Recent content by suchomimus

Hullo? A whole year goes by without another comment?

The Collector is an essential unit in the novel. It needs a little adaptation to work it into the mod. It's a huge tractor sort of thing that sifts the Spice out of the sand. It can move on its own and drive to the Spice Warehouse with its load, or a Carrier can air-lift it, which is good if...

Once you own some Spice you can start to build some nifty units. Fremen can always build Thumpers. The Wind-Thumper needs no Spice to build, it comes with discovery of Stillsuits (level 3 on the Fremen branch, free to them). Other civ's can build the Spice-Thumper (level 1 in branch for...

But I was talking about Spice. You've seen that your first acquisition will be costly. You may need to send many settlers into the D-D, only to watch them get eaten. Building a city right on top of a Spice-blow is probably dumb. There's likely a Worm right next to the Spice square, if not...

Worms usually sit quietly in the deep desert, enjoying the dry heat. Several things draw their attention, though. Spice does. A new upwelling of Spice may draw in nearby Worms, so harvest with caution. Machines draw them, too, because the noise and metal and electro-magnetics irritate the...

One of the tricky things about adapting these novels to a Civ3 mod will be the acquisition and management of Spice (melange). {{The variations of Spice used for special occassions in the novels will become 'Wonders" in the mod.}} Spice really should be both a strategic and a Luxury resource...

The Harkonnen get two free techs down their branch [which are unrewarding to other factions] and the first tech they complete will give them a very hard unit, valued about 3,4,1. Another tech or two will give them a 3,4,2 unit. Thus they will be building a tough and punishing armed force, but...

My mental visualization of the tech-tree is getting more complex. Muad-dibb also requires some techs from the Bene-gesserit. Thus, there are three branches that need to be developed to lead to build "him". It will be tricky to get the four or five needed B-g techs through trades without...

An "Expert" question: Can a resource be re-spawned in a random square after one visible source is depleted? I have read of Iron and such "appearing" anew after a source is used up, even appearing in the same square that it had just disappeared from. Does each location for a resource need to...

The Moisture Collector will not replace "Aqueduct", which will still be in a 'neutral' branch of the TechTree. Down the Fremen branch you can develope "giver hooks", "thumpers", etc. . Atreides will start with techs that give "diplomatic" advantages, which can be used to deflect aggression...

(continuing) - - Going back to that tech the fremen already have. Let's call the tech "Still-suit". It will be the third tech in the "Fremen" branch of the tech tree, and will give the new unit of "Stillsuiter", a tough early unit. The Fremen already have it, of course. It easily avoids...

After ruminating on the other suggestions here, I have an idea for the tech-tree coalescing. As before, all Techs are within one Era. The civ-specificity would be served by each civ startting out with one or several early techs. for example, Fremen would start out with three pre-collector...

What a great idea! The games created so far based on Dune have been shallow disappointments when compared to the novels. I don't expect much from a 22KB mod, but this should be a nice starting point. Civ3 has the complexity to allow a deep and involving Dune-mod. Another good reason for me to...

It might also be a good idea to make a backup of all the affected files and folders to a Zip file (would likely be huge) or burnt to a CDR/RW. Then if your OS dies (sure, that ~never~ happens in OSX or XP) or Civ3 get bit-rot, you can put back all the customized jobbies and continue to play...

The only thing more bizarre would be to have two (or more) Persia's spawned (without being set up that way or hacked). Becka, (or is it Thunderfall?) the only thing you left out is a saved game for the rest of us to download. I'd be curious to see how things played out after that point...