Dune Wars 1.3 Feedback

[keldath]

yeah, but we can make them stronger no?

 

[Deliverator]

In the future, I could change it so that the slave can optionally be used for a hammer bonus in a city or an XP bonus in an arena type building.

I like these ideas, in particular the arena one. I say implement them.

Yeah, I think we can do more still to strengthen the Harkonnen.

This might just something for you keldath to feed into your unit review. But it would be good if we could also model their use of treachery and traitors somehow, like in the Dune board game.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

At the moment dessert insects is worthless as a tech. None of the resources are generated on the archipello map.
harvesting spice cost more then its worth. Harvesting just a few of them kills your economy.
Sandstorms are to prevalent. The ai cant handle/keep up with the improvements it destroys and is to stupid to fortify units on the improvement to prevent it of bieing destroyed by the storms.
Can we make it so that barbarian units besides sandstorms and worms can enter desserts?

 

[Deliverator]

At the moment dessert insects is worthless as a tech. None of the resources are generated on the archipello map.

I think they are generated, but they are rare. If you look at this table it shows that only 7.8% of bonuses will be Insect bonuses in 1.3.8. I increased the proportion of Hawks and Hares because people complained they weren't seeing them, but we could undo that change and have an equal proportion of Fauna, Insect and Plantation. More feedback would be helpful.

Spoiler :

We have 24 land based bonuses so it will always be possible that you wont see some of them for quite a long time in the game. Over forty percent of bonuses are Groundwater to ensure growth. We have talked about reducing the proportion of Groundwater since the water is not really as scarce as it should be at the moment. There'll definitely be further tuning of bonus placement as we go on.

harvesting spice cost more then its worth. Harvesting just a few of them kills your economy.

We can reduce the maintenance on the Spice Corporations, or remove maintenance completely.

 

[Ahriman]

harvesting spice cost more then its worth. Harvesting just a few of them kills your economy.

I disagree with this strongly. For eg, with 5 spice I am paying -3 gold upkeep and getting +15 commerce - which then gets split into gold and beakers and multiplied by my marketplaces, libraries etc.

Things like desert hares and hawks need to get a small tile yield boost from the camp though. Commerce, maybe.

 

[Deliverator]

We have hints and pedia telling you to found your spice corp, but don't explain how to do this anywhere.

 

[davidlallen]

At the moment dessert insects is worthless as a tech. None of the resources are generated on the archipello map.

Thanks for the feedback! This type of feedback is very important to help the mod be "fun" for all players.

I think now we may have too many resources, leading to long distances between them. Also I think there is too much groundwater; with two wells and two windtraps, you are limited by health. We are trying to capture a feeling that water is *limited*, and I think we need a little more tuning to reach that. I do not have my cheatsheets right here, but how many vanilla resources are there, compared to current DW? If there are more, it may be worthwhile to weed them out a little.

harvesting spice cost more then its worth. Harvesting just a few of them kills your economy.

I don't understand. When you found the corporation you get a 5 gold revenue which directly cancels the 5 gold cost. Then for each harvester, you get 3 commerce. Can you explain in a little more detail how this *hurts* your economy?

Sandstorms are to prevalent. The ai cant handle/keep up with the improvements it destroys and is to stupid to fortify units on the improvement to prevent it of bieing destroyed by the storms.

Actually fortifying units does not defend against storms. There is no defense except being somewhere else. Or being in a city; storms do not enter cities. Or having the House Shield wonder. This is something I can't avoid right now -- when I order a barbarian storm to move across the Great Wall, the game just ignores me. This must be protected at a low level in the game code. I should overhaul the AI to do "something" with cities and pass through the GW, but that has not come up to the top of my to-do list yet.

Do other players agree that storms are too prevalent? It is easy to change, just one threshold value in the python. If so, should I decrease it by 50%? 25%?

 

[Deliverator]

Actually fortifying units does not defend against storms.

I think he is saying that he has seen the AI do this.

 

[Ahriman]

I think I registered my issues with reducing groundwater. Its already hard to get cities over population 10-12, reducing groundwater will just make this harder.
You don't want there to only be a handful of places that can generate viable cities, and making them rare will give an even bigger advantage to civs that happen to start near them. As it is now, basically everyone starts near some groundwater and some other stuff, but if you make them rare then some civs will start near groundwater (and win) and others will start without them (and lose).

Its important for water to be common in order to yield decent city sizes; in vanilla you could get a decent city nearly anywhere by building more farms if needed, but in Dune your city-size is fixed by the resource and hills distribution from the map generation.

I have no problems with sandstorms, they seem fine to me. They're going to be weird on the Arrakis mapscript though if they still move only Eastward (I assume that map script doesn't wrap either, so all the sandstorms will eventually end up on the eastern border?).
Another thing: in the books the Shield Wall and the like are huge mountain ranges that protect the habitable areas from the storms. So maybe storms shouldn't be able to enter Peaks tiles, or peaks and hills tiles?

 

[davidlallen]

I think he is saying that he has seen the AI do this.

Neither my code, nor the default game combat code, offers any advantage to a fortified unit besides its +25% or whatever defense bonus. A fortified unit loses just as fast to an attacker with 1000 strength as an unfortified one.

I think I registered my issues with reducing groundwater. Its already hard to get cities over population 10-12, reducing groundwater will just make this harder.

Surely we can find a way to improve this midgame behavior with stronger improvements from techs. I think the early game is pretty weird now with a ton of water and highly limited health. Players will decide how much they like the game, based on the early game. Let's hook them by making it feel more like water is the limit.

They're going to be weird on the Arrakis mapscript though if they still move only Eastward

With some work, but not a huge amount, I can make the storms move in a spiral pattern instead. Today they go east with some chance of NE or SE; I just need to make them move generally diagonally depending on which map quadrant they are in. But then this spiral pattern will look weird on an archipelago map. So the trick will be to either retire archipelago, or find some magic way for the game python to tell which mapscript was used when the map was generated.

So maybe storms shouldn't be able to enter Peaks tiles, or peaks and hills tiles?

It is already true that storms lose strength and often die when crossing these tiles. I can make this effect stronger if needed.

 

[Ahriman]

Players will decide how much they like the game, based on the early game. Let's hook them by making it feel more like water is the limit.

<shrug>
Early game is important, sure, but I'm unconvinced that its better with less water and more health. Is it a purely aesthetic issue - you are inherently bothered by having a negative health value in the early game? Or do you think cities grow too fast in the early midgame (once you have a few health buildings and resources)?

And I think the early game is definitely better with more balanced start positions across factions.
I think players can be easily frustrated by getting bad start positions. And less water means higher inter-factional variance in tile yields from start positions. Which means some factions are winners and others are losers.

Personally I really like new cities growing fast; its frustrating foudning cities beyond the early game in vanilla because it takes so long fro them to pull their weight; not so here because lots of water and then abundant mid-game health means they grow quickly.

I can make the storms move in a spiral pattern instead

find some magic way for the game python to tell which mapscript was used when the map was generated

This is the best solution.

It is already true that storms lose strength and often die when crossing these tiles. I can make this effect stronger if needed.

Unnecessary - does this mean that sandstorms disappear by the late game? or do they keep spawning?
Why not just make it so they can't enter peak tiles? (And maybe hills, maybe not).

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Sandstorms cant attack, thus you can block their path with units. unless later in the game they can, or something is wrong with my game.
Spice corp cost 5 gold per resource and only gives 2-3 commerce.
The supply pod is way overpowerd, seems to be functioning like a GE.
There is probably to much water resources, preventing the generating of other resources.
What about buildings generating extra water, either raw production or a percentage?
Is it inteded you can improve mountaintiles? cause they look weird when improved.

 

[Ahriman]

Sandstorms cant attack, thus you can block their path with units

I remembered them attacking in an earlier version; I haven't tested it lately since I always get out of the way.

Spice corp cost 5 gold per resource and only gives 2-3 commerce.

Not for me it doesn't my current Corrino spice corp has 15 spice, the mouseover on the corporation (underneath the religions in the city screen) gives +45 commerce -3 gold, and the maintenance section costs 6.31 gold (-50% for my tribunal building).
So; huge economy boost.

The supply pod is way overpowerd, seems to be functioning like a GE.

Yeah, confirmed.

What about buildings generating extra water, either raw production or a percentage

I'd support this.

Is it inteded you can improve mountaintiles? cause they look weird when improved.

They look a bit weird but it works fine for me. If you can mine them tho you should be able to build all 3 mine levels, like on hills, not just the base.

 

[davidlallen]

<shrug>
Early game is important, sure, but I'm unconvinced that its better with less water and more health. Is it a purely aesthetic issue - you are inherently bothered by having a negative health value in the early game? Or do you think cities grow too fast in the early midgame (once you have a few health buildings and resources)?

I am inherently bothered by having access to so much *water* on a *desert planet*. It is a theme thing, not so much a mechanics thing. I think we should find a way to make the player actually feel limited by water. Right now I feel my early cities have way more water than they need, with very little effort on my part.

 

[Ahriman]

I am inherently bothered by having access to so much *water* on a *desert planet*. It is a theme thing, not so much a mechanics thing. I think we should find a way to make the player actually feel limited by water. Right now I feel my early cities have way more water than they need, with very little effort on my part.

See, to me it feels like water is scarce; only a few tiles produce any water at all, and it is very hard to get cities above size ~12-14 even fairly late in the tech tree unless you are playing pro-terraforming. In this mod, a cottage tile or workshop tile or ocean tile produces no food at all, whereas in vanilla nearly every tile in the game produces food.

In vanilla, you can always choose to trade off commerce or hammer production with food production by building more farms instead of cottages or windmills instead of mines, but in this mod your food income is hard-coded by the terrain and the windtrap limitations; you build the dew collectors on plants, wells on water, and as many windtraps as you can; you have no way to increase food yield. There is little strategic decisionmaking in building improvements in this mod; the only issue is whether to build solar farm, cottage or eventually turbine. The quanat improvement (+1 water) is too trivial to consider; tile yields are not worth working.

If you make water resources really scarce, then you can't have cities of any significant size.

Adding buildings that give +x water income and/or +y% water income is a good compromise here IMO between our positions; you can make water-producing tiles scarcer while still allowing big cities.
You will have to put a high AI weight on such buildings though, and check to make sure that the variance of water yield across the mapscripts is not too large.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Something wich also might help while reducing the amount of watersources, is a tech "waterconservation" wich increases all watertiles with 1 water besides buildings. Or perhaps only the quanat improvement. Something wich is also lacking is commerce. During the game tiles that yield water should give commerce.
As it is now, the game focuses to much on specialists and production to produce a decent amount of beakers.

 

[Deliverator]

Adding buildings that give +x water income and/or +y% water income is a good compromise here IMO between our positions; you can make water-producing tiles scarcer while still allowing big cities.
You will have to put a high AI weight on such buildings though, and check to make sure that the variance of water yield across the mapscripts is not too large.

I'm in favour of this compromise. I also think that all water improvements should have a yield that ramps up with techs at certain points, like Biology does with Farms in vanilla and our Wind Traps do.

We should also get the Polar Terrain into the top and bottom of the Archipelago mapscript, not just Arrakis. Cephalo described how this could be done. The Polar terrain, Polar Ice bonus and associated improvement and wonder will be another source of water keeping with the theme.

 

[davidlallen]

If people don't want to decrease the frequency of groundwater appearing, then maybe we should decrease the benefit of wells and windtraps in the early game. Either they can ramp up automatically like villages, or they can come in three varieties that need to be built like mines or turbines. It just seems thematically wrong that I can easily get enough water to support a 8-10 size city early, on a desert planet.

 

[Ahriman]

But it also seems wrong in a civ game that you struggle even in the late-midgame to have cities more than size 12-14, and many AI cities will be capped out well before that.

I'd keep away from the villages-growth model, they're pretty frustrating when you get hit with sandstorms. Cottage growth might also need to be looked at; cottages are now pretty weak considering the yields you can get from desert waste with the weather scanner building.

Something else to consider as well; maybe the higher yield wells and mines should have longer build times. So to get those really big bonuses, you need to devote significant worker-time to them.

 

[Deliverator]

I think decreasing the frequency of groundwater somewhat is OK, but we do need to create a list of water related buildings to compensate. I'll upload the spreadsheet I have for bonuses and then perhaps we can play with the proportions and make changes in 1.3.10.

One more thematic way to get water could be to link it to trade routes. There are buildings and wonders in vanilla (Cothon, Temple of Artemis, Custom House) that increase the commerce yield from trade routes. It would be good to have a Water Market building that adds +1 water per trade route or something like that. Perhaps there is a modcomp available, as it would need an SDK change I assume.

Edit: Taking a look at the XML, there is an iTradeModifier on Civ4YieldInfos, meaning that you can have trade routes provide a yield of water (food). If trade routes provide both water and commerce, you can then make buildings that use the following Civ4BuildingInfos tags to scale up the yields:

iTradeRouteModifier = % change in no of trade routes in this city
iTradeRoutes = Change in no of trade routes in this city
iGlobalTradeRoutes = Change in no of trade routes in all cities

This would would mean that cities that have less local water (groundwater bonuses) could still get a decent water income through trade.

You could even scale down the trade yield for commerce seeing as the primary income comes from spice harvesting. Then the major role of trade routes becomes to get water for growth.