First off, I think we all agree the mod needs a lot of tuning. We really need many players, with sometimes conflicting opinions, to make this mod "great". As always, "this sucks" is helpful, but not as helpful as "let's try this instead".
jefmart1 said:
What if spice proliferated or "blew" like forest growing and was "chopped" by harvester units, and instead of hammers it provided gold. Then techs could increase the gold created (like chopping).
Koma's previous suggestion was to chop the jungle terrain. I think chopping the spice blow is excellent and skips over the corporation step. The only problem is that it destroys the spice, which puts more stress on the system to generate it. We may be able to tune that. Maybe something like pillage, which can change one linked improvement to another? Anyway a worker action.
In patch 1.1.3 I fixed a bug with spice blows getting "stuck". So I recommend you upgrade if you haven't. If anybody is interested in directly tuning the amount of spice, it is a one line change to a python file. In assets/python/DuneWars.py, find the following code:
Code:
# Add new spice blows
def BlowAdd(self, iSpiceCount):
pBarb = gc.getPlayer(gc.getBARBARIAN_PLAYER())
xmax = CyMap().getGridWidth() ; ymax = CyMap().getGridHeight ()
# Compute the number of blows to be added
iBlowWant = (xmax * ymax / 150) - (iSpiceCount / 8)
The 150 is a simple divisor. To make twice as much spice, make it 75. I just locally changed it to 50 but I haven't played yet. Using notepad to edit this file is fine, just be careful to keep exactly the same white space (spaces and tabs) at the start of the lines.
I surely prefers food (and me too), making the commerce bonus from desert waste pretty useless. In general there is not enough food, especially at game start. In my current game 45% of time is up and most of my cities have 2-5 pop.
Deliverator has pointed out that the bonuses seem weaker, somehow, compared to vanilla. I strongly agree. I started a vanilla (revdcm) archipelago game last night. It had much more decision-making than the current dune wars. This definitely needs to be improved. At least part of the problem is my own fault, or at least, I have made bad recommendations about changes. There are several big changes I am rethinking:
a. I suggested giving work boats movement 1 to avoid spamming them as explorers. Right problem, wrong solution. Instead, scouts should be DOMAIN_SEA units with a TerrainImpassable for ocean, unlocked with a later tech. Then put back work boats to move 2.
b. I suggested moving hovering later in the game to avoid spamming light hovers. Having a 6/3 unit as a first level tech is definitely bad. But, I suggested moving hovering much later in the tree. Now, there is no way to get a colony on another "island" until you have that tech, which has many prereqs. I am not sure of the solution. The vanilla galley, at an early tech, seems like the right answer but it is not Dune-Like to have this type of unit. Any suggestions on how to enable colonies on other islands, sooner? Moving just the hover transport to a lower tier tech may solve the problem, but it doesn't feel right.
The ai calculates danger that comes from the sea. If danger is high, it will prefer building domain sea units. Try disabling sandworms, spice blows and sandstorms and check if ai still spams light hovers. Only a guess...
That is a good insight. All three of those units have ridiculously high strength. It is definitely worth an experiment. As it happens, all three of those units are defined as DOMAIN_LAND and the Python code is in charge of moving them; I am not sure whether the AI thinks of them as ocean threats or not.
The worm needs an actual combat strength so that late game tanks might defeat them. The storm and blow need to be units, so that they do not accidentally remove features or improvements; but what I want is to make them unattackable. The blow can have "defend only" but the storm cannot. If removing these reduces light hover spam, then I can add python so that the game doesn't realize the storm kills units, by taking over its attack and defend routines.
Does anybody know if there is a way to make a *unit* unattackable?
- sometimes the storm seems to stuck on a tile. I had a storm next to my city that didnt move any further. After a few turns it slowly disappeared.
I can certainly make some improvements to the storm travel AI. It won't move through cities, so if your city is directly east of the storm, I can see it might get stuck. By any chance did you have the "house shield" wonder, which prevents barbarian movement? I have noticed that this prevents storm movement, which I did not expect. I think the game has hard-coded the behavior somewhere at a much lower level, and I am not sure I can override that.
- my rover killed a sandworm too (like deliverator reported), gave me 14xp!
Like I reported to deliverator, this must have been a very early game, your first or second barbarian encounter anyway. Please edit your xml/gameinto/civ4handicapinfo.xml; find the section for your chosen difficulty level; find iFreeWinsVsBarbs and change it to zero. If this does not fix your problem let me know.
Should we change this handicap so it is always zero even on easy levels?
- the barrel cactus still needs a road to be connected
There is a bug where "badlands" terrain prevents connection. Is it the same problem? In xml/technologies/civ4techinfos.xml, add TERRAIN_TUNDRA as a TerrainTrade for TECH_TUNNELS.
- ai loves to build space ports, sometime 5-6 times in one city
Multiple space ports? Or things like Spice Convoy, Nutrient Convoy, etc? I love building those convoys also, +2 health or +1 happiness is very significant.
- what is the purpose of the city wind trap?
It operates the same as the improvement. Maybe there is no need. I added it, since the AI does not understand that the windtraps give fresh water to start irrigation chains. I was afraid that the AI might not build windtrap improvements, and then get stuck by having little fresh water. The improvement is high value now and the AI seems to build it; so maybe the city version can be deleted.
In other news, I grabbed some screenshots from Children of Dune part 2. I got a better Leto 2, an adult Alia, an "old" Stilgar, and Ghanima. I added Ghanima as a copy of Leto; probably we could find a better solution. We definitely need a better Duke Leto and Fenring; also Beast turns out to be lower res than I thought, but I already returned my rental of Dune 1984. See attachment for files which are not already in patch 1.1.3.
