Idea for Scenario: Dune

[The Caltrop]

Hmmm... here's an idea:

How about some sort of scenario like that in Frank Herbert's novel Dune? The world could be normal, but there is one special island (in the center of the map, maybe?) that is very barren. But on that island is a uber-strategic-resource 'the spice' which allows a civ to do some near-vital fuction (to be decided). To keep it from being a land-rush scenario thing, the island is already populated by the civilisation of 'Arrakis'.

Nation Name:Arrakis
Noun: Fremen
Adj. Fremen
Leader: TBD
Some City Names: Arakeen, Carthag, Tsimpo, Sietch Tabr
Religion (Have at begining of game?): It is a custom religion, to give it Dune Flair. They either have the Zensunni faith (but their already is Buddhism and Islam in the game...) or the Religion of Muad'Dib.

They cannot build any more cities then they alredy have (so, they are really just a guardian civ as it were... the Fremen can't take too much advantage of their Spice). In fact, It'd be cool if the Fremen were unable to lead the island Arrakis at all. But, to protect themselves, they have powerful units to start out with: Mighty Sandworm-Riders and Fedykin warriors built in the Stone Age would still be effect and and protect Arrakis inpenetrably until maybe the early Industrial age. At this point, the Spice will have some sort of value or purpose, and the outside powers will begin to attempt to make inroads onto Arrakis to obtain it.


If this is a dumb idea or somthing... I apologise. I am new to the world of Civ.

 

[Sullla]

You could also play it on the Oasis map, which would undoubtedly make Sirian happy.

 

[Suki]

i think a dune scenario would go easiest in SMAC, just convert the xenofungus to 'spice' and the mindworms to 'sand worms' (which don't do psionis attack, just really really brutal physical). Turn off all the water in the map creation, fiddle around with the tech tree, insert some kind of system (similar to the cards in 'AOE III') for dealings with the 'spacing guild'. change the traits of the factions. Be sure to give the freemen a high, default 'planet', and 'efficiency' rating so they can catch worms and be all big and spread out and there it is. The supply crawlers and slowly built up forests are allready in the game. The whole theme of the reactions of the spice and water is similar to the poloution activating the fungus. switch 'energy' for 'spice', 'minerals' for 'water' (fits with the poloution thing, and the bar is allready blue). you'd also have to put in some prety violent reactions between different types of units (if you have energy shields defending against lasers it sets off a nuke)..
you could even replace 'ocean' tiles with 'desert' and have an 'island' or two like the shield wall so some units wouldn't be able to go into, or too far into the desert (like early boats... oh wait, boats don't get lost in SMAC)

I was also thinking that SMAC would also give a really 'good lord of the rings scenario', just replace all the fungus with forests, and the mind worms with ents so when you start polluting the ents come and clean things up...

 

[Thrar]

The topic sounds very nice to me - I love the Dune books - but still hard to do justice in Civ.
You could set it up as you proposed, modeling the universe with a couple of houses. However, you won't get such things as CHOAM, the Guild, or the Imperium. You could have a special site, Arrakis, but I think this would mostly just mean everyone tries to get hold there, without the real flavor of Dune, which in my opinion was often driven by complicated diplomatic relation.

Another setup would be just to model Arrakis itself, then you'd kinda get to a Dune II scenario (you know, one of the first RTS games that existed). 'Historically' limited to at most four factions (Atreides, Fremen, Harkonnen and maybe Sardaukar), and without connection to the rest of the universe.
This would kind of represent Dune, but none of the following books.
Given the extensive modding capabilities, getting the four civs to resemble what they are supposed to mean is probably not as difficult. Another desirable feature would again be extensive diplomacy and a lot of details in that, which might prove more difficult to recreate.

I like your idea, maybe some time (when I get the game...) I play around with the editor and game files to get some basic implementation of that - probably the second, Arrakis-only, idea. I don't really expect much of realism from that, however...