Dune Wars

[Deliverator]

DV27: Fresh Water has been renamed Wind Trap Water but it doesn't only come from Wind Traps anymore. Rename to Water Access perhaps?

 

[TheMostWanted]

Deliverator and everybody, please. I need to put a Russian Cossack Civ4 BTS in Civ4 Col. What should I do? Please, help me. NOTE: in Russian Cossack, to load it in Nifskope, don't appear TeamColor.bmp.

 

[Deliverator]

@TheMostWanted: I have responded to your request in this thread.

 

[Ahriman]

*nvm*

 

[davidlallen]

AHR58
Unit costs seem a little low relative to economy/hammer outputs.
Maybe we should increase hammer costs across the board, 20%? Especially in the early game.

Some units in particular seem extra cheap; wasp for example.

This requires some discussion / agreement / experimentation. We had a similar issue reported as, "Increase cost of settlers", which we improved by reducing water yield.

Is the hammer yield of cities too high? The costs of the early game units are very similar to vanilla, so if you feel you can build too easily, perhaps we should reduce hammer yields. If this is the problem, what are the largest components of your hammer yields, which we can reduce safely?

If there are specific units which should be made more / less expensive, please propose new costs. This will cut down on iterations.

 

[Ahriman]

This requires some discussion / agreement

Absolutely, it was intended as a discussion starter.

Is the hammer yield of cities too high?

I don't think hammer yields are too high. If we lower hammer yields, then we make the commerce improvements (cottages) and specialist economy (engineers) relatively more valuable, which is NOT a desirable goal.

Hammers are higher than vanilla because:
a) You can build hammer improvements all over the place, not just on hills
b) Every tile yields hammers as base yield, vs vanilla where every tile yields food.
c) Tile yields are generally higher overall than in vanilla. And tile improvements from tech come earlier
d) Refinery comes much earlier than forge, and factory in Dune comes earlier.

I think this is fine. In vanilla, Hammers are generally the rare resource, they're terrain dependent and hard to get. Commerce and food you can get pretty much anywhere.
In Dunewars, hammers and commerce are pretty easy to get, but water is scarce and terrain dependent.

Thus, I think the right solution is to increase the hammer cost of units, and maybe of structures.

Wonders still need a redesign, but their hammer costs are generally way too high for all but the earliest Wonders.

Latemidgame and late game Dunewars hammer yields are similar to late-game vanilla and the unit costs are fine, but early game and early-midgame Dunewars hammer yields are higher. Hence you can max out buildings pretty easily, and then built very large armies.

 

[davidlallen]

DV24: Perhaps we should review civ starting techs a little bit. In particular, the fact that the Fremen don't start with Mysticism means that the Shai Hulud religion is usually founded by the Bene Gesserit or Ix - not very thematic.

Ix should not start with mysticism, that is very strange. They should start with mining and maybe crystal materials

Pardon the all caps, but here are the current starting techs. Please suggest the changes.

ATREIDES: WATER_CONSERVATION DESERT_SURVIVAL
ORDOS: DESERT_SURVIVAL MINING
TLEILAX: DESERT_SURVIVAL MINING
FREMEN: EXPLORATION DESERT_SURVIVAL
CORRINO: EXPLORATION MINING
HARKONNEN: EXPLORATION MINING
GESSERIT: DESERT_SURVIVAL MYSTICISM
IX: DESERT_SURVIVAL MYSTICISM
ECAZ: WATER_CONSERVATION EXPLORATION

 

[davidlallen]

If we lower hammer yields, then we make the commerce improvements (cottages) and specialist economy (engineers) relatively more valuable, which is NOT a desirable goal.

None of these values need to be fixed. Right now we have added a hammer bonus to cottages because the AI seems to prefer turbines otherwise. But we could easily decrease engineer hammer yield as well.

Hammers are higher than vanilla because: [...]
Latemidgame and late game Dunewars hammer yields are similar to late-game vanilla and the unit costs are fine, but early game and early-midgame Dunewars hammer yields are higher.

These are all good facts, but none of them convince me that raising hammer cost is the solution. If we raise hammer cost for early game units and leave midgame units the same, then the midgame units will cost almost the same as early game units. That does not sound quite right either.

Can we do the same trick we did for water yield, and spread it out more? I am also curious to see how the actual city hammer values compare between a DW game and a similar vanilla archipelago game.

 

[Ahriman]

None of these values need to be fixed. Right now we have added a hammer bonus to cottages because the AI seems to prefer turbines otherwise. But we could easily decrease engineer hammer yield as well.

There are discreteness issues though. Cottages could be too weak without the hammer from fresh water (or fresh water unimportant again). Engineer yield is only 2 hammers (but boosted by civics), dropping it to 1 hammer would make it far too weak.

if we raise hammer cost for early game units and leave midgame units the same, then the midgame units will cost almost the same as early game units.

Not really true.
Examples:
Infantry= 25, Master guardsmen=50, Heavy trooper=130.
Bladesmen= 40, hardened bladesmen= 70, shield fighter=140
Rocket trooper=35, missile trooper=80.

Hence, I think the solution is increasing the costs of the tier 1 and 1.5 units slightly. Tier 2 units (shield fighter, heavy trooper, roller) mostly feel fine.

 

[davidlallen]

Hence, I think the solution is increasing the costs of the tier 1 and 1.5 units slightly. Tier 2 units (shield fighter, heavy trooper, roller) mostly feel fine.

I have not examined it closely yet, but here is a side by side comparison sheet of the costs of the units sorted by tech tier. This can be helpful for both comparing against vanilla, and also comparing early units against later units. If you have specific changes for unit cost, please suggest.

 

[Slvynn]

SL03 Slavery Civic Description is wrong on Civic change popup screen, which telling that "Slavery (Faufreluches) is allowing to sacrifice population.." etc etc (vanilla description)

 

[Slvynn]

Also - anyone - please sign for MP game/testing of DW of this weekend (probably it will be 1.6.3 game)

Via hamachi,
channel: Sorcciv
pw : zemo

see you there

 

[Ahriman]

AHR58b
My draft changes would probably be:
Soldier, increase to 50% city defense, increase to 20 hammers.
Scout thopter, increase to 30 hammers
Infantry increase to 30 hammers.
Crysknife fighter, increase to 40 hammers
Bladesmen, increase to 50 hammers.
Vulture thopter, 75 hammers.
Quad, unchanged.
Rocket trooper, 40 hammers.
suspensor gunship, 65 hammers
Master guardsmen, 60 hammers.
Hardened bladesmen, 80 hammers.
Grenade trooper, 70 hammers.
Mortar, 60 hammers.
Missile trooper, 90 hammers.
Ixian walker, 75 hammers (national limit 10).
Reverend mother - 15 = typo? 150 sounds about right.
Ixian avatar might need some strength tweaks, and should probably be around 110 hammers (national limit 10).
Similarly add nationa limit 10 to naib's chosen and fedaykin (if they don't yet have it).
Aircraft aren't on the list, wasp hornet felt a little low.
The Devastator super-heavy tank should be a heavy scorpion replacement with the same cost, but with only 1 movement point, IMO.

But it could be interestnig to compare the economy-wide hammer profile over time relative to vanilla. I suspect we would see a large difference.

 

[Ahriman]

And old issue, but really should be a high priority because of its effect on gameplay.
Can we please prioritize getting spice headquarters destroyed and the corporation wiped when you capture an enemy's spice corp? The doubling of spice commerce income (and the inability of the other faction to relocate their spice hq elsewhere) is kindof broken for a conquest focused gameplay.

 

[Ahriman]

AHR61
The Automated factory, computerized research center and thinking machine factory buildings are supposed to require the Technocracy religion in that city. That's the point of technocracy religion; you can't build these without it.
Also, they are supposed to cause +unhappiness just in their own city, not in the whole continent.
Increase the unhappy to +3 if you think its not enough.

But Technocracy religion is *supposed* to be very strong, given how late it is founded.

AHR62
Ixian Avatar and Cymek are far too weak given their late stage in the tech tree. Lets move them earlier or buff them, or some of each.

Maybe:
Move the Avatar to Industrialism, boost its strength to 13.

Move the Cymek to Cybernetics, boost its strength to 16.

And then maybe we make the Avatar and Spider into anti vehicle/air, and make the cymek the anti-melee.
Or make one of them anti-guardsmen.

Give all a national limit 10.

 

[davidlallen]

Can we please prioritize getting spice headquarters destroyed and the corporation wiped when you capture an enemy's spice corp? The doubling of spice commerce income (and the inability of the other faction to relocate their spice hq elsewhere) is kindof broken for a conquest focused gameplay.

Please try setting these buildings to be automatically destroyed upon conquest. In file buildings/civ4buildinginfos.xml, for each building of class BUILDINGCLASS_HOUSE_CORP (there are nine, one for each civ) change the bNeverCapture flag from 0 to 1, and also change the iConquestProb from 100 to 0. I assume this will allow the loser to refound the corp, but it should certainly prevent the victor from having two spice corps.

 

[phungus420]

If it's like the shrine or corporate system, you will not be able to refound, as buildings set up to have a maxGlobalInstances of 1 can only be built once, ever.

 

[Slvynn]

Is there anything possible like palace re-location mechanics? If conquered , palace moves itself automatically. And before 4 cities founded , you cant move it by yourself.

 

[davidlallen]

If it's like the shrine or corporate system, you will not be able to refound, as buildings set up to have a maxGlobalInstances of 1 can only be built once, ever.

Thanks for the info! The spice corporation buildings are set up a bit oddly. There is a buildingclass which has MaxGlobalInstances set to -1 (no limit). Every civ has their own UB with a MaxPlayerInstances of 1. It would take a while to set up the experiment, but I believe this means the player who loses their spice corp building could build it again; it is more like a national unit with a cap. Does that sound right?

 

[davidlallen]

AHR61
The Automated factory, computerized research center and thinking machine factory buildings are supposed to require the Technocracy religion in that city.

This still doesn't make any sense to me. These particular buildings run on Thinking Machines, which is an Ixian UR. If we remove the requirement for TM from these buildings, then we remove the unhappiness and they become generic rate increase buildings. If you just want generic rate increase buildings, perhaps we can find some other way to introduce the risk of the Second Butlerian Jihad.