First complete game feedback

Just finished my first game of Dune, thought I'd offer some feedback. The game was a Huge Arrakis Emperor, as Paul Muad'Dib of the Fremen. I set the AI to have one of each faction, so there were 8 opponents instead of the normal 10 for that map size. Won with a terraforming victory, to try it out.

Overall, I love the mod. Easily in the top 4 I've played, with BUG, FFH2, and Final Frontier Plus. Clearly factions need some balancing, but you all knew that already. Fremen and Sardaukar in particular are wickedly powerful. Hard to know how to balance things relative to them, considering in canon they are supposed to be the two most dominant fighting forces in the galaxy, but still.... Corrino ended up the second place faction in the game, despite becoming my vassal after a short, brutal, and one sided war over the polar cap, so they were clearly doing something right before running afoul of the Fedaykin. Tleilaxu and Bene Gesserit were the other two marginally successful AI's in the game.

I have some other, fairly minor observations that seemed odd to me. Some are undoubtedly intended, others may be minor bugs:

1. Zeal 3 cannot be taken by units with only 1 move point, including the Mahdi units it's most flavored for (already noted on bug thread).

2. Sandrider workers seem to treat all desert as move 3 roads, while other unit types use move 2 roads.

3. The XP bonus for Ginaz training is functionally useless. Even with both levels (+40%), you would need to be risking your level 5+ unit attacking not much higher than 50% odds to have a chance at +1 bonus XP. Still a useful promotion for the +20% strength, but perhaps increase the bonus to +25% XP for each level so you only have to get 2 xp from a combat to have it kick in?

4. Very minor, but it's annoying for Fremen to have to burn a promotion on stillsuits in order to get thumpers. Don't think I actually attacked any sandworms the whole game, but it's a thought.

5. Couldn't figure out how to drop a thumper to attract a sandworm. Is that feature implemented at all, or just in the description?

6. Having the worker buttons for all 3 mine levels look the same was a little annoying. Even a little Roman or Arabic numeral in the corner to differentiate would be nice. Similarly, if there's a way to set the default action for the "m" hotkey to be building the highest level mine available, that would be nice.

7. I would like to see more than 3 mentats available. Perhaps it's just my playstyle, but I found the military XP bonus far more desirable than any of the others, except perhaps the production one, in the midgame. As an idea, maybe a limit of one mentat of each type? That would further encourage the city specialization the mod seems to be set up to promote. Also, as someone else already noted somewhere, the civic mentat is bugged to give +25 /+25 with sapho juice.

8. Bombers can't take ultralight (fighters can)? Probably intended, I just got excited when I saw it in the list of available promos for bombers.

9. I don't think the Dragonfly Bomber should upgrade to the Cielago Stealth Bomber. They are both quite late in the game, and serve different enough roles that having both available could be useful.

As I said, pretty minor stuff, and I loved the game. Just wanted to mention what came to mind while playing. Now to decide which faction I want to play next!

Thanks for the feedback and kind words, always appreciated.

Fremen and Sardaukar in particular are wickedly powerful.

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Most of Corrino's power actually comes from the 50% faster building on settlers from Imperialistic trait.
Shaddam (Imperialist, Expansive) is a wickedly powerful expander.
Sardaukar themselves don't make that much difference, and they have to pay for them by losing a trade-good slot.
We can consider toning the Imperialist bonus down slightly.
Fremen are meant to be very powerful early game, but eventually should suffer from lack of vehicles and such, and vulnerability to airpower.
Their big advantage in AI hands comes from the AI's effectiveness in conquering barbarians with crysknife fighters, who should perhaps get a city attack penalty or something.
Their big advantage in human hands comes from the fact that the AI isn't very good at contesting the desert tiles, and in in particular isn't very good at using aircraft.

These are hard to fix.

1 is noted.
2 I hadn't noticed. We should look into this.
3. Interesting point. Perhaps if we adopt fractional experience gain, as in Fall Further? I'm not 100% sure how XP gain works I guess.
4. We've had several discussions about thumpers. I think my preferred design is to remove them as a selectable promotion, and have them as a built-in promotion on crysknife fighters, Naib's Chosen and Fedaykin. And maybe any other Fremen melee units. And have them make the stack immune to works.
5. That functionality is gone I think, we used to have it but it was annoying MM that the Ai didn't understand, so we went to a passive effect.
6. I don't remember the buttons - I thought we had changed them? We can check. Not sure that we can change the hotkeys though; I don't think we can have a hotkey mean different things depending on which tech you have.
7. Deliverator has some mentat redesign changes in mind.
8. Surprising. They're both hornet class, they should have the same promotion availability. Ultralight should be available to any hornet.
9. I'd be fine with that, easy fix.

These kind of minor notes are very much appreciated, its this kind of thing that we want for high-end polish, and that is easy for people who are used to the mod to not notice anymore because we're used to "how things are".

Ahriman said:

Their big advantage in human hands comes from the fact that the AI isn't very good at contesting the desert tiles, and in in particular isn't very good at using aircraft.

These are hard to fix.

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I think the AI's main weakness in contesting the desert is that it doesn't understand to treat it like ocean, in most ways. Thopters and suspensors are odd, when it comes to Civ 4 AI, in that they are both naval superiority and ground support units. It seems like if you could get the AI to task some percentage of its forces as naval superiority, and recognize the desert as where the "navy" belongs, you could tap into BtS's generally adequate naval combat AI. I'm not a programmer, definitely not an AI guy, and I recognize that's easier said than done, but it's an idea I had, anyway.

3. Interesting point. Perhaps if we adopt fractional experience gain, as in Fall Further? I'm not 100% sure how XP gain works I guess.

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I'm not 100% sure of the formula either, but my observations are that above 98.5% or so odds, you only get 1 XP on attack. From 75%-98.5%, you get 2 XP; 50% - 75% = 3 XP; exactly 50% - 33%(?) = 4XP. And below that you have no business attacking anyway. It's some scaling based on the 50-50 giving 4XP, and all fractions are truncated. Bonus XP is calculated based on the final, rounded result. So for a 20% bonus to do anything, you need to be earning 5 XP from the attack, which means you need to have about 20% odds of victory. For the level 2 40% bonus, you need 3 XP to get a +1 bonus, which means attacking with worse than 75% odds with, at minimum, a level 5 unit (combat 2 + Ginaz 2)

Never actually played Fall Further, but I assume it carries over XP fractions? That might work, and you might want to do it anyway, but just increasing the Ginaz bonus to 25% per level means at level 2, you will get 1 bonus XP attacking at 98.5% odds. While risky, that's not an insane option.

As I mentioned though, just the unrestricted +20% combat per level is nice, so it may not need the XP bonus at all.

6. I don't remember the buttons - I thought we had changed them? We can check. Not sure that we can change the hotkeys though; I don't think we can have a hotkey mean different things depending on which tech you have.

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Well, in vanilla, pressing "r" builds a road, until you have researched railroad, when it builds a railroad. Railroad might technically be shift-R, but regular R still works, so something similar might be implementable here.

These kind of minor notes are very much appreciated, its this kind of thing that we want for high-end polish, and that is easy for people who are used to the mod to not notice anymore because we're used to "how things are".

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Always happy to help! I much prefer beta testing fun mods like this than the "release" version of Civ 5.

I think the AI's main weakness in contesting the desert is that it doesn't understand to treat it like ocean, in most ways.

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I think rather the opposite; the problem is that it treats it too much like ocean, and the vanilla naval AI is... not good.

In vanilla, ocean is basically unimportant unless its near a city. There's no particular reason to worry about units there unless they're blockading your city. The naval AI pillages fishing boats, and attacks nearby naval units, and can sortof escort an amphibious landing (this AI is beefed up for Dune Wars).
But I've never seen the vanilla naval AI use its navy intelligently, and it certainly never really used carriers and aircraft well.

So the AI doesn't know to try and attack enemy units in desert that aren't near their cities, and it doesn't know that it should try to protect its harvesters, and it doesn't really know how to built up an aircraft strike force and relocate it to areas under pressure.

But similarly, I'm no AI guy, and I don't have a great grasp of what is possible here.

Never actually played Fall Further, but I assume it carries over XP fractions?

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In fall further experience is carried to 2 decimal places, so you can have all kinds of fractional effects, or slow training effects that might for example add 0.05 xp per turn.

If fractions here are just rounded off, then we probably need to either get rid of the rounding and carry decimals, increase the XP bonus or remove it.

Well, in vanilla, pressing "r" builds a road, until you have researched railroad, when it builds a railroad. Railroad might technically be shift-R, but regular R still works, so something similar might be implementable here.

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Thats a sensible comparison. I don't know what is possible here.

I much prefer beta testing fun mods like this than the "release" version of Civ 5.

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Well, I think Civ5 is quite good, and much improved with the patch. There are a number of things I'm not so fond of, and it still needs considerably more work on the tactical AI, but I like a lot of the design decisions and others I'm kinda used to. And they still haven't found good balance for tile yields, specialists and great people, or happiness.

I think there is a huge amount of mod potential though with the new mechanics, and there are already some balance mods out there that make a number of big improvements.

Ahriman said:

Well, I think Civ5 is quite good, and much improved with the patch. There are a number of things I'm not so fond of, and it still needs considerably more work on the tactical AI, but I like a lot of the design decisions and others I'm kinda used to. And they still haven't found good balance for tile yields, specialists and great people, or happiness.

I think there is a huge amount of mod potential though with the new mechanics, and there are already some balance mods out there that make a number of big improvements.

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Oh, I quite agree. I've played 180 hours of Civ 5, according to Steam (ouch, didn't realize it was THAT high). I'd even recommend buying it now, though I hadn't until the latest patch. Still disappointing the release was that rushed and unpolished.

And hoping the full SDK is coming soon, so we can start seeing some of the high complexity mods Civ 4 has spoiled me for!

I'm glad to see someone raising the issue of the AI on open desert. I just played a game in which I was entirely vulnerable out in the desert, with virtually no thopter coverage and nothing by way of suspensors. And my economy was almost solely spice driven. My spice harvesters should have been pillaged nine ways to Sunday, but it seems like the AI doesn't appreciate this. I even had Fremen infantry riding in to attack me, pillaging land tiles but ignoring fields of spice harvesters as they rode in.

Conversely, as you noted Ahriman, I've been able to cripple the AI by just running around with a few suspensor craft and mopping up its undefended spice harvesters. Again, I don't make any claims to sussing out balance issues, but for a mod so wonderfully built around the spice idea, I'm a bit worried the AI doesn't quite get it.

(Which is one reason I can't wait for Iain to get Dune Wars working in multiplayer! Go Iain!)

-Tom

Well, on lower difficulty levels sometimes the AI really doesn't have a desert "navy" large enough to be able to contest the desert, and saves what it has for escorting its invasion forces, which is one of the things we have got the AI doing mostly pretty well (though we still have a problem where the AI sometimes doesn't unload immediately on landfall, and there is a turn where the player can easily use land forces to wipe out their transports and escorts).
I highly recommend cranking up to ~Immortal difficulty and dealing with the AI war machine then, once it hits midgame.

But I agree in general that the AI is very poor at protecting its harvesters or pillaging yours. But I'm not sure what we can do about it.

Also, we removed the ability for thopters to pillage (which I still tend to think is the right design decision) because otherwise its too easy for the human player to exploit the AI by moving onto land, pillaging, then moving back out onto the desert.

Ahriman said:

Well, on lower difficulty levels sometimes the AI really doesn't have a desert "navy" large enough to be able to contest the desert, and saves what it has for escorting its invasion forces, which is one of the things we have got the AI doing mostly pretty well (though we still have a problem where the AI sometimes doesn't unload immediately on landfall, and there is a turn where the player can easily use land forces to wipe out their transports and escorts).

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I had that happen in my game last night, Leto got bribed to go a quarter of the way around the world to war with me, I don't know what he had on those six carryalls but after taking them out he agreed to peace shortly after. Anyway, he did escort them but he got to "land" on the last movement and ended his turn without unloading.

I did have an odd occurrance though, he declares, I go to my offworld reinforcements and one of the units I was able to purchase was a Cymek (and at the time no one had founded the Thinking Machines religion). I just thought it odd so I'd mention it, I didn't know if it was a bug or not.

I go to my offworld reinforcements and one of the units I was able to purchase was a Cymek (and at the time no one had founded the Thinking Machines religion). I just thought it odd so I'd mention it, I didn't know if it was a bug or not.

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Yeah, its a bug.

There are several problems with the offworld mechanic; it should only give combat units (no spies or transports), it should have all non-standard units (like the Cymek) removed, and the replenishment rate of the pool needs to be increased.

I think part of the problem is that koma wrote all the code for the offworld screen, but he's no longer working on the mod.

Thanks for the great feedback clearbeard.

clearbeard said:

Zeal 3 cannot be taken by units with only 1 move point, including the Mahdi units it's most flavored for (already noted on bug thread).

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Already fixed for next patch.

Sandrider workers seem to treat all desert as move 3 roads, while other unit types use move 2 roads.

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Good spot. Desert tiles cost 2 movement points. Sandrider quarters the cost of moving in desert tiles so a unit with 2 moves can move 8 tiles. Sandworker given free to all Workers on researching Stillsuits halves the cost of moving in desert so Workers can move 2 tiles instead of 1.

Fremen Workers are getting both Sandrider *and* Sandworker so their movement cost per desert tiles becomes 2 / 2 (from Sandworker) + 4 (from Sandrider) = 1/3. So Fremen Workers can move 6 desert tiles following Stillsuits. I have fixed this by making Sandrider and Sandworker mutually exclusive using the handy PromotionExcludes tag in the XML.

The XP bonus for Ginaz training is functionally useless. Even with both levels (+40%), you would need to be risking your level 5+ unit attacking not much higher than 50% odds to have a chance at +1 bonus XP. Still a useful promotion for the +20% strength, but perhaps increase the bonus to +25% XP for each level so you only have to get 2 xp from a combat to have it kick in?

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Perhaps fractional experience is the way to go like Ahriman says - will investigate.

4. Very minor, but it's annoying for Fremen to have to burn a promotion on stillsuits in order to get thumpers. Don't think I actually attacked any sandworms the whole game, but it's a thought.

5. Couldn't figure out how to drop a thumper to attract a sandworm. Is that feature implemented at all, or just in the description?

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The Thumper promo possible wants removing. I think the implementation is that worms are attracted to any unit with the thumper promo so you can potentially use it to protect your harvesters. This seems like excessive and un-fun micro-management to me.

Is there value in just having Thumper grant worm-immunity only? Or should we scrap it completely.

The Promotion progression should probably go Stillsuit -> Sandrider -> Thumper to fix point 4. All three promotions are available to none Fremen civs if they can obtain Fremen Water Debt.

6. Having the worker buttons for all 3 mine levels look the same was a little annoying. Even a little Roman or Arabic numeral in the corner to differentiate would be nice. Similarly, if there's a way to set the default action for the "m" hotkey to be building the highest level mine available, that would be nice.

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The buttons and the on screen graphic are subtley different but clearly too subtley - I can try and do something about that even if it's the roman numerals for now. BTW is there a reason why I shouldn't add a ObsoleteTech to Worker Builds/Improvements? That would tidy things up here since only the latest mine/well improvement would show.

7. I would like to see more than 3 mentats available. Perhaps it's just my playstyle, but I found the military XP bonus far more desirable than any of the others, except perhaps the production one, in the midgame. As an idea, maybe a limit of one mentat of each type? That would further encourage the city specialization the mod seems to be set up to promote. Also, as someone else already noted somewhere, the civic mentat is bugged to give +25 /+25 with sapho juice.

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I have an idea for a new solution for mentats that I should get around to posting for discussion. The +25 civic mentat with sapho is fixed for the next patch.

8. Bombers can't take ultralight (fighters can)? Probably intended, I just got excited when I saw it in the list of available promos for bombers.

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Just tested with World Builder and it worked ok for me unlike the Zeal 3 issue you reported.

9. I don't think the Dragonfly Bomber should upgrade to the Cielago Stealth Bomber. They are both quite late in the game, and serve different enough roles that having both available could be useful.

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Done.

I have fixed this by making Sandrider and Sandworker mutually exclusive using the handy PromotionExcludes tag in the XML.

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Nice work, good fix.

Is there value in just having Thumper grant worm-immunity only?

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I think there is, many people have found it off-putting that Fremen can still get eaten by worms.
But I'd just attach it to particular units (like the Water-Debt units and the Raider) rather than as a selectable promotion. Its not worth burning a promotion on.
Alternatively, the effect could just be tied into Sandrider.

BTW is there a reason why I shouldn't add a ObsoleteTech to Worker Builds/Improvements?

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I can't think of one. I think there used to be a reason because the higher level improvements could only be built if the lower level one is already present, but I don't think we need this.

Deliverator said:

The buttons and the on screen graphic are subtley different but clearly too subtley - I can try and do something about that even if it's the roman numerals for now. BTW is there a reason why I shouldn't add a ObsoleteTech to Worker Builds/Improvements? That would tidy things up here since only the latest mine/well improvement would show.

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I noticed the difference with the on screen graphic, but not the buttons. As for obsoleting, one implication is for adjacent ground water tiles. As it stands, you can have an aquabore next to a deep well, but not 2 adjacent aquabores. Can't think of a reason to keep the older mine types though.

As it stands, you can have an aquabore next to a deep well, but not 2 adjacent aquabores.

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Personally I'd remove the restrictions on having adjacent wells. Its very rare to have adjacent groundwater resources, and if it happens, why not let you build both wells.

If we keep the restrictions on having adjacent wells though, then having an aquabore next to a deep well would qualify as a bug, not a feature.

I can't imagine any problems that would be removed by obsoleting the old types (provided that we're sure they don't require the lower tech version).
Yes, the lower level ones have lower build times, but so what.

I wonder if we should also consider increasing the tile yields of bonus resources (iron, nitrates, crystal, etc) for the higher end mines, since in general you'll only have the advanced mines on the bonus resources, so they're pretty lame with just the +1 extra bonus.