Couple of question about the gameplay before I buy

[kocur4d]

I like strategy games mostly 4x and grand strategies. I have been looking for something little bit different.

Few points I would love someone to elaborate on.

Most of the bad reviews I seen are about lack of the campaign mode for single played. I couldn't care less for a campaign. I almost never play campaign in games. I play skirmish/free play/sandbox modes. But I only like those if victory conditions are the name of the game.

I dislike endgames in most of the Civ games or Stellaris since the game tends to expand with options as time passes. There are victory conditions but those feel very relaxed in my opinion. Most of the time the game is pushing me in this direction or that direction as the events of the game unfold. My plan changes based on game events.

On the other hand games like Old world I tend to play very sharp from turn one. I can plan in advance, for example I know that there is 50 turn left I think about plan that will make me win. I focus on the plan while I navigate around events in the game. I like this much more.

I think those are two main differences, in my opinion, between those strategy game.

What kind of game is Dune?

I think I will be mostly plying single player but if it is easy to setup multiplayer game, but no friends play this one, I am happy to check that as well.

[Kolopaper]

Games can last between 1-3 hours depending on the settings and speed of your choice. Game is pretty slow on the default speed, so the preferred is 1.5x speed even on multiplayer and the average time on MP is around 1:30 per game. Something to keep in mind if you decide to play on MP. You can also pause whenever you want on singleplayer.

Since the game does not last very long in comparison to other 4x titles like Civ and Stellaris, you will feel like you need to play good from start to finish. Depending on your faction of choice, there are some preferred victory conditions but that can change on the spot depending how the game goes. You need to approach each game from multiple fronts(Eco, military, Agents/Operations).

Victory Conditions are as followed:

1) Hegemony Victory - Basically a score victory which is the easiest and most games end up on hegemony, although playing MP your score can be lowered if you are close to winning, so it can become pretty dynamic at the last moments between many players.

2) Economic Victory - A market opens up after a while, where you can buy/sell shares and whoever reaches 50% gets an eco victory. Again, it's something that can be pretty dynamic if everyone is buying shares. As soon as someone dies, their shares are automatically selled and the price becomes lower, so it's easier to buy more shares after that.

3) Political Victory - After a series of monthly voting, some Houses can be voted as Governonrs of dune and if left for 30 days, they win. Again, every other player can vote against, or make him lose their position at later vote, but even if 1 player is down, it can become easier to maintain the position and win.

4) Domination Victory - You kill the enemy base, everything gets blown up. Pretty straightforward but you cannot do that easily on all enemies, because traversing very far can be punished easily, so destroying a nearby enemy can lead you to easier winning by other conditions.

5) Assassination - Same effect as domination, you assassinate their leader and if it succeeds they lose everything.

Against the AI, most conditions are pretty easy to achieve once you learn the game well enough, but on MP the games can become very dynamic since every detail matters a lot. A victory can be snatched in the last moment when everyone is heated up.

Game is played mostly as a FFA, and there is Conquest which is a campaign-like mode, but it mostly plays like a regular sandbox, with some generalized objectives to keep some flavor and spice.

Now for the actual gameplay, the pace is somewhat slow in the early/mid game where you expand and plan how to proceed, with scouting being very important, and later in the game you need more micromanagement for your army and various events/notifications happening around your empire.

[Soho]

If you consider Civ and Stellaris games to be 'grand strategy' I would say this game (DSW) is much tighter in scope - Civ you will play through many eras of time, DSW is over the course of a couple years at most - Stellaris you play over many planets with many variation between aliens and types of star systems/planets, DSW is just the one very important planet and really typically just one section of the planet

For diversity, and replay-ability, the different factions in DSW do play quite differently than each other - and with a choice of different councilors for each faction, you can also play each faction differently through multiple plays. Want to play Harkonnen as a huge military powerhouse, stomping everything in its path? You can. Want to play Harkonnen as a sneaky spymaster and assassinate everyone? You can do that as well. Every faction you can play either way, or more ways, its really up to your creativity

Originally posted by kocur4d:

I can plan in advance, for example I know that there is 50 turn left I think about plan that will make me win. I focus on the plan while I navigate around events in the game

DSW plays much more like that - you don't technically have turns, its RTS with active-pause, but it plays as if there are 'turns' going by in real time. You can very logically see how long different things take... how many cycles of one thing can be done in the time that another thing takes to do... there is a lot of planning/time management, mechanics to speed certain things up, etc Like a lot of strategy games, improvements are incremental i.e. you need to stack many small improvements to gain a noticeable improvement. Navigating around emergent events is crucial as well- you may have been planning to do a certain thing, but circumstances come up where it makes more sense to change your course- this happens a lot

I'm a fan of the game, obviously, I've played hundreds of hours through all the game modes, Conquest mode and Skirmish... It is my opinion that, besides Northgard (their other title, also very good) and COH2 (my other favorite game... COH3 is pretty horrible compared to its predecessor tbh), there hasn't been a RTS skirmish game quite this good since Warcraft 3. I attribute it to the unique mechanics and how they interlink, and I very much like the art-style as well - if you are going to spend many hours with a game, you ought to like how it looks and sounds, and this one again is really good

[Kothra]

Personally, I think people that say there is no "campaign" mode are not really being fair to the game. And as an avid 4X/Grand Strategy/RTS gamer this game scratches an itch I didn't know I had with its Conquest Mode.

Conquest Mode is playing in 2 stages. FIrst stage you pick where you want to go to battle. Second stage you play a short 1-3 hour game in that area.

In the second stage it is a variable object game with unique missions and rule modifiers for each map. There is enough variation you can play through a few times and not play too many of the same objectives.

But...the first stage is kind of the turn-based planning part. You choose upgrades for each region, or for your faction as a whole as you complete missions. And you have to manage the "pressure" metric at the top while also trying to meet one of a few different objectives. You can eliminate factions, ally the Fremen, or control a large part of the map. If you complete any 2 objectives you win the Conquest.

Personally, Conquest if my favorite game mode because of the ability to not only play one of the 4 main houses. But also because you get to upgrade the house to be something unique.

I played one Conquest as Corrino where I had 3 Main Bases (Most factions only get 1, but Corrino by default can build 2). And I could build every building in my main bases twice (Main Base Buildings are REALLY powerful and so they are normally limited to 1 per map). And lastly, I was taxing all of the other factions in the game for 10% of their Solari (Money).

It was satisfying to see my faction be different than the out of the box Corrino.

[kocur4d]

Thank you all. Very detailed and to the point. I think I will like it. I will pick it up on the next sale.

[⎝Wyrd Deofol⎠]

Originally posted by kocur4d:

Thank you all. Very detailed and to the point. I think I will like it. I will pick it up on the next sale.

You won't regret it. ;)