Dune Wars

[davidlallen]

1. A small bug in that when I create my first settler, I get like 3-5 repeats of the pop-up telling me I've built my first settler.

I have never seen that popup. Is that related to the tutorial or something? Do you also get popups when you play vanilla about your first archer, etc?

2. The religions seem a bit odd. I almost think you need to 'do away' with them and go with more of what you have in Fury Road or what they have in Planetfall of more of 'themes' of how to progress.

Interesting suggestion. There is more background on the religions on this thread in the subforum. Please stop by.

3. My only semi-complaint is that it seems too easy (or at least too early) to get a win w/terraforming.

Are you using the 1.5.5 patch? We have moved the Arrakis Transformation tech much deeper into the tech tree by adding another tech as a prerequisite. However, we have also gotten feedback from others that the terraforming victory is too easy, and it should instead count terrain plots and give a win when 3% of the terrain is transformed. Some more discussion and background at this thread.

4. I haven't played them yet so maybe I've missed this, but shouldn't the Ixians have a 'problem' like the Fremen or Atredies in that when those factions go for Arrakis terraforming there is a repercussion for certain Ixian units being created?

Not sure what you mean. Ixian units are cybernetic; they don't care about terraforming except maybe for rust.

6. Plus, just a thought, have you considered perhaps doing something like what they did in the The History of the Three Kingdoms mod where the Emperor is a unit that is capable of being captured?

I do like the heroes and emperor unit in HOTK. There are a few things we still need to "dunify", like wonders and UU/UB; once everything is done, adding heroes is something we would like to consider.

7. Any plans to possibly allow a way for units to be bought from the Spacer's Guild?

Plans, no. It is already in the game. Please see the "reinforcements" section in the Dune War Concepts tab of the dune-o-pedia. You need a landing stage built, and then you need to find the homeworld screen button at the upper right of your window. (It looks like a greek helmet in the 1.5.x versions.)

8. Is there a problem with the Thumper promotion? I've never found a way to activate that function.

It should act like a lightning rod, to attract worms away from other units and then disperse it harmlessly. But it is not working yet; I need to modify the worm AI.

Though I must say the worms act a bit strange in that having workers out on the sand doesn't seem to attract them as much as I would have thought. Plus (and I'm sure this is a AI thing) I've noticed they often get 'attracted' to units in cities right on the border to sand and take forever to leave.

Hm, those both sound like bugs. I will investigate.

 

[Ahriman]

Thanks for the feedback.

2. The religions seem a bit odd.

The religions basically represent different power groups your citizens (and your civ, through state religion) can choose to be supporting. So Shai-Hulad means you're supporting the old Fremen/native ways. Imperium means you're supporting the Emperor and his political power. Landsraad means you're supporting the Great Houses and their hunger for grade. Mahdi means you are supporting the messainic jihad. Quizarate means you are supporting the bureacratic religion leading to the Golden Path of happiness and stagnation. Technocracy means you are tinkering with Thinking Machines, and the edges of the strictures of the Butlerian Jihad.

The idea of the mod is that early religions, such as Shai-Hulad and Imperium, representing the "old order" on Dune are gradualy replaced by later game religions. Some values still need tweaknig to attain this.
This is unlike vanilla and most mods, where the religions founded early game tend to dominate forever and late-game religions are pretty useless (how often is Islam one of the world's main religions in vanilla?).
Many of the religious also have unique spread characteristics; Imperium spreads fast, but is displaced automatically by any other religion. Mahdi spreads automatically to cities you conquer. Qizarate displaces *all* other religions in a city.

3. My only semi-complaint is that it seems too easy (or at least too early) to get a win w/terraforming.

Yes we are looking at redoing the terraforming victory.

4. I haven't played them yet so maybe I've missed this, but shouldn't the Ixians have a 'problem' like the Fremen or Atredies in that when those factions go for Arrakis terraforming there is a repercussion for certain Ixian units being created?

Ix? Why? Are you meaning something with Heighliner production neednig Guild navigators and spice??

6. Plus, just a thought

IMO the current Emperor is basically represented by the owner of the Imperial religion holy city/shrine.

7. Any plans to possibly allow a way for units to be bought from the Spacer's Guild?

You can! You're missing a feature of the mod already implemented, but its easy to miss.
Once you have offworld trade, a "purchase units from the guild" icon appears in the list of icons that access various menus - its a small greek helment.
We need some way to make that button waaay more obvious.

8. Is there a problem with the Thumper promotion? I've never found a way to activate that function.

We're still debating how this should function. Take a look at some posts earlier in this thread.

Though I must say the worms act a bit strange in that having workers out on the sand doesn't seem to attract them as much as I would have thought.

Worms are attracted to units in a 2-tile radius.

Plus (and I'm sure this is a AI thing) I've noticed they often get 'attracted' to units in cities right on the border to sand and take forever to leave.

Actually, there is another possible unit for this. Worms go for units in a 2 tile radius. In early versions of this mod (when the AI was set), worms were able to travel on rock/land tiles (anything except hills). We then disallowed the worms from going onto land, but is it possible that their AI is still triggered by units in a 2-tile radius even if the unit is on rock/land? When they should be attracted only by units on desert waste/deep desert tiles?
David?

 

[davidlallen]

Worms go for units in a 2 tile radius. In early versions of this mod (when the AI was set), worms were able to travel on rock/land tiles (anything except hills). We then disallowed the worms from going onto land, but is it possible that their AI is still triggered by units in a 2-tile radius even if the unit is on rock/land? When they should be attracted only by units on desert waste/deep desert tiles? David?

Ninja'd you. Yes, this is likely; I will check.

 

[Deliverator]

A small bug in that when I create my first settler, I get like 3-5 repeats of the pop-up telling me I've built my first settler.

This annoys me too. I think it happens when you have advisor popups switched on. It's not exactly the same message repeated, it goes "Congratulations you have just created your first <unit type> unit!" with 4-5 different unit types.

 

[arkham4269]

1. A small bug in that when I create my first settler, I get like 3-5 repeats of the pop-up telling me I've built my first settler. Doesn't crash anything, just a annoyance.

Disregard this, I didn't notice that it's actually different pop-ups.

 

[The Capo]

This mod is awesome. How the hell did you edit the interface like that?

 

[arkham4269]

The religions basically represent different power groups your citizens (and your civ, through state religion) can choose to be supporting. So Shai-Hulad means you're supporting the old Fremen/native ways. Imperium means you're supporting the Emperor and his political power. Landsraad means you're supporting the Great Houses and their hunger for grade. Mahdi means you are supporting the messainic jihad. Quizarate means you are supporting the bureacratic religion leading to the Golden Path of happiness and stagnation. Technocracy means you are tinkering with Thinking Machines, and the edges of the strictures of the Butlerian Jihad.

Yes I understand this but the problem is that this isn't a standard Civ mod where you start with nothing. At the beginning of the game you'd expect the Fremen to have Shai-Halud, the Atredies and Harkonen (at least) to have the Landsrad, and Corrino to have Imperial for example. Having these factions have to develop them later seems odd.

So I see most of the religions as being more like starting Civics. The 'real' religions would be like Mahdi and maybe the Ixian one in that they have decided to hell with everybody else, we're doing machines again, Butlerian Jihad or no! So anyway, when I get a chance I'll start poking through the discussion threads that were posted above.

Ix? Why? Are you meaning something with Heighliner production neednig Guild navigators and spice??

Sort of like I said above, I would think that creating certain units would over time create more and more of a negative diplomatic impact on against the Ix. I mean when they start building walkers, computers and AI type things, many of the other factions might finally freak out and call for a new jihad. That puts the Ix in a position of having to decide when and if they can afford to build certain units just as factions who want to try to win a terraforming victory do.

BTW, the other problem I had with the terraforming victory (and yes I have the latest patch) was that I was able to start building 7 of the buildings in 7 different cities all at once and I expected all the factions to freak out. None did, even after I built one then another and then the other five were built in one turn for the win. Plus I had turned a great deal of my area into grassland and nary a peep from the other factions.

IMO the current Emperor is basically represented by the owner of the Imperial religion holy city/shrine.

Well I was thinking that be able to capture the Emperor as you can in HOTK actually mimics the book since that's exactly what Muad Di'b did. In some respects if this were to be enabled, I'd take out Shaddam the IV as a Corrino leader since he's the Emperor and the Corrino faction would represent less the Imperial presence but just the others in the Corrino family that might themselves want to oust Shaddam. Otherwise it seems odd that the Corrino faction isn't more nasty. I mean attacking them is attacking be like attacking the Emperor and from the Dune series, he'd be able to call upon the Great Houses to help them destroy which ever faction attacked.

Of course in HOTK usually some faction ends up with the Emperor so you have to wrest him from them so like I said, there could be some metric that triggers the "Emperor comes to Dune" event which would could drop him and a few legions in Corrino territory. Then it's a matter of grabbing him. I'm sure some sort of event matrix could be created to figure out if after being attacked, the Great Houses would rally to the Emperor or not. I mean in the book, Duke Leto I points out he's targeted by the Emperor because he's one of the Dukes that could potentially rally the Landsrad against him. So maybe depending on how popular you are with the other factions would affect what happens when you try to attack the Emperor.

 

[davidlallen]

Yes I understand this but the problem is that this isn't a standard Civ mod where you start with nothing.

That is not so clear. We had some discussions about this at the very early stage of this mod. "Somehow", there was some kind of apocalypse, and all tech must be re-invented. This is because the point of a civ mod is to show development of technology. We never concluded, but you can see more discussion on this thread.

Sort of like I said above, I would think that creating certain units would over time create more and more of a negative diplomatic impact on against the Ix.

There is some aspect of this, but perhaps there could be more. We assume that the Ixian people themselves don't mind thinking machines, but the rest of the population does. There are several late game buildings which rely on thinking machines, such as the automated factory. These give big unhappiness penalties because the local population fears a second Butlerian Jihad. Giving negative diplomacy reactions to any civ who uses thinking machines is an interesting expansion of this.

BTW, the other problem I had with the terraforming victory (and yes I have the latest patch) was that I was able to start building 7 of the buildings in 7 different cities all at once and I expected all the factions to freak out. None did, even after I built one then another and then the other five were built in one turn for the win. Plus I had turned a great deal of my area into grassland and nary a peep from the other factions.

Each *completed* Reservoir gives a -2 penalty up to a -8 cap; you can see this in the diplo reactions as "Your terraforming is threatening the spice!". But if you completed them all very quickly, they may not have had a chance to declare war. You can see more discussion about this on the terraforming victory thread.

 

[Ahriman]

I would think that creating certain units would over time create more and more of a negative diplomatic impact on against the Ix. I mean when they start building walkers, computers and AI type things, many of the other factions might finally freak out and call for a new jihad. That puts the Ix in a position of having to decide when and if they can afford to build certain units just as factions who want to try to win a terraforming victory do.

Ah, so you meant terraforming as an analogy. It sounded like you were saying that increased terraforming should could problems for Ix. Which made no sense to me.
We represent the unease with advanced machinery with unhapiness from the buildings (except for Ix) and the usual "you follow the wrong religion" if they adopt Technocracy state religion.
I don't see any reason to give them penalties just for creating a few walker units.

We're looking at redesign options for terraforming, including triggering a massive war when you start getting close.

The "theoretical" story background of the mod was that there was a massive disaster on Arrakis, stranding a few members of the various factions on Arrakis, with almost no resources. Hence the start with nothing flavor of the mod. Only over time is there a reconnection to the rest of the galaxy, with trade and reconnection to the homeworlds
Its a fudge, but it works well enough.

The Shai-Hulad religion is really partly among the

So adopting the Shai-Hulad religion really means that you're choosing to support the native workforce of the pan and graben. Which several of the houses could do, or the Bene Gesserit could be manipulating them (as they did through the Missionaria Protectiva).

It would be incredibly hard to balance factions if Corrino always started as the Emperor, and Atreides as leader of the Landsraad, etc. (besides, its easy to read Dune as the Harkonnen really being a member of the Imperial "religon" - he is using the Emperor and the Emperor is using him, both expanding imperial power at the expense of the Landsraad. Sure, the Baron would like to take over "leadership" of the Imperium religion so to speak, but that doesn't mean he isn't following it).

Also less replay value.

There are already some blocks to stop really non-canon events (only some factions can found particular religions), but too many blocks becomes boring.

I think the current design works at its core, and its better to generally work with the Civ engine than to fight it.

 

[davidlallen]

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the game. Though I must say the worms act a bit strange in that having workers out on the sand doesn't seem to attract them as much as I would have thought. Plus (and I'm sure this is a AI thing) I've noticed they often get 'attracted' to units in cities right on the border to sand and take forever to leave.

Well, I checked the code and they are not attracted by units/improvements on land. Is it possible that you are only seeing worms near your cities, because the rest of the terrain is in fog? Is it possible that the worms are stuck by terrain? They do not have any kind of maze threading ability, they just pick one adjacent tile randomly.

 

[davidlallen]

Version 1.6 is released!

Download: this link
Release note: this link

First post in this thread updated; first post in subforum updated.

 

[Deliverator]

This mod is awesome. How the hell did you edit the interface like that?

Ask koma13. He's the interface genius.

 

[The Capo]

I definitely will. I hope he can help me out. If I wasn't a modder I'd have more time to play this, but it looks fantastic so far and I can't imagine it woudl get any worse as I play. But I'll try to mention anything wrong I notice. Keep it up guys.

 

[kzwix]

Tried using it this morning, but the download was corrupted. Twice.

 

[Deliverator]

Sorry about that. We are working at resolving this.

 

[kzwix]

It's ok, no need to apologize, I just mentioned it to you so you could fix it ^^.

Glad you're quick to respond, though, it's nice to see active mods. And I have to say I'm quite impatient to give it a try

 

[Deliverator]

The link is now updated to another site, so if you try again you should have more luck.

 

[kzwix]

Gonna try it right now. Thanks

[EDIT]
Ok, the installer worked fine, but I got an exception launching the game. I'm gonna check whether I have the 3.19 patch installed (maybe I still have 3.17)

 

[davidlallen]

Some people have reported crashes on launching a new game with the arrakis mapscript. For now you may wish to use the archipelago mapscript, and stay tuned for a patch.

EDIT: the announcement thread has a patch in case you downloaded 1.6 today. The patch upgrades 1.6 to 1.6.1. The download location now contains 1.6.1.

 

[azzedar]

there seems to be a problem with the missile launcher (the siege unit) unit, too. When attacking it the game regularly crashes as soon as its attack animation would follow. first i thought its because of my fedaykin that attacked from the sand, but it was continuing to happen with all units that tried to attack missile launcher units, no matter if in city, outside, or which players territory. doesnt seem to happen with every single one of them, but when it does, it does everytime i load. happened once when a launcher attacked one of my cities too.
im playing the 1.6 version.
try yourself, if u dont get i try uploading a save game.

btw.: great new icons, very nice. and i love the fremen units
another thing, although not really important:
i think some of the special units are not shown in the dune-o-pedia (or not linked to their faction as race-only units). for example the devastator (didnt it had another graphic some versions ago? i dont like that one), the bene gesserit whatever-mother and the atreides hier.