The freshwater lake is an interesting problem, but not related.
Weird conincidence then; my only 2 non-coastal cities cappened to be on a freshwater lake.
Landing stage, space port, weather scanner all had this issue.
This also of course suggests a possible solution for coastal transports....
Have the transports require a cheap 'desert yard' building in order to be constructed, and then set the iMinAreaSize = 10 for that building.
So we could have sandworm transport units that can't travel on land, and can only be built on coastal cities!
Reduced the transmission percentage from 100% to 25%. It will still eventually spread to everybody, but slower. Is this enough?
I don't know, we can test, but I still think it feels bizarre when my ixan meks or scorptions or thopters get plagued, or when I get my entire stack plagued when an aircraft in that stack bombs the ixians. Would be great if it could be limited to infantry types only.
In my test game, all the walker units get homeground.
My mistake, I'd forgotten that the walkers only had base movement 1, so I thought my 2 move walkers weren't getting it.
The intention was to have three unitcombats: early gun infantry, melee infantry, and late gun infantry. Only melee infantry can ignore city walls. I would rather keep the number of units with this ability small. Maybe we need different names to make this more clear. Maybe two is enough, gun and melee. I agree quads should go into the scorpion class; we could certainly rename it. But I wanted walkers to be almost like UU of their related infantry units, including to be in the same unitcombat.
My impression was that walls (at least those of the citadel) were actually shields surrounding the city, protecting it from ranged assault. So vehicles, aircraft, ranged weapons aren't very effective against defenders, hence their large defensive bonus and the small reduction from siege units. But the shield has no impact on melee guys, who just walk through it and then butcher the defenders.
Also arguably lasgun troops should ignore shields, because of the feedback nuke effect that woudl happen if you tried to use your shields against lasgun attackers.
What is the purpose between early-gun and late-gun? I think its much easier to merge these. Shock troopers were definitely intended to be melee troops (hence why they come with personal shields tech), its meant to go bladesmen, elite bladesmen, shock troops.
I think the number of units that ignore city walls can potentially be large; most units in the Dune universe are melee, because of how shields stop ranged weapons, and siege warfare is not an important thing in the dune universe.
The reason I think that Walkers should go into the scorpion class is so that anti-tank weapons are more effective against them. If I'm fighting a robotic walker, I would much rather have a missile launcher than a sword or maula pistol.
I'm fine with the walkers basically being UUs of various infantry units, but I still think they should change unit class. Why do you think they need to be guardsmen class?
So it does give you the bonus without the tile yield, just as you suggested.
Ok, this is probably fine then, lets just eliminate one of them.
Hmm. I do worry that with the current system it is too easy for the first to get to offworld trade to monopolize all the good resources.
How about a combination?
a) Limit Landing stage to a national limit of 4. (And remove landing stage as a building requirement for other buildings if any).
b) Have three classes of resources: URUs, Major import resources, minor import resources.
Have each civ that is eligible for a URU (Corrino and Ix atm) automatically get that as their first resource. (Otherwise the AI might screw up and not get it if it picks 4 other resources, and the human player can strategically delay the resource to their 4th pick getting others first, knowing no-one else can take their one.)
Have the major import resources like the +2 luxury goods are now. These provide 3 copies and only 1 contract is allowed for the world.
Have the minor resources give +1 bonuses, provide 2 copies, and have 2 contracts allowed for the world. Marble would be a minor resource.
Have the AI make sure that they know that major resources are better than minor. Just hardcode the AI a preference order for its picks.
Then, once all the contracts are taken, then any additional landing stages do not give any further contracts.
So, there is still a nice bonus for the early researchers of offworld trade; you can get a bunch of the best resources, but its harder to lock out later people from still getting somethnig useful, and we don't get the craziness of 15 marble resources.
Caladanian wine could be a +1 happy minor resource. Pundi rice could be a +2 health major resource. Elacca could be a +1 happy resource. Fogwood could be a happy resource. Whale fur could be a minor happiness resource. etc.
