offworld trade and resources

[Deliverator]

I've attached the source image from the loading screen - without the text of course. I think this will make a good background for the Fremen homeworld screen.

 

[God-Emperor]

GE01: The Bene Gesserit do not get the UB version of the palace (the Bene Gesserit Mother School) that provides the Sisterhood Covenant resource. That resource is also not available from offworld trade. Net result = no Reverend Mothers in the game.
Depending on how it is supposed to work, can be fixed in two different ways:
Fix A: Give the BG the UB palace in the CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file.
Fix B: Add the Sisterhood Covenant resource to the offworld trade list in DuneWars.py.

A related problem, if the Sisterhood Covenant resource is made available:

GE02: If you get the Sisterhood Covenant but you are not the BG civ (via trade with the BG, for example) you can build the Reverend Mother unit, but one of the abilities it says it has doesn't actually work - the promotion ability. The first thing the function that is used to give the promotions (DuneWars.WeirdExperience()) does is to check if the player is the BG. If the player isn't, it exits the function without doing anything. If this is how it is supposed to be, then the list of abilities for the unit is wrong if you are not the BG, which is not a simple XML fix - what is displayed for the unit would need to depend on who you are. If this is supposed to work for anyone who has a Reverend Mother, then the python needs to have that first check removed.

 

[Deliverator]

Fix A: Give the BG the UB palace in the CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml file.

This is my preferred solution to the first point.

 

[davidlallen]

GE01: The Bene Gesserit do not get the UB version of the palace ... If you get the Sisterhood Covenant but you are not the BG civ (via trade with the BG, for example) you can build the Reverend Mother unit, but one of the abilities it says it has doesn't actually work

No wonder I have gotten little feedback on the RM abilities.

 

[davidlallen]

GE02: If you get the Sisterhood Covenant but you are not the BG civ (via trade with the BG, for example) you can build the Reverend Mother unit, but one of the abilities it says it has doesn't actually work

Excellent find, and excellent analysis. Is there any chance you would be interested to join the Dune Wars dev team and help out with some of these changes? There are always xml changes which are easier, but we are lacking for python and sdk programmers. I have kept a list of issues in a spreadsheet at this post, and since you have started using "GE02" I see you have read enough back posts to understand the motivation for using this sheet.

I will probably do a 1.6.3 patch tonight (12 hours from now), and update the sheet by removing fixed items and adding recently discussed items.

After that, would you be interested in looking at issues such as DA104, DA97, AHR49, DA84 (see sheet for details)? The descriptions are short but I can easily fill in any details which may be helpful from the implementation standpoint.

 

[Deliverator]

Redirected:

Our potential solutions here are:
1) Reduce the offworld goods from +2 to +1. Con: messes up balance with other offworld goods, and makes offworld less important.

In the initial outline for offworld goods the only good to have +2 happy was Semuta which was meant to be Ecaz's unique resource and therefore give them an advantage.

I wasn't really a fan or having many +2 health and +2 happy bonuses when that change was made. It just means each resource feels very bland and samey, it lacks a bit of flavour, and +2 just feels like too much too easy. I would rather have +1 and another +1 with some building that you have to build first.

I would like to see all the offworld goods set back to +1 health/happy with the possible exception of Semuta. I'd then like to see a lot more building tie-ins and other more interesting uses for the offworld goods. One example, is the Banqueting Hall (now a National Wonder in the new design) which gives an additional +1 happy with Caladanian Wine, Slig, Dates, etc.

At the moment the Landsraad Directorate is boosting some resources, but there seems like no thematic reason why it should boost Caladanian Wine/Semuta/Soostone. Those three resources end up being three different names for the same thing whilst the original intention was to have offworld resources that have different benefits to each other and therefore make for an interesting choice. Right now it makes no difference whether I pick Semuta (a powerful and addictive narcotic) or Soostone (a precious gem). It's not very flavourful.

If we had certain buildings that boost 2 or 3 resources (perhaps a mixture of Dune and offworld goods) then that could give more incentive to care about your choices. You could have Jewellers for Soostone/Opafire/Diamonds, in addition to the Banqueting Hall and others. This way there could be some advantage to collecting complementary sets of resources.

I also think we can be more imaginative about the effects that these bonuses can have. We have the Ginaz promotions idea, but I'm sure there are other interesting uses for offworld bonuses.

4) Reduce the number of trade goods generated by a landing stage contract from 3 to 2; so you can only share a trade good with 1 other player.

We could even set it to 1 for those that give a more powerful advantage to the player. The Ginaz promotion line is probably a good candidate for only giving one unit since it doesn't really make sense for Ginaz training to be passed on. In this case, if you do trade away the good that mean you are giving away the utility of it.

 

[davidlallen]

Here is a quick summary of what we have today.

Contract    Owner       Effect             Building
--------    -----       ------             --------
Cala. Wine  Atreides    +2 happiness       LandsDir
Ginaz       none        1 unit, promo(*)
Labor(*)    none        +25% worker rate
Opafire     Ecaz        +2 happiness       LandsDir
Pundi Rice  none        +2 health
Sapho       none        boosts Mentat 
Sardaukar   Corrino     2 units            Fiefdom
Semuta      none        +2 happiness       LandsDir
Sisterhood  B.Gesserit  Reverend Mother
Slig        Ecaz        +2 health
Soostone    none        +2 happiness       LandsDir
Thinking    Ix          4 units
Water       Fremen      2 units            ShaiTemple

The two (*) items are not implemented yet: the labor contract, and promotions from Ginaz training. The observation is that the human player can easily trade for the happiness items and get too much happiness. How about this, mostly what deliverator suggested:

1. Leave the Ecaz contracts as +2 with no building effect.
2. Change all the other +2 to +1: wine, rice, semuta and soostone
3. Remove all the building effects of the landsraad directorate
4. Find some building(s) which grant +1 for wine, rice, semuta and soostone.

 

[Slvynn]

Seems reasonable
Only please dont forget to nerf Ecaz - i think 1 more stage, and 1 resource +1 happy +1 health , other +2 health (hey they are from ecaz) will be more balanced

 

[Ahriman]

From other thread":

4 and 3 at least

The problem with 3 is that it can mess up other trades. You saw in the Succession game for eg how hard it was to get Fremen to trade Water Debt to us - when we were giving them cities, techs, units, anything they wanted all game. Do we really want to make that worse? A lot of AIs are already pretty tough traders.

(Actually; it sounds like what you might have meant was just increase the AI's trade valuation on the luxury trade goods. This might be a good solution. Maybe we should move these values from 5->10)

How much happiness is contributed by (a) buildings - which ones? (b) my own offworld trade resources, or (c) offworld resources traded by other AI's?

I don't have a good feeling for this; I'll take a look next game.

I am not sure #4 will have much effect. Could you look into some of your games with many AI players using chipotle debug mode, and see how many times the AI has even traded these resources? If the number of offworld resources traded is small, then #4 will have no real effect. Even if the number of trades is fairly large, how many of them would be prevented by simply reducing the number of resources from 3 to 2? This allows the AI to trade once, but not twice with the same resource.

I'm not sure either. Sylvnns contention is that is can be quite easy to have 2 happniess trade goods yourself and trade for 2 more, for +8 happiness. If this is a common problem, then reducing the number of copies from 3 to 2 could have quite a large impact; it could cut the happiness from resources you've traded for by up to half (on average).
I still think its worth trying. We also don't want 3 factions building Sardaukar or 3 factions buildnig Ixian walkers or 3 factions building Fedaykin; their core faction and ONE close ally.
I think trading these would be more interesting if you only got 2 copies.

* * *

From this thread:

I would like to see all the offworld goods set back to +1 health/happy with the possible exception of Semuta.

I dunno, this makes them seem kinda weak and bornig to me, but I don't feel strongly. I like the idea of these resources actually meaning something.
If you make them only +1, then it becomes a no-brainer to just get labor or Ginaz training instead.

Banqueting Hall (now a National Wonder in the new design)

Banqueting hall is a very strange national wonder. Why can you build only 1?

At the moment the Landsraad Directorate is boosting some resources, but there seems like no thematic reason why it should boost Caladanian Wine/Semuta/Soostone

The thematic reason is: Landsraad religion is a trade religion, so it should have synergy with luxury trade goods. And the building was supposed to be CHOAM Directorate (Landsraad Directorate doesn't make any sense).
I don't care if the boost is happiness or something else, but I like the idea of a synergy - its also part of giving Ecaz synergy with Landsraad religion (like Corrino should have synergy with Imperial, and Fremen with Shai-Hulad, and Ix synergy with Technocracy) since Ecaz gets more trade goods.

You could have Jewellers

Jewellers don't really seem like a very Dune-ish building. And we don't really need more happiness/commerce booster buildings.

We could even set it to 1 for those that give a more powerful advantage to the player.

Ginaz is the ONLY one that I would even consider being limited to only 1. These are supposed to be trade goods.
On Ginaz, its not like the training is really limited to a particular house: eg Ecaz and Atreides both have people with Ginaz training. But I don't feel strongly about this.

Slig Ecaz +2 health

Slig as Ecaz makes no sense. These are Tleilaxu.

3. Remove all the building effects of the landsraad directorate

I dislike this. The building should have trade-goods synergy. The whole point of the religion is as a trade religion; it should encourage you to try to trade for as many trade goods as you can.

* * *
Edit: another exception, offworld labor as a non-tradeable seems fine to me.

 

[Deliverator]

Banqueting hall is a very strange national wonder. Why can you build only 1?

I'm taking inspiration from the Great Banqueting hall of Arrakeen. It's not just a dining room, it's where the elite entertain dignitaries from Dune and offworld. Think state banquets where matters of political and cultural importance are discussed.

Slig as Ecaz makes no sense. These are Tleilaxu.

Agreed Sapho and Semuta are sourced from planet Ecaz. I'm guessing giving Ecaz exclusive access to Sapho is going to screw with the new Mentat implementation, so they should get Semuta and the Tleilaxu should get Slig as originally intended.

I dunno, this makes them seem kinda weak and bornig to me, but I don't feel strongly. I like the idea of these resources actually meaning something.
If you make them only +1, then it becomes a no-brainer to just get labor or Ginaz training instead.

Well, how do we make the current +2 health/happy bonuses more interesting than just being copies of each other? That's what makes them kinda boring from my standpoint.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm taking inspiration from the Great Banqueting hall of Arrakeen.

Ok. I have no particular objections, it just seemed odd.

Well, how do we make the current +2 health/happy bonuses more interesting than just being copies of each other? That's what makes them kinda boring from my standpoint.

I understand your point, and the idea of Buildings synergies is a good one. If they are just +1 bonuses each but with say a couple of minor synergies, that would make them more powerful and more flavorful.

Is it possible that we could think beyond just happiness bonuses?
Maybe some buildings should give gold % bonuses with these trade goods.
So we could have +1 happy, and +10% gold with some building.
Or hammers, beakers or culture.

They could have bonuses with CHOAM Directorate (why is it renamed Landsraad Directorate? influnence in the Landsraad lets your house be awarded a CHOAM directorate) AND something else, while giving only 1 happy or healthy directly.

Currently, there is a +25% gold building (grocer replacement) that gives +1 health with various resources. Removing these health bonuses would make health more interesting (health rarely binds past the early game), and we could instead add some trade good gold bonuses.

But I take your point about wanting *different* buildings to boost the different goods, that does make them more flavorful.

I will think more about this when I have the mod and can look at the building lists.

 

[davidlallen]

"Too much happiness" seems to be a current problem. Also we are hopefully about to make a bunch of changes in buildings for the wonder proposal. It is easy to adjust the happiness values from 2 to 1 in the xml, and it is easy to add happiness for buildings in the xml. Would somebody care to make a proposal for this?

 

[Ahriman]

How about: faction specific bonuses (Caladaanian Wine, Tleilaxu slig meat, Ecaz Semuta) stay at 2, everything else drops to 1 (pundi rice - though this is also canonically Caladaanian, Soostone, Opafire).

Every resource drops to having 2 (1 to keep, 1 to trade) down from 3, except Ginaz training (drops to 1) and Offworld Labor (drops to 1).

Retain the CHOAM Directorate (if its currently Landsraad Directorate please rename it to CHOAM directorate) bonus happiness for +1 happy from semuta, soostone, opafire, caladaanian wine.

Give +1 happy from banqueting hall from Slig meat, Pundi rice.

* * *
Another thought; Slig meat is a bit problematic for Tleilaxu, because the Tleilaxu never actually eat it. For them, it is ONLY an export item, for money.
Not sure how we could work around this.
We could put a +2 unhealth from slig meat on the Zensufi temple to encourge the human player to trade it away, but that wouldn't really work for the AI.
The alternative would be to have it somehow generated commerce instead of health.

 

[davidlallen]

Picking up the happiness problem from this post and subsequent. I have made some local changes to reduce the problem of too much happiness. I need suggestions on one point.

I want Ecaz to have a +2 health and +2 happiness UR without any more buildings. Neither of the existing health UR are "canonical" for Ecaz, in fact Slig is canonically Tleilaxu. Nothing in the Dune Encyclopedia jumps out as an Ecazi health boost. So I have overlooked canon a little and kept Slig as an Ecaz UR. I have removed the happiness benefit of LandsDir on Semuta and made Semuta limited to Ecaz instead of Opafire. So, Ecaz now controls a +2 happiness resource (Semuta) and a +2 health resource (Slig).

Now consider Cala Wine, Opafire, Soostone and Pundi Rice. They are very similar; they all give +2 to something. I have made all of them give +1 health or happiness instead of +2, so Semuta and Slig are the only +2 resources. I would like to add some secondary effects for these four. One possible secondary effect is a building which gives an additional +1 of health or happiness. But, perhaps there is a more interesting solution. We can add buildings that require these resources, which can give a variety of effects. Deliverator had suggested a Jewellers building to give +1 happiness on Opafire and Soostone. But Ahriman had suggested instead to think more broadly of other benefits.

What secondary benefit, such as a building with some effect, should we add for Cala Wine, Opafire, Soostone and Pundi Rice?

 

[Ahriman]

I want Ecaz to have a +2 health and +2 happiness UR without any more buildings.

Why? It seems more important to me to have Slig meat as Tleilaxu than to have Ecaz have a +2 happy and +2 health resource (what is the argument for this?)
[On the not eating it thing; the Zensufi temple could give +2 unhealth with Slig meat, +20% gold with slig meat]

I would rather have Slig meat not in the mod than produced by someone who wasn't Tleilaxu.

should we add for Cala Wine, Opafire, Soostone

I really like continuing to have the bonus with the CHOAM Directorate building. Landsraad is supposed to be a trade religion, it makes sense to give it synergy with trade goods.
If this is a gold bonus rather than a happy bonus, that would be fine too.

A jeweler building feels too narrow; my tendency is still to support the post #353 design.

Wine, rice, slig meat, all make sense having bonuses with the Banquet Hall wonder.

 

[davidlallen]

Why? It seems more important to me to have Slig meat as Tleilaxu than to have Ecaz have a +2 happy and +2 health resource (what is the argument for this?)

The +2 items will be the most valuable trade items, which seems to match with the Ecaz trade focus. Can anybody suggest a +2 health item which is not Slig?

On the not eating it thing; the Zensufi temple could give +2 unhealth with Slig meat, +20% gold with slig meat

I get your point of a +2 unhealth to cancel out the +2 health, but the +2 health applies to all connected cities, and the +2 unhealth only applies where the building exists. This seems like a weird mechanic.

Wine, rice, slig meat, all make sense having bonuses with the Banquet Hall wonder.

But, it is a national wonder, which means it only applies to one city, which means the effect is pretty weak. I was hoping we could create 1-2 new buildings with effects related to these resources. Any ideas?

 

[Ahriman]

The +2 items will be the most valuable trade items, which seems to match with the Ecaz trade focus.

Ecaz gets an extra landing stage. That would seem to be sufficient.

Think about it; a normal faction could get 1 strategic good and 1 +1 happy good.
Why should Ecaz be able to get a strategic good and a +2 happy and a +2 health?

Thats like an extra 3 separate luxury resources over other factions, plus the fact that they can then trade their trade goods for more.

Ecaz are supposed to be a trade faction; they should be encouraged to trade their offworld resources with other factions, not just get enough from offworld that they don't have to trade with other factions.
They should be encouraged to try to keep good relations with lots of players, and open borders, and do lots of trade.

and the +2 unhealth only applies where the building exists

Yeah, but you're likely to have Zensufi temples everywhere by the time you build a landing stage.

I agree its not ideal though, it might give you incentives to not build the temple.
Another way to force it would be to have the Tleilaxu palace provide a "Tleilaxu population" building in every city, that gave +2 unhealth from slig meat and +20% gold from slig meat.
That way, its unavoidable, and there are no weird incentives to no build the temple.
Its a minor point though.

 

[Ahriman]

A thought; possibly the Soostone and Opafire resources could give a bonus with the Theater building (currently kinda weak, just gives culture).

So we could have:
Soostone = +1 happy, +1happy with theater, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate
Opafire = +1 happy, +1 happy with theiter, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate
Caladaanian wine = +1 happy, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate, +1 happy with Banquet Hall, Atreides only.
Semuta = +2 happy, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate, Ecaz only
Pundi rice = +1 health, +1 health with banquet hall, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate.
Slig meat = +2 health, +2 unhealth with Tleilaxu population (provided everywhere by Tleilaxu palace UB), +20% gold with Tleilaxu population, Tleilaxu only.
And then Sardarkar cooperation, Ginaz Training, Ixian technologies, Offworld Labor as strategic contracts.
And Fremen Water Debt as palace-only strategic contract.

 

[davidlallen]

Ecaz are supposed to be a trade faction; they should be encouraged to trade their offworld resources with other factions, not just get enough from offworld that they don't have to trade with other factions.

My intention was to make Semuta and the +2 health bonus item something that other players would find valuable, and try to trade for. So it is encouraging other players to trade with them. After these changes, we may find Ecaz still has too much happiness, and we can discuss again; but I would like to try the +2 values.

Soostone = +1 happy, +1happy with theater, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate
Opafire = +1 happy, +1 happy with theiter, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate
Caladaanian wine = +1 happy, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate, +1 happy with Banquet Hall, Atreides only.
Semuta = +2 happy, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate, Ecaz only
Pundi rice = +1 health, +1 health with banquet hall, +10% gold with CHOAM Directorate.
Slig meat = +2 health, +2 unhealth with Tleilaxu population (provided everywhere by Tleilaxu palace UB), +20% gold with Tleilaxu population, Tleilaxu only.

We are getting closer to agreement.

a. There is not currently any way to implement +N % gold on a building due to a resource. I have added an sdk change which is +N % *per resource available*. Then a civ which has a contract for 3 of the resource would get 3N % gold while a civ which had traded for one of the resource would get N % gold. I don't think that is what you meant. What I had proposed was a special purpose building which gives +10%, which *requires* the resource available to be built. This is like the Water Shipper building today.

b. Sorry, but I still think Slig -2 health from the temple is a clumsy implementation. I cannot suggest a better one to reach your goal. If we could find a different name and/or accept a small violation of canon, I would prefer to have some +2 health resource which is Ecaz specific.

 

[Ahriman]

So it is encouraging other players to trade with them

But what will the Ecazi player be trading *for*? If they can already satisfy their happiness and health needs on their own, and other players don't have much of value to trade for. And they hardly ever have decent amounts of gold per turn for trade.
I see no obvious reason why Ecaz need to have superior trade goods as well as getting more of them.
If you want them to be able to get more, then give them more copies; haev the Semuta contract make 3 copies, not 2. So they can get more happy/health, but only by trading with other civs, which is the strategy we're trying to encourage.
Trade, not self sufficiency.

There is not currently any way to implement +N % gold on a building due to a resource

Ah, of course, I had forgotten. I was trying to think of something they could give that wasn't happiness, so we could have my preference for a synergy with the CHOAM Directorate building, but without providing too much happiness from the resources.
It would seem relatively harmless to have the +N% per resource available, since for any of these you could have at maximum two copies.
So, CHOAM Directorate could give say +5% gold per copy of soostone, opafire, wine, semuta, or pundi rice. So, if you had 2 soostone resources and 1 semuta resource, it would give +15% gold.

What I had proposed was a special purpose building which gives +10%, which *requires* the resource available to be built.

The problem with this is the human exploit; trade for the resource, build the building everywhere, then end the trade - but keep the buildings. Not desirable. Plus, it loses the flavor; its your Directorate in CHOAM that is giving a commercial bonus to your income; your influence in CHOAM helps get you preferntial trade terms.

b. Sorry, but I still think Slig -2 health from the temple is a clumsy implementation

My design here didn't put it on the temple; it put it on a "Tleilaxu population" building.
The "Tlexilaxu population" is a dummy building, that cannot be constructed; instead, it is provided in every Tleilaxu city by the Tleilaxu Palace Wonder (like how the Stone of Prophecy wonder provides a monument in every city). It serves no purpose except to give +2 unhealth from slig and +20% gold from slig.
Like the "Demonic population" for Infernals in FFH.

But I am not fussed about this; I don't mind that much if Tleilaxu can get the health benefit from slig rather than a commercial benefit, its just a minor flavor thing [Tleilaxu see the sligs as filthy - religiously tainted - and so refuse to eat them, and sell them instead].
I'm happy to drop it if you prefer.