DuneWars: Battle for Arrakis

Hi everyone,

We're looking at starting up a succession game using the DuneWars mod, developed here:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=358

The mod is a total conversion of Civ, set in the Dune Universe of the novels of Frank Herbert. The mod opens after some great disaster, with several of the Great Houses trapped on the surface of the desert planet Arrakis. Gradually they must rebuild and expand, and strive for total domination of the planet's riches.

Players must harvest the spice melange, contesting loyalties between the Emperor, the Great Houses and new religions and values. Wealthy factions may pay the Guild to transport soldiers from their homeworld. Leaders may choose to focus on spice income, or to begin the slow process of terraforming Arrakis, fulfilling the dream of the Fremen. Water is incredibly scarce; players must carefully focus the little water they can glean from windtraps, wells and dew collectors.

We will be using version 1.6.3 (which is as yet unreleased, but will be in the next few days), and playing on a Standard Arrakis mapscript, at Epic gamespeed and probably Monarch difficulty.

We would probably look for 5 players, maybe 6 if there is a lot of enthusiasm.

The purpose of the game is to have fun, but also to showcase the Dune mod, and try and demonstrate some of the neat features.

We will try a "roleplay" type set of objectives, probably one of the following (voted by the players):

1. Emperor Muad'Dib.
Play as Atreides, found Mahdi religion, gain a permanent alliance with the Fremen, and win a Holy war victory (half the world follows mahdi, half the land territory are within your borders). Destroy the Harkonnens outright.

2. Desert outcasts
Play as Fremen, refuse any diplomatic agreements (resource trades, open borders, map trading, etc) with any player except Atreides, win a terraforming victory.

3. Preserve the old order
Play as Corrino, win with any victory condition, but Quizarate, Golden Path and Technocracy religions must all be eliminated (or not founded, or founded by the player and not spread elsewhere) and their holy cities razed.

4. Will of the Landsraad.
Play as Harkonnen, Atreides, Ecaz or Ordos. Found the Landsraad religion. Win a diplomatic victory. Never declare war on any follower of Landsraad religion.


To start with, it looks like:
1. Ahriman
2. Slvynn
3. AnotherPacifist
4. Deliverator
5. ?

Experience with either succession games OR the Dune mod would be a plus, but neither is required.

So if you're interested, post here or PM me.

wow. I didn't know about the dune mod. I will lurk with enthusiasm.

He who controls the spice controls the universe...

How about to raise difficulty to Emperror (more challenge, its succession game). Also please fix my name for right spelling in your post

Also i should add few requirements of :
1. Play as Paul. Must adopt Arrakis Paradise civic. Terraforming victory disabled (to prevent us and/or Freemen allies to gain it before we get to Holy War win)

4. Found CHOAM, Adopt Arrakis Spice civic.

5. I'd add yet Thinking Machines of Ix campaign option, Win Domination or Religious Victory, Found Technocracy, Eliminate Leto II of Atreides and Tleilaxu right away. (just to show more one option of the game - playing as robot/thinking machine faction - i am ok with 4 1st )

6. Play as Bene Gesserit, try to maintain peace, never declare war, Win Cultural or Religious Victory.

We can also add some screenies of different campaigns leaders for our choice. That wil be cool cause people will be able to see visuals pre-game.
Something like tread campaign chooser.

EDIT: i am personally inclined with Campaign 4 "Will of the Landsraad".. That should be Interesting and fast to start with. It also gives wide starter civ/leader option. Followed by 1 and 5.

Depending on who we get as players we'll decide on scenario and difficulty level; we don't want too much of a challenge for a mod with many restrictions and unfamiliar players. Plus, this is more of a roleplayed game, rather than a strict play-to-win match.
Also; it can be difficult to guarantee founding a particular religion at higher difficulty levels, because the AI's research bonuses are *so* large in the early game.

I'd lean more towards options 1. or 2.; 4. is kindof a pacifist gamestyle, which probably won't be as good at showing off the mod as a more warlike scenario will be.

We can have an Ixian robotic game once we clean up the Technocracy religion a little more.

Joining the game would also be an excellent way to start exploring the mod, along with some players and mod designers who already have some experience with it.

[Just wanted to be clear that players don't need to have played the mod at all before starting.]

Ah and if someone dont even know how its looks like - Dune, I got few random screenshots

Dune Wars mod is very deep insight into Frank Herbert's world of Dune novels series, with some influence from another related origins, gathering alot of deep fictional but "real" and "canon" history of that world according novel's plot.

Spice. Sand. Desert. Worms. Greed. Hatred between Great Houses, Competition and fight over dusty and mysterious planet called Arrakis or simply - Dune.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8572529&postcount=6

I'm more of a monarch player, since I've been torturing myself with RFC's emperor mode (which is much harder than emperor) for a long time before.
I'm also more inclined to build rather than conquer, although I do the occasional wars to get science and commerce going. For that reason the first 2 scenarios I like better.

I am veeery agressive. Very. That will be interesting and good , because we will take role of advisors, each one having own specialization. Anyways its a team game and art of team game
Also Scenario 1 is not quite peacefull and building scenario. Mahdi is not peacefull religion
So i like #1. I like Holy War victory goal, And i like Mahdi only restriction .

Oh yeah, Mahdi is the most aggressive religion in the game; it basically spreads only through conquest (it has no missionaries but spreads automatically to any city you capture). Sadly, we don't yet have my favorite concept for this religion working yet (it needs some sdk changes); the shrine will be a unit producing monstrosity, giving a military production bonus for each city with the religion. As it is, its gold for now as a placeholder.

1. will be a bloody conquest game. The tattered banners of jihad, marching slowly over the planet. Muad'Dib! Muad'Dib!

Now we just need some other players.... if we get some, we could start this weekend, assuming David has 1.6.3 ready for Fri night.

I can see it now, Slvynn getting mad at us for not building him a big enough army to play with

I'm no stranger to big armies though...viz. my most recent game with ROTK with an aggressive...no, spiritual leader...it's just I'm more of an early war or an overwhelming war to get my way.

Haha Yep ! If we play Mahdi (1) game we prolly will beeline jihad right after we have arrakis habitation and plantations tech (workers techs/starting improvements boost).
Thats because Mahdi Fighters is big advantage at early stage. Nothing can match it, and if AI will have infantries still, we'll cut through them w/o WW and w/o crazy support costs, and with awesome odds.

I'll join in.

Bear in mind that despite the fact I've worked on this mod since the start of June, I'm not that good a player. Perhaps I'll learn something from you guys.

great
The things you tech at start very terrain dependant. 1. Play the map. Plan units/techs according it. (example - Quads can be great if you have lots of flatland and clear path aviable, Suspensors if you on small island/ scattered on tiny islands, Melee in some proportion always but also depends on what you have around you, guardsman are good for mesa choking.)
After last patches (i like this alot) i find some AIs should not be trusted. 2. Never trust Ordos and Harkonnen and Corrino. On my experience Executrix is one of most early-war loving leaders. Simply he is agressive techwhore while Rabban is just dumb shaka-monty type. Baron is early backstabber too, he builds alot of units, just Executrix build less but his units are more advanced.
Defence. It's not vanilla. 3. All cities should be well defended. No matter how deep they are within your cultural borders.
Early spice tiles = big tech advantage. 4. Spice tech should be early, and spice is vital at start. If you have mesas/resource tiles dont hurry with building wells if they will harm your spice tiles.
Promotions. There are good list of "vs UnitCombat class" promotions aviable, dont promote units for 1-2 promotion, and use promotions when you see what coming against you. 6. Counter enemy stack.

Those are main concepts for DW that are special to mod, (1) just simply much more important in DW than in vanilla, for (6) DW have full scale counter abilities for some Units Classes.

I'll join in.

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Awesome!

Never trust Ordos and Harkonnen and Corrino. On my experience Executrix is one of most early-war loving leaders. Simply he is agressive techwhore while Rabban is just dumb shaka-monty type. Baron is early backstabber too, he builds alot of units, just Executrix build less but his units are more advanced.

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Excellent, my leader design seems to be working.

If you have mesas/resource tiles dont hurry with building wells if they will harm your spice tiles

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Dunno about this... you're normally better off with the well IMO.

damnit id love to join this if i didnt have exams

but i suck big time at playing the game

Ahriman said:

Dunno about this... you're normally better off with the well IMO.

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No, if you have plently of mesas, dew colector resource tiles and spice then its better to hold wells. Lets say your tech rate at some start point of game is 19. (example, early stage)

If you add spice tile you get nice addition to early tech rate which means you get new tech upgrade for your improvements sooner and earlier will be able to build certain units/buildings.

Early windtrap/dew city with spice in bfc is good gain.
You also not always build cottage economy/ and not always, esp on start, have hapiness to grow far. Cottages is long time investment, and at start they are weak , harvesters is short and immediate and quite powerfull if worked (remeber gold tiles in vanilla? now add +income for corporation )

Hmm, trying not to get too far offtopic, but who here own's the third stage edition? I always had a problem with the dvd messing up on me half-way through the movie.

For those who haven't seen it, a preview:

Dune 3'rd Stage

damnit id love to join this if i didnt have exams

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PL, if your exams are over by the 10th, and we put you in slot 5, then at ~ 2-3 days per player per section, you would not be up to play your first section until after you were finished. And you could just bow out on making strategic decisions for the first round.

obsolete said:

Hmm, trying not to get too far offtopic, but who here own's the third stage edition?

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I got hold of the Spicediver fanedit, but I haven't been able to get hold of the 3rd Stage version.