A mod-mod: "Dune Wars Reduced"

[davidlallen]

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.

I had a discussion with Maniac by PM about the dropships in Planetfall. His comment was that the dropships basically only have their fast movement over ocean, not over land. Over land they have a similar movement speed to other units, so they can easily be caught and killed. I have lowered the strength of suspensor units and also given more move 2 land units and roads.

Do you think that changing suspensor units to have move 2 or 3, and double movement on desert, would make this problem better? Perhaps the carryalls could keep their high movement everywhere but I could lower the strength even more. Then the risk of using transport nearby to other units becomes much higher.

I agree that we should try to fix the sdk behavior allowing unload/pillage/load/repeat, but that requires a lot more knowledge inside the sdk.

 

[Ahriman]

Do you think that changing suspensor units to have move 2 or 3, and double movement on desert, would make this problem better?

Yes that would help.

Haven't tested yet whether you implemented it this way, but I also really like my idea of roads not buildable on rugged, dunes, hills or peaks. This would help to still make terrain matter and still be an obstacle. So you can easily patrol and defend your flatlands civilised areas with cottages and the like, but the harsher terrain still feels different.

Also:
AH20. Falcon thopter (strength 6, three moves!) appears to have no tech requirement. This is particaulrly annoying because it obsoletes the scout thopter, so you can't build scout thopters and you need them for early inter-island transport. The thopter requirements feel out of whack too; the scout thopter should require exploration, the strength 4 thopter should require desert warfare (currently at exploration) and the strength 6 thopter should have something even higher (Imperialism?).
AH21. Trade port gives +1 trade routes in ALL cities. Should give +1 trade routes in just that city. Otherwise its insane, you easily have cities with 6-7 trade routes pretty early on.

 

[Ahriman]

AH22
The Atreides-free-unit-mechanic is broken; it gives WAY too many free units.
I would suggest something like the Demagog mechanic from FFH; you get the free unit when an enemy moves onto one of your cottage tiles.
Or allow Atreides to always draft a unit at the cost of 1 population in the city, and no unhappiness penalty. But I'm getting a free infantry every few turns in every city, would be very easy to swarm an opponent.

AH23
Is there any way to remove the "X has proven the world is round" bonus?
a) it doesn't make much sense (I don't think there was any doubt about the shape of the world) and
b) bonus movement on all thopters is pretty powerful, since they're amphibious.

 

[keldath]

hey guys,
im on final stages of testing the civ specific tech tree,
tomorrow ill know for sure id it works 100%,

this will allow us to have tech branches for each civ/group of civs - thus allowing unique promotions, units, bonuses, and every aspect linked with a tech.

im sure this can allow us to further develop diversity betwen civs, like fremen wont be able to learn...say aerial combat ..

 

[keldath]

hey guys,

i was very unconformable with the tech tree as published in dw reduced,
so i sat down and completely rebuilt the entire tree along with the units.

i had to add 7 techs to the tree, i know you guys are against it, but plz try this out before you say our favorite phrase of the week : "more is less".
its just 7 techs...

i did this for one purpose - make the unit tree more logical and each tier of units to have sufficient distance between them, so each and every class will have more "game time", meaning i think its better when you can play more time with units, before they get obsolete by netter ones...

i also tweaked the powers of most units to fit this.
also, i did not add any more units, just used the existing ones.
i think we need two more unit class on the end of the tech tree, cause we only have there - scorpion, thopter and muala - wee need shock trooper and a guardsman.

again, i really hope you approve this, and get it inside this modmod that i wanna have as 1.4 later on.

the units make much more since now compared to our old version (1.3).
deleting the units completely, was a very smart move david.


plz write me what you guys think:

 

[Ahriman]

Keldath:

Unit class buzzard thopter is incorrect.

The extra techs appear to be empty?

I added the units file to assets/xml/units and the tech file to assets/xml/technologies

 

[keldath]

hey ,

plz re download now,

ive re uploaded the files since i wanted to fix the upgrade tree as well.

the file: techsinfo.xml goes : assets/xml/technologies
the file unitinfo.xml goes : assets/xml/units

plz let me know what you think.

the empty techs are for future use, when we re positioning buildings, wonders, promotions.
i also pland of making a few unique techs for some civs - like riding the worm - to the fremen.


****

another thing,
the current unit classes, is very good, but,
i think theres too much relynse on infantry units, you guys removed rovers, and now - you got - 1 combat type that acts as defensive units - guardsman, i think, they should be later on the tech tree replaced with rover unit category,
so th rule that will apply along the tech tree :

1. infantry for city attack
2. defnsive rover for defending the cities - roveres in midgame for start game - infantry(guardsman).
3. heavy support vehicle for engaging units - scorpion
4. thopters - against infantry and scorpions - but week on power.
5, carryalls.
6. aa trooper
7. hornets

each tier needs to have this order of unit to make a balanced unit combat system in my opinion.

 

[davidlallen]

Let us call those files "1.4.3". I will work on "1.4.4" which revises all the buildings into your new tech tree.

 

[keldath]

really? this makes me so happy!

i was sure that youll wont like this!!!

thanks!

`you wont be dissappionted - i put much thought in the unit tiers.

 

[davidlallen]

I haven't looked into your new files yet, it will be another 8 hours probably. My building redesign is only on paper so far, which means I won't have to worry about any merging.

 

[Ahriman]

AH24
Roads are buildable on desert wastes (ie coast) tiles. Ooops. I really like banning roads from deep desert, desert waste, hills, peaks, rugged, and dunes tiles. So you can only build them on mesa/rock/badlands (and plains/grassland).

AH25
Also, there needs to be a way so that only ground units benefit from roads; suspensors and thopters should NOT benefit from road movement bonuses.

 

[koma13]

What!?? We have roads again?

Also, there needs to be a way so that only ground units benefit from roads; suspensors and thopters should NOT benefit from road movement bonuses.

This can be easily done by setting <bIgnoreTerrainCost> to 0 and <bFlatMovementCost> to 1.

 

[koma13]

I am getting a python exception in new 1.4.2 mod when opening the city screen:

Traceback (most recent call last):

File "CvScreensInterface", line 996, in forceScreenRedraw

File "CvMainInterface", line 3336, in redraw

File "CvMainInterface", line 6498, in updateCityScreen

File "Revolution", line 1050, in updateLocalRevIndices

File "Revolution", line 219, in loadInfo

AttributeError: 'module' object has no attribute 'sXMLNationalism'
ERR: Python function forceScreenRedraw failed, module CvScreensInterface

edit:

Revolution.py (219-221):

self.iNationalismTech = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getTechInfo,gc.getNumTechInfos(), RevDefs.sXMLNationalism)
self.iLiberalismTech = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getTechInfo,gc.getNumTechInfos(), RevDefs.sXMLLiberalism)
self.iSciMethodTech = CvUtil.findInfoTypeNum(gc.getTechInfo,gc.getNumTechInfos(), RevDefs.sXMLSciMethod)

It tries to call sXMLNationalism from RevDefs.py. Someone (david?) changed RevDefs.py (61-64):

sXMLNationalism = 'TECH_NATIONALISM'
# Used by Rev, weight of religious effects decreases after each discovery
#sXMLLiberalism = 'TECH_LIBERALISM'
#sXMLSciMethod = 'TECH_SCIENTIFIC_METHOD'

We have to uncomment these lines again and change the tech names to the new ones.

 

[davidlallen]

What!?? We have roads again? This can be easily done by setting <bIgnoreTerrainCost> to 0 and <bFlatMovementCost> to 1.

Both you and Ahriman commented that roads were needed. When it was just one person, I still thought it was an interesting experiment, but when the same feedback comes from multiple people I thought it was time to give up and put them back.

One of the suggestions about making suspensors less subject to abuse of load/pillage/reload/move was to give them a lower base movement, and then give them double movement on ocean. If we set the two flags you specify, that will not work.

There is a mod which was created for Fury Road for exactly this purpose; it is called JRouteNative and it is found at this post.

I still consider roads as experimental. Maybe we should take them back out. Maybe we should add JRouteNative so that suspensor/carryalls do not benefit. What do you think?

 

[davidlallen]

I am getting a python exception in new 1.4.2 mod when opening the city screen:

Please turn off Revolutions in your game options screen. This is a result of renaming all the techs. The best solution is to just remove revolutions. Let us all say it together: "More is not better". Another solution would be to edit revdefs.py and change the names of the techs there, to some other names which exist in the current game.

EDIT: it does not really matter, but I introduced the problem by renaming the techs, and keldath "solved" the problem by commenting out those lines in revdefs.py. At least now I have enhanced civcheck to check all the python files for strings that look like TECH_SOMETHING or UNIT_SOMETHING, which will help prevent me from introducing this type of error in the future.

 

[koma13]

Please turn off Revolutions in your game options screen.

Ok, that is a solution too.

Both you and Ahriman commented that roads were needed. When it was just one person, I still thought it was an interesting experiment, but when the same feedback comes from multiple people I thought it was time to give up and put them back.

Well, to tell the truth I am not that happy about having roads back in game...

One of the suggestions about making suspensors less subject to abuse of load/pillage/reload/move was to give them a lower base movement, and then give them double movement on ocean.

Wouldn't it be easier to change the load/unload behaviour? E.g we could only allow units to be loaded if they haven't moved that turn already.... something like this.

 

[davidlallen]

I completely agree that it is important to fix the sdk for all terrain transports so that this type of load/pillage/reload/move behavior is not possible. If you could try that out, it would be great.

The problem pointed by Ahriman about lack of roads was that it is difficult to counterattack pillagers and move defensive units from one city to a nearby one (on the same island). Your comment much earlier was about moving workers. Airlift may help for workers but not large numbers of troops. So we are trying to find a solution. We can try several things, in different combinations:

* Roads.
* Units which specialize in open field counterattacking; the scorpion units and perhaps some rollers could be added for this.
* Fix the base all terrain transport problem.
* Decrease the strength of suspensor and carryall units so that putting them anywhere near combat is risky
* Decrease the move points of suspensor units over land (eg, make them move 2 or 3 with double movement in ocean/coast).

 

[Ahriman]

Re: roads

AH26
My argument for including roads (on decent flatland tiles) is:
a) The AI is very easy to invade because with all the very slow movement units and the AI's inability to take advantage of transports for moving faster on the same continent, the AI simply cannot move its army around fast enough to respond. It can charge its thopters and suspensors toward the invader, but not its core infantry and mechanised troops.
b) Roads give the defender an a strategic advantage in warfare; they 1 move infantry can move 2-3 tiles. This is incredibly important when there are multiple move units like thopters than can easily pillage the AI's economy to death, and if they stay 1 tile away the missile troopers will be helpless to stop them.
Whereas in vanilla civ, spearmen can use roads to move multiple tiles and be much more effective at countering pillaging by chariots or horsearchers because they can influence a much larger area; you have to stay 2-3 tiles away to avoid their counterattack.
The strategic advantage given to the defender by superior movement mirrors human history (defender always has an advantage) and helps to mitigate the fact that the defender is usually outnumbered (both in history and in civ) since the attacker has the strategic initiative.
Also, given that city defenses are weak in this mod (city-attack units ignore them), faster defender movement can help counteract this.
b) Having to manually load and unload transports to efficiently move around units within your borders is NotFun micromanagement busywork.
c) there really isn't any particular reason why roads don't belong in the Dune universe on decent terrain. In the desert, sure, no roads. But on land, in the areas inhabited by humans? How can we argue that you can build a plantation and cottages, but can't build a road? In a world that has space-travel, I can't believe that humans don't have the technology to build roads.
d) Even in Planetfall which has no early game roads, there are eventually magtubes (roads). And Planetfall also has other mechanics to speed movement for infantry (faster movement along rivers and coastlines, APC promotion) and to give the defender an advantage (bunkers as terrain improvements and given free in cities with city walls type buildings).

I think roads will make DuneWars warfare much more fun.

 

[keldath]

hey koma13,
indeed ive commented out the lines...

i dont mind removing revolution if you guys think is doesn't fit dune. just say the word.

i vote no on roads also. i dunno, the mod seems more cool without them .
i now the route mod, we can use this, perhaps we can limit roads just for certain tiles?

***

edit: Ahriman got a point there....


****
off the issue,
i attemted to fix the white grid lines on the spice, i got it look better now :

 

[Ahriman]

AH26
To clarify:
I don't think roads need to be used for connecting resources. I like the instant connection, it has lots of pros.

But I think roads need to be there for improving movement rates. Without them, I find the military aspect of the mod to be very NotCool.

And you'll still get a good feel of different movement from different different terrain if you can't build roads on rugged, dunes, hills or peaks (or desert waste/deep desert).