Hero/Leader/World Units

[Deliverator]

Keldath and myself are both keen to have hero and leader units in the mod. Here's some quotes and posts on the subject:

Could we have World Units like in FfH so that there are some hero units which there is a race on to build like wonders? Also, I've thought before that it would be interesting to have a Civ mod where your leader actually appears as a unit in the game - spice extends life so you have an excuse for long lifespans. Maybe there could be a range of Leader unit promotions to add a sort of role playing element. Having Paul Muad'Dib as a unit with special powers would be cool. A cool thing about the original 1992 Dune game was that your Fremen would be more powerful if Paul was in the battle and even more powerful if he was riding a worm.

The Leto II - worm-human-hybrid - could be an amazing late game unit - maybe call it God Emperor.

I do like this idea of having your leader in the game. You can nuture them over time from vulnarable to awesome like in an RPG. They could be immortal but lose abilities when they die, or get a number of lives perhaps. It doesn't work for every leader. Works? Paul Muad'Dib, Mohiam, Alia, Rabban, Feyd, Scytale, Stilgar. Perhaps not? Spacing Guild, Emporer, Duke Leto. For the Emporer we could make up a high ranking Sardukaar hero.

Some more ideas on Leader/Hero units here and here.

The AI is the BIG problem with Leader/Hero/World units. I think that FfH2 has made a few alterations to stop the AI doing *really* stupid things with heroes, but they still have a lot of issues with it. I guess the only realistic way to handle a Hero/World Unit AI is to let it operate as normal, but then hook in in certain circumstances to make it behave differently.

For example, a hero should only attack when the combat odds are quite strongly in its favour and if injured it should go back to the nearest city to heal. I don't know much about AI programming, but I think you could come up with some reasonably simple rules for them. Then it's just a question of implementation. I know david has done a bit of simple Python AI, and perhaps koma could do some SDK changes for it.

Some discussion on FFH2 and AI here

So I think we should kick this idea around some more. Bear in mind that FFH2 hero AI is far from perfect, but it hasn't hurt the mod's success.

 

[Ahriman]

I'm pretty leery of heroes as combat units. I don't think that any of the named characters are militarily all that significant.

Dune isn't a world of heroic ubercommandos (unlike fantasy mods like FFH or Warhammer), particular individuals just aren't really that important on the battlefield. Characters in Dune mostly seem more to me like being chess Kings (weak guys who must be protected from assassination, capture, etc) than Queens (powerful units that enemies must fear).

So I'd lean more towards making any in-game heroes into support units with neat abilities or powers or bonuses for the city they're in, not combat units.

 

[keldath]

i think the best implementation for heros of dune is via regicide

 

[Deliverator]

There are a few characters from the book that could legitimately be combat heroes. Duncan Idaho would be an example seeing as he takes down 19 Sardaukar single handedly before being killed. In addition, Duncan says of Gurney Halleck, "Gurney could best me six out of ten times".

That said I'd definitely want some heroes to be powerful support units too. I think it's fair to have a mix.

I like regicide, but we need to find a way to implement that - the AI is the major challenge as usual.

 

[davidlallen]

Keldath and myself are both keen to have hero and leader units in the mod. [...] I don't know much about AI programming, but I think you could come up with some reasonably simple rules for them. Then it's just a question of implementation.

Ah yes, "just a question of implementation". From my standpoint, the hard problem is having the AI make a coordinated decision involving king units and other units, with proper consideration for the risk to the king unit. The AI I have done is for certain units which can reasonably be considered independent of all the other units. For example, sandworms and sandstorms do not need to coordinate with other units. The Reverend Mother doesn't have any specific AI; here I designed the unit so that one of the existing unit AI's would be "close enough".

I definitely do not want to undertake proper implementation of regicide; it's too much work for a volunteer effort.

Let me suggest another possible rationalization for limited national units. This came up in a thread about regicide for Fury Road a year ago. Suppose we consider something like a "royal family" which has a limited number of members, but all the members have a certain power. So the family can continue to bring up new members from childhood, but there are never too many of them at once. If you think about it this way, then a limit of 5 units represents an ability to recover from losses.

I never actually implemented this for Fury Road either, but if this seems like a reasonable way to think about it, we can certainly do lots of interesting things with national units that will still allow the AI to plan coordinated attacks.

 

[Ahriman]

Duncan Idaho would be an example seeing as he takes down 19 Sardaukar single handedly before being killed.

Yeah, he killed 19 guys.... but not an entire regiment. Which is what units represent in this scale. Whereas fantasy heroes (eg in LotR) often take out many dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat.

I don't really like regicide; all regicide will do is make it easier to take out enemy AI players by taking out a particular city. Besides, its not like killing one guy would make most factions abandon Dune; thats why they have heirs.

We have a ton of national limit units in Warhammer; the idea is that many elite units (wizards, knights, etc) can only ever be fielded in small numbers, and that
But I think national limits in Dune work better for "Elite Household Guard" style units, rather than heroes. But I'd have no objection to having an Elite Guard UU (burseg/fedaykin types) for each civ with a small national limit (say 5) - and then the Imperium UU Saudaukar having a much higher national limit (10-15) representing a faction-superiority for elite troops.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

I rather have national units then loose heroes.
In dune they are more like GG/GP who should either have an unigue building are can be attached to units for specific promotions/abilities.
The only superheroes who could roam around alone is leto II and some atreides descendants in the later/newer books who have special abilities (like superhuman speed making them virtually invisible and able to kill an entire fort)

 

[keldath]

hey guys, just wanted to say,
that the history of the three kingdoms mod, which is a really beautyful mod,

have a hero system that will suit dune wars heroes perfectly, i reccomoned you try this mod out.

 

[Deliverator]

One day, we can make a Heroes of Dune modmod seeing as not everyone seems to want them.

 

[davidlallen]

I really like the idea. But if we don't make the AI use them tactically with proper regard to the risk of losing the singleton unit, I don't think it will be effective.

 

[keldath]

check out the history of the three kingdoms = the ai knows how to use he heroes,
it is a very awesome part - they can form legions - they pack up units onto them, really cool.

 

[davidlallen]

I tried out History of Three Kingdoms. It is pretty cool. I asked on their subforum about their hero AI. Actually, the AI doesn't do anything special for them. It's just each hero has a certain number of "lives", each time they get killed they may lose one of the lives or not. When the lives are gone, they die. See this post and following for discussion.

We may want to use the same model, which is heroes, but not regicide.

 

[Deliverator]

Yeah, he killed 19 guys.... but not an entire regiment. Which is what units represent in this scale. Whereas fantasy heroes (eg in LotR) often take out many dozens of enemies without breaking a sweat.

Ultimately, it comes down to the fun factor. The Dune boardgame has heroes for each faction and it adds more flavour and interest to the game. Individuals in Dune do have a big impact in the stories, and Dune is as much a fantasy as it is sci-fi in my opinion. Why should we restrict ourselves from something that could be a fun addition to the game out of some notion that Dune should be more 'realistic'?

I'd like to have a Gurney Halleck unit, a Piter de Vries unit, etc because it would make the game more flavourful and fun from my perspective. You can care too much about realism in a universe with 400 metre long worms.

The respawning option is a decent way to go. There is a modcomp for respawning in this list by the J. I don't know if this is the HoTK solution. I'd be happy to have a heroes modmod if the majority don't want it.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Ive been trying the 3kingdoms out. The hero/legion system deffinatly fits the atreides, and most likely the fremen too.
But it should only be used for infantry units in the dune setting.

 

[keldath]

i knew you guys will be fond of 3k hero system,

but, itried to merge it, it gets a bit complicated on the sdk...

 

[Deliverator]

Maybe koma can help, once he's done with the homeworlds prototype.

 

[keldath]

yap lets hope so

 

[koma13]

You can care too much about realism in a universe with 400 metre long worms.

I think that civ in general is the very wrong game if you are obsessed with realism.

Maybe koma can help, once he's done with the homeworlds prototype.

Yes, I will do that. I always wanted a mentat system in dune wars. Maybe we can make it that there is a chance a hero is captured when losing a battle?

 

[keldath]

awesome koma,

hope you can build something for the heroes, that would be a really fun part.

 

[davidlallen]

I looked through the thread that Deliverator pointed, about the stuff The_J has added in python. This is easy stuff. We don't need sdk work to do it, these are just python additions. The hard part will be to design it. So far, DW has not progressed with any overall design; we started with a repaint, and then several people have thrown in local redesigns eg of food, units, improvements, units again, improvements again, units again, and today units and tech tree again. Buildings coming soon!

In particular, the ability for a hero to survive is identical to the slaver effect the Harkonnen already have; when a particular unit loses a combat, it just appears one plot away and (in HOTK) may lose a vitality point.

In fact, the recent Atreides Heir is very similar to the HOTK hero, except that my heir unit doesn't level up, and its bonus is very general. It provides a straight +25% combat value to any unit in the stack.

What is the relationship between GP generation and hero generation? In HOTK, the board starts out fully populated, you cannot build or raze cities. As far as I can tell, heroes only appear when their "father" dies, so the number of heroes is constant too. This is interesting but a very different setup compared to vanilla or DW today, both of which have you start out from one initial city.