Version 1.7 feedback

[davidlallen]

Anyway, I really found the settlers to be too cheap.

Several people have commented on this. In my opinion, the problem is that it is easy for a small city to have a big water surplus, so the settler builds quickly. It would be interesting to get your feedback on that -- if you play a vanilla game or some other mod, and watch your early city food surplus, I think you will see it is much smaller and therefore settlers take much longer to build.

I think the right solution is to somehow make early game water a little more rare. I am afraid to tune this too hard, but it is a consistent feedback. What would be the best way to reduce early game water?

Are you planning to use Revolutions and/or BarbarianCivs? 'Cause it would add some more dynamics, and since it's based on RevDCM...

As you point out, it's based on RevDCM. There are a lot of revolutions options you can turn on. We haven't playtested them, but they are there. Sometimes players get these options turned on by mistake and complain; so we have hidden them. But assuming you are willing to change Civ4GameOptionInfos.xml, you can unhide them and play with them.

Really, writing some AI code for units buying shouldn't be too hard. You'd need to make calls if a city is in danger to check if there's offworld units available, then a routine to determine which unit to buy.

Er ... sure. AI is simple. It is only a few lines of code. Not! We would love to have a developer who understands the AI to help out. There are a number of things I have not been able to figure out. If it is easy, then please help us out by writing some. For one example, we do not understand how to make workers build improvements on spice plots which are outside city BFC. For another example, we would love to have Fremen unable to build suspensor vehicles and thopters, and only use the ones they capture. But this completely confuses the AI and the Fremen never expand.

 

[Opera]

Several people have commented on this. In my opinion, the problem is that it is easy for a small city to have a big water surplus, so the settler builds quickly. It would be interesting to get your feedback on that -- if you play a vanilla game or some other mod, and watch your early city food surplus, I think you will see it is much smaller and therefore settlers take much longer to build.

I think the right solution is to somehow make early game water a little more rare. I am afraid to tune this too hard, but it is a consistent feedback. What would be the best way to reduce early game water?

Well, why not just change the Settler's production cost?

As you point out, it's based on RevDCM. There are a lot of revolutions options you can turn on. We haven't playtested them, but they are there. Sometimes players get these options turned on by mistake and complain; so we have hidden them. But assuming you are willing to change Civ4GameOptionInfos.xml, you can unhide them and play with them.

Okay, I'll try that

Er ... sure. AI is simple. It is only a few lines of code. Not! We would love to have a developer who understands the AI to help out. There are a number of things I have not been able to figure out. If it is easy, then please help us out by writing some. For one example, we do not understand how to make workers build improvements on spice plots which are outside city BFC. For another example, we would love to have Fremen unable to build suspensor vehicles and thopters, and only use the ones they capture. But this completely confuses the AI and the Fremen never expand.

Simple is different than short. Long is different than difficult.

Just take a look at the routine used for the AI to choose its tech. Is it difficult? Not that much. Is it long? Hell, yeah.

For the reinforcements AI, you would have some not-so-hard routines. It's nothing like making workers build improvements (which I'm sure I can't do).

 

[Ahriman]

I meant using the same kind of screen for the "Landing Stage" mechanic. So you'd have a screen kinda similar in which you could create contracts to get resources and such offworld.

I don't understand the design goal you are trying to achieve here. The current UI and system for getting contracts seems the simplest way of achieving the current design goal (resources feel like they are imported from off-world, some resources are restricted to particular civs).

What I meant was that, for now, that system is really military only but it could be expanded for trade, for example.

How so? You get the trade goods once, but you can repeatedly continue to purchase military units, and do so in particular cities, and from a long and changing list of units. So it makes sense to have a complex UI interface for unit purchase, but not for trade good purchase.
And again, selecting contracts through events is easy to AI program, not so much for creating a complex trading system.

(At worst I'll take care of that myself )

If you'd like to create modmods with extra factions that'd be fantastic. But I would suggest that keeping close to book lore as much as possible is important, so try to read a few of the books first . My personal preference is also to keep to the Dune timeline roughly around Dune and its two sequels (next ~20-30 years), rather than the stuff from 3000 years in the future (or the distant past).

I was playing at Epic speed. Still too quick

Well, its personal preference. Remember that FFH runs *much* slower than vanilla, so I suspect that peoples' expectations are anchored on what they've been playing recently.
Also I haven't really played on low difficulty levels much, I find the game works well at ~Emperor or so, the AI does pretty well.

I think the right solution is to somehow make early game water a little more rare. I am afraid to tune this too hard, but it is a consistent feedback. What would be the best way to reduce early game water?

I dunno, to me it mostly feels ok now. We've tuned the early game water back sooo far already, compared to what it used to be. We could shift the tech at which a few of the improvements get +1 water though; push the +1 water for windtraps back to something later (currently Arrakis habitation is too strong a tech anyway).

I don't think its a problem that expansion is a bit faster than in other mods or vanilla, because the AI does it pretty well too. There is a lot of empty space to fill, and the game isn't very interested until it is filled, so I don't see a problem with having that space get filled faster.

Well, why not just change the Settler's production cost?

Settlers don't actually have a direct production cost like other units, though there is a parameter somewhere that affects it. Final cost is determined by a bunch of features, including map size.

 

[davidlallen]

Well, why not just change the Settler's production cost?

This is a common question. First, the cost of the settler unit in any mod's xml is zero. It is built with food, so there are special rules for it; it is not changing a single hammer cost. Second, I am not sure you agree whether early game water surplus is the problem, but if that is the problem, then raising the settler cost does not solve the actual problem. I agree it is something to look at, but I don't agree we should just increase some hammer cost to fix it.

Just take a look at the routine used for the AI to choose its tech. Is it difficult? Not that much. Is it long? Hell, yeah.

Exactly. If we go into the middle of that routine and randomly add something, it is almost impossible to tell what effect it will have. Similarly, adding a routine to randomly buy units will have an unpredictable effect on the rest of the AI. In order to really understand how to help the AI decide when/where to spend money on units, we should understand a lot of the AI code. I find it very difficult to understand.

But, again, we would love to have you contribute; if you'd like to write some AI and test it out, we can incorporate it into the mod.

 

[Ahriman]

We could shift the tech at which a few of the improvements get +1 water though; push the +1 water for windtraps back to something later (currently Arrakis habitation is too strong a tech anyway)

Moving the windtrap +1 water to climate controls would slow the early game.

 

[Duke Leto1994]

Welcome to civfanatics! What stage did the game crash at? Were you able to start a game or did it crash during the "init xml" stage? If the game crashed after you clicked "next turn", do you have a save game from shortly before the crash? This will help us to reproduce and fix the crash.

Sorry for responding to this at such a late time

I was at an early stage of the game when the bug happened. But I started a new game and it worked fine.
However, i find that most of your techs don't have quotes, but a message saying something around the lines of insert quote here. Im not sure if that was because you couldn't find quotes or if your code is broken, you may want to check it out.

 

[davidlallen]

However, i find that most of your techs don't have quotes, but a message saying something around the lines of insert quote here. Im not sure if that was because you couldn't find quotes or if your code is broken, you may want to check it out.

Glad it is working for you. If you'd like to submit any quotes, we would be happy to put them into the game.

 

[MariusDarkheart]

Hi, love the mod!!
Just a quick question, Do you have any suggestions on what world size, speed and difficulty I should set this mod at? I leave all the other settings at the default option.
Oh and did I mention I love the mod?

 

[Ahriman]

Hi Marius, welcome to Dunewars.

I suggest:
Standard map size, Epic game speed, 8 players, 22% or 24% land mass, Arrakis mapscript. But YMMV.

As for difficulty, something harder than you play vanilla at. I find Emperor or Immortal for Dunewars quite fun. It can be fun to start at something hard and get your ass kicked, and then tone it down to something more manageable if needed.

The current version AI is also unfortunately very weak because of some bugs we've introduced in building spice harvesters (AI no longer builds them properly).

 

[MariusDarkheart]

Thanks, I normaly play a new mod at a lower lvl first to try it out. I had noticed the AI was just too nice. They don't like me being too big but don't do anything about it. I wont tell you lvl I play it at as its low...... Oh btw how do you set the number of players? I think the computer just decides it. I'm no modder so if it requiers me to change some thing the i'll not. If its something obvius then be nice and don't laugh too much!

 

[Ahriman]

To change the number of players, make sure that you choose "custom game" from the main menu rather than "play now", and then on the screen where you choose what player you want (and what game options) you can open or close AI player slots (and choose which players they are, if you like). So, to increase the number of AI players, just go to the "closed" slot and change it to an AI player.

Definitely playing on a low difficulty the first couple of times to test out the mechanics is good, but you'll need to crank it up to get much of a challenge. The AI can be pretty aggressive on higher difficulty levels, though its economy will be a bit weak until we can get spice income fixed. David is working on that, but it is a hard challenge, so we may revert to the old system where the spice income came through a Corporation mechanic, which provided good incentives to the AI to get extra copies of the spice resource.

Hope you enjoy the mod!

 

[Rainbowsand]

I wonder why harvesters were implemented as imps instead of units. Contradiction to the book + clear nonsence with building anything amidst the Dne desert.
A simple script "for each harvester of certain civ if harvester unit location == spice deposit location then add +1 spice resource to that civ" shall do it.
Also as i remember harvester mobile factories were imported via Guild liners for a hefty price and were costly themselves so they should be available only as purchases from spaceports or at very advanced manufactoring tech level.
Manual harvesting of spice (that produces much lesser yield) should be implemented as a special worker action, look into 'clear pollution' for template.
And as the spice is basically a sandworm excrement so it should appear in a sandworm' trails? And be purple-to-violet colored

 

[Rainbowsand]

For Herbert's sake sandworm from Smugglers faction! They gave it a cut from their profits so it can provide its spice to them exclusively... All decent modders have separate factions for beasts and barbs

About startup: otherworlders should start with spaceport and all should start without palace! Such luxury is added on the later stages almost everywhere exc the Sid's imagination.

The starting city of those not 'native' to Arrakis (e.g. arriving in force to harvest spice) should contain a lots of advanced buildings and units also, to represent their brought initial supplies.
They should posses a huge starting sum of gold to make additional purchases at spsceport, with availability varied upon the house specifics. An early start should be reserved for fremen (and...) alone with others starting later (loot the Rhye's)

 

[Deliverator]

Hi Rainbowsand and thanks for the feedback.

I wonder why harvesters were implemented as imps instead of units. Contradiction to the book + clear nonsence with building anything amidst the Dne desert.

This is for gameplay reasons. Earlier in the mod's development we tried out harvesting using a unit in a similar way to the Westwood games, but it just ended up being un-fun micromanagement. We want spice to yield significant revenue, but we don't want the majority of the players time to be spent maintaining their harvesters fleet. I know these things can be automated and many other people have argued for unit-based spice collection (included myself a long time ago), but for now we have found that the present solution makes for the better and more fun-to-play mod.

And as the spice is basically a sandworm excrement so it should appear in a sandworm' trails?

To be more precise, the spice originates from the pre-spice mass. The pre-spice mass is formed when water mixes with the excretions of the little maker, which is the young sandworm. The pre-spice mass forms beneath the surface of the sand and explodes in a spice blow, covering the surface with spice. So I think we have modelled the process pretty faithfully - the little makers themselves are really too low-level in the process to represent in game.

And be purple-to-violet colored

The references in the novels are to the spice producing an orange gas that smells of cinnamon.

Dune Messiah, quote regarding Edric, the Guild Navigator:

[He] swam in a container of orange gas ... His tank's vents emitted a pale orange cloud rich with the smell of the geriatric spice, melange.

From God Emperor of Dune:

Great bins of melange lay all around in a gigantic room cut from native rock .... And the smell – bitter cinnamon, unmistakable.

Since, Herbert never precisely describes the colour of the spice itself, we have followed the Westwood games and make it a cinnamon colour, which should at least make it familiar to players of those games.

separate factions for beasts and barbs

I know some of the FFH2 modmod have this, but Dune Wars is not built on that code-base the effort to port it over would be unfeasible. There are other solutions to getting two barbarian factions (I think the J has one), but are hacky and have limitations as far as I know. If there was an simple and decent way to do it then I'd certainly be in favour

About startup: otherworlders should start with spaceport and all should start without palace! Such luxury is added on the later stages almost everywhere exc the Sid's imagination.

Palaces are a core Civ 4 thing that effect city maintenance, so getting rid of them at the start of the game isn't really an option without breaking the way the game works. Plus in Dune Wars, some of them provide the Civ Unique Resources such as Fremen Water Debt.

The starting city of those not 'native' to Arrakis (e.g. arriving in force to harvest spice) should contain a lots of advanced buildings and units also, to represent their brought initial supplies.

I think what you are talking about here is a scenario that more accurately matches the fiction. It would be good to create a scenario like this at some point. In terms of the main mod we had a vague post-catastrophic backstory to explain why all these factions are stuck on Arrakis with limited resources and technology.

Anyway, keep the feedback coming. It is good for us to have as much as possible.

 

[Pickly]

For some reason, the Tlelaxau spice gathering method has not been switched to a spice corporation in my game. (Though several of the other civs have built them.)

I'm using patch 1.7.2.1

 

[Ahriman]

Confirmed. Tleilaxu palace still gives the old bonus, and they are unable to build their spice corp.
[Didn't check the save, but replicated in worldbuilder]

Intriguingly, I observed them still building harvesters in autoplay!!!

This applies to other factions too; anyone with a UB palace I'm guessing.

So, Fremen, BTl, BG (?).

And none of the spice HQs seem to be buildable.

 

[davidlallen]

I agree I probably forgot to remove the spice bonus from the UB palaces. However, as far as I can tell all of the civs can build their spice corp. As before, you have to have access to at least one spice resource, which means you must have a spice harvester. Does that help?

 

[Pickly]

I checked a few times after getting some spice resource harvested, I could not build the building in any of my cities (and it does not appear on the build menu, even as a greyed out button)

 

[Ahriman]

I checked a few times after getting some spice resource harvested, I could not build the building in any of my cities (and it does not appear on the build menu, even as a greyed out button)

I tried this in Worldbuilder with Tleilaxu and Fremen (gave myself all the trade techs, a settler and workers, built a city next to spice, built the harvester, saw spice resource in the city screen, but was unable to build the HQ).

[This does present a weird hypothesis though; if merely the *presence* of the spice corporation causes AI to build harvesters, even if the corporation is unattainable, does that mean its ok to use the palace-gold spice method after all?]

 

[Deliverator]

CIV4CivilizationsInfos.xml needs to be updated to allow each civ to build their own Spice Corp HQ I think. It doesn't look like this has been done in the 1.7.2.1 files at least.