Dune Wars 1.3 Feedback

[koma13]

Sorry, I do this all the time in RL but I forgot to explain. If several people are all submitting issues simultaneously, then we need a way to tell whose "issue 10" we are discussing. My initials are DA. So "DA10" is my tenth issue. Each person should use some different string prefix, so we can tell them all apart.

Ah ok. So when I have a new issue to report I will put a MK before.

The key concept of the spice blows is that they appear randomly in the books, and signal Fremen that more spice is appearing. If the spice does not decay, then there is no reason for new spice blows to ever appear. So to make blows appear, the spice has to decay. Any votes on keeping it or removing it?

It doesn't feels random. It's always there, next to you. I don't care if spice appears in plot (20, 22) or (24,22). So whats the point in constantly changing this?

I have to admit that reducing appearance of spice and increasing decay time could help. But it has the disadvantage that economy would even more fluctuate.

 

[Ahriman]

I think one of the coolest flavor things from Dune is the tension of trying to get as much spice as possible before the worms come, and the differning Atreides/Harkonnen attitudes to this (save the spice vs save the crew - sounds like a good event actually -> pick a gold income or a happiness bonus).

I think this isn't in the mod as much as it could be (radically longer build times would help with this), but making them normal resources that are there permanently would remove this.
You need to be *afraid* of worms as a human player, rather than just having them eat a few scouts.

I'd remove their ability to go into non-ocean tiles, but make them normal barbarian AI, so they will enter your territory and try to go after your harvesters and pillage your refineries.

Personally I'm not bothered by the randomness at all; law of large numbers it evens out, and its not that hard to adjust the science slider to account for the changes over time.

 

[davidlallen]

DA17. Worker can still "walk on water" using TerrainPassableTech. This was removed from the other early units due to the scout thopter.

DA18. Sandworm should not be able to attack thopters at all, or at least, it should not be attracted to stacks which have only thopter units.

DA19. Harkonnen slaver attack converts a defeated sandworm into a slave.

DA20. Why does infantry have a ranged attack? Perhaps it is just inherited because the unit started out as archer/longbowman, but it isn't clear why they should attack at range.

DA21. There is an improvement "Aquabore", but the build action is "Build a Qanat System". Not sure which is intended but they should match.

DA22. I improved some of the build buttons. But still, the improvement buttons for all three mines (in the pedia) should be changed to match the build buttons. Also the build buttons for all three turbines should be replaced with their improvement buttons (they will need to be cut out of the atlas, it seems build buttons cannot come from an atlas.)

DA23. The thopter, which is not an air unit, is eligible for air unit promotions such as Range I and Ace.

 

[Deliverator]

DA21. There is an improvement "Aquabore", but the build action is "Build a Qanat System". Not sure which is intended but they should match.

My mistake it should be "Drill an Aquabore" or something like that.

On the spice, my vote is keep the spice blows, but slow the decay process down quite a lot. It might take a bit of tuning to find a nice level for it.

DV1. Xeno Botany for Desalinating Salt Pans is a bit wrong. I'd change the name to Desert Engineering which fits with the surounding techs, and change Mining -> Surface Mining just to differentiate it a bit from Mineral Extraction.

DV2. Koma made this point:

Carryall tech comes way too late to be a decent replacement for roads.

... and I agree. It seems a bit strange that you build a space port and many other things, but then Dune Topography for Light Carryalls is so far up the tree. Can we bring it forward?

DV3. Not really an issue, but a feature request. I would like to see the Desert Workers replaced/upgraded with Worker Carryalls. These would be great for flavour. They can have +1 movement over the Desert Workers.

 

[koma13]

DA17. I don't think the ai will load workers on transports. If we remove the ability to cross the deep desert, ai will have to build a worker on every single island.

DA18. Ah, finally... I suggested that multiple times. We can try giving the sandworm a huge combat penalty vs. thopters.

DA20. True, it's related to archer. Maybe moving ranged attacks to the missile trooper is more convincing?

DA23. Looks like a relict. Thopters were orignally intended as air units.

 

[keldath]

ok guys, ill try to get as much of this latest feed into patch 1.3.5

 

[Deliverator]

DA02. The City Wind Trap gives no water. It "appears" to have no effect at all. It actually gives fresh water around the city, but this is in python so there is no message about it. Should the CWT give a similar bonus to what the normal WT gives? That, combined with the 3 water for a normal city, may make it too easy.

I'd say remove the City Wind Trap. I've never been a fan, because I don't like having a building that has the same name as an improvement just with 'City' in front of it.

The presence of windtraps in the settlement is pretty much captured by the +3 water on the city tile in my opinion.

 

[keldath]

hi,
im not sure the ai uses the reservoirs of liets,

i ran an autoplay - and i was the only one to have it, might be mistaked - but worth a test.


*
ok im sure the ai wont build resorvoirs.

also i won the game very fast - i think 7 res' is to low - how about 10-15 - so it will be req to conquer more cities and to go to war more.

 

[Ahriman]

DA17 Is it possible to have workers be like galleys and things; so they can't cross deep desert unless its within your cultural borders? Best of both worlds.

DA18 Do we really want thoptors able to hunt down and kill sandworms?

The level 2 reservoirs need a higher tech requirement; you shouldn't be able to win a construction victory so easily.

In making the AI build them, make sure it doesn't build them in cities with badlands tiles, since these don't terraform.

Also, at current balance levels at least pro-terraforming is way better than pro-spice. It can make mega cities with huge numbers of specialists, combined with the feudalism civic +3 beakers from specialists.... crazy specialist economy.
Maybe you shoudl make it so that spice blows won't occur within the territory of pro-terraforming factions? Or that they are more likely to occur within the territory of pro-spice factions?

 

[davidlallen]

(redirected from bonus placement thread)

There are a lot of buildings that need to be tweaked or culled IMO. Many are also ridiculously cost-ineffective; some high level buildings that are like 300 hammers for a +15% gold bonus?

I think there are too many buildings that provide happiness bonuses. The shrine of the worm in particular is far too easy for often a +4 happy bonus.
If you want this building, why not tweak it so that its an alternative cult to the established religions, and so gives +1 unhappy for each religion present in the city.

Keldath has said he feels there are too few buildings. You have mentioned about Shrine of the Worms several times. Can you point out which other high level buildings you feel should be culled?

 

[davidlallen]

DA17. I don't think the ai will load workers on transports. If we remove the ability to cross the deep desert, ai will have to build a worker on every single island.

Interesting. In vanilla archipelago, I assume that the AI will load workers onto transports. Is there a reason to think it should be different in DW? I have not monitored vanilla autoplay games closely enough to tell if the workers on other islands got there by transport or by being built natively, but I'd be surprised if that was missing.

 

[koma13]

Now, that you are mentioning it... We can try adding unitai_worker_sea to all transports.

 

[davidlallen]

Yesterday I made a crude attempt to create a spreadsheet of all the units in this post. The main point was to help focus on which units should require which strategic bonus. I have written a real script to do this, and also included the unitcombat, moves, and strength. This is based on the 1.3.5 patch from keldath today.

The attachment is a "comma separated value" file so you can read it into your favorite spreadsheet program or process it further in some other way.

 

[Ahriman]

Too *few* buildings? Wow.

Do you have a list of all the buildings currently in their mod with their hammer bonuses and effects? I'd be happy to go through and make recommendations. Its a bit cumbersome to try to do it from the civilopedia.

 

[davidlallen]

Unfortunately buildings have such a varied effect, it is hard to come up with a good way to capture the data in a spreadsheet. I can get the name, the required tech tier, and any obsoleteness tech tier; this will let us know which buildings are available at each tier. But there are so many other possible effects.

 

[Ahriman]

Ok, that would still be useful as a base. Saves a lot of typing

But I won't have time to look until next week.

 

[davidlallen]

In case it is useful, here you go. It would be interesting to take this a little further and give a cumulative count of the number of wonder, nonwonder buildings available by tech tier, and compare it to vanilla ... someday.

 

[Deliverator]

I have written a real script to do this, and also included the unitcombat, moves, and strength. This is based on the 1.3.5 patch from keldath today.

This is going to be a big help. Thanks.

 

[koma13]

Keldath, I'm getting this python exception when starting a new game with 1.3.5:

Spoiler :

 

[davidlallen]

Keldath, I'm getting this python exception when starting a new game with 1.3.5:

That is my code. I can see how this could happen in unusual circumstances, such as reloading python modules after changing them during a game. But it "should not" happen all the time. If you exit civ, restart, and start a new custom game, do you see this? Do you see this every time or just sometimes?