Attention: Its not Dune 2 AND THAT'S OKAY

[Vertemouse]

Its not Dune 2 or Dune 2000 AND THAT'S OKAY.
It has the spirit of the books and not the films AND THAT'S OKAY.
Its not a twitchy tactical RTS but a political and economic mix between Northgard and Stellaris which makes perfect sense for Dune.

AND THAT'S OKAY. Its OKAY for Dune games to not be Dune 2. For example, see the digital tabletop game Dune Imperium which is exceptionally NOT-DUNE 2.

If you need Dune 2 or Dune 2000 that badly the best you will get is a clone called Barkham. Play that forever and leave Dune Spice Wars alone.

[GinsengSamurai]

DSW is more like a real-time board game than a traditional RTS. DSW reminds me of the board game Risk, with more dynamics. I didn't expect DSW to be a traditional RTS like Dune 2000 or the C&C Red Alert games.

I was hoping that new Starship Troopers Terran Command game would scratch that itch, but read some reviews that it doesn't include skirmish against AI, the last time I checked.

[Vertemouse]

Originally posted by GinsengSamurai:

DSW is more like a real-time board game than a traditional RTS. DSW reminds me of the board game Risk, with more dynamics. I didn't expect DSW to be a traditional RTS like Dune 2000 or the C&C Red Alert games.

I was hoping that new Starship Troopers Terran Command game would scratch that itch, but read some reviews that it doesn't include skirmish against AI, the last time I checked.

Ooh, that's a good comparison. Its more like a relatively combative eurogame like Kemet or a very short Twilight Imperium. The devs previous game Northgard was like combat and worker placement.

[Pessimus Prime]

I have to admit I was a little bit surprised how infantry and close-combat based that game is. This was of course completely different in the first Dune game I played in the early 90s. And I mean: nukes and machine guns and then on the other hand swords... Does this really fit? ;-) The combat-system here is a little bit simple; instead we have the other options with the council, espionage and so on. But it's called Spice WARS... I'm currently still addicted to the game (but not tried the multiplayer so far) but it's something else than I expected.

[Hattori]

How is that worked for the game tough? almost no player base

[Katitoff]

Originally posted by Hattori:

How is that worked for the game tough? almost no player base

Well, good thing its not competitive ELO based game than.
It does perfectly fine for that it is.

Northgard also did not started strong, but it just kept growing, both content and playerbase.

[Pessimus Prime]

Well, after about 50 hours I can confirm: its definitely not like the other Dune games in the past - its better. :-) I keep my statement that the combat-system is a little bit too simple but combat is just one factor amongst many here; we have so many other options. I won a "battle" without firing a single shot for example. And the factions seem to differ more than its the case in other games. I still discover and learn new things at DSW.
But thats also a little bit the problem. The game is so complex that you never can really understand and fully appreciate it within the refund-time... ;-/ And the title "Spice Wars" and the Dune-games of the past may cause some confusion at a lot of players at least if they not checked the game a little bit before in videos for example. And you definitely need to do the tutorials to understand at least the basics but thats still not all by far. A manual at a complex game like this would have been useful... And maybe a different title. For example: "Dune - Arrakis Affairs" or "Dune - a Game of Thrones". :-D

How good the AI is Im not really sure yet. It seems to be OK more or less on the map but in the Landsraad I at least often saw that factions vote for AND against things at the same time and not always really seem to act in own interests. Well...thats a little bit strange. But maybe it depends of the difficulty. I not yet tried the harder two ones - and by the way still not the multiplayer. I probably sooner or later will although in this game the single player is more important to me.

Dune - Spice Wars not really what I expected although I knew that its not like the Westwood games in the past (but not HOW MUCH differently it is) but still very good and possibly addictive. :-)

[Bermag]

It is a different game and I agree it is better than Dune 2 but combat was more fun in Dune 2, more optiosn. But it was mainly battle and not much else.

I really don't think we should compare. Thhey are different game just as there are many different Star Wars or 40k games.

[Theobald]

My first game ever was Dune 2, my first in-character crush ever was Chani in Cryo's Dune, Dune has literally shaped my perception of videogames, and 1- I'm pretty adamant that Shiro devs are the same and it shows and 2- I find this game here the best Dune game ever.

Better than past Dune RTS-es because Dune was never about just battling. i can buy the OPEP out, I can impede my adversaries in the UN, i can actually assassinate my opponents. That's a perfect rendition of the grandfather of all Space House against Space House settings. It's like a real-time boardgame.
Fittingly, Dune also spawned the antediluvian ancestor of asymetrical boargames back in '79.

[Tommytools]

I enjoyed westwood's Dune 2, despite the fact that it was only set on a planet similar to Dune and abandoned pretty much all the lore in the books. D:SW stays much closer to the books.

In a nutshell: personal shielding is such that most of the empire only fights close quarters combat, shields in the Dune universe can only be penetrated by slow weapons (and are so efficient they last longer than any battle). As such close quarters combat in the Dune universe is more about deceiving your opponent than brute force. Tanks are useless in this setting, the shields can't be penetrated by high velocity rounds and would be eliminated by close combat forces, so on most planets of the empire they don't bother armed vehicles (at least not when in conflict with other houses).

Arrakis (or Dune) is an exception; shields cause the sandworms to go into a frenzy and they will converge from many miles around to remove any shield generator on the sand. Sandworms are extremely territorial and will kill smaller worms encroaching on their territory, but an active shield would make them ignore each other until the shield is gone.

Shiro "stretched" the lore a bit by adding repulsorlift vehicles, those (in the lore) are based on the same technology as shields and have the same effect on sandworms. But all in all they stay close to the lore in the books; limited vehicles (mostly for transportation only), no computers (humanity was almost wiped out by AI long before the events on Dune, replaced by Mentats, who use a combination of spice and other drugs to achieve similar results) and all vehicles that do not have a crew on board are controlled remotely (no machine is allowed to be capable of making its own decisions).

[Curator]

it is just... boring

[Vertemouse]

Originally posted by Curator:

it is just... boring

Frantically waging war while not crashing your economy and avoiding Sandworms is not boring.