Dune Wars 1.9 Final Release Feedback

[clearbeard]

Yep, I've only had time to go over some of the discussions. Trying to get around to all of them.



One major difference here is that most of the civ-specific promos have three tiers, the ordos does not. Most of those tiered promos increase durations or amplitude of missions, which doesn't apply to either of the ordos missions, you either destroy an improvement or you don't for example. That's where the ideas above came from, something for extra tiers for their promo(s). Any other ideas there are welcome.

One idea for a higher tier Ordos mission could be "salt the earth" where instead of just destroying an improvement, the tile gets salt added to it. "Dirty bomb" could be a third level, which adds fallout instead.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Really appreciate the feedback guys.

This suggests to me making sabotage scalable as well.
At tier 1, you could decrease the unit's movement (or make it only able to move once every x turns).
At tier 2, also decrease its strength by x%
At tier 3, destroys the unit.
It seems that the lesser effects could be implemented by passing a 'Sabotaged I' or 'Sabotaged II' promotion to the targeted unit. This might even make it possible to increase their duration and effect.

These are good ideas. When I get a day or two to really think about this, I'll put together all the ideas proposed and come up with a system. Until then, more ideas are always welcome.

If you want to be nasty, tier 3 sabotage could, instead of outright destruction, set strength and movement to 0, making the controlling player actively having to destroy it themselves. "It's useless. Scrap it. Damn these blasted saboteurs!" This would make the effect even more transparent as well.

It would be nasty, but I'd never hear the end of the "what happened to my unit " threads, and I'd have to actually teach the AI to delete them. Which, while not impossible, teaching the AI anything new is a pain roughly on par with teaching kindegarders algebra (Ok, maybe an exaggeration in this case, but still)

Water Cache reduces damage from air strikes and nukes. Is this intentional? As I recall from my Fremen game from an earlier patch (and checking the 'pedia), their unique replacement Deathstills only save water on growth.

Definitely doesn't sound intentional. I could see a moderate argument that a well contained and protected water cache would be helpful for surviving air raids/nukes, but not a -50%, and it's not intuitive at all. Conversely, guard stations and force shields have no protection afforded. I'm going to put a small effect on the guard station, and a larger one on the force shield that adds up to this same -50% (so the late game air power balance isn't screwed up).

Atreides' Beesting interceptors only get +50% against other hornets, while the normal version gets +75%. Is this intentional? Seems odd, especially noting the upgrade Locust also has +50%.

I'd have to agree with you again. The current setup means both have an effective strength of 10.5 against hornets, exactly the same, which leaves the beesting slightly more damaging in air strikes, but no better at actual aerial combat. The problem I see with dropping the wasp to 50% is that puts it at effectively 9 versus a firefly bomber's 8 strength, a very narrow margin. Which brings us back to the wonky vanilla civ situation where bombers shoot down intercepting fighters a lot of the time. So raising the beesting's bonus seems the right action.

There also needs to be enough difference in effective aerial strength between the beesting and the locust to justify upgrading. The locust has an effective strength of 9*1.5 = 13.5. Using 75% for the beesting puts us at 7*1.75=12.25. That's a little close I think. Using 60% instead we get 7*1.6 = 11.2, compared to the wasp's 6*1.75 = 10.5. So we've got a moderate but not overwhelming advantage for the beesting, hopefully without damaging any balance.

The 'pedia entry for CHOAM says the founder gets a free emissary, but I didn't.

I founded CHOAM yesterday and got the free emissary, and it's properly setup in the xml for them too. You either missed it, or it's a bug that needs to be looked at. But that xml field and it's behavior should be unchanged from BTS I'm guessing.

Not a bug per se, but should Harkonnen slaves be changed into regular workers when captured/freed?

I like this idea and it should be possible through python without too much trouble. I found it awefully odd to be capturing and using old harkonnen slaves as the atreides in a game a couple weeks ago.

I'm finding captured slaves to be immensely useful as pre-builders. It's clearly an exploit, but if you stop a slave the turn before he finishes, and finish with a regular worker, you get the benefit of the faster work rate, plus keep the slave.

This is a hair more complicated. There are at present no unit level variables or functions I can think of that would be useful here. What I can do is create a new unit variable in the DLL that acts as a counter each turn the unit is building something. Passing that to python, I can kill a slave after he's worked x number of turns for instance, where x is modified by the game speed, and with a little uncertainty added in on just how many turns any slave could work before dying so as to not be gamed to much. It's low priority however.

One idea for a higher tier Ordos mission could be "salt the earth" where instead of just destroying an improvement, the tile gets salt added to it. "Dirty bomb" could be a third level, which adds fallout instead.

I was thinking something similar. The real bummer of sabotaging improvements is, you know that after spending hard earned EP's and risking you're unit, the AI will just have the improvement built again in five turns anyway. Adding an improvement that prevents them from rebuilding immediately would help that. But instead of salt, I'm thinking about the wrecked infrastructure left behind that has to be cleared first. Any ideas on a good name (or if 'wreckage' would work), plus it would need artwork. If anyone knows of existing art on the database or from some mod that might fit that, it'd be useful.

I could alternatively, or alongside the above idea, add a plot level variable that cuts workrate in half on the plot and expires after some time. It wouldn't be 'visible' except in tooltips, saving the need for artwork, and would really be easier to code I think.

Chris

 

[Natasha]

It would be nasty, but I'd never hear the end of the "what happened to my unit " threads, and I'd have to actually teach the AI to delete them.

If you go that way, a promotion on the sabotaged unit, coupled with the message that "A {unit} in {city} has been tampered with by a Saboteur!" should make it clear what happened. But I figured teaching the AI to handle them would indeed be quite difficult.

I'm finding captured slaves to be immensely useful as pre-builders. It's clearly an exploit, but if you stop a slave the turn before he finishes, and finish with a regular worker, you get the benefit of the faster work rate, plus keep the slave.

This is a hair more complicated. There are at present no unit level variables or functions I can think of that would be useful here. What I can do is create a new unit variable in the DLL that acts as a counter each turn the unit is building something. Passing that to python, I can kill a slave after he's worked x number of turns for instance, where x is modified by the game speed, and with a little uncertainty added in on just how many turns any slave could work before dying so as to not be gamed to much. It's low priority however.

Doesn't seem like a big deal to me. While it is technically exploitable, it sounds like a lot of micromanagement for a relatively small bonus. Especially if you run Serfdom, with the 50% work rate chances are the Slave will be done in a single turn anyway.

I was thinking something similar. The real bummer of sabotaging improvements is, you know that after spending hard earned EP's and risking you're unit, the AI will just have the improvement built again in five turns anyway. Adding an improvement that prevents them from rebuilding immediately would help that. But instead of salt, I'm thinking about the wrecked infrastructure left behind that has to be cleared first. Any ideas on a good name (or if 'wreckage' would work), plus it would need artwork. If anyone knows of existing art on the database or from some mod that might fit that, it'd be useful.

I could alternatively, or alongside the above idea, add a plot level variable that cuts workrate in half on the plot and expires after some time. It wouldn't be 'visible' except in tooltips, saving the need for artwork, and would really be easier to code I think.

I had forgotten about sabotaged improvements. Replacing it with a wrecked version sounds good. I would much prefer it to be visible on the map, so some kind of artwork for that would be sweet. As a name, 'Wreckage' would work, or maybe 'Ruined Improvement'. (I guess we need to stay generic, as giving each improvement a specific 'wrecked' version would not be feasible.)

 

[clearbeard]

Really appreciate the feedback guys.

...Which brings us back to the wonky vanilla civ situation where bombers shoot down intercepting fighters a lot of the time....

I always thought this was intentional and reasonable, from vanilla Civ, and don't mind seeing it kept here too. The B-17 wasn't called the "flying fortress" for nothing, after all. I'm not entirely sure how to tweak the numbers to achieve it, but on a successful interception having something like

25% - bomber shoots down fighter (almost always damaged in the process)
25% - both damaged
50% - fighter shoots down bomber (damaged half the time in the process)

feels about right to me. That's for equal tech level intercepts, of course (wasp on firefly; locust on dragonfly).

I founded CHOAM yesterday and got the free emissary, and it's properly setup in the xml for them too. You either missed it, or it's a bug that needs to be looked at. But that xml field and it's behavior should be unchanged from BTS I'm guessing.

Should have thought to save the autosave from the turn before founding. If it happens again I'll be sure to do that. Gotta love bugs that happen sometimes but not others!

I like this idea and it should be possible through python without too much trouble. I found it awefully odd to be capturing and using old harkonnen slaves as the atreides in a game a couple weeks ago.

Isn't there an XML tag that defines what a unit becomes on capture? The one that turns settlers into workers?

This is a hair more complicated. There are at present no unit level variables or functions I can think of that would be useful here. What I can do is create a new unit variable in the DLL that acts as a counter each turn the unit is building something. Passing that to python, I can kill a slave after he's worked x number of turns for instance, where x is modified by the game speed, and with a little uncertainty added in on just how many turns any slave could work before dying so as to not be gamed to much. It's low priority however.

Definitely low priority. The AI's slaves seem to disappear as intended, and it requires an unattractive amount of micromanagement to abuse it as a player. As an alternate, slaves could be changed to the Fall from Heaven model, where they are slower than normal workers, but can be burned like a great engineer for a small hammer boost. Not sure how much work adding that functionality would be, but I'm pretty sure it's just a couple XML changes.

I was thinking something similar. The real bummer of sabotaging improvements is, you know that after spending hard earned EP's and risking you're unit, the AI will just have the improvement built again in five turns anyway. Adding an improvement that prevents them from rebuilding immediately would help that. But instead of salt, I'm thinking about the wrecked infrastructure left behind that has to be cleared first. Any ideas on a good name (or if 'wreckage' would work), plus it would need artwork. If anyone knows of existing art on the database or from some mod that might fit that, it'd be useful.

I could alternatively, or alongside the above idea, add a plot level variable that cuts workrate in half on the plot and expires after some time. It wouldn't be 'visible' except in tooltips, saving the need for artwork, and would really be easier to code I think.

Chris

I thought of salt and fallout because they already exist in the game, and have large opportunity costs (and relatively high tech costs) to remove. Wreckage would work just as well. You could use the city ruin graphic if nothing else is out there. Your other idea sounds good too, and if it's easier to code than an add feature function, even better.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

I had forgotten about sabotaged improvements. Replacing it with a wrecked version sounds good. I would much prefer it to be visible on the map, so some kind of artwork for that would be sweet. As a name, 'Wreckage' would work, or maybe 'Ruined Improvement'. (I guess we need to stay generic, as giving each improvement a specific 'wrecked' version would not be feasible.)

I think I'll go that route, keeping 'wreckage' unless something better comes along, it seems to fit to me.

I always thought this was intentional and reasonable, from vanilla Civ, and don't mind seeing it kept here too. The B-17 wasn't called the "flying fortress" for nothing, after all

Once in a while is all right, but I recall seeing it a lot more than made sense in vanilla (like, bombers shooting down fighters more than half of the time). Might just be a case of reconstructive memory, as it's been a while. At any rate, since it seems to be alright now, the minor tweak like I'm trying should give good results. It's should remain possible but fairly rare. Since the fighters are 'attacking' the incoming bombers, it seems odd the entire fighter wing would be shot down, seeing as they have the initiative and can pull away from the fight if losing (looking from a realism point of view). The bomber's lack this advantage.

Isn't there an XML tag that defines what a unit becomes on capture? The one that turns settlers into workers?

Good call, lot easier than what I was going to try to do. Already fixed in my working copy.

but can be burned like a great engineer for a small hammer boost

That is an easy xml add like you guessed, and I'd already planned to do the same thing. Sometimes you get a bunch of slaves and there's no improvements to really build at the time, need something to make them useful in such situations and this seems intuitive. (done)

I thought of salt and fallout because they already exist in the game, and have large opportunity costs (and relatively high tech costs) to remove. Wreckage would work just as well. You could use the city ruin graphic if nothing else is out there. Your other idea sounds good too, and if it's easier to code than an add feature function, even better.

Yep, same idea, just different 'obstacles'. The problem with salt in my mind is it doesn't really represent what the saboteur is doing. He's not going to hang around after blowing up a bunch of stuff to salt anything, that's all I'm sayin' . The city ruin is the easiest art to use, since it's already by default there, but doesn't really fit that well and could be confused as a... wait for it... real city ruin. It might do in a pinch though or at least for testing. Still need something better, but I'm not sure where to look. I'm hoping someone who's more familiar with the available graphics from the database or mods will have an idea, as I could spend days looking through it all.

A dirty bomb in the latter game would be cool though, maybe even affect more than one tile. More bang for your buck .

Chris

 

[clearbeard]

New topic, maybe a bug, maybe not. Improvements seem to have nationalities now (eg Atreides Ice Extractor). Maybe they always did I just never noticed. Problem is, captured improvements, while still giving the proper yields to the city, do not seem to give resources. Save attached, note the ice south of Keke has a Harkonnen extractor. That should then be polar ice #9, but I only have 8. I've only noticed it with polar ice so far. There was another unit my border expansion captured from the Ixians I already pillaged and rebuilt.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Deliverator added in the nationality bit in either 1.9 or 1.9.1, but it doesn't affect your ability to work it or receive resources, only there for flavor as far as I am aware. I'll take a look at the save and see what's going on (with any luck).

Edit: Problem Solved...

You'll kick yourself for this one -- you're exporting one to House Ecaz.
9 - 1 = 8

 

[clearbeard]

Deliverator added in the nationality bit in either 1.9 or 1.9.1, but it doesn't affect your ability to work it or receive resources, only there for flavor as far as I am aware. I'll take a look at the save and see what's going on (with any luck).

Edit: Problem Solved...

You'll kick yourself for this one -- you're exporting one to House Ecaz.
9 - 1 = 8

lol, I just noticed that, and was coming back to delete my post. You're too quick!

 

[davidlallen]

but can be burned like a great engineer for a small hammer boost

That is an easy xml add like you guessed, and I'd already planned to do the same thing. Sometimes you get a bunch of slaves and there's no improvements to really build at the time, need something to make them useful in such situations and this seems intuitive. (done)

Careful. Will the AI use it? I don't think so. There are lots of great play ideas which are (a big pain / impossible / beyond my skills) to teach the AI. Any abililty the AI cannot use, further widens the skill gap between players and AI.

 

[clearbeard]

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?

Okay, I thought this issue was fixed with the last patch, that connected polar trade routes. It seems in addition to that problem, polar cities still do not benefit from polar water shippers. Perhaps this is intended? Another save attached. Note Al Gharb and Asmara Rock do not have the "+6 water from corporations" while my non-polar cities (like Arrakeen) do.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Careful. Will the AI use it? I don't think so. There are lots of great play ideas which are (a big pain / impossible / beyond my skills) to teach the AI. Any abililty the AI cannot use, further widens the skill gap between players and AI.

Good catch, and I know. I'll quote myself:

teaching the AI anything new is a pain roughly on par with teaching kindegarders algebra

Now... I can just about guarantee that as of now the answer is no. The worker unit AI code I'm sure has no consideration for the HurryProduction tags. However, as far as teaching AI goes (which usually is pretty involved), this one might just be easy.

The hurry production will be fairly small to begin with to where it gives a human something to do with extra slaves, but given any improvements to build, that's still a good move. So even without any AI code to tell the AI to think about hurrying production with them, it's not really hurting it too much. But, I can add a check for the hurry tags (they would just use iBaseHurry), then, if there is no work to be done given the existing worker code, send them to a nearby city and have them press the hurry button. It wouldn't need to be rocket science since it's a small effect. We could even tell it to prioritize cities building wonders without much trouble.

But I wouldn't worry too much over it till I can look at that. It's more of a psychological change than a gameplay changer, so you don't feel like you have nothing to use them on in those certain instances. If it becomes the primary thing to use slaves for then I've balanced it wrong.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Okay, I thought this issue was fixed with the last patch, that connected polar trade routes. It seems in addition to that problem, polar cities still do not benefit from polar water shippers. Perhaps this is intended? Another save attached. Note Al Gharb and Asmara Rock do not have the "+6 water from corporations" while my non-polar cities (like Arrakeen) do.

Interestingly, on the turn the save starts, neither of the cities in question have the "+6 water from corporations", while cities back on the 'mainland' do, just as you said. But after going to the next turn, both of the cities had the bonus water kick in. Had they just been built that turn? If so, it might have needed to go through some function at the end or beginning of a turn before the 'corporation' bonus is applied.

Just to elaborate a bit more, there's nothing different in how this works and any of the other commerce for resource 'corporation' buildings, including the palaces, guild research facility, etc., so there's no reason for the terrain or location to affect it. As long as the requisite resources reach the city via the trade network, it should be good to go.

Chris

 

[clearbeard]

Interestingly, on the turn the save starts, neither of the cities in question have the "+6 water from corporations", while cities back on the 'mainland' do, just as you said. But after going to the next turn, both of the cities had the bonus water kick in. Had they just been built that turn? If so, it might have needed to go through some function at the end or beginning of a turn before the 'corporation' bonus is applied.

Just to elaborate a bit more, there's nothing different in how this works and any of the other commerce for resource 'corporation' buildings, including the palaces, guild research facility, etc., so there's no reason for the terrain or location to affect it. As long as the requisite resources reach the city via the trade network, it should be good to go.

Chris

It wasn't the previous turn, though they were the most recent cities to build it (3 turn prior, I think). I took a look at some autosaves and found something interesting. The water shipper updated properly when I researched my next tech (ablative shields). Seems it was only coincidence I noticed it when my polar cities and only my polar cities built shippers, and another coincidence the save I uploaded was just before gaining a tech. The observed sequence was:
10382 - city 1 builds shipper, no water
10383 - city 2 builds shipper, no water
10386 - tech researched, both cities get water
I played through those turns 3 times and got the same result each time. I'll keep an eye out as the game progresses and more new cities build shippers, to see if the behavior repeats.

Another unrelated question: what does the "culture control" from outposts do, exactly? I assumed it prevented enemy culture from encroaching, but that doesn't seem to be the case after all...

 

[Natasha]

IThe observed sequence was:
10382 - city 1 builds shipper, no water
10383 - city 2 builds shipper, no water
10386 - tech researched, both cities get water
I played through those turns 3 times and got the same result each time. I'll keep an eye out as the game progresses and more new cities build shippers, to see if the behavior repeats.

A similar thing happens with Spice. The number of spice resources controlled doesn't always seem to update straight away. Not sure if it's related to research though..

Another unrelated question: what does the "culture control" from outposts do, exactly? I assumed it prevented enemy culture from encroaching, but that doesn't seem to be the case after all...

I have been wondering that too.

 

[clearbeard]

Noticed another little one: imperial priests have a national unit limit of 1, where all the other religions are 3. I suppose it might be intentional, reflecting a difficulty in renewing fealty to the imperium once it's supplanted by a different faith?

And is the University of Arrakis supposed to be a world wonder, rather than a national wonder? It seems odd that it's world, while the guild exchange is national.

 

[Praylak]

10382 - city 1 builds shipper, no water
10383 - city 2 builds shipper, no water
10386 - tech researched, both cities get water
I played through those turns 3 times and got the same result each time. I'll keep an eye out as the game progresses and more new cities build shippers, to see if the behavior repeats.

In regards to your saved game, it might be interesting to note that your one mainland city had a polar shipper built before any polar region city had one built. Though it shouldn't matter as the resource is connected to the city in question and is being consumed by polar cities. Strange....

Another possibly related issue, I seen the polar terrain type listed in both techs Dune Topography and Water Transportation, is there a reason for this? I'm probably shooting at the dark here but its curious. I'll take a second look at that...

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

A similar thing happens with Spice. The number of spice resources controlled doesn't always seem to update straight away. Not sure if it's related to research though..

That I can answer, almost by accident... Late last year I tried out a little project to mod into my RevDCM base a more complicated resource model, where the number of resources and how long you worked them, and so on, actually mattered. I scrapped it because I didn't like the way it affected gameplay in the end, but in the process I can across this issue.

The resources available was actually a floating number instead of integer that often went up slightly every turn. In the city screen it showed up correctly every turn. But, the tooltip when hovering over the resource on the map seemed to update only sporadically. I finally isolated it to updating when you researched a new tech, or, of all things, when you uncovered a previously unknown plot... You usually won't notice this with the current resource system since they only change every once in a while anyway, but it was very obvious in my experimental system.

Took forever, but I finally traced it to a certain dirty bit (a binary internal variable that's used to tell the interface when to update certain things basically) that shouldn't have been connected logically to updating the number of resources at all . I put in a line of code setting it to dirty at the beginning of every turn and it always showed the right numbers after that.

Now... what these dirty bits actually do is hidden in the .exe, not the dll, so I have no idea what else is tied to it, so the solution I used there might have performance implications, it might not. I also don't know if it's involved with the corporation thing. On the one hand, it's the only one of these bits (there's about 8 or so by my recollection, which is a little rusty) that's tripped when researching a new tech, which means it could be the culprit. On the other hand, the resources show up fine in the city screen (where the corporation information is lacking) without it being tripped, they only lag on the world map tool tips.

At any rate, it's actually a minor issue, and it might be (if this is the culprit) just a display issue where the resources are hooking up immediately, just the tooltip is behind the times. To test this, watch the actual water accumulated in one of those cities with a new polar water shipper before it shows up in the tool tip and see if the extra water is added anyway.

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Noticed another little one: imperial priests have a national unit limit of 1, where all the other religions are 3. I suppose it might be intentional, reflecting a difficulty in renewing fealty to the imperium once it's supplanted by a different faith?

I think this is very intentional. Imperial has a very high natural spread rate, it goes everywhere in the early game. This should be to balance that.

And is the University of Arrakis supposed to be a world wonder, rather than a national wonder? It seems odd that it's world, while the guild exchange is national.

Short of a balance reason to change this, I'm assuming it's intentional

 

[Deliverator]

Short of a balance reason to change this, I'm assuming it's intentional

Long discussion here on the University of Arrakis and other balance issues. I think we should make it a National Wonder, perhaps rename it House Academy (but that might be confusing with the Academy from Great Scientists).

There's lots of other tweaks in that thread proposed by 100Bears and Ahriman that we should probably look at applying. Wouldn't want all that debate to go to waste!

 

[ChrisAdams3997]

Whoa , that's gonna take a little while to digest, hadn't looked at that thread yet.