1.5 Feedback

[Cyanide]

Thanks for the feedback! Glad you're enjoying the mod.

The groundwater resource doesn't actually do anything. It is a remnant of an old system that we should probably remove. There is no reason to ever build a city on a groundwater resource.

This buildings are being changed, and they're being tied into the Technocracy religion. And they won't cause unhappiness outside their own city.

Oh, allright then ^^.

This is an interesting point that I hadn't thought about. I've never really used the spies much.
There are lots of ideas we had for tweaking spy missions (my two favorite ideas are having the BeneG spy have an espionage mission that works like an Influence-Driven-War pillage to weaken cultural influence on a tile, and a Sabotage mission for Ordos that damages vehicles in a tile), but espionage is hard to change codewise and get the AI to use well.
We would have to think about whether the AI can sensibly use transports with spies, or whether it uses spies amphibiously at all. Or maybe spies should get desert movement.

Spies with desert movement would be strange : they aren't supposed to be able to walk in the desert without attracting the worm (for non-fremen civs). Could spies "bombard" their spy actions with a 1 or 2 range ? (well, must be hard to spend espionnage points that way, never seen that in any mod).

I don't see sabotaging harvester improvements as being very critical, particularly when they're such transient temporary things in the mod, with low build times.

My view of the game was : Spice > bulbs > tech lead > win the war. Slow down your ennemy's research can be critical, AND it's the main technique used in the books (very few real battle, a lot of guerilla, sabottage of harvesters : see Paul vs Harkonnens or Leto II vs Aalia).

I don't really see how that would work, logically or codewise. Is the infiltrator bribing the troops there?

Well, er... the outpost is just an outpost, right ? You don't have to leave permanent troops here to keep your cultural domination on the (small) area. Actually I won a few game on duel maps (3-4 IA), with only 3-4 cities, and many outposts to harvest spice and limit the IA land. I thought it was weird that the IA did not tried to do anything against that. My capital is far away, there is not always troops around. It should not be hard to take possession of an empty outpost.

No easy fix for this I think. Maybe captured slaves should appear in the capital of the civ who generates them, or in the nearest city if the civ that generates them, rather than the tile they're captured on?
The main AI improvement for this mod has been better transport use and amphibious invasions.

The IA is not into oversea warfare, I understand that must not be an easy thing...

If the slaves appeared in the capital they would maybe be too powerfull, esp in the future if they can be used to give hammers to production (seen somewhere on this forum, still planed ?). A Harkonnen ends a war with dozens of slaves...

Is it possible to disband automatically any slave that ends his turn out of cultural border AND without a military unit on the same square ? Before the IA round of course. They're not that stupid.

EDIT :

Yes, I'm a lurker on civfan for some time ^^. I am a Civ player for a long time (I spent many of my youth nights on Civ I), but only tryed mods recently as I used to play Vanilla until very recently when I got BTW (yeah, I'm late ^^).

The groundwater is a tradable ressource. It does nothing ?

Interesting point. When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

units are teleported at the closest tile out of your ennemy borders, neutral, yours or someone who grants you open borders. You can cross water or anything like that.
By the way, you DO generate slaves by fighting a thopter on the sea, the next round it is teleported to the closest tile (not necessary yours) (weird, but there is no "drowning").

Excellent point. I had not thought of that. I'll look into how to accomplish it. In other mods, or in vanilla, are there events which allow you to choose some buildings to destroy?

"Random" events that take place ONLY if you have a given building exist. Add a high probability and the player should be prompted next round after the conquest, or at least have good odds to have the event on day or another. Hm, I don't know how to prevent it to happen if YOU built the Ixian Building.

 

[Ahriman]

Excellent point. I had not thought of that. I'll look into how to accomplish it. In other mods, or in vanilla, are there events which allow you to choose some buildings to destroy?

It would be easy enough to set the Technocracy factories (and all of the religious buildings really) to auto-destroy on city capture.

I was thinking of making this available to spies, at a certain tech level.

I think the problem is more likely to be an AI one rather than anything else. Do we know anything much about the espionage AI?

When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

I think you're missing the point.
The problem is, when the Harkonnen are at war, they are constantly generating a bunch of slave units. The problem with these is that the AI has a fixation with attacking and capturing every slave/worker unit it can when they are left undefended and in range of their units. This tends to pull the AI's units out of position, and into a location where they can easily be killed. Which generates another slave....

So its an easy way for a human player to bait the AI into wasting all its units, without actually losing units yourself.

Its nothing to do with peacetime displacement, its just a weakness in the target priority of the AI.

Like I said, I think the best solutions are to have the generated slaves appear back in hope territory, not on the battlefield.

There is the Groundwater bonus that you dig wells on, there was the old old Water resource but I think that's been gone for a while...

Its not actually gone. There is a groundwater resource that isn't provided provided by the well improvement, but still shows up when a well is built directly on top of the groundwater feature (like how building a city on other resources gives them to you).
You see the AI sometimes with 1-2 groundwater resources available for traide in the diplomacy screen. The resources have no effect on anything, but they're still there.

We don't really have a Privateer equivalent - it's a good point. Perhaps some stealth units with Hidden Nationality would be appropriate.

I think he's arguing for units like Caravels, transports who can enter enemy territory without open borders. They don't need to be attack/combat units.

There also need to be some ways of spotting invisible units - it was a particular problem with the Ordos Saboteur unit, who was an invisible combat unit, and could easily roam through your empire at will killing all your workers, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. I recommend giving "spots invisible units in adjacent tiles" to all thopter units, to spies and to Reverend Mothers.

 

[Ahriman]

Slow down your ennemy's research can be critical

But given how easily a destroyed harvester improvement can be rebuilt, the effect is trivial, so its not really worth a spy mission. Each individual spice resource is still only contributing a handful of commerce.

You don't have to leave permanent troops here to keep your cultural domination on the (small) area.

Well, my impression was than an outpost absolutely has a small permanent garrison of soldiers.

thought it was weird that the IA did not tried to do anything against that.

Well, this is a problem with the vanilla AI, it doesn't really pillage much. The AI attacks cities, it doesn't really perform raids.

It should not be hard to take possession of an empty outpost.

Its not; if you're at war, just pillage it. Buy why should spies be able to do this?

If the slaves appeared in the capital they would maybe be too powerfull

I don't see that they would be too powerful. All they can do is build one improvement, and then they die (worked to death). Getting lots of slaves is supposed to be a powerful effect; its the main Harkonnen mechanic. Every faction should have a powerful mechanic.

Is it possible to disband automatically any slave that ends his turn out of cultural border AND without a military unit on the same square ?

The AI wouldn't understand this at all. It captures a slave when raiding, and sends the slave back home... oops, he's unescorted, he gets disbanded.
And an individual slave isn't worth escorting. All it can do is build 1 improvement.

Teleporting them out of the conflict zone is more likely to work IMO.

 

[Cyanide]

But given how easily a destroyed harvester improvement can be rebuilt, the effect is trivial, so its not really worth a spy mission. Each individual spice resource is still only contributing a handful of commerce.

I disagree with that. Just keep sending spies to an ennemy and he WILL fall behind. Well it worked for me, destroying his cottages, and mines first then harvester. I usually play dual map, so you have less Spice overall : maybe it's not working on bigger maps. I'll try a normal size next time.

Well, my impression was than an outpost absolutely has a small permanent garrison of soldiers.

Ok, I had not the same feeling about outpost.
I thought it was rather like supplies caches. Like when Leto asks Liet the autorisation to use the supplies outposts that are under his guard as an imperial ecologist (but actually serve the terraforming process). Some water, weapons, in a good hidden spot for observation, maybe a guardian or two, like scouts, but no real military power by itself. If it's different in your mind, np.

 

[Ahriman]

Well it worked for me, destroying his cottages, and mines first then harvester

Destroying cottages and mines can be effective; cottages take a long time to regrow, and advanced mines and turbines take many turns to rebuild.
But harvesters build in only 3 turns, so destroying them is easily remedied.

The mod also isn't really designed to be balanced for duel sized maps, its aimed at small-medium size.

If it's different in your mind

My perception is that these are a fort (this is originally what they were called). Hence the large defensive bonus, and their ability to project influence into the surrounding area.
I hadn't thought about them being a supply dump, though I suppose that would also make some sense.

 

[davidlallen]

When you make peace with somebody, the game pushes all your units to the closest point outside his borders. I am not sure what happens when you make peace with somebody, who is on an island, and your units don't have boats available. Does the game drown them? It may be reasonable to push the slave outside borders even if they drown. Or maybe you never generate slaves when inside their own territory. What do you think?

I think you're missing the point.
The problem is, when the Harkonnen are at war, they are constantly generating a bunch of slave units. The problem with these is that the AI has a fixation with attacking and capturing every slave/worker unit it can when they are left undefended and in range of their units. This tends to pull the AI's units out of position, and into a location where they can easily be killed. Which generates another slave....

I am not missing the point, I am proposing a solution. There is some code already which pushes a unit outside cultural borders. It is executed when you make peace. I am proposing that when you capture a slave inside an enemy's cultural border, the same code should be executed on the slave to push it outside cultural borders.

 

[Ahriman]

I am proposing that when you capture a slave inside an enemy's cultural border, the same code should be executed on the slave to push it outside cultural borders.

Ah! Then I missed the point. That seems reasonable, but so does putting the slaves into a city.

Units don't drown when peace is declared, they get pushed to the closest legitimate land tile, either in your own territory, in neutral territory or in territory of another player with whom you have open borders.
It doesn't care about whether the tiles are connected by land or not.

 

[davidlallen]

Ah! Then I missed the point. That seems reasonable, but so does putting the slaves into a city.

From the ""reality"" standpoint I can justify pushing slaves outside the border. I find it harder to justify teleporting the unit across the map to the capitol, or even the nearest friendly city. Also if the unit appears somewhere else, not immediately on the screen, the user may not discover it until next turn. They may be confused about where the unit came from.

The other option I proposed was that if a Harkonnen attacks a unit in that unit's home territory and wins, then no slave would be created. You can imagine the enemy soldiers vanishing into friendly territory instead of standing around to be enslaved. Which do you think is better?

 

[Ahriman]

Also if the unit appears somewhere else, not immediately on the screen, the user may not discover it until next turn. They may be confused about where the unit came from.

I don't think pushing outside borders is any less confusing than pushing into a the nearest city, and pushing into a city makes the ability much more useful particularly for inter-island assaults. The slaves aren't very useful if the AI isn't good at transporting them somewhere useful after creating them. The slaves need to be useful. Pushing them outside borders can easily end up putting them into really weird places where they can get stuck (eg in a tile on an enemy island that isn't covered by their culture, that could even be surrounded by enemy culture), or won't feasibly make it back to friendly territory.

And pushing into the capital means the player can easily find them.

Plus, with their 1 move rate, it would take them forever to walk home on many maps.

You can imagine the enemy soldiers vanishing into friendly territory instead of standing around to be enslaved.

This doesn't make sense to me. Soldiers are captured in wartime all the time. The only differnce is, normally they just go into POW camps, whereas the Harkonnen enslave them and put them to work. Half the point of the ability is to be able to launch offensive slave raids, I see no reason why the ability shouldn't work in enemy territory.

If the soldiers could escape enslavement, then they could escape being destroyed as well, and withdraw.

Besides, its likely to be even easier to rationalize capturing slaves in the Dune universe than many other SF settings, because in Dune the combat is mostly very close range or melee, because of shields.

 

[davidlallen]

I don't think pushing outside borders is any less confusing than pushing into a the nearest city.

I think we will get questions like, "How did this free unit appear in my city?". I think it is realistic to need transport for the captured slaves, or use them locally to where they were captured.

If I can figure out how the "peace push" works I will try using it. If I can't figure it out, or if players try that and don't like it, then I will try teleporting them to the nearest friendly city.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think teleporting to nearest city will be much more useful than to the capital. After all, the nearest city should be the one most recently captured (and presumably pillaged), so your new slaves can just rebuild them with their lives.

Can I suggest a "food" benefit to spice? Right now, there are many other ways to get gold, so spice is not really absolutely necessary. Spice is supposed to prolong life also, so why not make it synergistic with water to make it more valuable? E.g. 3 spices equals 1 water. This will also make Arrakis Paradise a more daunting civic.

 

[Ahriman]

I think we will get questions like, "How did this free unit appear in my city?".

Then create a help text. I agree its not ideal, but then nothing is.

I think it is realistic to need transport for the captured slaves, or use them locally to where they were captured.

I don't think this is a good idea when the AI is bad at transports. Remember that the AI will never amphibiously transport worker units. This is why we made workers able to cross desert.
As an alternative; bump slaves up to 2 moves, and let them cross desert tiles, just like normal workers.
Then I would be fine with just bumping them out of culture, rather than to a city.

Spice is supposed to prolong life also, so why not make it synergistic with water to make it more valuable? E.g. 3 spices equals 1 water.

This doesn't make much sense. Spice is a geriatric drug, and extends the life of the tiny handful of the very rich who can afford large doses of it, but it doesn't let you survive without water, and there is never enough of it to have a significant impact on the lives of the general population.

It would also weaken the interesting differentiation between Paradise and Spice economy. As it is, one is for population growth, the other for commerce yield.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think the Atreides are overpowered at start. Having a worker at start makes them grow much quicker than the other civs. 1 worker does not equal 2 scouts (because you can't grow when you build workers). Maybe get rid of their starting soldier (since you're going to get free soldiers anyway).

 

[AnotherPacifist]

OK, I see the difference between Spice and Paradise. But then, for symmetry, shouldn't there be a spice "victory"? E.g. control 30% of all the spice on Arrakis AND run Spice as a civic, after you reach a certain tech (to avoid the victory condition triggering too early). Sure, spice gets depleted and some cannot be reached (e.g. spice islands in the desert), but surely conquest of other people's spice will count?

 

[Ahriman]

We're thinking some kind of spice related/economic victory.

I agree that Atreides shouldn't get a free worker to start, and I still really hate the whole free unit thing (it makes them a quantity-not-quality army, which is the opposite of what they should be).

 

[Slvynn]

It seems strange but Noone devlaring war in my game. Some civil wars happening, very odd.
So far i like game veeeeery much, just hope ai ill be nasty boy and attack at least.

Also seems that AI not prioritizes some important wonders, like lib.

 

[Ahriman]

*Civil* wars? That shouldn't be happening, not in any of the latest versions since most of Revolutions was deactivated.

Depending on which version you're using, you may not be getting wars because diplomatic relations are too high because everyone is the same religion. I find a fair number of wars though at higher difficulty levels.

As for Wonders; depends what difficulty level you're playing. I play at Emperor, and hardly ever manage to build any wonders. The library I can sometimes get by prioritizing education early.

Wonders are also going to get a total rework, but we don't really have a lot of great ideas for wonders or effects of them at the moment. The existing wonders are all just renamed vanilla wonders.

 

[davidlallen]

Thanks for the feedback! Are you playing version 1.5.4? In this version, we have partially introduced a new religion system. In this system, just about everybody converts to the same religion. As a result, everybody likes each other. Do you see that in your diplomacy screen? In the next release, 1.5.5, which may come this weekend, the religion system may have more diversity.

 

[Slvynn]

Yes i playing 1.5.4 version. Noone wants to attack me, and civil wars all the time. They have civil wars and i have some popups with it. I dont like them, but i do like new religions , also i playing always with Choose religion > please can you give religion preference to leaders?, lets say Corrino will found Imperial if they tech religion dicovery first wit hthis option. Because playing as Tleilaxu and seeing that someone other found Tleilaxu Supermacy is kinda odd.

Another bug i found when playing as Corringo, that When i teched Mauler , i got regular Master Guardsmen, and not my UU Militia.

Also i found its runni9ng Revolution Mod (civil wars?) by default - But i dont know how to disable it.

 

[Ahriman]

Its strange that Revolutions and civil wars are still activated, I thought they had been deactivated somehow. You can do this manually by going into your ini file Documents/My Games/Beyond the Sword/CivilizationIV, open the file, go down to game options, eg

; Game Options
GameOptions = biglongnumber

then make sure that all every digit of the biglongnumber is 0 - or at least that the last 6 digits or so are 0. Then save the file.

The Revolution mod will still run (we use some features of it, like influence-driven war), but the civil wars type features will be disabled.

We won't have Choose religions because the religions are going to be made very different, with lots of unique features and spread mechanics. These mechanics will be influenced by where in the tech tree they go, so for example it would be too powerful to be able to choose Quizarate as an early game religion.
Also, Tleilaxu will start with their religion, and no-one else will be able to adopt it.

As for Corrino not getting UUs.... thats very strange. I wonder if an updated UU file was in one of the intermediate patches somewhere and not included in 1.5.4?