The Spice Thread

It's about time spice got it's own thread. The current set up:

1. Spice appears only on Desert Waste/Deep Desert tiles.
2. Spice appears randomly on the map triggered by a spice blow mechanic.
3. Spice tiles are worked by Spice Harvester improvements.
4. Spice harvesters can only be built within you cultural borders.
5. Every civ has a House Spice corporation. This Corporation only has a Headquarters building and cannot be spread to other cities. The Corporation generates 3 additional commerce per spice tile with a Harvester improvement.
6. Spice disappears over time, this will happen more quickly when a Harvester is in place and more slowly is running the Arrakis Spice civic.
7. Spice will not appear on tiles with (or adjacent to) fresh water access in the current design.
8. The Landsraad religion shrine, CHOAM Headquarters, founds the CHOAM corporation which functions as second House Spice corporation for your faction.

Planned/Proposed Changes
1. We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.
2. Wonders that give increasing benefits the more spice you control such as Prescience Chamber and Guild Research Facility.

Here are two of the big issues that have been raised about the current implementation.

Issue 1 - Various people have commented that spice is not important enough in the mod

WarKirby said:

Also, some thoughts about spice. I haven't played incredibly far into a game yet, so perhaps there are things I'm not aware of. But my overall impression so far, is that Spice doesn't seem to be as important as it should be.

"He who controls the spice, controls the universe"
but in practice, it seems more like
"He who controls the spice, controls slightly more wealth than others"
which isn't quite as epic.

Spice is hard to get. This is mainly because it only appears in areas of desert where you can't build cities. Almost like sea, really. The only way to get it is to build cities on the "coast" and expand culture far enough to reach the spice. Desert Waste gives relatively little in tile yields, and I believe Deep desert gives nothing at all, so there's an opportunity cost there, in sacrificing workable tiles in a city radius to get more spice.

To add to that, spice is temporary. I know more can be spawned by blows, but that doesn't seem to be happening to me so far. My experience of spice is building a city next to it for some temporary prosperity,, and then that city sinks into mediocrity once the spice expires and it's left with a poor city site.. Decent, sustainable city sites rarely contain any desert tiles, and so no spice.

On a related note, the Arrakis Spice civic. It gives +1 per spice harvester, which is "nice", but that's all it is. It hardly seems worth the effort. Production is easy enough to get from mines on the ridiculously common Crystals resource, that +1 from a tile you never really expected to get production from at all, doesn't make a lot of difference.

In short, I'm finding in the recent verson, that there doesn't seem to be a lot of reason to care about spice. The opportunity cost of placing a city in a bad location just to gain an ultimately temporary commerce boost from spice, (until it vanishes) doesn't seem worth the maintanance costs you pay for it. Not compared to placing a city farther "inland" next to a few groundwater/crystal resources, and growing a big, productive, sustainable city.

I think spice needs to be a LOT more valuable. but this is just my opinion

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As things stand it is possible to have a thriving economy while harvesting little or no spice which feels wrong.

Options

1) Reduce the amount of commerce available from sources other than the spice. For example, reduce commerce available from cottages and specialists.
2) Increase tech costs, etc and increase commerce from spice so that spice commerce accounts for a larger percentage.
3) Create buildings and wonders that provide varied beneficial effects dependent on the amount of spice tiles improved. See this thread.

Issue 2 - It is not possible to harvest spice more than a short distance from land tiles

This is because spice harvesters must be built within you cultural border. To harvest the spice you need to extend your cultural border over desert tiles. This means that maps have to have a fair number of islands for spice harvesting in any quantity to happen.

Options

1) Keep the status quo meaning that spice and spice harvesting will not be a significant factor in more Pangaea style maps such as the current Arrakis.py.

2) Change Arrakis.py.

Ahriman said:

Spice works pretty well on a Duneipegalo mapscript, so its easy to interpret this as a mapscript issue at least as much as a mechanic issue. Also, as my draft Arrakis scenario map shows, the real Arrakis from the books is not just big continents; it has plenty of narrow land-necks which will provide significant spice to most players, only in the big northern basins will there not be any significant spice access.

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2) Allow spice harvesters to expand cultural borders using JCultureControl or a similar mechanism to Starbases in Final Frontier. I tried some simple experiments with this - see here and here.

A summary of the drawbacks of this approach:

Ahriman said:

I still have many concerns. For example, I worry that:
a) the culture will stay there even once the harvester disappears, which will look and feel weird
b) the AI will not defend its spice tiles, or attack yours. It would be easy for a human to start a war and pillage off all their harvesters with only a handful of thopters (removing their culture) and then building your own
c) it will be exploitable by the human; the human player can build a huge worker army and go around the whole map getting all the spice, leading to a truly massive economy. The AI won't understand that a huge worker army would be valuable, and so won't build one.
d) it will be very hard to balance the spice income. Either you will be able to run too big an economy with all the spice, or you won't be able to run a big enough one without it.
e) it would allow an arrakis paradise user to still generate a huge spice income. Arrakis paradise penalizes spice income by providing big areas around cities where spice can't spawn, but if you're free to mine all the spice in the deep desert away from your cities then this isn't much of a penalty.

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I responded to these issues in this post. On issue (a) is seems like the removal of culture when improvements are removed is built into JCultureControl.

I know this isn't a comprehensive list of the issues or possible options, but it is just to get the discussion going. I can come back and update this post as further stuff is raised.

Some things to add:
i) Spice will not appear on tiles with (or adjacent to) fresh water access in the current design.
ii) Landsraad/CHOAM religion shrine is intended to be another spice corp building.
iii) We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.
iv) Currently you get very different amounts of spice on the Duneipegalo vs Arrakis mapscripts.
Spice works pretty well on a Duneipegalo mapscript, so its easy to interpret this as a mapscript issue at least as much as a mechanic issue.
Also, as my draft Arrakis scenario map shows, the real Arrakis from the books is not just big continents; it has plenty of narrow land-necks which will provide significant spice to most players, only in the big northern basins will there not be any significant spice access.

So "change the Arrakis mapscript" needs to be one of the possible options.

On Duneipegalo script, spice income can already provide ~1/5 of your commerce or more quite easily (eg: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=229105&d=1253989616 ), and more than 1/5 of your gold/research output because it is all concentrated in your capital, which will have the most gold/beaker boosting buildings.
(Eg for same economy as above: http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=229255&d=1254102207 Capital provides nearly half economy-wide beaker output, and most of that comes from spice commerce)

On Duneipegalo script, spice income can already provide ~1/5 of your commerce or more quite easily, and more than 1/5 of your gold/research output because it is all concentrated in your capital, which will have the most gold/beaker boosting buildings.

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Is a fifth enough to be considered 'important' though? Not sure.

Is a fifth enough to be considered 'important' though? Not sure.

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It can end up providing nearly 1/3 of your gold and beaker output because you have every booster built in your capital.

Which means that it is 50% of the size of the entire rest of your economy. (1/3)/(2/3)

So yes, I think thats plenty. (See screenshots in post 2).

Also note, that means that if Arrakis paradise reduces your spice income by half relative to Spice economy, then Arrakis paradise terraforming must increase the output of the rest of your economy by 25% in order to stay balanced.
Which is a pretty big ask.

* * *
Also note some edits in post2, and some more concerns with harvesting outside normal cultural borders:

And I don't think it will be fun for the human player to being having to control and contest areas outside their cultural borders. The limited line of sight will be frustrating (AI doesn't suffer from this), and the long supply lines and distance won't be fun either. The combat would be boring, since there is little variety in the deep desert units (just a suspensor gunship line and the thopter line), and since the AI is bad at using aircraft carriers. Plus, Fremen would have a huge advantage since they can bring their normal soldiers out onto the desert, while everyone else can only use suspensors and thopters.

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Checking in for a very actual discussion. As of now, Spice is way too unimportant.

As I said in the 1.6 feedback thread:

Also, the Spice Firm produces 5g to compensate for its maintenance as coorp. However, if you have 0 spice (but have the corp), it has no maintenance and you will earn the 5g because the corp will be passive. This makes rush for a single spice source for the coorp and then ignoring spice (living inland this is often sound) can be viable (since you would need to keep a constant supply of something like 4-5 spice just to get the same yield out of it as you get from the building if you have no coorp maintenance).

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This is actually an incentive against collecting Spice until you're fairly large. When you're fairly large, why spend time on spice when you can go on a conquering spree?

Basically, Spice opportunity costs are way off. It needs to be extremely valuable. In the description it says that prices have once reached 720.000 solaris the decagram, but in reality the commerce you get from one source of spice (which, I hope, is more than one decagram per year/turn) is what you get out of taxes from a basin hamlet. If that's just half of 720.000 solaris, the planet is wicked-rich.

I think it would make sense to double the commerce bonus from the Spice coorporation, and implement buildings for other cities that generate minor income from Spice aswell.

Also , i remind, there was talk about boosting Arrakis Spice civic at all in comparison to Paradise. Perhaps something involved with guild .....

Atm as civic it provide much less change and options and features than Paradise.

Spice is quite powerfull atm, and kinda balanced, nbut yes it should provide more, it will feell more right. Perhaps it will also balance Spice and Paradise Civics, and will make Terraforming victory harder to achieve.

I think that is especially true because civs like the Fremen react with negative diplomatic relations because you pick that civic (I guess that this works the other way around aswell, though?).

Its current effect is far too weak; you almost never work Spice tiles.

Diamondeye said:

I think that is especially true because civs like the Fremen react with negative diplomatic relations because you pick that civic (I guess that this works the other way around aswell, though?).

Its current effect is far too weak; you almost never work Spice tiles.

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No, you not right, sorry. I working plently of tiles and alot , adn that doubles and feed my economy. And i played alot of games and i am kicking this game at deity tiny map and now struggling with small. Spice makes sagnificant boost, but perhaps it should be more. Just because Paradise adopters have own great boosts and Terraforming is easiest and fastest victory in game.
Yep perhaps it should be revieved and rebalanced, i am sure, compared to Paradise espesially, but if used well you can get very hight amounts of income via spice.

This is actually an incentive against collecting Spice until you're fairly large.

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No there isn't.

When you're fairly large, why spend time on spice when you can go on a conquering spree?

Click to expand...

What is stopping you from doing both?

Basically, Spice opportunity costs are way off.

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What opportunity costs? The only opportunity costs to spice are other things that workers could be doing. And these are pretty low value compared to collecting spice.

in the description it says that prices have once reached 720.000 solaris the decagram, but in reality the commerce you get from one source of spice (which, I hope, is more than one decagram per year/turn) is what you get out of taxes from a basin hamlet.

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This isn't really a useful comparison.
Gameplay > fluff. Besides, who knows how many people a town improvement represents. 10,000, maybe? Is it really so unreasonable that the GDP of 10,000 people is more than the NET income from a single harvester operation?

There is a limit to how much income should be coming just from improvements that you don't even have work the tile to receive income from.

I completely agree with these though:

1. Landsraad/CHOAM religion shrine is intended to be another spice corp building.
2. We've talked about adding a building that gives say +0.15 gold per spice resource. Maybe this could be a Spice Economy unique building.

Click to expand...

The one thing that *is* weird is that spice resource tiles used to be considerably more valuable to actually work, within city BFC. Now they only seem to be giving 4 commerce?? They used to give like 7.
Can we check on this in the game files?

Ah yes there is something changed with bfc worked tile bonus. I remeber it was 8 with fin, yep.

Ahriman said:

The one thing that *is* weird is that spice resource tiles used to be considerably more valuable to actually work, within city BFC. Now they only seem to be giving 4 commerce?? They used to give like 7.
Can we check on this in the game files?

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There has been no change in spice yield since 1.4.2 or so. Polar waste commerce yield was decreased by one in 1.5.2 or so. There was a long debate about this, but from my standpoint, polar cities are too powerful.

I know you have said this, but I am 100% certain that spice (with harvester) only gives +4 commerce currently (see attached screenshot, 1h1c base for desert waste, +1h from arrakis spice civic, +4 hammers for spice resource w/ harvester), and that it used to give more, once upon a time at least. It has been at +4 for a while, but this is not enough IMO.

I would suggest that spice give +1c by itself, and that the harvester give +5c when on a spice resource. So the highest possible yield = desert waste w/ weather scanner and arrakis spice civic and spice resource and harvester improvement = 3h/7c.

This is nothing to do with polar desert waste, we can discuss that a separate time.

Ahriman said:

I would suggest that spice give +1c by itself, and that the harvester give +5c when on a spice resource.

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I am a little confused. You have commented in the past that when all the +% buildings are built, the commerce rate is too high. Would you be willing to try this out locally and see if it makes the game too easy? The harvester yield is in terrain/civ4improvementinfos.xml. The spice bonus yield is in terrain/civ4bonusinfos.xml.

I can test this at some point, sure. I doubt it will make much difference to overall economy rate; the number of spice tiles normally worked in the BFC of cities is very small.

So the main reason for this change is for a small *real* change in commerce from a spice economy, but a large "feel" in how important spice is.

Also, to help differentiate arrakis spice from arrakis paradise (who cannot work spice tiles in BFC because of fresh water).

Holy one,

first of all:
Congrats!! This is such a great mod!! You have implemented so many great ideas and the "dune-feeling" is veeery present.

But I also know (like you do ;-)), that work is not finished, yet... especially AI-programming seems needed... the hardest work, I suppose.

In my games (just two yet, until about turn 100 difficulty noble and prince), the AI doesn't harvest any spice. I followed this already in the "diplomacy mode", where no other player was able to give me a "spice-ressource". First I thought, that you don't want to show the opponent harvest to the player... but now, that I can cross Irulans borders I see, that she doesn't harvest the giant blow in front of her door:



I don't know, if this problem only occurs in my games... or if I have to wait more turns, until AI harvests (but why?! other fields have been upgraded, too)
Might it be, that spice is located in "water"-fields and CIV assumes, that Workers cannot walk through water?! Maybe CIV doesn't get it, that a tech improves a units marching options?!

If that's the problem, my suggestion is, to try it with the "fishing-boats/whale-ships"! Might it be possible, that they could "harvest spice" and solve the problem about it? This would also give the option, that the harvesters become mobile units (fishing-boat kind).

It might also be possible, that you can "recycle" your harvester that way: as soon as the spice has depleted, the harvester becomes a "fishing-boat" again. This might be harder to implement.

Although I already read many many posts here in this forum, I haven't read ALL, maybe this already has been discussed somewhere and dropped by some reason... if it really was, I'm sorry for stealing your time.

Don't get me wrong: This mod is sooo great, so many story-related things have been implemented and most things fit! I wonder, how much time you all spent for it... the more it makes it worthier to work on! I've also seen many changes between version 1.6.1 and 1.6.3, so I know, you are working very hard

Thanks team ;-)
yours Hived!

P.S.: I also attached my savegame... just in case, that only I have this problem.

Hello and nice to see You here.
In my games AI always before me to harvest spice.... Dunno really what to say to you... *shrug*

(They are so spice greedy that they build outposts to get it.

I checked your worldbuilder - Well, because you playing on easy level, ais dont get free units and workers, so they start slower but then will develop rapidly.
In DW difficulty raises by different curve, and those starting improvements are very different, and veeeeeeery important in DW. If you play on Monarch You'll see.
There is different economic system (alot of hammers and very few food, much more commerce) and different abit combat system from BTS.

Also ai tent to improve food/production first, so while it have imrovable mesas/resources he will improve them (they provide both resources and water/commerce/production).
And on easy levels there is a limitation - workers, and abundance of resource tiles in culture borders of Rexing AI civs. (which have more cities and culture than You.) AI just grab more land, and by this increasing potential improvable water yield tiles, and then prioritizes them. But soon enou7gh when they have enough workers and tiles improved they will focus on spice (having twice more improved bfc cities than You)

My adivises - wait abit or just start game on Monarch difficulty
And be carefull - The fact that AI not harvesting spice does not mean he isnt fighting for it. He is busy to capture more tiles of it while you focused on harvesting of already aquired one.

Also, be carefull with such defences. Rapid eco growth does not mean win in DW if you have tiny land/weak military. Some ais love to make nastry surprises by unloading huge stacks 1 tile near your capital by swift suspensor fleet attack. Dont neglect defence, Harkonnen buddy may be not harvesting spice because he want someone to harvest for him (check his land you scouting now with your thopter. and count military units. those units can arrive to you by suspensors in 6 turns (and they will) ).

In my games (just two yet, until about turn 100 difficulty noble and prince), the AI doesn't harvest any spice

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In my games the AI normally harvests spice without any problems. My guess is that particular AI player had not yet researched the spice harvesting tech that allows the spice harvester improvement to be built. The AI is pretty slow to tech (and build improvements) at Noble difficulty. Maybe I need to increase the Gold flavor value on that tech a little, to make the AI like it more, if this turns out to be a common issue.

you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)

Thanks all for answering my obviously wrong guess.

Slvynn said:

Hello and nice to see You here.
In my games AI always before me to harvest spice.... Dunno really what to say to you... *shrug*

(They are so spice greedy that they build outposts to get it.

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Wow, great to hear that. I had expected, that AI doesn't get the hack, what the outposts are good for, in this Mod... but hearing, that they even use them regularly, makes me even more addicted to this Mod

Slvynn said:

I checked your worldbuilder - Well, because you playing on easy level, ais dont get free units and workers, so they start slower but then will develop rapidly.
In DW difficulty raises by different curve, and those starting improvements are very different, and veeeeeeery important in DW. If you play on Monarch You'll see.

Click to expand...

Thanks for checking my file. Maybe you're right, I should simply start a game on a higher difficulty level (maybe even emperor or deity), just to look, how AI develops there. I was just unsure as I have NEVER seen spice as tradeable good in the opponents diplomatic screen, but “many” other ressources.

Slvynn said:

And be carefull - The fact that AI not harvesting spice does not mean he isnt fighting for it. He is busy to capture more tiles of it while you focused on harvesting of already aquired one.

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Yeah, that's because I know, that spice is a “depleting” ressource...

...btw. it also deplets, when not harvested, doesn't it?!

I only harvest spice, as long as no other tile gives me at least ressources of the same value... of course this “value” depends on my “feeling”. In some cases 7c is worthier than 1w+1h (I'd say in most)... in others not. To realize, when to choose the one and when the other, is one of the differences between “medium” and “good” players ;-)
Also the horrifying status of health made me choose this “golden path”, as I tried to get health-boosting techs as fast as possible. On the other hand, I wanted to be one of the first players with education, so I could enjoy the advantage of first tech(-cross-)trading (which is on low difficulties still possible). Maybe the “health-challenge” could be better solved by early settling... but that's also something more experienced players can judge better.

Slvynn said:

Also, be carefull with such defences. Rapid eco growth does not mean win in DW if you have tiny land/weak military. Some ais love to make nastry surprises by unloading huge stacks 1 tile near your capital by swift suspensor fleet attack. Dont neglect defence, Harkonnen buddy may be not harvesting spice because he want someone to harvest for him (check his land you scouting now with your thopter. and count military units. those units can arrive to you by suspensors in 6 turns (and they will) ).

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Huh... don't make me shiver afaik the Harkonnen have no suspensor techs yet... of course this does not excuse the “low militarization” of my tiny land. I just wanted to wait for better units to build. Also “high-tech-unit”-attacks were planned (should express my aggressive stance), so that expansion not only comes by settling... I felt really safe being “beyond” the impassible desert and thanks to education, I know most of the techs they don't have yet. but I have to agree: My “pair” of cities is not something, you could call “empire”.
You see, it has been a while, since I had my last civ-game.

Ahriman said:

In my games the AI normally harvests spice without any problems. My guess is that particular AI player had not yet researched the spice harvesting tech that allows the spice harvester improvement to be built. The AI is pretty slow to tech (and build improvements) at Noble difficulty. Maybe I need to increase the Gold flavor value on that tech a little, to make the AI like it more, if this turns out to be a common issue.

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(Almost?) all of them have the tech. The Harkonnen sit “centered”, they have no “coastal cities”, so it's logical, they have no spice (if only the baron knew what Feyd is doing there!! Gimmie my ssspice!!!)...
I think it's not a tech problem, but I guess, they improve (all) the other tiles first, such as Slvynn said :-/

fusetech said:

you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)

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I like this idea! As it not only (hopefully) makes the AI improve spice first and maybe settle a bit more spice-orientated, but also fits to the story:
health: spice extends life
happiness: At least the addicted (and who is not on dune? Look in their eyes ;-) ) will thank you, but also the traders. C'mon spice is the most wanted substance in universe! I'd be happy to have some. It's better than gold in our world ;-)

giving gold in every city is not needed imo and also harder to implement (?!). You already get gold by spice-coorp. and working on the spice tile.
Also it would force you to expand even more rapidly, because when having enough spice each city doesn't longer cost gold, but in addition rewards you with more gold. Not to say, that each city also gives you the option of more spice to harvest: a vicious circle.


I've also read somewhere of the idea of cutting the commerce-outputs of other tiles/improvements, so you are forced to harvest spice in order to get gold and beakers. Maybe this also lets the AI improve spice-tiles earlier.
I'd give it a try!

...btw. it also deplets, when not harvested, doesn't it?!

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Yes, the spice is on the surface of the desert. If you don't harvest it, it will eventually be covered by sandstorms.

It depletes faster when it has a harvester on it though.

but I guess, they improve (all) the other tiles first, such as Slvynn said

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Then they probably don't have enough workers. low difficulty level....

you could treat spice like a strategic resource that is automatically connected to all of your cities, that gives gold, happiness, and health (if that's possible)

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That would break the game I think, making all other resources unimportant. And why should spice be giving happiness or health??!? Ordinary citizen/workers can't afford to buy significant quantities of spice. Only the incredibly wealthy can become addicted. Most of the population never gets more than trace amounts, they aren't longer living or easier to keep in line because of it. The spice all gets exported, not used for local consumption.