That seems stupidly OP. Can't die at all? Not even from the drug? So the only counter to it is to also have combat drugs, which is one of the defining features of an overpowered ability.
Oh, I think there’s a pretty reliable counter available: the “Supply Drop” operation, which can be used by anyone (and is cheaper, I think). Supply Drop gradually heals and resupplies your own troops long enough for “Combat Drugs” to wear off, at which point your Harkonnen foes will all technically be alive, but with 1 hit point apiece, and any troops you have that are still standing will wipe ’em out immediately.
Honestly, I always try to keep a “Supply Drop” operation ready to go, for when a fight look likes it’s about to turn nasty. It’s not gonna completely flip a fight like “Combat Drugs” does, but it’s the sort of edge that can turn a narrow loss into a narrow win or—in cases like this one—keep a fight from being flipped against you.
Yeah, I just realized it's an actual Intelligence operation, not a unit ability. And that's a HUGE difference, because it means they are definitely having to expend a notable resource to use the ability and can't spam it.
And yeah, I definitely question how much the AI is cheating. Playing on Medium, I sent a stack of five of my own squads PLUS three special units granted by resolution. Managed to snag a village right by Harkonnen base after wiping out four squads plus two local militia, and I haven't lost anything yet. I go to the Harkonnen capital and attack... and I'm doing no damage? At all. My army had melee, ranged, and demolition units, and I was doing no damage. I'm taking rocket fire so I back off.
The Harkonnen then move in another six units via shuttle, plus walk over two more. I'm way ahead on economy at this point and the army I have is all I can field, but somehow the Harkonnen can just completely and easily overwhelm me in the field? What the fuck?
But a lot of comes down to the gameplay having a lot of moving parts and details and this stuff is just not explained well enough yet. The NUMBER ONE thing the game should tell you? What the hell kind of victory each leader is ideal for. And actually lay out the various victory types, because I think there's at least three ways to win? But I'm not sure at all. Hell, it took me like thirty minutes just to find the dang research interface because of how scattered the interface is. It took me an hour of playing Atreides before finding that the Peaceful Annexation ability is on the village icons, not on an ability list for you anywhere.
I like the game, it's just... messy. I think the vast bulk of the work to do before it leaves Early Access is a better interface and making the mechanics much more clear.
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HonkHonk is this poster.Registered User, __BANNED USERSregular
The operations do seem hella powerful.
The Fremen and Harkonnen somehow teamed up on one of my territories and came with 6-7 units against my three. I dropped Poison the Reserves and something else I don’t know what it was, and I won pretty handily. Think I lost one unit.
Cease Fires are also really strong at countering unexpected attacks or Combat Drugs.
Whenever I'm able I like to keep a Cease Fire around to fend off an attack where my troops aren't, which usually buys enough time to get them there and repel it
I'll say that the Fremen thumpers are vastly better than the airfields at getting troops where they need to be fast. Like I have no idea why anyone would ever want to waste a build slot on an airfield right now, their area is so small
I can see in multi outmaneuvering a fremen player as they use up their thumpers.
Much as with the ’70s Dune board game (and its reprint), I think that the resources of any individual player in this game are invariably so constrained that alliances are extremely potent. If two humans in a multiplayer game decide to unite against you, you either have to negotiate a betrayal of that alliance immediately, make one of your own (assuming a fourth player is available), or just be dead in two minutes.
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Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
edited May 2022
Definitely not a fan of how the game devolves into basically 3v1 against the player. Rolling towards a Hegemony and Charter victory at one time as Atreides and all three factions, plus a wildly overactive amount of Fremen from Sietches, were hitting me from all angles and usually at the same time. Harkonnen would have some big blob of an army and hit me in the north, the Smugglers would hit me in the south, and both the Fremen and the Smugglers would both hit me with a rebellious town operation at the same time. I finally got sick of putting out the fires and just left the game at triple speed. I was holding the Governorship of Dune Charter with twenty minutes so I just went "fuck it" and let everything burn. They never went after my main base, and it was infinitely less hassle than trying to counter three factions at once.
Would be nice if the other factions would go after each other half as hard as they go after the player. The Harkonnen in particular would just throw fucking everything at me and never even glance at the other factions.
EDIT: Case in point, just lost an Easy match because the three factions utterly ignored each other all round, then when I start pummeling the Atreides headquarters when they've got ten minutes left for the Governorship victory, suddenly I'm getting hit by everything from everyone. Plus, those headquarters are way too fucking durable. I had seven units, two of them demo units and five Fedaykin, hammering at that thing for ten straight minutes and the Governorship still resolved to an Atreides victory faster than I could kill the base. I'm finding the endgame goals to be an enormous fucking slog overall.
I had seven units, two of them demo units and five Fedaykin, hammering at that thing for ten straight minutes and the Governorship still resolved to an Atreides victory faster than I could kill the base. I'm finding the endgame goals to be an enormous fucking slog overall.
Against an HQ, I think you’ll want more demolition units than Fedaykin. Demolition units can only strip off one armor at a time, and HQs start with twenty. I can’t recall if they get more when upgraded, or if they only get more HP. The Fedaykin’s role in an HQ assault is to tank (and to keep enemy troops off your demolition types); you’ll want as few as you can get away with.
I do tend to see the enemies prodding each other, personally (Fremen wiped out the Smugglers altogether in my last game), but I’ve also found that if someone’s a thorn in your side early, they will be the whole time. So I angle toward an assassination of that faction head if their HQ is too far away.
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Olivawgood name, isn't it?the foot of mt fujiRegistered Userregular
Definitely not a fan of how the game devolves into basically 3v1 against the player. Rolling towards a Hegemony and Charter victory at one time as Atreides and all three factions, plus a wildly overactive amount of Fremen from Sietches, were hitting me from all angles and usually at the same time. Harkonnen would have some big blob of an army and hit me in the north, the Smugglers would hit me in the south, and both the Fremen and the Smugglers would both hit me with a rebellious town operation at the same time. I finally got sick of putting out the fires and just left the game at triple speed. I was holding the Governorship of Dune Charter with twenty minutes so I just went "fuck it" and let everything burn. They never went after my main base, and it was infinitely less hassle than trying to counter three factions at once.
Would be nice if the other factions would go after each other half as hard as they go after the player. The Harkonnen in particular would just throw fucking everything at me and never even glance at the other factions.
EDIT: Case in point, just lost an Easy match because the three factions utterly ignored each other all round, then when I start pummeling the Atreides headquarters when they've got ten minutes left for the Governorship victory, suddenly I'm getting hit by everything from everyone. Plus, those headquarters are way too fucking durable. I had seven units, two of them demo units and five Fedaykin, hammering at that thing for ten straight minutes and the Governorship still resolved to an Atreides victory faster than I could kill the base. I'm finding the endgame goals to be an enormous fucking slog overall.
That’s weird because I’ve never had this issue in the two games I’ve played! In one the Smugglers were busy stomping Harkonnen on the other end of the map to the point that I never even saw them, and in the second the Harkonnen overtook and wiped out the Atreides while I took their border villages and wiped out the Smugglers
Reboot, restarted the game, start playing Harkonnen, things going fine. Worm sign? Alright lets see the new effects--2 seconds after warning there is no worm sign. Just worm. Eats a unit.
Not the end of the world but I'll let it go back in the oven.
Reboot, restarted the game, start playing Harkonnen, things going fine. Worm sign? Alright lets see the new effects--2 seconds after warning there is no worm sign. Just worm. Eats a unit.
Not the end of the world but I'll let it go back in the oven.
There is a low probability of that happening and it is mitigated by having an ornithopter camping around your harvesters, forcing you to weight having ornithopters on top of your economy, or your vulnerable borders. Or using auto-recall and taking a production hit.
One thing I hope for next patch is that Crowd Manipulation is tuned. It's far too godly. Players have very little reason to try the endgame espionage toys until they plan to knock down a faction base.
-Big performances improvement (still have problems with shaders on DirectX)
-Update lobby UI
-Update animations
-Fix harvesters no removing visuals when refinery is destroyed
-Fix minor houses votes to take bounties and attributes into account
-Add player left lobby system message
-Add disconnected and reconnected player system messages
-Add chat system messages sounds
-Add player defeated messages in chat system and lobby messages
-Lobby: Allow aborting countdown
-AI removing military order on a village if it was starting to rebel
-Fixed weird building construction animation
-Fixed militias taking longer when oppression ends, and not taking less when oppression starts
-Fix village not showing selected when selecting an Underworld Headquarter
-Fix unreachable collisions
-Fix lobby parameters editable during countdown after clicking reset
-Fix votes not changing to blue influence color while dragging the votes
-Control groups no longer keep dead units on clients
-Fix recon of enemy villages
-Fix probe not correctly updating fog after use
-Fix chat input overflowing badly
-Fix pause window showing on top of the esc/option screen
-Fix property set on clients for control groups
I will crush you.
EDIT - I will put some tips in the OP. Because there are certain moments where a little micro can go a long way.
Typical EA question, how is the game so far? Is it pretty stable or still buggy? Balance ok? Looking at the roadmap, the features seem nice but not a deal breaker if the other 2 things are in a good spot.
I've played through one win and am on the way to another solid game - It's pretty polished from a "complete experience" standpoint and I've only hit one or two bugs as fremen and atreides.
As far as the worms - sometimes they just eat your shit in my experience. Which... I'm fine with, honestly.
Typical EA question, how is the game so far? Is it pretty stable or still buggy? Balance ok? Looking at the roadmap, the features seem nice but not a deal breaker if the other 2 things are in a good spot.
I think that overall, balance is good except for one ability that needs tweaking.
The Crowd Manipulation espionage mission is an expensive cast that causes one rebellion in a town without triggering militias. Late game AI becomes a Crowd Manipulation party and it is disruptive enough that it can be favored over assassinating another player.
late game crowd manipulation is really silly and kinda forces you to just build an airfield network that covers everything you own - it feels kinda related but I also feel like the smugglers hegemony trigger on pillage feels bad mid-late game when just looking for villages to pillage ties up units while everything is rioting
It looks like I own their previous game, NorthGuard. Would it be worth playing that complete game to get a handle on this one or are they pretty different?
It looks like I own their previous game, NorthGuard. Would it be worth playing that complete game to get a handle on this one or are they pretty different?
Northgard would actually prep you for Dune Spice Wars really well, and unlike Dune, it has a full campaign.
Both are less about microgame and more about economic plate spinning. The slightest skirmish can distract you from weaknesses in your economy (or cause them.) Dune Spice Wars throws in Stellaris elections.
Northgard feels like what a real-time worker placement game would be. Amusingly, in the campaign, you're on a quest for revenge but most of the game involves building an economy for several years and all I can say is "jokes on you, I'm into that shit."
Dune Spice Wars is meant for a four player free for all. The economics are still there, due to the Emperor and Spacing Guild's ever increasing Spice taxes. However, it is more combat oriented.
In both games, your economics always feel fragile by design.
Yep, it's a similar pace to North guard with a speed up button and more systems to interact with. It has a similar slow burn until lots happens at once, with multiple victory conditions and pressures (escalating spice needs).
It's a game that rewards forethought and planning, but includes plenty of ways to punish overextension and greed.
1. You don't need three units in the beginning, and there is plenty of time before a third is needed. If you inspect the composition of neighboring militias that contain three units, a standard melee/range duo can take on two ranged and a melee militia. Ranged units DPS crumble when a melee unit is in their face. Send your melee fighter to the back line, and have your ranged unit alternate between debuffing the ranged units and melee units. If the melee unit peels away to chase your ranged unit, kite them while your melee unit chews up the ranged units.
2. I used to dismiss the Investment Office. Its actually a rather powerful building if used in the right provinces. A village that is producing 2 Manpower without the help of a building can produce 6 Manpower if it gets an Investment Office (and that's more than what a Recruitment Center can provide.) 3. The AI likes to send you Research Agreements early. Ignore them in the early game because they won't produce anything until your base Knowledge production is higher.
4. Given tip 1, The Fremen can get away with Solari income in the negative while they pay the first spice bribe, but they have to find a second Spice source as soon as possible. Their Authority production is insane, so they can afford to cozy up to other players with Research/Trade agreements.
5. The AI opponents will give you all their income, and probably sexual favors, if you return a captured Agent to them (as they should!) Your Agents in Counterintelligence is a great investment. 6. Make sure you select your Ornithopter and RIGHT CLICK on a spice Harvester if you want the added worm protection.
7. Find a province with at least 4 Wind Strength. That should be your second province unless your first is that good.
8. It's OKAY for a province that does not have a boost to Plascrete to produce it. You should have several provinces producing Plascrete. You can optimize in the late game.
I noticed that buying shares in CHOAM (Amazon in Space,) has received a complete overhaul. Instead of just being a dull "convert all your money into points" Operation, shares fluctuate and provide revenue. Owning half of the shares is a new victory condition.
I guess folks were looking for a fully fledged story campaign as well but that's not happening so mixed reviews?
That's the impression I got, too. I'm a pretty big Dune fan (which I guess is obvious, lol), so I grabbed it yesterday on release even thought it was full price. I was actually surprised how big of a game it is. I figured it was going to be like Northguard, but the 4 faction skirmish game I played looked like it was going to take a couple of hours at least.
So far I'm really enjoying it even though I need to get a lot better at managing production and moving to a mid-game army at the right time. I tried the campaign game but my first map was a hegemony victory condition and I couldn't figure out how to get more than the AI given that it feels impossible to get them to fail their spice delivery even when you're constantly putting pressure on their spice zones. There was only one "special zone" on the map and it was way far away, so no chance for a craft workshop.
Yeah I really enjoy what I play cause there are a lot of ways to victory and balancing many spinning plates, will probably give it a go or try out conquest.
Hrm, I'm trying conquest and like a fool keep going for the hegemony victory conditions. While playing on normal, I'm having difficulty managing the 15k hegemony without the AI just pulling off a win.
Given first time I forgot to go for special locations the first time and house corsini can't expand as fast as others but I don't get it...
I'll try a third time, go back to my precious Harkonnens.
Also the armory is cool. Being able to get upgrades to your units is a nice plus if you aren't climbing the military tech tree.
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Yeah, I just realized it's an actual Intelligence operation, not a unit ability. And that's a HUGE difference, because it means they are definitely having to expend a notable resource to use the ability and can't spam it.
And yeah, I definitely question how much the AI is cheating. Playing on Medium, I sent a stack of five of my own squads PLUS three special units granted by resolution. Managed to snag a village right by Harkonnen base after wiping out four squads plus two local militia, and I haven't lost anything yet. I go to the Harkonnen capital and attack... and I'm doing no damage? At all. My army had melee, ranged, and demolition units, and I was doing no damage. I'm taking rocket fire so I back off.
The Harkonnen then move in another six units via shuttle, plus walk over two more. I'm way ahead on economy at this point and the army I have is all I can field, but somehow the Harkonnen can just completely and easily overwhelm me in the field? What the fuck?
But a lot of comes down to the gameplay having a lot of moving parts and details and this stuff is just not explained well enough yet. The NUMBER ONE thing the game should tell you? What the hell kind of victory each leader is ideal for. And actually lay out the various victory types, because I think there's at least three ways to win? But I'm not sure at all. Hell, it took me like thirty minutes just to find the dang research interface because of how scattered the interface is. It took me an hour of playing Atreides before finding that the Peaceful Annexation ability is on the village icons, not on an ability list for you anywhere.
I like the game, it's just... messy. I think the vast bulk of the work to do before it leaves Early Access is a better interface and making the mechanics much more clear.
The Fremen and Harkonnen somehow teamed up on one of my territories and came with 6-7 units against my three. I dropped Poison the Reserves and something else I don’t know what it was, and I won pretty handily. Think I lost one unit.
Whenever I'm able I like to keep a Cease Fire around to fend off an attack where my troops aren't, which usually buys enough time to get them there and repel it
I'll say that the Fremen thumpers are vastly better than the airfields at getting troops where they need to be fast. Like I have no idea why anyone would ever want to waste a build slot on an airfield right now, their area is so small
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
I can see in multi outmaneuvering a fremen player as they use up their thumpers.
Would be nice if the other factions would go after each other half as hard as they go after the player. The Harkonnen in particular would just throw fucking everything at me and never even glance at the other factions.
EDIT: Case in point, just lost an Easy match because the three factions utterly ignored each other all round, then when I start pummeling the Atreides headquarters when they've got ten minutes left for the Governorship victory, suddenly I'm getting hit by everything from everyone. Plus, those headquarters are way too fucking durable. I had seven units, two of them demo units and five Fedaykin, hammering at that thing for ten straight minutes and the Governorship still resolved to an Atreides victory faster than I could kill the base. I'm finding the endgame goals to be an enormous fucking slog overall.
Against an HQ, I think you’ll want more demolition units than Fedaykin. Demolition units can only strip off one armor at a time, and HQs start with twenty. I can’t recall if they get more when upgraded, or if they only get more HP. The Fedaykin’s role in an HQ assault is to tank (and to keep enemy troops off your demolition types); you’ll want as few as you can get away with.
I do tend to see the enemies prodding each other, personally (Fremen wiped out the Smugglers altogether in my last game), but I’ve also found that if someone’s a thorn in your side early, they will be the whole time. So I angle toward an assassination of that faction head if their HQ is too far away.
That’s weird because I’ve never had this issue in the two games I’ve played! In one the Smugglers were busy stomping Harkonnen on the other end of the map to the point that I never even saw them, and in the second the Harkonnen overtook and wiped out the Atreides while I took their border villages and wiped out the Smugglers
PSN ID : DetectiveOlivaw | TWITTER | STEAM ID | NEVER FORGET
Patched, loaded the game, crashed the computer.
Reboot, restarted the game, start playing Harkonnen, things going fine. Worm sign? Alright lets see the new effects--2 seconds after warning there is no worm sign. Just worm. Eats a unit.
Not the end of the world but I'll let it go back in the oven.
There is a low probability of that happening and it is mitigated by having an ornithopter camping around your harvesters, forcing you to weight having ornithopters on top of your economy, or your vulnerable borders. Or using auto-recall and taking a production hit.
One thing I hope for next patch is that Crowd Manipulation is tuned. It's far too godly. Players have very little reason to try the endgame espionage toys until they plan to knock down a faction base.
I got the warning, saw no signs other than the red exclamation mark and suddenly monch monch went my troops.
I will crush you.
EDIT - I will put some tips in the OP. Because there are certain moments where a little micro can go a long way.
The inside joke is that Christopher Walken is playing Emperor Shaddam in Dune Part 2.
Not only can Walken play a horrible monster, the song references Dune, so Fatboy Slim is a prophet.
As far as the worms - sometimes they just eat your shit in my experience. Which... I'm fine with, honestly.
I think that overall, balance is good except for one ability that needs tweaking.
The Crowd Manipulation espionage mission is an expensive cast that causes one rebellion in a town without triggering militias. Late game AI becomes a Crowd Manipulation party and it is disruptive enough that it can be favored over assassinating another player.
Northgard would actually prep you for Dune Spice Wars really well, and unlike Dune, it has a full campaign.
Both are less about microgame and more about economic plate spinning. The slightest skirmish can distract you from weaknesses in your economy (or cause them.) Dune Spice Wars throws in Stellaris elections.
Northgard feels like what a real-time worker placement game would be. Amusingly, in the campaign, you're on a quest for revenge but most of the game involves building an economy for several years and all I can say is "jokes on you, I'm into that shit."
Dune Spice Wars is meant for a four player free for all. The economics are still there, due to the Emperor and Spacing Guild's ever increasing Spice taxes. However, it is more combat oriented.
In both games, your economics always feel fragile by design.
It's a game that rewards forethought and planning, but includes plenty of ways to punish overextension and greed.
1. You don't need three units in the beginning, and there is plenty of time before a third is needed. If you inspect the composition of neighboring militias that contain three units, a standard melee/range duo can take on two ranged and a melee militia. Ranged units DPS crumble when a melee unit is in their face. Send your melee fighter to the back line, and have your ranged unit alternate between debuffing the ranged units and melee units. If the melee unit peels away to chase your ranged unit, kite them while your melee unit chews up the ranged units.
2. I used to dismiss the Investment Office. Its actually a rather powerful building if used in the right provinces. A village that is producing 2 Manpower without the help of a building can produce 6 Manpower if it gets an Investment Office (and that's more than what a Recruitment Center can provide.)
3. The AI likes to send you Research Agreements early. Ignore them in the early game because they won't produce anything until your base Knowledge production is higher.
4. Given tip 1, The Fremen can get away with Solari income in the negative while they pay the first spice bribe, but they have to find a second Spice source as soon as possible. Their Authority production is insane, so they can afford to cozy up to other players with Research/Trade agreements.
5. The AI opponents will give you all their income, and probably sexual favors, if you return a captured Agent to them (as they should!) Your Agents in Counterintelligence is a great investment.
6. Make sure you select your Ornithopter and RIGHT CLICK on a spice Harvester if you want the added worm protection.
7. Find a province with at least 4 Wind Strength. That should be your second province unless your first is that good.
8. It's OKAY for a province that does not have a boost to Plascrete to produce it. You should have several provinces producing Plascrete. You can optimize in the late game.
A Risk like long version of the campaign as you seek to take over territories of Arrakis
Is Arrakis prepared for the Archduchess' arrival...?
1.0 Release in September
I guess folks were looking for a fully fledged story campaign as well but that's not happening so mixed reviews?
That's the impression I got, too. I'm a pretty big Dune fan (which I guess is obvious, lol), so I grabbed it yesterday on release even thought it was full price. I was actually surprised how big of a game it is. I figured it was going to be like Northguard, but the 4 faction skirmish game I played looked like it was going to take a couple of hours at least.
So far I'm really enjoying it even though I need to get a lot better at managing production and moving to a mid-game army at the right time. I tried the campaign game but my first map was a hegemony victory condition and I couldn't figure out how to get more than the AI given that it feels impossible to get them to fail their spice delivery even when you're constantly putting pressure on their spice zones. There was only one "special zone" on the map and it was way far away, so no chance for a craft workshop.
Yeah I really enjoy what I play cause there are a lot of ways to victory and balancing many spinning plates, will probably give it a go or try out conquest.
Given first time I forgot to go for special locations the first time and house corsini can't expand as fast as others but I don't get it...
I'll try a third time, go back to my precious Harkonnens.
Also the armory is cool. Being able to get upgrades to your units is a nice plus if you aren't climbing the military tech tree.