Dune Wars 1.3 Feedback
- Thread starter Deliverator
- Start date
davidlallen
Deity
As long as this only happens when you are editing python in the middle of a session, I agree with you. This will not affect people who play the game normally.
I would still like to figure out why this comes after editing the python. There is something about when BUG calls __init__ compared to when the game throws away my objects. For some reason, the game throws away my object when python is reloaded, but BUG does not call my __init__ to let me reinitialize the object.
Possibly, you can fix this locally by adding one line to your copy of DuneWars.py:
Code:
def onGameStart(self, argsList):
self.Initialize() # <== add this line
for iPlotLoop in range(CyMap().numPlots()):
pPlot = CyMap().plotByIndex(iPlotLoop)
iType = pPlot.getTerrainType()davidlallen
Deity
Ahriman
Tyrant
Sandworms can move into peaks tiles. Ooops 
Worse, sandworms can attack cities.
I also think the worms are going to completely gimp AI expansion, because they will eat all their early units. They're a big pain for the human player, but the human at least knows that they're safe on hills tiles, the AI doesn't and so will lose many units.
My recommendation; don't let worms move on land. They should be limited to the desert. Its crazy to think of worms wandering around on non-sandy land tiles, through cottages and farms and human habitation with all that moisture.
So, they're naval units that eat your stuff if you try to cross the desert, and your workers that are trying to build refineries, but won't stop you from basic early expansion and worker improvement construction (I'm unable to build the dew collectors near my capital because there are 2 worms who constantly sit one tile away.
Workers aren't woken up by worms moving next to them, so you have to manually cancel their orders at the end of every turn to avoid them being eaten if there is a worm nearby.
The worms also pillage your improvements like cottages, and there is nothing you can do to stop them.
This is pretty broken.
Worse, sandworms can attack cities.
I also think the worms are going to completely gimp AI expansion, because they will eat all their early units. They're a big pain for the human player, but the human at least knows that they're safe on hills tiles, the AI doesn't and so will lose many units.
My recommendation; don't let worms move on land. They should be limited to the desert. Its crazy to think of worms wandering around on non-sandy land tiles, through cottages and farms and human habitation with all that moisture.
So, they're naval units that eat your stuff if you try to cross the desert, and your workers that are trying to build refineries, but won't stop you from basic early expansion and worker improvement construction (I'm unable to build the dew collectors near my capital because there are 2 worms who constantly sit one tile away.
Workers aren't woken up by worms moving next to them, so you have to manually cancel their orders at the end of every turn to avoid them being eaten if there is a worm nearby.
The worms also pillage your improvements like cottages, and there is nothing you can do to stop them.
This is pretty broken.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Playing as BG at least, there is no longer a harvester unit and workers seem unable to move onto desert tiles - so how are you supposed to build refineries?
Battle thoptors seem too strong in the early game.
Horse archers in vanilla are only 2 moves IIRC, and you have road networks within your empire so that spearmen can catch them. Its too easy here for thoptors to pillage like crazy and destroy workers.
I'd reduce their strength to 5 at most, maybe remove their ability to pillage, and take the initial scout thoptor down to strength 2.
Battle thoptors seem too strong in the early game.
Horse archers in vanilla are only 2 moves IIRC, and you have road networks within your empire so that spearmen can catch them. Its too easy here for thoptors to pillage like crazy and destroy workers.
I'd reduce their strength to 5 at most, maybe remove their ability to pillage, and take the initial scout thoptor down to strength 2.
You can put a worker onto a transport (I've only tried hover transport so far), move the transport onto the spice, and have the worker build the refinery. Unfortunately, I've yet to see the AI do this, and thus they miss out on the income from the house spice firm.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Sounds like entirely pointless micromanagement. What was wrong with the Harvester unit? Or with workers walking on desert within your borders?
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
I think I'll try and prevent worms entering land terrain in the next patch. I'm not really sure what the argument was for allowing it...
ok guys,
after hours of hunting a crash within my overlord2 mod (im just updating it to 3.19),
ive traced a Sirius game crasher bug inside the buildings,
first feedback before i talk bout the crash:
some buildings in dune - still require river - so they cant be built at all...cause we dont have rivers...
for example - the holzman field generator.
so this needs to be changed for all buildings...
the game crasher bug -
the holzman building - is built on the three gorges dam from the vanilla.
they both have the same function:
give power to all cities in the continents -
this tag in the bulding infos:
<bAreaCleanPower>1</bAreaCleanPower>
when this building is built - band a ctd occurs.
i traced this in my overlord2 mod - cause i use the same dll we have for dune - so
just incase - i tested this on our latest version of dune:
removed the tag - briver>1 to 0 on the hotlzman,
then - bang - a ctd upon build.
im not sure at the moment about this crash to be in the revdcm 2.5 as well - haven't tested yet - but i leaning to think its in our dll, i suspect a specific code.
you guys are welcomed to test this as well,
meanwhile we have no danger from this ctd cause it neutralized because of the river preqeq.
i will work on fixing this for the next patches.
*****
second issue:
david - when you start a game on the shy hulud era (future) ton your start location - you have green terrain....once you found the first city - it disappears... chech it out.
long post i know,
but i had to let you guys know.
*****
oops!
i wanted to post this on the feedback 1.3....silly me.
after hours of hunting a crash within my overlord2 mod (im just updating it to 3.19),
ive traced a Sirius game crasher bug inside the buildings,
first feedback before i talk bout the crash:
some buildings in dune - still require river - so they cant be built at all...cause we dont have rivers...
for example - the holzman field generator.
so this needs to be changed for all buildings...
the game crasher bug -
the holzman building - is built on the three gorges dam from the vanilla.
they both have the same function:
give power to all cities in the continents -
this tag in the bulding infos:
<bAreaCleanPower>1</bAreaCleanPower>
when this building is built - band a ctd occurs.
i traced this in my overlord2 mod - cause i use the same dll we have for dune - so
just incase - i tested this on our latest version of dune:
removed the tag - briver>1 to 0 on the hotlzman,
then - bang - a ctd upon build.
im not sure at the moment about this crash to be in the revdcm 2.5 as well - haven't tested yet - but i leaning to think its in our dll, i suspect a specific code.
you guys are welcomed to test this as well,
meanwhile we have no danger from this ctd cause it neutralized because of the river preqeq.
i will work on fixing this for the next patches.
*****
second issue:
david - when you start a game on the shy hulud era (future) ton your start location - you have green terrain....once you found the first city - it disappears... chech it out.
long post i know,
but i had to let you guys know.
*****
oops!
i wanted to post this on the feedback 1.3....silly me.
With respect to spice, I feel that it simply isn't important enough in game. I think there should be something like a global spice counter (spice resources per turn per civ) which, say, gives each civ a flat solaris bonus once it reaches a certain milestone. For example, 1000 solaris (adjusted upward for each era) per civ each time the global counter hits 1000 spice. It would be nice to increase the importance of solaris as (I think it was) keldath mentioned in a different post...
This global dynamic would help to level the playing field. But to encourage extra spice production, each civ could have their own spice counter. Once they reach a certain quota, they could receive special, otherwise unobtainable units from, perhaps, their home world (which could tie in to your idea about the homeworld screen). Or perhaps from the Spacing Guild who could receive something every time a civ uses this feature, but is otherwise unable to do it themselves.
Finally, I really think the spice harvester unit should return. It should have sufficient movement points to enter an adjacent spice plot and immediately begin production of a spice harvester improvement. Additionally, I would personally like to see a very expensive harvester unit that could make an improvement in one turn, and perhaps has additional defensive bonuses. Maybe make it a national unit...
As for other suggestions: I have found that most civs NEVER switch to terraforming, except the Fremen ones. Perhaps this is because I have the terraforming victory turned off (then again, I hate all victory conditions and never actually play to achieve one...) This is unfortunate because I think the terraforming mechanic is impressive and is significantly better than the spice civic, which could use some improvements itself. Perhaps if you choose to implement something like my spice quota mechanic, there could be significant bonuses to that. Alternatively, the spice civic could offer something like access to a special spice oriented corporation. It would have to be something that would provide an ultimate benefit to every city it is in (instead of relying on the corporate HQ to counteract the weird maintenance mechanic).
I think you guys should also consider altering what terrain cottages can be placed on. While their importance is greatly reduced in this mod (thankfully!) due to the increased importance of trade routes, civs that start on primarily rocky continents almost always do absolutely terribly. Ahriman already mentioned this, I just wanted to second it.
Finally, and I think this is primarily just a personal preference, but I would like to see how the AI chooses city sites changed. Way too often they build cities way too close together, simply to get access to, say, a meagre water and one other special improvement. These cities simply detract from precious city plots of the main ones. City plots are significantly more important in this mod due to the (justified) harshness of deep desert absent the presence of spice. This mod would be much better served with fewer cities, in my opinion. Actually, a fairly radical approach would be to use the 3-plot radius mechanic used in FFH, with the AI modifications that knows how to use it. Like I said, just a personal preference.
This global dynamic would help to level the playing field. But to encourage extra spice production, each civ could have their own spice counter. Once they reach a certain quota, they could receive special, otherwise unobtainable units from, perhaps, their home world (which could tie in to your idea about the homeworld screen). Or perhaps from the Spacing Guild who could receive something every time a civ uses this feature, but is otherwise unable to do it themselves.
Finally, I really think the spice harvester unit should return. It should have sufficient movement points to enter an adjacent spice plot and immediately begin production of a spice harvester improvement. Additionally, I would personally like to see a very expensive harvester unit that could make an improvement in one turn, and perhaps has additional defensive bonuses. Maybe make it a national unit...
As for other suggestions: I have found that most civs NEVER switch to terraforming, except the Fremen ones. Perhaps this is because I have the terraforming victory turned off (then again, I hate all victory conditions and never actually play to achieve one...) This is unfortunate because I think the terraforming mechanic is impressive and is significantly better than the spice civic, which could use some improvements itself. Perhaps if you choose to implement something like my spice quota mechanic, there could be significant bonuses to that. Alternatively, the spice civic could offer something like access to a special spice oriented corporation. It would have to be something that would provide an ultimate benefit to every city it is in (instead of relying on the corporate HQ to counteract the weird maintenance mechanic).
I think you guys should also consider altering what terrain cottages can be placed on. While their importance is greatly reduced in this mod (thankfully!) due to the increased importance of trade routes, civs that start on primarily rocky continents almost always do absolutely terribly. Ahriman already mentioned this, I just wanted to second it.
Finally, and I think this is primarily just a personal preference, but I would like to see how the AI chooses city sites changed. Way too often they build cities way too close together, simply to get access to, say, a meagre water and one other special improvement. These cities simply detract from precious city plots of the main ones. City plots are significantly more important in this mod due to the (justified) harshness of deep desert absent the presence of spice. This mod would be much better served with fewer cities, in my opinion. Actually, a fairly radical approach would be to use the 3-plot radius mechanic used in FFH, with the AI modifications that knows how to use it. Like I said, just a personal preference.
hey edorazio,
and welcome,
thank you for the long feedback.
ok,
first -
3-city radius - i had up until patch 3.19 come out - an excellent mechanism for it - the city tile size grew with the culture levels - you could even have a city sized with 4 tiles.
but, i couldnt merge the code to 3.19 , im not an sdk coder, so it had to stay out for current version,
im eager for someone to update this code - its mylons enhanced city something.
as for spice,
i also tend to agree , our current spice economy system is awesome by it self, but it should be more, exactly how you described it - a quantitive resourse system,
but again we need a well trained sdk coder for this - we have many ideas that we cant implement yet due to this.
we are improving the mod every day, we will use your feed, thanks !
and welcome,
thank you for the long feedback.
ok,
first -
3-city radius - i had up until patch 3.19 come out - an excellent mechanism for it - the city tile size grew with the culture levels - you could even have a city sized with 4 tiles.
but, i couldnt merge the code to 3.19 , im not an sdk coder, so it had to stay out for current version,
im eager for someone to update this code - its mylons enhanced city something.
as for spice,
i also tend to agree , our current spice economy system is awesome by it self, but it should be more, exactly how you described it - a quantitive resourse system,
but again we need a well trained sdk coder for this - we have many ideas that we cant implement yet due to this.
we are improving the mod every day, we will use your feed, thanks !
This can be fixed by setting up MIN_FOUND_VALUE in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml. But if we choose it to high (eg. 600), ai won't found any cities at all.
How is that working in city screen? Is it zoomed out making tiles smaller? Right now there is barely enough place for a 2 radius city.
davidlallen
Deity
Here is patch 1.3.7. There are two changes:
1. In 1.3.6 I removed the ability of workers to move on desert. I forgot that workers need to do this in order to build spice harvesters. I put it back.
2. Everybody on the forum has now complained that worms should not be allowed to move on land. They have moved on land since the first version of the game. Am I the only one who remembers the scene in the books and movies, where the Fremen attacking the capitol ride up practically to the front door using worms? However, since everybody votes against it, I have prevented them from moving on land.
Please unzip the attachment and copy it over your file dune wars/assets/xml/units/civ4unitinfos.xml.
EDIT: Please unzip the second attachment and copy it over your other file dune wars/assets/python/DuneWars.py.
1. In 1.3.6 I removed the ability of workers to move on desert. I forgot that workers need to do this in order to build spice harvesters. I put it back.
2. Everybody on the forum has now complained that worms should not be allowed to move on land. They have moved on land since the first version of the game. Am I the only one who remembers the scene in the books and movies, where the Fremen attacking the capitol ride up practically to the front door using worms? However, since everybody votes against it, I have prevented them from moving on land.
Please unzip the attachment and copy it over your file dune wars/assets/xml/units/civ4unitinfos.xml.
EDIT: Please unzip the second attachment and copy it over your other file dune wars/assets/python/DuneWars.py.
davidlallen
Deity
ahriman said:
@ koma13: Could this be caused by your bNoDangerCount change from a couple of releases back? *Storms* have bOnlyDefensive in the xml so they should not cause this, but the worms should be treated the same as any other barbarian unit, and cause automation to cancel. If so, we have a problem, because we need bNoDangerCount in order to prevent the AI from building tons of units in a pointless attempt to counter worms.
Deliverator
Graphical Hackificator
Thanks david.
If you look at the map I made today, Arraken would on the 'coast' in Dune Wars terms. One of the reasons I think that implementing worm riders as naval transports would be a good way to go, is then you can ride your loads of Fremen up to a city and do amphibious assault in what would be a fairly good representation of the Battle of Arrakeen in the film. It's the Fremen riding the worms that do most of the damage, not the worms themselves...
If you look at the map I made today, Arraken would on the 'coast' in Dune Wars terms. One of the reasons I think that implementing worm riders as naval transports would be a good way to go, is then you can ride your loads of Fremen up to a city and do amphibious assault in what would be a fairly good representation of the Battle of Arrakeen in the film. It's the Fremen riding the worms that do most of the damage, not the worms themselves...
davidlallen
Deity
Welcome!
Ahriman has suggested that the bonus terrains from terraforming are too powerful, leading to cities with too many specialists. I have found in several autoplays that a Fremen AI will often win around turn 400, so perhaps it is too easy. I really like the "look" of switching to globe view and seeing green, so I like the present rate of terrain spread. Perhaps we can make it give less benefit, or have a stronger penalty. Maybe the anti-spice zone needs to be bigger.
Also, the pro-spice faction needs to be stronger. The +1 hammer from spice economy does not seem to be enough.
Any suggestions are welcome. For non-modders, it may be hard to tell what is easy to implement and what is hard; we are often limited by what we can teach the AI to use effectively.
There is a discussion in another thread about a completely different mapscript based on a polar view. We may switch to that. In the archipelago mapscript, all the terrain near the north and south edges is this type of terrain, like vanilla tundra. Perhaps we should make that terrain less common or make sure civs don't start there. I would rather do that, than make cottages buildable on that terrain.
This should be pretty trivial to try out, if you want to locally edit your xml. See file assets/xml/GlobalDefines.xml. There is a variable, MIN_CITY_RANGE, which has the default value 2. Change it to 3. Voila. Now the minimum distance between cities will be 3 instead of 2.
Ahriman
Tyrant
Here's one, at the stronger end; how about spice blooms in the territory of civs with the pro-spice civic *never* expire. Or at least take twice as long to do so.
davidlallen
Deity
That is an interesting idea. But, in 1.3.6 spice expires much more slowly. Do you feel that this will make much difference anymore?
