Balance Concerns

[OneHundredBears]

We could put it down to 1 scientist, but give the Wonder itself a beaker yield of ~+4 beakers.
That way, it still gives a nice science boost, but doesn't give so many GPPs, so doesn't allow the Academy building so fast (via great scientist).

Good idea.

Maybe 70 hammers would still be sufficient to prevent massing?

Anything in the 60-80 hammer range strikes me as balanced. At 60 hammers, Ixian quads are slightly less effective at taking cities than bladesmen and very powerful in the open against someone with only infantry. At 80, even non-Ixians will occasionally want to use quads in games where enemies invite pillaging or barbarians are particularly plentiful. Where to put quads in the 60-80 range depends on whether they should be a core unit or a specialized one. In any case, I wouldn't decrease the cost of the trike below 75: the ability to outmaneuver opponents in their own territory is devastating.

Guild Research Facility can give 1.5 beakers per spice if we want

I think that this would be enough. However, everyone would still want to build the Facility. Even a Paradise player should be able to manage 15 spice in a +100% science city, giving 45 beakers/turn so .06 bpt/hammer. Building a university in a midgame science city (let's say 40 base bpt, a good yield in my experience) gives a lower .05 bpt/hammer and then there's the denial aspect. Thus for anyone, getting the Facility is at least on par with building a university in a science-oriented city, usually a wise thing to do.

This follows the trend that DW wonders that are worth building in more than a few corner cases are often worth building almost all of the time. It feels like a return to Civ II and SMAC, where wonders were more of a reward for being able to build them first rather than a strategic choice, built in specific situations and usually only with the right resource. This approach to wonders isn't necessarily the wrong way to go, but it seems worth mentioning.

The yield for the Chamber of Visions might do well with a similar reduction, but when it comes to espionage, I'm still wrapping my head about the implications of being able to annex cities, and don't even know the abilities of half the factions.

Would also significantly weaken spice silo building, if the same mechanic was used for both (ie both were immune to multipliers).

There's no reason not to keep the current mechanic for silos, even if the spice commerce income doesn't go through multipliers. Leaving silos as they are encourages more specialization (silos and gold multipliers in the same cities) and there's little risk of the silos being overpowered: someone would need 14 cities with silos just to match the CHOAM headquarters spice income, and with standard player density, someone with that much land and infrastructure is probably winning anyway.


For the University, I'm partial to the national wonder approach, just so it doesn't become a bone of contention in multiplayer.

my worry is that you over-estimate how much of the spice value comes from the Spice civic, and how much spice you can still get with Paradise.

I hadn't considered a hybrid Paradise spice-heavy strategy. After reading this, I played a game with that approach, I'd guess that after the spice wonders are balanced, the Paradise civic itself would be competitive with Spice. The Reservoir of Liet is still pricey, though. After removing hills (which I've never seen terraformed, so I assume don't change), desert tiles and tiles already terraformed, there just aren't enough remaining tiles to justify the combination of a 300-hammer cost, water penalty and still considerable terraforming time. The large moisture radius hurts spice production, too. Perhaps reservoirs are worthwhile when going for the victory condition, but someone controls enough terraformable tiles to win that way has enough of an economy to win other ways too. I'll try tweaking my games to halve the reservoir cost and drop the required tiles for the paradise victory by 20%, and see how that plays out.

I've run across two more weak things in further games. One worker per city has been enough both to avoid working unimproved tiles and put harvesters on available spice in my games: thus it's cheaper and more productive to pump out 5 workers than build the Sandworkers' Union. Mercantile also is lacking. I've never seen a DW trade route have more than 2 base income, and it's usually 1 or 1.2 until the endgame. Thus someone with four equal-sized trading partners (I doubt that one can do better than this on most standard maps) will average at most an extra four commerce per city from the trait, and much less than that for most of the game. By the time that a Mercantile leader is getting a mere two commerce per city from the trait, an Expansive leader might well have an extra population in most cities from the increased health, a Philosophical leader can pop multiple extra great people and an Industrial leader is able to save hundreds of hammers and possible win the race to a wonder that would otherwise be lost. The many buildings that Mercantile builds quickly are presumably meant to make up for this, many of them aren't worth building in most cities without the Mercantile bonus, unlike libraries, universities and water caches.

I'm also worried about the effect on multiplayer. People usually aren't willing to trade with someone who gets a better deal, having the ironic effect that a Mercantile player will find it harder to get open borders than other players. Tuning the balance for Mercantile in single player games is unlikely to be hard (increase the bonus, apply it to domestic trade routes, or add some other benefit), but I don't see any easy way to remove this issue from multiplayer.

 

[Ahriman]

I could live with quad hammer cost down by 10 hammers.
I don't think its fair to compare to Bladesmen though, since they come noticeably earlier; Fanaticism requires 4 tech pre-reqs and costs 50% more, Light Manufacturing only requires 2 techs.

It is by design that Reservoirs are useful only really if you're going for the Victory condition.

There have to be some costs to going to the Victory condition; it can't just be that you play the same way as you play every other expansionist game, and get the win by "accident".
If you make those changes, can you report back on how you find it feels?

Getting reservoirs early and building lots of them is the price you pay.

The spice reduction from reservoir moisture radius is also by design; it is a deliberate step that really forces you to abandon much of your spice economy.

I find that I will often have more than 5 cities. I don't think Sandworker Union is particularly underpowered. We could reduce the cost if you really think its bad, but I'm not sure that's necessary. Similarly, Serfdom is a very powerful early game civic.

I'm certainly open to tweaking Mercantile, we introduced it only recently after dropping Financial as boring and unbalanced, but the main advantage here is from all the cheap buildings, rather than the trade route modifier.
Also, with CHOAM buildings and other structures (and Tuek's Sietch wonder) the number of trade routes in a city can get quite high, and the yields can get quite high with the various stacked booster buildings (including Landing Stages).
And the commerce yields are fractional, so its perfectly possible to get yields of 2.5 commerce or whatever.
I often see trade routes over 2, and trade can often be over 1/4 of commerce income, if you're aiming for that. We used to see trade route income often ~= 1/3 of commerce, we toned it down slightly since earlier versions.
Trade yields are in part based off population, so they'll be higher with a Paradise strategy.
I'd be happy to consider increasing the benefit (increase to 75% to start with?), but I would want to keep it as a foreign trade route yield boost, so that it encourages you to play the game slightly differently (keep and maintain open borders).

In general, the mod balance is designed for singleplayer, not multiplayer. There are all kinds of things, like one of Tleilaxu's main penalties being that everyone hates them, that aren't going to work well in multiplayer. Similarly, using Bene Gesserit city annexation is going to piss off a human player far more than it will the AI players, and Bene Gesserit and Corrino espionage abilities that affect diplomacy modifiers will be useless.
If people want to play multiplayer, great, but its ok if we aim for balance around single player only.

 

[Deliverator]

I find that I will often have more than 5 cities. I don't think Sandworker unit is really underpowered.

I think 100Bears meant the Sandworker's Union wonder - it increases Worker improvement building rate from memory.

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, sorry, typo on my part, now corrected. I think its a decent wonder, particularly with the engineer GPPs.

 

[aprogressivist]

I'm playing through my first game, and it does seem damn hard to get the 3% terraforming for Arrakis Paradise.

I mean, I've already built the Monitor warship, am into Future techs... have conquered huge swathes of Tleilaxu territory. I've got most of the Polar areas and my empire is the largest at this point.

I got a message for getting past the 1% mark but... no idea how close I am to the 3%.

Presumably only greenery that's in my territory counts towards the 3%?

I guess I could go pick on the Atreides. They're the only other faction that's on Arrakis Paradise (well, other than my vassals), and have a lot of terraformed greenery.

They've also been my only friends.

 

[aprogressivist]

Perhaps reservoirs are worthwhile when going for the victory condition, but someone controls enough terraformable tiles to win that way has enough of an economy to win other ways too.

Yeah, I echo that sentiment.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm playing through my first game, and it does seem damn hard to get the 3% terraforming for Arrakis Paradise.

Did you beeline Arrakis Transformation and start building lots of catchbasins and Reservoirs fairly early?
Are your conquests recent, or sustained?
Terraforming takes a while to happen, and depends on the number of catchbasins and reservoirs you have. Once you have several reservoirs, terraforming will occur much faster.

I got a message for getting past the 1% mark but... no idea how close I am to the 3%.

The victory screen should list the number of tiles you have, and the number you need.

Presumably only greenery that's in my territory counts towards the 3%?

Yes.

well, other than my vassals

Vassalization is not a very good idea when pursuing terraforming. You want as much territory as possible, and you want it terraformed.
Vassalization is fine if you're going for diplomacy or religion or conquest, but you're better to take as much land as you can when pursuing terraforming.

Yeah, I echo that sentiment.

Maybe, but part of the point of the terraforming victory is as a means of actually *having* the victory (and a screen that acknowledges that you win).

I think the point of victory condition is to reduce some of the busywork of grinding out some other kind of victory.
Could you use that economy to get some other victory condition instead? Sure, but then you'd need to go do that.

Its hard to balance a terraforming victory because its primarily passive, like a space-race victory except that it doesn't even require much tech, and it gives you sizeable economy bonuses along the way. So its very important that it doesn't become too easy to accomplish.
It shouldn't be something that you can easily achieve by accident through normal play (taking vassals, postponing catchbasins and reservoirs, etc.).

One possible way would be to make it easier to accomplish in terms of needing fewer terraformed tiles, but make it more painful and costly, that required more water, or had economy penalties on the buildings, or something so that you have to give up some opportunity cost in order to achieve it.

 

[OneHundredBears]

I could live with quad hammer cost down by 10 hammers.
I don't think its fair to compare to Bladesmen though, since they come noticeably earlier; Fanaticism requires 4 tech pre-reqs and costs 50% more, Light Manufacturing only requires 2 techs.

It wouldn't be fair to compare normal quads against bladesmen. Ix is paying a both a trait slot and most of its faction-specific benefits, though. If doesn't seem unreasonable for them to get an earlier city-busting unit in return. But I had thought that the window between when quads first become available and others can get bladesmen or rocket troopers to deal with them was a bit smaller than it is. Since balance is focused around single player, lower than 70 hammers then would be too much: the AI doesn't know to rush for something better than infantry when it sees Ix getting quads.

I think the point of [the terraforming] victory condition is to reduce some of the busywork of grinding out some other kind of victory.

Hitting 'enter' 50 times in a row isn't exactly scintillating either. It would be nice if the victory were a worthwhile option on its own. I'll get back to you about this once I've tried enough different settings to make some useful suggestions.

I find that I will often have more than 5 cities. I don't think Sandworker Union is particularly underpowered. We could reduce the cost if you really think its bad, but I'm not sure that's necessary.

I too, find that I have more than 5 cities, but by the time I have more than 10, I usually have all the improvements that I need in the first few and so can transfer workers over. Unless it was changed in 1.9.1, the Union gives only a +50% increase in worker speed, worth no more than 50% more workers (and possibly less, since it doesn't increase movement speed and anyone likely to build it is likely to be taking advantage of the power of Serfdom). After taking the Great Techman points into account, it might be a worthwhile build for Industrious leaders, but no one else.

I'm certainly open to tweaking Mercantile, we introduced it only recently after dropping Financial as boring and unbalanced, but the main advantage here is from all the cheap buildings, rather than the trade route modifier.

In that case, we should probably focus on the buildings when tweaking it. Currently, the Merchant Quarter is less valuable than a library in most cities but almost as expensive even with Mercantile, the Water Souk costs so much that even a Mercantile leader shouldn't consider building it until late in the game when base trade route yields are high, banks are good only in cities with high base gold yields, which are uncommon in most strategies, Space Ports, although very strong, only appear in the late game and there are only two Landing Stages to be built all game. One way to approach this would be to tweak the cost for the quarter and the souk. Another would be to add other buildings, such as the Commodities Exchange, Desert Airfield and CHOAM directorate to the list. While I like this move thematically and in the way it encourages Mercantile players to get CHOAM and spread out their gold generation by building the bank/exchange combination in many cites, it is also more of a lategame bonus. Mercantile's weakness is an earlygame and midgame issue.

Also, with CHOAM buildings and other structures (and Tuek's Sietch wonder) the number of trade routes in a city can get quite high

It's quite easy to get lots of trade routes, but the number of foreign trade routes is capped by the total number of cities your trading partners have. Keeping enough trading partners to average noticeably more than four foreign routes per city is a diplomatic feat.

And the commerce yields are fractional, so its perfectly possible to get yields of 2.5 commerce or whatever.

Right. I was just choosing round numbers to make the math trivial (I've actually never noticed a base trade route yield of more than 1.8). I would have done well to point that out.

I often see trade routes over 2, and trade can often be over 1/4 of commerce income, if you're aiming for that. We used to see trade route income often ~= 1/3 of commerce, we toned it down slightly since earlier versions.

I think that you're confusing base and net trade route yields here. As of BtS, each trade route has a base yield depending on the population of the city getting the route and the minimum of the population of and distance to the city providing the route (scaled by some constant depending on map size). All multipliers, including the +50% trait multiplier that Mercantile gives, apply to this base value. Thus you might be getting 7-odd commerce from a trade route with multipliers, but only .9 of that from Mercantile because the base yield is only 1.8.

 

[Ahriman]

Hitting 'enter' 50 times in a row isn't exactly scintillating either.

Agreed, my design intention was that its ok if terraforming sometimes doesn't happen until its clear that you are capable of winning by other means (ie you are the significant frontrunner player) but sooner than it would take for you to actually go ahead and win by other means.
If its always quicker/easier to win by (say) domination than it is to win terraforming, then terraforming isn't balanced right.

It would be nice if the victory were a worthwhile option on its own

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Could you explain please?

After taking the Great Techman points into account, it might be a worthwhile build for Industrious leaders,

How would you tweak it, if you find it underpowered?
Perhaps this is something that I don't notice because of Epic game speed; on epic, improvements take much longer to construct, and your workers spend more of their time building things and less time moving around, so the reduced build time is quite noticeable.

I think we also reduced the build time of some of the various superior improvements (level 2 and 3 mines and wells, melting lens) and we changed it so that you build turbines on hills (that auto-upgrade yield) rather than mines (which you had to rebuild with level 2 and 3 to get the yield boosts), so late-game worker-time is much less important than it used to be.

the Water Souk costs so much that even a Mercantile leader shouldn't consider building it until late in the game when base trade route yields are high

Water souk could probably use a cost reduction.
I'm not sure about the merchant quarter; if we reduce the cost of that, do we run into the problem where we're making the bonus from Mercantile *smaller*, and making it easier for non-Mercantile leaders to gain advantage from the Quarter?

Another would be to add other buildings, such as the Commodities Exchange, Desert Airfield and CHOAM directorate to the list. While I like this move thematically and in the way it encourages Mercantile players to get CHOAM and spread out their gold generation by building the bank/exchange combination in many cites

CHOAM and Imperial buildings are tied to the Political trait already.

but the number of foreign trade routes is capped by the total number of cities your trading partners have. Keeping enough trading partners to average noticeably more than four foreign routes per city is a diplomatic feat.

I think this is intended. Thats the point of the trait, its trying to encourage you to maintain a lot of open borders agreements and generally good diplomatic ties. I don't find this that hard to do, if I'm not warmongering a great deal.

Perhaps the best solution would be to bump the foreign trade route yield up to 100%?

I think that you're confusing base and net trade route yields here.

I hadn't noticed that you said "2 base income", I just read it as 2 income. Sorry. I agree that the base is much lower than the net, and thats a good point to remember when balancing the trait.

 

[OneHundredBears]

Agreed, my design intention was that its ok for terraforming to happen only when its clear that you are capable of winning by other means (ie you are the significant frontrunner player) but sooner than it would take for you to actually go ahead and win by other means.
If its always quicker/easier to win by (say) domination than it is to win terraforming, then terraforming isn't balanced right.

It would be nice if the victory were a worthwhile option on its own

I'm not quite sure what you mean by this. Could you explain please?

Sorry. I meant 'would be nice if there were times when pursuing a terraforming victory had a higher probability of winning than any other strategy.' This is probably very difficult to do without making terraforming almost always the best victory condition and runs counter to your design intention, though. If it were possible to get a terraforming victory without the land needed for most of the other victory types, then getting just enough land and then terraforrming it as quickly as possible would be too
powerful. The AI doesn't do much to pursue victory, so you could always beat it as long as you got enough land to terraform.

How would you tweak it, if you find it underpowered?
Perhaps this is something that I don't notice because of Epic game speed; on epic, improvements take much longer to construct, and your workers spend more of their time building things and less time moving around, so the reduced build time is quite noticeable.

In addition, the decreased granularity works in the Union's favor on epic's since civ rounds up the number of turns needed to create an improvement. I'd think that building more workers would still be a better deal on that speed, though. How many workers per city do you usually have? My tweak would be to decrease the cost by 100 hammers and add the Refinery as a prerequisite. This hopefully creates a situation where some (who don't have refineries in good hammer cities or need few workers) still won't have an incentive to build the Union, but it will be an excellent deal for others (some combination of Industrious, already have the pre-req building in a good location and have lots of workers but need more. I'd prefer to make the pre-req building the Merchant Quarter, both thematically and to avoid the double-whammy effect of Industrious helping with the pre-req and the wonder itself, but the techs don't line up.

I'm not sure about the merchant quarter; if we reduce the cost of that, do we run into the problem where we're making the bonus from Mercantile *smaller*, and making it easier for non-Mercantile leaders to gain advantage from the Quarter?

There's a point where that effect kicks in. At the cost above where non-Mercantile leaders will routinely build the quarter everywhere, a cost decrease is a boon to Mercantile leaders who will be building it most places while the non-Mercantile do not, but below that point reducing the cost helps the non-Mercantile more, as you say. I don't think that non-Mercantile leaders would commonly build the quarter at a cost higher than 120 hammers: at that point the library, university, water-increasing buildings, factory and depending on strategy and circumstance, wonders, health-boosters, units, unit-enhancing structures, temples and tribunal are more efficient. Thus I think that a decrease of 30 hammers or less is probably safe in this regard. The Water Souk could likely support a greater cost decrease, but I wouldn't care to estimate how great.

Perhaps the best solution would be to bump the foreign trade route yield up to 100%?

If the intent is to encourage Mercantile players to trade more, I'd support this change even if it was then necessary to decrease the number of buildings that get the Mercantile bonus in order to keep the trait balanced. The current +50%, making up something like a sixth to a tenth of trade route income, isn't a strong incentive to go forth and perform diplomatic feats to get new trade partners.

 

[Ahriman]

would be nice if there were times when pursuing a terraforming victory had a higher probability of winning than any other strategy

Certainly I'd like to be the case, so long as you have specifically played in such a way as to make the terraforming happen as early as possible (lots of expansion through culture and settlement, conquest rather than vassalization, beelining Way of Liet early and building up catchbasins, beelining Arrakis Transformation early and building up Reservoirs).

This is probably very difficult to do without making terraforming almost always the best victory condition and runs counter to your design intention,

My comment above was unclear; I have edited for attempted clarity.

My point is:
I don't really expect it to be a condition where you have a tight race coming down to the wire; do you win a terraforming victory or does some enemy win a domination (or diplomatic, or whatever) victory, like sometimes a cultural victory could be in vanilla Civ relative to an AI pursuing space race.

But there is often a point in a game where its clear that you're the strongest player, and that you're going to win. But to actually fulfill a victory condition might require 50+ more turns of grinding out a victory against weaker players. It isn't much fun, it doesn't provide any strategic challenge, but it happens. The idea of terraforming and spice victories, in addition to flavor and encouraging a different way to play, was to try to find a couple of ways that might end the game shortly after its clear that you're *going* to win, without having to spend those tedious extra 50 turns.

It seems like you're not finding it to work out that way?

If it were possible to get a terraforming victory without the land needed for most of the other victory types, then getting just enough land and then terraforrming it as quickly as possible would be too
powerful. The AI doesn't do much to pursue victory, so you could always beat it as long as you got enough land to terraform.

Right, this is my concern.

My tweak would be to decrease the cost by 100 hammers and add the Refinery as a prerequisite.

Sounds possible. Though I wonder this kind of change (building pre-req) tends to favor the human player over the AI. I'm not sure how much the AI builds the refinery, its probably common enough that its ok (since AI doesn't care about health much on the highest difficulty levels).

Thus I think that a decrease of 30 hammers or less is probably safe in this regard. The Water Souk could likely support a greater cost decrease, but I wouldn't care to estimate how great.

We should look into this.

If the intent is to encourage Mercantile players to trade more

Yes, this is certainly the intent; I'd like to see different leaders favor different strategies as much as possible.
This sounds like the best solution; change +50% foreign trade to +100% foreign trade.

 

[davidlallen]

Certainly I'd like to be the case, so long as you have specifically played in such a way as to make the terraforming happen as early as possible (lots of expansion through culture and settlement, conquest rather than vassalization, beelining Way of Liet early and building up catchbasins, beelining Arrakis Transformation early and building up Reservoirs).

I may not recall some of the details at this point, but you mention avoiding vassalization. Somebody, probably you, suggested that plots terraformed by vassals could count 50% towards your victory condition. I never did this and I do not recall if deliverator added this. If we haven't done this previously, and we add this now, will that help any? It is not that *hard* to do, if it would help make this victory more obtainable.

 

[Ahriman]

It will help very slightly, but not that much. Even if you force your vassals to adopt Paradise, their terrain won't transform very fast, because transformation rates in player X's territory depends on the number of catchbasins and reservoirs owned by player X. And while you might be building lots of catchbasins and reservoirs, the vassal players probably won't.

The only real way that you could make vassals be significant contributers is if their terraforming rate depended on the max of the terraform rate of themself or their master. But I don't think this is the right way to go.

I think terraforming *should* require you to play at least somewhat differently,and I think that encouraging complete conquers rather than vassals is a reasonable way to do this. But maybe we should add this to an in-game civilopedia strategy guide.

 

[aprogressivist]

I think terraforming *should* require you to play at least somewhat differently,and I think that encouraging complete conquers rather than vassals is a reasonable way to do this. But maybe we should add this to an in-game civilopedia strategy guide.

That's fair enough, but right now it just seems a little... I dunno. Anti-climatic. I won't feel a sense of "whew, I did!" achievement when I finish my current Arrakis Paradise game, I'll be thinking more, "at last...". Now, I admit, I don't play at very high difficulty levels, so maybe the game gets more exciting, but the dynamic doesn't feel quite right.

Here's what I would suggest:

* Lower the amount of terraformed terrain required from 3% to 2.5%

* Once a faction reaches 2%, for the last 0.5% of terraforming necessary, you are automatically and unceasingly at war with Arrakis Spice factions. (This will encourage the AI to attack the player simultaneously, hopefully.)

Just my 2p.

 

[Ahriman]

I think there are already diplomacy penalties at 1% and I think 2% for all Spice users.
With enough penalties, simultaneous dogpile wars will tend to happen anyway, because one person will declare and others will pile on.

But if the AIs aren't tough enough, because the difficulty is too low, then the late game is never going to be exciting. You can't have a tense lategame without powerful foes.

We could try 2.5% though.
But I think I'd prefer to use diplomacy modifiers rather than forced war declarations. For example, if you were Bene Gesserit and had been steadily concentrating political marriages on another player to make them your friend, or if you are close religious allies with someone and had been gifting them tribute all game, that player shouldn't declare war on you arbitrarily. If they do, then making an effort to have good diplomatic relations aren't really very meaningful.

If they hate you enough and they're powerful, they'll declare war. If they aren't powerful enough, then getting them all to declare isnt' going to feel good anyway.

But I hardly ever find the late game part of any Civ4 game or mod to be very good or challenging, for any victory condition.
The human grows faster than the AI, so its hard to get the AIs to be a decent challenge to the human in the late-game without being overly powerful before then. And if they're a decent challenge in the midgame, they often aren't much of a challenge in the lategame.

 

[OneHundredBears]

I'd echo Ahriman's advice on difficulty and add my own experience. If you aren't losing a significant number of your games, they probably aren't very exciting. Individual games vary enough that if some of them are close enough to be interesting in the late game, a number of them will also be losses. The mechanics of the higher difficulty levels also help encourage a fun lategame. The bonuses that the computer players receive increase as the game go on. At Monarch and Emperor it's quite possible to grow your economy faster than these bonuses help the AI (though if you're not yet playing on those levels, learning how to is a great challenge and often produces exciting late games). However by Deity, even the best Civ4 players have trouble matching the economy of an equally large and advanced lategame AI because of the bonuses (I'm not one of these players and have yet to win a DW deity game, but I expect that the same holds with the mod).

In those games where the lategame isn't close, it's usually not too hard to win a quick diplomatic victory or just invade someone with a holy city, spread that religion everywhere and win the holy war victory. I'm actually a bit concerned over the holy war victory as a design issue: as domination is land-limited rather than pop-limited, anyone going for domination will almost always capture a holy city and have enough people to win holy war simply by spreading that religion to their own cities and using inquisitors if needed, making domination almost obsolete.

The idea of terraforming and spice victories, in addition to flavor and encouraging a different way to play, was to try to find a couple of ways that might end the game shortly after its clear that you're *going* to win, without having to spend those tedious extra 50 turns.

It seems like you're not finding it to work out that way?

As of my last post, I wasn't. Then I looked at the code, spurred by your comment that terraforming depends on the number of catchbasins and reservoirs, and realized my mistake. I didn't know that terraforming depends only on the total number of terraforming buildings and not at all on the number of terraforming buildings in cities that contain or are near a given tile. I was indeed doing it wrong, assuming that since the terrain around a city didn't terraform quickly when I built both buildings in that city but only had a middling number of reservoirs and catchbasins overall, it also wouldn't terraform quickly when I built both buildings and had a high number overall. I ran the numbers, and it looks reasonable: depending on how much terrain someone has, it might take something from 20 turns (someone not too far from a domination victory) to 80 (just enough terraformable tiles to win the victory) for 10 each of catchbasins and reservoirs. That feels like exactly where you want terraforming to be. It's fast enough to avoid tedium but requires enough land that terraformers will usually be strong enough to have multiple ways to win.

If it's alright with everyone, I'll churn out a terraforming guide for the pedia. I imagine that my assumption that terraforming is local, rather than global, is shared by a lot of players (most buildings in a city affect only that city). Also, would-be terraformers take note: having more than the minimum number of terraformable tiles will always decrease the expected number of turns until victory, but the first few tiles above the minimum will greatly decrease that rate. You'll reach 125 green tiles much faster if you have 140 tiles that can be made green rather than only 125.

I haven't looked at the spice victory yet. Various technical issues prevent me from running the patcher, so I won't be able to say anything about the latest version until they're resolved in a week or two.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm actually a bit concerned over the holy war victory as a design issue: as domination is land-limited rather than pop-limited, anyone going for domination will almost always capture a holy city and have enough people to win holy war simply by spreading that religion to their own cities and using inquisitors if needed, making domination almost obsolete.

Well, I think its ok if domination is obsolete, we could even remove it. Holy War is more flavorful, and fun if you're playing Mahdi.

Sounds like on terraforming we have documentation failure.
Yes, catchbasins and reservoirs are *global* boosters, in that they affect the probability of each tile spawning per turn (as long as its within your borders, has moisture/fresh water, and you are Paradise civic).

So with lots of reservoirs, yeah, you'll terraform much faster. And grasslands can sometimes spawn lakes, which spread fresh water further and so mean even more terraformable tiles.

More guides are always better, if you've got the time we'd really appreciate it.

 

[davidlallen]

If it's alright with everyone, I'll churn out a terraforming guide for the pedia.

I highly recommend that you add one or two sentences to the existing Dune Wars Concept section on terraforming, rather than adding a new guide.

Anybody writing a Dune Wars Concept section for espionage?

 

[Ahriman]

Anybody writing a Dune Wars Concept section for espionage?

Sorry, still on my list.