A mod-mod: "Dune Wars Reduced"

[davidlallen]

the tech tree is too dense with units (cant believe im saying this...), what i mean is, that you need to have enough time to utelize al the units you have - look here, you have medium thoper, but you can barley build some and bang, two and the half techs later - you can build heavy thopters,

This is exactly what I mean by playtesting and tweaking. With all the UU in the way, we could never see this before. Please do compare the unit lifespans against vanilla before you make too many changes. The spreadsheet which I sent is very helpful for this; it shows the vanilla units against the DW units. Please note that there are fewer DWR units than vanilla, so it may be better to move around the techs, rather than deleting more units.

I think Ahrihman had a good suggestion for the scorpion units; they should be the mobile defense units to attack incoming assault stacks. So I took away their city attack bonus and made them move 2. We could take this unitclass a little further by adding one or two more units at the lower end of the tech tree, for example using some of the roller graphics which I deleted.

I don't plan to tweak units anymore, please go ahead. I am going to focus on buildings, and the unique abilities of the civs.

 

[davidlallen]

I still think it will take more than just one unique ability per faction to make them play differently. It needs to be a combination of functional and flavourful things - all working together. I wouldn't say that the existing abilities for Harkonnen, Ordos and BG really make them that distinctive.

I agree we are not done yet. I wish I could go faster. I hope we will get there.

 

[keldath]

ok great david,

ill see how i can move arround the units.

i know the units in the vanilla...i dont think they did such a good job

ahriram said something on compensating for lack of roads - maybe adding some move,ment promotions ?

 

[davidlallen]

I think the particular problem is lack of units which can defend cities. I think the scorpion units can grow into this. Also, he suggested that Planetfall has some defensive bombardment units, using ranged attack. Maybe one or two more units in the maula family, which are vulnerable outside cities but can bombard attackers?

 

[cephalo]

Personally, I think you guys should eliminate all UU's and UB's, make sure the mod is fun, and then start discussing what UU's and UB's can be added without destroying the fun you created.

Otherwise, I think you'll end up chasing your tails trying to find the fun through all this complexity. I love complexity in the games I play, but until you have found the fun, complexity is really standing in the way of your development process.

I was serious in my previous post. Atreides vs. Harkonnen, make it fun. Then start adding your 'wouldn't it be fun if..'s back in until things start to get ugly. Then stop!

 

[davidlallen]

I think starting with *two* civs is a little small. But I agree with you in spirit.

 

[Ahriman]

If it feels "less" than the previous, I am fine with that. Do you find that it limits your city growth excessively?

Yes, its hard to get cities above size 8-10.

i feel like i somewhat loosing grip here, and dune wars is turning into dune reduced.

I don't think we're abandoning your mod, I think we're toying with some stuff and a different design method. I don't think that any of us intend for factions to not have UUs, but its easier to get the core units design working better without the UUs there, and then add them back in.

I think the point of this modmod isn't just to make the mod small, but to cut out a lot of the excess stuff and then build back in some of the stuff that really worked.

Its not that there shouldn't be multiple UUs and UBs for factions - there definitely should be, faction differentiation is key - but these can be built in once the general unit roster and tech placement is tweaked.

I think the particular problem is lack of units which can defend cities. I think the scorpion units can grow into this. Also, he suggested that Planetfall has some defensive bombardment units, using ranged attack. Maybe one or two more units in the maula family, which are vulnerable outside cities but can bombard attackers?

Scorpion units are tanks; they should not be good city defenders. Instead there should be a class of *decent* city defender units, that stay decent at the high end.

I don't think long-range bombardment makes sense fluff-wise in the Dune universe.
a) Too easy to block with shields
b) Dune is about up-close-and-dirty melee, not huge long-range artillery bombardemnt.
Remember that the artillery that the Harkonnen use successfully in Dune did so because they were a complete surprise. No-one used artillery units anymore in normal warfare, they were deemed completely obsolete.
There needs to be another mechanic, probably multiple move units.

AH17
Why not make all infantry 2 moves, scorpions 3 moves, thoptors 4 moves, suspensors 4-5 moves?
And try and implement something so that pillaging takes away all remaining movement points to prevent massive pillaging.

 

[keldath]

cephalo,

yeah your right, theres too much units on v 1.3,

david did a good work in the cuttdown, we can optimize the cuirrent unit classes and the tech tree, and then only to set the uus.

a mod for 2 civs.....well....thats *thin*.......makes me feel like playing some dine 2000




****
Ahriman. its ok, ive thought of this modmod a lot, and i decided that it is good to start over from a strong basis with really optimized unit classes and tech tree before placing uus,
the uus on the full version, mostly , have no meaning to the civs, this way we could all choose together what will be a fit unit to each civ,carefully choose its strengths and abilities.

you could say i opened my eyes a bit.
ive looked at other mods and most mods that have a strong theme, aren't just a jumble of things thrown together to form a mod.
so it its very important to start over, make the mod really feel dunish, and most important make it simple to understand and to be fun to play with.

its just that im soooooo eager to get to a version that all we will have to do is think of how more can we enrich the mod,
i guess i want v 1.8 to be ready sooner heheh

 

[davidlallen]

Yes, its hard to get cities above size 8-10.

OK, I will try to measure and improve something here.

Scorpion units are tanks; they should not be good city defenders. Instead there should be a class of *decent* city defender units, that stay decent at the high end.

I didn't mean "sit in a city and take it", I meant "go out and hit the attackers before they get close", like vanilla knights (move 2, no defensive bonus). Does this seem like a reasonable role?

Why not make all infantry 2 moves, scorpions 3 moves, thoptors 4 moves, suspensors 4-5 moves?

What is the advantage of changing infantry to 2 and scorpions to 3?

 

[keldath]

why not make all infantry 2 moves, scorpions 3 moves, thoptors 4 moves, suspensors 4-5 moves?

i support this - but with infantry moves 1 - and there can be special promotions for them that gives more movement.

 

[Ahriman]

I didn't mean "sit in a city and take it", I meant "go out and hit the attackers before they get close", like vanilla knights (move 2, no defensive bonus). Does this seem like a reasonable role?

Yes, sounds fine. Also good all-round high strength units - still ok in city attack or stack defense.

What is the advantage of changing infantry to 2 and scorpions to 3?

AH17
Generally higher mobility and better AI ability to defend its own territory, and mitigate for AI inability to exploit transports as I explained earlier.
Remember than normally even 1-move infantry can move several tiles in your own terrain. So rushing in with chariots to pillage is dangerous because even a 1 move spearman can still move 2 tiles to attack your chariot.
Whereas here with all the 1 move stuff, you can easily pillage everything not adjacent to a city without the AT trooper or missile trooper being able to stop you.
Plus if you invade the AI, it will take them forever to bring their army in to reinforce the area you're attacking.
I don't think that bombardment bunkers are right for Dune as a defensive advantage, but more mobility might help.
If you add these with promotions it might work, but the AI has a bad tendency to only move its units as fast as the slowest unit in a stack, so this might not help much unless it selects the promotion on every unit.
What would be ideal would be if you could get a real substitute for roads that fulfill their same purpose; to give defenders a movement advantage during wartime.

 

[Ahriman]

AH18
What is the point of anchor grass? It is more expensive to build than a cottage or mine and yet appears to do nothing.

Does it give a terraforming chance separate from catchbasin/reservoir? That would be cool.

 

[davidlallen]

What would be ideal would be if you could get a real substitute for roads that fulfill their same purpose; to give defenders a movement advantage during wartime.

Well, one possible substitute for roads is ... roads. I strongly object to putting roads across deep desert, but I don't have any strong objection to putting them back on "dry land". But if the AI has to bring reinforcements from another "island", then this is the same problem that would occur in a vanilla archipelago run, and the AI is supposed to use transports.

What is the point of anchor grass? It is more expensive to build than a cottage or mine and yet appears to do nothing. Does it give a terraforming chance separate from catchbasin/reservoir? That would be cool.

The intention of anchor grass is to provide a cheap improvement, since catchbasin/reservoirs will upgrade the terrain only if the plot has some kind of improvement. If it takes longer to build than the others you mention, this is a bug.

 

[Ahriman]

Well, one possible substitute for roads is ... roads.

AH18
Putting roads back would definitely help. Yes, it won't get them from other islands, but thats fine; you can still get help from the same archipelago, and infantry can still manage to move 2-3 tiles around their own cities.
Absolutely, no roads in desert wastes/deep desert tiles, and you could easily say no roads in hills or peaks or dunes, so they're flatland only.
That would also help the visual aspect; you won't have roads on every tile, and dunes on land will still act as a real barrier.

If it takes longer to build than the others you mention, this is a bug.

AH17
Currently yes, it took 5-worker turns for me when cottages and mines were 4 and
But that alone isn't really much value even if it only takes 1 turn; the catchbasin/reservoir only terraform the tiles in 1 ring/2 rings around your city, and by the time a city is big enough to be building those buildings, you will already have improvements on all the relevant tiles.
Doing the terraforming even without the reservoirs built
But I suspect this would be very intensive on system resources - having to check every tile every turn to see if it has an anchor grass improvement, then doing the random terraform check.
Another alternative; maybe have it speed the transformation that already happens?
You already have to do tile checks of tiles next to a reservoir, right?
So why not:
If (city has catchbasin/reservoir), check (tiles in 1/2 radius).
If (improvement present, != anchor grass) then (2% chance of terrain change).
If (improvement present, == anchor grass) then (20% chance of terraform change).

So you can use the anchor grass to speed up the terraforming process (but without any current tile yield), and then build over the anchor grass improvement with something else.

This would be particularly useful for "bad" tiles like dunes or badlands or rugged; that should have several upgrades needed.
Dunes -> arid -> plains -> grassland.
Rugged -> Badlands -> rock -> arid -> plains -> grassland.
At 2% chance, it would take average 250 turns to turn rugged into grassland, but with anchor grass on it would take an average of 25 turns.

 

[Ahriman]

re: water yields

OK, I will try to measure and improve something here.

AH13
+% water buildings can also help here. If I can get 3 water from city tile + 6 water from well + 4 water from windtrap + 3 water from dew collector = 16 water that supports population 8. (this is a very common yield).
Later game when I get the yields up to 8 from the groundwater, 5 from the windtrap and maybe 4 from the dew collector (is that in yet?) will have 20 water for pop 10, which will go up to 23 water with the +15%.

AH19
Suspensors still seem to have strength too high; you can't have a strength 8 3-4 move gunship that can move anywhere where everything else is strength 6-8 with 1 move. Suspensors should be weaker than normal infantry of similar tech-tier on land.

 

[davidlallen]

I am not sure offhand if +water% buildings are possible. I do not think there are any +food% buildings in vanilla. I will have to check. If it is possible, I agree with your suggestion.

I had taken roads out a long time ago, let me try putting them back in specifically to solve the problem of defensive reaction time. When koma13 comes back, he will say "I told you so", which is true. I wanted to experiment with no roads at all to make it different from vanilla, but maybe it is a failed experiment.

I will decrease the build time of anchor grass. I like the idea of having anchor grass be more effective at upgrading bad terrain like rugged. It may not be easy to implement, however; I will have to check.

We can certainly tune the strength of suspensor units.

One of the advantages of numbering these comments is that once they all get strewn around different threads, some of them can get overlooked. If they are all numbered, and I can look to see that I have fixed AH01...AH07 and AH09...AH20, I will realize that AH08 has been overlooked and go hunt for it.

 

[Ahriman]

I am not sure offhand if +water% buildings are possible.

I know they exist in other mods. The Rise of Mankind mod has a ton of them.
In Warhammer, we have -x% food buildings; the High Elves have a racial building in all their cities that gives +5 health but-10% food, so they grow much more slowly (as penalty for getting superior military units).

I'll try to edit numbers in where appropriate if that helps.

 

[davidlallen]

Here is patch 1.4.2. You can install it over either 1.4 (release note) or 1.4.1 (release note).

Civilization abilities
* Fremen foot units (settler, soldier, worker, melee units) and water debt units now get desert double move promotion, Sand Rider.
* Unit for House Atreides, Atreides Heir. Gives "Inspiration" promotion (+25% combat value) to all units in stack. National unit, limit 2.
* Each Atreides city may automatically generate a drafted unit, percent chance is (5 * population).

Minor changes
* Add roads, to improve defensive movement
* Removed crystal bonus requirement from all hornet and carryall units
* Removed nitrate requirement from most higher level units
* "Normalize" resource placement for crystal and nitrate; every player should have one now.
* Corrected cost of trade port to 100
* Decreased combat strength of suspensor and heavy carryall
* Decreased build time of anchor grass
* Added about eight new buttons in the tech tree
* Added xml help for some units

You can get it from this link (400 KB).

Next I will study the buildings, and update them probably Friday night. I need some specific ideas on unique abilities for the other civs: Corrino, Spacer, Ix, and Tleilaxu. I gave up on the paradrop and satellite ideas for Spacer, and we never got anything conclusive on Tleilax in its thread.

 

[Deliverator]

I am not sure offhand if +water% buildings are possible.

I'm pretty sure that buildings can add a percentage modifier to any yield.

 

[keldath]

hey,

david,
good job,

but roads? you surrendered? i thought you guys didnt want roads....its a ore unique aspect we have in dune.
maybe we can use route resriction for some units, or i dunno, maybe we can replace roads with somekind of movement bonuses like promotions.
but, roads are always fun

very cool atreides abilities!


very good idea on the space guild, maybe they can have an ability to see the entire map using satellites from game start or some kind of a unique sattelite unit - that can attack from long range or even do espionage missions from far.
there's a really nice art of a sattlelite in planetfal.
also, paratroop ability is nice.

for tleilax, we can do something with gholas, and cloning abilities - maybe some python code that will make that if they loose a unit - theres a % chance that it will be resurrected withing the nearest city - like idaho was replicated.


also,
note that theres a buf in one tech - that there are two techs on the same spot,
ill fix this with my promotion system that ill do on Friday.

I'm pretty sure that buildings can add a percentage modifier to any yield.

can be done.





***
Atreides Heir - is availble for everyone -its not unique.