More than 18 Players?

Hey, folks. I looked around a little bit, but I either didn't look hard enough or there weren't any topics concerning the number of players per game.

Anyways, I was wondering, is it possible to easily edit the game to allow for more than eighteen players? I always like having a bunch of civilizations, and especially considering how huge the world is (even if it's mostly sand and dunes), having all the factions fleshed out might be fun.

Anyways, I was just wondering if that was possible and easy to do on my own, or if it's something that would have to be done via patch or what have you.

Well, there are only 9 playable civilizations, so even 18 on a map would have every civilization doubled. There are also issues with having more than one of the same civ alive at one time.

Dune Wars wasn't really designed with the philosophy of some mods (not to put any other mod down) that more is better I'd say, but rather the team picked civs that there was enough information about them from the dune universe to flesh them out a bit and enough different about them that each would play a little differently. Since the books focus very little on affairs outside of the few main players (Atredies, Harkonnen, Fremen, Corrino for instance), making an interesting playable civ out of most of the smaller mentioned houses would have required a lot of liberties being taken, to say the least. Even as is, Ordos isn't a real 'cannon' house (comes from the dune rts video games) and Ecaz is a real stretch as well. So sorry playing a game with a large number of players probably isn't going to be possible, but I hope the civs that are there will be more interesting for it.

i once wanted to add the house riches civ also - on the first dune wars version
, there was a spacing guild faction.

maybe someone could make an addon

It seems to me that Richese would probably be too similar to Ix (mechanical/technologist faction), and we decided that the Guild didn't make much sense as a player (it is very anti-canon for them to be fielding military forces directly), and so we made Ecaz into a trade faction.

It is hard to think of many other new ones. We could add Moritani, but they would be hard to differentiate from Harkonnen.

And most of the other houses (Hagal, Mutelli) don't really have any clear flavor.

I think we're already stretching it, flavorwise, with Ordos and Ecaz, and with the Bene Gesserit as a playable faction (though you can imagine they are working through some puppet house).

But the mod is not designed to work with more than 9 players, many mechanics would start to fail.

Ahriman said:

But the mod is not designed to work with more than 9 players, many mechanics would start to fail.

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I don't quite agree. The mod is not designed to work with two copies of the same civ; in particular we know that Tleilax plague and possibly the KH units have this problem. However, there is no fundamental limit related to number of players.

I figured that's what he meant David

well,

maybe i think that having more civs to play and choose from, is simply - a bit more fun, so.....sticking to the straight dune canon is too harsh, after all we are talking about civ 4 game play.

just a thought.

Well, my question was if it would be possible to add more slots for players, not necessarily make more Civs for the game. Basically, I wanted to have every faction have all their leaders in play at once- team them all up and see how it goes. Having more or less factions (for instance, I COULD just go without some of the less canon factions) is irrelevant to me, but could be interesting to have more in there just for kicks.

in particular we know that Tleilax plague and possibly the KH units have this problem

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So does Ix (only one copy of Ixian weapons resource is available) and Corrino (only one copy of Sardaular cooperation resource is available).
I think it was pretty obvious what I meant. But yes, technically it is duplicate factions that cause the problem.

maybe i think that having more civs to play and choose from, is simply - a bit more fun, so.....sticking to the straight dune canon is too harsh, after all we are talking about civ 4 game play.

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I think the Dune lore/flavor is a huge part of the value of the mod. Just inventing new houses I think weakens this; it also dilutes the amount of flavor we have. If we add X more houses, then we are less likely each game to be playing against the Atreides, Harkonnen, Fremen, Bene Gesserit and Corrino (unless we manually force the choice of foes), who are surely the core of Dune lore. So I would tend to oppose adding anyone unless there is a strong canon reason for them to be there. We have already had many complaints at having included Ordos.

Well, my question was if it would be possible to add more slots for players

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Understood; I am not sure, others will be better placed to answer this than I. Obviously you should play the mod however is most fun for you.

Quote:
Well, my question was if it would be possible to add more slots for players
Understood; I am not sure, others will be better placed to answer this than I. Obviously you should play the mod however is most fun for you.

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interesting - maybe we ca have a pre made scenario for dune, where we place a starting point for the factions and we can make like 14 or so factions - with duplicate factions only with a different leader - youll have both leaders of the atreidis - teamed up together - but as of apart nations.

this can be fun.

The point is that some "civs" = factions just don't work correctly when you have them more than once. This is known for, but not limited to:
- House IX (only one IX Ressouce, but eventually none the the houses IX get them. No known solution.)
- House Corrino (same as IX, but for the sardaukar ressource)
- Bene Gesserit (Kwisatz Haderach may not be doubled)
- Bene Tleilax (problems with plagues, AND their "native" religion may not be doubled)
- ? Fremen ? (only one water debt, didn't test this myself)

Thus, at least these factions can only be included once if intended to work as intended. A game with more as 9 civs would need to clone only the OTHER civs, but you still might face unexpected problems.

? Fremen ? (only one water debt, didn't test this myself)

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Fremen don't get messed up, because Water Debt comes from their palace, not a Contract through the offworld system, so two Fremen players will both have a Fremen palace that gives the resource.
You are correct on the other issues though.

Flavor-wise, I don’t have a problem with multiple leaders of the same house squaring off against each other. It does have problems in this mode though.

KHM said:

The point is that some "civs" = factions just don't work correctly when you have them more than once. This is known for, but not limited to:
- House IX (only one IX Ressouce, but eventually none the the houses IX get them. No known solution.)
- House Corrino (same as IX, but for the sardaukar ressource)

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One option, if it is possible, would be to set the number of unique off world resources available equal to the number of players in that faction (maybe plus one to allow for it to be available for maps w/o that faction).

- Bene Gesserit (Kwisatz Haderach may not be doubled)

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You could just make these national units that can't be rebuilt. I assume it can't be that hard.

- Bene Tleilax (problems with plagues, AND their "native" religion may not be doubled)

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This one is the real problem. I’ve tried playing as the BT with multiple BT factions and the religion is not doubled, instead only one of the BT factions founds it. That stinks because the BT religion is one of the draws of playing that faction.

Pretty much all of the conflicts for multiple leaders of the same civ can be corrected with checks in the related code to deal with instances of duplicate civs. The only real possible exception is the Tleilaxu Holy City. All of the religion code is built around the assumption that there is only one holy city per religion. Altering the rules to allow a single religion to have two or more would be a large task.

However, now that I'm thinking about it, it probably would be doable to create additional "fake" holy cities. For all internal religion code the original Holy City (who ever founds the religion first, a.k.a. the first Tleilaxu civ to settle a city) would be called (for instance by getHolyCity(eReligion), etc., but the "fake" additional ones would still give all the benefits. This wouldn't really be easy, but it is doable.

There are still other things that are higher priority right now, but eventually I'd like to clear up these kinds of conflicts.

Flavor-wise, I don’t have a problem with multiple leaders of the same house squaring off against each other.

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Really? I can't exactly see a Liet-Kynes / Stilgar grudge match happening based on any kind of flavor. Nor can I see various Bene Gesserit sisters fighting each other (the Sisters who opposed them like Jessica were basically apostates in the eyes of the Sisterhood). Nor would it make sense for multiple Tleilaxu to treat each other in the same manner that that they treat outsiders.

One option, if it is possible, would be to set the number of unique off world resources available equal to the number of players in that faction (maybe plus one to allow for it to be available for maps w/o that faction).

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Maybe possible, but would require a lot of coding and reworking of the resource system to allow duplicates and to change how they were selected. For example, if there are 2 Corrino factions A and B, then there would have to be 2 Sardaukar cooperation resources. But we'd also need to change the AI for how resources are picked; currently Corrino are hardcoded to get S Cooperation with their first landing stage, because it is the "best" resource; we'd somehow have to block them from taking both S Cooperation resources if A builds 2 landing stages before B builds any.

With duplicate civs, we'd also lose faction color, which would be unfortunate.

I see it as something to implement for those who like bigger games with more players involved and don't mind the inconsistencies you mentioned. I mean, I'd never play it with more than one of each, but once other more important matters are handled, there's no harm in making the code more robust to handle multiples.

But right now it's sitting behind the current AI work, the new Axlotl tank code, and a planned further refinement of espionage (with AI overhaul for it). So... it might be a while

I see it as something to implement for those who like bigger games with more players involved and don't mind the inconsistencies you mentioned.

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I have no objection to allowing it; for those players who don't want to use it, it is harmless. I'm merely arguing that it doesn't really make sense flavorwise - but there are certainly people who won't care about that.

but once other more important matters are handled, there's no harm in making the code more robust to handle multiples.

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Agreed.