Civilizations, Leaders and Traits

Here is the current list of Dune Wars Civilizations and Leaders.



Leaders: Duke Leto Atreides (Philosophical/Financial); Paul Atreides (Philosophical/Spiritual); Alia of the Knife (Aggressive/Spiritual); Leto II (Philosophical/Imperialistic)
* Hawk Thopter, a UU replacement for Vulture Thopter with +1 move.
* Pilot School, a UB replacement of Aerie which gives more XP for starting thopter and hornet units.
* Bee interceptor, UU replacement of Wasp with longer range and better intercept.
* Owns Caladanian Wine UR, +2 happiness




Leaders: Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Aggressive/Organized); Beast Rabban (Aggressive/Protective); Feyd Rautha (Aggressive/Charismatic);
* Can generate slave units on combat victory.
* Devastator Tank, UU of Heavy Scorpion.
* Slave Pit, UB of courthouse which has no real effect since slavery "whip" is temporarily removed.
* Inkvine Regiment UU of Heavy Trooper.




* All initial units, and some later foot units, start with double speed desert movement.
* Several powerful melee UR units unlocked by Water Debt unique resource, which the Fremen control.




* Imperial Trooper UU replaces heavy trooper
* Laza Tiger UU replaces master guardsman; a HN unit intended to pick off isolated enemy units.
* Selamlik, UB of courthouse building which gives -50% war weariness.
* Several powerful melee units unlocked by Sardaukar Cooperation UR.




* Sayyadina UU, teaches combat/drill promotions to units in stack.
* Line of 4 Kwisatz Haderach UUs, each one is irreplaceable and gives bonuses to all units in stack. For example, the ultimate unit gives +50% attack strength, two first strikes, and immunity to first strikes.
* Reverend Mother, a late game spy type unit with access to diplomatic missions. These include +1 diplomatic bonus, convert city, and destabilize civilization. Requires Sisterhood Covenant UR, so other civs may build it.




* Plague effect on combat result which gives -25% strength and is easily passed from one unit to another. If an infected unit enters a city, the city receives -2 health.
* Axlotl tank, late game building to provide ghola (clone) unit commanders with high experience.
* Face Dancer, UU of spy, has access to Poisoner spy promotion. Can assassinate settled great people.




* Four walker UR units unlocked by Thinking Machines UR
* Three UB which are variants of the late game automated factory and research center; these use thinking machines, and the Ixian variant avoids the happiness penalty.




* Spy units gain 1 XP per turn.
* Trike, UU of Quad with +1 movement.
* Chemical trooper, UU of Grenade Trooper with more collateral damage.
* Saboteur, UU of spy. At present this has no special effect.




* Elaccan Gladiator, UU of hardened bladesman; high strength, but automatically dies after any combat win or lose.
* Smuggler: has trade mission like Great Merchant but less powerful.
* Smuggler's Haven: replaces Landing STage; same effect, but Ecaz can build three instead of two.
* Sculptor's Garden: UB of Mushtamel; +1 trade route.
* Owns Opafire and Semuta UR (+2 happiness)


(As of Dune Wars 1.6.5)

This thread is to discuss the different factions and leaders in general, but there are also some specific things it would be interesting to discuss.

1. How do we make the different factions play differently? One of the great strengths of Fall from Heaven II is that each faction is so different to play that there is massive replay value.

2. Should we have new Dune specific traits? If so what? For example, the Bene Gesserit could have a Prescient trait giving them Espionage advantages and their units First Strike promotions.

3. Are there any ideas for new civs that are different enough from the current ones?

4. What traits should each leader have?

5. Are there new leaders we could add to get two leaders per civ?

Try to be constructive in any criticism, and offer alternatives.

wow just wow,

i wont even know where to being to work after i set a stable version, you added so much files so far!!

No worries. All of the new files are in the graphics update 1.2.1 which Deliverator has linked, and they do not change the gameplay.

ah great david.

sorry im seem to be away alot - its busy times in real life now.

but...in three weeks ill be back full time!

How about House Ix, with industrious and scientific traits.
Lots of mechanical units, and maybe some things that get close to violating butlerian jihad restrictions against thinking machines.
Super-computer type building that increases research output, cyborg warriors.

Traits differentiate factions, but not enough; the civ traits simply aren't powerful enough to have a huge impact on how you play.
UUs are a great way to differentiate civs, so are different palace bonuses, but so are different civ mechanics.

Maybe some mechanics that were like super-traits, or significantly increase the power of traits.

Some civs could be favored towards more aggression, conquest and slavery/exploitation of natives (Harkonnen). Maybe the Harkonnen could enslave units when they capture them, and then sacrifice these for production in cities. Maybe they could have a unique building that added hammers and commerce at the cost of unhappiness.

Some factions favor influence and meddling; maybe Bene Gesserit and Imperium infiltrators could literally buy enemy cities like probe teams could in SMAC, or maybe could start wars between enemy factions, or significantly reduce the influence output from enemy cities, or use an ability that integrated with influence driven war submod to shift the influence on a particular tile - basically, add some extra super-good espionage options to these factions.

I'd like to see the Tleixu even more... biological. Some kind of biological warfare weapons; maybe a super-virus from espionage that decimates a city population.
Face dancers with hidden nationality (maybe a mentat assassin UU instead of a harbinger UU), and/or maybe the FFH Marksmen trait.
Axolotl tanks that are like cloning vats and increase military unit production, or a national wonder that creates a free copy of any unit construted, like FFH Clan Warrens.

Spacer guild that is even more trade oriented; bonus trade routes, maybe they could get hammers or food from trade routes, like the lizardmen unique civic Lost Lands in the Fall Further modmod.
Maybe a unique building that acts like an airport in terms of airlifting units around the map; the guild has access to massive freighters.
Access to spy satellites that have recon missions with a large radius.
Maybe give them some para-troop units

Atreides could have diplomatic bonuses; maybe an inherent +2 to +3 diplomacy modifier with all other players except the Harkonnen. Maybe extra diplomatic options; they can form more than one permanent alliance, or could form a permanent alliance after a shorter time in shared war/defensive pact.
They could also get some inherent happiness bonuses in their cities.

Make the Fremen into real jihadist holy warriors. Give them bigger bonuses for having their state religion in cities, but big penalties for having non-state religion.
Maybe lots of cheap warriors whose death doesnt' cause war weariness.
Maybe some units that are like submarines; invisible when in the desert, and can only be detected by a handful of infantry units, so they can launch stealth raid assaults to pillage some stuff and run.

Make the Sietch Tabr Fremen into real terraformers, trying to realize Liet Kynes' vision and turn Arrakis into a real planet. Maybe they can hoard water somehow, and release it to turn desert tiles into land tiles, or have a "spell" like vitalize from FFH that can actually change underlying terrain.
Give them inherent terrain bonuses from forests, so they're encouraged to terraform differently, and various other terraforming advantages.

Anyway, just some brainstorming.

yeas i support making the houses more unique, no dougt.

via - traits, units, buildings, and more.

as for the extra 5 houses - ix is defenetly among them -
heres a link to the suggested houses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Family_Houses_in_Dune

Another thought; you could make the Tleilaxu agnostic, a la FFH, and give them their own religious buildings but prevent them from building any of the others.
It just feels very wrong for the Tleilxau populace to be worshipping outside religions, given their fanaticism.

I like those ideas.

Guild => trade bonuses
Gesserit => espionage missions
Harkonnen => slavery
Tlielaxu => bioweapons
Fremen => cheap fighters, worm transport
Sietch => terraformers
Atreides => diplomacy

Imperium, Fenring, Ordos => nothing yet. Wikipedia says Ordos is interested in wealth and employs mercenaries. Fenring is an assassin and an "almost-ran" Kwisatz Haderach. Imperium could specialize in heavy infantry like Sardaukar. We have some ideas for Ix; maybe they could replace Fenring.

I really think we need more uniqueness to these, before adding new ones.

Imperium definitely needs kickass Sardaukar. They could also be Culture warriors, with unique buildings that give % culture bonuses. If feels like they should be well placed to win a cultural Influence victory.

Fenring is an assassin; maybe some stealth or assassin type features - some units with the FFH marksmen promotion?

Ordos IIRC is non-canon, they were literally created by Westwood for Dune 2 (that was the first PC game I ever bought).
Mercenary units could work fine; maybe they could have a unique building that lets them instantly create some mercenary units in that city in exchange for gold, like how FFH creates mercenaries with the Guild of the Nine. The units could have an intrinsic +1 gold upkeep modifier.
AI won't handle this though, of course.

I really think though that while faction differentiation is important, you need to cut out the number of units and structures, or at least use obsolesence to clear out the number available at any given time.
The mod feels way too bloated with too much stuff in the build menus, and the tech tree could probably use some streamlining.

Ahriman said:

Traits differentiate factions, but not enough; the civ traits simply aren't powerful enough to have a huge impact on how you play.
UUs are a great way to differentiate civs, so are different palace bonuses, but so are different civ mechanics.

Maybe some mechanics that were like super-traits, or significantly increase the power of traits.

Click to expand...

Actually, I was thinking of deep unique mechanics like the Khazad in FfH2, where the amount of gold in the bank affects civ-wide happiness and production. This is much deeper than a normal trait.

The Fremen's special relationship with the sandworms would be a good opportunity to make gameplay fundamentally different for them.

I agree there are too many units and buildings - the Danger of More is pitfall number 1 according to Kael. Removing stuff can actually improve the mod.

Agree completely that new mechanics (like Khazad vaults) are a good way to differentiate factions.

Fremen and sandworms would be good, or fremen and terraforming, or both.

Make Sandworms a unit class of their own, and give Fremen a unit that gets a huge (like +300%) combat bonus against that unit class, and can capture that class if it beats it in combat. So the worm-tamer captures the sandworm and can then use it.
Problem is, AI probably won't understand this , so you might just have to go with buildable sandworm rider units, that function like normal naval units and can only move in desert tiles.
These units could also have an infantry-only carrying capacity.
Maybe take away access for Fremen to some of the normal transports and mechanized units; Fremen really should be mostly infantry-oriented, using Worms to get around rather than the normal transports.
Their sandworm transports could have a high movement rate in the desert tiles, but once they're on land you have to move around at the 1-tile infantry movement rate. This would make fremen into kindof "naval raiders". They rule the deserts with sandworm units, but have to hit-and run. They have difficulty carrying out sustained land-based campaigns because of low-unit movement and poor mechanized units.
Fremen units could also get combat bonuses in deserts and deep deserts.

Another possibility; Fremen factions could start with somethnig like the FFH barbarian trait, which makes them at peace with barbarians.
If you used some of the Fall Further mechanics to split up different barbarian factions, you could have a "world" barbarian faction with sandstorms and worms, and have Fremen at peace with them (makes sense that Fremen should survive sandstorms better), and then a separate "smuggler" barbarian faction that Fremen are at war with as normal (and maybe the Guild should be at peace with the smugglers, since the smugglers need the guild to export their spice?).

Also, thanks for linking that design article: I strongly endorse basically everything in it, very well written.

I'd strongly suggest compiling a list of all the buildings, and adding up all the total bonuses.
Count the total possible happiness and health bonuses, and bonus trade routes, bonus trade income, culture output, bonus hammers/gold/beakers, etc. Make sure they aren't too much, and that there aren't too many buildings in each class.
There probably only needs to be 1-2 buildings of each type in each era.
So maybe a total of 4-6 gold boosting buildings (market/bank etc.), 4-6 total beaker boosting buildings, etc.

I really want to be able to place a thumper, capture a worm and ride it as the Fremen. But you're right it would probably be impossible to get the AI to do this.

Ahriman said:

Ordos IIRC is non-canon, they were literally created by Westwood for Dune 2 (that was the first PC game I ever bought).

Click to expand...

In Dune 2, two of the Ordos special units were the Deviator tank and the Saboteur. The Deviator is a missile tank that fires gas filled warheads. The gas temporarily brings the target under control of the Ordos (if successful). I would like to see this in Dune Wars as I think it is a cool idea and technically achievable. The Saboteur could just be a replacement for a Spy but with an increased chance in destructive missions.

Here's me, suggesting new units when we need to cut the number down more than anything...

Koma13 is currently looking at reworking the early units. Perhaps when he has finished his review we can look at further streamlining of buildings, units and the tech tree. It might be worth trying the approach of taking out every single unit apart from the absolute bear essentials, and gradually put things back in, only keeping the things that meet the requirements outlined in Kael's article.

If we can make the UUs have special abilities (like the Deviator tank idea) then that will also help with faction differentiation.

The deviator was pretty silly
Having a nerve has that confuses units and makes them unable to act (like Charm Person from FFH) and gives a defensive penalty is one thing, but its pretty ridiculous for the gas to somehow let you take over an enemy military unit.
I'd make it disruptive and weakening rather than mind control.

I'd suggest one idea from Kael's How to Mod link posted earlier; 8-10 different units per era.

Ahriman said:

The deviator was pretty silly

Click to expand...

Granted, but fun though. Who doesn't want to use the enemies own big guns against them?

Ahriman said:

I'd make it disruptive and weakening rather than mind control.

Click to expand...

There's also the option to make it go berserk for a round or so - attacking the next possible target (I totally get this effect on my best units in FfH2 every time, because the mutation spell hates me). That way, it doesn't have the silliness of gas-induced mind control, is still chemical and makes it strategically more interesting, because it can backfire as well, if you don't use it well. And way more fun than plain weakening.

Also, it would be less annoying than in FfH2, because it's only a single special ability of a single unit.

Cheers, LT.

I dunno, I think losing control of your units is the opposite of fun. And an attack that makes one unit attack another is basically a guaranteed unit kill PLUS a unit majorly damaged. Which is really too powerful for one Deviator unit to be able to do every turn: you kill one unit and cripple another without any risk to yourself, every turn? Also, the FFH effects normally target the top unit in the stack, which is the most powerful, so you're getting rid of their *best* two units, killing one and damaging the other.

Though I guess units are more disposable here than in FFH, which encourages very carefully developed high level units and heroes.

Unless you meant that it goes berserk, but not barbarian, and so it can still only attack enemy units? So all you're really doing is provoking an enemy unit into attacking you? That could be useful I guess if you're sitting on a defensive tile, and isn't nearly as imba.

Ahriman said:

Unless you meant that it goes berserk, but not barbarian, and so it can still only attack enemy units? So all you're really doing is provoking an enemy unit into attacking you? That could be useful I guess if you're sitting on a defensive tile, and isn't nearly as imba.

Click to expand...

I didn't thought of copying it 1:1 from FfH - the ideal implementation would be like this: You attack unit with the deviator -> next turn, the unit attacks the weakest adjacent unit/stack (outside of its own tile, of course), i.e. makes an attack with the highest success chance.

If that's you... well, sucks to be you! Otherwise, it allows you to mess with the strongest defender, but it will never destroy the strongest defender. It's a roundabout way to mess with enemy formations - you can use it to provoke it into attacking you - or to damage adjacent stacks/units. Also, due to the move due to the attack, it messes with an existing stack.

But in no case it allows you to destroy the strongest unit around you. Also, ideally, the deviator would end its movement after the attack, meaning it would always be a possible target.

Cheers, LT.

What if there are no units in adjacent tiles? This seems likely, since: a) if you're smart you get away, and b) AI tends to focus in stacks, so unlikely to have other nearby units.

And if there is an enemy unit in an adjacent tile, then the Deviator effect is killing one of them; either the attacker, or the defender.

I'd also suggest making it a "spell" ability on the Deviator, rather than something that happens from attack. Either would require a fair amount of coding.

I have tried out some experiments.

For Harkonnan, I have locally changed the game so that any kill by a Harkonnan has a 75% chance to generate a slave. The idea comes from this modcomp, although I did not like that implementation so I did my own. His implementation results in double buttons in the tech tree. I haven't tried it out much. The AI will use this effect, by accident; it will not plan to do more attacks to generate slaves.

For Tleilaxu, I have locally changed so that any Tleilaxu infiltrator unit gains 1 XP per turn. With the Super Spies code, spies can get promotions and there are some advanced assassination and bribery missions. My first implementation is a little painful because when the unit levels up (every few turns at first), it comes out of fortify and shows up in the list of active units. So you have to pay attention to it, pick the promotion or at least set it back to sleep. In FFH, hero and sorceror units which gain XP this way do not wake up; you may come back many turns later and find it has five levels available. That is more convenient but I do not know how to implement it.

I have played this one a little and it is not quite as much fun as I hoped. I built a couple of infiltrators. They cannot cross desert so I built a hover transport to take them to an enemy city; fortunately I had open borders so I could drop them off. They had a bunch of levels, but I had no espionage points to spend, so they couldn't really do anything. I guess it takes a little more planning to put up the espionage slider and build espionage related buildings.

I'd like to get "some kind" of new mechanism like this for each civ. The fremen could use the dune grass terraforming I listed in this other new thread. I like the idea of doing something with precognition and/or the worm life cycle for Bene Gesserit, but I have not figured out the details. We have a few simple ideas, but nothing solid enough to implement yet. I will keep thinking about it.

I have locally changed the game so that any kill by a Harkonnan has a 75% chance to generate a slave

Click to expand...

I think this works fine; the biggest challenge is in what happens to the slaves once they're created. Though 75% is probably a bit much, I'd make it go down to 25% or so and increase the benefit of each slave, otherwise the slaves become a micromanagement hassle.
Also you get military benefits from having lots of slaves created on the battlefield, because the dumb AI values caputring workers highly, so you can easily lure them into wasting movement recapturing slave units rather tan actually attacking you. And the upkeep costs of large numbers of slaves can be a problem.

In FFH (and Warhammer) the slaves are half speed workers, but the problem is the AI thinks they're workers and uses them as such (and pays upkeep on them) despite the fact that they're pretty miserable workers. This slows down their improvement construction because they don't realize that they still need to build more real workers.
I'd have the slaves purely sacrificable for hammers like a mini-great engineer, hopefully the AI could handle that and get the slaves back to its cities by giving them great person AI rather than worker AI?
In Warhammer we're also toying with some ideas of making slaves rarer but sacrificing them in cities to create permanent slave pit structures.
Another possibility; have slaves like great people but settleable rather than sacrificable. Settling a slave makes a slave specialist, which does nothing by itself, but a slave pits building can be constructed in the city which gives +1 hammer per slave (and maybe +2 unhappiness).
The "accidental" AI use for creation is fine, you normally kill enemy units whenever you can regardless.

I'd really want to make Bene Gesserit more espionage oriented than the Tliexu; there are surely more interesting ways to model their biological mastery than through espionage.
You could also make infiltrators able to cross coastal sand tiles.

Creating new espionage missions is pretty key though for more espionage to have any effect; my favorite suggestion (of my own, yes its crass) is the espionage mission that alters tile influence. I love the idea of the Bene Gesserit using espionage to expand their borders out into your territory while remaining at peace.