Which types of victories are there? (Diplo, Terra, War, ?)

[Jester Fool]

I can see pillaging vs. city attacks as somewhat of a difference, although either way it would involve building a large military of some sort

Not necessarily. Employing a 'peacemonger' strategy, you could adopt 'War of Assassins', build numerous Infiltrator units and sabotage enemy AI spice harvesters without declaring war or having a large offensive military force. House Ordos would seem to be a good fit for this type of victory. Also, don't forget that you can't win unless you can defend your cities, so IMO this shouldn't be considered in whether a particular victory condition is different from another.

 

[Ahriman]

You could make it that you need to have X% of the harvesters in the world instead.

Problems with this is:
a) Victory can be too easy from pillaging all the enemies. I'm not sure that this is good for gameplay, because the AI doesn't know how to defend its harvesters.
b) Non-harvester spice sources aren't counted. I think this is strategically non-optimal (things like Project Amal *should* count towards spice control) and confusing for the player, since they don't observe the number of harvesters they control (without counting manually), what they observe is the number of spice resources in their cities (from all sources).

I wouldn't see this as a hybrid method. It is just a victory condition with two fairly simple to understand conditions.

I'm not particularly bothered by the dual condition, as long as you can find a transparent way to display both to the player (in the victory screen).

build numerous Infiltrator units and sabotage enemy AI spice harvesters without declaring war or having a large offensive military force

The AI isn't going to be able to sabotage harvesters; the destroy improvement espionage AI only targets only-land bonus resources. We can't be unrealistic about what espionage is going to accomplish.

* * *
I think we might be able to get away with something where pillaging harvesters helps, as long as the proportion is high enough.

I would make it:
Count up the spice resources available to each player in their capital. Call this sum Z. This INCLUDES spice from project amal, spice purifiers, etc.
You must have X% of Z AND at least Y spice in your capital.

And X will need to be *high*. Like 80-90%. So, you can accomplish the goal through going on a massive harvester pillaging war, but you have to declare war on virtually the whole planet to do so.
This means that the victory condition WILL require you to play differently. Not just normal expansion, but a concerted effort to simultaneously destroy enemy harvesters.
And Y might be say 40, scaled by map size.

The AI is never going to achieve the victory condition, but that's not really the end of the world. We aren't really designing a game where the AI has a decent chance of winning, merely where the AI has a good chance of frustrating the player from winning.

 

[Jester Fool]

The AI isn't going to be able to sabotage harvesters; the destroy improvement espionage AI only targets only-land bonus resources. We can't be unrealistic about what espionage is going to accomplish.

In vanilla Civ, the AI privateer unit pillages sea based resources. Would it be possible to add a similar effect (modified privateer coding) to the espionage AI? Would it be worth the effort?

 

[Ahriman]

n vanilla Civ, the AI privateer unit pillages sea based resources. Would it be possible to add a similar effect (modified privateer coding) to the espionage AI? Would it be worth the effort?

I do not have a good idea of how this sort of thing functions. But I suspect the cases are very different.
The privateer is a domain-sea military unit, that happens to always be at war, so it functions just like a normal naval unit does during wartime.
The spies aren't pillaging, they're implementing an espionage mission, which just happens to have the effect of destroying an improvement.
So, I suspect they are very different mechanics codewise.

 

[Jester Fool]

Here's an idea. How about add a spice harvestor raider type unit which functions like a privateer unit. Stats - 4 STR, 2 movement, cannot attack cities; requires Spice Extraction and Suspensor Devices.

 

[Ahriman]

That is a very interesting idea.

My main concerns would be:
a) The mixture of land/sea domains we have in Dune Wars complicates a the pillaging AI. We want a unit that is only going to hang around in desert tiles pillaging, and not wander onto land to get destroyed by normal forces. BUT we no longer have such a thing as a coastal city, and we have no incentives to build cities adjacent to deserts, and we have no units that can't enter land tiles.
b) The AI often only effectively defends its city BFCs, so it might be too easy to exploit this by pillaging all the harvesters outside the BFCs without triggering significant AI response.

If we could get it working, that'd make a great Fremen unit.
Maybe the Razzia Raider should be hidden nationality?

 

[Jester Fool]

Concern 'a' does seem to be a problem. As far as concern 'b', I may have falsely assumed that the AI would actively seek to destroy 'hidden nationality' units.

If we could get it working, that'd make a great Fremen unit.
Maybe the Razzia Raider should be hidden nationality?

Sure. That might be the easiest way to implement.

 

[Gelvan]

don't you have already such a unit -> the sandworm. maybe it could be stronger and show up more frequently so it would destroy more harvesters therefore the victory condition of having x harvesters would be more difficult. give Fremen some sort of "worm-calling" instead of a unit (maybe a repeatable project). in the old Dune2 game you always had to balance your (real) time between attacking the opponent and building new harvesters after they got eaten by the worm. I could presume, that also in turn based game it would be nescessary to "watch your back" while attacking opponents.
I really like the idea of a switching holy city for CHOAM.
what was the reason for the change that made forts unbuildable outside cultural borders? I really liked (an reimplemented) to build them so that new harvesting grounds can be achieved that have to be secured against suspensors. I know it's a bit unfair to the AI, but on the other hand, one can use a higher difficulty level everytime, no?

 

[Ahriman]

Hi Gelvan, thanks for providing feedback.

maybe it could be stronger and show up more frequently so it would destroy more harvesters therefore the victory condition of having x harvesters would be more difficult.

The problem with this is that this also hurts everyone else who isn't really focusing on a spice victory, and thus lowers the value of spice overall, which is not a desirable goal IMO.

what was the reason for the change that made forts unbuildable outside cultural borders?

The AI didn't understand how to use it; the AI doesn't look to build improvements outside its cultural borders. We prefer to use mechanics where the human and AI are on level footing as much as possible.

 

[Gelvan]

The AI didn't understand how to use it; the AI doesn't look to build improvements outside its cultural borders. We prefer to use mechanics where the human and AI are on level footing as much as possible.

In Final Frontier (and modmods) the AI builds space bases, although they are units and cost money, they also enhance the border and the AI is able to use them to get resources. Not the most important thing to think about of course, it's easy enough to change the "build-outside-border"-tag in the appropriate file. Still it's fun to be able to grab a bit more land for harvesting..

in the last game I had 78 harvesters at the end of the game (settings: Ordos, Warlord, raging barbarian, perm. alliances, archip.. er that with the many islands ) (diplomacy victory at 268). I played with the Forts outside border. the worms were a bit nasty in the beginning, but after turn ~180 they rarely showed up, which I suppose was due to a quite colonized map. -> ? the Fremen declared war, and some (3) of their thopters/suspensors DID destroy some (~8) of my harvesters.
the worms destroyed throughout the game ~12-20 (not really sure, becaues they were rebuilt so fast by my spice worker hordes).

I think a bit more worm activity would be nice. other "ideas" I had while playing: what if worms could be "trained" by very sophisticated people (Fremen?) using a "spell". Or a spell to prevent them "entering MY borders". okay spells and AI, but anyway 't was just a thought. or if some religions would make a "no worm entry area". or more simple: worms may only move on spice. If there is no spice, they disappear. they re-appear from time to time, if there is any spice on the map.. with or without harvesters.

Ok, i think i'll stop and let you come up with something more refined. btw. this mod is really one the greatest ever! Thank you very much for having the experience.

 

[Ahriman]

Not the most important thing to think about of course, it's easy enough to change the "build-outside-border"-tag in the appropriate file.

Allowing them to be built is one thing, but that is not sufficient to make the AI build them, or to do so intelligently. A human player knows to build them adjacent to tiles that have spice resources - it would be hard to get the AI to do that in an intelligent fashion.

This ends up meaning that the human player has a much larger spice income than an equivalent AI would have, which is not desirable.

I think its fine at present with forts buildable only inside culture.
If you want more spice, then you have to get more culture or conquer more territory.

I dunno, worms feel about right to me. They're there for flavor and to make spice a bit more interesting, but I don't think we want them becoming a minor MM pain.

[I really like Deliverator's 1.8 graphical change so that the worms are visible rising up out of the sand for a turn when they eat a harvester.]

There are "fewer" worms late-game because they're always finding harvesters to eat and disappearing.

Fremen use worms through the sandrider mechanic.

I don't see a purpose behind stopping worms from entering your borders; that's also unrealistic. The only thing that stops worms is water (and rock).

Worms can't be trained.

 

[Gelvan]

after thinking about it, I have to admit you're right, instead of building forts I should go for settlers. building forts while the AI can't do it, is a bit lame.

I really like Deliverator's 1.8 graphical change so that the worms are visible rising up out of the sand for a turn when they eat a harvester.

me too

I think the Space Victory really could be somewhere along the lines of 50-75 harvesters (on a small map). (without new mechanics) It would be more or less the amount of land you need to win a domination victory, but it's much more interesting than a domination victory (at least that's what I think ). on higher difficulty levels there would be more and stronger thopters of more aggressive AI's to prevent that.

 

[dammitbiscuit]

Thoughts? Other proposals?

Victory: "Don't hurt him, he's my dealer"

The player wins by dealing more spice to the other factions via trade relationships than the other factions are producing themselves.

 

[Ahriman]

by dealing more spice to the other factions via trade relationships

We've basically forced spice to be untradeable at the moment. Its just too hard to get the AI to correctly value the spice resource, where they can't be exploited either by buying spice from them too cheaply or by selling them spice too expensively.

 

[Ahriman]

Bumping this thread for more feedback.

I still tend to think that the most feasible solution here would be:

Count up the spice resources available to each player in their capital. Call this sum Z. This INCLUDES spice from project amal, spice purifiers, etc.
You must have X% of Z AND at least Y spice in your capital.

And X will need to be *high*. Like 80-90%. So, you can accomplish the goal through going on a massive harvester pillaging war, but you have to declare war on virtually the whole planet to do so.
This means that the victory condition WILL require you to play differently. Not just normal expansion, but a concerted effort to simultaneously destroy enemy harvesters.
And Y might be say 40, scaled by map size.

Assuming that such a thing is actually implementable code-wise.

If it was possible to record total spice income, then we could patch in a counter for total spice of all players, and then try to solicit some playtest feedback to get values for X and Y.

 

[Deliverator]

Count up the spice resources available to each player in their capital. Call this sum Z. This INCLUDES spice from project amal, spice purifiers, etc.
You must have X% of Z AND at least Y spice in your capital.

And X will need to be *high*. Like 80-90%. So, you can accomplish the goal through going on a massive harvester pillaging war, but you have to declare war on virtually the whole planet to do so.
This means that the victory condition WILL require you to play differently. Not just normal expansion, but a concerted effort to simultaneously destroy enemy harvesters.
And Y might be say 40, scaled by map size.

I like this design. Having a Spice Monopoly victory would be a good addition. Implementation shouldn't be too bad, I can just copy David's implementation for the Terraforming victory - just a question of coding your victory check in Python which shouldn't be too hard.

 

[Crighton]

I too think this is a good idea (reminds me of the economic victory some of the Colonization mods have and that I complain CIV didn't have any of).

It also makes sense in terms of the storyline/theme of the game.

 

[AbsintheRed]

Also like this solution
Implement it in the next version

 

[Deliverator]

Implement it in the next version

Done. The Spice Monopoly Victory will be in patch 1.9.0.2 which should be uploaded in the next couple of days:

 

[Ahriman]

Awesome!

Will do some playtesting to see how the values feel.

[Though, I have a bunch of family staying over the holidays, so won't have much of a chance to play games]