Dune Wars

[davidlallen]

I'm downloading the new LoR installer for us Steam users. Will there be a similar fix coming for Dune Wars? (If not, I can be patient as I noticed I didn't delete my previous Dune Wars folder after all)

For DW, you can use the zip file mentioned in the download database entry for 1.7. No emergency release is needed, the solution has been available for a week or so.

We do not plan any more releases of DW till after New Years. Either, we will release a minor patch like 1.7.1 which will have a patch installer that does not try to verify 3.19; or we will just skip to the next major release number like 1.8 and include the updated installer.

 

[Ahriman]

AHR93
Mentats (along with other espionage units) should be removed from the homeworld purchase list.

It isn't worth getting espioange units instantly and the homeworld promotion does nothing for them, and you shouldn't be able to use offworld trading to exceed national limit caps (except maybe for Sardaukar).

 

[davidlallen]

You have mentioned that you do not want espionage units taking up space in the homeworld list; that is fine. Why don't you want mentats? They are not espionage units. There may be a bug where the list is not checking for national limits; I will investigate that.

 

[Ahriman]

Why don't you want mentats? They are not espionage units. There may be a bug where the list is not checking for national limits; I will investigate that.

A) National limits, though presumably you would work around that.
B) There is no gain to an instant "mentat-here-now", unlike a gain to an instant combat unit here-now. Mentat benefits are a slow trickle over time.
C) Mentats should not be available before you actually have the mentats tech, otherwise why pursue the tech?
D) Mentats are non-combat units, and so do not gain anythnig from the Homeworld trait or Elite status (extra experience).
E) Mentats aren't super-expensive, and you only get three, so you should just be building them, there's not particular reason why you'd need to spend gold to get them.

Homeworld units should be limited to actual combat units, where the extra strength from Homeworld actually matters (and similarly for the extra XP from Elite), and where its valuable to get something instantly, or where its really useful to be able to get a single unit of a type that you don't quite have the tech for.

I'd be tempted to remove transport units from the list too, they fail most of these requirements.

Its annoying when your homeworld units aren't actually useful.

* * *
AHR94
Should siege units get the home ground +1 movement advantage?
It can be frustrating sometimes moving them around in home terrain at their slow 1 move at a time. Is there any particular reason why they don't get the bonus? It slows down AI stacks unnecessarily I think (and/or forces human player transport micromanagement).

 

[davidlallen]

AHR91. Imperial Palace does not appear to actually be giving culture. (It shouldn't matter that it is captured from another faction, right?)

Hm, dueling screenshots. I cannot reproduce this problem. I took a starting game, and using WB, I gave myself the Imperial Palace and also one city with Imperial religion. I am showing the +1 culture as expected. Is it possible there were no cities left with Imperial religion when you did this?

AHR94. Should siege units get the home ground +1 movement advantage?

Good point. Since it happens in python there is no automatic documentation of this. All units of unitcombat Guardsman, Vehicle and Mech get this today. The idea was to allow defensive units in a city to counterattack at distance more effectively, to compensate for the lack of roads. Siege units are rarely used in a counterattack role. However, I cannot think of a good reason to prevent Melee units, for example, or workers and other units with unitcombat "None".

Shall we add the homeground promotion to *all* units? This will make the suspensor units quite fast, including spies and mentats.

 

[davidlallen]

1.7.1 is released! Please see the first post in this thread. Most of the discussion is found in the Dune Wars forum, but we read this thread as well.

 

[nightinerr]

This game is great friggin' fun. What an awesome idea - Dune and Civilizations. It fits so well.

 

[keldath]

glad your having fun!

 

[embryodead]

Hello,
I installed DW 1.7 + 1.7.1, the mod itself looks nice but BUG/RevDCM is driving me crazy. From the game-breaking things - my screen is spammed with "BugOptions - cannot locate the settings folder" repeatedly, so I can't see any game messages. How can I fix that? ...better yet, can I disable BUG somewhere?

I'd also like to get rid of RevDCM, but I guess this would be more of a problem. I know there are INI files with some specific options, but I couldn't find anything to disable the whole thing (BUG at least), so that I can play just DW.

 

[davidlallen]

The BUG user settings directory is supposed to be, My Documents\My Games\Beyond The Sword\Dune Wars\UserSettings. Does this directory exist? The installer is supposed to create it. If this directory does not exist, please create it. Then the "spam" messages should go away.

I agree that BUG creates a lot of extra buttons, but by definition, it does not change gameplay. When I first used BUG I was distracted by all the buttons. There are a couple that I use, and I just ignore the rest.

For RevDCM, it has a number of options, but they are all "off". So it is not affecting gameplay either. Sometimes, if you switch between different mods, these options get turned on by accident. So you could check in the custom game screen, options section, and scroll all the way down to make sure no option is turned on. Once you have done that, RevDCM should not have any effect.

Are there things in either BUG or RevDCM which you find very distracting?

 

[embryodead]

Thanks for your reply davidlallen. The folder you mentioned does exist in that location, and contains numerous INI files. Indeed I do have all RevDCM options enabled in game, which I guess is also due to game not being able to locate that UserSettings folder (EDIT: and yeah, one of the Rev popups says Revolutions.INI was not found although it tells me the mod folder name should be Dune Wars 1.6.something)

I can rule out permissions as I'm using WinXP. My Documents etc. are in standard locations, only Civ is elsewhere, in D:\CIV\Beyond the Sword. The Installer found both locations without problem. I tried putting a proper dir in CvAltRoot.py but it doesn't seem to be used. I also tried hardcoding the path in BugPath.py but that didn't work either.

As for distraction, I haven't moved on with the game due to the BUG bug, I'm just not a fan of either of these mods, they clutter the screen and cause problems when merged (not my first time, although I never had this particular problem), but once I sort the folder thing out I assume with most of RevDCM disabled it shall be fine!

 

[embryodead]

Update: I resolved the problem by changing "Dune Wars 1.6.5.2" to "Dune Wars" in CvModName.py. Weird that no one else had problem with this. Now BUG loads up fine and RevDCM has only IDW and Spies enabled (I assume that's correct?).

 

[Khazaar]

I just want to congratulate you on your mod and tell you I´m enjoying it thoroughly. I´m playing the Harkonnen and rushed for slavery but at first thought that the mod was buggy until I read the patchnotes.
I´m still kicking @ss with them, so no worries.

 

[Ahriman]

Shall we add the homeground promotion to *all* units? This will make the suspensor units quite fast, including spies and mentats.

I'd leave it off thopters, suspensors, spies, mentats, workers, etc.
Just leave it on for combat ground units (including siege), that the AI tends to stack together.

Hm, dueling screenshots. I cannot reproduce this problem.

I am fairly certain there were still cities with the Imperial religion. Odd. I will watch again next game.

Incidentally: what happens to holy city status if that religion is removed from the city?
Eg: imperial founded in city X, Shai Hulad missionary plants shai-hulad in city X, python code wipes imperial from city X.
Are there anty problems with the shrines, or the holy city status? Or can you still be the holy city of religion A even if religion A is not present in that city?
Or do exceptions for holy cities need to be made in the python code for Imperial (which is wiped by anything) and for Quizarate (which wipes everything)?

 

[embryodead]

After one game as Harkonnen, my first impression is that I'm putting the mod in my personal top 3 together with FfH2 & RFC families of mods, top-notch work with all the custom game mechanics, graphics and overall feel Especially the terrain/resources/improvements, normally a mundane part of the game, are amazing.

After the initial problems with BUG/RevDCM there were no more issues, though I feel that the AI has problems with harvesting spice, e.g. I have almost 60 spice now without really trying whereas the AI civs have 2-5 spice each with roughly the same amount available for harvesting. Typically I see a group of 20 or so "eyes" in AI border with just 1 harvester.

I also have about a hundred of slaves and no jobs for them, I feel the enslavement chance could really be lower.

 

[davidlallen]

Incidentally: what happens to holy city status if that religion is removed from the city?

Nothing happens to holy city status. We had discussed about whether existing religious buildings should be removed from a city if the religion is removed. For example, in RevDCM, an inquisitor may remove a religion from a city, but if that religion had some building like a temple, the building is left behind. The same thing happens in DW. In the previous discussion, somebody (maybe me) suggested removing them, and somebody else (maybe you) suggested that would make inquisitions too powerful.

What do you think should happen?

 

[davidlallen]

After one game as Harkonnen, my first impression is that I'm putting the mod in my personal top 3 together with FfH2 & RFC

Awesome! Thanks for the feedback.

I feel that the AI has problems with harvesting spice, e.g. I have almost 60 spice now without really trying whereas the AI civs have 2-5 spice each

The 1.7.1 release includes a new version of the Better BTS AI mod, which has substantial changes in the tradeoffs the AI makes to send workers, and also has a new mechanic to put spice income directly onto a building instead of using a corporation. It is possible that either of those, or both together, has caused the AI to lose interest in spice. I will look into that, thanks for pointing it out.

I also have about a hundred of slaves and no jobs for them, I feel the enslavement chance could really be lower.

Do you mean that all your workers are idle also? We have tried to make higher level improvements so that workers always have something to do. If you have a slave surplus, perhaps you should build fewer workers and use the slaves?

 

[embryodead]

Do you mean that all your workers are idle also? We have tried to make higher level improvements so that workers always have something to do. If you have a slave surplus, perhaps you should build fewer workers and use the slaves?

I have 16 Cities, 10 Workers, 3 Spice Workers and 65 Slaves (OK, I exaggerated but that's not counting tens of others that died because I didn't bother to pick them up). It's true that spice and improvement upgrades make sure my workers have something to do, but those few workers are enough, basically. Except for those 3 spice dudes I stopped building any once wars & slavery started.

Whenever I capture an enemy city, I get 10-20 slaves in the process, and since such a city is already fully developed, those slaves sit idle. I can use 2-3 of them in case an improvement upgrade is needed, but that's it.

Maybe it'd be more logical if slaves were produced out of relevant units (melee, guards) - I got a lot from thopters and suspensors it seems, they spawn in the middle of the desert and then teleport to the nearest city.

 

[davidlallen]

Whenever I capture an enemy city, I get 10-20 slaves in the process.

Is that because the city had 20-40 defending units and half of them became slaves as you destroyed them? That seems like an awful lot of defenders.

 

[embryodead]

Is that because the city had 20-40 defending units and half of them became slaves as you destroyed them? That seems like an awful lot of defenders.

The city with 20+ slaves I captured from Fremen had maybe a dozen defenders but there was also a lot of thopters and such flying around. In fact, there still are, and provide for more slaves - screenshot attached.