OneHundredBears
Chieftain
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2011
- Messages
- 11
I encountered the mod two weeks ago (before the Better BUG AI edition) and have been impressed so far. It captures a lot of the feel of Dune, the gameplay is exciting and the new mechanics, especially religion and the spice, look like they support a variety of interesting choices. As Sid Meier says, a game is a series of interesting choices, so that's a great thing.
The balance does seem to be off in places. Here's a list of the issues that I've encountered- hopefully it will be useful. I've only played two games (standard settings, Prince as Leto II and Emperor as Scytale), so my analysis doesn't take everything into account and is likely wrong in a few places- I'd love to hear other players' thoughts on balance issues.
Mentats
The mentats are a great way to give players more choices and encourage city specialization, but some choices seem much better than others. The financial and industrial choices are the most glaring. A financial mentat isn't likely to produce more than 10 gold per turn until the endgame- a city has to produce 234 base gold to reach that point. Even a monetary powerhouse with, for instance, CHOAM headquarters with 80 spice, 5 great merchants and 10 merchant specialists would need a good bit of commerce from the slider to do so. Meanwhile, an industrial mentat provides a minimum of 10 hammers, which conventional wisdom considers significantly more valuable than gold.
There also seems to be a bug regarding industrial mentats. They apply their fixed hammer bonus to any city, but the percentage hammer bonus only appears to affect cities that don't already have a percentage hammer bonus from some building, like the factory. I haven't investigated in detail, but the bonus does seem to work with other percentage bonuses such as building a university as a philosophical leader.
Offworld Trade
This tech is really powerful. Landing stages are good enough that it's worth teching early for them alone, but the real power comes from Homeworld Reinforcement. In the emperor game, I was able to bring in shield fighters when my best unit was hardened bladesmen and the AI was defending with master guardsmen. This may be less significant on higher difficulty levels where it's hard to get a tech lead and the small number of units from Homeworld Reinforcement have to face huge AI armies, but it is still very strong and the ability to instantly reinforce threatened cities should not be underestimated.
Browsing the forum here suggested that the extra income from Refineries, Merchant Quarters and Guild Banks on that shows up on Finance screen is also enabled by Offworld Trade. This income may not be necessary at all, since the Guild Bank is as strong as its vanilla civ counterpart and the other two should be easily balanced by playing with their construction prices, rather than an extra undocumented bonus*. Regardless of whether the income is necessary, it probably shouldn't be attached to a tech that is already so powerful without it.
*As an aside, the documentation is very good almost everywhere. Explanations are clear and where I expected them to be, most mechanics had explanations and the hints were well chosen to bring new parts of the mod to a new player's attention. However, there were a few missing spots: espionage, the mechanics behind the Tleilaxu plague and the aforementioned bonus income. The Strategy Guides section was also full of cruft from vanilla civ. I think that I understand Dune Wars well enough to write some mod-specific guides for that section if people would like to see them.
Wonders
Some wonders from vanilla civ are even more powerful while some new wonders are very expensive. The Great Library requires players to research Aesthetics significantly earlier than they would otherwise (barring a few trade gambits) and is expensive without marble. Its counterpart, the Filmbook Archives, both comes for free with the tech that has the best features of Writing and Alphabet and is much cheaper for a resourceless player. I worry that this creates something of a first-past-the-post effect: the player who gets the Filmbook Archives has a huge edge in the race to Academies, due to getting Education early and having many great scientists for academies and bulbing in that direction. Getting the first shot at The Collected Teachings and the Cogitor Philosopher is a reasonable reward for choosing that tech line, but since the University of Arrakis is a world wonder, it becomes too powerful.
The player who gets the University has a huge tech advantage since the spice makes a super science city so strong. Even an Arrakis Paradise strategy gets enough spice to match the mighty bureaucracy science capital of vanilla civ, and a spice-based playthrough far exceeds it. This tech advantage is devastating on its own, but also makes it so that that the player will both be the first to Prescience, getting the Chamber of Visions and have a good chance of being the first to Frigate Transportation, winning the Guild Research Facility. The benefits from the Filmbook Archive and University of Arrakis are thus likely to snowball.
The Liberalism race in vanilla is a good comparison. Winning Liberalism is also often aided by bulbing and the path to Liberalism provides many of the same benefits. It key to many strategies and probably the most common goal of Immortal and Deity players (certainly the most common goal of those who don't make some early military play). However, Liberalism provides only a single free technology, while the University of Arrakis gives hundreds of beakers per turn, starting the turn it is built and quite possibly breaking a thousand by the end of the midgame. I don't know enough to consider the benefits of Qizarate, but I imagine that they are not trivial either.
Some of the new wonders are weak, especially in comparison to those two. The Order of Mentats is at most half again as good as the Filmbook Archives, as it gives only one extra specialist. This is probably an overstatement, since great scientists are so powerful when those wonders are available and the Order mixes three types of specialists, making results unpredictable and not helping city specialization. Despite all this, the Order takes more than three times as many hammers as the Archives.
The Fai Water Tribute is another such wonder. Adding bonus food can be very tricky to balance, but I feel this is too conservative. A 5% bonus provides enough water to support an extra person only in a city with 40 water, enough for 20 people already. Thus the Tribute comes off poorly in comparison to the Wet Planet Conservatory and Propaganda corps, which will frequently allow an extra unit of population but cost much less. The Tribute does speed up growth, but only in cities that have a lot of water, which are either near their caps (benefiting from the other two wonders) or already growing very quickly. I would suggest lowering the cost to something in the 400-600 range and, if the cost remains near high end of that range, increasing the water bonus to 10%. That way players have a choice between spending a lot of hammers as soon as the wonder becomes available, in order to get something that takes a long time to pay for itself but is a very powerful boost later in the game, or saving their precious early game hammers and risking the wonder. As it is now, the Tribute is so expensive that it is never worth building soon after it becomes available. This is very odd for a wonder.
The Doctrine of Istislah falls between the two categories as an old wonder that is too expensive in its new incarnation. The Angkor Wat is significantly cheaper even without stone, but in vanilla civ, it was weak enough that that it usually wasn't worth building even with stone. It could be argued that the Bene Tleilax, with their priest bonus, make this wonder worthwhile. However, I'm not sure that running so many priests is a good strategy for them. In order for the Doctrine to give the same return on investment as an industrial mentat (just counting the 10 hammers and not the 10% bonus to make things simple), one needs to be have about 43 priests or settled prophets. That's a something like a fourth of a large mid- or late-game civ. In cities that won't generate a great person, working a normal tile will give results that range from slightly worse to significantly better than even a Tleilaxu priest, depending on the tile and tech level (e.g. a priest with both civic bonuses and both hammer bonuses is 0/3/3 and a culture, while even without civic bonuses, a late-game wind trap is the much better 4/2/1 and a moist rock town the slightly worse 0/1/5). In cities that will generate a great person, other great people are much better: the Tleilaxu will have already have generated the Zensufi Shrine prophet with their initial prophet point and so will have little to do but settle most later prophets, while other great people have a variety of strong options.
Water Economy
Naturally, the technology that makes wind traps into water-positive rather than water-neutral tiles will be worth beelining. That's not a horrible thing and I can't see any way to change it short of the ugly move of taking the +1 water away form this tech and giving it to everyone at the start of the game. However, the AI didn't beeline Water Economy in my games. If a strong computer players are important, there needs to be some way for them to get this and probably Planetary Ecology) very early whenever they're not pursuing a very strong alternate research path. Otherwise they grow very slowly and as we know, "water is is life." I recognize that getting AI to weigh the relative merits of different tech paths effectively is very hard in general and probably even more so the way that the civ AI is coded, but still think this is worth considering.
Concluding Thoughts
I'm sure that I'll have more to say when I've played more. The spice economy seems very strong and, due to CHOAM and the related wonders, only 1-2 players will be able to run it efficiently in any given game, early aggression looks weak due to the available units and map layout (does the AI still use the number of bordering land tiles in it decision whether to go to war?), the free hammers that Botanical Testing Stations sometimes give are almost as strong as the free workers that show up on the lowest difficulty settings in vanilla civ and the Atreides special promotions are weaker than generic combat on midgame and later units. On the whole, though, Dune Wars does a good job of changing civ while still leaving players with lots of viable choices. Thanks to the dev team for a great mod!
The balance does seem to be off in places. Here's a list of the issues that I've encountered- hopefully it will be useful. I've only played two games (standard settings, Prince as Leto II and Emperor as Scytale), so my analysis doesn't take everything into account and is likely wrong in a few places- I'd love to hear other players' thoughts on balance issues.
Mentats
The mentats are a great way to give players more choices and encourage city specialization, but some choices seem much better than others. The financial and industrial choices are the most glaring. A financial mentat isn't likely to produce more than 10 gold per turn until the endgame- a city has to produce 234 base gold to reach that point. Even a monetary powerhouse with, for instance, CHOAM headquarters with 80 spice, 5 great merchants and 10 merchant specialists would need a good bit of commerce from the slider to do so. Meanwhile, an industrial mentat provides a minimum of 10 hammers, which conventional wisdom considers significantly more valuable than gold.
There also seems to be a bug regarding industrial mentats. They apply their fixed hammer bonus to any city, but the percentage hammer bonus only appears to affect cities that don't already have a percentage hammer bonus from some building, like the factory. I haven't investigated in detail, but the bonus does seem to work with other percentage bonuses such as building a university as a philosophical leader.
Offworld Trade
This tech is really powerful. Landing stages are good enough that it's worth teching early for them alone, but the real power comes from Homeworld Reinforcement. In the emperor game, I was able to bring in shield fighters when my best unit was hardened bladesmen and the AI was defending with master guardsmen. This may be less significant on higher difficulty levels where it's hard to get a tech lead and the small number of units from Homeworld Reinforcement have to face huge AI armies, but it is still very strong and the ability to instantly reinforce threatened cities should not be underestimated.
Browsing the forum here suggested that the extra income from Refineries, Merchant Quarters and Guild Banks on that shows up on Finance screen is also enabled by Offworld Trade. This income may not be necessary at all, since the Guild Bank is as strong as its vanilla civ counterpart and the other two should be easily balanced by playing with their construction prices, rather than an extra undocumented bonus*. Regardless of whether the income is necessary, it probably shouldn't be attached to a tech that is already so powerful without it.
*As an aside, the documentation is very good almost everywhere. Explanations are clear and where I expected them to be, most mechanics had explanations and the hints were well chosen to bring new parts of the mod to a new player's attention. However, there were a few missing spots: espionage, the mechanics behind the Tleilaxu plague and the aforementioned bonus income. The Strategy Guides section was also full of cruft from vanilla civ. I think that I understand Dune Wars well enough to write some mod-specific guides for that section if people would like to see them.
Wonders
Some wonders from vanilla civ are even more powerful while some new wonders are very expensive. The Great Library requires players to research Aesthetics significantly earlier than they would otherwise (barring a few trade gambits) and is expensive without marble. Its counterpart, the Filmbook Archives, both comes for free with the tech that has the best features of Writing and Alphabet and is much cheaper for a resourceless player. I worry that this creates something of a first-past-the-post effect: the player who gets the Filmbook Archives has a huge edge in the race to Academies, due to getting Education early and having many great scientists for academies and bulbing in that direction. Getting the first shot at The Collected Teachings and the Cogitor Philosopher is a reasonable reward for choosing that tech line, but since the University of Arrakis is a world wonder, it becomes too powerful.
The player who gets the University has a huge tech advantage since the spice makes a super science city so strong. Even an Arrakis Paradise strategy gets enough spice to match the mighty bureaucracy science capital of vanilla civ, and a spice-based playthrough far exceeds it. This tech advantage is devastating on its own, but also makes it so that that the player will both be the first to Prescience, getting the Chamber of Visions and have a good chance of being the first to Frigate Transportation, winning the Guild Research Facility. The benefits from the Filmbook Archive and University of Arrakis are thus likely to snowball.
The Liberalism race in vanilla is a good comparison. Winning Liberalism is also often aided by bulbing and the path to Liberalism provides many of the same benefits. It key to many strategies and probably the most common goal of Immortal and Deity players (certainly the most common goal of those who don't make some early military play). However, Liberalism provides only a single free technology, while the University of Arrakis gives hundreds of beakers per turn, starting the turn it is built and quite possibly breaking a thousand by the end of the midgame. I don't know enough to consider the benefits of Qizarate, but I imagine that they are not trivial either.
Some of the new wonders are weak, especially in comparison to those two. The Order of Mentats is at most half again as good as the Filmbook Archives, as it gives only one extra specialist. This is probably an overstatement, since great scientists are so powerful when those wonders are available and the Order mixes three types of specialists, making results unpredictable and not helping city specialization. Despite all this, the Order takes more than three times as many hammers as the Archives.
The Fai Water Tribute is another such wonder. Adding bonus food can be very tricky to balance, but I feel this is too conservative. A 5% bonus provides enough water to support an extra person only in a city with 40 water, enough for 20 people already. Thus the Tribute comes off poorly in comparison to the Wet Planet Conservatory and Propaganda corps, which will frequently allow an extra unit of population but cost much less. The Tribute does speed up growth, but only in cities that have a lot of water, which are either near their caps (benefiting from the other two wonders) or already growing very quickly. I would suggest lowering the cost to something in the 400-600 range and, if the cost remains near high end of that range, increasing the water bonus to 10%. That way players have a choice between spending a lot of hammers as soon as the wonder becomes available, in order to get something that takes a long time to pay for itself but is a very powerful boost later in the game, or saving their precious early game hammers and risking the wonder. As it is now, the Tribute is so expensive that it is never worth building soon after it becomes available. This is very odd for a wonder.
The Doctrine of Istislah falls between the two categories as an old wonder that is too expensive in its new incarnation. The Angkor Wat is significantly cheaper even without stone, but in vanilla civ, it was weak enough that that it usually wasn't worth building even with stone. It could be argued that the Bene Tleilax, with their priest bonus, make this wonder worthwhile. However, I'm not sure that running so many priests is a good strategy for them. In order for the Doctrine to give the same return on investment as an industrial mentat (just counting the 10 hammers and not the 10% bonus to make things simple), one needs to be have about 43 priests or settled prophets. That's a something like a fourth of a large mid- or late-game civ. In cities that won't generate a great person, working a normal tile will give results that range from slightly worse to significantly better than even a Tleilaxu priest, depending on the tile and tech level (e.g. a priest with both civic bonuses and both hammer bonuses is 0/3/3 and a culture, while even without civic bonuses, a late-game wind trap is the much better 4/2/1 and a moist rock town the slightly worse 0/1/5). In cities that will generate a great person, other great people are much better: the Tleilaxu will have already have generated the Zensufi Shrine prophet with their initial prophet point and so will have little to do but settle most later prophets, while other great people have a variety of strong options.
Water Economy
Naturally, the technology that makes wind traps into water-positive rather than water-neutral tiles will be worth beelining. That's not a horrible thing and I can't see any way to change it short of the ugly move of taking the +1 water away form this tech and giving it to everyone at the start of the game. However, the AI didn't beeline Water Economy in my games. If a strong computer players are important, there needs to be some way for them to get this and probably Planetary Ecology) very early whenever they're not pursuing a very strong alternate research path. Otherwise they grow very slowly and as we know, "water is is life." I recognize that getting AI to weigh the relative merits of different tech paths effectively is very hard in general and probably even more so the way that the civ AI is coded, but still think this is worth considering.
Concluding Thoughts
I'm sure that I'll have more to say when I've played more. The spice economy seems very strong and, due to CHOAM and the related wonders, only 1-2 players will be able to run it efficiently in any given game, early aggression looks weak due to the available units and map layout (does the AI still use the number of bordering land tiles in it decision whether to go to war?), the free hammers that Botanical Testing Stations sometimes give are almost as strong as the free workers that show up on the lowest difficulty settings in vanilla civ and the Atreides special promotions are weaker than generic combat on midgame and later units. On the whole, though, Dune Wars does a good job of changing civ while still leaving players with lots of viable choices. Thanks to the dev team for a great mod!
