land transport?

[davidlallen]

Hi, I worked on a Mad Max mod last year. This year another author keldath is working on a Dune mod, and I am trying to help a little. First, go check it out at this link. It's playable, and looks pretty good. Second, we are a little stuck on something, and I heard a rumor that FF may have a solution.

Do you have working land transport that the AI will use?

Many people may know that since vanilla civ doesn't have any land transport units, the AI does not try to deal with them. In Dune, the best way to get an army across the desert is with carryalls or hovers, units with move 3-4 and low strength. We have these units, and we can define them as transport, and the player can use them fine. But the AI won't. That pretty much cripples the AI for any offensive war. Is there something in FF, or somewhere else you have heard of, with a solution?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I know of no solution to this problem.

 

[davidlallen]

That is sad. If anybody is interested to stop by the thread and dl the mod, we would like any suggestions about how to handle this.

 

[Thonnas]

If it's somewhere the units could get to on foot, the AI would never be so risky as to load them all into one (vulnerable) unit.

You could probably make it work by making oceans be your desert, and having your transports be naval units but then the units that have the ability to enter ocean(desert) [I assume your fremen can cross the desert freely] would never actually do so under the AIs control.

I suppose in regard to my first remark you could try making the desert impassable by ground troops (if you haven't already), though I still kind of doubt the AI would even bother (considering it still kind of sucks with naval invasions, anyway). It'd much rather spend half the game marching it's army halfway around the world, than to load it on a few ships and cross an ocean in a turn or two.

The mod looks interesting, none the less. Good luck with it.

 

[Fenboy]

As I recall, the idea was discussed heavily, and finally abandoned as unworkable. A shame, but there you go.

 

[davidlallen]

I researched it pretty carefully about a year back and came to the same conclusion. I was hoping somebody had come up with something since then.

We'll try something related to high move costs for desert, or maybe use the amphibious AI code anyway.