A mod-mod: "Dune Wars Reduced"

[davidlallen]

Ah yes, the old "UNITAI_ASSAULT_SEA on non-cargo unit" crash. It seems OK now, so I will release it. I have achieved the goals in the first post in the thread: I removed all the UU and UB, and re-arranged the tech tree.

The tech tree is by no means "perfect". On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is completely random as if done with a random number generator, and 10 is perfectly tuned, I think I have moved it up from a 3 to a 5.

I think the unitcombats and units are now fairly well laid out; see the spreadsheets in the previous post to see the details and how it compares to vanilla.

Please try this out and give me some feedback. The next step is to do a similar analysis of buildings, and trim them down also. Then we can *add* unique mechanics for each faction. The Harkonnen, Ordos and Bene Gesserit have some kind of unique mechanic, as described in the Dune Wars Concept tab in the civilopedia.

At this point, the "landing stage" mechanic is removed. All the unique bonuses are still there and unrestricted. So, for example, any player can get Sardaukar Cooperation by building a Contract. In particular Thinking Machines are helpful to get the Ixian units. I will make the Offworld Trade tech give either (a) your unique bonus if you have one, or (b) a picklist of the unplayed, unbuilt unique bonuses. Then each time you build a contract building, you can pick another one.

You can download it from this link (56 MB). Note: this is a full release, and the mod name is "dune reduced". So you can install it adjacent to your "dune wars" mod. This is version 1.4.

 

[keldath]

hey david, good work buddy,

i know it was painful to do.

i cant say i like everything in here, but i sure do glad you did this,

i will try to make the full version according to this, after you refine this a bit, i think we can have 2 version for players,
like rise of man have mega pack and regular pack.

i will re built the dw to give it much more meaning, and less a mess, as i said, im gonna implement the unique tech tree modcomp, and i have a plan laid out.

great work dude.

 

[Deliverator]

Good work david, I think what is most needed is some solid playtesting before we make further refinements.

 

[Ahriman]

Quick comments from the spreadsheets; having thoptors and suspensors require the same strategic resource is a bad idea. Its bad enough not being able to get suspensors as naval units because you lack crystal anywhere near you, but when you can't even

I also dislike how the vehicles are still all 1 move. 1 move units really limits the strategic depth of warfare without transports in a mod with no roads; it makes effective fighting *all* about exploiting transport use, which the AI doesn't understand how to do. There are many 2 move infantry - these are faster than vehicles?
I see you thought the rover line was too similar to thopters?

It feels like scorpions have the same role as melee infantry; slow moving city attack. This was why I tried to make them into field-superiority fighters.
I'd also let most infantry units move onto desert wastes, at least within your own cultural borders.

Heavy carryall is strength 40???!? Transports should still be vulnerable, otherwise you aren't penalized for carting your army around in them even on land.

Will post more comments when I get a chance to playtest, its hard to tell much from just looking at the excel sheet.

 

[Ahriman]

Started playing.

AH01. Several xml errors on loading the mod.
AH02. Tech tree would obviously need to be simplified too; particularly in the late game. And religions reworked/simplified/cut (there should be fewer religions total).
AH03. All contracts available with no tech requirements.
AH04. Caladaanian wine appears to have no effect.
AH05. Windtraps still buildable outside cultural borders.
AH06. Workers can't build dew collectors on appropriate resources, even with the tech.
AH07. Contracts are too cheap. A luxury good that gives +2 happy in all cities the early game for little resource cost?
AH08. Should be limited to 1 contract per city to make it more difficult to just take them all, and contracts should be a world wonder; if 1 player gets the contract for X, they then get the monopoly on it to trade (I don't remember if this is currently true or not, just quit the game and can't be bothered loading it again).
I'd also really really prefer faction specific contracts (like sardaukar cooperation) to be only buildable by the appropriate faction.

 

[davidlallen]

Strategic Resources

I counted up the number of units requiring Strategic Resources and compared it to vanilla using the first sheet.

In vanilla, there are four SR: horse, copper/iron (counting them together for simplicity), oil, uranium. 40% of the units require no SR, 40% require one SR, and 20% require two SR. Furthermore there is a nice crossover at tech 10, we switch over from horse/copper/iron to oil/uranium.

In DWR, there are five SR: crystal, nitrates, iron, diamonds, stravidium. For right now I have ignored the effect of Unique Resources. 20% of the units require no SR, 60% require one, 20% require two. Except for stravidium there is no nice crossover.

So I agree the distribution of SR requirements needs some tuning. I like Deliverator's suggestion of nitrates for explosives, crystal for suspensors, diamonds for lasers, and stravidium for heavy armor. But there should be fewer units with the requirement, and a more distinct crossover at tech 10.

Unit feedback

The three infantry who have move 2 are all desert fighters, including the Fedaykin. The carryalls are defensive only, but I can decrease the strength of the heavy one. There were only two roller units left, not enough for a whole class, and I think thopters are more "Dunish" than rollers.

Good suggestion to differentiate the scorpions. I will bump up all the scorpions to move 2 and remove the city attack bonus.

I believe that the AI does use transport correctly, as long as we use the exact implementation we have -- the transports are DOMAIN_SEA with bCanMoveAllTerrain and our customized sdk changes. So the AI should use them as well as it uses ocean transport in a vanilla archipelago game. Hopefully that is good enough for now.

 

[davidlallen]

Started playing.

AH01. Several xml errors on loading the mod.

Thank you for using numbering! Please let me know the details of the errors; I do not get any errors upon loading, xml or otherwise.

AH03. All contracts available with no tech requirements.
AH07. Contracts are too cheap. A luxury good that gives +2 happy in all cities the early game for little resource cost?
AH08. Should be limited to 1 contract per city to make it more difficult to just take them all, and contracts should be a world wonder

Yes, the contract system is not yet in place. I pointed that out in this thread 5 posts back. See the offworld trade thread for my current proposal.

AH04. Caladaanian wine appears to have no effect.
AH05. Windtraps still buildable outside cultural borders.
AH06. Workers can't build dew collectors on appropriate resources, even with the tech.

I am surprised by AH06, but I agree AH04 and AH05 are bugs.

 

[Ahriman]

AH01
XML Load Error:
Failed Loading XML file xml\text\dunewarstext.xml [.\FXml.cpp:133]
Error parsing XML File
File: xml\text\dunewarstext.xml
Reason: End tax 'English' does not match the start tag 'Text'
Line: 9151, 3
Source: </English>


Load XMl call failed for xml\text\dunewarstext.xml
Current XML file is:
xml\text\jimprovementlimit_actions_civ4gametextinfos.xml

Save attached if you want to verify AH06.

 

[Ahriman]

AH09
I strongly suggest having some of the lower level strategic resource requirements be 'builds 50% faster with X' (and double hammer costs) rather than "requires X".
This can be particularly true for units with 2 resource requirements: builds 25% faster with X, builds 25% faster with Y.

Its fine for high end specialist units to require resources, but not the early game so much.

If you don't have a crystal resource, it can be much more expensive to build that suspensor transport, but you shouldn't be locked out of naval units.

AH10 I think desert buggy type things (quads, trikes, various wheeled vehicles) are very Dunish.

AH11a
The problem with the ATV transports and 1 move units is this; as a human player, I can load up a strike force on one turn and move the transport, and then on the next turn move my transport right next to the enemy force and unload them, and then the units can attack that turn. The AI doesnt' know how to do this.

It makes my army massively more potent than the enemies; basically with a bit of micro I can make all my units have 4-5 movement points to the enemies 1. I can also unload an infantry unit, attack with it, then load it back into the transport and move the transport away.

The problem is amplified by the lack of roads; in vanilla, even 1-move units can eventually move 3-4 tiles within friendly territory, which gives a big advantage to the defender. As it is, the AI is pretty terrible at defending its territory, because when I threaten one of its cities, it is way too slow to be able to bring extra units in to reinforce, and they also tend to trickle in 1 by 1 because of slow movement so I can easily pick them off.
The only AI threat are hovers.

So the ways to mitigate or fix this are:
a) Have more 2 move units, or units with double moves in terrain type X (there is a cool APC promotion in Planetfall for infantry which gives double moves in flat terrain), so the movement advantage from exploiting transports is less significant.
b) Have unloading a transport remove all movement points from the units unloaded.
c) Put roads back at a suitably advanced tech. Even planetfall (which has no roads) eventually has magtubes, and gives infantry movement bonuses next to rivers or on coastlines.

I guess my point is, combat doesn't work terribly well in the mod atm, because the combat AI isn't good at thinking in the environment with non-standard mechanics (no own-territory movement advantage, very limited movement without transports).

 

[davidlallen]

I am surprised by AH06, but I agree it is a bug. In fact it is a major bug affecting the amount of water you can generate. I carefully renamed all the techs and units, causing keldath some grief, but I never renamed improvements. So I deleted the worker "build camp" order after deleting hawks and hares. But the "build camp" order is actually for dew collectors.

Are you comfortable to edit xml files? Please edit assets/xml/units/civ4unitinfos.xml and search for BUILD_WINDTRAP. It appears in two places, once for the worker unit and once for the slave unit. In each place, add the build camp order (four lines) as shown:

				<Build>
					<BuildType>BUILD_WINDTRAP</BuildType>
					<bBuild>1</bBuild>
				</Build>

				<Build>
					<BuildType>BUILD_CAMP</BuildType>
					<bBuild>1</bBuild>
				</Build>

 

[davidlallen]

I strongly suggest having some of the lower level strategic resource requirements be 'builds 50% faster with X'

I think there are two solutions; (1) more units which don't need any SR, and (2) higher map density of the remaining SR. For example, I can remove the Iron Ore requirement (melee units) and ensure that crystal appears in 100% of the starting player BFCs.

The problem with the ATV transports and 1 move units is this [...]

Thanks for giving the details. I agree that the AI should also be able to do what you describe, and I am disappointed it cannot. How do the equivalent things work in Planetfall with the dropship? We have shared this code from Maniac; maybe he found a solution or we missed sharing part of his code. Improving this will require SDK changes.

Also, does the airlift ability on the starport help? Can we do more with that?

 

[davidlallen]

AH01
XML Load Error:
Failed Loading XML file xml\text\dunewarstext.xml [.\FXml.cpp:133]
Error parsing XML File
File: xml\text\dunewarstext.xml
Reason: End tax 'English' does not match the start tag 'Text'
Line: 9151, 3
Source: </English>

Bad developer, no biscuit. I put in the tech quotes from Sword Of Justice and "assumed" that my script would clone all the languages correctly. Please replace assets/xml/text/DuneWarsText.xml with the attached.

Looks like I will be putting out a 1.4.1 today with a number of small fixes. Thank you for your patience in finding/reporting all these.

 

[Ahriman]

I think there are two solutions; (1) more units which don't need any SR, and (2) higher map density of the remaining SR. For example, I can remove the Iron Ore requirement (melee units) and ensure that crystal appears in 100% of the starting player BFCs.

Yes, these would help too. I guess I just never really like the implementation (even in vanilla) of the all-or-nothing nature of strategic resources - hence my prefernce for builds-faster-with-X. In vanilla at least these change over time; copper and horses are great early game, but much less important later, when oil becomes crucial.
Whereas here you *always* need crystals.

Thanks for giving the details.

Another trick; load up a big move transport with units. Move onto enemy tile; unload first unit, pillage, load it back up. Move transport onto second tile, unload second unit, pillage, load it back up. etc.

Spaceports definitely help somewhat, but not enough, even for city defense. In vanilla and many mods you really do have to hammer down the defensive fortifications before attacking, but in this mod the city attack units mostly ignore the city defenses entirely, so its pretty easy to blitz cities in a single turn or two, so they can only airlift one more unit in.
Spaceports also don't help with protecting against mass pillage.

I don't *think* Maniac got Dropship AI to be amazingly intelligent (haven't played PFall much for a while - I started playing this cool Dune mod), but this is much less important in PFall than here since:
a) attacking enemy territory is much more difficult because of the bunker improvements that can bombard in a 2-tile radius, and the free bunkers in city when you build city walls
b) several units (armor, hovertanks, locusts, etc.) that are 3 moves or more, or paratroopers, or get double moves in fungus
c) much more concentrated starting point (all the civs start pretty close togther, so its a much shorter walk to get to an enemy to fight a war with them)
d) faster movement along rivers and coastlines (at least in friendly territory).

But better AI isn't even the answer; its pretty lame if all the combat tactics revolve around how to abuse transports.
There's nothing about the Dune universe that particularly screams "transport units" as the central strategic asset. Well, interplanetary transports, maybe.

Are you comfortable to edit xml files?

You ask me of all people this?

I'll wait for the patch.

 

[davidlallen]

Are you comfortable to edit xml files?

You ask me of all people this? I'll wait for the patch.

I can easily accept that you don't want to get into making your own changes and experimenting. But, you obviously type email fine. It cannot be so hard to paste four lines into an xml file. I am afraid you are about to complain about how hard it is to find water because you cannot build dew collectors, and I am hoping you could make this change to avoid running into this problem. I have already made a dozen other changes in unitinfos. So I cannot conveniently create and test a file with just this one change.

 

[Deliverator]

I think Ahriman feels about XML editing the way you feel about SDK.

 

[davidlallen]

I think Ahriman feels about XML editing the way you feel about SDK.

I see your but Notepad does not take days of setup and monkeying with makefiles to get it working.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't have an xml editor installed. I realize its not that hard, but its a personal commitment device to prevent me from spending time modding that I don't have. Sorry for the inconvenience....

I think I'm smart enough to realize that water yields without dew collectors are obviously less, and not to start complaining about that.

 

[keldath]

so...nobody cares of the full version no more?

 

[Deliverator]

@Ahriman: I think the work you are putting into playtesting and feedback is enormously valuable. Modding is certainly addictive, so I understand your position.

@david: With regards to the SDK, I'm fine that you don't want to touch it. I may try myself at some point, if I get interested enough. Apparently, if you use CodeBlocks then you don't need a makefile, but the setup still looks pretty complicated.

 

[davidlallen]

I don't have an xml editor installed.

You do know that XML is plain text, right? I use a plain text editor. You do not even need to worry about indenting or white space or anything. (Python is trickier from that standpoint.)