Mentat mechanics

[AnotherPacifist]

1 and 2 are working fine. 3 and 4 work but it's always mentat military despite having chosen other options.
Also, when you annex a city, if there is a mentat building in there, it seems to general a "mentat generic" building.

 

[orlanth]

I have received zero playtest feedback so far on Mentats.

I guess it's that Mentats come so late in the game that I rarely ever get the chance to build or come across them much.

One solution of this is to think about integrating the Mentats with the holdover generic "Great Person" mechanic from Civ4. Mentats are a big part of the Duniverse and deserve some more gameplay visibility/presence from the start, while keeping the generic "Great Prophet", "Great Engineer" etc seem a bit of a duplicative mechanic, not as flavorful & out of place. Perhaps Mentats could arise rarely at the beginning from GP points, and late-game tech could unlock the capacity for focused training (maybe through a Build ability, analogous to unlocking of Build Research and Build Culture.) The Sapho Juice resource could then easily give a +% to , as in FfH, and this would also permit "Capture Mentat" as an Infiltrator ability to seize a settled Great Person.

Also, one thing I've noticed is that when checking in Worldbuilder, the AI often gets far behind in not taking as much advantage as me of stacking multiple big percent bonuses (ie Great Scientist -> Academy etc) onto the focused Spice Corp commerce to make quick super-science cities. For me, it seems like the time I make spice corp and Landsraad and plop Great Scientist -> Academy on them is the time I start pulling effortlessly far ahead (and I'm pretty bad at Civ ). So, another reason to think about doing some redesign of the generic gp for this mod.

 

[AnotherPacifist]

I think the mentats need to be much more powerful (like double the effect they have right now), but at the same time, much more expensive (like 5 times as much), so that there's actually an incentive to build them. And yes, having them earlier would help also (almost makes them like a mini-national wonder that gives benefit early on if you build them, but also takes away your production from something else like military and other buildings).

 

[Riso]

Making them more expensive is a good idea. Not only increased price but also upkeep.
Now I suggest limiting Mentats to 1 per civ and giving them 2-3 effects. That way they are really valuable and you don't want to risk to lose them.

Might be also be easier to do if their effects are Mentat only unit promotions like FFH2 does for some units.

Bonus if the Harkonnens get a Twisted Mentat that cannot take effects to increase happiness.

 

[davidlallen]

These ideas are interesting, thanks!

Are there any units today that cost specific upkeep? I'm not sure how to do that, but it sounds interesting.

Is one mentat with 2-3 effects better than 2-3 mentats with one effect each? I think if each has one benefit, you have to plan your cities a little more instead of creating one supercity with everything.

The mentat effects are implemented as unit promotions already.

We had thought about twisted mentats, but we did not find enough different effects for them. In the books, it is actually the Tleilaxu who perform the twisting, but then any house could "purchase" one. So we would probably make these units produced by Tleilaxu but perhaps tradeable to other civs, like Reverend Mothers or some of the Fremen and Ixian units.

 

[Riso]

It is more fluffy to have only one Mentat per house.
They are supposed to be outrageously expensive and incredibly useful, since there are no computers as such. I was thinking they should give civ wide effects.

I was under the impression that Harkonnen expressively ordered a 'twisted' Mentat, in lieu of a normal one. I also understand that they have no ethics and are quite sadistic.

 

[davidlallen]

It is more fluffy to have only one Mentat per house. They are supposed to be outrageously expensive and incredibly useful

What effects would you suggest? If they are the same for every civ, then there is no interesting decision to make.

I was under the impression that Harkonnen expressively ordered a 'twisted' Mentat, in lieu of a normal one. I also understand that they have no ethics and are quite sadistic.

That is correct. What effect would you suggest this should have in the game?

 

[Riso]

What effects would you suggest? If they are the same for every civ, then there is no interesting decision to make.

But the effects you have right now are the same for every civ?
By simply limiting them to 2/6 instead of 3/6 you increase their effect.

You could just take effects from any other unit and offer them as Mentat upgrade.
Also why not let upgrades do stuff like:

Combat Master: +10xp for Mentat unit combat upgrades to them then into fearsome battlefield units

Civ wide Mentat upgrade effects:

Propagandist: +1 happiness
Spymaster: +5% espionage
Broker: +5% income
Engineer: +5% production
Logistic: -5% unit upkeep
Researcher: +5% research
Artist: +5% culture spread

That is correct. What effect would you suggest this should have in the game?

I am not really sure beyond them giving no happiness choices to pick.
Perhaps allowing them to sacrifice pop to speed up a project in the city the Mentat is in, regardless of slavery civic?
Allowing for more war exhaustion?
Slowing pop growth in exchange for more production?

 

[davidlallen]

But the effects you have right now are the same for every civ?

Sorry, that wasn't very clear. Currently you can build three mentats, each with one specialty, and they must go into three different cities. So you should plan out which three cities will get them, and what specialty is best suited to each city. This requires some difficult decisions. Are you proposing that each mentat should have one specialty but it affects all cities, and each civ should only be allowed to have one mentat?

Also why not let upgrades do stuff like:

These seem very similar -- actually identical in many cases -- to the existing Mentat abilities. Did I misunderstand something? In the promotions tab of the civilopedia, you can mouseover all of the mentat specific promotions (the orange color ones) to see the effects.

 

[Riso]

Are you proposing that each mentat should have one specialty but it affects all cities, and each civ should only be allowed to have one mentat?

Close. Two effects, that may or may not affect each city, based on one unit.
But now that you mention it, it might be a better idea to have the promotions be like this:
One part of the promotion is "hands on" for say, combat/spying/diplomacy, and the other is civ wide.
Example:
You decide that the Mentat is going to be your spy master. The unit individually gains a large bonus to all spying it does, but it also increases spy defenses by 5% as long as the unit lives.
Different upgrades could be:
Weaponmaster: +10xp for Mentat combat upgrades, +1xp all units produced everywhere.
Philosopher: +city happiness, +production speed of all missionaries/temples

That way you have to balance protecting the unit with using its special/in hotspots.

These seem very similar -- actually identical in many cases -- to the existing Mentat abilities. Did I misunderstand something?

Yes similar ones exist already.
I was using them as basis for examples as civ wide effects instead of per city.
I was thinking that if you affect everything, you have to be more careful with effects.

 

[Riso]

After I went to bed I realised that Great Persons could actually be seen and used as Mentats, making a dedicated separate unit superfluous.

 

[davidlallen]

There is a lot of back-and-forth discussion about that earlier in the thread. I specifically want effects which can *not* be done by Great People, to avoid this overlap. One key difference is that mentats are mobile. If you have a need for production on one side of your empire, and later a need for production on the other side, you can relocate the mentat. Also, mentats are trained and "purchased" from offworld, so it makes less sense for a city to generate them over time.

 

[Ahriman]

I think I prefer the current system to some of these others. A mentat with a single effect can be used more efficiently (by both human an AI), and I like them being mobile single-city boosters. This helps make them different to many other booster types (wonders, great people, etc.)

And I like the flexibility where you get to choose what the bonus is for each specific mentat.

I couldn't think of a good way of differentiating twisted mentats. The one lean towards this I tried to incorporate in the design is that the mentats tech can be reached through either Mind Training (normal mentats) OR through genetic manipulation (twisted mentats).

Another thought:
We could change the great scientist and/or the great spy and/or great trader into mentats (that create permanent mentat buildings like an academy).

 

[Yaromir]

Well in the book, mentats were involved in runnings of entire house, not just a particular city.

What is there was only one mentat unit which would have some small civ-wide effects and similar effects but stronger on the city where he is placed.

They can also be made useful by giving some sort of benefit when placed in a stack of units.

Another idea might be to give Mentats a "mission" which would alter the effects he has (don't know how easy it is to do).

 

[yiumlaien]

In the books Mentats are superior by combining all available facts and calculate the actions that need to be done on the one hand, and calculate the most propable actions of the enemies on the other hand.

So, in my eyes, each mentat should give a noticable amount of espionage points each turn.

The thing with the calculated prediction is more difficult to reflect...
I'm not sure if this can be implemented but let me explain my idea:

A mentat could propably tell his master if an attack will fail or not, and could also think of some genious flight plans if something goes wrong...

So, would it be possible to give the mentat the ability to give another unit a promotion which is similar to the Immortal-promotion of FFH2: if it dies it gets revived in the capital at once (without the promotion).

To keep it close to the mentat, I would make this promotion to last only for one turn, so it has to be renewd each turn...

According to what have been done in FFH2 the thing above should be doable.
The only thing I'm not sure about is, how you could guarantee that this special promotion is alway only given to ONE unit, even if the Mentat "casts" his ability on a whole stack of units...


My 2 cents ;-)

 

[Dragon Azori]

I have a suggestion to improve the way mentats work. In Fall from Heaven there are spells like "Hope" that create a building in a city as long as the unit is in the city. If you set something like that up you can have each new mentat get a free promotion which is the ability to create a building and blocks the other abilities. For the juice you just need to add the effect to the building (like the steel works gets 50% production from iron and coal). Seems like a simpler way to handle the whole thing to me.

 

[davidlallen]

Actually, that is exactly the way it works. When a mentat is created, you chose one promotion. You can see that the graphics for the mentat promotions are different, if you look at the dune-o-pedia tab for promotions. When a mentat enters or leaves a city, an invisible building is created. You can see this if you look at the list of buildings in the city screen, when a mentat is present.

Is there some effect you can think of, which is not happening today?

 

[Dragon Azori]

Actually, that is exactly the way it works.

Actually NOT exactly. There is not a button on the mentat to create the building, it sort of spawns by its self. Also there are two buildings one for juice and one generic. For me I got a mentat from my home plant of Ix and got industrial on it. At first nothing seemed to happen so I moved it around from city to city and I still saw no change. At some point later I noticed that a build had appeared in the city it was in, but it was the wrong one.

 

[Ahriman]

There is not a button on the mentat to create the building, it sort of spawns by its self.

Since there is no reason why you would ever want to not push this button immediately, wouldn't having a button just be mindless busywork micromaangement?
Besides, with the ability happening automatically, then the AI also gets the advantage from it more easily.

at first nothing seemed to happen so I moved it around from city to city and I still saw no change. At some point later I noticed that a build had appeared in the city it was in, but it was the wrong one.

Sounds like a bug.

 

[davidlallen]

For me I got a mentat from my home plant of Ix and got industrial on it. At first nothing seemed to happen so I moved it around from city to city and I still saw no change. At some point later I noticed that a build had appeared in the city it was in, but it was the wrong one.

If you can make this happen again, please send a save game that shows the problem. You can attach it to a post in this thread. If you do, please mention exactly which build and patch you are using, such as 1.8 or 1.8.0.1.