1.4.8 feedback

[Ahriman]

DV1 - Polar Ice needs to be added to a Route Enabling technology - see attached. (Unless it is and I haven't got the tech yet...)

Good call, probably just needs the polar terrain (and polar desert waste?) to be added to the Dune topography tech (or desert trade, or water transportation).

 

[davidlallen]

AH107. How is the Bene Tl cloned unit thing supposed to be working? I didn't see any signs of it working.

Please see the dune wars concepts tab of the dune-o-pedia, unique abilities section. Do you have an axlotl tank built?

DV1 - Polar Ice needs to be added to a Route Enabling technology

Away from game at the moment, but do you have the tech for deep desert trade? That is, can you hook up a resource on another archipelago?

 

[Ahriman]

Do you have an axlotl tank built?

Nope, didn't realize it needed a building. I'll test it later then.

Away from game at the moment, but do you have the tech for deep desert trade? That is, can you hook up a resource on another archipelago?

From the screenshot he shouldn't need deep desert trade; all she should need is polar and polar desert waste.

 

[Deliverator]

DV1 - Yes, I had Dune Topography for trade on Deep Desert.

AH96
The AI is doing a *lousy* job of offshore colonization. Even after hundreds and hundreds of turns they still won't colonize other islands.

This is my experience too. We seem to have taken a step backward somehow.

AI aggressiveness also probably needs to be toned up some; the AI isn't starting many wars, even when it has much bigger armies (because it can buy the soldiers it needs with all its gold from the unlimited troop supply of off-world trade).

Agreed, it's more like Dune Tea Party than Dune Wars right now. It seems I can expand a huge amount and the AI just threatens me without following through and declaring war. I am the instigator of most conflicts. I've been thinking we should go through the exercise Planentfall went through giving their leaders more personality. Making everyone somewhat more aggresive can be part of this. I suppose the proposed new religion design will have a effect too. I'd like to see us implement civ attitude modifiers along the lines of this post which would make war more likely as well.

 

[koma13]

The AI is doing a *lousy* job of offshore colonization. Even after hundreds and hundreds of turns they still won't colonize other islands.

This have to be something we did recently. I remember when I released my early unit patch (with the awesome scout thopter!) I made sure AI settle the whole map. There was even some complaint about AI settling too much.
Not sure what happened... the last person seen working on transports was David....

 

[Deliverator]

On the subject of AI Declarations of War, this post analyzing a Planetfall game was interesting to read. I wonder if the stuff about Area AIs is relevant to Dune Wars as well.

 

[davidlallen]

Not sure what happened... the last person seen working on transports was David....

When I released 1.4.7 and 1.4.8 I ran some autoplays, and I clearly saw *sometimes* that an AI would settle onto another archipelago. So I don't think the transport changes, or the total tech tree rewrite, are *preventing* settling.

It will be painful to figure out. I don't really understand what the AI does, even in vanilla archipelago. I suppose somebody could inspect a human player's growth compared to all the AI's. The technique I suggest would be to set the civilization ini file so that an autosave is created every 20 turns and an unlimited number can be kept; then just manually play for 200 turns, or however long it takes to be quite sure the human player is way far ahead. Then see what the AI players failed to do, and then step backwards through the autoplays to see what good decisions they failed to make, and then finally some "inspiration" would occur as to why.

Personally, I think the total rewrite of the tech tree is more likely to be the reason, rather than a few lines of changes in how units are loaded/unloaded, but it will take some work to figure out.

 

[Ahriman]

I think its hard to blame the tech tree changes since the AI won't settle even once it has all the early tech.

Possible fixes include:
a) Taking the crystals requirement away from hover transports (if they still have it)
b) Changing scout thopter AI to transport rather than scout, and change it so some civs start with scout thopter rather than hawk thopter
c) Adding ability of settlers to enter desert waste tiles (the mod used to have that a while back).
d) Making the suspensors tech a requirement for more of the midgame techs, or increase its AI weighting? (Only way I can see tech tree changes being relevant.)

 

[Gelvan]

For what it's worth my 2 cents: Playing warlord on a "standard" map (which I think is quite huge, but okay) I was excited to see that the AI IS really building Spice improvements - I'm not sure if the AI is "good" because I'm a lousy player (warlord IS my difficulty level) but to see it using the idea of this mod (the spice must flow), made me happy. Good job! the AI's had (after two hours of playing) around 5 bases each, only the Atreides had only 2 (they lost one to the smugglers). For me (the human) it was a bit "overwhelming" in the beginning, because there were SO many tech options, but after I got 2 settlers for free (goody hut), it was easier. next time I start on a small world with 6-7 AI's to see if war "works" better. one minor critique: the wind mill (building) gives +1 water, but only if you have a late game tech. Maybe this should be written somewhere ("gives +1 with tech xy"). Aside of that I really like that in the civilopaedia there is either a text or a "this is a stub article" - this is much better, than the "TXT_UNIT_..." which is seen in other mods. Oh one other thing: the sound. Did I do something wrong? in the middle of the game (after "you reach another era") the renaissance music from vanilla is played (church songs) this is a bit annyoing. I suppose I made something wrong with the sound extra package? well after all: great mod, I really like it.

 

[Ahriman]

I recommend playing on Small archipelago maps with ~8-9 civs.

Which building do you mean by "windmill"? The Turbine? Or the Windtrap?
Windtrap gives water bonus right from the start, and then gets another +1 water from sandfarms.

 

[Deliverator]

Oh one other thing: the sound. Did I do something wrong? in the middle of the game (after "you reach another era") the renaissance music from vanilla is played (church songs) this is a bit annyoing. I suppose I made something wrong with the sound extra package?

If you install the Music Pack I created, you should have Dune music through all eras - apart from the religion spreading music which I'm going to change once we have implemented the new religion design. I'm hoping that this Music Pack with become replace the sound add on linked in the welcome thread.

 

[Gelvan]

Which building do you mean by "windmill"? The Turbine? Or the Windtrap?
Windtrap gives water bonus right from the start, and then gets another +1 water from sandfarms.

the building is called "city wind trap" - according to the civilopaedia, it doesn't give a bonus.

the Fremen got another building called "wind trap" (has another picture also), replacing the Qnat which gives +2 water +2 health.

the improvement wind trap works fine.

regarding the size - I think "small" is still quite big and 8-9 civ's would be a good recommendation (thanks).
I will try tiny with 6 civ's.

@Deliverator
thanks a lot for the link, I have not seen this, and used the one in the welcome thread.
I suppose it's excactly what I searched for.

 

[Ahriman]

Ah, you're playing quite an old version then. The city windtrap version no longer exists.

 

[Deliverator]

See this post for the links to install the latest version.

 

[Gelvan]

ah okay - this time I've read the welcome thread till the end, and now I've installed 1.4, patch 1.4.8, art patch, music patch and benegesserit.mp3.
Ready to go thanks a lot!

and btw. WOW! first look = great!

 

[davidlallen]

I compared the tech costs of DW vs vanilla. There is no huge difference, until you get near the top end of the tree. I have attached a spreadsheet which shows the average tech cost per tier. For both, it increases from tier to tier at about the same rate; there are several tiers where the DW increase is "lumpy", while the vanilla increase is always "smoother". Still, the average costs are similar.

I added a column which shows the cumulative cost; that is, if you researched every tech at each tier, how many total beakers you have spent. Again at the lower levels it matches closely; actually DW is usually ahead by a little.

The main place where there is a significant difference is at tier 16 and above; DW has only 7 techs while vanilla has 20. Since these are expensive techs, this changes the cumulative cost quite a lot.

In conclusion, I don't think we need to rebalance tech tree costs.

I do think we need to rebalance early water availability and reduce the total commerce available. Both of these will reduce the number of beakers available and effectively slow down the tech tree. This does not directly help with the perception of lack of expansion by the AI. More work is needed on these points.

 

[Ahriman]

I compared the tech costs of DW vs vanilla. There is no huge difference

There is however a huge difference in the potential economy size.
In Dune you have:
a) spice corp, which can easily be providing an extra 40 commerce+ or so in your capital, which gets multipled by all your boosters.
b) higher tile yields, particularly in the early game, and particularly of food yields from only a few tiles, which make specialist economies much easier to support
c) Bigger economy bonuses from civics, with either specialist economy (meritocracy and faufreluches) or cottage economy (private property + planned economy)
d) High bonus food yields from greenhouse and water refinery buildings.

So tech costs need to be higher than in vanilla to have a similar progression, with the higher commerce amounts.
And many people feel that vanilla tech progression goes a bit too fast, hence why many other mods like FFH have slower tech rates.

I think I would rather increase settler costs and reduce the bonuses from greenhouse and water silo than reducing the prevalence of water sources significantly, but I'd also be happy to leave tech costs for now and experiment with growth reductions instead.
We want a city in any given place (since the AI is bad at city placement and tends to fill up all land tiles with cities) to be at least moderately viable, so I think that changing bonus placement isn't the best way to go.

I'd also be fine with pushing Deep wells back later in the tech tree, which would also help slow early water.

What do you think about the viability of my suggestion in AH104?

 

[davidlallen]

I was not trying to say there is no problem, I was saying that among the possible suggestions, increasing the tech costs does not seem like the best solution.

I would much rather reduce the water benefit from groundwater and windtraps early, to make less water available and slow growth. If your early cities grow fast because there is plenty of water, then it doesn't feel like Dune.

For example, suppose we make the following changes:

* Decrease windtrap from +2 water to +1. You already get a +1 water for windtraps at Sand Farms tech, which is only tier 6, so I don't even think we need to add another bonus anywhere.
* Currently shallow well, deep well, aquabore give +3, +5, +7 water. We could reduce it to +2, +3, +4. Or even stronger, to +1, +2, +3 and give a +1 bonus somewhere deep in the tech tree.

 

[Ahriman]

* Decrease windtrap from +2 water to +1. You already get a +1 water for windtraps at Sand Farms tech, which is only tier 6, so I don't even think we need to add another bonus anywhere.
* Currently shallow well, deep well, aquabore give +3, +5, +7 water. We could reduce it to +2, +3, +4.

This is definitely worth trying. Or maybe +2/+3/+5.

 

[davidlallen]

AH100. Remove world is round bonus

Duplicate of AH23. Yes, you have requested it before, but it is not fixed. You can tell by either searching for the number in the release notes, or looking in the current issue spreadsheet.

AH93. The requirements for cultural border expansion are weird; quite different from vanilla.

I agree, but it is not clear how to fix completely. Somebody has added a lot of different game speeds, like about 10 different speeds. For each speed, and each city ring distance, you need a culture threshold, and it should scale nicely across all the speeds. For vanilla, normal speed, the thresholds are 10, 100, 500, 5000, 50000. For DW, normal speed, the thresholds are 23, 110, 331, 2856, 3556. So it takes only 3556 culture instead of 50000 to get radius 7. DW goes on to give radius 8-10 with 8561, 54610, 69610. These numbers seem really random. I suppose somebody had a program to generate the 10 different speeds and 10 different radius values. I can fix it for normal speed, but scaling it across all the speeds seems complicated.

Any thoughts on how we should fix this one? One obvious possibility is to just put back the vanilla XML file, which would give the vanilla speed choices and culture thresholds.

AH103. I suggest you significantly increase the time taken to clear salt, so that settling in a salt pan takes a long time to get a decent city, like settling in jungle does in vanilla.

In vanilla, it takes 4 turns for a worker to clear one square of jungle. For DW, the time required is the same. Should we make it take longer than jungle clearing?