Version 1.8 Feedback

[davidlallen]

Axolotl tanks should not allow you to build soldiers that are 50% better than those of other factions, at the same cost, with no hardcap.

By a similar line of reasoning, Fremen melee troops should not be allowed to move fast on desert, and BG should not be allowed to create a unit which gives +20% strength to all units in its stack.

Tleilaxu conquering the universe with wave after wave of Clone Troopers feels very wrong to me.

I can't dispute your perception. But, my perception is that you have a number of Duncan Idaho's, each one leading a normally purchased battalion of troopers.

 

[Ahriman]

By a similar line of reasoning, Fremen melee troops should not be allowed to move fast on desert, and BG should not be allowed to create a unit which gives +20% strength to all units in its stack.

I totally disagree; a +20-40 free XP on units is far more powerful than desert movement or the breeding program.

Also, the Tanks are not (currently) central to the Tleilaxu advantages (which mostly revolve around its priest economy from the shrine, and plague) whereas sand-moving is almost the only Fremen unique ability, and the breeding program benefits are fairly central to the Bene Gesserit advantages.

There's nothing wrong with having unique abilities, but they should not be over-powered (and I think 20-40+ free xp qualifies here) or massively more powerful in the hands of humans (who can isolate a single unit and use a great commander on it) than the AI (who won't do this).

But, my perception is that you have a number of Duncan Idaho's, each one leading a normally purchased battalion of troopers.

I don't think that this occurred. But even if it did, I don't think that a single superior commanding officer is equivalent to an extra 20+ free experience points.

An alternative solution to all of this would just be to have every unit built in a city with the Axolotl Tanks building give a "Ghola Commander" promotion, that gave say +10% strength and 1 first strike chance.

 

[fjordan]

I don't think it is as powerfull as you think. I reported a while ago that my units got autopromoted. I now think this was the axolotl tanks at work. I did not know this feature (civilclopedia should be updated). But I know I did not get extra promotions / XP for free from the barracks and settled Burseg. It am pretty sure it also copied the XP points. So maybe unintended, it limits the free promo's somewhat. And it takes away flexibility in your promotions choice, it's one type only. Furthermore, I find settled Bursegs and military academies very usefull, so there is some additional cost, especially if you want more than 1 unit type.

I am going to try out this "exploit" for sure in my next Tleilaxu game, I like this kind of flavourfull micro-management. Keep it this way as far as I am concerned.

 

[yiumlaien]

Hi,

I've two points to feedback:

1. Strange diplomatic behaviour...
When the other nations started having offworld trade goods, I checked them for some trading possibilities, and for example asked for Semuta...
I was pretty surprised when I asked old mom Gaius for Saphojuice, and she offered it to me for free?!
She also had some groundwater to offer, and again, she did not want anything in return...

Then I talked to Liet-Kynes and he gave me Gianz School Training also for nothing...

I believe this must be some kind of a bug or something, because they should not give away these things so easily...

2. Espionage Mission: Influence Civic
I was able to convince the Fremen (!!!) to change their civic to Arakis Spice, from Arakis Paradise... and for a ridiculous low amount of points...
The effect was that they really changed to Arakis Spice and lost something like 20 terraformed spots until they were able to change back.
It shouldn't be possible or at least muuuuch more expensive to do such a dramatic change simply by such a espionage mission.
Is it possible to remove this possibility or increase the price?

 

[davidlallen]

That is interesting. What difficulty level are you playing at? What was your relationship with these AI's before you made these trades? This behavior seems possible that at low difficulty levels, and a positive relationship.

 

[Ahriman]

I think we should get rid of influence civic espionage mission. This kind of thing is broken in a game where there are buildings that get instantly destroyed by leaving a civic.

Groundwater is correctly valued at zero; it does nothing. The AI will only get it by building a fort on a groundwater resource (which they will only do outside the BFC of their cities).

I'm surprised that Ginaz or Sapho would be given for free unless you are at a very low difficulty level or the other player is a vassal.

 

[fjordan]

I can confirm this behaviour. I play at emperor and I also noticed that as soon as the AI is willing to trade the 'special' resource it will give it away for free.

 

[Ahriman]

We should double-check the AI values on these then. Its a single parameter for each resource IIRC.

 

[yiumlaien]

Difficulty Monarch
Relation status: cautious

I agree with Ahriman: those espionage missions should be dissabled at all... does not make sense for Dune Wars (or the effects are far too big).

 

[Matzerg]

Can confirm that some resources are handed by the AI for free (remembering sapho juice, ginaz and ground water - most likely because they grant no health/happy boon)

I also encountered three major problems during a very long game on deity as Harkonnen (yes, kinda much for the first game ):

1) building Landing Zones didn't get me any offworld-resources. In another game on a smaller map with Ordos it worked normally.

2) No Ships are wreaking havoc by displacing entire armies (>40units) from my fortified city to a tile next to it - which allows one enemy unit to capture the now empty city (probably already reported in the bug thread). Could be cause by no ships moving through the city - made worse by the fact that nothing can reveal them.
Also on a minor note they are way too good at picking off workers - which gets even worse with all those pillaged improvements by

3) Stealth Bombers with 85% interception evasion chance
Once any civ got 10 or more of those babies and they can practically pin huge enemy armies down. Interceptors or mongoose troops can do little to prevent their Stack of Doom from being crippled every round - unable to move. The only way to advance would require medic III and an entire army with march promos. Splitting the SoD into smaller stacks/single units would allow the bombers to kill them right away.

Nukes are cheap compared to those things


Playing 1.8 - downloaded about 2weeks ago


Edit: Not sure if it got mentioned already but the traits should get a little tuning to better fit into the Mod.
E.g: Financial seems much weaker in Dune Wars compared to BtS, while charismatic gets stronger by never-obsolete-obelisks. And protective still looks weak.

 

[Ahriman]

Only time landing stage should not function is if you're too slow and all the resources have been taken.

No-ships need a hard-cap of ~3.

The stealth bomber like all aircraft could do with a strength decrease so that there's actually a chance of it dying when intercepted, and it should do less damage. Removing the ability to destroy improvements would probably also be wise. And most important adding the modcomp where stacked interception units get multiple chances to intercept.

Financial is still very strong with a cottage economy. Its one of the strongest traits, its just slightly less insane than in vanilla.

Charismatic isn't that strong; 1 happy late-game is hardly anything to crow about. Protective might be a little weak, I dunno.

 

[tesb]

i really like your latest installment of the mod.
i have one question and a fix:

q: How do you force a building like the force shield to scale with city size?

fix: you should increase the visibility priority of the force shield and the house generator to something like 10000. when there are many buildings in a city chances are the shield will not get rendered, if you keep the visibility priority to 1.0

 

[Random Walker]

Hrm. On air power, is there any way for sandstorms to interfere with it?

 

[Matzerg]

Just played an very long game with as the Bene Tlailax and enjoyed it very much.
V 1.8

My experience with the Axotl Tanks has been "meh". While it can be possible to get clones of some highly promoted units (or homeworld units ^^) more often I would experience the some sort of "degeneration", "devolution" or whatever you may call it

"Degeneration" means many copies would lack one or more promotions of the original unit while maintaining the unitlvl/XP of the original. Since I could not afford to disband the weak copies (needed EVERY unit during wartime, damn deity ^^) often one of the weaker units would get more XP than the original one - or the original one simply died. Now all new units would get cloned from the "defective" unit already missing some promotion by default with a good chance of missing more.
Now repeat that cycle several times and you get brand new tanks with combat 1 and 37XP, needing "only" 13 (->50) XP to get to combat 2.

Another disadvantage appears during lategame when it's alot more difficult to get your new units to use the better promotions (heavy weapons, etc).

On the bright sight there are some uses for the Axotl Tanks:
Simply build it only in some cities. That way getting units like mongoose with +40% interception or tanks with +1 movement isn't a problem.
Or build it in cities which produce mainly bombers, artillery - instead of barracks/airport. Those 2 unittypes rarely get promotions, so once you get one good original you can clone it for the rest of the game.
And lastly sometimes you are lucky enough to get more than enough good copies of your lvl6 units before the degeneration sets in.


On another note:
In my opinion the Tlailaxu are strong right now because of:
1) Guaranteed religion, which also grants 1solaris for every city you own and gets you gpp from turn1 as well as a free priest in your cap and better priests overall. Although you can't adopt another religion, you still can spread the other ones and get all their unique buildings and if you fear the diplomatic penalty - simply don't adopt you state religion.
2) The Plague: -25% strength for every enemy unit is, well, insanely helpful
(Maybe reducing it to -15% would be more balanced).
But the way the plague spreads at first and disappears once both sides make peace is nicely done


My impressions so far from another fun game of a great mod.


P.S.: Please, please fix those no ships. Or add an option to disable them altogether. Even if they get a national limit of 3 and without the army moving glitch they are still extremely annoying (for me) and extremely deadly (for the AI). Annoying because I need half an army to escort my workers, deadly because I camp on the AI's military resources and pillage them as soon as they are rebuilt.

 

[Ahriman]

Thanks for the feedback, glad you're enjoying the mod.

I agree that Tleilaxu plague is a bit much.
I think we need to change the Tleilaxu UUs and buildings so that they require the Zensufism state religion.
One of the no-ship fixes should be to remove its ability to pillage.

* * *
Edit
Oh, and:

Hrm. On air power, is there any way for sandstorms to interfere with it?

Sand storms destroy thopter units passing through them IIRC.
I think we could probably make storms more interesting if they had a 3x3 effect rather than just being a single tile.
The problem is, given that the AI doesn't understand storms, making storms matter for gameplay rather than just aesthetics would tend to advantage the human player over the AI.

 

[Deliverator]

Hey all. As you've probably guessed I have been busy with RL for a while.

I guess no one is sure how Civ 5 will affect Civ 4 modding. People are still modding Civ 3 so I guess Civ 4 mods will continue to played and worked on for a time - certainly it seems like that will be the case for the FFH2 modmods. But Civ 5 will obviously attract the majority of people . Personally I'm most interested in whether there will be a way to convert Civ 4 3D models to Civ 5 - if there isn't then figuring out a way is the kind of modding problem I like. It would certainly speed up getting some quality Civ 5 mods done if Civ 4 graphical content can be ported somehow.

I think enough effort has gone into Dune Wars to try and bring it to some kind of conclusion. This review on ModDB is good encouragement in that direction.

The mod will probably never be complete as I would like it to be, particularly the art which was initially what I put most effort into before getting more into Python and SDK changes. I could work on the art alone for six months and still not be satisfied probably...

I would like to try and address most of the issues raised in this thread if possible as well as do the unique faction espionage and few other gameplay additions/changes. I won't make any promises, but I do intend to try and put a 1.8.1 patch together sometime in August when I have some time off work.

Art-wise, I have made Mines that actually look like mines last month by just tweaking the vanilla modern mines:

Spoiler :

Also, the latest Planetfall city set from Lord Tirian could look really good for the latter stages of Dune Wars.

 

[davidlallen]

I think enough effort has gone into Dune Wars to try and bring it to some kind of conclusion. This review on ModDB is good encouragement in that direction.

"More finished than FFH"? Really? The review is certainly long and makes some good points; but almost all the points are about the menu/pedia graphics. This wasn't really our main focus. I do wish we could put some time to finishing Sid's Tips, which should be easy; everybody complains about that. (These are the "stub strategy" entries in the pedia.)

I agree about converting civ4 to civ5. We will see in .. 58 days.

 

[Lord Tirian]

Also, the latest Planetfall city set from Lord Tirian could look really good for the latter stages of Dune Wars.

If you intend to use it, you might some use for the attached texture. It's from an earlier iteration and has more orange and brown hues - might be a better base to work from for Dune Wars.

Cheers, LT.

 

[Ahriman]

If it would be useful, I was planning, when I get some time, to write up a comprehensive list of bug fixes and design changes that I think would get this mod to a "reasonably complete" version. There's a lot of good stuff in the bug thread and this thread.

This would probably focus on:
a) espionage changes
b) Tleilaxu changes (plague and axolotl tanks)
c) off-world changes
d) health changes
e) aircraft changes (including no-ships)

But I don't want to spend the time on it unless David and/or Deliverator are likely to have the time and interest in seriously considering the proposals and implementing some.

I really will get to the tips stuff at some point, but the next couple of weeks are pretty crazy, my time is going to be consumed by dissertation writing.

 

[Ahriman]

Oh, and that review seems to be focusing on trivial things, rather than actual content. I think its pretty useless as far as reviews go.