offworld trade and resources

I'm sure it will work fine and I look forward to trying it; my one hope is that you continue to differentiate factions using other mechanics, such as a diplomacy bonus for Atreides and special spy missions for Ordos, Fenring and BGs, and make the Hark slave mechanic more useful (sacrifice slaves in cities for production boosts). I think Fremen will need a ton more UUs; they should be a much more infantry-oriented faction with worms; good naval power but weak on land because they should lack the artillery, suspensor units or mechanized vehicles available to other factions. There need to be more mechanics than just a few UUs and UBs to actually make the factions play differently.
 
Remember that another great means of differentiation is to have some techs only available to particular factions.
 
Based on 1.4, here is my revised plan for unique resources. Note Ecaz is removed in 1.4.

There are three UR which are associated with particular civs:
Caladanian Wine - Atreides - +2 happiness
Thinking Machines - Ix - allows building 4 special units
Sardaukar Cooperation - Corrino - allows building Sardaukar

There are three which are unaligned and only give benefits:
Slig - +2 health
Opafire - +2 happiness
Semuta - +2 happiness

There are two which are unaligned and allow building special units:
Kindjal - Ginaz Warrior
Sapho Juice - Mentat

The proposal is that when you get Offworld Trade, you should get your civ's UR. For Atreides, Ix and Corrino, this is clear. For the others, should they get a pick? A pick would be of any unaligned, plus any of the aligned ones whose civ is not in this game, minus any which were already picked by other players. For Atreides, a pick may be better than Wines.

Perhaps Spacer Guild should get to pick two?

Also, my original thought was that when you build a Space Port, you can then build a Contract "building". Once that is built, you get a pick of any available UR.

In 1.4, all the UR buildings are buildable, and there is no restriction. So I need to do something. Let me know what you think.
 
In the Westwood games, the Fremen are special elite Atreides units. Here's an idea along similar lines.

Fremen should have a UR that represents their trust and cooperation, that is the equivalent of Sardaukar Cooperation and allows building of the Fedaykin URU. This UR could be named Water Debt.

You can then set up the following via diplomatic bonuses and penalties, or by restricting choices in some other way.

Fremen like Atreides, hates Harkonnens.
Atreides have an advantage in obtaining Water Debt UR -> Fedaykin URU.

Corrino like Harkonnen, hates Atreides*
Harkonnens have an advantage in obtaining Sardaukar Coop UR -> Sardaukar URU.

* Corrino wants to manipulate the Harkonnens to eliminate the Atreides threat.

There is a nice symmetry to this which I like.

I would also rename Kindjal to Ginaz Swordsmanship or something like that.
 
I think giving Fremen stuff to Atreides doesn't make sense as long as Fremen are in the game (and they'd *better* be in the game). Want to be on good terms with the Fremen? Thats what the diplomacy engine is for.
 
Deliverator said:
Fremen should have a UR that represents their trust and cooperation, that is the equivalent of Sardaukar Cooperation and allows building of the Fedaykin URU. This UR could be named Water Debt.
Click to expand...

I like this part, it is symmetrical. In particular the Fremen Infantry unit (which I will probably rename Worm Rider) is pretty useful; so I will make this one a public (non-UU) unit that requires Water Debt.

I agree with Ahriman that the diplo bonuses could come from the game engine. There is a little bit of diplomatic forcing with the favorite/hated civic of arrakis paradise. If we need something to encourage more factionalism, we can consider this separately.
 
More to the point, things like trade goods should depend on good diplomatic relations with the appropriate faction. If you're Atreides and want access to Fremen stuff, you should have to have a good diplomatic relationship with the Fremen such that they are willing to trade their resources with you through the diplomacy engine (assuming they're in the game). If you want Sardaukar cooperation, you should have to have a good diplomatic relationship with the Imperial faction, such that they are willing to trade their strategic resource with you.
You shouldn't be able to just get these special things by spending some hammers on a building.
I'd also tend to make the units granted by these strategic trade resources more powerful than other units of similar tech level, but with a national limit requirement. So maybe you can only build 6 Sardaukar or Fedaykin units, but they totally pwn all other infantry in their unit class.

I've no problem with intrinsic diplomatic bonuses/penalties between some factions. You could give Atreides +4 to Fremen, +2 to everyone else except Tleilexu (no bonus) and Harkonnen (-4 penalty). Good relations with the Lansraad is an Atreides faction feature.

I like Water Debt more than Stillsuits.
 
One key idea from earlier in the thread which I failed to repeat recently is that each contract is like a world wonder. You get three units of the resource, one to use and two for trade. So your two friends can build the units also.

The Ixian units, Ginaz Swordsman, and Fremen Infantry which rely on the UR's are definitely stronger, but I did not intend for them to be any stronger than a normal UU. That is, a UU is typically a little stronger in one area, and I was aiming for something similar with the units enabled by UR. But I was not planning to have any unit count limit.

I suppose a limited number, of much stronger units, would also be a workable solution.
 
that is, a UU is typically a little stronger in one area, and I was aiming for something similar with the units enabled by UR
Click to expand...

I suppose a limited number, of much stronger units, would also be a workable solution.
Click to expand...

Either of these would be fine.
 
I would like to see Water Debt allow the Fedaykin too. This is mostly a theme thing - now that Paul is Atreides I'd still like to be able to have them fight under him.

I think there is nothing wrong turning UUs into URUs, the owning civ will still be able to build them and it makes things more interesting.

Perhaps have a World Unit cap of 20 or so on both Fedaykin and Sardaukar, although I'm not sure it's necessary.

Setting diplomatic standings and leaders' personalities (as has recently been done on Planetfall) is worth a new thread at some point.
 
I'd go for national limit rather than worldcap; insanely frustrating if you can't build your unit because your allies (or former allies) are hogging the supply.

I'd also make sure that there are multiple tiers (2 at least) of these URUs; a mid-game Sardaukar and a late-game Sardaukar for eg.

There are some hard-coded diplomatic bonuses in FFH too; Falamar likes all women, and Os-Gabella hates all men. And there is a spirit spell Trust that gives a one-off bonus to everyone.
 
OK, I have implemented it. Please see the 1.4.1 patch. What I implemented is a little different from the original design, as usual. The full details are in the dune wars concept tab of the civilopedia under "offworld trade". Basically you get one contract with every Trade Port building you build, so you can only get one per city. The picklist contains your unique resource if any, plus any unique resources of players who are not in the game, plus all the unassigned resources, minus any resource which has already been picked. So they are kind of like world wonders.
 
Hey! :)

I just want to say that I am back home. I didn't have read all the posts, that will need some days. As promised next i will try doing that offworld screen...
 
koma13 said:
Hey! :)

I just want to say that I am back home. I didn't have read all the posts, that will need some days. As promised next i will try doing that offworld screen...
Click to expand...

Welcome back. Looking forward to seeing what you come up with. :)
 
keldath said:
why did you guys removed plasteel and plaz as resources?
Click to expand...

I explained in the bonus thread a little bit. Basically, in Civ 4, resources are generally raw materials rather than finished products. Both plasteel and plaz are made from something else - you don't mine for them. Stravidium is one of the raw materials used to make plasteel and that's still in. Plaz was hard to get excited about as a strategic resource. What can you do with toughened glass apart from make windshields?
 
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