The Spice Thread

[Ahriman]

Edit: Having ONE game, where 1/3 of economy (let's say commerce ) is powered by spice, is not a strong enough arguement against spice improvement IMO

a) The 1/3 is not an abberation, I regularly get this by late-midgame playing as a spice industry civ.
b) Economy and commerce are not the same. Economy is gold and beakers. 1/3 of commerce is MORE than 1/3 of beakers, because the commerce income from spice is concentrated in a single city, where you will have maximized your percentage boosters (universities, banks, etc), and have things like Academies built.

... I'd even say, it's an argument FOR spice improvement. I read it like: "in most games, spice makes up at most a third of economy. Most economy is granted via cottages or non-spice ressources."
IMO there should be games (not all, but it should be possible), where at least 2/3 of economy is running via spice... especially, as soon as the guild has "returned" to the planet.

I disagree with this. Spice should *never* be approaching 2/3 of the economy size.

The civ engine is, fundamentally, built around cities, and population, and that population working tiles or acting as specialists.

I think the engine and AI will break down if we try to divert too far from this, and make income just come from improvements within your cultural borders.

The AI knows how to attack cities, and defend its own. The AI does NOT know how to contest areas of spice, or protect its harvesters from being pillaged. And I suspect that it is not really feasible to try to teach it this.

If you make spice too important, you destroy the AI because it is easily hamstrung by a human player who can cut off its spice income.

The problem is that today in DW, a good human player can easily get 300-400 points of commerce per turn by turn 255, while the AI can only get 150-200 points

This is a good point.

Human exploitation of fort culture is part of this. Maybe we should remove the ability to build forts outside cultural borders, since the AI can't do this?

 

[idahopotato]

I don't know anything about development. I like the way the game plays now, but if you want it to be as realistic as possible, then spice would have to be closer to 99% of all commerce. Maybe 75%, with water being the remainder. I imagine that this is pretty much impossible with this type of engine. I think there is a Dune game out there where spice is the only resource in existence, but this is not that game right? You guys are doing a great job by the way. I can't seem to put the game away.

 

[keldath]

hey people,

there has been much debate on spice, and still going.

i always wanted dune wars to have a system of resource compiling:

spice need to be compiled - in the game youll have a counter - similar to solaris/money
and that counter will indicate how much spice do you have in your empire .

you start compiling the minute you have 1 spice resource, thus youll get +1 to your spice counter.

the spice will be used both for commerce - as it is today - with the corporations system.
and second - in order to build certain things - buildings, units and wonders, youll have to pay in spice. like a sand rider will cost 50 hammers, and say 10 spice units, so if you have 30 spice units in your counter - when you build this unit - 10 spice units will be reduced from your counter.

so,
i think this will give spice the proper importance we need it to have in dune wars - spice is needed both for money and both for building most of the important units and buildings.


we have a similar system imbibed in the dune wars code, only that the cost is based on money - you can add to every unit goldcost - which upon building that unit - youll have to pay the preqeq sum of money.

theres some code that was written a long time ago - its called fuel mod, it has some sort of compiling mechanics.


i have a very old code that we can use - it adds two tags - iron cost and food cost, this code adds the ability to compile food and iron, and afterward, to make a unit cost amount of iron or/and amount of food. but the code is missing proper display , i will make testes since i cant remember how it looks.
if this idea will be accepted, maybe david, our only active sdk coder, can develop this code a bit more to our needs.

 

[Ahriman]

These ideas are interesting, but this would be quite a radical change to the economy system of the mod.

i always wanted dune wars to have a system of resource compiling:

I don't really understand how this system would be functionally different from renaming Gold into spice.

Besides, why would you stockpile spice? Basically the value of spice to you is money, so you export it when you produce it.

The only reason to stockpile a commodity is if you think the price of it will go up in the future (or can make the price go up by restricting supply).

n order to build certain things - buildings, units and wonders,

Why should these things cost spice? Its not like they need it as part of the manufacturing process. Spice is just a valuable trade commodity, its not involved in the construction process.

you can add to every unit goldcost

Why would you want to do this? I think this would just confuse players and the AI (and human players) without really adding anything much to the game.

I think just making spice valuable as gold (as the current system does) is much cleaner.

I think we need to work with the civ engine economy as much as possible, rather than trying to fight it, in ways that they AI will not understand.

 

[keldath]

well,

i know theres no reaon for spice to be a part of a units cost,

but you would agree with me, that spice will be a bit more important in the game.


your right about spice is money, but perhaps spice can give like half money half stockpiled.

but yeah, we need to give spice some more weight as a gold provider.


how about in some way, we can have a special settler that will found cities on desert?
the building in those cities will be limited, but their cultural border will cover enough spice,
so you wont be depended on having "coastal cities" with spice access.
it will be something like a spice base that can be disbanded any time.

idunno, im just thinking out laud.

 

[Ahriman]

I think that the best way to make spice more important is to add a few more buildings that boost the yield of spice, as in this thread http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=336948, rather than trying to change the mechanic to somehow make it stockpiled separately.

I think its much easier to just have gold as the only stockpile.

And not too important; as I suggested in post 81, making spice too important is dangerous in that it advantages the human player over the AI, since the human can understand the importance of targetting enemy spice income through pillage.

how about in some way, we can have a special settler that will found cities on desert?

In terms of harvesters and coastal culture, I think a useful analogy from earth is to think about fisheries, and exclusive economic zones.
Most fishing (historically) occured somewhat near coastal port cities; fishing boats venture out from port only so far, catch their harvest, and return to port. They can fish anywhere within a limited range, dependent on technology, and over time (as technology improved, and as in-shore fisheries were depleted), they ventured further out from the coast.
When an area is near two or more countries (ie when their zones compete), the fishing rights access to those areas in contest was determined by the relative political power of the rivals (though a fixed difference for all countries in modern times, with the law of the sea convention).

It still isn't really feasible to go out into the ocean and support floating towns.

This is basically what we have in the Dune mod, and I think it works pretty well as a mechanic; the desert is dangerous, and so you can only venture out so far into the desert to harvest spice, and this increases over time as your cities grow and become able to support more distant spice operations.
And when contesting spice with neighbors, political influence (culture) determines who gets it.

So while I think its interesting to have desert cities (and not impossible to code - see Planetfall), I think it isn't really necessary, and that trying to introduce it would have many challenges and problems.
1) Very hard to get the AI to use it effectively, to found them, to defend them or to attack them.
2) There are no water sources or bonus resources or improvements (other than spice/harvesters) in the deserts, you couldn't really have a city out there, and it couldn't really manage
3) It doesn't seem very logical; the desert really isn't capable of supporting life, and any settlement would risk being destroyed by storms.
4) It doesn't fit with the fluff well. There aren't any settlements out in the desert.
5) It would get attacked and destroyed by sandworms.
6) I think it would weaken some of the atmosphere of the harsh, dangerous desert that is risky to to cross.

im just thinking out laud.

Understood, its good to throw ideas out and see which ones might work.

* * *

I think this is my favorite idea from the thread above:

honest, also a (spice-) refinery should not give +25% hammers, but +25% commerce/gold

This is an interesting idea. It is a little problematic I think how lategame you have to go before you get a commerce booster building. Maybe this should be a commerce building instead of a hammer building, and we could create another hammer booster building somewhere else, maybe at crystal materials or sand farms (both currently very weak techs).
Rename the refinery "spice refinery", and have it give a trader rather than a techman specialist slot, and then create a hammer booster building. Workshop, maybe? Factory, and rename the current factory to manufacturing plant?

 

[Slvynn]

I think that hammer boosting building is not necessary. (i mean + hammer boost from refinery early game)
I'll remind you that hammers in DW is something veeeeery common. Its big difference from vanilla. Also, few times i remeber mentions that things to build like wonders / units are too cheap. So perhaps best way to fix several issues is just remake Refinery bonus, and remove this hammer bonus , leaving it to automatic factories and such. Then automatic Factories, and perhaps Ix mechanics will have more importance.

 

[Ahriman]

I think that hammer boosting building is not necessary. (i mean + hammer boost from refinery early game)

The only reason I suggested a new hammer boosting building is if the Refinery becomes a commerce booster rather than hammer booster.

I don't like changing the refinery to commerce and then having no hammer boosters in the game until the late-midgame with industrialism.
We need some kind of forge building.

 

[Lord Tirian]

I think its much easier to just have gold as the only stockpile.

By the way, I think having access to a lot of spice resources at once should be emphasised, stockpiling doesn't fit as well, feel-wise. It's "The Spice must flow!", not "Spice: Gotta collect it all!" - a stockpile would encourage saving it which "feels" wrong.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Hived]

The only reason I suggested a new hammer boosting building is if the Refinery becomes a commerce booster rather than hammer booster.

I don't like changing the refinery to commerce and then having no hammer boosters in the game until the late-midgame with industrialism.
We need some kind of forge building.

Where are your well known arguments? I agree to Slvynn: An early "Hammer-booster" is not necessary, as hammers are very common and units relativly cheap.

By the way, I think having access to a lot of spice resources at once should be emphasised, stockpiling doesn't fit as well, feel-wise. It's "The Spice must flow!", not "Spice: Gotta collect it all!" - a stockpile would encourage saving it which "feels" wrong.
Cheers, LT.

C'mon! The Baron himself had very much spice-reserves on his home-planet (remembering Thufirs report?). Keeping spice "at home" is as common as leaving money on your bank-account... especially in this mod, where the contact to the guild is not available at the beginning, spice should be stored... but game-engine-orientated, AI-orientated, it is not that easy to store it really...

...about spice-harvest out of cultural borders:
In the books/films carry-alls were mainly used, to „carry“ or lift harvesters in areas far away from home. My suggestion: carry-alls have an „own“ harvesting ability. You can go with them on spice tiles and they harvest spice „directly“ to the guild, so that spice doesn't go via your spice firm (would be harder to implement, i think) (if possible, spice-tiles without harvesters, so that „double-harvesting“ is not possible). If possible, carry-alls should also not be affected by worm, but therefore by storm ...btw. the storm doesn't „kill“ units in the desert, does he?
they are rewarded with Solaris of course.
Yes, Ahriman, even this will be hard to be taught to AI... but what will not? As carryalls are quite expensive, I hope, that this will not allow players to "cheat" by building carry-all-armies and getting millions of solaris... and when, he has achieved a great economical victory!

Greetz, HivedOne.

 

[Ahriman]

Where are your well known arguments? I agree to Slvynn: An early "Hammer-booster" is not necessary, as hammers are very common and units relativly cheap.

Actually, units are now slightly more expensive than in vanilla, and cities are slightly smaller than in vanilla. I think it would be too hard to build a decent army in the midgame and build Wonders without a hammer-booster. I'd be fine with such a building coming slightly later than a tier2 tech, but it should be well before the quite late industrialism tech.
Besides, boosters of beakers vs commerce vs hammer buildings help in terms of city specialization/differentiation, which is a nice strategic factor.

C'mon! The Baron himself had very much spice-reserves on his home-planet

The Baron had stockpiles only because:
a) he was stealing from the Emperor, and so had difficulty selling spice in large quantities on the market
b) he controlled the level of spice output, and so he could be fairly confident that spice prices were going to rise in the future, hence why he stockpiled spice.

Other Houses did not have spice stockpiles.
The Baron's reserves are noteworthy precisely because of how unusual they are; they are the exception that proves the rule.

The comparison would be: how many people (or governments) do you see hording gold bars today?

..about spice-harvest out of cultural borders:
In the books/films carry-alls were mainly used, to „carry“ or lift harvesters in areas far away from home. My suggestion: carry-alls have an „own“ harvesting ability.

I think this has all the same problems that every other "harvesting outside culture" mechanic would have. I'm not going to repeat them all there.

Yes, Ahriman, even this will be hard to be taught to AI... but what will not?

Existing mechanics that do not fight against the AI (like workers building improvements to capture resources) do not need to be taught to the AI.
I think we should try to minimize the number of features that would need new AI, and limit them to those that would provide significant gameplay enhancements.
The more features we have to try to teach through hard-coding, the worse the AI will perform.
And IIRC a unit can only have one AI routine - if carryalls have a harvester AI, then then the AI won't be able to effectively use them as transports anymore.

 

[Slvynn]

Another idea coming to mind - atm Harks lack special features as civ because of nerfed slavery. Mabby add UB to them something related with Spice stockpiling?

 

[Hived]

Actually, units are now slightly more expensive than in vanilla, and cities are slightly smaller than in vanilla. I think it would be too hard to build a decent army in the midgame and build Wonders without a hammer-booster. I'd be fine with such a building coming slightly later than a tier2 tech, but it should be well before the quite late industrialism tech.
Besides, boosters of beakers vs commerce vs hammer buildings help in terms of city specialization/differentiation, which is a nice strategic factor.

okay... that's an argument... I just wanted to know, why there is a need for a hammer "booster".

The Baron had stockpiles only because:
a) he was stealing from the Emperor, and so had difficulty selling spice in large quantities on the market
b) he controlled the level of spice output, and so he could be fairly confident that spice prices were going to rise in the future, hence why he stockpiled spice.

so you agree, that in this mod, where the emperor is no longer the boss and where in the beginning no contact to the guild is available, so the most needing costumer (paying the best price) is not yet there, stockpiling spice would be logical?

Other Houses did not have spice stockpiles.

Of course they had not... because they were not on dune (at least the last couple of years).

The comparison would be: how many people (or governments) do you see hording gold bars today?

No it's not the right comparison, because we have a "world-wide-trade", we are confident, having a piece of paper, that says: "You possess 3 gold bars in Philadelphia" (or something similar)... in this mod, it's more like "keeping the oil shares, until the big oil hunger comes".
Don't get me wrong, I also think, that spice-keeping is hard to implement... but I also say, that it would be more realistic... that doesn't mean, that it has to be changed, I am happy with this state, but I just cannot deny it, just because it is not programable.

I think this has all the same problems that every other "harvesting outside culture" mechanic would have. I'm not going to repeat them all there.
Existing mechanics that do not fight against the AI (like workers building improvements to capture resources) do not need to be taught to the AI.

Yes, that's right, but changing nothing (but names and graphics), won't make it a dune game, but a civ that looks like Dune.

I think we should try to minimize the number of features that would need new AI, and limit them to those that would provide significant gameplay enhancements.
The more features we have to try to teach through hard-coding, the worse the AI will perform.

I agree in principle... but what are significant gameplay enhancements? IMO these are not "some special units" having "new" combat abilities, that's just the icing on the cake, but fundamental changes, such as implementing spice-blows, disappearing ressources (faster if harvested, slower with some civic), making water to sand, but letting several units cross it, making AI worker "walk on sand"... that's it, what makes Dune Wars to Dune Wars!!
...that doesn't mean, that each good idea has to be implemented, this decision is still made by the programmer(s)... who have the hard work to do

And IIRC a unit can only have one AI routine - if carryalls have a harvester AI, then then the AI won't be able to effectively use them as transports anymore.

That's no problem at all: two possible solutions:
a) fast solution: make two different carry-all units: civilian and military
b) better solution: give them in cities a promo-button (such like galleys in FFH, make them change their crew), that also "exchanges" the unit(type).

Greetz, Hived.

 

[Ahriman]

so you agree, that in this mod, where the emperor is no longer the boss and where in the beginning no contact to the guild is available, so the most needing costumer (paying the best price) is not yet there, stockpiling spice would be logical?

Sure, I guess in the very early game, before offworld trade tech, Houses probably stockpile the small amounts that they harvest before they ship it offworld.

But after that.... there is a galactic-wide trade. So yes, there is no need for a stockpile, and the gold analogy works perfectly.

There is no "big spice hunger" coming.

Yes, that's right, but changing nothing (but names and graphics), won't make it a dune game, but a civ that looks like Dune.

We've changed plenty. And there are plenty of changes that you can make that add flavor without fighting the AI.

I agree in principle... but what are significant gameplay enhancements

In the mod so far?
1) Amphibious invasion AI (cephalo)
2) Homeworld unit purchase AI (Koma)
In progress:
3) Settler city site selection AI (David/Koma)
4) Mentat use AI (David)

These are all major changes with significant gameplay enhancements.
I don't think that something that risks breaking the game's economic model, and being much easier for humans to exploit than the AI, would be an enhancement. How are you going to code the AI to intelligently contest areas outside their cultural borders? Thats such a complex goal that it is much harder than the more limited AI tweaks being made.

b) better solution: give them in cities a promo-button (such like galleys in FFH, make them change their crew), that also "exchanges" the unit(type).

The AI doesn't use the crew changes in FFH, and certainly wouldn't easily be able to do so intelligently.

 

[Slvynn]

Agree, all changes that should be done should be related only to bonus per resource mechanics (BTS corporation) avoiding mechanics that are will not work with AI and crush economic model.

Refinery should have +25% commerce with spice (using mechanics whihc were posted by keldath)

perhaps +2 gold per worked tile yeild

and perhaps some units production bonus with this resource (RM for example)

 

[Ahriman]

I don't really like adding bonuses that are "builds faster with spice" or "+25% commerce with spice" for the Spice resource, just because everyone will have at least one spice, so the constraint is really non-binding.

I think all spice bonuses should depend on the number of spice resources, not the presence of a single resource.

Also, a building that was both +25% hammers AND +25 commerce in the early game would be too much.
I don't mind a spice refinery being a commerce-booster building, but we need a separate hammer-booster building, not reusing the same building for both.

 

[Slvynn]

i mean to remove hammer boost.

Also RM is unit that in lore require spice, btw , there alot of quotations and mentions about that.

 

[Ahriman]

Also RM is unit that in lore require spice, btw , there alot of quotations and mentions about that.

So what? It is just messy to add resource constraints that will never bind, or conditional bonuses that always bind. There will never be a case where you have enough tech to get RMs but don't have a single spice resource.

Besides, the amount of spice needed by a Reverend Mother is tiny compared to the amount of spice generated by a harvester in a year.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Hi there

First up, thanks to everyone for all the work that's gone into the mod! It looks great, and while I've only played a couple of hours I'm sure it'll occupy a fair few more..

To be honest I was surprised by the sheer amount of spice on the map though, and its relatively low value compared to how I imagined it reading the book. I've had a couple of "left-field" ideas that I thought I'd throw out there in case there's any value to them.

I haven't done any modding other than tweaking the XML of vanilla to make it a more "laptop-friendly" game so I don't know how realistic any of this is. Bear with me if it's way too ambitious.

Random idea #1:

What about treating spice as a unit, rather than a resource? e.g. spice is a barbarian unit that spawns randomly all over the map, with 0 movement and 0 strength. It can only be captured by ground units (e.g. a harvester unit), and can then load onto (ideally) that same harvester unit, or into a thopter. When it gets back to a city it can perform a Great Merchant-style trade mission (but in your own city) for cash.

In terms of AI (remembering I have no real idea what I'm talking about ) could the harvester follow a similar line to a work boat seeking an offshore resource? And similarly for the unit, follow a Great Merchant on a transport seeking overseas city path?

Alternatively you could say that once the harvester got to the spice, the pick up and return and export is automatic, and treat it as a goody hut (but with lots of gold).

Gameplay-wise you'd have plenty of spice to go around in the early game, so no incentive for an early rush on your neighbours. Mid-game you'd start fighting over faraway spice deposits and late game you'd be taking out rivals to stop them competing for all the new spice popping up. You'd be running deficit research most of the time, with your coffers occasionally boosted by new sales of large spice deposits.

If the harvester could be set to "automatic" like a work boat you wouldn't need much micromanagement (unless there are worms about) and the AI should be able to compete on a similar level. (Can the AI be set to escort units - i.e. send some thopters along with its harvester? And to have plenty of scouts flying around at all times so it can see where new spice is? Oh, and can barbarians be set to spawn in unfogged tiles?)

If that could all work you could have spice a lot rarer, more valuable, and harvested outside cultural borders.

Random idea #2:

What if spice was a strategic resource that can be traded with a non-playing Guild, for off-planet strategic resources providing a range of bonuses? i.e. they don't have cities but have contact and will trade with everyone, and will "buy" all your spice in return for imports from other planets.

That way you could get a real bonus for each new tile of spice harvested. The Guild would have one of each resource for each player.

Resources could provide e.g. water +1 (only 1 or 2), happiness +1 (a few), health +1 (a few more), commerce +1 (heaps) or whatever other bonuses can be provided (maybe some needed for units - fuel sources, construction materials that can't be found on Dune etc.)

I guess you'd still have the problem of being able to pillage the AI harvesters.. maybe if they were rarer it could protect them like it does with Iron/Oil etc in vanilla.

Anyway, just a couple of random ideas, I might play a couple of games and see if I can think of anything else.

Cheers

 

[Ahriman]

Hi forty,
Welcome to Dunewars, and thanks very much for the feedback. I'm glad you're enjoying the mod!

Unfortunately, I don't think idea #1 is very feasible. Spice works much better as a resource than as a unit in terms of AI and art, and having to move captured spice "units" back to cities could be unnecessary micromanagement.

As for #2, part of this is kindof what we have already. The idea behind the commerce income from spice is that this comes from exporting the resource offworld. We also already have a few resources from happiness and health that are imported from offworld. I don't think that getting a new resource for each spice tile would work very well; I think its better to have lots of spice tiles, than just a small handful, and so the benefits of each spice tile can't be too large. I also prefer the system where spice gives you commerce, rather than directly giving you happiness or health type bonuses.

Importing water from offworld isn't really very feasible - just too expensive. But we're already planning to add some other benefits from Spice through wonders, like a Prescience chamber that gives espionage points depending on the number of spice resources you control.
I also don't think that making spice a rare resource that you could fortify and protect with an army on a single tile would make much sense, fluffwise.

Thanks very much for the ideas though, we're always glad to hear feedback from players. We're certainly planning to make spice a little more valuable, since "spice isn't important enough" is one of the common player feedback messages we get.