Here’s a great mod to tickle your balls - PC Gamer just highlighted this mod in its modding section, so I thought I would check it out (while waiting for the Elemental patch). It is GREAT!! Dune Wars is made for the Beyond the Sword expansion (I’m playing on my Steam version, so it works).
I have no idea how I missed this one, but I love some of the ideas. For instance, as a Fremen, my scouts get bonus’ to movement when moving over ‘deep desert’ spaces. What happens is when my scout unit hits a deep desert spot, the unit changes to a giant sandworm with the fremen scout riding his back. Oh, and watch out while crossing those deep desert spaces, sandworms WILL pop up and devour your units at random intervals. It makes you try to have your units end their turn on rock squares.
Water replaces grain, and you even build windtraps instead of farms. I’m gushing, gonna go play some more. Amazing how some of these mods make it feel like I’ve got a whole new game.
Well, the other two mods they highlighted weren’t done enough for my tastes (for example, the Planetfall mod appears to use Civ IV standard terrain at the moment which is not nearly Alpha Centauri enough for me). This one looks like it may be at the moment but I would bet wasn’t not so long ago.
Wildfire spread mechanic for the Mahdi and Technocracy religions. Cities will adopt with a certain probability on discovery of the religion. With the free missionaries given at Qizarate this means that you can see all 7 religions present in the late game.
Monestary building (+1 culture, +10% culture, +10% science, 1 priest slot) and Razzia Command world wonder (+100% Enemy War Weariness) added to Fanaticism tech.
Mahdi Zealot requires only Mahdi religion in the city rather than the Temple of the Mahdi building. The Temple is still required for the later Mahdi Mujahid.
Various tech tree adjustments and rationalisations. Removed Jihad and reworked things a bit so that Mentats can come earlier in the game. Divine Mandate now gives the Mahdi religion and is an OR requirement for Law of Arrakis (to make is less dead-endy).
Abomination (Insane) Trait for Alia
Differences in religion have a more profound affect on diplomatic relations leading to more wars. (This has been capped at a very low level previously.)
Religious trait now doubles passive religion spread rate
To Do:
New implementation for Mentats since I don’t think we have really captured the theme yet - still working out the finer details, but the rough plan is to have one Mentat per civ with various abilities that can be built over time. The basis for the new design is an expanded version of the CityBonus promotions from Fall Further. Mentat influence will be able to extend to multiple cities, the range of influence being increased by promotions. Twisted Mentats will have a promotion set that is focused on suppressing and corrupting opposition cities. Obviously, the AI will have to be taught to use these, but I’d like to have a go at doing that.
Faction unique espionage units
Health redesign.
Tleilaxu plague fix and reworked Axlotl tanks.
Fix no-ships
Fix Slave and Worker movement
Fix BG Instructress
Replace Financial with a more trade focused Mercantile trait. Review other traits, in particular, which buildings are built quicker with each.
A barbarian Waterstealer unit that actually steals water.
Bigger sandstorms (with hoverover text)
Probably will rename the Technocracy religion to Thinking Machines to make it clearer what it is about and then strengthen its gameplay features.
Remove ranged bombardment and tweak siege units where necessary.
Offworld trade good tweaks.
Have civilizations decide at the beginning of each game whether they are going to pursue Arrakis Paradise or Arrakis Spice for that game. Give each leader a pro-Spice probability to control this. This is the only way we can have civs other than the Fremen pursue terraforming sometimes.
Possible Fremen Sietch improvement to be built on Caves - something like +1 water, +1 hammer, +1 commerce, +1 population at nearest city (no net water cost), very long build time.
There’s other stuff on the list including art tweaks and improvements, but this is most of the gameplay stuff. If you have any other requests for 1.9 then now is the time to register them.
Overall, the goal is to take a large step towards the completion of the mod. Once 1.9 is done, I’d envision a few 1.9.x patches to fix bugs, refine balance, and add new art and pedia content, then 2.0 would be the final Dune Wars probably towards the end of the year.
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Although it does makes me wish that someone would do a good Landsraad Imperium knockoff strategy game – aka, a remake of Emperor of the Fading Suns. The intrigues of the Houses Major interested me far more than Arrakis itself.
CivIV is the gift that keeps giving(and it’s amazing mods)! Downloading…and it will keep me busy(along with GalCivII) until Elemental is good enough for me to buy. Cheers for the headsup Jorune.
Unfortunately PC Gamer picked some two-year old screenshot… The graphics have been much improved in the meantime. Terrain has been redone, no elephants running around, no Deer button for the Ruins etc. 0_o
At one point in time, I think it was one year ago or something, I was helping out that mod (under the alias Connery on the forums) but I had some problems with my Civ4 (read: utterly destroyed dvd) and eventually left. I’m glad it turned out great. :)
