1.9.7 Feedback

>>>>>>>>>> Download Patch 1.9.7 <<<<<<<<<<<

This is only a patch and requires the full Dune Wars install 1.9.1. As with the previous patches, this includes all post 1.9.1 patches in it and can be installed directly on a fresh 1.9.1 Installation, or any previously patched version of it.

1.9.7 Patch Notes

+ Fixed viewing Promotions in the pedia

+ New Worker Automation options: Build Spice Harvesters and Upgrade Improvements (e.g. Shallow Well -> Deep Well)

+ Withdrawal from combat logic now looks for the best defended plot with the least enemy threat to it

+ Improvements can now be built on Polar Sink

+ Removed 'Pick Religion' option from the code entirely

+ Salt pan trade enabled.

+ Added scroll bar for Homeworld Screen City list - now you can transport units to latest additions to your empire.

+ No Ship can no longer move into tile with a unit that it is at war with - it may only attack. Also No Ship may no longer enter unguarded cities if you are at war with the owner. This is to prevent weird behaviour with units jumping to a new position.

+ Made some promotions available to the Carryall unit class (Many promotions allowed for other unit classes are not valid since Carryalls cannot attack).

+ Carryalls and Suspensor Transports can no longer pillage

+ Assault Cannon can no longer fortify for defensive bonuses

+ Industrial complex now has 10% production bonus on top of the +5 hammers and free techman.

+ Suspensor destroyers no longer receive defensive bonuses

+ Max Trade Routes raised from 8 to 50 (this is meant to be arbitrarily high, unfortunately due the way the code works setting it too high results in very very very long turn times. 50 should be enough.)

+ Can no longer build the House Shield Generator in a city that already has a Force Shield

+ Must have CHOAM as current State Religion to build Commodities Exchange

+ Implemented zero upkeep for Mahdi Zealot and Mujahid - no longer contribute anything to Unit Cost or Unit Supply

+ Created a few new buttons for buildings so everything should now have a unique icon even if 3D art is shared.

+ Every Non-State Religion present in a city now causes an additional -2 to happiness. The Bene Gesserit's Missionaria Protectiva building negates this. This should discourage religion spamming and make Inquisitors more useful. Note: if you have no State Religion then every religion present in a city will cause an additional -2 happiness.

+ Added religion flavors to Great People to allow more techs to be bulbed - Imperial and CHOAM to Great Nobleman, Thinking Machines to Great Scientist and the remainder to Great Prophet. Disabled the Great Person display in the Tech Screen as it was incorrect and it's not worth the effort to fix it. Probably further reviewing of tech flavours is needed to increase the number of bulbing options available.



Enjoy

Please post any feedback you have. I'm not sure when I'll get time to do more work on the mod, but here is a short list of things I would like to do to complete the mod if I get the chance:

Woohooo! This list of changes is just GREAT!!! Nearly Everything that was broken is fixed, more than expected for sure. I've waited so long for this patch, but now... worms incoming!

This reminds me - I think I will add +2 happy to every holy-city-wonder. It should still be desirably to "invent" any available (!) religion, and you can't remove a religion out of its holy city (Can you?).

Of course if would be better to "add 2 happy faces if this religion is not your state religion", but I'm probably not able to do that. Maybe +1 happy could be a compromise, or the code of the missionaria protectiva can be reused.

Hey, hey, glad to see you plugged away at it and got it released. I'm also glad it looks like you found my bug in my worker 'upgrade improvements' automation code .

Undocumented feature of 1.9.7: Content of botanic test stations reworked. Great!

KHM said:

It should still be desirably to "invent" any available (!) religion

Click to expand...

It still just as desirable to found any religion. There is just an added incentive to run a state religion rather than no religion and to keep your cities clean of non-state religions.

Undocumented feature of 1.9.7: Content of botanic test stations reworked. Great!

Click to expand...

That's news to me! What do you think has changed? AFAIK botanical testing stations haven't been changed for a few patches...

Nice job Deliverator! I haven't played the mod for a while, this gives a good excuse to give it another spin.

1) "To keep your cities clean of any non-state religion": You can't do that in the holy city of the specific religion. YES, this is typically outweighed by the benefits of the shrine, but the point is: you can't purge it.

2) Botanic testing stations. I always play at marathon:
- Until now, cash findings were between 120-250 Solaris, and still are. Good.
- But beakers were only abot 30-40, now 150-250 and thus balanced. Fixed.
- Hammers were a pitiful 7-11 (=> 1-2 turns of early production) and are 50-80 now. Fixed.
Don't know what you did (and it seems you don't either), but something has changed to the better for sure.

That's one of my changes I'd made and passed along to Deliverator.

An old issue that I thought had been cleaned up a while back, but that I've noticed again; the Arrakis mapscript is creating some graben tiles that aren't Sink. All graben are supposed to be Sink, with the +1 commerce, but this isn't happening for some reason.
Odd.

KHM said:

2) Botanic testing stations. I always play at marathon:
- Until now, cash findings were between 120-250 Solaris, and still are. Good.
- But beakers were only abot 30-40, now 150-250 and thus balanced. Fixed.
- Hammers were a pitiful 7-11 (=> 1-2 turns of early production) and are 50-80 now. Fixed.
Don't know what you did (and it seems you don't either), but something has changed to the better for sure.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, I thought you meant new features as in new results. Chris fixed the goody results to scale with game speed and that is included in 1.9.7.

Does this patch break saves from 1.9.6?

My guess is no in the sense of actually causing crashes, but that it could lead to very funky situations, where empires are thrown into unhappiness because of too many religions.

Folket said:

Does this patch break saves from 1.9.6?

Click to expand...

I think it probably will. There are quite a few C++ SDK changes. I'd start a new game to be on the safe side.

An old issue that I thought had been cleaned up a while back, but that I've noticed again; the Arrakis mapscript is creating some graben tiles that aren't Sink. All graben are supposed to be Sink, with the +1 commerce, but this isn't happening for some reason.
Odd.

Click to expand...

Are you seeing a lot of these or just the occasional tile? The mapscript and terrain hasn't been changed in a while AFAIK.

yep, far as I can recall, I haven't touched the map script, can't imagine anything that I would have for at least.

I don't think its from anything recent, I remember seeing this a while back.
But it can be a fair number of tiles.

Take a look at the attached screenshot; red circles are on graben tiles that are not sink.


I thought the mapscript was supposed to make every graben tile sink.

Thanks a lot for the update. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best fantasy mod;, not only it reveals creativity with its fun toys and setting but also a concern with balance and what the AI can do.

I just had a lot of fun achieving an overkill spice victory with Stilgar. A fun game although the Mahdi Rush against the AI seems too effective.
The new buttons for the workers are awesome. Still, when I tell the workers to automatically improve old improvements they seem to prefer to build spice harvesters even if the improvement was right next to them.

Thanks again.

Very nice update - glad to see you are still working on this

If you don't mind me asking, how did you manage to implement all those multiple Terrains with different elevations (e.g. different Coast and Ocean terrains, and Sink / Salt etc which are non-"water" but still low-elevation?) I've been trying to import some different ocean and land Terrains into Civ4Colonization from this mod and Master of Mana, but it seems very unpredictable how they end up being displayed.

BTW for fans of the Duniverse, there is an interesting looking Dune themed mod now in the works for Crusader Kings 2 (interstellar rather than Arrakis based). It looks months away yet but I hope it makes it through to completion.

@orlath: look at the height maps that come with dune wars.

Thanks tesb. I've found the tga files for coast and ocean in art/terrain/heightmap . I suppose TextureBlend in artdefinesterrain xml controls which are used? (modiki unfortunately is not too informative on terrains.)

Your new terrains in Master of Mana look fantastic btw; I would love to try adapting a few of those as a planet terrain in Colonization if you wouldn't mind me using some. I notice that your artdefines xml uses
<Path>Art/Terrain/Textures/LandBlend.dds
<Grid>Art/Terrain/Textures/LandGrids.dds
but it displays unique textures in game; did you use a different system to achieve this?