Dune Wars

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

Thanks for the feedback! Now there are only 489 other downloaders who should post!

edorazio said:
1. I see in the sub-forum you guys are changing the terrain up a little. Currently, Rugged terrain does not terraform. This makes it extremely poor terrain, particularly in light of my concerns with other aspects of the terraforming civic (see below). Perhaps Rugged should only terraform into plains?

Yes, there are two possible big changes coming. Please drop by the Arrakis.py map script discussion to learn more. This is related to the starting plot calculation; especially on the archipelago mapscript, some civs start surrounded by rugged and have difficulty growing.

2. Currently, building a Reservoir of Liet yields thats -2 diplomatic penalty with, I believe, only civs running the pro-spice civic. A few problems with this. First, if you convince them to switch civics to Arrakis Paradise (side note: I wonder if you should even be able to do this...), you retain this penalty.

The diplo penalty should definitely go away if they switch; I will check that. I assume there is a big resistance to switching to a "hated civic", but I can check that also; I am reluctant to make it impossible.

Second, if you disable the terraforming victory condition, you can accumulate enormous negative diplomatic penalties.

That is *definitely* a bug.

Its enough to overwhelm every other factor in diplomacy and basically means you will never trade with a pro-spice faction for the rest of the game. Perhaps cap the penalty at -8ish, or perhaps -10 max total for the Reservoirs and the current -4 for using terraforming.

Good suggestion.

3. At least in my games so far, the vast majority of civs switch to pro-spice. I think this is because they research it first as it is a much cheaper tech and comes sooner in the tree. It seems like a civ immediately switches to the first Arrakis Future civic they get, unless they are, what I assume to be, hardcoded to prefer one over the other, i.e. Corrino for pro-spice and the fremen for paradise.

Most of the civs have a "favorite civic" and "hated civic" for these, so they are highly likely to switch to their favorite. In addition pro-spice has a benefit with no real visible penalty, so there is no reason to avoid it unless it is "hated". Do you ever see the paradise civs switching to it?

4. At regular speed, at least the first half of the entire tech tree goes by way too fast

We thought this was due to high spice commerce. However, after some study it seems to be because foreign commerce income is much higher than vanilla. Can you confirm in your finance advisor screen? I have locally reduced the foreign commerce income, so this should be more balanced in the next patch.

5. I still think the pro-spice civic is way too weak, especially versus the terraformers.

Other playtesters have commented about this as well. I attempted to make pro-spice stronger by decreasing the rate at which spice decays in pro-spice lands. However spice decays so slowly now, this may not be noticeable. What other effects can we give pro-spice to make it stronger? Later game techs which enable even more hammer or commerce bonuses?

Spice in general is still way to weak as well. I don't feel like it is a must-have thing right now, which makes no sense in the Dune universe. You get a modest economic bonus for each one right now. Why not, at the least, a much larger CREDIT bonus in the capital for each resource?

This is definitely the intention. Things may be skewed now by foreign trade income; let us see if it looks better after the next patch.

6. Related to 6, I think upgrade costs should be decreased; significantly so if you don't implement 5 above. Planetfall has done this well, I think.

We have not done anything to make upgrades more or less expensive, so it should work the same as vanilla and most other mods. What is different about planetfall, just a blanket percent decrease in upgrade cost compared to vanilla?

7. I know this is probably pretty far down on your list, and I've already complained about this before (sorry!) but city placement remains god-awful.

I agree with you. There are two ways to sort the list: important to gameplay, and easy to implement. Unfortunately this is important to gameplay and hard to implement. There are three places to change, which have completely unrelated code: each mapscript for initial placement, and the internal AI for deciding where to place colonies. (Neither mapscript uses the internal AI.) We will fix this, I just don't know when.

8. Really minor quibble, but the tech that lets you build a library immediately precedes the tech that lets you build the observatory.

Excellent point. We'll spread them out.

9. It would be absolutely amazing if terraforming lead to the development of oceans and lakes as mentioned above.

We have a graphic for "raincloud" which I plan to launch from Reservoirs of Liet, like sandstorms launch from deep desert today. For lakes, we could also add the existing Oasis feature, and for the very late game, actual lakes using the vanilla water graphics. I agree this would be cool. The implementation of terraforming is all in python and it has gotten fairly complex. I may try to move some of this into the sdk; expanding the Fresh Water data stored on the map will make a lot of the complexity go away. Stay tuned!

We do appreciate the feedback, please write more! We have used a convention for providing feedback which may seem strange, but will help us make sure all feedback is addressed. Next time you give feedback with a numbered list, could you start the list at 10? In other words, across all your posts, please use a unique number for each feedback instead of starting over at 1.

Deliverator · Sep 20, 2009

davidlallen said:
We have a graphic for "raincloud" which I plan to launch from Reservoirs of Liet, like sandstorms launch from deep desert today. For lakes, we could also add the existing Oasis feature, and for the very late game, actual lakes using the vanilla water graphics. I agree this would be cool. The implementation of terraforming is all in python and it has gotten fairly complex. I may try to move some of this into the sdk; expanding the Fresh Water data stored on the map will make a lot of the complexity go away. Stay tuned!

I think oceans and lakes could be tricky graphically, but we could definitely use rivers seeing as we are not using them at all. I was playing with them in World Builder and there's definitely some potential for a cool late terraforming feature there.

koma13 · Sep 20, 2009

Thanks for the feedback! Now there are only 489 other downloaders who should post!

I can't count the mods I downloaded and then forget about and never tried out...

Anyway, what happened to game speeds? I liked saga speed. Now there is only marathon, but it is too quick.

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

koma13 said:
What happened to game speeds? I liked saga speed. Now there is only marathon, but it is too quick.

See discussion starting at this post for a few more posts. From 1.0 through 1.4.8, there was a modified gamespeed file. It had some very strange breakpoints for the amount of culture required to expand your cultural borders. Because there were so many gamespeeds in this custom file, it would have been a small project on its own to clean that up. I proposed to just put back the vanilla gamespeed file, and there was no strong objection at that time. So in 1.5 I put back the original gamespeed file.

I don't think we should drop back to the previous DW one, which had such weird values, but we can certainly discuss further changes.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

I think part of what terraforming needs is some minor benefits that happen beyond the BFC of the cities with the reservoirs and catchbasins.

I don't know about creating oceans; I think we should leave that to the Mars, Now mod.

We could however use the feature layer; retain the terrain type, but add oasis feature (+1 water) or scrublands/forest feature, or whatever. It could be cool to start seeing some vegetation spread on the grasslands.

The balance is getting reasonable; terraforming is much weaker than it used to be; I am worried now in fact that paradise AI civs aren't building their terraforming buildings, the building might need a higher AI weight.
The other way to weaken terraforming, as I have suggested before, is to prevent spice blooms from happening within the cultural borders of civs with Arrakis spice civic.

But I think the diplomatic penalties are part of the balance; currently, Fremen and Atreides will usually go Paradise, and everyone else will go Spice. I quite like this; it means that if you go for the more powerful paradise, you will have almost everyone allied against you, and risk dogpile wars. This is as it should be; terraforming arrakis threatens the spice, which is the lifeblood of almost all the factions in the game, and so going terraforming *should* be unifying everyone against you.

If the AIs split equally between spice and terraform, then we would lose this.
There does need to be a small diplo bonus between spicers, and between terraformers (ie intra-civic bonuses).

Anyway, what happened to game speeds? I liked saga speed. Now there is only marathon, but it is too quick.

I think we should be balancing the game for Normal, or Epic at the most.

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

Ahriman said:
I don't know about creating oceans; I think we should leave that to the Mars, Now mod.

We could however use the feature layer; retain the terrain type, but add oasis feature (+1 water) or scrublands/forest feature, or whatever. It could be cool to start seeing some vegetation spread on the grasslands.

I think rainclouds and oases will add a lot. Maybe small lakes, maybe scrub forests; I agree large oceans are probably going too far.

The other way to weaken terraforming, as I have suggested before, is to prevent spice blooms from happening within the cultural borders of civs with Arrakis spice civic.

I think that does not "weaken", it "cripples". That means your spice income drops to zero. I think we have identified that foreign trade income is too high currently, but the next patch will fix this. As it is, a Reservoir of Liet prevents spice within its BFC, and a catchbasin prevents spice adjacent to the city; so cities that build these will push spice away anyhow. But at least cities of that civ which have not built these buildings can still get spice income.

I think the better solution is to think out how pro-spice can be stronger. I like the idea of adding more and more bonuses to the harvester with higher techs; maybe we could pick out 3-4 mid and high tier techs, and give pro-spice an additional +1 commerce and +1 hammer from these.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

I think that does not "weaken", it "cripples". That means your spice income drops to zero. I think we have identified that foreign trade income is too high currently, but the next patch will fix this. As it is, a Reservoir of Liet prevents spice within its BFC, and a catchbasin prevents spice adjacent to the city; so cities that build these will push spice away anyhow. But at least cities of that civ which have not built these buildings can still get spice income.

First, it wouldn't reduce it to *quite* zero, since a bloom on the border would still spill into your territory, but this is minor.

In my opinion, if you are going to a terraforming economy, you will have a much larger population and so have a much larger cottage or specialist economy. You should have to give up getting revenue from spice.
Maybe as a compromise, we could increase the "no-spice" area of the catchbasin and reservoir by 1 more tile; so the catchbasin prevents spice within 2 tiles and the reservoir within 3.

Another change would be to increase the spice resource degradation from the paradise civic, the opposite of how pro-spice reduces the degradation now.

Also, while I think the normal-> plains terraform rate is good now, we could use a slightly slower plains -> grassland rate. The plains don't normally hang around for very long; you tend to go from nothing to grassland quite quickly.

Remember that if we are boosting terraforming further by adding oases and scrub and allowing badlands/rugged to terraform, then we have more leeway to weaken it in other areas.

I like the idea of adding more and more bonuses to the harvester with higher techs; maybe we could pick out 3-4 mid and high tier techs, and give pro-spice an additional +1 commerce and +1 hammer from these.

I really don't think this would help much, because 80%+ of the spice resources I control are usually not within the BFC of any city.

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

Ahriman said:
80%+ of the spice resources I control are usually not within the BFC of any city.

I am pretty sure the spice resources you control, which are outside any city BFC, do not contribute to your spice revenue. It has to have a harvester and be inside your BFC to contribute.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

I am pretty sure the spice resources you control, which are outside any city BFC, do not contribute to your spice revenue. It has to have a harvester and be inside your BFC to contribute.

This is not true. Any spice terrain within my cultural borders that I have a harvester on increases the number of spice resources I have, whether it is within a BFC of a city or not.

And the number of spice resources I have boosts the commerce yield of my house spice corporation.

Just like any other resource in the game; if there is a cow resource outside any BFC and I build a pasture on it, I still get the cow resource.

Not sure where you got this idea from.

Unless you aren't talking about spice corporation revenue?

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

I am specifically talking about spice revenue. But perhaps I am remembering something different; there was a suggestion to allow building harvesters on spice *outside* cultural control. The xml can be modified to do that, but I believe we discovered that with this modification, those spice plots did not contribute to spice revenue.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

I am specifically talking about spice revenue

As in the revenue from the corporation that comes from the number of resources you have; yes, you get this from every resource with the improvement built on it within your territory.

But perhaps I am remembering something different; there was a suggestion to allow building harvesters on spice *outside* cultural control. The xml can be modified to do that, but I believe we discovered that with this modification, those spice plots did not contribute to spice revenue.

I think this was probably what you were remembering; an easy mistake.

This is correct; you only get resources from tiles within your cultural borders, so building harvesters outside wouldn't help; improvements outside cultural borders aren't owned by any faction. The only way to do this would be to make the harvesters like forts, providing cultural influence in a 1 tile (or 0 tile) radius. And I don't think the AI would do this well; I don't think it ever builds improvements outside its culture. As it is, the AI spreads culture with forts a little by building the forts on bonus resource tiles that are within its culture, but outside the BFC of any of its cities, but thats it.

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

Thank you for the correction. I guess some neurons were misfiring.

Back to the original question, how can we make pro-spice economy more powerful? This is a separate question from making paradise economy weaker. I would rather have them both strong so the decision is interesting, rather than both weak.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

Well, it is the relative strength of the civics that matter.

I think slower spice degradation and higher harvester yields are sufficient for spicer as opposed to neutral.

And then weaken the ability of paradise users to get spice in their territory.

Some random other possibilities:
a) a unique worker unit ("carryall team", "spice crawler"?) that require the pro-spice civic and could only build spice harvesters, and had some mix of: more movement points, higher work rate, ignore terrain cost (or -1 terrain cost).
b) a unique building that required the civic and gave gold bonuses with spice.
c) the civic provides bonuses to some of the spice-economy buildings, like an extra +gold from the refinery, spotter control and spaceport
d) +1 trade route, or +trade route yield %.

But we don't want to overlap with the Landsraad/CHOAM religion either.

davidlallen · Sep 20, 2009

Ahriman said:
Well, it is the relative strength of the civics that matter.

Choosing between two weak civics doesn't really matter. Choosing between two strong civics is a more interesting decision.

a) a unique worker unit ("carryall team", "spice crawler"?) that require the pro-spice civic and could only build spice harvesters, and had some mix of: more movement points, higher work rate, ignore terrain cost (or -1 terrain cost).
c) the civic provides bonuses to some of the spice-economy buildings, like an extra +gold from the refinery, spotter control and spaceport

Those are both excellent ideas.

Ahriman · Sep 20, 2009

Choosing between two weak civics doesn't really matter. Choosing between two strong civics is a more interesting decision.

I take your point, but the spice and terraform civic are both strong already, and the decision between them is already very interesting. Its just a question of *how* strong.

We also need to make the non-transparent benefits of spice economy (like the slower spice degradation) clearer in the documentation; its easier for the player not to notice that their spice economy is much larger than normal.

Potential problems are:

a) a unique worker unit ("carryall team", "spice crawler"?) that require the pro-spice civic and could only build spice harvesters, and had some mix of: more movement points, higher work rate, ignore terrain cost (or -1 terrain cost).

Will the AI build these, thinking they're better, and not build enough normal workers?

c) the civic provides bonuses to some of the spice-economy buildings, like an extra +gold from the refinery, spotter control and spaceport

Civics can't currently boost gold output of buildings; only happiness and health I think, so it would require dll modification.

edorazio · Sep 21, 2009

Perhaps the spice civic could grant access to an Apostolic Palace equivalent (Arrakis Spice Exchange). You could vote on resolutions affecting the various qualities of spice: duration of the spice, frequency of the blows, "price" of the spice, access to new units (harvesters as mentioned, maybe some new units that flourish in spice tiles).

davidlallen · Sep 21, 2009

That is an interesting idea. Some of those parameters such as how fast spice expires, and how often spice blows happen, are controlled by the ecology of Dune itself, so I am not sure they would respond to a vote

I agree with your previous suggestion about adding more interesting resolutions to the UN / Landsraad vote, and there are probably some good spice related resolutions we could add there. I think the paradise people would want to vote also, so we could probably put this type of resolution into the existing UN / Landsraad.

darkedone02 · Sep 21, 2009

I built 7 of those reservoirs of liet and didn't get that victory when i built every single on on my cities. It most be a cheat build don't work on that (when you press + when you select your city)

although i do see terraforming is a bit dry and need more improvements. It be nice that if that if a single tile is surrounded with grass, that grass terrain have a foral improvement. We need some plants and nearby cities can gain a small happiness bonus when these florals are near them. That way, Terraform got a small graphical improvement.

davidlallen · Sep 21, 2009

darkedone02 said:
I built 7 of those reservoirs of liet and didn't get that victory when i built every single on on my cities. It most be a cheat build don't work on that (when you press + when you select your city)

I have noticed that also in the past. I think the "Mastery" victory condition causes this. I play with this victory condition disabled and then the other victories work as they should. Do you have "Mastery" turned on?

although i do see terraforming is a bit dry and need more improvements.

Thanks for the suggestion. In the next patch we will probably allow Oasis to appear during terraforming. Others have also suggested small forests, and previously we had some improvements for small animals such as Desert Hares. We will try to add more "chrome" in this area.

Deliverator · Sep 22, 2009

Considering that:
i) that pro-spice civic doesn't feel that interesting right now.
ii) "He who controls the spice, controls the universe." - I don't think the mod really captures that sense yet.

How about making an Spice Monopoly/Economic victory that is the aim of the pro-spice strategy? Pro-terraforming has an end target, so it would make sense to give pro-spice one. That gives the competing civics competing aims.

I would like % shares or directorships in CHOAM to be modelled by the game. Seeing as we are going with Imperium and Landsraad as religions that frees up CHOAM. I outlined a rough sketch of an idea in the religion thread. We could have...

...a custom mechanic to model CHOAM the way it is described in the books. When the CHOAM tech is discovered, shares or directorships are split amoung the civilizations, either (i) based on the amount of tiles controlled or (ii) based on the number of spice tiles controlled. Civs then get an income each turn based on the total number of spice tiles worked on the whole planet. Every 10 turns perhaps, the CHOAM holdings are recalculated. CHOAM holdings can be viewed in a new tab in one of the advisor screens. The majority holder of CHOAM shares could get some special benefit. House Corrino could get some advantage in terms of manipulating CHOAM holdings.

The income aspect is optional, but I like the idea that obtaining say a 75% share in CHOAM would lead to a Spice Monopoly victory. If the percentage share in CHOAM is purely based on the number of spice tiles controlled, then the new victory condition might be too similar to the Domination victory in which case it could replace it. One issue I can think of is that the amount of spice tiles changes with spice blows, but this could be a driver for pro-spice players to control more desert tiles so when the next CHOAM audit happens they have a chance at more control.

Does anyone like this idea?

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