making two fremen civs different

[davidlallen]

We now have better names for the two Fremen civs, Chouhada and Sihaya. Here are some quotes from the civilizations thread about how to make them different.

Chouhada Fremen (prev. Fremen) (theme: Jihad, the purging of Arrakis). YA HYA CHOUHADA: "Long live the fighters!" The Fedaykin battle cry. Ya (now) in this cry is augmented by the hya form (the ever-extended now). Chouhada (fighters) carries this added meaning of fighters against injustice. There is a distinction in this word that specifies the fighters are not struggling for anything, but are consecrated against a specific thing--that alone.

Sihaya Fremen (prev. Sietch Tabr) (theme: Liet's Way, the terraforming of Arrakis). SIHAYA: Fremen: the desert springtime with religious overtones implying the time of fruitfulness and "the paradise to come."

I would say that one group of Fremen should be designed to be militant Jihadists (as controlled by Alia), while the other would be aimed at being more pro-terraforming.

These are quite different agendas. I can easily imagine different Fremen going one way or the other; which is more important, waging a jihad to spread your religion across the planet (and the galaxy), or making the planet actually nice to live on?

I think its ok for most units to be the same. But I would differentiate them mostly with UBs; the terraformers get things like deathstills and better windtraps that give better water income (and maybe their spaceport tradegood could be a unique resource that makes the reservoir buildings build faster; so double the cost of the reservoirs and then make them build 50% faster with this resoruce?), while the jihadists get things that increase their military potential, particularly of their infantry, like the sietch bonus that gives extra infantry mobility.

I could also see the Jihadists getting some cheap spammable fanatics UUs who have no upkeep cost and whose death did not cause war weariness.

Today (1.3.8) they have all the same UB and UU:

Windtrap (replaces Qanat ...)
Deathstill (replaces food warehouse, better growth)
Fremkit (replaces space center ...)
Stillsuit workshop (gives 3 units of stillsuit bonus, +1 health)

The former Sietch Tabr Fremen have one more UB, because four wasn't enough:
Sietch (replaces walls, gives units a free stillsuit promotion)

Fremen Rover (replaces acolyte)
Sandwalker (replaces bladesman)
Naib's Chosen (replaces Mentat Assassin)
Desert Crawler (replaces Heavy Roller)
Fedaykin (replaces Shock Trooper)

Some of these don't make a lot of sense to me, and there are a lot. In related news, in the worm rider mechanics thread, I have figured out how to give a 2x movement promotion on desert. I proposed to give the Fremen a set of UU for settler, scout, worker and basic foot infantry, which would automatically get the desert move promotion.

I think there are too many UU/UB here, with several overlapping ideas.

How should we resolve this? I propose to remove all their existing UB except Deathstill, and remove all their existing UU except Fedaykin and Naib's Chosen; then add four UU for settler, scout, worker, soldier. These UU will be identical except for the 2x desert move promotion. I will add the 2x desert promotion to Fedaykin and Naib's Chosen.

What do you think? This still does not differentiate them much, but it gives them a consistent theme anyway.

 

[keldath]

wait on my patch 1.3.9,

i do think they should share the uus but maybe different ub's,

also maybe we can add some more diversity.

 

[Deliverator]

Windtrap, Sietch and Fremkit buildings can be scrapped I think, they don't make much sense or overlap with other things. In general though, I don't have a problem with having more than three UBs or UUs per faction if they all serve a purpose and add distinctiveness.

I like them having the Fremen Stillsuits as a unique bonus, hence the Stillsuit Workshop. Not a fan?

The Naib's Chosen should be melee fighters, a half-way house to the Fedaykin, rather than Mentat Assassin style units IMO.

From theme the Fedaykin and the Sardaukar should probably be the most powerful human units in the game.

For the Chouhada, I've suggested using the Draft mechanic to create cheap disposable fighters. Also, perhaps some ability to capture other factions units and use them. I like the passage from the book where the Fremen capture a Thopter, that says a lot about the Fremen's guerilla fighting style. I think the vehicles they have now are out of place, but they should be able to hijack stuff and use it.

Also, it would be good to test drive the Leader units idea with Paul Maud'dib, generating more fighters and giving massive combat advantages wherever he goes...

Both factions should have water advantages, but the Sihaya should get more of a boost from a UB or two. Terraforming doesn't feel all that fun yet although it is nice to see the map changing. Not sure what would make it more fun...

Minor point, but I think the Stillsuit promotion for worm riding should be called Sandrider, which is the term used in the book.

 

[Deliverator]

Dune quote:

... the Fremen were a people whose living consisted of killing, an entire people who had lived with rage and grief all of their days, never once considering what might take the place of either - except for a dream with which Liet-Kynes has infused them before his death.

 

[davidlallen]

I like them having the Fremen Stillsuits as a unique bonus, hence the Stillsuit Workshop. Not a fan?

Oops, I forgot to mention that. Yes, keep it. It makes a nice difference from the other civs' landing stages.[/quote]

For the Chouhada, I've suggested using the Draft mechanic to create cheap disposable fighters. [...] Also, it would be good to test drive the Leader units idea with Paul Maud'dib, generating more fighters and giving massive combat advantages wherever he goes...

Those are both cool ideas. It's hard to teach the AI to use a unit with mixed offensive and defensive capabilities. Suppose the hero were an offensive unit, but every turn it had a chance to just plain materialize a low level combat unit. As the unit gains experience a promotion could let it spawn more powerful units, so they don't get out of date.

 

[davidlallen]

I thought a little more about the mechanics for drafting and generating units. I think there would need to be two separate things: a UB which has a chance to generate units each turn, and a UU which has leadership bonuses. This way the attacking unit can be out attacking, while units are generated at home. Since the AI cannot handle protecting a single powerful unit, I think these should be national units with a limit of like 5, similar to Reverend Mothers, rather than a single "king" unit.

Recruiting building

I spent a little time searching to find a good name for the recruiting building. But then, it occurred to me that googling "arabic recruiting center" might not be a good idea . I don't have a good name for the building yet. I think it should have a small chance per turn to generate a unit, depending on the population of the city and also the number of surrounding towns.

There are a few related mechanics which already exist. Drafting is an action button on a city which generates one unit at the cost of a pop unit plus 3 unhappiness for 10 turns. This is enabled by a tag on a civic, Way of the Wicked in DW today. In FFH, there is a crusade worldspell. This has a chance to generate many units when it is cast; it can cause towns to downgrade one level while generating the unit. It isn't clear that the AI uses drafting well; there is a recent thread about this in the BBAI sub-forum.

The unit itself could be a Chouhada UU called "Wali". In the Dune appendix this is the name of an untested Fremen youth; google says it means "trusted one", which is OK too. The concept should be a low strength unit which can quickly gain experience and upgrade into something else; if it survives the first battle, then maybe it can become something useful. You might use it to finish off crippled enemies so it can get the XP. The only trick is that throughout the game, the strength of the unit might need to increase. Maybe the unit generated should be a standard unit but it has an "untested" promotion which gives it -25% strength; the first level the unit gets would undo this promotion.

Leader unit

I am less sure about this, maybe it is not even needed. I was looking for a good "holy man" name in the appendices, but I couldn't find a good one. Sayyadina is the only thing I can come up with, but that is more of a priestess than a war leader. I am not sure what the mechanics should be. The concept is a stack of jihadi units going around attacking stuff. Maybe the leader should generate new Wali units each turn, more when it wins a battle. I am not sure how to give combat advantages to a stack; I suppose we could have a "frenzy" promotion, +25% strength, which applies to all the units stacked with the leader. Certain units, probably Fedaykin, would get +50% from frenzy instead of the base 25%.

Any thoughts?

 

[keldath]

perhaps we can do two sorts of worm riders -

one for each fremen on top of their shared uus already,

currently - the worm rider is weak and an early unit -
perhaps - as a unique thing for the fremen - we can make a special sets of promotions only for the worm -
with the passing of time - you can get a worm with more and more promotions that will keep it stron through the ages - like in future time- when building a wrom rider you get something like a promotions that gives +500% to attack - making the current worm rider 2 power - to 10..and so on.

 

[davidlallen]

Interesting idea. But, in the books, sandworms never appear as individuals. You attract one, ride it for a while, and release it. A long trip may involve 20 different worms. I agree we need to make worms relevant throughout the whole game, but I am not sure super-promotions on the worms is the best choice.

Maybe the double move promotion on all Fremen units will be enough; I guess we can start to see that when 1.3.10 comes out.

 

[keldath]

ok,
we need to make controlled worms by fremen to be more meaningful.

 

[Deliverator]

I was looking for a good "holy man" name in the appendices, but I couldn't find a good one.

'Sadu' would do it.

SADUS: judges. The Fremen title refers to holy judges, equivalent to saints.

 

[Deliverator]

Since the AI cannot handle protecting a single powerful unit, I think these should be national units with a limit of like 5, similar to Reverend Mothers, rather than a single "king" unit.

I would still like to see if we can find a workaround to make single powerful units work. It will give the mod much more character than resorting to National Units every time. However, I can appreciate that the AI will suicide them a lot.

I suggested before that we could do respawning of Leader units when they are killed, similar to the Immortal promotion in FFH2. They would obviously lose their promotions when respawned. Perhaps you could build in some sort of penalty, like each time they are killed it takes a longer number of turns before they respawn, and/or a fixed number of respawns. If each civs has say 3 individual heroes then the AIs got to manage something useful with at least one of them...

I don't know if FFH2 did any custom AI work with their hero units, but it might be worth looking at.

 

[keldath]

i really want hero units...wish we could get some code for that..

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

Why merge the fremens with one civ power, and different leader powers? No idea how hard or even possible this is to code.
It makes little sense theme wise to have them both at the same time in a game.
Civ power: all foot units can enter dessert and are ignored by worms, and maybey invisible to other landunits unless they are right next to them. kinda like the submarine is to most ships. make them unable to build more then light thopters and the first carry-all.
leader powers for the jihadist something military and espionage for guerilla warfare, (stillsuit promotion)
while the paradise fremen should get commercial bonusses from water.
Theme wise I like the deathstill, windtrap and the gardenbuilding.

 

[davidlallen]

At least temporarily, in 1.4, I have combined the two Fremen civs. Once we get good unique mechanics for 9 civs, then we can expand back up to 12. With the worm rider and terraforming concepts, I think we have enough. I had thought out the mechanics for generating Wali units and the leader unit, but putting this onto the Fremen seems like too much for one civ.

Would anybody object to moving this concept to Atreides instead?

Each Atreides city would have a chance of generating a free unit per turn, based on the pop of the city plus the number of surrounding full towns. Say, with pop 16, it is guaranteed to generate one unit per turn; with pop 4 and some towns, maybe one unit every five turns. The unit is whatever unit is currently draftable. I am not sure exactly how that works, but the game knows what unit is draftable and the unit type is returned by an existing python call. So I can create the unit. No unique building is needed; it happens automatically. So the AI does not need to worry about it either. When the unit is generated it has a promotion, "Untested", which is -25% strength. Whenever the unit gets a promotion (when it reaches level 2) the Untested promotion is removed.

The Atreides civ would also have a national unit with a limit of 2, called "Atreides Heir". If the unit gets killed, they just go back into the family tree and find another one. This way we do not have to worry about lack of a regicide type AI. (Of course I agree it would be great to have that, but it is hard to do, and I do not think we should count on anybody suddenly producing it.) The unit has UNITAI_ATTACK or UNITAI_COUNTER so it should go into attacking stacks. The effect of the unit is to give a +25% attack strength to all units in the plot, as long as the owner is not at war with Atreides. This represents Atreides charisma and leadership. The unit itself has a low attack strength, like 2.

 

[Greeneyedzombie]

It would fit the atreides. In the books its one of their strengths (besides good infantry and airforce) to have good propaganda and give people chances to prove them.

 

[Deliverator]

Good ideas david. Leadership and inspiring loyalty are Atreides strengths.

I would also like to see the Atreides have a limited number of strong infantry units called perhaps 'Ducal Guard' which can go toe to toe with the Sardaukar. With an Atreides Heir present they would have a good chance of beating them.

 

[Deliverator]

I would like to see something radical done with the Fremen: make it impossible for them to build any vehicles. Instead, their units have a % chance of capturing any vehicle they defeat.

Since they have the worms to get around the desert, the Fremen don't have the same dependence on hovers and transports.

In Dune, the Fremen capture many ornithopters and other equipment and then use it in the final assault on Arrakeen. This change would really do a lot to capture the spirit of them as guerilla raiders. It would be radical, but I think it with some tweaks it would work and make them much more distinctive.

If you need to compensate for this, then make their melee units even stronger. The Fedaykin should be able to defeat the Sardaukar. In Dune, when there is a fight between them at the Cave of Birds, there are 7 dead Sardaukar to 2 dead Fedaykin.

 

[davidlallen]

Capturing vehicles is a good idea. I think that once I release the 2x movement for Fremen in desert, they will be good early game raiders. If we need them even stronger or more different, we can come back to this idea.

Currently the Fedaykin are strength 24 and Sardaukar are strength 28. If the Fedaykin are stacked with the +25% Atreides Heir, that is 32 to 28, which is better but not outrageous. Also if a Reverend Mother has been stacked with some of these units, the +combat and +first strike may be enough to tip the scales.

There are imperial militia and troopers which I think of as weak Sardaukar, but these are strictly Corrino UU.

 

[Ahriman]

I support much less in the way of vehicles for Fremen, but I'm unsure about the idea of capturing them.

 

[davidlallen]

Each Atreides city would have a chance of generating a free unit per turn, based on the pop of the city plus the number of surrounding full towns. Say, with pop 16, it is guaranteed to generate one unit per turn; with pop 4 and some towns, maybe one unit every five turns. The unit is whatever unit is currently draftable. I am not sure exactly how that works, but the game knows what unit is draftable and the unit type is returned by an existing python call. So I can create the unit. No unique building is needed; it happens automatically. So the AI does not need to worry about it either. When the unit is generated it has a promotion, "Untested", which is -25% strength. Whenever the unit gets a promotion (when it reaches level 2) the Untested promotion is removed.

The Atreides civ would also have a national unit with a limit of 2, called "Atreides Heir". If the unit gets killed, they just go back into the family tree and find another one. This way we do not have to worry about lack of a regicide type AI. (Of course I agree it would be great to have that, but it is hard to do, and I do not think we should count on anybody suddenly producing it.) The unit has UNITAI_ATTACK or UNITAI_COUNTER so it should go into attacking stacks. The effect of the unit is to give a +25% attack strength to all units in the plot, as long as the owner is not at war with Atreides. This represents Atreides charisma and leadership. The unit itself has a low attack strength, like 2.

This is now implemented in 1.4.2 at this link, except I did not bother with the "untested" promotion. If the units are too strong, we can decrease the appearance percentage for the same net effect.