Spice Flowmax : ᑐᑌᑎᑕ

"The House that controls the most spice will control Dune"

An early access guide to the new Dune.


If anything here helped you, or made you laugh I would appreciate a thumbs up.

Intro

If you're reading this guide to decide if you want to play this game then you need to realize Dune: Spice wars is not a traditional RTS. This will make some people angry.

Unit caps overall are very small and you need multiple towns and research to be able to afford the upkeep of several units. You need research to get more military units (more command points = higher unit caps).

The game is pretty unique in that the political aspect of the game can greatly hinder or help your efforts. Every so often there is a "vote" with three aspects that are chosen. One of these is a construction reduction cost by 20% but makes your HQ unable to attack. You might want to select this to change a building from 1500 "gold" to 1200 but in so doing the enemy can assault your HQ.

Normally it is extremely difficult to kill your main HQ building. You must have a town nearby so your units can refill their supply and health. The only times I have made it easy where when I owned a town directly adjacent to a HQ and attacked with about 8 units (several of which were the max tier).

The politics get messy because you can vote for certain events that will hurt one player or all players who are not "you" with a certain style of play for your faction. There are options for a player to mess with the events so that someone wins a "good event" and has several bad things happen to them as a result.


I got a chance to contact one of the developers and they said that overall the design of the AI for this game is to have as little cheating as possible. On the highest difficulty for example the AI does NOT automatically know where all your units are - like in most games.

This might be the game I have been waiting to play for 20 years. I hope you will give it a try.

*Edit* : this game is going through rapid changes so if something is outdated bear with me. I am going to have a new section and an old section so you can read the old things for posterity but see how the game is now with the new section.

New Harkonnen

This is the current face of House Harkonnen.

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• The corrupt ability is no longer tied to a councilor. You can become immune to it via a tech in the blue side of the tree- but I would ignore this as you don't need that side much. Oppression has a fixed cost and cannot be made longer/cheaper. You still want to have lots of militia for the production increase.
  
  
• You can kill enemy troops to get throwaway agents at 5k hegemony. These are great to use to hasten assassination protocols on the enemy. The first agent in the slot is the one likely to be captured first. So if you have two extra agents you can have one on infiltration and sacrifice one to speed up the operation and reduce the cost. The cost reduction is significant in terms of solari and intel. Brainwashed agents have reduced stats so you don't want them cluttering up the space an agent with better stats could fill. You can "fish" for better agents by using agents you don't like as sacrifices on missions.
  
  
  
• The 10k Hegemony bonus allows you to have three agents in a slot without unlocking it the normal way via tech. It would also allow you to have four agents with CHOAM to get a 10% bonus per agent on spice exchange rates with one of the yellow techs.
  
  Note : Hegemony gain via spent intelligence is very slow. Most games I am focusing on my Economy and I hit 10k well behind other players (but my economy outpaces them).

HQ Setup/ Research Order

This is how I like to build my Harkonnen base in this patch. You use three yellows for +10% income to control the CHOAM market. You will not research a 4th slot as that requires two green research (speeding up build order).

Harkonnen troops probably do better with +2 attack as they are not a defensive hold the line faction. Most of their roster is disposable or is geared around bonuses disposable units.

I find the need now more than ever for ticking landstraad so I like three blue buildings. The Embassy gives +25% authority generation which is also huge. You will need the increased spy cap to make the most of your house abilities.

Below you can also find the order in which I researched tech in a recent game. Fear first lets you raid for money and save authority in the long run. Getting to T4 economy early will help the spice flow. At this point in the game I was slightly past the middle of the map and just really needing more military cap. But I do not need that much more. The spies will carry me the rest of the way - which is why I want them next.

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• The Harkonnen T3 Unit is quite good as it is a stealth unit now and can stack up to crazy levels of offense in combat as well as movement speed to chase down enemies that want to run. The T4 is bad as it splits into 3 units you cant control and the parent unit dies. It still costs 4 Command points meaning you need to play as Judge for Harkonnen to use Landstraad Judges for your "tank".

Councilors

Pick Rabban for +1 militia slot. More slots = more income. Remember that No militia equals -10% production and five militia is +15% production. Your towns are harder to take and get more produciton. This is win/win.

Piter is amazing as he can shut down harvesting operations against the AI. One drone can literally bankrupt the AI from across the map. And it gives you ticking intel early game which is desperately needed,

Feyd is good if you like to spam oppression. I do not like to spam as it makes your troops required to commit to defense. If I cant raid anytime soon I can send them to the town I want to overcharge.

Iakin Nefud is an "AI" commander. Get rewarded for sending waves of troops that die at the enemy's feet. Pretty much only works with mercenaries. Combining the -5% unit hp with Rabban's militia power debuff is bad. So don't use this guy.

House Corrino - The Emperor

• Make sure you use Wensicia Corrino. She will allow you to build fuel cells, plascrete, windtraps and processing plants twice in a village. She will increase upkeep costs but this is trivial (be aware this faction does not get maintenance centers).
  
  
• You have a unique tech in green to give villages production bonuses if they have 4 of the same type of building (yellow, blue, red). This stacks with the harvester works building so you can have insane levels of production. And then you can put a 30% production building in the 6th slot on your spice field that will cost 1 authority as upkeep. With yellow research you can play with just a few spice fields. This is highly advised as the Emperor because you will pay a ton of authority for taking land not near your HQ.
  
  
• Take areas mostly around your base with good village modifiers (which will get doubled/tripled)
  
  
• Use your Deploy HQ ability at 5k Hegemony on a non spice town. Deploying the town will essentially delete the old town so be aware. It will not remove a Sietch. You cannot deploy the new HQ on special regions.
  
  
• The area you deploy your base will revitalize your ability to take over new sections of the map.
  
  
• Try to get a CHOAM advantage early as you can get a trickling economy/influence boost with the Imperial Taxes tech. Winning via CHOAM takes a while and is boring but really you're just wanting to control enough to make buying shares be difficult.
  
  
• The Artillery Drones outranges everything. You can chip away at bases if you are patient. The T4 unit is incredibly strong. The T1 range/melee units are good in a group of six as they buff each other (the unit does not count itself for adjacency). The Incinerator is good to pair with Sardaukar meat shields. This leaves you with an "infantry" army group and a Sardaukar group. You can split arty between them as needed but it works better in a pair as they can cover each other if in melee.

Your base has a triple slot, a double slot and a single slot. You get the same setup in your second base. I prefer triple red, single blue and double yellow in the first base. But that takes a lot of research so in the meantime you can put the building for + authority gain in your first base and move it later.

In the second base I go triple blue, double yellow and single red. Put the monument where it will double a bonus for the best results. I really like to try for research towns next to my HQ as this is crazy levels of output.

New Smugglers

Not much changed with this faciton other than these bonuses and the tech tree. They now gain Hegemony from underground bases not pillaging.

• The smugglers now get 200 Landstraad rating when they hit 5k Hegemony. They can install underground HQ's in the enemy HQ. They can install a "booby trap" building that will remove 20 armor from the HQ on attack as well as a building to buff all infantry by +2 armor when in enemy territory.
  
  
• The new Black Market Branch building (built in HQ) lets you get +25 Lanstraad rating for voting a positive resolution on another faction.
  
  
• Unit breakdown is great for the smugglers. You have absolutely insane attack values at night for stealth units. The T4 stealth melee and t3 sniper (longest range non arty unit) are fantastic. The T1 melee is good as it heals after a kill and the t1 ranged causes attrition which can supply kill 3-4 untis or force a hasty retreat of an entire army through attrition.
  
  
• The tech tree however is abysmal. You have to research a t4 tech to be able to use investment centers. You get bonuses for raiding but you shouldn't as it makes the land cost more later.
  
  
• Their special ghost market mission can be used to steal income from the enemy. As a result you might want to put your first agent on Arrakis and the second on Choam (requires both to be infiltration level 1).
  
  
• Be aware the Smugglers are limited to 3 militia and can only get heavy militia and +1 militia as a T4 tech (which is not worth the research). They also can only get 1 missile battery.
  
  
• On the other hand they have an incredibly cheap harrasment tool with the Marauder Raid mission that costs 100 intel/solari. It sends out five militia units to attack a city (looks like a NPC fremen raid). It will attempt to raid the city for you. Be mindful that the marauder raid if successful will give you a stacking raid penalty for owning the territory (+20% authority). There is a t4 tech in green that will remove up to a 30% penalty which is one and one half of a successful raid. It can be used to kill a few militia so you can immediately follow up with the "real" attack.

Councilors

Drisq is someone I would never use unless going for the perfect infiltration achievement. With this passive you get level two infiltration with a single agent. Is it worth losing out on BJ or ST? No.

Bannerjee is a great option if you want to make all your untis heal on kill instead of just the t1 melee. This absolutely supercharges your fighting force with a lot of combat staying power. The authority on raid is "meh" unless you designate a city as a raid only zone for xp/profit.

Staban Tuek gives you insane influence production from underworld HQ and while this is nice it sucks if the territory is often being liberated conquered and liberated again.

If you absolutely must take every village then Lingar Bewt is your man. This is how you get the achievement for owning 30 territories and it's how you gobble up all the land.

New Base Layout

This is what I used last game I played. Im not saying this is optimal but rather showing the new layout. There are so many single slots...

New Atreides

You have good T1 units but no armor breaking on the range ( don't use them to do the savage achievement where you do no tech research). Your T4 buffs the heck out of the other nearby units. Your T3 is armor break and t2 is a really useful heal drone. This army is one of the most simple to use and is very well thought out. Your T1 ranged unit can stack the attack bonus multiple times on troopers (at least 3 maybe up to 5).

• The Atreides tech tree is pretty garbage. You can get a unique tech while advancing towards more command points (left path) that gives -10% damage to friendly units inside your borders and +1 armor to all units when there are 2 or more of your units in a region (any territory). They have a very powerful green tech to give +10% influence production per special region but I'm almost always capped with whatever faction I play around mid game. The same tech also gives +10 special region production which is very niche. Overall I would skip all the unique tech except of the blue tech that unlocks the Council Chamber building. That building is amazing : it gives +20% landstraad and influence gain and allows you to spend influence to cancel a negative resolution affecting you. They have a unique t3 tech in red that gives +20% unit power in territories you control (nobody ever takes the tech in this slot normally for any other faction). The only problem is that it doesn't lead to command points and is generally not worth the research. You have a unique yellow tech for solari income for trading with sietches. Is it worth the t4 research?
  
  
• Diplomatic annexation of far away lands lets you do the "aggressive turtle" maneuver. Take over a far away land, build an airfield and drop an army behind enemy lines. This makes fighting Green one of the most annoying opponents as AI.

Councilors

Pick Gurney because it's a huge boost early on when you need it most. Veteran Militia are super important because you can only get +1 militia as the green +1 militia is replaced with a questionable special tech.

Lady Jessica is for achievement hunting and multiplayer to force treaties. You still have to research the treaties to enforce them.

Duncan makes the Sietch problem go away much faster and this lets you be offensive earlier with less invested in defense. This is very powerful. The -10% diplomacy cost to annex is small but every bonus stacks up.

Thurfir Hawat is good if you want to spam your provinces for +20% production with missions or if you want to play "agent slot machine". If playing Single player you could always save the game right before you get an agent and force a better reroll. He's good but easily a third pick as he still has a lot of RNG. If you get eye of the council and if you get some BG's then you will get good traits on them. But what if that doesn't happen? You will for sure get a lot more intel with Thurfir so that could be a reason to use him.

New Fremen

The Fremen only get 4 building slots now but they don't make harvesters to use up a building slot. They have a turret unit that replaces the old t3 caravan that gave supply in the desert.

Quick HQ Sieges

You need armor stripping units to make the HQ vulnerable. If you take a town right next to the enemy HQ you can have some melee units tank the hits while ranged units attack from safety. Rotate hurt units back to the town to heal while someone takes their place drawing fire.

If that's too slow then try the Defense Sabotage Mission.



In this picture I have stacked Defense Sabotage (debuff icon : shield with line through it) with Gear Sabotage and architectural surveys. Note: If you don't pay your taxes you can be attacked by judges who will use this mission on you.



This halves the power again (does not reduce it to zero - that would be too easy) and makes it take another +50% damage.

This is a Lanstraad event so you can't depend on it happening but you can quickly end someone when it does appear.







The Smugglers can blow up a base faster than anyone else. Why? You can make a building in the HQ as a booby trap that will strip 20 armor from the HQ. Then you attack at night when your stealth units have insane power boosts.

If you use them all at once you can kill a base in under 30 seconds. Consider this a warning for MP.

Below this point is "old" content

It might still be correct or relevant but it could also be outdated.

Factions Intro

There are four factions and they are very different in how they play.

Atreides- "Nice guys" who benefit from treaties.
Harkonnen- "Bad guys" who are basically conquerers.

These two factions have an advantage in the Landsraad resolutions (vote system). These factions start with free "votes". To make a long story short the Landsraad system gives you votes based on your standing. The other two factions dont start with standing so they have to get all their voting power from influence.

The Smugglers - stealthy faction (think Ordos if you are a Dune II fan)
The Fremen - Native faction

These two factions can eventually get 500+ influence per vote cycle via tech/ HQ buildings or other mechanics (sietch alliences with fremen). They are "slow start / strong finish" when it comes to vote power.

Councilors

For whatever faction you pick you will select two bonuses for that house. Each faction has radically different options to pick from. Note : if you spy on an enemy faction you can see which councilors they selected.

The councilor you pick is not an arbitrary opinion. Hard with the best councilor will feel more like easy while medium will feel like legendary with a councilor that doesn't do much for you.

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Atreides:

1. Lady Jessica : can force factions into treaties for influence but the opponent can spend authority to refuse.

This is useful to hurt enemy Landsraad standing if they want to attack you (breaking the treaty). If they decline it will sap their authority which is vital for military expansion. This is more valuable than it seems because the Atreides benefit from treaties (with research).

2. Duncan Idaho: You get 100% faster trading benefits with Fremen (once befriended and allied they stop attacking you). He also grants a 10% reduction in annex cost for villages.

This seems like a bad choice but might be the best "least bad second option". Stacking annex cost is important for late game so that villages dont take forever. Also trading with Sietches takes a long time and getting them to max faster is really good because you can spend more time attacking and less time defending against raids.

3. Thurfur Hawat: Your agents (spies) get +1 trait. Villages targeted by operations give +20% production for two days.

The spy bonuses range so much that this can be very minimal.

4. Gurney Halleck: Unlocks Veteran Militia unit. Military units start with +1 experience level.

Always take this councilor. He is that good. Veteran military units are insanely strong and otherwise take a long time to keep alive. This also lets you train T4 units at level 2 veterency. (Dune Is the perfect country for old men).

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Harkonnen:

1. Feyd-Rautha : can corrupt a Landsraad voting option. You gain +10 influence by killing rebels.

This is a strong option. If someone is beating you in Landsraad standing you can corrupt an option and force them to take it. Later when MP is a thing you can let someone win an option and they won't know they are voting to lose Landtraad standing. You can also cheese influence by making your cities rebel and giving you free influence. If you control the vote then you win the game.

2. Piter De Vries: Unlocks the stealth probe (which you get from research anyway). Makes your Ornithopters generate intel in enemy territory and disguises which faction they belong to unless close.

Intel is not very good currently (except when you play Hard/Insane). It is a "dump" currency I use to trade the AI my intel for his "concrete". This could be valuable to do that faster. The real value here would be to have invisible spies and extra intel early on for an early supply drop. Trading intel for concrete is very strong on medium. I like this councilor a lot.

Late game when you have 5x idle Ornithopters and money becomes no object this becomes a lot more valuable.

Overall the Probe droid sucks as a unit. Its saving graces are stealth, no supply, and no manpower. The most useful thing it can do for you is finish a cap while you move your army back to heal. It is a pretty good little spy that can potentially turn the tide in combat and can give you a combat boost when it dies.


3. Rabban Harkonnen : +1 Militia slot. Increases the duration of oppression by the number of militias (making it better).

Never play Harkonnen without this councilor. Why? You get extra production based on how many militias your cities have. You also get more duration for oppression - meaning you can get spies faster.

4. Iakin Nefud: refunds 50% of unit prices on death. Makes the combat drugs intelligence option cheaper.

Combat drugs are risky; instead win fights with micro/tactics as it has a huge problem of draining their health to zero. With more intel from Piter you can do all missions more often. Getting lots of "refunds" on death should not happen often vs AI. This might get much better when MP exists.

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Smugglers: Overall they have very nice well rounded options.

1. Staban Tuek: Makes underground HQ better.

This is why you play smugglers - to leech off enemy villages. When MP rolls around this will let you "leech" from the "winning" players. It wont do a lot vs the AI when you can easily push their territories.

2. Lingar Bewt : Makes annexing villages cheaper if you have extra water.

This will help you grow larger as you control more territory; it will be more valuable as you control more land. Local Dialect research is a -15% annex bonus. Trying to annex a 94 cost village we get : -18 authority from Dialect, -6 from water production (21).


3. Drisq: gives your spies the "merchant" attribute. All infiltration levels are set to 1 (even with no spy).

The infiltration level bonus is an "early game" boost. The merchant attribute gives you +1% Solari global production per Infiltration level at the cost of potentially good agent traits. All of your spies will have this trait with no variation unless you get "event spies". The extra Solari these agent make is a joke.

This seems "ok". Is it worth the slot? Probably not. It would be cool for 2v2 team games to know the enemy councilors.

4. Bannerjee: Gain 30% more from pillaging villages. Gain plascrete (concrete) when you pillage a viillage.

This is how the AI funds its wars. I was wondering how this faction was getting nearly infinite concrete as the AI. This would be my second "always pick"

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Fremen:

1. Chani Kynes : Like the Harkonnen corrupt power this will link an election result with a rebellion.

There is a lot of potential for early intel with this choice. You can use that to have a supply drop much earlier than an enemy might anticipate. Late game this also plays well into liberate for 1k.

If you give the AI intel an they have this option they will cause rebellions. You can potentially milk this if you are playing the Harkonnens.

Intel is not very valuable to me except when playing on Insane where you need it.

2. Stilgar : +1 Authority per spice field exploited.

Authority is hard to get and every ticking bonus is very valuable. This will be better on medium-large maps.

3. Mother Ramallo : Starts with the temple unlocked and reveals all spice field locations.

The vision aspect is not that great but helps (less scanning required). Picking this lets you make the temple early on so you can make extra resources faster but it does not give you the other benefits of that tech. This is a really good option because the temple lets you get more money a lot faster.

4. Otheym : +10% unit speed and units gain 20% power/armor if alone.

Unit speed is good because nothing else in the game gives that bonus. The "lone warrior" trait can decide battles and is a lot better than it sounds due to how melee units work and need to move around other units..

This can combo with the stealth unit to deal extra damage on the first attack from stealth. But this is probably "sub obptimal" right now.

Atreides Faction

House Atreides

Default bonuses :

• Peaceful Annexation allows you to annex far away locations without connectng "trash provinces in the way".
  
  The problem with this is that you can already use the support drone to help you get to far away places. The annexation process also takes 15 days which is a really long time.
  
  You can currently abuse this mechanic in that if you have a few hundred points you can annex several territories for a lower price. You would want to do this mid game when you border an enemy. Without moving your army you can suddenly have 3-4 territories. Yes the 15 day annex is longer but you get the militia that was in the cities.
  
  
• Other factions lose no Authority when they have treaties with you (but you still lose the Authority). So you're really helping the enemy with this trait.
  
  
• Get more votes with a high Landsraad standing.
  
  Finally - here's a reason to play this faction. If you control the vote then you can use that to win the game.
  
  
• Cannot pillage neutral villages.
  
  After playing the Harkonnens first I realized this was a very strong penalty.

5k Hegemony Bonuses:

• Positive resolutions give +10 credit income.
  
• Negative resolutions give +10% unit power.
  
  Useful but not game changing.

10k Hegemony Bonuses

You can ignore the necessary requirements for charters except for Landsraad standing. In short this means you can take Landsraad positions when they randomly appear without filling the requirements.

This is powerful because you can always hold every office if you are in high standing. And you will be by playing house good guy - right?

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House Strategy / Breakdown

The game was simple with this faction. Eliminate the Harkonnens and then you control the vote. You can have such a voting advantage that you can choose everything once the Harkonnens are gone. Your next biggest threat are the Smugglers who can be siphoning income from your expansions.

The "no pillage" penalty makes you poor. Expand towards someone you want to fight and chain pillage them. You might want to "treaty up" until you unlock the better units.

Veteran units make you really tough to beat in combat.

Your top tier unit (warden) gives all nearby units +2 armor. There is a research option to make it have an extra level of experience. So you can be popping these out with +2 levels of XP. This is hard to beat once they are on the field. One buffs all units around it so you need one per squad instead of needing two per squad to "tank" like the Harkonnen. You can unlock a tech to give you +20% power in your territory.

Troopers have better damage but low survivability. If you did a 2 trooper opening you can later make 2 wardens and split them into a new force. Troopers with a mixed unit force do a ton of extra damage.

Warden+ trooper+sniper+heavy weapon+ support drone = GG. The support drone is the last part I add so they have better mobility in deep desert. The drone will heal them after defeating city militias meaning if a counter attack comes they will be full health. Their military works really well and is simple to use. Units support each other and give each other nice buffs

If you replaced a trooper with Landsraad guard then you would have an 8 armor unit.

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Special Faction missions

• Arrakis Diplomacy - Disbands the fremen raids and increases relations with Sietches in the region (200 Solari / 200 intel ; requires infiltration of spacing guild :1 and Landsraad : 1)

If you have plenty of Intel this will let you keep your armies on full offense with little need to defend against "lesser AI" attacks. It also helps build relations which is fantastic. Wait for them to be in your region before using the ability - I had it eat a "wrong raid" once where there were 2 raids in a region.

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Special Notes

This faction has an easy time getting council positions not normally unlocked yet once you have 10k Hegemony. Eye of the Council is particularly useful but its appearance will come only when RNG says so. Once you hit 400 Landsraad you can trigger the governor position and end the game.

When I tested this faction I was using the councilor for +1 trait on my agents. It just so happened that I later became Eye of the Council and got two special agents from that position. I am not sure if they always spawn with 2 traits or if I got a second trait because I had made that selection.

Overall the extra agent trait does almost nothing (assume agent traits are kinda broken right now). Even if I got an extra trait from that position on those two special agents it was not worth selecting that option. That being said you could spam spy on your spice producing territories to increase production by 20% for 50 intel. This trait will counteract the "ghost market" intelligence option somewhat when used against you.

Ironically the Atreides are hurt on game start by giving out research/trade treaties to enemy. When playing against them always ask for Solari or trade agreements. You might need to give them something to allow it.

Peaceful Annexation can be use to take very far away spice fields. Upon completion make an Airfield immediately and transport 4 units there to guard it. Otherwise the enemy can cause a rebellion there and you lose it instantly. Now you have made a flank attack that an enemy must defend. You could potentially air drop your whole army onto the back door of an enemy this way.

Question : what happens if you use force peace with Lady Jessica vs Fremen? I assume they break the treaty at no cost and move along with their conquest.

Lady Jessica might be OP in MP but for now I have not been bothering using her. I see you are about to take my town : peace mode engage.

Harkonnen Faction

Default Bonuses: Overall very strong.

• Can use Oppression on Harkonnen Buildings
  
  Gives you a 200% bonus to production and build speed. Oppression boosts all resources in a town. Towns with Special bonuses for research/manpower/etc are affected. Keep an army between three cities and cycle the ability. One army of 3-4 units can handle revolts. You can no longer oppress while the town is on cooldown from the previous Oppression.
  
  Oppression scales based on number of buildings; fewer buildings reduces the cost so there is a strategy where you can use the local hubs tech and have only a recruitment center in one town to pump out manpower.
  
  Try to use Oppression on a city like this:
  
  
  
  
• +5% village resource production per active militia.
  
• -10% village production
  
  This means you start with -10% production on villages. You can eventually go up to +6 Militia slots. This means you can have +20 production when you have a city with 6 filled militia slots. This means you have a slower start but a stronger late game.
  
  
• Always know the influence gain of other factions
  
  Without spying you can know how much voting power the other factions have. You can win the vote system easier without save scumming because you know their income and influence totals.

5k Hegemony bonus

• If any village is oppressed you gain +10% unit power. You gain +100% agent recruit speed.
  
  Oppress a village right before you fight. They won't potentially revolt until later anyway. Cycle this bonus and you can get agents much faster than the other factions. This is a very strong mid game bonus.

10k Hegemny

• Kill a friendly agent to reduce mission cost and preparation time

This might seem terrible but normally there are mission complications and this prevents that. If you get 2/3 missions done and sacrifice then the enemy cant counter the mission. The first two assassinations change from 500 to 100 intel with sactifice.

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House Strategy / Breakdown

Find a village you never want to own and pillage it as often as possible. You will suffer a 5% annex penalty if you decide to take it later. Eventually you can get a bonus for having pillaged a village several times through research (there is a several minute cooldown timer between pillages).

Use the corrupt ability to lower the Landsraad standing of House Atreides. Then the voting becomes simple because you can have about 120 "free votes" and everyone else has 50-60 or 0 votes.

Revolts can be your friend. You can cause your city to rebel and get experience/influence from killing the rebellion. If people coordinate and use multiple revolts on you at once you could be in trouble.

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Your two starting military units are great with no research required.

Troopers are a fine melee unit early game. They get extra damage when they have health missing.

Gunners are a fantastic ranged unit as they deal 30% damage to an adjacent target and their attacks have a 30% chance to break armor. Three together shred targets.

Never build the Vanguard unit.

The Probe droid has 15 range (each square a unit can stand in is roughly 15 range). It is better used as an invisible scout than as much else. They cannot feasibly kill a harvester.

House Guards are super tanks. They have 6 armor and when they get to 20% health they gain +5 armor and +50% power. So right when they are about to die they suddenly are not about to die. Without armor breaking units nearby these units are nearly invincible. These are weak to the smuggler "demo" unit so eliminate that faction quickly. This unit likely needs a change so that if the armor is broken at 20% hp its armor is reset or the +5 armor can never be broken.

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Start with 2 troopers then add a gunner or two. Unlock house guards and split your army. Create two groups of : House guard+trooper+ 2x gunner. You could also go with one trooper and three gunners per "squad". I dont like keeping more than 2 troopers for late game. Gunners have one more armor than the trooper.

If possible take over the Landsraad Guard position so you can make a cheaper tank unit (3 command vs 5 command). These only cost 1 influence to upkeep so you can use several late game to bulk up your army. More importantly prevent anyone else from having them.

If you didn't take the councilor for stealth probes then I would not bother using them unless you have 2 command points left over or are very rich. They can be useful to give you a warning about attacks. I like stealth probes a lot more after using them on insane for free Intel.

Your main threat are the Smugglers/Atreides. Fremen can be really annoying if they have the option to cause rebellions with a vote. If you kil off the Atreides then you get to control the votes.

Your unique tech: instill fear can make villages 25% cheaper to annex if you have pillaged them 5 times. This is bugged and only stacks once if you pillage before unlocking the tech. Only work around is to wait to pillage until this tech is unlocked. You can pillage "permanent farm" gold towns that you will never own.

-What happens if you use combat drugs when you are attacked in your own city? The unit can't die but slowly loses health. Sometimes a unit can die at the end of a combat. I don't know if that is a bug or if damage ticks faster than regeneration. You can prevent this if you use a supply drop that overlaps with the drugs.

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Special Notes:

-The Harkonnens apparently only require 2 in all levels of infiltration to Assassinate an enemy. I assume there is an error in the text for their 10k Hegemony power?This is super powerful in terms of needing less research. You also get agents more quickly with oppression.

- Chaining Oppression at 5k Hegemony this lets you get Agents faster than everyone else. That helps maximize manpower/influence/spice production. You can also use this to farm a lot of influence if you picked Feyd.

It is a mistake to just randomly pick Oppression to a random city. I noticed that when I was winning two of the AI would gang up on me and both cause a rebellion when I had one or two of my own. I learned my lesson the hard way not to just press the button in every city because "I could". If you keep using Oppression on the same village it stacks a debuff for a 2% chance to rebel every day. The Oppressed debuff gives -5% production/building constrution/militia power after the bonus goes away. Cycling different cities means the buff resets to zero with time. It might seem obvious but dont be spamming Oppression if you think the enemy is about to attack.

Using Oppression on a spice producing area is going to be worth more than most other villages. If I click on a region that produces 45 spice when I click Oppression it immediately goes up to 135 spice.

-This is my favorite faction. My only gripe is that there is no "Devastator" unit. We had a double barreled tank with insane armor in Dune II, and a gigantic mech in Dune 2000.

-There is a potential strategy to use probe droids as a "suicide squad" before an attack. This would make a lot more sense later when you have lots of extra money. You could in theory combo this with the Vanguard unit but overall I found them to be super squishy and not worth trying to keep alive. This is a "losing" strategy though because the enemy gets Hegemony from killing your units.

-The Martial Economy tech is not worth it to me. When I won on Insane I had a 50 command point army that cost 100 Solari upkeep. Getting three techs for -30 upkeep seems like a bad tech investment.

The Smugglers

Default Bonuses

• Can install underground headquarters in enemy villages

These let you profit from enemy expansion. They cost Solari and authority (the first was 90 solari and 3 authority but this increases with the number HQ installed). They have a 5 Solari upkeep each. Currently they cannot be removed unless the territory is liberated. This is somewhat broken and the textbook definition of "no counterplay". Just lose the territory to remove it? lol.

There are 9 options. (patch just added two and changed whisperer's lair).

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From this list I would really only ever consider using about four. Bootleg Market is probably the most useful along with the Whisperer's lair (depending on number of agents you have in play). Explosives are good. Spyware and the cache are questionable.

• can place Bounty on Landsraad resolutions.

During a vote you select one option and that option gains a bounty. All other factions will gain 5 Solari per vote on the targeted choice. In other words you "bribe" the other factions to vote the way you want. You can entice the other factions to trade their votes for Solari. It seems as if the bribe option makes the minor houses more likely to vote for this option as well.

• Improved access with black market access

Paying off your bribes (delivering your spice Quota) gives you +2 influence production.

You have access to a unique HQ building that grants 1% of spice production as influence. (black market branch)

• Limited Lanstraad access

You start with 0 free votes and eventually can get 50 base votes (see below). Unlike the Fremen you can still use the audit operation to increase your Landsraad rating to 500. Each use of the mission gives you +30 points.


5k Hegemony:

• Now you get 50 Landsraad base standing so you have some votes without influence.

This is more like a penalty because you could have picked a faction that started with votes and Landsraad rating. But at least you're not Fremen. At this point when you pay taxes you will start to get more rating which gives you more for the taxes.

10k Hegemony

• Gives visibility to all enemy HQ. Allows Underground HQ buildings in enemy bases.

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House Strategy

Generally speaking I found this factions army to be medium damage/ low defense. They are most certainly a Quantity over Quality style army; I prefer the opposite. The smuggler top end melee unit has stealth. It still has low armor and is more of a dps unit than a tank. Overall smuggler units have low armor values and dont "tank" well. Overall I really dont like this faction but you might.

Their drone unit shoots a target and makes it have -power and plus armor. So the idea is you use this to attack ranged units not tied up by melee that are not being focus fired. It has the most armor of any Smuggler unit but has low health so is not suited to tanking. It doesn't use water and only has Solari as upkeep. It does require fuel cells for continual use. Overall I would rather have units that focus fire for high dps. This unit can backfire tremendously vs heavily armored units.

Their overall unit strategy is about lowering supply and dealing extra damage to low supply units. That's great if someone is attacking you. The wrecker unit can obliterate enemy unit supply killing them via attrition. It's interesting but overall a worse plan than say direct damage. You can't really skip the wrecker because it is your armor breaker/aoe unit.

I suspect that when we get MP there will be a strategy around using snipers and free company. Both units have stealth and can launch devastating surprise attacks. It should be noted that snipers have 0 armor by default.

It is worth noting that snipers have 50 range. For comparison sake most everything else has 30 range. Harkonnen combat drones have 15 range which is one "space" away from melee combat.

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You can't get a ticking +1 landsraad standing with 3 statecraft buildings (like the Harkonnen and Atreides). Instead 3 blue buildings gives you +4 influence production (everything else is the same). I find the +100 influence option for 2x blue buildings to be a lot better.

You can get crippled by resolutons that reduce influence production. You must always vote against these because this is how you get voting power.

Overall you probably have the strongest voting power because you have 50 votes, you can bribe one option in the vote and it is easy to get 500 influence per vote cycle if not more.

If you are losing the game as the smugglers you can turn your HQ into an extremely hard to kill bunker. But why would you want to depend on that? You can also "Leech" resources from players that are doing well.

You want to expand to towns with lots of water but also need to use some Solari/Authority to make underground HQs.

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They have black market events where you can sell spice and get benefits ranging from Solari, hegemony as well as a free military unit. This always involves selling spice. Make sure you dont miss a spice deadline.



Black Markets also appear as a map object you can interact with a unit or your agents. These will "replace" some of the other map objects such as the random tech - but you already get that from your HQs.

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As soon as one or more factions is eliminated they get a lot less viable because they are really the most viable as a "3rd party threat".

You lose all investments in an underground HQ if the city is liberated.

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There was nothing in this faction that made me really want to play them. They have a technology for -40% penalty to annex a city based on distance. When you combine this with the Water annex reduction councilor you can expand like crazy. If you want to get the governor achievement I suggest you try it with this faction. They can control more land with less authority than any other faction.

You absolutely want to control the polar cap to get the +50 water production as this faction.

Underground HQ can be really powerful to attack militia only defended cities. Plant a bomb and "boom" half hp on Militia when you attack them. Be careful not to withdraw or they will return to the city will full hp and the bomb will be wasted. This would be a perfect opportunity for a cease fire as another faction.

HQs can also give you free tech progress that the enemy has researched. You can spend 200 gold up front to get a small tick of random research an enemy has finished every day. This is good and bad as you get research you "dont want" along with the stuff you do want.

They have a tech that removes 100% of the raid penalty for annexation (this is retroactive and probably should be more like 50% but we are in EA).

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Special faction missions

• Underworld Cells - Makes village capture cheaper for you and more expensive for other factions (cost: 200 intel/ 200 Solari. Requires infiltration : Spacing guild :1, CHOAM : 1)

• Crowd Manipulation- Selected village starts a rebellion. (cost 400 intel / 400 Solari. Requires Infiltration: Arrakis: 2, CHOAM :2, Landsraad :1)

-This is actually a mission available to every faction but I feel like it is really useful to this faction. If you see an enemy army guarding a city, cause a rebellion to make the army move. The smugglers are likely the weakest faction in a 1:1 engagement without any tricks (thankfully you have many).

Then move your army to attack the city near you and when your Underground HQ bomb triggers the Militia will only have half health. Check and Mate.

Smuggler Changes

Several buildings got changed since the last patch.

Whisperer's lair now reads as :

+1 Intel generation, -10% daily chance of capture when assigned to this faction, -10% capture when an operation on this faction is detected.

This is pretty crazy because you can stack this 4-5 times and your spies won't get caught unless you have really bad luck or the resolution for 100% capture is active against you.

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• New building : Clandestine scouts - Gives +10% power to units in the region.

• New buildnig: Activist quarters - When using your bounty +5 minor house votes are guaranteed.

This makes your bounty ability that much better. Wow - this is really strong when you make 3-4 of these in every enemy town.

• New building :Worker's guild - Host village gains +20% resource production.

- Why would you ever build this? This would only ever make sense in a 2v2 game format.





These are the new Underground HQ buildings for enemy Headquarters.

Fremen

Default Bonuses:

• -30% daily supply drain for military units

This might seem minor but this adds up with all the other bonuses.

• Can ally with Fremen Sietch (the npc fremen) outside of your territory.

When you ally with them it costs authority and does not cost an agent. This means the fremen can be the "spy masters" because they dont need to waste a slot.

• Can ride worms with Thumpers

They dont get airfields and instead ride worms. Worms travel quite a distance compared to the arifield shuttles. This power is really good for launching distant attacks on territory you want to take or liberate (think deep strike if you are familiar with 40k). Worms are faster than aircraft ( at least when you ride the larger one).

The only problem with this is that you dont generate thumpers until you get your 5k bonus. They also recover slowly. So if you get targeted by an AI, while you have a rebellion you might need to use up 2/3 uses in a very short period of time.

The polar region will not allow worm travel to initiate (no sand) and it will also block worm travel through that region so beware when planning on which areas to control.

• Limited access to the Landsraad

The Fremen are even more restricted than the Smugglers as they cannot hold council positions (except Governor). You will never have any "free" votes. Late game you can get a lot of influence votes but it takes a long time to get to that point.



5k Hegemony Bonus:

• You passively generate thumpers. You can call larger worms that will let you travel longer distances.

10k Hegemony bonus:

• Military units gain power according to your Hegemony (+20% At 25k Hegemony)

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House Strategy/ Breakdown

Why Play Fremen? They have an insane building they can make in their HQ that lets you double the bonus from one district. I found that +4 armor made the top tier unit incredibly hard to kill. This gives them versatility even though they start as an underdog in the Landsraad standings. Their starting melee unit is quite strong but late game I found myself deleting several veteran units to make the tier 4 unit instead (which can be produced with +1 level of xp with tech unlocks).

Why use the T4 unit? It gets +1 armor and 10% power per unit in combat with it and with the +4 bonus it can go to 8 armor base. This is probably way too strong and needs to be toned down.

They have an "assassin" unit that can hit for a ton of damage out of stealth. While that sounds great and all it's a glass cannon unit. If you want to use this unit then you should take the speed option so they can run away after attacking. You would also probably want to build your HQ with one red building and the Bazaar to get +4 power.

Worm travel lets them strike far offensively; this is the opposite of arifields which let you react to defend from attacks. Their base -30% supply helps move through desert or just help you not die to attrition when attacking.

I didn't bother with the support unit because I just didn't need it. I usually prefer units that cost command points be able to fight well. This unit has low attack power and is meant to be a mobile heal/stealth/supply station for units out of combat. This gives the Fremen long distance attack power so they can attack 3-4 tiles away from their area of influence. You could also deploy one near a village being captured to heal troops once the combat is over. Once MP rolls around this could be used to hide an army that is guarding a city. Also just for clarity sake : this thing uses 12 water which is kind of insane.

It does allow for long distance harassment so you could cause a rebellion in the enemy front line while attacking their backline too. It's neat but not absolutely necessary most of the time.

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Stilgar and Mother Ramallo seem to suit my playstyle best. Knowing where the spice fields are is of limited usefulness if you somewhat direct your ornithopters at the start of the game.

It can be expensive to ally with multiple Sietches. This can be mitigated if you chose Stilgar as your councilor to get +1 authority gain per spice field. Mother Ramallo will give you a lot of income early on.

Like the smugglers they can eventually build a lot of influence. Fremen get a large portion of their vote power by allying with the lesser npc fremen.

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Basic army composition was base melee unit+ranged unit. Once you get the tier 4 unit replace your T1 infantry with better units that only require one more command point.

They have a unique tech in the yellow tree that lets them unlock the temple building if it was not unlocked via a councilor. Researching this tech gives you +1000 Solari for liberating a village. Obviously there is good synergy to use this With Chani. I feel certain you do not get the 1k for using a rebellion on an enemy.

At first I thought Chani was pretty terrible as a councilor. How to make the best use of her ability? Have a rebellion operation stored up. Make one house suffer a rebellion on vote result. When the first revolt hits give them another. Use this as a diversion to attack heavily into enemy territory. Anyone that voted against the way you voted will get a rebellion.

Do not "leave territory blank" for the benefit of getting extra intelligence.

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They have a unique building unlocked via blue tech: Al-Gaib temple.
This gives: +20% spice production, +40% resource production in villages touching your HQ, +40% resources when trading with Sietches. This is obviously more valuable on a small map or if your HQ is surrounded by 4-5 territories you own.

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Special Faction Missions

• Sand Cloak - Allied units are invisible for 2 days. (cost 200 intel / 400 Solari. Requires Infiltration: Arrakis :1, Spacing Guild : 1)

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Special Notes:

You cannot hold any office besides Governor.

You cannot ever get Landsraad rating. So you cant get these:

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Paying your spice tax gives you +1 ticking Authority. Your 4th tech in the harvester line does not give you extra manpower for the harvester but instead increases spice production by 10% per allied Sietch. This seems more than slightly busted.

HQ planning

Every faction has a different HQ setup. They often have a few different unique buildings that will influence what you want to build. As I mentioned before the Fremen Bazaar is extremely powerful so you would always use it - the question being for which bonus.

To help you plan what to build here are some pics of HQ layouts. While it is possible to build and remove buildings later this can get expensive - although I find it pretty easy to become infinitely wealthy long before I can finish the game.

I wouldn't copy the layouts exactly as things are likely to change from game to game. These pictures are also from my first game with that faction so things might not be Optimized.

The most simple rule is that you only build districts with buildings of one color (the Bazaar being the exception to this rule). If you're doing it any other way then you are cheating yourself out of powerful bonuses.

Note that three tier 1 buildings will give you a 20% research bonus stacked three times (60%) to one area of research. This can be an issue later when some of the research takes 30-50 days per item.

I am a big fan of getting the research building early as early research can help jumpstart your faction as most good things are locked behind a tech wall.

Depending on your playstyle you may prefer different buildings. Here are some ideas to get you started. I like to flex my military might and starve the other factions of spice - if they have no income they really wont be much of a threat.

Why do I prioritize +2 armor so heavily? Armor = damage reduction. If your army takes less damage then you have higher unit preservation. In most games vs the AI I lose 0 to 2 units. Veteran units are way better than "vanilla" squads. Max xp units will fight enemy squads of many more combatants.

Three yellow HQ buildings for +20 % CHOAM shares is terrible. Even fremen using the Bazaar would only get 700 per mission (instead of 500).

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Atreides



This faction benefits the most from Landsraad rating so going for triple blue gives you a ticking +1 Landsraad bonus. Having a 400 rating enables voting for the Governor position.

As such I would suggest going for: 3x Blue, 2x yellow, 2x red. Place the rest as needed for research bonuses or early income gains.

You could go for 3 red, 2 yellow, 2 blue. This is probably a stronger strategy given the Atreides military has +2 defense from the warden and an option for +2 defense in their territory. The unique building gives 30% Landsraad rating increases and 30% more influence production. It's easy to max out both of these and the +100 influence is probably better than the +1 ticking Landsraad bonus.

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Harkonnen



The Harkonnens can get 2x triple building bonuses. This means you can get +2 armor and +1 ticking Landsraad bonuses. The only downside is that it takes longer to get a bonus going. Since the Triple yellow bonus is weak there's not a lot of room for variety.

Triple blue /triple red is the preferred setup. This leaves room for a 2x bonus from yellow.

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Smugglers



The Smugglers cant get +1 ticking Landsraad from 3 blue buildings. As such I think they do better with the +100 max influence from two blue buildings. Note you can still max out your Landsraad rating through the "audit" mission. The extra water from green research is going to save you a ton of authority when you have maxed out building slots. You definitely want triple red to make your units die slower.

Note : Unlike the previous two factions you only get 9 building slots.

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Fremen



You will notice this faction only gets 8 building slots. As I mentioned before the Bazaar building counts as a "wildcard" and doubles the bonus. It is the blue building being built in a red section and will double the bonus for three red buildings from +2 amor to +4 armor.

The obvious strategy here is to go with 1 red+ the Bazaar or 2 red+ the Bazaar for either +4 power or +4 armor. I think in the current game armor is way better than power but I could see it being interesting for some kind of a gank build with hit and run attacks using the stealth unit.

You can also put the Bazaar in a single slot and demolish it later. Doing this will give you 40% research for all three categories. This is not a long term solution and will make you lose half the resources but the long term gain for research time could make it worthwhile when you are starting to steamroll. This gives the Fremen the potential to have a huge tech advantage on everyone else (which is odd considering they are "back world sand people" but whatever).

I found it easy to get +500 influence per voting cycle late game so I would highly suggest +100 influence would be better than +4 influence (before the double bonus).


After some testing I noticed that you really dont need +4 armor with the Fremen. Leaving the Bazaar for research the whole game is very strong. Note it has no affect on green research.

Universal Military Buildings (Red)

The Command post is unlocked by the Support Structures technology (straight down the red tree).



Why is this building good?

This building gives you +20% power on all your units and will stack with the 20% bonus from a military base. On top of that it gives you +12 command points. It also gives your army -20% daily supply drain. This last part while not as exciting is still really helpful for logistic movement.

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The Barracks is unlocked by the Ground Command technology (one right).



Why is this building good?

This gives all your units +20% health. More health will keep your units alive to preserve veteran units. This building gives your units +50% more xp so they level up faster. Units also heal 50% faster in a town and when using a supply drop (makes the broken even better).

I usually make this building before the command post because the tech gives me +8 command points. I actually have to build the command post to get the +12 command points. Also I find getting more experience early and preserving my units has the most effect if you do it at the start. Usually it can be challenging on game start to field a bunch of extra units early on.

For comparison sake an elite Harkonnen trooper has 28 power and a base unit has 18 power (without any buffs it has 16 in case you are wondering).

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The Recruitment Center is available once you have 2000 Hegemony



This is the least useful building for my style of play. The 20% faster training is not very useful. The extra training slots is not very useful (except you can exploit the command point cap currently by clicking very fast on high speed). The main reason to make this building is for + 0.5 manpower per controlled village. You would make this building when you want to complete three red buildings for the +2 armor bonus.

Exceeding your command cap will make your units have -20% power but if you have twice as many units as you should it more than circumvents the penalty. This is an exploit and it will get fixed. Don't depend on it.

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What About Defensive military buildings in the HQ? The answer is Praetermitto. I didn't even need to mention that they suck because you're smart and you know that just by looking at their bonuses. You can build them in a single slot and combo with a 50% research tech boost for super Military research.

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Universal Economy Buildings (Yellow)

The Harvester Works is a generic building available to all factions. It is unlocked by the modular parts research.



This single building Determines what my Spice Towns look like. If possible I make everything in them be "yellow". I will only make an exception for an emergency and hopefully temporary recruitment center or missile battery.

This is unlocked by the modular parts research and until something changes this always my first research target - not because I want to make the building first but because I want more spice production.

Why is this building good?

If you have 5 yellow buildings in a village where you harvest spice then that is a 25% increase. Did you notice that the windtrap, spice refinery, spice silo, plascrete factory, maintenance center and fuel cell factory are all yellow buildings? Having the spice silo here gives you another +20% yield increase.

If you are Harkonnen with 6 militia you get another +20% production increase (you have a -10% base so two militia will remove some of the penalty). Without the Spectral Imaging tech you can expect to get about 60 spice per village as Harkonnen.

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The CHOAM Branch is unlocked by the Economic Lobbying tech (lower right of yellow). Note: this building requires a bottom tier of tech.



Why is this building good?

It applies a -50% Solari upkeep cost to all villages around your HQ that stacks with the Maintenance center. Usually this will apply to about 4-5 regions on a medium size map.

It also gives you +30% Solari for your exchange rate for spice. That makes it so you are far less pressured to get good exchange rates and worry less about being "in the red" for income.

Combine this with the Harvester works and you will have a lot more income.

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Recycling Vats is unlocked by the Water Trade tech (two down in green)



Why is this building good?

This building becomes more valuable with every building in your HQ. If you have 9 other buildings completed when you finish this you will suddenly have +50 water. The supply also makes raiding and attacking more distant provinces easier. It wont be super valuable as your first building.

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Research Hall



This building is not as good as the other choices in most circumstances.

You can make this early for +3 research if you somehow got a lot of Solari and cant make more units. It can add a lot of research late game if you can convince two of the AI to enter a research agreement.

Universal Blue Buildings (Diplomacy / Spy craft)

The Administrative Hall is unlocked by the Local Hubs tech (down and then left in green).



Why is this building good?

Admin is one of the most limited resources because every village you take makes villages cost more next time. More admin points allows you to take more territories and have more of everything.

You can unlock your Hegemony faster with this building. Note that with ~9k Hegemony you can make 43 Solari (meaning it will at least pay for its upkeep). This is likely the first blue building I will make in future games. In my opinion the other two buildings are not as good.

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The Intelligence Agency is unlocked by the Spying Logigistic tech (one right in blue).



The tech to unlock this building speeds up the time needed to get more agents by 100%. This building increases it again by 200%. There is one more tech to the right for another 100% increase (and +5 max agents). If you dont have these techs then you are getting agents very slowly.

The "+2 operation slots" means that you can have five intelligence missions to use instead of only three. This can be very useful late game when you have lots of intelligence from 15 (or 17) agents.

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The Embassy requires no tech unlock.

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This building gives +2 influence for 20 upkeep, but a listening post (built in a village) gives you +2 influence for 10 upkeep. Assuming you have agents infiltrating Landsraad you will get 2 gold per agent. This extremely minor. I have never had the +20% influence bonus activate.

Unique Faction Buildings

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All of these buildings are Blue except for the Fremen Building which is yellow. I will not be covering the unique military buildings right now because I really dont think they are worth mentioning at this stage of game development.

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The Atreides Council Chamber requires the Atreides Delegation tech (One rght and one down from there).



This tech gives you +30% Landsraad rating gains and +30 Influence. It also allows you to spend influence to remove a negative resolution applied to your faction. To cancel a resolution click on the Landsraad Council button. Hover over the negative resolution affecting you and there will be a red "X" you can click. It will cost about 100 influence depending on how much time is left on the resolution.

If you are planning to use this building (and you should) you might go Triple red, 2 blue, 2 yellow.

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The Harkonnen Interrogation Center requires the Cruel Reputation tech ( one down one left in blue).



One of these buildings is not like the other. Where's the game changing bonus?

I don't like this building. It gives you intel when you pillage a village (based on size), +10 intel for each enemy unit killed, +10 intel per agent captured.

The bonus can be strong as you can chain rebellions. This brings an enemy faction to its knees when you attack their city and trigger a rebellion.

This building might be more interesting if it gave + 20% counter operations. Agent capture is such a weak mechanic that you may as well just immediately sell them back to the enemy for 500-1000 Solari.

Needing two extra blue research unlocks to get this building just makes it that much worse. I much prefer three bule techs to "finish" blue.

If you want to use this building put your Embassy in an empty singe slot and break it later to put something like the Water Recycling building. The weakest thing about this building is needing to get 2 techs that don't really suit how you play as Harkonnen. If this building were unlocked via the tech about unlocking agents it would be good.

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The Smuggler Black Market branch is unlocked by the Underworld Contracts (one left).



This building gives you more influence from spice and more Solari from Plascrete/Water. This is an amazing building.

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The Fremen Al-Gaib Temple is unlocked by the Sietch Newwork tech (one down one left in blue). Note this is a Yellow building.



This gives you +20% spice production, +40% resources in any village around your HQ, and 40% more resources when trading with Sietches. This is all great.

The tech unlock also gives you +50% agent recruit speed per allied Sietch. This can greatly speed up agent production.

Economy Management

There is a purple/yellow slider at the top left of the screen when you are harvesting spice.

Moving the bar so there is more yellow means you are selling more spice. Moving the bar in the other direction means you are storing spice.

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Here are two examples from the same game where I have moved the slider to the extreme and one point in the middle.

The little circle shows how much time you have left until you need to pay your "space taxes".




If you click on the clipboard you get this window to appear. It shows you how much spice you are expected to make before the next tax period ends. Note : worms, sandstorms, rebellions and enemy attacks can all change this timer so you have to plan for that.


In this spice report we see that the current period has a bad exchange rate. The next period has a much better echange rate. The higher the number for the exchange means you get more money for each unit of spice.


The obvious strategy here is to hoard spice when the exchange rate is bad and try to do most of your selling when the exchange rate is good. In this moment I am hoarding spice to sell during the next period.

You can change the slider all the way until you have a very minor negative income or just barely positive depending on how much money you have.

Proper economy management will require you to periodically check the spice rates so you get the most income. Sometimes you need the money now so just have to make sacrifices and cant get an optimal exchange rate.

Be concerned when you are struggling to make the quota now and the next exchange period will be even worse.

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If you miss your taxes you lose Landsraad rating as Harkonnen/Arteides/Smugglers (I have not checked all difficulties but the AI ignores this on Insane).


Apparently when playing as the Smugglers this can also happen :



These are the elite troops of the emperor taking control of an enemy NPC who didn't pay their taxes. It is unknown at this time if this will happen to other factions as well. If you watched the new Dune movie you might remember the Sardaukar attacking the Atreides. This was supposed to be secret because the Emperor is not supposed to intervene directly or attack the great houses.

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The AI is not exactly a tactical genius. If you are going to miss your spice quota you can likely trade them something so you do not miss your taxes.

There have been times when I traded with the AI and took all their spice and there was no way they could pay their taxes after trading with me.


If you cant trade with the AI then raid a nearby village and put everything into stockpiling (full purple).

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On Game start you are set to stockpile way too much. The Quota should be 80 so try to get to 85-90 and sell everything else. The first exchange rate is always good so you don't have a terrible start.

You will have a bad start if you forget to move your spice tax slider.

Trading

Generally speaking the AI is dumb so abuse them. I've never seen the AI suggest a trade deal that helps me. I have also never traded my influence to the AI and it seems to be a working strategy.

Give them all your intel (read as "shiny beads") for their Plascrete (concrete). This works best when the AI does not have a "green up arrow" next to their Plascrete. In the current state of the game almost all of the operations are of little value if you have been planning well and are not new to a strategy game.

This might seem obvious but it's just crazy how good trade abuse is against the AI. Don't forget to ask the Atreides for a treaty. It doesn't cost you any authority for having a treaty with them, but they still get the authority penalty. Note : this becomes less valuable when you do border them because then you can't attack them.

You can trick the AI into making favorable deals by lowering the slider just a bit and sometimes it will trade away almost all of its money, concrete or influence. If the AI has a medium value of a resource they don't value it as being worth more so you can take more if it in a trade (except I think influence is always a "green value" item).

You could spy on the AI to see what resources they have or you could just open up trade.


Why is intel garbage? Early game you can't really do much with it to hurt an enemy. To launch nukes (ATOMICS!) you need like 200 days of research outside of all the economy/military research that you need to win wars and pay for your upkeep costs. You need the same to make an assassination attempt.

The best mission you can do with intel early on is supply drop for only 100 intelligence (heals your troops and gives them supply mid combat).

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Fremen Sietch Trading

When you finally detect a fremen Sietch you can start trading with them. You click on it and click the "start trading button". You will always give 10 water to get something back.

Once you build up to 100 reputation you can form an alliance with those fremen by sending a newly recruited agent. Click on the Sietch and there is a black box near the upper right. Click the available agent and he will be "Stuck there" forever.

Note: you can take an agent off a mission and put them in an unselected category by right clicking on the agent. [Thank Lima for this tip]

As I mentioned in the Fremen faction section they can ally with a Sietch by spending +2 authority (which remains "tied up" until you break the alliance). Having Stilgar for +1 authority per spice field becomes very useful to ally multiple fremen villages.


What does trading get you?

You will always trade 10 of your water and they will give you something in return. Options I have seen so far include :

• +30 Solari, +1 authority, +4 spice, +1 knowledge, +10 Plascrete, +3 manpower

What bonuses do you get for an alliance?

These vary wildly. Some are very meh and others are "gg". Options include:

• Tier 4 military units cost 1 less command point (this is the best option)
  
• Militia gain +2 power & +20% health (this is likely the second best option)
  
• +20% Solari Production (very strong mid game)
  
• +20% manpower production (this is a good bonus you can always use)
  
• +4 knowledge (this is 4 cities worth of research and better than it sounds)
  
• +40% production in this region (this is beyond OP when it was a region containing spice)
  
• +3 Intel production, +30% Agent recruitment ( this is just kind of "ok")
  
• -100% building upkeep in this region (this is probably not worth it).
  
• -50% T1 melee unit costs, -50% T1 melee unit training time (this is garbage)
  
• +20% power to units in the region (absolute garbage)

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Special Note :

If you get reputation up to 100 the Fremen Sietches will stop attacking you. You do not need to ally with them (I made that mistake on my first playthrough).

Do not waste an agent to get a medicore bonus such as: +20% power to units in this one specific regeion.

Research

Research takes more time every time you research something else. This game requires you to continually make more and research or else you will have no ability to progress through the tech tree quickly.

If you go down one tree first and get to the bottom of a tree you will find that everything is suddenly really expensive.

Mastering this game is going to require the player to say well I "want" this tech but I don't "need" it. You pick exactly certain techs in a very specific order so that you get everything you need to win quickly. Then you can go back for the "fluff" that you didn't need later.

Build order is going to vary slightly from faction to faction but overall I think it's going to be an early mix of yellow for economy, red for military and a sprinkle of green for water reduction cost/ extra research from villages.

It is apparently changing next patch but structured warehouses slows you down a lot. You often get 1 good territory to make the building for +60. Losing some initial income can save you 20-40 days after you have 8-10 techs.

I suggest a compromise to rush 2-3 techs down a tree then switch trees.



This is the tech tree in my first game as Harkonnen. There is some room for optimization but this gives you an idea.

With 21 techs researched and 30 knowledge income the red tech I am research requires about 44 days of research. With a 40% research bonus in "yellow" a bottom tier tech costs 32 days.

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Imagine you research 15 items in green and yellow with nothing in red.

Now you want to research military tech and the first tech went from 2 days to like 15 days. Ouch. That means the bottom row is going to be like 30-40 days instead of 15-20 days.


This would cripple you because you need military research to get more command points (more command points = field more units).

By the time you nearly finish off two categories research starts to climb into the 55 days for one research item. This means that research unlock order is extremely important.


As I mentioned in the HQ planning section : you can make a blue/red/yellow building in a single district slot to speed up research by 20% . This is more of something to consider in the early game when you can first afford one building and something to consider changing later when you have an infinite supply of materials.

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I could be wrong but I am pretty sure the Paracompass and Spectral Imaging techs are a "trap". You only get 20% production if you have an Ornithopter attached to a Harvester. As you can see in the picture above I have 6 harvesters (I know you can have up to 10 on some maps) and you can only have 5 Ornithopters.

In case you were not aware there are a ton of things to scout on the map. And then when that is done you can use your Ornithopters as invincible scouts. Put them on the border where 2/3 enemy zones touch and you will see everything there. Knowing where the enemy has troops can save you a huge amount of trouble. Leave one on to scout new events and the rest turn off auto scouting.

The AI often leaves a blob of troops around his HQ. If they are not stealth units and vanish it means someone is getting attacked.



Army Logistics is 100% a trap. If you take a city and an enemy is moving reinforcements then use a supply drop to heal and refresh the supply of your army. When you pillage or liberate a village you get full supply back. That tech is only going to make it so you get logistics while you are capturing. Is that worth making some really good tech take longer? No.

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Optimized Research

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Obviously every faction will be a little bit different due to unique techs. But here is my best working research path right now. As an example if I were playing Smugglers I would get Water Sellers Contracts as my 4th tech due to their councilor bonus. More towns = more water = faster annexation =more evrything.



These are the only things I research now in the Yellow Tree. Ignoring the rest of the tree seems to have sped my game up tremendously.

On game start I research Modular parts and then switch to Green for reduced annexation costs. I will come back for extra harvester crews periodically. Note I will usually get Economic Lobbying before getting the last harvester crew slot. Why? Because once you make the building you dont need to throw a few hundred manpower to increase your income.

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This is what my red tech usually looks like at the end of the game. I will research Military Threat and Air Command if I need to escalate. When you have about 50 command points another +8 is not really a very big deal. You can easily get 2-3 units out of 8 command and that is easily enough to make a small guard force to bulk up a militia or use to raid villages.


I prioritize Ground Command over Support Structures (instant +8 command vs need to make a building to have +12). I am a huge fan of T4 units so I often try to rush to T4 with Call to Arms if it makes sense.

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This is my optimized Blue tech path. I get these three after I am comfortable in green yellow and red. This gives me faster agents and I have found everything else is not worth increased research.

Late game I might come back to unlock Sand Diplomacy or Spying Mastery but they are absolutely not a priority.

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This what I consider to be part of the Green tree; the only reason I would research Paracompass is if I am playing on a small map. Troop logistic becomes an issue because you usually start to lose health due to how the map has certain elements placed (everything is truncated). The only reason I would research Spectral Imaging is because I am locked into two spice fields and don't have manpower production and the rest of the yellow research would take too long.


For about 9 days of research mid game I can get defense structures to gain +1 Militia slot. Everyone but the Atreides can get +1 Militia slot from Border Defense in the green tree but this is usually a 20-40 day investment by the time I want to research that next.

As much as it pains me to say : I find getting the three blue techs for faster agent ticking is just way more useful. That being said Sietch detection is really important to not miss an extremely powerful bonus. If you have extra water and can't really afford extra military you can trade 20-30 water to Fremen and get a lot of value for it.

Be aware the local hubs tech is not a very strong bonus. If you have 14 cities that only gives you +2 knowledge.


As I said elsewhere :

The Harkonnen Instill Fear tech is broken. The bonus only applies once for 5% and is supposed to stack up to 25% so I would Ignore this tech right now.

If you rush this tech then you can make it work but you have to ignore pillaging villages early on unless you never want to own them later.

Build order looks like : 2 yellow, 3 green, 2-3 blue, 2 red, 1 yellow, 1 blue, red.

Tech tree is changing next patch so not going too much into details.

Research Changes

The tech tree changed.

You no longer need a tech to boost spice production with a Ornithopter. Just click on the Ornithopter and then click on the harvester. A magnifying glass will appear over the harvester and you get +20% production.

The CHOAM stuff moved to a side branch and is now two upgrades (building unlocked on first tech).

Agents and Operations

What do I do with intel? You click on the "play" button in the opterations tab and you can launch missions. The most basic mission has no infiltration requirements. You basically use it to scout sections of the map. Note I only used this once and instead rely on 2-3 Onithopters to scout the map. As I said in the trading section the amount of concrete you can get from the AI by trading away your intel is almost Criminal.

• Probe a region to gain vision for 2 minutes and all points of interest are revealed (50 intel).

The most basic mission has no infiltration requirements. You basically use it to scout sections of the map. There is an even that says "spy" to get some reward. Do this twice to complete that.


Some of the missions are clearly designed for PVP. One example is the Interdiction Zone mission that stops Carryall traffic. How would you use this? When a worm is spotted you might be able to use this mission to make their harvester get eaten (making them potentially lose 200 manpower).


The Assassination and Atmomics missions are locked behind huge tech requirements. In theory you could skip some of the tech if you get elected to the Eye of the Council. These agents come with a special Council trait. What does that mean?

In this picture you can see that I have infiltration level 3 with only two agents. This happened because she produces +100% extra infiltration. In other words as a single agent she counts as two agents worth of Infiltration. If you have her then you could potentially skip some research as the missions otherwise require tech that lets you put 3 agents on the different Infiltration options.

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This is the other agent I got as a result of holding the Eye of the Council position. I do not know if they have a second trait because I was playing Atreides using the +1 agent trait. I do not know if they are always the same. I have gotten her before through RNG as a regular agent (one trait).

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What do I do to prevent my agents from being captured?

-Don't use agents when there is a resolution active that makes detected agent actions result in 100% capture.

-Don't use missions that are beyond easy in difficulty. Easy missions have a 0% chance to get your agent caught unless a resolution is active.

-Note: the Political Audit and CHOAM shares missions have a 0% chance for mission agent capture.

What do I do if an agent gets captured?

-After maybe 5-10 minutes they will escape. If you dont want to wait that long you can trade with the faction that captured your agent. It cost me 500 Solari to free them the first time and 1000 the second time. At the time I had like 50k in the bank so that was meaningless.

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• What should I do with my Intel mid game?

Queue up a few missions such as : Supply Drop, Gear Sabotage, Poison reserves.

Save them until you really need them and otherwise trade your Intel for more Pascrete. The AI uses intel to spam nearly harmless missions such as using ghost market on a territory that makes +3 income from the ownership bonus. So he spent 200 Solari to gain 1.5 gold per tick during the event duration. Good job. I can't ask for them to be more incompetent.

• What should I do with my Intel late game?

You can turn 50 intel and 10k Solari into 500 Hegemony.

You can turn 50 intel and 300 influence into 30 Landsraad standing (assuming you are not playing Fremen).

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See the Victory conditions for notes on Assassination. Be aware the Harkonnen can launch an uncounterable assassination attempt with no complications by sacrificing an agent.

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• How do I get more agents?

The HQ building : Intellgence Agency gives you +200% agent recruitment speed.
The research : Spying Logistic gives you +100% agent recruitment speed.
The research : Counter Measures gives you +100% agent recruitment speed and +5 max agent slots. Technically you can have 17 agents if you get the council position that grants +2 agents.

If playing Harkonnen spam the Oppression button (responsibly) to keep getting +100% agent recruitment speed.

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Where should I place my agents? There are 4 main places you can place an agent to get bonuses. Each agent gives you a ticking +1 bonus.

If you don't know what to with an agent as a general rule I would suggest putting them into Arrakis. I always put my first agent here because you can start getting a two day bonus to a random tech from some of the random "?" elements on the map. Over time this starts getting worse and worse but by the time that happens you likely dont need the alternative option anyway and reducing research by two days is better than not. The only problem is the result is completely random. Rapid expansion also requires Authority more than anything else. Getting more towns sooner= more money, more concrete, more research so you have a faster growth than the enemy.

Arrakis gives Authority, Spacing guild gives Manpower, CHOAM gives you a base +5 Solari bonus, Landsraad gives you +1 influence production. Overall I find the Authority bonus to be extremely helpful to take over more cities faster.

• Having one Agent assigned to an enemy shows you their production value incomes (+ influence for example) and tells you which faction bonuses they chose at the start of the game. In my Harkonnen game the AI picked Lady Jessica and never used it. Thanks again for being incompetent.

Unless you are trying to assassinate an enemy or use Atomics dont bother spying on them.

• Having Agents in counterintelligence gives you +2 command points per agent. This is not a very good bonus and if I could speak to the developer directly I would ask this to go up to +2 or +3 per agent to make it more valuable.

Having two agents for +4 cap to your command points will obviously be valuable as more army is better than less army (unless you can't afford it). It will also allow you to field more high tier units due to "uneven" number splits where you try to get as many high tier units as possible without wasting command points.

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What does spying on an enemy do?

Level 1 shows you their Agent bonuses. Level 2 lets you see their HQ upgrades. Level 3 shows everything (including supply).

Combat Operations

In regards to unit combat remember to consider using operations if you would otherwise lose. It is important to have "something up your sleeve" at all times. Once you start neighboring enemy factions you definitely should have at the very least one supply drop ready to use at a moment's notice.

If you are winning every individual battle with no or few/ losses you can eventually cause enough attrition that even an Insane AI opponent becomes unable to compete with you despite having lots of cheats.

• You can use multiple operations at the same time. You can combine Cease fire and poison the reserves to kill off an attacking army. The AI usually likes to stand around and wait the timer out.

• If you want to attack an enemy you might try causing a rebellion in their back line so they move troops away from the point you want to take. Or you can attack a front position and cause a rebellion in the back.

• As the Harkonnens you can use combat drugs and then use a supply drop to heal your army. Your army will temporarily be invincible but low health. The supply drop will heal them. Combat drugs would be particularly useful with Militia since they are expendable (especially if you made them half price).

• You can hide a stealth unit in a region where an enemy produces spice and use a mission to stop carry alls. Then you can either hope a worm shows up or blow up the harvester. Sometimes the village is forward and the spice field is in the back. Do not be afraid to raid the enemy's harvester if the village is somewhat out of reach.

• If you want to attack an enemy harvester that has 200 manpower in it you might want to launch a carry all interdiction. As I said before sometimes the village is just too far but the spice field is very close to land you control.

What do Atomics do? If used on a village they will decimate it and kill nearby units. If used on a HQ it will deal 4000 damage; you can use the mission to lower the HQ defenses first to deal slightly more. [You can thank Raton Râleur for the tip about exact atomics numbers].

Combat Strategy

For the most part you only need to guard the towns on the border of your enemy or those that will be targeted by a raid. Once targeted by a raid it will continue to happen until you change that arrangement by getting to 100% relations with them.


I found that a good army combination is 4 units for almost all factions. It might be tempting to blob but only blob if you need to pincer some stronghold from 2 sides. As soon as you capture have one army go back to guard duty.


Rebellions do not follow the same rules and are dangerous because militia forces will not fight the rebellion. This can be a slight problem when playing the Harkonnen if you overuse Oppression.

This game heavily penalizes ranged units that get into melee combat. As such you need melee units to tank and then ranged units to deal damage. As a general rule of thumb any ranged unit in melee combat will lose to a melee unit in combat.


Here's a TLDNR army plan:

1. Build two melee units. When not attacking anything always camp your army in a city. This makes you safe from worms/sandstorms and you are immune to supply loss.
2. Build one armor break unit (repeat this step once)
3. Build one melee+one armor break unit and have them guard a flank side city.
4. copy the first army build on the other.
5. Pillage crappy villages to make money (if atreides you need to pillage enemy owned villages).
6. Build militias and maybe a rocket battery in the places the fremen Sietches attack.
7. Prioritize conquering land with high wind values (more wind= more water; water= life).
8. Prioritize connecting land or every other land so you can move through your territory without worrying about supply issues.
9. Militias and a few "real" units are tough for the AI to beat. It's a joke to hold land. The best militia units are Heavy Militia or Veteran Militia (Atreides only unit). The Atreides do not get +1 militia slots in green tech because they get the veteran militia unit instead.
10. Conquer land that leads to more spice / more wind or more "concrete". The polar cap province might be worth taking if you got the research because it can allow you to build a +50 water extraction building. Always take special research lands.

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Harkonnen example:

Your base tank unit is the trooper and your Gunner ranged unit is the dps.

Start with 2 melee units and take your first two towns with only those units. Anything else will end up costing more upkeep than you need. With the money you saved on a third unit get a second Ornithopter immediately. Scouting is vital and there will be stuff to scout for easily the first hour of play unless you are on a small map.

When you get some spice flowing and have money/manpower/etc then get a gunner. Eventually you will want a second gunner but the one will help you enough to take 3 unit villages.

As a general tip don't just annex any village nearby. Every village you own makes all others cost more. So we need to be picky. If there is a junk town nearby those can be perfect to "farm" for gold. Both the Harkonnen and Smugglers can eventually remove the negative annex penalty for pillaging. Keeping towns that are not worth owning to pillage will make all your Solari problems go away quickly.

At some point you will get to where you need two armies. You could potentially split your army and have them stay in "defend" mode with some militia and maybe a rocket battery. Eventually military bases start being relevant and can be a really powerful investment. Note that buildings such as the military base affect all touching provinces. So if one province has 4 neighbors then it gives the bonus in all of those areas.

For the Harkonnen specifically I like to expand to two troopers and 3 gunners per army. This gives us time to slowly build up to a third army of 4 units. Around this time you should get house guard or potentially Landsraad Guard. House guard gain +5 armor when they are at 20% health.

In all honesty Troopers are more of a dps unit than a tank but they do fine for tanking early game (they do more damage when they have hp missing). They cost 3 command points which is the same as Landsraad Guard.

On that note Every faction that can get this unit by becoming the council judge benefits greatly by having them permanently be part of their army (anyone except the Fremen). So if possible get yourself some Landsraad Guard. Be aware they cant level up but that is fine as they start with good stats anyway.

Overall the Harkonnen have the best DPS unit of all 4 factions as they can deal 30% extra damage to "blobs" of units with aoe damage. That being said other factions have snipers that can do damage at long range. I suspect there will be a strategy for 4x snipers + T4 stealth infantry to gank units in a city then retreat/repeat.

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All the while you are building to this point you are building up your militias in towns that are likely to be attacked. Sit in them with your little army and you have +3-5 units to help if the enemy attacks. As the Harkonnens you need to build Militia in all towns eventually to increase production.

When not playing as the Atreides pillage neutral villages that are "not worth owning" as often as possible when it is safe to do so. This will give you lots of extra money (and concrete if playing as the smugglers). If you pillage a village it will place a penalty on annexation later but both the Smugglers and Harkonnen can turn the penalty into an annex reduction cost. Stop killing us and just liberate us already?

Be careful about attacking Fremen as they have a lot of stealth units and can cloak their army with an operation. The smuggler tier 4 unit is a high dps unit that also has stealth.

You can cheese an army next to a town by attacking the units outside the town. Kill them first and the Militia won't trigger until you attack the city. Missile launchers will attack but why fight five units at once when you can "gank" one unit and then fight the other four units?



This was from the First game I played as Harkonnen. A double or triple city setup like this is an incredible defensive position. You can see I have two Missile Batteries covering the cities.

Each city has 6 militia units and there are two House Huard and two Gunners with very high veterancy level.

The AI was throwing his entire army at this position and never had any success at breaking this fortification. The closest he ever got was throwing a rebellion at 2 of the three cities when this army was pulled elsewhere to quell a rebellion I caused with overuse of the Oppression Mechanic.

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If you have a look at the section where I mention my victory over Insane AI you can find some ways to abuse the AI in combat. Until you play on Insane you can win the game easily with an optimized research path, strong economy and good military defense. Do not have all your units in one location.

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The Arifield allows for rapid movement of units. How does it work Place the building and it creates a circle near the city where units can get on or off transports. Units can traverse from one airfield to another very quickly but it is not free. The building also has pretty steep upkeep costs and requires fuel cells. Your HQ has an airfield by default. I start using this mid game when I have expanded a lot.

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In short : tie up enemy ranged units with your melee. If you have your melee in front of the enemy melee the AI will chase your melee and continue to fight them. While that is going on blast the mob of units with your AOE troops. Note that armor breaking troops always do AOE ranged damage.

If you have never played an RTS before concentrate fire on more dangerous units. Four armor breaking units firing on one unit will kill it extremely quickly.

Politics / Landsraad Regulations

Every few days there is a vote on Regulations. These are modifiers that will affect the next 20 or so days of gameplay.

The sequence of voting events is as follows :

1. If there is a Speaker of the Council they get to look at the three proposed options and potentially reroll one option. If you don't reroll you can save the reroll and it "carries over". I've had 4 rerolls and used several in a row. Anyone who is not the speaker does not even get to see what the options are before one can be rerolled

2. Options that can use some kind of "trickery" use them as the events are proposed to all 4 factions.

This is where the Harkonnens can corrupt one vote option, the Smugglers can use a bribe to entice people to vote on an option, and the Fremen can use their revolt option.

3. The vote is held. All factions get to vote. If you dont have Landsraad rating then you have to use 10 influence to vote.

Every time you get +100 Landsraad rating you get +10 votes. Using the Corrupt ability I was able to reduce House Atreides down to 60 points. I could not get them below that base threshold. I assume the same is true for the Smugglers once they gain +50 points.

House Harkonnen with 400 rating gets 120 votes. House Atreides with 400 rating gets 130 votes. In short +100 points gives you 10 votes.


The Smugglers and Fremen start with about 100 influence and have almost no production of that resource. Until they get a lot of influence production they basically have almost zero vote power. This can be super devastating early game depending on RNG. You could vote for the option for the Fremen base to lose the ability to attack and then go kill it with a very small army. Neither of these two factions has a Landsraad rating until they get to 5k Hegemony.

Early game do not trade these factions your influence and you keep them mostly powerless. Alternatively you could trade them influence on a vote cycle where you dont care if any of the resolutions pass and get 800-2000 of a resource you desperately need.


4. The votes are counted and the results are shown. Obviously you could save the game when the vote has "0 days left" and change your mind about how you spend your points. But the point is to get to where you dont need to do that and always get what you want.

You might notice there are a ton of votes that seem to come out of "nowhere". These come from minor houses. When you have a high Landsraad rating they tend to vote with you.

Be aware the smuggler faction using their bribe ability will swing a large number of minor house votes. Late game I think it's actually easiest to have the strongest vote power with the Smugglers because of this mechanic and their ability to produce tons of influence.

After this part the cycle reverts back to step #1 unless there is no Speaker of the Council in which case you skip to step #2; obviously there is no one holding that position on game start.

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When do elections for special positions come up? It is complete RNG. If you want a council position and one was just taken (other than speaker) I suggest you vote for people to lose all rights. It seems to make positions come up faster.

Note there is a resolution that can come up that will remove everyone from Council positions. It's kind of cheese but the speaker can reroll that option away.

If you are the only house that fills the requirements then you basically get the position by default. One benefit of playing the Atreides is that if you have a high Landsraad standing then you ignore all the other requirements for positions

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Here is an example picture from the same Harkonnen game.

I got the speaker position early on when Blue/Yellow had no vote power. I eliminated Blue so they would stop using their Bribe power.

I got the Judge / Water Seller positions because nobody else met the requirements. I used the corruption option to reduce House Atreides down to 60 faction so they basically lost all chance to beat me in an election. The Fremen have +5 influence production so it's not likely they will get what they want either.

- In this picture there will be a vote in 4 days. The Atreides are down to zero Landsraad rating and the Fremen are locked at that point as a faction.

From what I can tell it is RNG but the minor houses "supposedly" vote your way more often if you have a higher rating.

-I really hope that on higher difficulty the minor houses dont vote for the AI more often as that would be a really scummy thing to do to make the AI "play better". I have no evidence to think they do but it is just a scary thought.

Apparently if you vote decline hard enough you can prevent people from getting a council position even if they are the only option.

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What do I vote to Hurt the Fremen? Vote to reduce influence production by 30 as they have no "free" votes. Vote to increase water upkeep as they get ticking Hegemony points for having excess water.

What do I vote to Hurt the Smugglers? Vote to reduce Influence / Increase Water upkeep (why would you ever not pick that option)

What do I vote to hurt the Harkonnen? Good question - I will get back to you on that.

What do I vote to Hurt the Atreides? They get Hegemony for getting the things they want approved via votes. If you know their production values or know they are fighting someone vote against what you think they want.

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Be aware that Landsraad reputation affects how much Solari you get for Selling your Spice. Apparently very low gives -20% and very high gives +20% Solari.

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What is the best way to use the Harkonnen Corrupt ability?

Vote for something you know a Green/Blue player wants for themselves. You can look at influence values before a vote cycle. As Harkonnen you always know how much influence someone is making.

If there is something in the vote cycle where you really want to vote for two things and are not sure you will get one then you might not want to Corrupt anything.

Voting to corrupt something negative is dangerous because what if two factions vote this on you (and they will if you are "ahead"). The AI will usually vote for architect surveys on you because they want to prevent their HQ from being disabled. Normally this does not matter but sometimes the HQ can help stop a rebellion and you "want" that negative to get 20% cheaper buildings.

Once you start getting way ahead, you can keep using this ability to get even more ahead because the factions with permanent votes start losing vote power.

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Currently the Smugglers are not using their Bribe ability when they are an AI but this will likely change soon™.

Victory Conditions

There are 4 ways to win : Domination (kill enemy base), Hegemony (collect 25k points), Assassination (requires you to run the mission 3 times per faction), Diplomacy (be governor for 60 days).

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• Domination

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The most straightforward method might be to kill the enemy base. Unlike C&C or most RTS games the HQ takes a very long time to kill. It has very high armor and it shoots back with deadly force.

Armor breaking units can lower an enemy HQ's defenses. You can bring two melee units to draw the base's fire and 3-4 armor breakers. Without any healing one tank can cycle for the other. This is why you capture a city close to the enemy HQ. Cycle your melee units in and out of combat while the ranged DPS line blows the base away.

You could use the Defense Sabotage mission against the HQ to reduce its damage but overall supply drop is a lot cheaper and might be more cost effective.

You can also vote for the council reform that makes construction 20% cheaper but prevents their HQ from attacking.

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• Hegemony

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You collect Hegemony when you pay your spice taxes and kill enemies; these gains are permanent.

Every faction has specia means to gainl Hegemony bonuses.
Smugglers - Pillaging
Fremen - Excess Water
Atreides - Passed Resolutions
Harkonnen - Intel spent on Spycraft

Some bonuses to your score are only temporary and are lost if you lose the special condition: You have a bonus to your score if you hold special regions (some are worth 500-1000 points). You have a bonus to your score if you hold a Council Position. You also gain a bonus for High Landsraad Rating.

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• Assassination

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How do I trigger an Assassination victory?

The first two out of three assassinations require two in all infiltration levels. If not playing Harkonnen then the third level looks like this:



After you meet these requirements you need 500 intel and 1k Solari. Then you click the "play" button. This will require the Stealth Gear tech in Blue and Lay of the Land in Green (allowing level 3 infiltration for the Enemy faction and Arrakis).

As soon as you start this mission there can be complications. You have a very high chance an agent gets captured. With the complication comes an event that looks like a red magnifying glass at the top of your screen. You pick one of three choices. One of those can be do nothing and an agent is automatically captured (sometimes there is a third choice).



The other options can be things like pay solari, intel , influence or a combination of those to make the bad things that happen be "less bad". One option is a 20% chance of capture but if you fail then 2 extra agents are captured.

You might get one or two complications from each assassination mission. Note that if you pick an option that makes the operation take more time you might trigger another complication.

Eventually the mission will trigger and you will be 1/3 completed. You need two more successful assassination missions and then you eliminate the target.

The game will tell you that the enemy can do a counter assassination mission. So far I've never been assassinated by an AI but what happened is that this counter mission reduced my intelligence level on them. These intel levels comes back "free" over time so that basically did nothing. They repeated this process several times until I had 3/3 for the mission completed. The devs confirmed the AI does not assassinate - yet.

Using this mission has complications. You can pick one of three choices (Sometimes do nothing is a choice). Quite often this gets your agent captured. You can immediately trade with an AI to get them back (the price is getting nerfed next patch).

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• Diplomacy

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If you have 400 Landsraad rating you can become Governor (need to have 2+ Sietch alliances as Fremen). There is a total land owned requirement and there need to be alliances with 4+ Sietches, Then you must hold the position for 60 days.

If you are Governor and are voted Governor again - decline. It will reset the timer.

Village Planning

Many buildings affect the province they are in and the provinces around them. Spice Silos, Military Bases, and the Maintenance building give a bonus to that region and every region it touches directly. Basically the idea is to daisy chain buildings that give a bonus.

Imagine you have Provinces A-B-C ( the dash indicates a connection). One of any of those buildings in region B will provide the bonus to the other two regions.

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The general strategy I use is to make concrete almost everywhere. Don't know what to make: concrete. Wind traps are best built in areas that have 4+ wind but you sometimes are forced to use a level 2 or 3 wind spot (hopefully replace the building later).

Only make fuel cells when you need more fuel cells. I have beaten medium with every faction without ever using an airfield. Camp your army in a border village and have militia. If you have 4 militia and 4 units can beat 6 attacking units easily. The only problem is when you try the same strategy on insane and your 4+4 loses to 4 units.

After 2-3 villages you probably need some recruitment centers and need some tech buildings.

When possible you should unlock the 100 cost concrete building slot if you can make something there that will give you more money/water/concrete/spice production/research.

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Late game you will not need to make Plascrete factories everywhere. But if you can't decide what to make "early/mid game" in non spice towns the answer is likely research if you can afford it. The upkeep is not cheap as it is -10 per building. You will not finish the research tech tree. You will get to a point where you "finish" the techs you need to win.

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If you need more money then you need to take a new spice field. Part of planning is the idea of "island hopping" so you can keep getting closer to the good map territories. Early on it is a good idea to raid some of the villages around you when you lack the authority to capture them. After you get some tech research The Harkonnen and Smuggler factions can raid a village and make the village take less authority to annex (either negate the raid penalty or make raiding a village fear you until they submit).

Be aware their is a building you can make in your HQ that makes it so every economy (yellow) building in a village gives you a 5% spice production increase.

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If you are playing Harkonnen you get a 5% production increase for a village with each militia (and you have a 10% penalty base). You can have up to 6 militia slots if you chose the correct advisor and have all the tech.

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It would technically be "most efficient" to have maintenance centers be in every other region. Due to the mechanics of the harvester works building I almost always put them in regions with a spice field. The Bug with Spice Silos is now fixed and you can stack a maintenance center without blocking a spice Silo effect (in the past you had to build the silo first to stack them properly).

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Always put your Spice Refinery as close as physically possible to a spice field. If there is a worm or a storm or both the Harvester can sometimes get away in regions where there is a very small distance between the closest edge.

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This is a perfect example of what to do when you have towns in close proximity. Add a missile battery and it will beat rebellions without any effort. It will also prevent/defeat most attacks unless you are playing on Insane where the AI just has dumb combat buffs. This works even better with a "triple town" setup.



The missile launcher on the right is a slightly different color because it is inactive - rebellions disable them. But the neighboring town can defeat this uprising without any effort. As I have said elsewhere Rebellions will not let your militia fight so you must have some method of dealing with them.

Setting up one flank with missile launchers like this makes defending far easier as Fremen because they cannot use their worm to respond to attacks all the time because they can only have three thumpers.

I usually do a 4 - 4 unit split on my army early game. Then when possible I have some reserve troops that stand around waiting for a rebellion but could move up to assist in a town defense without using an airfield/ worm.

If not playing Fremen you can leave two veteran units (like say troopers you use to perma raid as harkonnen/smuggler) at your HQ for this purpose.

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If Fremen didn't have enough of an advantage they get an extra building slot in a village with an allied Sietch. I hope this becomes a "bonus for everyone" eventually.

Beating Insane AI

So far from what I can tell the AI has combat buffs on Insane. This really bothers me. Near infinite resources is one thing, knowing where my units are is another. The second he has unit buffs it really make me like the game a whole lot less.

How did I do it?

I chose a medium map with Hegemony/Governor victories turned off. I turned off worms, storms, and raids. I left assassination on because right now the AI doesn't seem to try to use it on you. Also the Harkonnens can use Assassinate with only two levels in every infiltration and that saves a huge amount of time due to how research scaling works.

I played a 1v1 against the Smugglers as House Harkonnen. I picked the spy drone and extra militia. Corrupt was not going to be an issue and 2x drones gave me tons of intel to have a supply drop ready very early.

As soon as I could I got a combat drugs mission ready. I only needed the drugs once really but ended up using them twice. If you use the drugs with a supply drop it will make your units much less likely to die (they can tick for damage when the drugs end and die even if in a town).

The first big engagement largely decided the game. He attacked me with a huge force and my militia+ my small army enjoyed some combat drugs with a supply drop. After that I was playing whack a mole raiding him, blowing up his harvester and liberating his towns. There is no way he was paying his taxes for the last half of the game - and yet he finished with 200 house rating. The Space Taxmen did not show up to attack him either.

After harassing him for over 2 hours he started expanding on the far side of his base. This gave me time to attack his only spice field as well as one of the cities touching his base. By that point I was on 4 spice fields and he only had his starting field. He did end up taking the south field but I took it about an hour later.



This was a somewhat unusual map as it allowed for a very "one sided" push with my army all in one spot.

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Why a medium map? Small maps have the expansion directions often blocked by special tiles that mess up movement. Three times in a row I had to take a "trash province" to get my second spice field or research paracompass (yuck).

Why play against the Smugglers? Their army has the weakest stats/mechanic right now. The Smuggler army does extra damage based off the enemy having low supply. This basically does nothing when they come attacking your city.


Unfortunately while unlocking this achievement I discovered that the Instill fear tech is not stacking five times like it is supposed to; it only stacks once and that really messed up my tech progress.

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I started a game and saved it. Then I looked where the AI was and loaded the save back. I also put my first spy on enemy infiltration to see which councilors he chose; the AI is cheating so a little bit on my part is only fair.

Do NOT trade your intel to the AI on insane. If you do then they will spam missions and it will make things so much worse. Unfortunately this can make your start much slower than what you can do on medium. Lucky for me the AI only had one spice field for a long time because I stole the one in the middle. I expanded within one tile of his base and left my army there the whole game.

I almost always put my first agent into Arrakis to get extra Authority. The tech unlocks are most valuable early on because you will always unlock the first 4 techs. I got pretty lucky with my tech unlocks as only one or two ended up going towards "dead tech" that I was never going to research (field logistics). Getting more land sooner means you have more manpower, water and concrete.

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What research path would I suggest you use? Go down to the third yellow tech to get Spice Silos. Then you need military bases for manpower and annex cost reduction (actually I suggest getting silos after you get the red/green unlocks). I unlocked instill Fear early.


If you don't necessarily need anything the right side of blue is good to unlock spies faster. During a 50% red research regulation I unlocked the House Guard and supply base (so I could build the HQ building).

I suggest building the building for +12 command points way sooner than I did as my army was 2x troopers, 2-3 gunners and two drones for way too long.


I did get voted in to the judge position but never bothered with those units. The AI was mostly spamming wreckers and snipers with the occasional melee blocker.


Several times during this game I got an army wipe on the AI because he moved his army through mine. He had some distant goal that he thought was super important.

The AI is also kind enough to let you walk over to his towns and position your melee units on top of his ranged units. Then you can have all your units attack and absolutely obliterate him. I would much rather him not be so absent minded and not have extra defense/attack stats but we don't get to pick and choose.

I also got to wipe the AI's army about 5 times because I saw he was going to attack an expansion city thanks to my Drone Intel. The AI ignores you and attacks the city so you can kill his dps without getting attacked.

By the end of the game I had two troopers and at least 4 gunners that were the max xp rank. I had one elite house guard and another that was close.

The probe droids are "ok" to assist with combat if you can abuse the AI by kiting one unit. WIth two droids you can have one get chased by a melee unit while the other shoots the target. Move your droid being chased in a circle around the one that is standing still and shooting. Do not let the melee unit get too close to the shooter or you will need to change roles.

If your Gunner ever gets into a melee and you want them to shoot you can move them next to a trooper and move the gunner past the far side of the trooper. You can do the reverse if your trooper is about to die to an enemy melee unit.

The drones were most useful for letting my army run away and heal while the drone captured. The best part is that taking land from enemy keeps giving you intel while they are in enemy territory.

Once my Ornithopters were done scouting I left them in enemy territory to collect intel. I told one to stay on auto recon for when new map elements appear. At that point I got rid of the drone I had left and got some more units.

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By the end of the game the AI had only made three buildings (I think one of each color). I had finished my HQ (even removed a building once) and was going to assassinate him but an event came up to turn off his base weapons so I decided to end things in a base assault. He never even fielded the T4 unit which made things a lot easier for me as elite gunners absolute shred his T1 melee.

I had thought abut triggering the event about an hour earlier but I am glad I did not. When I started attacking his base he kept spamming units out of thin air. I was using supply drop and immediately starting a mission for another. I think I did three or four in a row before blowing up the base.

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The easiest way to win would likely be assassination. I had the first 1/3 complete and when my agent got captured I immediately traded the AI 1000 Solari to get him back.

I could have also gotten a Hegemony victory as I had started the AI of resources and he was not getting kills on my veteran units (but as I said earlier I turned this off). The AI finished the game under the 10k threshold but that kind of makes sense as I was disrupting his spice payments and I was the only person he could fight.

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None of my Sietches were worth allying. I did have quite a bit of extra manpower from trading with them and that was very useful even if I got it somewhat late.

Events

Every so often after an election you can have events spawn in the upper left hand corner of the screen. Most of the events are very clear in what they do. You have 20 days to get a bonus from green events or prevent a penalty from red events.

Here is an example event:



Most of the time I am forced to do the right side option to give all my units +100 xp. You can build a unit, delete it, and repeat if necessary. Veteran units are often worth the cost.

After several games I finished the left side option. It gave me a T4 House Guard at no cost that had max Experience.


The smugglers get black market events and often can have 2 events running per election cycle. The black market is purely optional with no "do this or lose something" like the red missions.

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There are events where you can get an extra agent. This does not "reset" your timer for getting another agent. These events allow you to get agents even when you have 15 agents.

Here are two examples of special agents you can get. I probably should have cropped those pictures to hide their effects when they are placed in different areas. Only the text in the box by their picture is the "base" stat.

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If you have an event that says make 2 statecraft biuldings : you can build one and delete it in a free slot and repeat that step. Selling a few hundred plascrete for an agent is totally worth it. Think of how much plascrete you can make in ~10 minutes.

Tip section

• When scouting a region with your ornithopter manually at the start of the game you can mouse wheel into the "strategic" map to see where the zone boundary.

• Your spice harvesting slider will be set towards way too much storage on game start. Initially you always have a good tax rate so storing it first is not optimal. Just remember to change the slider every time you pay taxes. You must check this slider when you get things interrupting Spice Production.

• Local Hubs is generally not worth making use of early game. It can be somewhat interesting if you use it on say a water extractor at the pole. The reason to unlock this "somewhat early" is to unlock a 30% authority bonus building.

• You can press "i" to see how many build slots are filled in a village. You can press "x" to see airfield range. You can hold control and press a number (not on number pad) to group a selection of units.

• You can press F2 to turn off the interface (if it is gone that is why). F3 disables unit banners - you dont want to do that.

• If you have two units in melee combat vs two melee units and you move your unit "through or past" your own unit both enemy units will focus on the other unit. This can be used to change which unit is "tanking".

• Why should every faction except Fremen start with two melee units? Because one ranged and one melee will lose a unit vs two melee unless your micro is incredibly strong or your HQ is helping the attack. You will note Fremen cannot afford two melee units of T1 because this unit has stats and population cost more like a T4 unit.

• Rebels are spawned by unrest or a mission called crowd manipulation; They spawn on your city and your Militia does not fight them. They immediately try to liberate that particular city. They have an ability called panic when under 50% health. This gives them -30% power and +3 Armor. You can often kite them away from the city to "decap". With Fremen T4 unit you want to get the rebellion units to half health one by one then start killing them.

• What are Drop Boxes? They spawn on the map like ruins or crashed ornithopters once every 20 days if you have a certain tech. You can use an agent to get ~100 influence or 500 Solari by interacting with a unit.

• The Ruins and what not on the map are how the AI get a resource advantage early on. I prefer days of research. I go Arrakis agent first because of this as well as more authority. The crashed spaceship is the "biggest prize" as it gives 5 days of research for three random projects (agent) or influence and Landsraad standing with a unit.

• I am playing the game with Worms off right now because even with auto recall on you have a lot of tedious play to tell your harvesters to stop being idle. Maybe I will keep worms on when playing Fremen.

• Sandstorms passing over a village or your HQ disable the buildings inside but wont kill troops sheltered there. It is annoying that it can make an economy problem trigger but thats part of RNG. I find setting them to low more interesting for interrupting play less.

• The tech "Stealth Gear" gives units in a region of your operation : tactical gear. This is a 10% power boost.

• Fremen and Atreides have no methods for reducing pillage penalties. As such I found it best to take towns or liberate them (unless it is a town you never want to own).

• Statecraft research does not affect "Green" research. With 53 research and 27 techs unlocked (5 Green if that matters but I doubt it) Political Science would take 29 days to research while spectral Imaging would take 41 days. Sand Diplomacy would take 46 days while Border defense would take 64 days (note this is a higher tier of tech). This was playing the Fremen using the Bazaar for super research the whole game.

• The Fremen are massively overtuned at the moment. They have the best T1 and T4 units. They have the best armor break unit - does extra damage vs armor that is also a stealth unit. They can get a support unit to walk unlimited distances (and it can deploy to heal/hide units). They dont require an advisor to ally with Sietches and can ally w/o owning the region. The Bazaar building is wickedly OP giving them the fastest tech or even better units (+4 defense). You can change from one to the other mid game. They can have their spice economy set to 90 sell/10 store the entire game. They dont need fuel cells to make Ornithopters. They can pick an advisor to start the game with a building that gives 20% resource per village. They are the only faction that can have 6 building slots (if there is an allied Sietch in the area). Their tier 4 harvesting tech does not require manpower but instead gives +10% harvesting rate per allied Sietch. They can make a building to increase unit power by 5% on Geothermal Energy regions (this stacks) but spice production is reduced by 5% per building.
  
  
• What are their downsides? No Landsraad rating meaning minor houses vote on your side less. They cant get Nukes. Their Hegemony win is very slow late game but kinda fast early game. They can travel to places offensively but can have problems defending due to thumper generation being limited and somewhat slow. They cannot tap the water in the pole. They suffer slightly in the voting system early game. They get the least number of HQ buildings (but still have the fastest research potential). They have no mechanic for "raid cost reduciton/forgiveness". They cant hold most offices.

• You can blow up buildings in a city while you are raiding it if it is owned by another faciton (including missile launchers).

• To get the true friendship achievement just save the game and give one of the AI all your resources mid to late game.

You can trigger a Fremen "harvester" to get attacked if you fight near it. I suspect this will be a way to drain Fremen Manpower in MP. Question : do Harkonnen drones fighting attract a worm?

• I hope this gets patched out but the following is a possible start. My troops won the fight and then died due to no supply. If I had been able to take the town it would have cost more authority due to the greater distance from my HQ. If this happens just restart.

Harkonnen Game Example

Let's take a look at this game to examine some decision making in action. I chose Feyd and Raban for my councilors. Map conditions were : medium, low storms, no worms, high raids. Game was played with no save scumming.

On game start I made 2 troopers and one ornithopter before unpausing. I had my scouts reveal all the towns around my base first as well as their special properties. The first Melee fight was vs two melee units. So I had my troopers attack the same target until one died. When one died, I walked my injured trooper behind my other trooper momentarily so the other started taking damage and had the first re-engage (to minimize recovery time).

On game Start my Spice field was NW of my HQ. so I took that and then I had three towns to choose from.

These two towns are right next to my HQ. This is fantastic and terrible at the same time. It means I never ever want to own them but they will be good places for me to raid when I get my Fear tech unlocked.

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This is the town I took first (technically second after my spice field). Why?

• It has a +1 manpower produciton bonus.
  
• It has 5 wind
  
• It is right next to the Spice field I took first - meaning I can use one army to counter rebellions in both provinces.

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Since the town I was about to take was right next to my spice town I used Oppression on my spice town (after changing my tax rate) after it touched the ground and was harvesting. I immediately started making a Plascrete factory.

Normally I would not do this except they are very very close. Oppression gave me enough Plascrete to buy the 100 building slot and I made a maintenance center. Why? Because it will reduce costs for both towns slightly and I wont need water for a while.

I immediately bought 4 militia for my Spice town to protect it from raids and increase production. Before the second town was captured I put 50 MP into the harvester to have 1 production.

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As soon as my first town is finished I make a Plascrete factory. Note: At this point I have 0 MP. Around this point in the game I offer the Atreides a research agreement. More than anything I want him to have a ticking -1 authority. When the factory finishes I will make a Recruitment center. As soon as I get MP (some people call manpower plates) I will fill this town with 4 Militia. I will not upgrade this town beyond two slots right now. Why? So I can oppress it for less MP.

I will intentionally cause rebellions later in my non spice town. Why? So I can farm influence/mp/plascrete as well as maybe level up my troopers a little bit.

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My first Agent goes to Arrakis.
My tech research is set to : 3 green (instill fear)

Normally I would next research :2 yellow (modular parts) but there is a spice field on the far right wall that will most likely require survival training (1 red) for +50% supply. I decide getting 1 red tech early is worth an early second spice field. I use my Arrakis agent to get one tech boost and it shaves 2 days off my first red research.

I make a windtrap in my Spice town (since I want it to be 5 yellow eventually) and I start making a gunner as Instill Fear finishes researching. I have one revolt and have oppression stacked twice.

I let the oppression penalty wind down as I get ready to take the new spice field (one stack remaining).

I do not use any Influence on the first vote. The AI almost always "blows their load". I did not find a crashed Ornithopter in time to get the Intel from it (even with 2 agents) so I could not use corrupt- missed the deadline by 1 day.



Spice town has 3 units : 1 melee 2 ranged. My supply is nearly gone by the time I get to the village so I have one trooper go in pehaps a little too soon. Each trooper ties up a ranged unit. Gunner attacks the snipers. Mid fight my gunner gets aggro from the melee. I move him through my other melee and my second trooper tanks the melee milita. My gunner resumes firing on the ranged units. Fight ends with first trooper having 98 hp and no supply. A very close call, but a calculated risk. By the end of this fight my Oppressions have all reset, and I have several nearby towns to raid. I do not oppress my MP factory right now because I want to make some quick cash raiding.

My wounded trooper still dies so I make another. I get an event for pillage 2 villages for +1000 gold. I'm about to be rich. I realize I forgot to make a fuel cell so I buy one in my first town for the 500 slot. I make a plascrete factory in the new spice town and max out the militia.

I expand my MP farm to have a science building and begin raiding.

While the gunner is finishing the raid capture - the slightly wounded melee troopers return to HP to get just a few extra ticks of healing.

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I get my third agent to Landsraad for influence production and reveal a Sietch. My science building finishes and I immediately oppress it as I know my army will be done raiding soon. After two raids and buying a third Ornithopter I have 1.6k Solari. I still have one town to raid. I build a gunner so I can potentially split my army evenly.

I opt to use my corrupt as everyone spent most of their influence in the first vote. I take a gamble that I can vote for Authority for myself and apply a Plascrete penalty to the Atreides. There was a regluation put in place to reduce influence production so a revolt or two should give me plenty of vote power.

Modular parts finishes and I switch to 2 blue research to get faster spies. I fill my harvesters and I am down to 15 manpower. Time to Oppress.

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Northwest of my spice town I capture this town as I Opress my "Manpower farm". I build a wintrap in my second spice town and a wind trap immediately in this new town. there is a regulation coming up for increased troop cost. I want to build all the army I will need before that finishes voting. I also want to start trading 10 water for 10 Solari. I will eventually put an airbase in this town (not yet).

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I win the +30 Authority and the Atreides get hit with corrupt. I begin upgrading my manpower farm to fill out its slots and setup the new town to become a MP farm. I return down south to raid my 3 "piggy bank villages". I am nearly 2k Hegemony and I want to make an early building - since I forgot to make units before the double cost reform finished.

I trade with the Fremen to buy all their Plascrete. Note the Green up arrow for Solari and the down arrow for Plascrete. In short this means they dont care about red and really want green. This means I get a much better deal.

I discover another Sietch near a spice field south (+20% Solari Produciton) so I begin trading with them. In the meantime I get +20 Solari Production. I opt for a Research Center in one of my solo slots.

I have an event that will give me 1k Solari if I finish 2 research projects - so I queue up Defense Systems after Spying logistic finishes (Delaying the second perk for spy generation). I have almost no influence but most everyone is in the same situation. There are two "buff" options so I decide to corrupt one anyway and try to get the -50% construction for myself. I build an Embassy to help get more influence but mainly for the research buff (will demolish later).

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Harkonnen Example II

To review my tech build so far is :

Instill Fear (3 green), Survival Training (1 red), Modular Parts (2 yellow), Spying Logistic (2 blue), Defense Systems (red), Counter Measures (blue), Gridex Plane (yellow).

My HQ has a research Center in one solo slot and an Embassy almost finished in another slot.

I won the 50% construction and hit the Atreides for another -30 corruption. I will have enough time to finish two buildings with the 50% discount.

I made two more gunners to guard the north and made an Airfield on the northwest expansion. My army is 4 gunners and two troopers total.

The ingame date is : 22.03

My next research will be Ground command for +8 command points and then I can get Support Structures to unlock the potential for +12 units - which will also allow for a completed red building Trifecta in the HQ. I decide to change to Economic Lobbying so I can make a 2 slot yellow first (choam+harvester works) and then red research.

My towns are all ready to raid again so I will hit them and expand to the southern spice field now that I can hold what I had and still have a forward army. I make the intelligence agency building at 50% cost.

My 5th agent goes to Space Guild so I can make Supply Drops.

I sweep the loot towns and then I take 3 towns south with all the Authority I was holding. But I am in last place for Hegemony. Overall I have the most land and hold 3 spice fields.

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Things got a little hectic at this point as I now bordered Blue and Yellow. I started raiding them with my squad of 4 units.

I fended off blue once with a supply drop right as he attacked the militia and killed everything except a T1 unit.

I raided yellow a second time and killed some of his units.

I built the Admin Hall, Interrogation center, and just started the Command post.



This is a screen shot before a lot of that happened - but Blue is immediately to my south.

Now that the Interrogation center is researched at some point in the near future I will destroy the Embassy. I should have already done that to get my Military research faster- whoops.

My main force is 4 gunners and 2 Troopers. I have 2 backline gunners that are chain raiding those three provinces still.

I have 2 sietches at friendly - one is allied (+20% solari production) and I dont wish to move an agent for the other.

I am researching Call to arms to get my T4 unit.

I am one town away from Blue's HQ - almost took it but I had a raid come and blue counterattacked causing some issues.

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Is this the build order you should use every time? No. Honestly it felt a little sloppy and I was under military cap at the end but I had plent of intel for supply drops and corrupting the entire game.

I forgot to up my military cap soon enough and the judge position passed without me being able to grab it .This position is essential to the Harkonnen right now as their T1 unit is not a good tank. You have way too long a stretch to T4 before you get something that doesn't crumple when it gets attacked aside from a gunner.

I have asked the devs to move the Interogation Center unlock tech to counter measures. Its current placement is about trading with SIetches. The building has nothing to do with that and instead is about spying. Not needing to research two blue techs would be such a huge boost to this faction that depends so heavily on T4 right now because two of its units really can't be used.

[Embuscade]

Will you now be editing your guide with the arrival of version 1.0? There are several of you proposing guides, perhaps you could get together to create one big guide to govern them all?

[glythe]

A quick note : The guide is somewhat out date as the game is going through a series of random patches. Will devote more time to this guide when the changes slow down a bit.

[bERt]

thank you very much !!! really helpful

[JNasty]

great job, very helpful.

[glythe]

It's funny but I ran into my first real problematic bug just now. I had my research tree break and become pink boxes.

In short : smugglers got buffed this patch and Fremen got nerfed.

[Farside]

I see your novel is expanding. Good job.

[glythe]

BIg patch today - with some exciting new changes to 10k Hegemony bonuses. Will update guide later this afternoon.

Atreides: Permanent prod bonus upon being elected for a positive resolution
Harkonnen: Can convert captured agents
Smugglers: Can build Underworld Headquarters in enemies’ main bases with new buildings
Fremen: Can build special buildings in allied Sietches

[glythe]

I am so glad that anyone has been helped by this article.

I can tell you from experience that the extra agent in Arrakis is appealing but with the current tech restraints you need to wait for it.

You need faster agents (blue), you need econcomy (yellow), you need Fear (green) which is also economy but is mainly for authority reduction.

Extra green techs really end up being painful.

[Farside]

I understand that any strategy is based on map size, faction, difficulty, choices made and ebb and flow of the game. Knowledge and insight of those that go before is golden.
I started a new game as Harkonnen on hard with all the defaults on. Kind of sucks.

Understanding the mechanics of the game makes it managable. Playing dune is like juggling on a tight rope. The reason I mention this is because I don’t want players to be discouraged when things go south.
The game is still in early access and does need improvements in serveral areas as you have pointed out.

I tried lay of the land as my third green to see what would happen. I liked the idea of the extra agent in Arrkaris, and 20% authority. Bounced down to Composite Materials, Modular Parts over to Surival Training and then over to the Intellgence tree. This worked well for me. I am struggling with some aspects of this particular playthrough the info you shared has made the task managable.

[glythe]

I have been messing around with the research order knowing full well it will absolutely change next patch (because we saw the tech tree changes when they accidently released the patch prematurely. For example you won't need structured warehouses to unlock the building it currently unlocks (and the building will change from 30/60 to 20/40 Solari income).

For Harkonnen I actually have been going 3 green first - in part just to see what happens. Mainly this is because the fear tech is bugged if you raid before you unlock it later.

What I can honestly tell you is that "perfect build order" is really going to change from map to map. That's probably not what you want to hear.

They apparently dont want you to get most of the tech and that feels kind of dumb to me.
There's also a problem with the tech cost scaling and no way to make green research cheaper (I assume this will be addressed).