1.9.6 Feedback

This probably answered someplace else but what effect does the difficulty level have on the AI's willingness to declare war?
I don't think it has a direct effect, but it has a large indirect effect, because higher difficulty level means that the AI has more power and a larger army (from production and other economy bonuses) and so it is more likely to have a power advantage.
There is a large variation in aggressiveness across the different AI personalities (Rabban is a aggressive maniac, the Ordos leaders won't start wars often but can easily be bribed into a war, Bene Gesserit are fairly peaceful builders].

Some of the recent AI changes have also reduced the AI's tendency to build military in the early game in favor of having it invest in economy more; one of the downsides of that is that sometimes (on lower difficulty levels in particular) AI cities are poorly defending in the early game.

2. Sounds like the espionage effect is working as intended. It provides a big water penalty, which should slow growth of your city and maybe even starve it.
 
Hi all,
I've downloaded version 1.9.1, patch 1.9.6, and Music Pack 1.9b.
When I try to load a new game; it begins but after ... back to windows :(

I use Vista.

Do you have an idea of this problem ?

Thanks a lot in advance

(Sorry for my poor english !)
 
Thanks David :)
I've other mods. For example, Rise of Mankind run successfully.
I use a Civ 4 "all in one" with 3.19 patch.
 
OK, I've got several games under my belt now so here's my 2 cents. As others have said the Fremen are very easy to play. I'm far from an expert player and at Noble playing the Fremen is usually an easy win. By comparison at my skill level playing any of the other houses is too easy at Warlord and I usually end up losing on Noble. Specifically Shai-Halud and Madhi's water and gold bonuses allow you to expand early and still maintain full research. And of course the Madhi units and production bonuses make it that much easier. What techs to pick are pretty straight forward. Go for Divine Mandate then Water of Life and the basics like Mining, etc... When you see thopters take a detour to Rocketry and add some sandworm riding AA troops to hordes. Not complaining in fact I think it's good to have one faction that's easy for new players like me to cut their teeth on. Now if I can just come up for winning strategy for some of the other houses.

Re: The spice monopoly victory. I've read the "Some concerns" thread and agree it's extremely difficult to pull off on a Standard or larger sized map. However I've tried for some quick games on Tiny maps and they were extremely quick indeed. On a Tiny map you only need 7-10 spice to win and at those low numbers it's more a matter of luck. If you start off 'inland' or just have the bad luck of not having spice blows in your territory you're going to lose quickly. I assume this is something that's difficult or impossible to balance out on all map sizes so I've just learned to turn off the Spice Victory on small maps.

Can anything be done to improve AI city placement? I know it's not brilliant in vanilla Civ, and it tends to overlap cities workable tiles, but in this mod as they say "Water is life". I've seen on several occasions where if an AI city had been placed in one of the adjacent squares it would gained groundwater without giving up any other resources. A few times it looked like the AI prefered mesas over groundwater. I have no idea how the AI works. Is simply trying to fill in territory or does it view a 1 water/2 hammer mesa as more valuable than a 1 water/1 hammer/1 gold groundwater without taking into account it's fully developed value?

edit> One last observation. In all my games when the AI controls the Bene Gesserit they're usually in last place. Any idea why that is?
 
Thanks for the feedback!

As others have said the Fremen are very easy to play.
Fremen are certainly very strong, Part of it is certainly because, as you say, they are easy to play. Their strengths are straightforward. There are definitely counters to them (using hornets and vehicles and anti-melee promotions) but the AI isn't so good at that.
Also, they can start to struggle in the late game where their lack of aircraft/vehicle access shows up.

Fremen are designed to be the most powerful in the early game, but they're weaker later on.
They're not the only one that can get Shai Hulad or Mahdi, so those benefits don't just work for them. On higher difficulty levels where expansion is more costly the early game advantage isn't as large; the economy or diplomatic advantages of other religions start to become significant.

The spice monopoly victory. I've read the "Some concerns" thread and agree it's extremely difficult to pull off on a Standard or larger sized map. However I've tried for some quick games on Tiny maps and they were extremely quick indeed
The game isn't really balanced for a tiny map. Not sure that we could do that very well, but we could probably make some improvements; in particular maybe we should tweak the minimum spice requirement up more?
I don't think the game would ever work *well* on tiny though.

I would imagine that on a tiny map there is probably very little "inland"?

Can anything be done to improve AI city placement?
AI city placement has already been completely rewritten. It isn't perfect, but it is pretty damn good IMO, especially relative to vanilla. The biggest change over vanilla is that it ignores tiles that are already within the BFC of an existing city owned by that player. The Dune Wars city placement code code assigns a value to various tile types (mostly groundwater, the water-yielding health resources and mesa, and then a little bit on other strategic/health resources and a very small amount on graben; polar tiles are also rated quite high), and then picks out the sites with the highest value within their BFC. There is a bias towards cities that are near the capital.

The settlement pattern is very different from vanilla, where the AI will tend to bunch up cities very tightly and settle like crazy; this is a very bad strategy in Dune Wars, where the value of a city is determined almost entirely by its water access.
We had a huge increase in AI performance when we changed their settlement logic.

I can't think of any obvious further changes that would improve placement, though it might be that the AI favors the pole too much given how much polar cities have been weakened.

In all my games when the AI controls the Bene Gesserit they're usually in last place. Any idea why that is?
Basically, I would say: the Bene Gesserit favor culture and diplomacy and espionage, and the AI isn't very good at using any of these. Espionage is probably also a bit underpowered, there are a few abilities that are very strong but they might be too expensive.
The Bene Gesserit also require careful use of their Kwizatz units, and the AI isn't so good at that.
The BGs are basically a late-game power, once you have large stacks and have had time to really start using their espionage to set up some stable allies.

In the hands of a human player, the BGs are probably one of the strongest.

I have observed the BG do well, usually when they found Shai Hulad and it gets adopted by several others.
 
Can anything be done to improve AI city placement? I know it's not brilliant in vanilla Civ, and it tends to overlap cities workable tiles, but in this mod as they say "Water is life". I've seen on several occasions where if an AI city had been placed in one of the adjacent squares it would gained groundwater without giving up any other resources.

If you can send a screenshot of this, it would be helpful. (Make sure to reveal all resources since some valuable resources may be hidden by your tech at the start of the game.)

In all my games when the AI controls the Bene Gesserit they're usually in last place. Any idea why that is?

ChrisAdams3997 had planned to work on the espionage AI after a "short break", but he has been quiet lately. I agree this is probably the thing that a BG human player does, which the BG AI does poorly. If you play BG as a human a few times, it would be valuable to then play a couple of games with BG as a computer player. Using cheat mode, look in on their position frequently. What did you do, which the computer player is failing to do? This will give us more specific information to improve the AI.
 
I've found another minor ... error in the game. The tooltip for the last basic trading-tiles-tech (desert trade) reads "allows trade on all tiles except deept desert". But that's not completely true: Salt pans are still excluded from trade. I noticed this when the landing stage I had built in my 3rd city (8 tiles away from my capital) did'nt deliver ginaz :mad: :sad: :( . Health&happiness goods were also not available (noticed that before).

Trade on salt pans should be included in desert trade imho.
 
The Laza Tiger is useful for several things:
a) Killing "almost dead" units hiding in stacks. Seems to be intended :).
b) Roaming at other territories you can't enter otherwise. Indended.
c) Killing mentats in cities. Seems to be intended and is fun (even to me, when the Corrino AI is so smart to do that. Happened once until now.). Mentats can be rebuilt, so this is no real problem.
d) Killing the Kwisatz unit. I believe this wasn't intended. Since you can't rebuild it (at least not the 4th one), AND there is no other option than fleeing for the Kwisatz unit (the Kwisatz will usually be the weakest unit and therefore be targeted), AND this is an anti-BG-Strategy available ONLY to House Corrino, this is a real problem. A solution could be "+1000% against Laza Tigers" added to all Kwisatz units. (Remember, the Kwisatz' were made 100 % proof against collateral damage for probably the same reason.)

So if there will be a new patch, I'd be happy if it included the following things:
- The solution for the "pick free religion" issue.
- Trade on salt pan squares, for instance with "desert trade".
- tiger-proof Kwisatz units.

BTW: Excellent work with the reworked techtree!!!!!!!
:clap: :clap: :clap: :worship: :worship: :worship:
Only thing I've wondered about is why kindjal fighters come immediately after shield fighters, with no other prerequisite.
 
a) through c) are certainly intended, though I wonder if we might be better off removing the hidden nationality ability (the AI is very bad at using this) and just leaving them as assassin units.

d) is worth thinking about. I have mixed feelings. The tiger provides one of the few counters in the game to the qwizatz units, which are otherwise very powerful, and one could argue that a player using the Qwizatz should try to have some screening units to kill any nearby tigers, but I guess I can see that the AI would be unable to do anything like this and it might be tough for the Imperials and only imperials to have the ability to counter them (though assassinating "special" people is well within the Imperial flavor, their spy has an assassin ability).

In technical terms, I'm not sure what could be done even if we wanted to make the Qwizatz units less vulnerable to tigers. We could give them a (defensive) withdraw chance (which I think they used to have?), or we could make them combat units, but I think I would still want it to be very easy to kill an unprotected Qwizatz.
Any other ideas?

I do think that Kindjal fighters have always been a bit too easy to beeline. Any thoughts on what be a logical alternative tech requirement, that would help slow them down?
 
In technical terms, I'm not sure what could be done even if we wanted to make the Qwizatz units less vulnerable to tigers.

What about my proposal "+900% against LazaTigers"? Kwisatz units can defend only, so there's no way to exploit this. Thumper promoted units have the same +900% against Worms.

Coming to "try to have some screening units to kill any nearby tigers": This is difficult when thinking of large stacks. The Kwisatz is MADE ONLY for use in stacks, the bigger the better. The Laza kills him out of his stack of doom, of course. But if you hide the Laza itself in a similar Stack, you can kill the Kwisatz while he can't kill the Laza (unless exterminating the entire Laza-consisting-stack of course). Now think the Laza-consisting-stack being stationed in a city (remember, you may have up to 5 Lazas). Enemy approaches your city, planning to besiege and conquer your city next turn, but of course is out of movement this turn. You send out your Laza and kill Mr. Kwisatz. NOT funny. In addition, this is an anti-Kwisatz-strategy ONLY available to the Imps. No one else can do anything like that.
Of course you might reply "but worm-riding is available only to Fremen [and their allies]. Mechs are bound to IX and so on." But this is general. Having mechs doesn't give you a unique advance against a special faction. But the Laza does: While every OTHER faction fears the mighty Kwisatz (and this is part of the BG-strength and therefore has been balanced in general terms), the mighty Kwisatz has to fear House Corrino because of their Lazas. It's like "scissors beats paper - unless it's imperial paper AND Bene-Gesserit scissors. In this case, paper still beats stone, but also beats scissors."
 
What about my proposal "+900% against LazaTigers"? Kwisatz units can defend only, so there's no way to exploit this. Thumper promoted units have the same +900% against Worms.
Hmm. Plausible. That would just mean that they were never selected to defend. If we wanted to make them immune, this would probably be the simplest fix.

I think you make a persuasive enough argument that the anti-Qwizatz ability of the tigers is just too strong as an anti-faction ability. Tigers aren't really central to the identity or strengths of the Corrino faction, but Qwizatz units really are central to the BGs.

I'd support your proposal.
 
Playing as Paul Muad'dib of the Fremen. It says I have the Freman Waterdebt, and I have the Stillsuits tech, but I can't build Crysknife fighters for some one.

Weird and annoying.
 
Playing as Paul Muad'dib of the Fremen. It says I have the Freman Waterdebt, and I have the Stillsuits tech, but I can't build Crysknife fighters for some one.

Weird and annoying.

Edit: Just got desert trade (or something) and can build fine. Not sure what went on there before.
 
Edit: Just got desert trade (or something) and can build fine. Not sure what went on there before.

My guess: you had the resource in your capital, but not in other cities, because there wasn't a trade route connection? So you couldn't build them in other cities?
 
A valid assumption, but I just went back and checked the save game and that wasn't the case. Instead, my capital showed no resources at all (ie, no Water Debt) and the crysknife fighter was grayed out. Is there a technology that "unlocks" the Water Debt for the Fremen?

More general comments about the game:

Very few technologies can be researched by great people. Is this intentional? It is kind of weird to keep settling my great people.

Melee units don't have any anti-vehicle promos as far as I can tell, however plenty of other units do receive bonuses against melee units. This can be a pain for the Fremen who can build fewer non-melee units.

Were the Mahdi units changed to require upkeep? Having no upkeep was pretty powerful, but now paying upkeep on a bunch of low end units meant to wear down enemies with continual assaults can really sink an economy. This is especially true for the Freman running Arrakis Paradise because they can't build as many units and they don't generate as much commerce (at least before the terraforming gets off the ground). Maybe Mahdi units should get half off upkeep?

Along the same lines, it would be nice if the Fremen had good alternatives to the Freman Mahdi rush. It is hard to say whether the Freman Madhi rush is too powerful or if the alternatives just don't cut it, but I feel like I'm playing the same game every time I run the Freman.
 
I do think that Kindjal fighters have always been a bit too easy to beeline. Any thoughts on what be a logical alternative tech requirement, that would help slow them down?

Logical in the sense of "supported by the lore"? Hardly.

Logical in the sense of "improving the (already well-thought) tech-tree"? Maybe. I'm always annoyed about the dead end "artificial spice".
- First, you have to research the prerequisite tech, that enables alliances only (not useless, but no big deal imho. You don't always have someone useful to ally with.).
- Then you have to research the tech itself, which is NOT cheap. Its ONE AND ONLY effect is: Enabling the amal-project.
- Then you have to build the wonder itself (not cheap, too.) Of course, anyone else could be faster than you, leaving you with two almost worthless techs.
Amal project provides 8 Spice resources. Maybe this is much on a tiny map, but else? I mean, you could instead turn your sliders to "100 % cash" for the required number of turns to research these two techs, then "build" credits in the city which would build the amal project otherwise. I bet you'd get MUCH more money this way than from these puny 8 spices.
On the other hand, "artificial spice" could be the prerequisite für "military elite". Maybe for lascannon troopers, too. Voila, tech gets useful.
 
Very few technologies can be researched by great people. Is this intentional?
We never set up a design for this, its a consequence of not thinking about the issue.
I think settling great people or using their ability makes a bit more sense with Dune flavor and its emphasis on human achievement, but not strongly enough to prevent people from bulbing if that is what they want to do. We could probably go back and add wider functionality here.

Were the Mahdi units changed to require upkeep
Not AFAIK? Not intentionally anyway.

it would be nice if the Fremen had good alternatives to the Freman Mahdi rush
I think they do. Bladesmen and hardened bladesmen are still good for rushing, Fremen can rapidly expand quite quickly, and they can take a religion/ecology tech path up to Naib's chosen. I don't think Mahdi rush is their only option. Mahdi rush is very powerful if you're playing a conquest strategy, but Fremen can also be played as a builder.

Logical in the sense of "supported by the lore"?
Well, we want logical in the sense of making some kind of technological sense. It could be that we'd tie it into the suspensor tech line or something; arguably the Kindjal guys might have better shields than the regular shield troopers.

I'm always annoyed about the dead end "artificial spice".
Artificial spice is very deliberately dead-end, and giving nothing but the Wonder. The idea is to make it an optional tech; very helpful if you're trying to get a Spice victory, but otherwise low priority. It's certainly possible to tinker with the number of free spice and the cost of the tech and wonder, but it should stay optional. Also, 8 spice really starts to add up with multipliers in the capital and then spice silo buildings through your empire, or with the other spice-based wonders.
 
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