They should have gone with a couple of additional factions other than the Smugglers and Fremen, even if they had to make them up. The Smugglers and Fremen should be neutral factions that you can court for support or destroy for resources.
Where are my impressions, dammit! The insights must flow.
I’m being really indecisive about who to play my first game as. My default was going to be the Harkonnen, but I’m being tempted by the Smuggler unit roster and some of the Fremen councilor bonuses (faster units and bonus attack/armor for isolated units sounds really nice).
Once that gets settled, I’ll clock some time with it.
Bought it, played for about 45 mins, then refunded it. To be honest, was kind of a little boring and tedious. Made me really miss Emperor: Battle for Dune. I would kill for an he remaster/remake of that game.
If you make a Dune game, and you don’t have a mechanic where a Bene Gesserit player can steal victory by successfully predicting who will “win”, then I don’t want to play your Dune game
Fremen voting in the Landsraad? Wat.
Do the Smugglers also get a vote? Wacky Dune.
I’m curious if that is a quirk of the current state of the early access release (that is, the Fremen fashion isn’t complete and has copy and paste functionality from other factions) or if that is the intended design for the Fremen. Anyone know?
Since so many people are hung up on it from a lore perspective:
Neither the smugglers or Fremen get ‘votes’ in the Landsraad. In the screenshot above we can see Atreides get 100 and Harkonnen 80 votes each time end every time (perhaps more as the game progresses depending on tech tree unlocks etc.) whereas non-house factions get 0.
However, all factions can spend ‘influence’ at the Landsraad, and whoever bids the most influence + votes ‘wins’ that policy. So there’s a huge advantage here for the noble houses - having 80/100 votes to throw away each and every time obviously raises the cost of entry to everyone that doesn’t and influence isn’t that fast to earn. Certainly in the early game you’re going to be at a significant disadvantage here if you’re not playing as one of the houses - maybe you can stockpile enough influence to nab one or maybe two policies every couple of Landsraads but the lion’s share will go elsewhere.
Interestingly you’ll see a voting bloc at the bottom there with 400 votes - these are the ‘Minor Houses’ which I don’t think have any actual presence the surface of Dune, my Dune, but perhaps represent the votes my Fremen influence is ‘buying’… and thus things actually do actually seem to fit the Duniverse lore quite well in Spice Wars. It doesn’t take that much of a logical leap to see how an empowered Fremen faction that now controls a significant chunk of the planet’s spice output might be able to lean on off-world minor houses for support. I pay my spacing guild spice bribe each and every time after all.
The Smugglers do eventually get 50 Landsraad votes after they get 5,000 Hegemony (basically like prestige or victory points), but that’s a fixed number and doesn’t seem to ever change. Functionally, it just means they get 50 recurring influence as well as a Landsraad reputation score, which can also further increase their Hegemony.
Never been much of a real time strategy fan, but I am enjoying this. The endless videos about the game on YouTube help when starting out. Nice melding of real time strategy and grand strategy. The one more turn vibe is strong in this one. Well polished for early access.
This is good but not great as an intentionally slow 4X RTS.
My main complaint is the weak integration of the license. Spice is a minor resource with minor implications.
Most importantly for the gameplay the factions are not different enough by a long shot.
The review(s) complaining about the Fremen for instance are wrong in some details. The Fremen don’t pay the Emperor a spice tax, they bribe the Spacing Guild with spice and get slightly different buffs/penalties. Or the Landsraad description by fox.ferro above.
The core of the complaint is true though, playing the Fremen is mechanically not really different from playing Harkonnen. A couple of very minor special abilities and unit adjustments is all you get and it’s not enough.
Yep, I agree - it’s enjoyable but shallow; mechanically you do pretty much the same thing with each faction with a couple of minor perks/flaws to separate them. It’s a shame because Endless Legend really implemented some great ideas on how to separate each faction out into its own unique style - ideas that could’ve been well implemented here.
My biggest complaint is that the tactical side is pretty woeful - there are three* types of combat unit (melee, ranged DPS, ranged debuff), all infantry. It’s a pattern that can work but unfortunately there’s no control of space, no need to flank, take the high ground or anything else - just glom everything together and take out your enemy’s debuff/dps units first, focussing down one at a time. Melee units can just walk through each other. I wasn’t expecting Total War but without any battle formations to exploit or deny manoeuvrability there’s really nothing interesting here. Even the inevitable wormsign amounts to nothing as you can just reposition at will onto safe terrain - imagine how cool it would have been if such area denial was part of your/enemy strategy.
Sadly what’s there barely qualifies as rocks and scissors. I kinda get why tanks and artillery rolling across the sands doesn’t exactly fit the Dune lore, but surely mortar teams and such could’ve worked? And there’s no air combat/support?
* Well, four I suppose - though the support units are almost totally useless and a waste of precious command points.
- Drones now beep boop
:D
Roadmap:
And no mention whatsoever of when or even whether they’ll be coming out of early access. The one thing missing from their early access roadmap is an actual destination.
-Tom
As long as the spice keeps flowing… I am ok with them taking their time. :)