Deep Thoughts

[joefriendgood]

Hi All,

I have been lurking and enjoying this mod for quite some time. It is the bees knees and is a main cause of my growing Steam backlog (and those damn deals). Anyways, while playing and loving the mod I wrote down some general ideas, questions and thoughts for the future of the mod. Please keep in mind that I am in no way saying, "add this stuff now" and I know nothing in the ways of modding, so feel free to dismiss. I am simply opening it up for discussion and am willing to help out with any limited skills (especially tedious grunt work) that I possess.

Ok, on to the ideas:

1. Are the +3 per spice wonders over powered? If you can acquire one or two of these for research or gold per spice, your economy is basically set for life. Have different +x figures been attempted to lessen these wonders?

2. I just saw the AI thread, but would like to add here that is seems the AI is not making nearly as much money as I am and therefore not as much research. I haven't finished a complete game with the latest patch (nice Christmas gift by the way), but that seems to be the theme on King difficulty.

3. Should there be a reduction of water for adopting the spice civil trait? To have the increased production and longevity of spice and be able to field large cities doesn't add up to me. It seems, thematically at least, the spice civs would and I quote, "Squeeze! Squeeze! SQUEEZE!" their cities for more spice.

4. Is it possible to add more Lansraad options? I only have the Free Trade, No Nukes, Diplo Victory and Stop Wars options when I am the Chairman. Things like: No off world trade; No pillaging spice harvesters; No thinking machine techs may be researched; etc. I am sure the AI wouldn't even know what these things are so I may be wasting ink on this one.

5. One thing I thought might be fun is to add audio clips from the movie when a tech is researched. Not all of them, but spread out over the tech tree. Any advice on where those tracks would go? I would be willing to give this a shot if you think it could be fun.

6. Could the Atriedes faction get a diplo boost through either more voting power or a diplo boost with most factions since they were always portrayed as loved by the Lansraad houses?

7. One idea that could make the end game pop is stealing the concept of a doomsday counter from FFH2. I have neither the technical know-how nor the inclination for making this happen, but wanted to hear your thoughts on the issue. The counter could lead to a Thinking Machine invasion or the Honored Matres (twisted bene gesseret from the books) finding the planet or a rebellion of unloyal Fremen on the planet. The counters could be triggered by different things: researching "forbidden" techs; building too many machine units; having global happiness reach a certain limit; the number units/cities destroyed.

Wow. This was more than I intended. Love the mod and wish you guys the best of luck. I hear Civ 5 needs a new lead...

Joe

[Ahriman]

Hi Joe, thanks very much for the feedback. Much appreciated. Glad you're enjoying the mod.

1. Are the +3 per spice wonders over powered?

Yeah, I think all of these need to be reduced to +2 at most (CHOAM religion shrine, Guild Research facility, Chamber of Visions).

I just saw the AI thread, but would like to add here that is seems the AI is not making nearly as much money as I am

Agreed, but what is your perception of what is driving this? Not building enough harvesters on spice?
Not large enough city size (because it favors hammer tiles or specialists over water tiles)?
Focusing too much on military rather than infrastructure?
Not having enough workers/building enough improvements?
Not beelining yield-boosting techs enough?
Not choosing civic combinations well?

Should there be a reduction of water for adopting the spice civil trait?

I think its more fun with an opportunity cost than an explicit cost: you get less water from adopting Spice civic than from adopting Paradise civic. So, going spice you have to give up the possibility of getting the water boost from Paradise, I don't think there should be a penalty too.

Arrakis Spice doesn't have to be Oppressive Harkonnen-style squeezing, IMO.

Is it possible to add more Lansraad options? I only have the Free Trade, No Nukes, Diplo Victory and Stop Wars options when I am the Chairman. Things like: No off world trade; No pillaging spice harvesters; No thinking machine techs may be researched; etc. I am sure the AI wouldn't even know what these things are so I may be wasting ink on this one.

I know the Landsraad is really dull, but I think the AI problems are the main ones here; the AI is pretty braindead when it comes to voting, and from what I understand the code is fairly hard to deal with. I don't think we'd want to block a specific religion.
No offworld trade: if it blocked resources, it would be hard to implement and would mess up several factions whose core benefits rely on that mechanic (Ix, Corrino). If it blocked offworld unit purchase, that would just remove a fun mechanic to no real gameplay advantage.

One thing I thought might be fun is to add audio clips from the movie when a tech is researched. Not all of them, but spread out over the tech tree. Any advice on where those tracks would go? I would be willing to give this a shot if you think it could be fun.

If we had tracks that could play (replacing the tech quote files) that could be fun, but I'm guessing that would be a big project.
It would be great if you were interested in collecting these.

6. Could the Atriedes faction get a diplo boost through either more voting power or a diplo boost with most factions since they were always portrayed as loved by the Lansraad houses?

Atreides are tricky since the flavor of the house depends very much on *which* Atreides we're talking about (diplomacy flavor doesn't fit well for Alia or Leto II). However, we are generally going for the Leto I flavor that you're talking about.
I tend to agree with you that I'd like them to have a slight diplomacy boost as one of their faction benefits, and I'd also limit their "vendetta" penalties to just Harkonnen (not Corrino).

One idea that could make the end game pop is stealing the concept of a doomsday counter from FFH2

An interesting idea, but I'm not sure it would fit well as a central focus.
I think Honored Matres wouldn't fit with the timescale of the mod; they don't exist until several thousand years after the rough timeline of the mod, and I think Thinking Machines are best handled through the existing religion.
We've toyed with having events, and there are some interesting possibilities for building more flavor with Events, I think that's the best place for including more of this kind of thing though.
Take a look at this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=377523

Thanks again very much for the feedback, its always valuable to get "first impressions".
Oh, and welcome to the CFC forums too.

[Deliverator]

Originally Posted by joefriendgood

One thing I thought might be fun is to add audio clips from the movie when a tech is researched. Not all of them, but spread out over the tech tree. Any advice on where those tracks would go? I would be willing to give this a shot if you think it could be fun.

The technical side is straight-forward, but it might be hard to find appropriate clips though. I'm quite pleased that I've finally got text quotes for all techs.

Another potentially more feasible idea is to find video clips from the film and/or miniseries to be played on founding religions or building wonders like the vanilla game has.

Wow. This was more than I intended. Love the mod and wish you guys the best of luck. I hear Civ 5 needs a new lead...

Yeah, Jon Schafer has gone to Stardock to work on Elemental modding support. I read this quite persuasive deconstruction of Civ 5 and am beginning to agree that the game has fundamental flaws that will be hard to fix. It's a shame the original designer won't be around to sort it out.

[Ahriman]

My take on Sulla's take on Civ5:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...&postcount=133
(and some following posts)

I agree with a lot of the details, but totally disagree that its a fundamentally flawed design.
However, everything rests on still needed tactical AI improvements.

Other than that, pretty much everything I don't like is tweakable through mods.

I don't think anything is fundamentally broken with using happiness as a combined growth limiter, and its perfectly possible to tweak the system to discourage ICS and to encourage taller empires (big cities decently spaced) rather than wide empires (lots of small spammed cities).
The most significant of these are:
a) Tweaking happiness so that there is some non-linearity in how unhappiness per city grows
b) Tweaking % yield buildings to encourage larger cities; larger benefits, higher costs if necessary (so they provide bigger benefits in decent cities, but aren't worth building in small cities)
c) Tweaking population growth, so that it is not so punitively difficulty to achieve large cities.

I think that in general Shafer did a great job in shaking up the paradigm and trying something new, and many of the Civ5 design decisions are great.
But its also probably not a bad thing to have someone else new come in with fresh eyes, who isn't as wed to existing design choices, and can take the game in a new direction in an expansion.
I just really hope that they in fact *do* replace him, and have a clear formal design lead with an overall vision for the game.