Dune Wars 1.9 Final Release Feedback

[Ahriman]

The core of the problem is, when I tech to be able to build Infantry, who cannot enter desert on foot, I can no longer build soldiers, who can.

Hi clearbeard, interesting, I've never had a problem with this before. My advice: beeline for crysknife fighters. They are awesome, and fairly low tech.

Or head for Fanaticism.

Fremen already have the best early expansion in the game, with mobile settlers, +1 water from Deathstills and then the pwnage crysknife fighter. I'm not sure that its a problem if they have a brief period where they can't defend overseas settlements with units not built there.

I'm not sure if its possible to have Infantry not make soldiers obsolete without also preventing soldiers from upgrading to infantry.

I think its rare to get a very small start position, but even if it happens, that happens in vanilla Civ too; sometimes you get a poor start.

When regenerating the map (Arrakis type, haven't tried archipelago), all the spice disappears.

The mod is not really designed to use the Regenerate Map button.
If you have a start position you don't want to play, then re-create a new game. Sorry.

 

[clearbeard]

...I'm not sure if its possible to have Infantry not make soldiers obsolete without also preventing soldiers from upgrading to infantry....

The mod is not really designed to use the Regenerate Map button.
If you have a start position you don't want to play, then re-create a new game. Sorry.

If soldiers can also upgrade into chrysknife fighters, they will not become unbuildable until you can build both infantry and fighters, so that would be an option to close the hole. That's a general truism for any unit that has multiple upgrade options: they don't obsolete until all possible upgrades are available. Thanks for the tip though, still exploring the tech tree and units list, didn't realize a better unit was coming so soon.

As for regenerate map, no worries. As I mentioned, it's minor. I'm a weak early game player, but strong later game. I usually like to get a map position that stacks things somewhat in my favor at first, but play on a higher difficulty, so I tend to regenerate a lot. Means I don't get creamed in the ancient era, but still can have fun in modern times (in vanilla, same idea in mods).

 

[Ahriman]

If soldiers can also upgrade into chrysknife fighters, they will not become unbuildable until you can build both infantry and fighters, so that would be an option to close the hole

Hmm. Would that mess things up for Non-Fremen though, and make their soldier not go obsolete?
Even non-Fremen can technically build the Crysknife fighter, though in practice its basically impossible to get an AI Fremen to trade you Water Debt that early in the game.
I don't think we want people to be able to build soldiers past the early game; its an easy way to abuse hereditary rule for happiness and to just choke the enemy with spam units.

 

[clearbeard]

Hmm. Would that mess things up for Non-Fremen though, and make their soldier not go obsolete?
Even non-Fremen can technically build the Crysknife fighter, though in practice its basically impossible to get an AI Fremen to trade you Water Debt that early in the game.
I don't think we want people to be able to build soldiers past the early game; its an easy way to abuse hereditary rule for happiness and to just choke the enemy with spam units.

Implications on top of implications with this new game. I love it! I believe that yes, that would be the case. I decided to play Fremen again in my new game, and with a little better planning, it's not an issue at all, waiting for chrysknifes.

New question:

What's the rationale behind the 7-wonder per city limit? That's a big enough change in my book to warrant its own note on the Dune Concepts 'pedia page. Personally, the 2 national wonder limit in vanilla was one of my least favorite features, so this one bugs be a bit on first glance (and I've already removed it for my game, but to each their own). I'm just curious about the change.

And this one's a real (if small) bug:
Melee units, such as the Mahdi Mujahid I'm about to slaughter the Atreides with cannot take the Zeal III promotion (yes, I have Zeal II and prescience). If you look at their 'pedia entry, or the one for any melee unit, the tooltip over the Zeal III icon says they are eligible for the "water insects" promotion instead. It appears that PROMOTION_ZEAL3, PROMOTION_WATER_INSECTS, and PROMOTION_SUSPENSOR_REMOVE all reference the same button art index, "dunepromoatlas2.dds,3,3" so perhaps that's the source of the issue?

 

[Jester Fool]

<snip>

Just want you to know Dune Wars values your feedback (I surely do).

 

[TomChick]

I presume this is a minor and easily fixable bug, but I don't get the shield effect for all my cities with force shields. It's not a big deal, but my OCD kicks in when I see an unshielded city that is, in fact, shielded.

-Tom

 

[Crighton]

A minor thought occurred to me: Why are the barbarians in Dune Wars called the Arrakeen? Shouldn't they be called the Jotakoru, which was the water stealing tribe. I can't remeber if they're in Children of Dune or in Dune Messiah, but their backstory was they stole everybodies water and all the fremen tribes united against them, thought them extict and their home seitch was considered a place of evil and magic.

 

[Deliverator]

I did some testing with INITIAL_GOLD_PER_UNIT to 2.
AI autoplays seemed to lead to basically the same AI scores with and without the change.

I don't think it makes much difference to the AI, because on the low difficulty levels (AI effectively plays on Noble) the player gets a lot of free units, so unit maintenance isn't such a pain.

I think we should seriously consider making this change.

I'll try to do some human-playtesting and see if the game "feels" differently.

If the effect is not noticeable doesn't that defeat the object? Don't we want unit maintenance to be something the player needs to pay attention to? Perhaps we should also reduce the free unit amounts.

 

[Ahriman]

If the effect is not noticeable doesn't that defeat the object?

Not necessarily; its fine for the effect to not be noticeable to the AI. We ideally want the effect to be noticeable to the human player though.

I haven't done enough late-game testing to see how much the difference is for the human player.

As an experiment: I could set the parameter to 1, play a normal game aimed at building lots of units, and then halfway into the game exit, change the xml value to 2, load the save-game and see how much the difference is.

We could consider reducing free units.

 

[Deliverator]

A minor thought occurred to me: Why are the barbarians in Dune Wars called the Arrakeen? Shouldn't they be called the Jotakoru, which was the water stealing tribe. I can't remeber if they're in Children of Dune or in Dune Messiah, but their backstory was they stole everybodies water and all the fremen tribes united against them, thought them extict and their home seitch was considered a place of evil and magic.

This has to work as a prefix to Sandworm as well as Infantry, Waterstealer, etc since there is only one Barbarian civ. Arrakeen Sandworm works ok since Arrakeen is the adjective for Arrakis (as well as being a city which is the confusing bit).

If you mean Jacurutu, I've thought of reworking the city naming logic so that the Barbarians have their own list again. That way we can have Waterstealers in Jacurutu and Shuloch etc. The Water Insect promo is a little nod to the Iduali.

 

[Deliverator]

Is there any particular reason why we made the change below? People are complaining that Hornets on a Suspensor Carrier cannot be set to Intercept as in vanilla and this change is why.

bool CvUnit::canAirDefend(const CvPlot* pPlot) const
{
...
	// davidlallen: allterrain action start
	if (isCargo())
	{
		return false;
	}
	// davidlallen: allterrain action end

I think I'll comment this out unless anyone has a good reason not to.

 

[God-Emperor]

I expect this is to prevent land units from doing interceptions while they are loaded onto transports (which makes sense - it is hard to shoot down an air unit if you are inside a vehicle and can't even see the sky, unless you want your troops to shoot holes in the roof).

So instead of commenting it out, you could add a check to see if it is a DOMAIN_AIR unit and not return false if it is to allow them to intercept (or check to see if it is DOMAIN_LAND unit and block it only if it is).

 

[Deliverator]

So instead of commenting it out, you could add a check to see if it is a DOMAIN_AIR unit and not return false if it is to allow them to intercept (or check to see if it is DOMAIN_LAND unit and block it only if it is).

Good idea - I'll do that.

Edit: I noticed that the additional code posted above wasn't necessary because it's handled in the unofficial patch patch code below.

bool CvUnit::canAirDefend(const CvPlot* pPlot) const
{
...
	if (getDomainType() != DOMAIN_AIR)
	{
/************************************************************************************************/
/* UNOFFICIAL_PATCH                       10/30/09                     Mongoose & jdog5000      */
/*                                                                                              */
/* Bugfix                                                                                       */
/************************************************************************************************/
/* original bts code
		if (!pPlot->isValidDomainForLocation(*this))
*/
		// From Mongoose SDK
		// Land units which are cargo cannot intercept
		if (!pPlot->isValidDomainForLocation(*this) || isCargo())
/************************************************************************************************/
/* UNOFFICIAL_PATCH                        END                                                  */
/************************************************************************************************/
		{
			return false;
		}
	}

 

[Ahriman]

I do definitely remember in one previous version of Dune Wars that cargo missile troopers were intercepting aircraft; I suspect David added that code specifically to try to fix the problem.
So this is something to make sure we test.

 

[Praylak]

Glad to be back playing this mod again. You guys have made some spectacular improvements since I last played! I especially appreciate the spice victory, new graphics and music.

I' haven't had any issues, although I haven't seen late game yet (restart syndrome, ). I do have a few questions, and I apologize if they have already been answered somewhere but my search failed to pick it up...

1) Is the economic screen working correctly, expenses namely? With all the units I have I'm still not paying any upkeep for them. City maintence is registering, and income side seems fine.

2) I'm a little confused about the Polar shipper building. Does this only increase water for cities in polar regions with the resource being worked? It does not actually 'ship' water anywhere, right?

3) Just for flavour, I'd suggest the 'spice worker' be changed to a type of vulnerable carryall (same move as the worker, but its a non-combative carryall). The time spent on location to build harvesters could be seen as deployment and recovery of such. This may seem like a mundane request, but I beleive it would add allot of atmposhere to the whole spice process as it matches up with the lore.

4) Do you think Harkonnenns could use a early-ish or mid game UU infantry? What were those guys called in Children of Dune, or was it Dune 2000? They had wicked looking red uniforms, a six barreled gun, but the Fremen tore them up in melee. I guess they'd be a type of Master Guardsmen replacement?

5) Have you actually seen mines on mesa's discover a mineral resource? In one game I had many mines all over the place, even still after I could have built the slighlty more benefical turbine imporvements. Never seen it happen once. How does that 2% chance work? Does the tile have to be worked in order for a chance to fire? I think it should be low yes, but it does actually fire?

Thanks.

 

[clearbeard]

Glad to be back playing this mod again. You guys have made some spectacular improvements since I last played! I especially appreciate the spice victory, new graphics and music.

I' haven't had any issues, although I haven't seen late game yet (restart syndrome, ). I do have a few questions, and I apologize if they have already been answered somewhere but my search failed to pick it up...

1) Is the economic screen working correctly, expenses namely?

2) I'm a little confused about the Polar shipper building.

3) Just for flavour, I'd suggest the 'spice worker' be changed to a type of vulnerable carryall

4) Do you think Harkonnenns could use a early-ish or mid game UU infantry?

5) Have you actually seen mines on mesa's discover a mineral resource?

Thanks.

1) Seems this would depend on your civic choices. Some options give you quite high unit support caps, which is based on total size of your cities, just like in vanilla civ.

2) Polar water shipper is built in any city, and adds water to that city based on the total number of polar ice your civ controls (and has hooked up to your trade network), similar to how spice works in your capitol.

3) Sounds neat, but tricky and might involve a prohibitive amount of micromanagement. I like the current system myself, if the AI can be taught to exploit it properly.

4) My general leaning is away from scads of UU's cluttering up the table of organization. I think that restrictions in place between factions on what types of units are built (e.g. Fremen not building vehicles), plus 1-2 UU per civ, and added to the unique (but excess and trade-able) resource units works well.

5) Not in this mod that I recall, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence in vanilla civ as well, with no more than 1-2 resources typically popping from mines in an extended game.

 

[tesb]

Hi deliverator, i was trying the latest ground version + patch from the welcome thread and i get multiple xml errors when i start the mod:

for example:
TERRAIN_SPICE_OCEAN in Info class was incorrect
current XML file is: xml\Technolgies/CIV4TechInfos.xml

similar i get TERRAIN_SPICE_COAST

and some technologies xml errors.

i uninstalled my old version and installed 1.9 + latest patch. i tried it two times by now (downloaded it 2 times) but it is still there so i guess it is not a corrupted download.

is there a known fix?

secondly any news on 2.0?

 

[Praylak]

2) Polar water shipper is built in any city, and adds water to that city based on the total number of polar ice your civ controls (and has hooked up to your trade network), similar to how spice works in your capitol.

5) Not in this mod that I recall, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence in vanilla civ as well, with no more than 1-2 resources typically popping from mines in an extended game.

Re:2
Thats how I thought it worked, but it turns out my city in the polar region is not connected to my trade network. I have researched Dune topography, but it still remains unconnected. I don't see how to connect it?

Re:5
I finally witnessed it, does happen, but extremely rare.

 

[tesb]

Hi deliverator, i was trying the latest ground version + patch from the welcome thread and i get multiple xml errors when i start the mod:

for example:
TERRAIN_SPICE_OCEAN in Info class was incorrect
current XML file is: xml\Technolgies/CIV4TechInfos.xml

similar i get TERRAIN_SPICE_COAST

and some technologies xml errors.

i uninstalled my old version and installed 1.9 + latest patch. i tried it two times by now (downloaded it 2 times) but it is still there so i guess it is not a corrupted download.

is there a known fix?

secondly any news on 2.0?

ok i tried 1.9 without the patch and it works. so it seems the latest patch (1.9.1.2) is breaking the game, giving xml errors. it seems strange though that nobody else has reported it.


edit: using dune-wars-patch-1-9-0-1 works fine too it is dune-wars-patch-1-9-1-2 which causes the trouble.

 

[davidlallen]

Please note that to use 1.9.1.2, you must install 1.9.1 first. Several people have missed this, and gotten related errors.