arrakis terraforming victory?

This idea has been floating around in my head for a while but I can't get it worked out. In the original novel, Liet-Kynes has a plan to terraform Arrakis by planting grass to anchor the dunes, then gradually introducing small animals. As the grass area extends, it would drive away the worms. Carried through all the way, it would kill all the worms and turn the planet into a normal green planet again.

I want to capture this as an "alignment". You are either for the worms, or for the water, you must pick a side. The navigators guild would obviously be against it. The fremen would probably be for it.

I have looked through the global warming code in CvGame.cpp and it is very simple. I could easily do something similar in python. Basically it says, each tile of forest counts as a positive "global warming defense"; each city unhealth and nuclear explosion counts as a negative. If the result is negative enough, then random tiles are turned to desert and their improvements removed.

For Arrakis we want something the opposite. Fundamentally as civs plant crops, the amount of worms and spice gets less. There would be a "tipping point" -- three percent, three hundred fifty years.

There are several parts I can't work out. Should we make an additional improvement type which is specifically for this type of grass planting? Would we use a normal pillaging mechanism for the people who are "against" terraforming? Is there another defense which strengthens the worms and the spice? How do civs "declare" themselves for one side or the other? In FFH this is modeled as religion, sort of, with an alignment on top of it. I don't know the details. But we are already using religions as religions. And, how does this lead to a victory of some sort? I thought of reskinning the space race victory or using some kind of project, but I can't get the details.

Does this seem like an interesting idea? How can we build mechanics around it?

good idea,

heres an idea,

in thomas war, as well as a stand alone addition in his python wonders that he released, theres a wonder - eden -

once built - a set num of tiles around the city - is terra formed - making desert to grass, snow to tundra and so on.

what if,
we do the same wonder mechanics,
only that instead of regular terra form - it creates agrass/green terrain - that isnt placed on the map normally - and its idea -once built in a city a set num of tiles near the city - no matter the kind - desert tundra desert plains - turns to green/grass terrain,

so in order to win this victory - you need to build say 7 of these wonders, and then you win terra' victory - 7 of you cities have converted all of its surrounding terrain into grass.

and perhaps - we can make that - after getting 7 of these wonders - your allowed to build "arrakis terra forming -wonder - that converted all of arrakis's terrain into green terrain - and that will bring victory.
kinda like spaceship victory - build 7 parts - then go and buld mega part, wait a few turns, bang wonder is in effect (like the spaceship gets to alpha centauri -victory delay xml line).

now how does that sounds ?

I definitely like the idea, I mentioned a few ideas for this in the faction differentiation thread. I'd definitely want this to be something that one of the Fremen factions had inherent bonuses towards achieving.

In terms of alignment; you could do something similar to Planetfall, with Pro-planet and Pro-Terraformers as civic options, and have diplomacy benefits and penalties between people who have adopted one civic vs those who have adopted the other.

"You risk destroying the spice! This cannot be allowed", -4 diplomacy.
"This planet could become paradise, you must not be allowed to stop it." -4 diplomacy.

(A la "you have adopted a foreign religion" diplomacy messages, etc.)

The Wonder method sounds possible. Maybe Fremen could somehow get double speed in constructing such wonders?
I'd call these wonders Reservoir of Kynes or something.
Another thought; if you go with the water for food idea, then these wonders should be buildable with Food as well as (or instead of) hammers. Basically, you're storing water up to have enough to enact Kynes' plan, like the vast reservoirs the Fremen have in the book/movie.

However, the terraforming really makes much more sense if food is actually food, rather than water. (Still works fine with water for health). If I somehow make a verdant grassland, that tile will be good for growing more food, but won't really provide more water.

Another thought: if you're dropping Tubers, then you have the forest/floodplain feature tile leftover for use (a tile can have a terrain type, a feature and an improvement). So rather than changing the terrain type, it could spawn a feature that adds +1 food to the tile.

Civics part

Good suggestion about using a civic for this. Can anybody give more detail about how this works in Planetfall? My thought was to hijack one of the five civic columns and make it: Ardent Pro-Terraformer, Pro-Terraformer, Neutral, Pro-Spice, Ardent Pro-Spice. The navguild would have a preferred civic of Ardent Pro-Spice. The Pro-Terraformer civics would be enabled by some tech which also enables terraforming itself, and that would be the preferred civic for Fremen.

Which column seems the least required for Dune? Are there some civics which should be "saved" from that column? Are there some civics in other columns which could be dropped so that these can be saved?

Apart from the vanilla concept of preferred civic, I am not sure how to factor this into diplomacy. That mechanic may be enough to get started.

Terraforming part

The goal is to get a lot of the bare, unused land covered by simple grass. One way to do this is to make windtrap buildable outside cultural borders, and add a new improvement "anchor grass" or similar which requires fresh water. It would not give any food/water/health/whatever benefit at all; the point is just to cover territory with it. Maybe initially it is not buildable on desert or barren terrain, but with a higher tech, then you can build it there also. (Never desert waste or deep desert.)

The game could check against a threshold to decide when "enough" terrain is covered. This would count certain improvements such as drip farming as well as the anchor grass improvement. Based on one quote in the book, let's call this the Three Percent Threshold. The pro-terraformers would get some benefit, and the pro-spicers would lose some benefit. (Not sure what exactly but it would have to be strong.) So the pro-spicers would have motivation to seek out distant windtraps and destroy them. As a result, the threshold may be true, or false, or true again at different points in the game.

When the threshold is true, we can have a global warming type effect which causes a new, good terrain type like grass to appear. I suppose this would benefit everybody, it seems unfair to keep pro-spicers from using it. But maybe it would appear "near" the anchor grass areas.

Victory part

We may be able to just recycle the spaceship victory. It requires seven different parts. There is a tower victory in FFH, I am not sure if that uses the same mechanic, but those are seven different towers you need. There is no reason to have *different* projects for this in Dune Wars. I am not sure how customizable this is; it does not seem to fit exactly what we want. The idea would be that when you are above the Three Percent Threshold, *only*, you can work on these projects. Once all of them get built then you win. I am not sure if we can actually prevent projects from being worked when some random condition is true or false. Some further investigation on this part is definitely needed.

you dont need to remove a civic,
we can just add another easily.


using the windtrap as an anchor of fresh water...interesting,

but for the game to work i dont know if that will be good - cause - what will make the ai to built the terraform improvemnt?

in my opinion the "eden" wonder is more easy to do, cause the code exists, the ai will build it, and it will be easier to use it for a victory.

but...thats just me

anyway - this is a must have thing in our mod.

Civics.

As stated, you can just create a new civics column. You're already presenting them in a list in this mod, so you don't even have to worry about horizontal space.

In Planetfall, you can adopt either Hybrid economy, Terraforming economy or Enclosed Biospheres.

Hybrid (ie accept Planet and work with it) and Terraforming (turn the world into a new earth and kill/control Planet) are fundamental antagonists; factions with one civic get a big penalty towards factions with the other civic. I don't know what the hooks are for doing this.
Just like how in FFH, you get a penalty with Good civs from using slavery, and you used to get one for using low health civics before they were cut.

Terraforming gives a +100% worker build speed bonus (which is valuable because there exist some very high tile yield but long production time improvements, like thermal boreholes) and a +100% growth rate of farms (farms scale up from +1 to +2 to +3 output over many turns like cottages).
Hybrid gives tile yield bonuses to hybrid forest improvements, and some other effects (including reduced city maintenance from distance or number of cities, I forget which).

So, basically, the two factions have very different incentives for what improvements to build; one has incentives for high yield but high "pollution" (ie anti-Planet) industrially type improvements (which can cause fungal blooms of barbarian units), while the other have more incentives for cheaper, lower yield improvements and sprawling empires.

Terraforming part
I still think that there needs to be some direct benefit for teraformer factions, maybe with high-build time terrain improvements that have higher yields.

Sending lots of workers out into uncontrolled territory is expensive (you have to escort them) and time consuming, so it needs to have some direct tangible benefits.
Also, the AI is unlikely to do it; I think any improvement construction is going to have to occur inside your controlled territory.

Both the Altar and the Towers of Mastery victories in FFH use tweaked versions of spaceship win; you need this (or these) Wonders or projects built to win. This is likely the most promising path. I still like the idea if you use water for food of making food contribute to these wonders; make it feel more like the Fremen plan of saving up enough water to then use on the Project.

Another idea:
If you adopt teraformer civic, you gain access to building a new improvement type; anchor grass (does this hook exist?).
Anchor grass gives a +1 food/water tile yield with teraformer civic (to make the AI build it, and to stop you from changing civics and still keeping benefits) and is only buildable inside your own territory on desert tiles (either ocean or landbased).
Spice blows can no longer spawn on anchor grass tiles, and adjacent spice blows will no longer spawn spice on an anchor grass tile.

A worked anchor grass tile could also eventually evolve into a grassland tile, which gives +2 tile bonus. Either have it naturally occur with some probability (like forests into ancient forests in FFH), or just grow like a cottage after ~60 turns.
Have the terraformer civic halve the growth time (=+100% growth rate) or natural probability.

Then have the Eden wonders require the terraformer civic and high tech requirements.

So you don't actually have to force the grass to grow to build the wonders (I'm guessing the hooks would be hard), but if you adopt terraformer civic you have carrots to encourage you to plant the grasses (and lose spice access).

Ahriman said:

As stated, you can just create a new civics column. You're already presenting them in a list in this mod, so you don't even have to worry about horizontal space.

Click to expand...

Yes, but I don't feel like the existing 25 civics are very interesting. I bet we could cut it down to 20 more interesting/useful ones, and then add the terraforming related ones.

Sending lots of workers out into uncontrolled territory is expensive (you have to escort them) and time consuming, so it needs to have some direct tangible benefits.
Also, the AI is unlikely to do it; I think any improvement construction is going to have to occur inside your controlled territory.

Click to expand...

OK, we already have an outpost in the mod, so I can make anchor grass buildable inside borders. If you want to grow more, build an outpost. I like the idea of it automatically upgrading to a swordgrass plot after some turns. Maybe there is another level of upgrade to a real grass plot once you hit the Three Percent Threshold. Or since there may be no hooks to make the T.P.T, we could skip that part and focus on tech requirements for the projects.

Not really up to speed with this thread, but certainly think terraforming victory is a good idea.

It would be great if it was really visible sort of like the hell terrain in FFH2. You can tell the advanced terraformers by the fact their lands are green with grass.

One thing has always confused me though. The Fremen worship the worm as Shai Hulud and rely on various produces of the worm (spice, water of life), but then they ultimately destroy them by following Kynes' teachings about turning Arrakis into a paradise. Seems like a strange contradiction. I'm sure someone has insight...

i really like your ideas Ahriman,

i hope we will begin work on this soon.

Deliverator,
hummm....interesting indeed!
i now reading the first dune book, i bought the whole 6 book set by frank h, all because of this mod .

im now half way to the book, i guess perhaps an aswer for this quastion lies around 1000+ pages in my future

Deliverator said:

It would be great if it was really visible sort of like the hell terrain in FFH2. You can tell the advanced terraformers by the fact their lands are green with grass.

Click to expand...

Good point. I need a graphic for "anchor grass". My graphics skills include recoloring, but that's about it. I can take the sword grass and make it greener. Could you make several variants, one of which is taller? I like the idea of zooming out a late game map where the terraformers are winning, and seeing it look green. In related news, many of the existing graphics are kind of hard to see on the map, like grey on brown.

The art to-do list is growing exponentially! Variants on the grass should be pretty easy though.

Yeah, a lot of the bonuses and improvements need new or replacement art, even just a recolour. The Barrel Cactus is amusing...

Deliverator...your laughing on my cactus?...

hehe...

ill point out, that, i made the improvemnts and the bonuses to fit each other - without using the too complicated civplot.xml file (buildings folder).

A thought for preferences; Fremen, Atreides and arguably Tleilexu might prefer terraforming; the Tleixlu don't care so much if the only source of spice in the galaxy is lost, because they're working on their own synthetic substitute; no more natural spice -> more power for them.

Everyone else would probably fight terraforming pretty hard, particularly the Guild over all others, who should probably be hard-code blocked from adopting terraforming.

I have a more or less final design.

New civic column "Terraforming", three entries, "Pro-Spice", "Neutral", "Pro-Water". Navigator has preferred civic pro-spice, both fremen factions have preferred pro-water. I am not sure how to make one civic give a bad reaction to the other like religions do, but I will figure that out and add it.

When you have pro-water civic, you can build two new improvements and one new unit.

Reservoir of Liet improvement: uses outpost mechanics plus windtrap mechanics. Provides slightly higher water bonus than windtrap, plus it can be built outside cultural borders and spreads control, but gives much less defensive bonus. Small percentage chance to upgrade adjacent desert tiles to plains, plains to arid. If you switch civics, it downgrades to a normal windtrap. I need some way to draw the AI attention to pillaging this, perhaps a high gold value will be enough. As temporary art, I will use a larger, recolorized version of Lord Tirian's new windtrap.

Anchor grass improvement: can be built inside cultural borders, requires fresh water, provides +1 food on tile. After 30 turns has a small chance per turn of converting into a swordgrass bonus assuming you still have the civic. As temporary art, I will probably use the cyan colored swordgrass, and make a new swordgrass which is more green. If I knew how, I would also make swordgrass taller.

Terraform worker unit: a worker unit which can *only* build reservoir and anchor grass. So when it is on automation that is what it will build. Normal workers cannot build those improvements. I will force the AI civs to spend some percentage of their production on these workers when it has the appropriate civic. I will reskin the worker and add at least a green armband.

In 1.2.3 I added a check so that spice will not appear near fresh water. So there is some small penalty to having lots of windtraps. But I need a suggestion for a strong bonus which the *other* civic will give. I thought maybe the pro-planet civic might get less commerce income from spice, but that doesn't make sense.

I'm guessing Pro-Spice needs both positive and negative effects, otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

I can create a taller grass NIF for you.

Deliverator said:

I'm guessing Pro-Spice needs both positive and negative effects, otherwise it would be a no-brainer...

Click to expand...

I guess the idea of civics is that they are almost all positive, you are forced to trade off which positive you want. So the trick is to come up with two positives that are equally valuable. Looking through the civics xml, there are lots of things we *could* easily do in civics, like decrease the city distance penalty, but none of them jump out at me as immediately related to pro-spice.

Maybe +1 commerce from spice harvesters, or +1 hammer.

Deliverator said:

Maybe +1 commerce from spice harvesters, or +1 hammer.

Click to expand...

I like +1 hammer. Sold.

Make anchor grass and sword grass spread fresh water (unlike drip farms).

This way, tiles adjacent to tiles adjacent to sword grass won't be candidates for spice blows either.

Since relatively few of your spice tiles are worked, there needs to be a big reduction in spice economy I think for this to be balanced; otherwise under a pro-water civic you could still get the terrain improvements *and* get big spice income.
This will probably need to be tweaked after playtesting.

I suggest you consider hard-coding a few more faction preferences over the civics, otherwise every civ is like to evaluate one (probably pro-spice, since pro-water has no direct effect) as being superior and adopt it.
Atreides are soft and nice to the poor oppressed native peoples, so they'd probably support it, as would the Tlielexu (damn I can't spell that word) since they're working on a synthetic alternative.

Ahriman said:

Make anchor grass and sword grass spread fresh water (unlike drip farms). This way, tiles adjacent to tiles adjacent to sword grass won't be candidates for spice blows either.

Click to expand...

Having the "spice-free" zone grow is a good idea. I don't think that the flag to spread irrigation works quite the way you think. That is, if you place a chain of farms in vanilla with Civil Service, I don't think the tiles show up as having fresh water. I think a farm gives the irrigated yield bonus if *either* it is on fresh water, *or* it is connected to a farm which has irrigation.

After playtesting (well, after *implementation* and then playtesting) we can decide if the spice-free zone needs to get bigger.

I suggest you consider hard-coding a few more faction preferences over the civics, otherwise every civ is like to evaluate one (probably pro-spice, since pro-water has no direct effect) as being superior and adopt it.

Click to expand...

I agree, but I am having a little trouble finding the hooks for this. I can see positive civic reactions but not negative ones. See this thread for more discussion.