Dune Wars

My impression was that the map only marked maps mentioned directly in the books. There are other cities and towns elsewhere that aren't marked.

Besides, if we only allowed cities where there are cities marked in the book, then everyone except Fremen would only be able to build in the Graben sinks.

There isn't anything that says the polar region is only "damp sand".

And, more to the point, as a mechanic it *works*.

I don't remember any references to damp sand. Polar ice on the other hand is mentioned - see this post.

On the book map, you can see a small area marked 'cap'.

Settlement at the pole is confirmed by this quote also taken from the first Dune novel.

So industry at the polar is supported by the fiction, albeit the polar factory is probably the equivalent of our Ice Extractor improvement. Also, the fiction points to the fact that an upper class have residencies at the pole.

It doesn't describe major cities granted, but I'd argue that on Arrakis this terrain is some of the least hostile and desirable available. However, I do agree that there is something about the polar super-cities that is a bit strange. This is probably because the major cities in the book, Arrakeen, Carthag, etc are not within the actual polar sink area.

We want the polar area to be contested even if cities aren't built there, so how about this as a completely different approach to the polar ice.

1) Cities no longer buildable on Polar.
2) Allow Ice Extractors to be built outside of cultural borders.
3) Ice Extractors create a +1 square of culture around them using JCultureControl. (If the Ice Extractor is pillaged then the culture will disappear.)
4) Set iAIObjective to 1 for the Polar Ice bonus (if not already).
5) Implement building effects scaling with number of bonuses and create Water Shipper Building +2 water per Polar Ice consumed. (Controlling the Polar Ice cap will provide a water benefit to all your cities - which is probably closer to the fiction)

Apart from (5), it is simple enough to set this up and see how the AI copes.

If its just the city size that bothers you, then change the tiles from 2w to 1w1h, and let some of the various bonus resources spawn there.

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I think this is decent alternative too.

I prefer having the cities there, because that way the AI actually seriously contests the area. As current, there is a colonization race for the polar area, and it normally ends up going to three different factions, who can then fight over it culturally and militarily.

Just having the extractor building would remove its interest as a conflict zone; you just send a worker up there in the early game to grab the ice, and send a thopter up there, and pillage everyone else's ice when you're at war with them.

Also:

4) Set iAIObjective to 1 for the Polar Ice bonus (if not already).

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Doesn't this just make the AI want to build cities near the polar ice? I don't think it has any impact on building improvements outside cultural borders.

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I'd also argue from a logic perspecive, the reason the cities aren't in the pole is because the sole purpose for the cities really is to support the spice harvesting industry, and the pole itself is too far away to do that effectively. Hence why the cities are basically as far away from the pole (ie as close to the deep desert) as they can be while still being protected from the storms by the mountains.

First of all, this is an awesome mod! I've been playing it exclusively since I first installed it.
I do have a couple of comments/requests: when playing as Fremen, if a Fremen scout is found in a goody hut, he will not have the desert travel promotoion. Secondly and more genetrally, is there a way to modify the game so two of the same figureheads are not in the same game?
Again, thank you very much for this excellent mod!

when playing as Fremen, if a Fremen scout is found in a goody hut, he will not have the desert travel promotoion.

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Yeah, I've noticed this. We need at some point to change the goodie hut bonuses. Particularly if we change these into botanical testing stations.
Free techs are too powerful. Map reveals are too weak and boring. Scouts are a bit lame, especially when they don't have sandrider.
I'd suggest we have:
Find technology: Gain X beakers
Find a spice cache: Gain Y Gold.
Find resources: get a "salvaged resources" unit in your capital that can be sacrificed like a great engineer for hammers.
Gain a scout with sandrider promotion.
Gain a quad, or hawk thopter.
Barbarian uprising.
We should also probably change Fremen to start with 1 scout and 1 soldier, otherwise its too easy for them to capture a very high share of the goody huts.

Secondly and more genetrally, is there a way to modify the game so two of the same figureheads are not in the same game?

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Well, either manually select the AI players, or don't have more than 8 AI slots (there are only 9 factions in the game at the moment, IIRC the game will only make copies when there are more AI slots than factions).
I suggest playing small map size, or medium at the largest.
Small map size, Duneipegalo script, low desert level, with 7 civs works pretty well IMO.

Arrakis has a pretty deep "canon". There is lots of material available on the definitions of plants, technologies, etc. But, the Dune Wars civilopedia is kind of blank. We have histories for the leaders and civilizations filled in, but the rest of the entries just say "Stub text for ...something...".

Would anybody like to help fill in the civilopedia? If so, please look into file ...Dune Wars/assets/xml/text/DuneWarsText.txt. (The "txt" file, not the other two.) Find lines like this:
And fill in some useful text with your favorite plain text editor. Then zip the file and post it here, or PM it to me. There is a script I run to fill in the other languages. You don't need to worry about formatting, except to leave the English.../English tags untouched.

If we have multiple people who volunteer to help, we can coordinate who will work on which group. The technologies are probably easiest, and then the bonuses. There are a lot of units and buildings but we can work on those in pieces.

We have been putting out a new patch every 1-2 weeks, so you can look forward to seeing your work "in print" fairly quickly.

Thanks in advance!

I've started writing some pedia articles but, as you can imagine, it's going to take awhile to have them all.

I'll be sure to post the file when I have something substantial to show, currently made:

Ablative Shield, Academies, Aerial Combat, Aerial Tactics, Air Power & Arrakis Habitation.

Here's an example:
Ablative Shield
An ablative shield is the protective field produced by a Holtzman generator. This field derives from Phase One of the suspensor-nullification effect. A shield will permit entry only to objects moving at slow speeds (depending on setting, this speed ranges from six to nine centimetres per second) and can be shorted out only by a shire-sized electric field.

Quote: "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defence, slow on attack ..." - Paul Atreides


And, last but not least, great work on the mod, loving it.

Awesome! We will probably have another patch release next weekend, so if you have a chance, please send me what you have by Friday or so.

I know this has come up before, but why don't we change the name from Dune-o-pedia to The Book of Dune or Dune Encyclopedia or something else?

Also, it would be good if it didn't have Sevopedia at the top and have the name of the item you are currently looking at instead.

Quote: "In shield fighting, one moves fast on defence, slow on attack ..." - Paul Atreides

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I think this would make more sense for the "Personal Shields" tech than the Ablative shields tech. The Ablative shields tech is designed to represent large ones for vehicles and cities, it is presumably more difficult to minaturize a shield generator into something that could just be put into a belt and used in an individual soldier.

David, I was just thinking about the new terraforming design, and the issue of the distinction between fresh water and irrigation.

I just wanted to check; tiles adjacent to a well will still have fresh water (not just irrigation) right? And so will transform even without a nearby catchbasin?

So a feature like a well or a vanilla oasis provide fresh water in their tile and every adjacent tile, and then with the right tech in vanilla farms in those tiles (or windtraps/insect farms in our current version) spread irrigation (but not fresh water) to other tiles?

Ahriman said:

I think this would make more sense for the "Personal Shields" tech than the Ablative shields tech. The Ablative shields tech is designed to represent large ones for vehicles and cities, it is presumably more difficult to minaturize a shield generator into something that could just be put into a belt and used in an individual soldier.

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Well, i'm doing it alphabetically so things are bound to be changed.

Understood, but its probably worth skimming through the whole tree first.

Thanks for doing this though, some extra flavor will be great.

Ahriman said:

I just wanted to check; tiles adjacent to a well will still have fresh water (not just irrigation) right?

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Right.

So a feature like a well or a vanilla oasis provide fresh water in their tile and every adjacent tile, and then with the right tech in vanilla farms in those tiles (or windtraps/insect farms in our current version) spread irrigation (but not fresh water) to other tiles?

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That is also true. In 1.5.4 the two improvements you mention have a flag "carries irrigation". In the changes for 1.5.5, I have removed the "carries irrigation" flag from all improvements. So there will never be any irrigation chains.

This is what I thought, just wanted to doublecheck. Thanks.

Bumping this thread. The old thread has been discontinued: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=321914

AHR36
Ixian spiders should have a national limit of 10, like the Sardaukar units. Maybe the other walkers should too, though some of them feel slightly underpowered and could possibly use minor buffs.

AHR37
Just noticed that the Diplomatic victory seems to be missing in the latest version? Intended? We should put it back at some point.

When playing as Fremen, if a Fremen foot unit is requested as a reinforcement from the home planet (?), it will not have the desert travel promotion.

Also, is there a way to get rid of the Tleilaxu Plague promotion from a unit? As an aside, that promotion is not listed on the Promotion Tree.

Thanks again for creating this mod!

When playing as Fremen, if a Fremen foot unit is requested as a reinforcement from the home planet (?), it will not have the desert travel promotion.

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Are you sure? interesting, I thought that had been fixed. note that in the current implementation, IIRC only melee units get sandrider, not guardsmen.

Also, is there a way to get rid of the Tleilaxu Plague promotion from a unit? As an aside, that promotion is not listed on the Promotion Tree.

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We're still thinking about tweaking the Tleilaxu plague. At the moment, plague is removed is removed by the hospital building, and when you make peace with the Tleilaxu.

The promotions tree IIRC only lists promotions that can be chosen as an upgrade from levelup. Other promotions don't show up there.