Stop Messing Up: A Crank's Guide to not losing in Dune: Spice Wars (1.0 Version!)

I made a guide called How Not to Lose at Dune: Spice Wars. I promised the Internet that if I got 250 ratings on that guide, I'd make an update for the 1.0 release and include House Ecaz and Ix. If nothing else, I'm a Fremen of my word. Here's a guide on how to not lose in version 1.0.

If you're new to this: I'm too cranky to care about your opinion. You're right, I'm wrong, but who's coming here to read a guide and who already wrote one, eh? I don't know how to win. I haven't invested 1000 hours in this game. I'm just here to point out the stuff you need to know to not immediately lose 30 minutes in like a total chump. If you like figuring out that stuff yourself and losing over and over to stuff you could've learned in a 10 minute read, why are you even here? Go faceplant.

So you played the Early Access version? Good for you.

Early Access, eh? No Corrino or Ecaz, you say? Back when the deep magic was written? Waited until the 1.0 release for them to stop adding those newfangled dang mechanics all the time? Yeah, me too. Here's some stuff you need to know not to lose:

-PLASCRETE FACTORIES ARE NOT FREE. They were once, yes, but no more. Look out. Similarly:

-NO MORE PLASCRETE UPKEEP. You can no longer bork your economy by accidentally building things that eat plascrete. Buildings now cost Solaris to upkeep instead. Joy.

-FINANCIAL VICTORY *WILL* SNEAK UP ON YOU. It's easy to miss, but pay attention and eat your fair share of veggies. I'll detail it later.

-THE HIGH END MILITARY UNITS ARE A LIE. They're for funsies and if you really need to turn extra resources into a military advantage, but there's still nothing quite like dropping an intel surprise in battle. That said...

-SUPPLY DROPS ARE NO LONGER AN AUTOWIN. They now only affect Supply instead of healing your troops midcombat, which means they work like they always should have instead of just making magic happen.

-NOBODY GETS SPECIAL HEGEMONY BONUSES. Oof, this is a big one. Factions used to get extra Hegemony for doing certain stuff like pillaging villages, and often that was why you did those things. Time to break those habits. Sorry.

-ASSASSINATION WORKS DIFFERENTLY NOW. It just... does. I put in a whole section on it.

Section 2: OK, so you've just started.

You did the Tutorials, right? Please don't tell me you wanted to read a guide where someone explained the basics in extreme detail. Who does that? You want details on Atreides, Fremen, Harkonnen, Smugglers? I wrote up stuff on them awhile ago, most of it's still good. I'll cover the changes a bit later on.

Let's pretend you did that, got confused, and wanted to know why the Fremen suddenly showed up at one of your villages with more troops than Taylor Swift has fans and whomped your gomp with holy righteousness. Now you're down a village, you lost all your militia, AND all your troops are dead. Good luck coming back.

Generally, you messed up in one of several possible ways:

1) You built just enough military to take out a neutral village.

Guess what? The neutral villages are MEANT to be pushovers. You're not an amazing tactician for bringing 5 units to a village with 4 militia, right-clicking, and winning a battle. The militia are just there to die heroically and buy you time until your real troops get to that village, not defend against forces strong enough to contest for the sovereignty of Dune itself.

Get more military when you can afford it, don't leave Manpower on max. Actually, don't leave anything on max. That's important enough to warrant its very own number.

2) You left a resource on max.

You absolute dingus. Why did you do this? Have you not played strategy games before? Oh, right, real-time strategy is for super nerds and a great RTS only comes out every decade or so. You're too young to have played Starcraft 2 and listened to Day[9], so now you've got to listen to me: Unspent resources are WASTED resources. There are only two acceptable reasons for being above 100 in something: Either you're waiting to afford the next big part of your strategy, or you can't spend it until you get the other next big part of your strategy.

If you let something build up to the point you can't earn anymore, it means not only did you fail to use that resource doing something cool and getting some advantage, but it also means you're now earning ZERO of it. All those expensive buildings you built to create more Manpower or Plascrete? Now they're eating Solari and doing zilch.

Got too much influence and nothing good to spend it on bc you hate all the Council options? Sell it to someone else for cash. Got too much Intel? No you don't, you just have Supply Drop operations or Infiltration Cells you forgot to purchase. If your intel operations are maxed out and you need need NEED all of them for whatever big scheme you got going, sell your Intel to someone else. This sucks a LOT, because you're basically giving them what they need to build Infiltration Cells to assassinate you with, but you'd rather have something you need and someone who's grateful you gave them Intel they wanted than wasted Intel and someone who's maybe choosing who to assassinate and remembering that you haven't even tried to be their friend even once.

HOW DO I KNOW WHAT MY MAX IS? I KEEP GETTING DEVELOPMENTS THAT INCREASE THE MAX HELP OOF OW shut up shut up shut up. Mouse over any resource in the game, it'll tell you your stocks. Set a 10 minute timer if you have to, and check each of your stocks every ten minutes. Then every five. Eventually you'll get a better feel for where your maxes are, where a 'high' number is, and what a 'safe' number is.

3) You forgot to make a friend.

If you don't like saying hi to your neighbor by shooting them in the face, pick a Truce with the first enemy faction you find. You can always betray them later, but a good solid Non-Aggression Pact will not only slap them with some penalties for breaking it off, you (and they) will get Landsraad Standing every Council meeting.

4) You forgot about airfields.

So you figured out Authority is good, you annexed a bunch of villages, and you have your standing army clumped on the northern edge of your territory. The Fremen show up out of nowhere on the southern edge because they got Ornithopters and they can see you're way out of position. They know that by the time your Goof Troops walk all the way down to South Boondocks, they can have your village liberated and be out of there in time for spit coffee with the Fedayeen.

Airfields every three villages and one on the border of your main base. Sure it's expensive, but so is losing an outer village.

5) You annexed the Polar Sink and didn't build Missile Batteries.

OK, this is an easy one to mess up, but any Special Region is a little vulnerable to this if it's near enough to someone else. Everyone wants the Polar Sink. It's near enough to EVERYONE because it's in the middle. It's a huge benefit, and ever since the 70s boardgame with Sting on the cover, the Polar Sink was the center of Dune's hotly contested map (you like those puns? You would, you dingus), people have equated controlling the Polar Sink with winning the game. Be prepared to fight for it if you took it. Someone else will liberate it just so you don't get the benefit of it.

Section 3: OK, you've gotten out of the starting gate.

OK, so you got to 10k hegemony about the same time as the others, and you've got absolutely no clue what to do.

First, pause the game. You can pause in single player. Pausing is good, pausing is lovely, pausing is a crutch. I spend like half the game paused in singleplayer. I'm writing this guide while listening to the cool background music of Dune: Spice Wars because I'm writing this while the singleplayer is paused. I'm surprised you're not playing the game in singleplayer reading the guide while paused right now. In fact, do it right now. Open the game up, get into a single player game, and pause it.

There, doesn't that feel better?

Get over the real-time "I gotta learn everything fast" idea. If you're only reading the tech tree when it's time to research, you're messing up. If you're only reviewing trade opportunities when someone offers you something, you're messing up. If you only look at your advisors at the start of the game, and you only look at hegemony bonuses at 10K, you're messing up.

Stop messing up.

OK, now that things are paused, take a look and make your best guess and what your opponents are trying to do. They're up to something, I guarantee you.

WHAT'S HARKONNEN DOING? Harkonnen is trying to assassinate someone. If it's you, maybe spend all your Intel on Cell Search to find the Infiltration Cells. Probe Setup doesn't do it. Maybe get some agents making you Intel. Keep an agent on Harkonnen if you don't already, it'll get you more Intel and you'll feel smarter.

WHAT'S ATREIDES DOING? Atreides is making nice with villages and trying to snatch up a Charter so they can probably become Governor or some nonsense. Don't fall for it. If they're winning resolutions, vote for them for everything bad that happens. Every resolution they lose is one they can't win. Don't trade Influence to Atreides.

WHAT ARE THE FREMEN DOING? They're trying to fight someone. Hope it's not you. If it is, you'll want defensive Ornithopters, Listening Posts, and Missile Batteries because the sand ninjas will show up out of nowhere uninvited.

WHAT ARE THE SMUGGLERS DOING? They're just building Underworld HQs everywhere, and I do mean everywhere. They're going to make a big play midgame but if they don't run away with it they'll fall off fast. Maybe don't worry about them as much as the others unless you're the only one close to them.

WHAT'S CORRINO DOING? Corrino is going to start giving Sardaukar to someone they've got a Truce with and buying up some serious CHOAM shares. Hope it's you, otherwise you're gonna have to start fending off Sardaukar. Get those defenses prepped.

WHAT'S ECAZ DOING? Ecaz is going to be leveraging their Garden Resort expansions into some seriously spooky military actions OR building a crap ton of Masterpieces and trying for a Hegemony win. Every Masterpiece they're building and every village they're not annexing is a useful bit of economy they're not working on. Liberate those new neighbors before they can Masterpiece up or else you'll suffer a lot of weird losses.

WHAT'S IX DOING? Ix (Vernius) is choosing a tech to disable and wrecking whoever threatens their network. They've also filed some patents by now, and which patents they file will tell you which area of the tech tree they plan to leverage to win. If you've Truced with them, you have a limited window to benefit from their MANY developments but sometimes that just means they eat you last. They've got a Nodal Network, which is a fancy way of saying you can completely wreck their day if you find the right village to liberate behind or near their front lines.

OK, so you're still paused. You can take a good guess at what's going to happen over the next hour or two, and you might just be right. It's OK if you're wrong, it just means you have to change your plan. But you NEED a plan to win.

A Plan? My Plan? OUR Plan? THE Plan....

So: maybe you're up against Smugglers and Ecaz, and you're truced with Ecaz. Ecaz will never betray you, the lovable hidebound bastards they are, so they're probably going to pick a fight with the Smugglers to gain Hegemony from their Champion. The Smugglers probably know this, so they're going to try to build UHQs under you to fund their fight with Ecaz. This means they won't want to take over your villages, which means you're free to help Ecaz wipe out the Smugglers with even a modest offense... but then what?

Check your options. You *don't* want a military conflict with Ecaz, because their Champion will be hopped up on victory and likely steamroll you. That leaves assassination, hegemony, governorship, and finance as viable alternatives to victory.

Assassination: Ecaz will be spending their Intel on military maneuvers and while they might expect you to Infiltration Cell, they'll be expecting it more of the Smugglers who are great at that sort of thing. The Smugglers might even try to assassinate Ecaz before Ecaz can wipe them out, so Ecaz will already be running Intel for Cell Search.

Hegemony: This is only an option if you can stall each other out. Ecaz steamrolls significantly from wrecking the Smugglers if their Champion survives, so don't expect this long, drawn-out kind of game from them.

Governorship: Ecaz will have Landsraad Standing from your long truce with them, so governorship will be difficult since you will just oppose each other at every turn.

Finance: This may be your best bet, since military costs lots of Solari in upkeep and you can just be merrily buying shares while Smugglers and Ecaz go broke fighting. It can be as slow as Hegemony, but if you've bought enough shares, you'll be able to play a defensive game that costs you less than Ecaz, so they'll never catch up even if they sink a few of your villages over the course of the endgame.

To win with a financial victory, you'll be focusing on economic developments, getting as much spice as possible while getting just enough military to defend yourself and just enough Intel to block an assassination.

WHAT IF IT DOESN'T WORK? Maybe Ecaz abandons their military plan and tries to match you on finance or go navel-gazing with Masterpieces, going all kinds of econ to buy CHOAM shares or get Landsraad Standing to get a Governorship or whatever it is they do with all that art. If so, their Masterpieces won't get them anything for Intel, so keep assassination as a backup plan, building Infiltration Cells with spare Intel and switching to Intel if Ecaz starts buying up major CHOAM shares.

Boom, now you've got a strategy- a plan and a backup plan. That will help bring your development choices and building choices into sharp relief.

The economy, stupid: Spice

Previously, the economy was just something that happened. Now, it's something you MAKE happen.

Every real-time strategy game involves an economy. Thankfullly, in Dune: Spice Wars, economy is very simple. You got Spice, Solaris, Plascrete, Water, Fuel Cells, Manpower, Authority, Influence, and Intel. That's it.

HE WHO CONTROLS THE SPICE CONTROLS THE - yeah yeah, Spice matters, sure. But basically Spice will get you Solaris, which you can get more of anyway, and which will buy you anything else in the game you want. Also, Spice fields are rare and limited. Some factions care more about them than others. Some, like Ix and Fremen, care less. In general, if you don't have a healthy influx of Solaris, get more Spice, then move the Spice/Solaris slider up and down until you're back to making enough Solaris to both keep you happy and keep the Imperial jerks off your back. Sure they'll always want more Spice, but you'll also always be making more Spice, right? As long as you're generally expanding your territory, making control of Spice fields a problem, and keeping your attention to a minimum by playing it Safe, not Greedy, you'll be OK, right?

PRO TIP: DON'T BE GREEDY. You may think you're fast enough, that you've got the APM and snakelike reflexes to grab your harvesters way before a sandworm can hit them.

You're wrong. The most scarce resource in this game isn't Spice, it's attention. You can only pay attention, real close attention, to one thing at a time. You have two eyes, but they focus on one thing unless you've got a special superpower. Most people can't multiask, they simply think they can multitask. Big difference. Recognize that your attention is limited- you have the genetics of an ape from the savannahs and you're hardwired for watching for lions, not pixels on a screen. In playing a real-time strategy game on a device that didn't exist for 99.9999% of your genetic lifespan, you are already wayyyyyyyy out of your element.

Don't make it harder on yourself. Choose safe mode. One less thing to pay attention to.

Send an ornithopter. Play it even safer. You won't notice the missing Solaris because you'll be making way more than when you thought you were cool enough to dodge a sandworm in a harvester that has the handling of a base-model Jeep Wrangler from 1960. When you can win reliably, maybe consider forgoing ornithopters or practicing greedy mode. Until then, just don't lose.

Still the economy, stupid: Solaris and Manpower

Solaris are money. That means they can be used to buy goods and services.

That also means they're worth absolutely nothing in your bank account. Spend em. If you're getting Solaris faster than you can spend, go buy some CHOAM shares. It may not win you the game, but it'll keep you from losing.

Most things need upkeep in Solaris. You can't pay a soldier in water. Make sure you're at a comfortable income- +100 is very nice, +200 is even nicer. If your Solaris ever go negative, you are in big trouble and you need to either dump troops, crash some Ornithopters, abandon a village, or otherwise cut costs. Cutting costs is for the suckers in retail hell. This is the one exception to not losing: Once you're in cost-cutting mode, all you can ever do is lose less. We're here to not lose. Don't cripple your economy by going into the red.

Sure, you can win by tactically going negative temporarily if you've got a big enough stockpile. But why did you have a big stockpile, you dingus? Spend the Solaris. Leverage it for other resources. Get plascrete factories and build economic buildings to get you more of everything else.

Worst case scenario, if you're unexpectedly high on Solaris, you're low on something else. You need to fix that FAST. It's probably plascrete, because otherwise you'd be filling all your villages to the max with buildings to maximize your economic productivity. Go find someone who has a crapton of plascrete, probably the Fremen, and trade them your Solaris for a healthy chunk of plascrete. Use the plascrete you bought to build a chunk of buildings so you don't have to go do that again in three cycles. Congrats, you've fixed your economy.

MY ECONOMY IS GOOD, EVERYTHING IS GREEN- NOW WHAT? Astaghfirullah, you're more helpless than a dog in a onesie. Don't do the dumbest thing and stop building your economy. You always need more economy. Find a village with space for a building, pay the plascrete to open the building slot, build that building. Which building, habibi? Easy, the one who has the smallest green number. Build up the smallest surplus until something else is the smallest green number, then build that. EXCEPTION: Water and Fuel Cells are misleading, you have to think of any positive water over 5 as a waste and any fuel cells over 9 as a waste since you can build a Dew Collector to get 5 water easy and you can build a fuel cell factory to get 10 fuel cells whenever you need them. What do you mean, you can't build a fuel cell factory whenever you want? Take over a fuel cell village before you need it, ya hamar. I can't play the entire game for you, figure it out.

Manpower is a sneaky resource- it is the most likely to max out when you're not paying attention, since during peacetime it doesn't feel like it's worth investing in. This is why you spend all your unspent resources: If you're not using your Manpower to build crew on harvesters and hire enough troops, someone's going to consider you an easy target. That's why the Fremen snuck up on you and raided your villages. If you've got enough of an army you can be anywhere at once, nobody will mess with you. When a cocaine-addled bear attacks the campground, you don't have to be the fastest, but you never want to be the slowest. Don't slack off on Manpower. Buy harvester crew, buy militia, buy troops. Don't be afraid to risk troops fighting an enemy faction if you've got the Manpower to spare. If you punch them in the mouth first, they'll pee their pants, overreact, and send a revenge force... but you knew they were going to do that, so you've got your Missile Batteries and refreshments ready for round two. Be aggressive, just like Grimes says.

Yep, still the economy, stupid: Plascrete, Water, Fuel Cells

Plascrete is good for one thing- making buildings. How much do you need? More than you have. More than that. Nope, still more.

You need 500 to build a Main Base building. Always be building in your main base. Just like resources, a Main Base that's building nothing is wasting an opportunity. Main Base buildings take so long and provide such huge bonuses that they should always have something cooking. If you can time your Solari and Plascrete production that you have 500 Plascrete right around the time your upgrade completes, you'll probably win.

Water is important for lots of buildings, but excess Water doesn't help you until you're the Water Seller or maybe you have Lingar Bewt as Smugglers to sell Water for you. This means don't build more Dew Collectors unless you absolutely need them, or unless you're going for the Water Seller charter. (Why, when there are so many other ways to get Solaris, unless this is your only option?) If you get behind on Water, you're going to run out of Solaris trying to keep up with the Water, so just- just- don't do that. Ya dingus.

Fuel Cells used to be more important bc they powered Ornithopters, but now they're just nice to have around. If you have any positive, you're probably fine- you won't run into a heavy need for them until lategame, and by then you should have enough opportunities to build Fuel Cell Factories that you won't care. Not worth talking about.

Maybe you're not stupid by now, but in case you are, the economy: Authority, Influence, Intel

You can tell what I'm going to say, right? Don't slack off on this, don't max out. Clearly, you can't really go negative on Intel or Influence without trying real real hard, so don't think of these in quite the same way you would Solaris or Plascrete. +100 Plascrete is normal and healthy. +100 Influence is banana pants shoes on head crazy.

I NEED MORE AUTHORITY WHAT DO? Stop being friends with people, it hurts your authority. Send agents to Arrakis, you'll eventually tire of it but early on you won't.

I KEEP MAXING OUT AUTHORITY WHAT DO? Authority is pretty much only good for annexing villages, so go send 4-5 troops or 1 hero + an elite unit and go take a neutral village somewhere. Once you take a village, peep what the next Authority amount you need is, and plan to take a village right around the time you get within 10-20 of that Authority. By the time you take out its defenders, you'll have the Authority to annex it, probably. If you're maxing Authority mid-late game, you maybe just ran out of villages to annex. Move those agents from Arrakis to somewhere more beneficial.

I NEED MORE INFLUENCE WHAT DO? Build villages next to your opponents or special regions, build Listening Posts, send agents over to spy on the Landsraad.

I KEEP MAXING OUT ON INFLUENCE WHAT DO? You can always spend influence on Charter Priority, and it's usually a good idea if you're the only viable candidate for a charter. In a pinch, you can sell it to others, but be ready to lose the next Council election to whoever you sold it to.

I NEED MORE INTEL WHAT DO? There's a whole 'Factions' tab on the Espionage screen. Pick someone you're not best friends with, send agents over to them. Trade for it, plenty of factions don't care about it and will gladly trade for something tangible like Solaris or Spice.

I KEEP MAXING OUT ON INTEL WHAT DO? When in doubt, pick an intel order you don't mind spamming. Infiltration Cells is acceptable if you're not truced with someone. Keep two or three combat or combat-response operations prepped and ready. Leave Order is fun in a pinch and only costs Intel.

Landsraad Standing: You forgot one

Sure, all this economy is fine and well and good, but what about Landsraad Standing? It's got a number!

I didn't forget one, you forgot one. Go stand in the corner. Landsraad Standing isn't an economic thing you accumulate, it's an abstraction to represent how much the Great Houses love you. High standing gets you a better CHOAM (Spice-to-Gold) exchange rate, a higher max Influence, and more Influence per turn. Low standing gets you invaded by Imperial Sardaukar, if you mess up enough.

If a political victory isn't part of your plan, it's OK to not sweat Landsraad Standing. A low standing won't kill you directly, it'll just make it difficult for you to stop someone else from winning politically. If someone gets ahead politically, just murder them, with troops or assassins. Don't stand for that nonsense.

Oh, you WANT a political victory? Gross. The nicey-nice way to victory is really only achievable by wrecking others' standing and influence so they can't stop you. And they will, I guarantee, try to stop you once they realize how close you are to winning the Governorship or whatever. Your best hope at a political victory is to appear unthreatening, like a boy band. Sing, dance, make people happy. Give them stuff. Help them with their wars or whatever. Agree to the science agreements, the trade agreements, whatever. The more agreements you have with someone, the harder it'll be for them to turn on you without losing Landsraad Standing, which will make it harder in turn to stop you politically. The more truces the better.

You also have to win at politics before someone else wins at hegemony, so keep an eye out for that. Find sneaky ways to harry someone that don't involve outright war, because there goes your Landsraad Standing. Assassination is fine, funding someone else's war against them is fine, deploying Intel operations to ruin their day- all well and good.

Victory Conditions and How to Slow Them Down

So yeah, avoiding a political victory kind of involves taking them out, but what about the other victory paths? The worst thing that can happen to you in Dune: Spice Wars is watching someone slowly creep their way from 29.5k Hegemony to 29.6, then 7, then 8, then 9, then win, even as you obliterate their holdings and send their people to Paradise.

Hegemony is the victory that wins when all other victory conditions stall out. Hegemony is the engine that stops Dune from being a 12-hour stalemate. You can't stop a Hegemony victory at 29.5k. You stop it at 15k, by slamming them so hard they never make it to 20k.

If you're friends with someone who's got a 5k Hegemony lead on you, stop. They're not your friends, they're your future overlords. Behave accordingly.

Same goes for finances. If you've got a trade agreement with someone who has twice your CHOAM shares, cut it out. You're funding your own loss.

Avoiding someone else's military victory is relatively straightforward- don't get wrecked. This may mean adding more Missile Batteries, training more troops, getting more military developments, or some combination of the above. Don't be the first to lose your Main Base, obviously. You'll know when it's your turn to tank up because either your outskirts will get invaded or someone else will lose their Main Base to an assault. If it happened to them even while you were there trying to run your little schemes to slow people down, it'll happen to you next, and there'll be one fewer faction to interfere with their steamroll.

Again, you can't really stop a victory. You can mostly slow it down. Ideally, you slow down your opponents long enough for your plan to work. You did make a plan, didn't you?

What plans are right for me?

Obviously, Dune: Spice Wars is a game with lots of paths to victory. I'm not good enough to be an expert about that. I just want to not lose. Thankfully, knowing which faction you've chosen goes a long way towards not losing.

The easiest way to lose with any given faction is to disregard what makes them good. Any faction can with with any victory condition, sure... but some are easier than others, and none can win without leveraging their unique advantages.

The Atreides can annex a village without having to send troops. This means two things: 1) You can annex a village without having to tell others you're going for it, and 2) You don't need to put your military eggs in one proverbial basket. You can play good defense while still expanding. If you get enough Authority, sometimes this means you can effectively annex two villages at once. Be aware, and play accordingly. Eventually Atreides can leverage these villages into whatever kind of dominance they like, but their bonuses to Landsraad Standing will generally push them towards a Political Victory. Failing that, moving the villages to get more Solaris than Influence can help them sneak in an Economic Victory if nobody else is in that running.

The Fremen have all kinds of Stealth, which compounds the attention problem human players have. Against the computer, it may not seem as helpful, but Stealth is practically a cheat code against mere humans who are already struggling to watch two things at once. If you create a diversion with a feint on one side of the map, they may ignore your actual attack for a whole minute or more- more than enough time to free a village and run. The Fremen also don't need Airfields because they have Thumpers, and don't need to build Refineries to harvest Spice. Use all this stuff because Political and Financial Victories are practically impossible for you, meaning you're either going to wipe everyone else off of Dune or win by Hegemony, which really just means slapping down whoever seems ahead until you win because you annexed the most villages.

The Harkonnen Oppression mechanic generates production when used and per active militia but also Rebels for you to fight and gain experience from. Between pillaging villages they have no intention of annexing and suppressing rebels, Harkonnen can gain a frightening amount of combat experience without ever leaving their borders and gain enough production if unchecked to speed through the early game to get a significant advantage midgame. Harkonnen can mess with the Council enough to get a Political Victory, even if a military or Hegemony Victory is off the table because they're just too busy fighting their own demons to dominate others or have the patience and territory to win by Hegemony. Harkonnen is also the only faction likely to pull off a victory by Assassinating their last opponent, which is best done immediately after said opponent finishes off the third-to-last opponent standing with a Harkonnen-supported military.

The Smugglers thrive on Underworld Headquarters, and should essentially be spending every spare Solari in service of getting more. Conquering villages you have a UHQ at is basically sacrificing the UHQ, so military conquest is a great way to bite your own tongue off. Stick to secretly buying out CHOAM, just because you get Landsraad Standing later on doesn't mean you'll really be able to buy your way into a Political Victory and you don't actually want to eliminate your opponents so Military is off the table. Hegemony is a nice backup but again, you just won't have the territory to stick it out long-term unless you luck into annexing and holding several Special Areas against all comers.

House Corrino NEEDS a useful pawn to grant Imperial Mandate to. If everyone hates you or sees you as the best target to aim their Mandated Sardaukar at, you're in big trouble. You need at least one person you're Truced with, preferably everyone once you've got most of the nearby villages you want. Also, deploying a 2nd Main Base is your single biggest economic advantage. The enormous costs of building 2 simultaneous Main Base upgrades are why you get extra Village building slots. Do it anyway. Hegemony is ironically your best best, as you're unlikely to be able to dominate everyone else militarily unless you can somehow luck into destroying a faction while you have the building that gets you a 3rd Main Base for that. The 3rd Main Base compensates for having to kill your favorite pawn once they're the only other faction left standing.

House Ecaz's ability sounds like you want a million Sanctuaries forever. You actually just want Sanctuaries early on boring villages (i.e., villages without a +X per X building quirk) to annex the villages you want, and a Garden Resort is for building on the edge of your territory to reach out and grab more of the villages closer to the center with the Prideful Crown development. Also, once you have a Champion, you want to be fighting with that Champion all the time. Fight villages you don't intend to annex, fight raiders, fight anything and everything. A Champion that isn't getting Trophies is being wasted. So many Ecazi developments are defensive in nature because you're meant to grab way too much land early and spend the entire midgame trying to hold onto it. Learn to love holding your ground against the tasteless hordes. You can reliably go with the Military victory if your Champion gets enough trophies, or you can go with Masterpieces and try for Hegemony/Political. Financial is a longshot unless you really get lucky with which villages you get to annex.

House Ix (Vernius for you unread plebeians) NEEDS the networks up to do anything. They DON'T need to immediately take the spice fields nearest their base, because of the way Tethered works. Take something like +Plascrete production, and make the spice field your 2nd or 3rd pick. Your economy will thank you later. Also, people will BEG you to Truce them. You share all your knowledge with whoever you Truce with. Don't just give it away, and withdraw your allegiance the second it helps them more than you. Someone who has become dependent on your allegiance can be absolutely crippled by your sudden withdrawal, especially if they're relying on your economic developments so they can go military or expansionist. Since your expansion is limited by your network, you'd rather not win via Military or Hegemony, which means you're either leveraging your developments to get to an Economic or Political Victory.

House Corrino: The Empire, now with ancient Christopher Walken

House Corrino is the power behind the throne, and everyone thinks they're on the throne. People want you to be on their side, and guess what? You are! You can be on everyone's side... except the people who want to stop you.

Diplomacy is, in many ways, about carrots and sticks. If you want a donkey to go somewhere, you either dangle a carrot in front of them to encourage them to go somewhere, or you hit them with the stick. The Imperial Mandate is both the carrot and the stick: You offer someone an Imperial Mandate for signing a Non-Aggression Pact with you (since it's a huge pain for them to get out of it once they do), and the Imperial Mandate is free troops that give that faction a bunch of gold for every kill. Now they have an economic engine that needs to shed blood (the carrot), and they've already promised not to shed yours (the stick that guides them away from you). Who do they hit? Not you, so who cares! They're going to take that advantage and ruin someone else's day. Rinse and repeat a couple times, and eventually every faction besides you has been set back by the Sardaukar. Now you're ahead simply because everyone else is behind, and if everyone is Truced with you, nobody's going to decide to take you out. If they do? Well, you can just let everyone know their forces are engaged with yours instead of defending, and the Imperial Mandate is there to help anyone who wants to help themselves to your aggressor's villages.

The challenge is that you're not really getting very much done yourself. You can't stretch very far thanks to the high Authority cost of stuff 2 distance away. That's fine, because you can build a second Main Base on a neutral or Corrino village. You should choose a neutral one you don't like, since the Main Base is going to land on whatever village is creating it. It can be as far away from your Main Base as you like, but the further away it is, the closer it may be to someone else, so make sure you're not on top of a friendly neighbor unless you're willing to wage a bitter turf war for the rest of the game.

Once you build that second Main Base, most of your resources are going to building upgrades on both those buildings. That leaves you precious little for aggression, research, or anything else until they're both done, but hey, nobody should be paying attention to you anyhow. Keep them occupied with each other until you're strong enough to really throw your weight around. If you're picking on people early, you're creating enemies who will do wild things like go out of their way to nuke you later. Don't goad the Atreides into dropping the family atomics on you. Be nice until your grip on power is secure.

A lot of your unique techs, like Integrated Costs, give production bonuses for being adjacent to an Imperial base. Your second base counts as one of those, so don't skip those.

House Ecaz: The Fancy Dancers

Ecaz is art. Ecaz is beauty. Ecaz is grace. Ecaz will lay your soul to waste.

They sound like a bunch of artsy fartsy hippies at first, building Sanctuaries and Masterpieces. It's all a facade. WHY are they building Sanctuaries? Because they feel only they are fit to defend the Fremen. WHY are they building Masterpieces on Dune? Because only they can create beauty here. Ecaz is deadly, but it's a protective kind of deadly- instead of coming into your space and taking your stuff, they're claiming all the space and punishing you for trying to even the odds. They're only peaceful as long as they have more.

In game terms, this means you have to plan your early game a little more carefully. The good news is that Deep Deserts, the edge of the game map, and other uninhabited territories do not count against 'Surrounding' for the purposes of getting Sanctuaries- if there's a village on the edge and you have two neighboring villages on either side of a Deep Desert, it's still your Sanctuary. It doesn't have to be literally surrounded with pink, only the regions that can be.

Remember, you get Authority from Sanctuaries. This doesn't mean you're giving up the opportunity for villages to have a nice Sanctuary, it means you're using that village to buy more villages faster. So few things give extra Authority. Make the most of it. Don't Truce with anyone (except maybe Ix) early. You've got the military to hold them off, don't be afraid of anyone. Get the expansion techs early to make the most of this Authority boost, and guess what? Your Manichean Propaganda tech punishes people who try to take advantage of you, to the tune of 25 Influence per attempt if they wipe out all 5 of your Militia.

Your Garden Resort, similarly, is your forward outpost for even more aggressive expansion. Prideful Crown, available right after that Manichean Propaganda, is a hefty Authority discount on top of the earlier discount you got. Sure they get knowledge per adjacent Sanctuary, but with that Authority discount you can make a Sanctuary out of a village a little further ahead. Get a Supply Drop, make the extra trek to a village 2 spaces out. You'll be glad you did.

You can't betray a Truce, but you can diplomatically end one. Don't be afraid to stop being friends with people. What are they going to do, attack you? Idiots.

The non-obvious thing about Masterpieces? They don't need any upkeep at all. They are the cheap spare thing you build if you don't know what else to do, and especially when you can benefit from the 'extra quirks' that Sanctuaries can provide. Anything that says something like "+3 Solari production per Economy building?" If you get double the Quirks from Sanctuaries and 2 Quirks for your Masterpiece, you're getting +12 Solaris per Economic Masterpiece for no upkeep. Not shabby. Put em everywhere. Put em in your back villages near the Sanctuaries. Put em in your forward outposts next to the Missile Batteries, your enemies will suffer a loss of Authority *and* Landsraad Standing if they get destroyed. Every frickin where.

Also, the non-obvious thing about Champions? There's a DAMN good reason House Ecaz has so many defensive abilities. You invest so heavily into your champion that if you send them out somewhere dangerous and a SANDWORM shows up and just EATS your Champion Hero? Yeah, you kinda just wanna fold right there. Don't make that mistake. Keep your Champions on the defensive, not in the Deep Desert where they can get absolutely wrecked.

House Ix: For the last time, it's Ix, not Vernius

House Ix was way too cool to say and type, so they used House Vernius. Sometimes life's not fair.

You know what's not fair about House Vernius? You have to lose Landsraad Standing before anyone even has the chance to care about it.

No, seriously- setting up your Nodal Network will cost you Landsraad Standing. Apparently these nerds don't want a second Butlerian Jihad or something. Why do you care about the Nodal Network? Well, it only HALVES YOUR PRODUCTION to have unconnected villages. On top of that, Nodal Networks insist on not being *too* connected. You can only build out from somewhere that has exactly one connection. This means you make kind of a spidery stretched-out empire, with no comfortable core. Your territory is difficult and annoying to defend. Oh well.

It's fine, though- having a Non-Aggression Pact with someone will get you 5 Standing every Council meeting, so you can earn it back. Good thing EVERYONE wants to be on your good side. Wait, that's only a benefit you get with the first espionage technology? Better get that if you want to expand, I guess.

As with any other faction, your alliance must be earned, not just handed out like the least satisfying size of candy at Halloween. (THAT'S NOT FUN SIZE. FUN SIZE IS BIG ENOUGH TO KNOCK ME UNCONSCIOUS IF YOU HIT ME IN THE FACE WITH IT WHILE TRYING TO TOSS IT INTO MY PILLOWCASE.) Ideally, you befriend someone, then pick the technologies that will help undergird their sprawling empire... only to yank it back at a crucial moment, rendering them un-teched, overextended, and doomed to choke on their own debt payments.

When is a good moment? Well, when their armies are knocking on someone else's Main Base, for one. Otherwise they'll use their troops to aim for you next. (Thpoilerth: They were going to do it anyway, you're just making it harder on them.)

Anyway, that's way later in the game. Most of what you need to know not to lose as House Vernius is simply that others will want to truce you so bad that you can friend your way out of most problems. That and you don't have to control Spice villages to farm from them. Oh, and you can build thinking machines of your own to spy on people for a very low cost and a bit more Landsraad Standing. Oh, and you can then give people Harmless Gadgets to spy on them more, which costs them Landsraad Standing too.

Vernius, like Corrino, does a lot of little things. Instead of adding up to an increase in conflict, though, Vernius' multiple bonuses all add up to a huge increase in Knowledge, which makes you a very desirable ally even if you do tend to stick people with Harmless Gadgets that are not harmless At All.

Buttbuttination: When censorship goes wrong

OK, so you wanna murk someone from the safety of your own home. I get it.

Thing is, as soon as you start the Assassination mission, they probably find out. They then get to play the most aggravating game of Mastermind ever, since the game will force you to do a Cell Search intel mission to find the cell, then EITHER:

-Tell you absolutely nothing
-Tell you you discovered a cell *near* one of your villages (meaning it's in a region adjacent to that village)
-Tell you discovered a cell *in* the village and squished it.

Also, the progression speed of the Assassination attempt slows down significantly if the target has Counterintelligence agents assigned, which they will. The only way to fix that is to send an Assassin to the Infiltration Cell, which resets the Progression rate to 100% and also costs a lot. You're gonna wanna have an Assassin on hand at all times, since it takes almost no time at all for the rate to drop to 50%.

The mission will also cost more and more gold and plascrete as time goes on.

Some factions, like Vernius, can take advantage of the Infiltration Cells. This means it's sometimes nice to have the cells around even if you don't plan on the cold, cold murder of an ally. They may be planning your death, and you may find the fastest way out of it is to kill them before they can kill you.

The other aggravating thing about Assassinating someone is that they will start doing LOTS of Counterintelligence the second they suspect anything. This means they can capture your agents up to three or four times while you're building up enough Information to bury your opponent... and if you don't have a ton of agents just lying around, be ready to pony up a LOT of resources buying your own people back. If you try this when you only have exactly six agents (one for each of the required Information levels), then you'll have to buy them back almost instantly to reassign them before the Information level drops back down. This will create an annoying back and forth chase to get to Information Level 3 on their House, in particular. The only good news here is that once you've got the Assassination project started, you don't have to maintain the Information Level... but it helps, since you get bonus Intel for each agent in that House, and you'll need the Intel to keep planting Infiltration Cells if one gets destroyed.

If you're feeling super ambitious, you *might* start shifting agents your next Assassination target... but there's a reason why they have the increasing costs associated with it. You probably won't be able to afford back-to-back attempts unless you're so wealthy that you could do whatever you like with it anyway.

Wait, you forgot the core factions!

No I didn't. I covered them pretty consistently in the first one, and... what? They changed a few things? OK fine, I'll go check.

House Atreides: Still the goody two-shoes. Now has a fun mid-level expansion tech, Cultural Assimilation, which makes Peaceful Annexation even cheaper? Just means you're expanding even more. You play Atreides if you want all the villages, and maybe to be friends with the Sietches if you go full Muad'Dib. The Air Network tech they haven't so you will build Airfields, it's so you don't accidentally wreck yourself by expanding everywhere and NOT building Airfields. You can safely neglect your military since you will pretty much only be using it for defensive maneuvers; treaty with everybody, get crazy Landsraad Standing, and get yourself voted something dumb like Governor.

House Harkonnen: Still all about Oppressing at least one village 100% of the time, preferably a spice or Solari village. More militia = more Oppression, which is why their +1 Militia slot tech is hiding over in the economy techs. If you can get the right village to Oppress (and if you can get the Sietch murdering technology and start Cleansing), you can make more money than Mr. Bean and just buy all the CHOAM shares, which is a nice alternative to being a sneaky assassin.

Fremen: Not a House. Still all about picking fights, liberating villages, or hoarding water, depending on your playstyle. If you don't want me at my GET A RECYCLING PLANT ALREADY, you don't deserve me at my DEATH FROM THE SKY THANKS TO RECYCLED THOPTERS. Don't forget about the Thumpers, they are your built-in airfields with a bonus Big Oof to your opponents when the worm lands in their soup.

Smugglers: Not a House. Still would rather build an Underworld Headquarters in everyone else's backyard than bother running viillages themselves, which means you're mostly staying out of the expansionist race and sticking to Solaris and Water almost exclusively. You are trying to become the Water Seller and get Solaris for excess Water, right? You are trying to take the Polar Sink, aren't you? Sheesh did you even play this game the first time round? No, right? OK then don't shed a tear that Smugglers no longer hit people right in the supplies, supplies are less important now. What's important now is getting a Wrecker and kiting the almighty Feyd out of your enemies while a pack of your Snipers one-shot whoever got close. Always hilarious, and if you leave combat, you can always just go back in and let your Snipers have another one-shot. 3 Snipers can generally one-shot any starting enemy unit if they're taking their first shot of the combat, so that's fun to keep in mind. You can still Poison the Reserves if you want, but it's going to be harder to find a good fun time to do that.

Multiplayer: Wait, where did the Pause button go?

Multiplayer Dune: Spice Wars is a VERY different animal. Remember what I said before about how important it was to pause and evaluate your situation and find a strategy? All that goes out the window. Your game of careful planning and thoughtful, strategic choices just became a mad rush of things happening way faster than you were used to. Council decisions will show up in a flash, sandworms will eat troops you forgot you even had, and an ambush from enemy troops will absolutely wreck you if you stopped out to grab a Coke.

This, friends, is the real game. Everything else up to this point was merely training for this.

Not losing in multiplayer is a matter of having your early game down cold. If you're still in the 'exploration' phase of the game where you're wondering what that technology does, what it means to have a Brainwashed Agent, or how you should open... play multiplayer anyway! The game will just end faster if you don't know what you're doing, which is a brilliant way to both practice your early game, let other people feel good about being experienced Dune: Spice Warriors, and spend less time noodling around in a mid or endgame that you won't see in multiplayer anyway.

If you've got your early game down cold, there will come a point in the game naturally where you've got a minute or so between activities, cooldowns, and your Main Base upgrades. If you feel like you can catch a breath? That's when you go check out your opponents. Pick just one, look over their stuff, click their diplomacy icon and see if they have any truces yet, then get back to your own stuff and click all the next things. Then pick someone else. Once you've had a chance to glance at everyone else's stuff, that's a good time to pick your main plan and backup. It may be before 10k hegemony, it may be well after, whenever you manage it is fine as long as it's before 20k hegemony. By then, someone is running away with it. If it's not you, you're probably going to lose.

Your best bet when falling behind is to simply assassinate whoever's taking over someone else's stuff. Dune doesn't really do the kind of snowballing where you get huge advantages for taking over other people's villages. They've got a game plan that involves anything but Intel, so they are NOT prepared to have to fend off a bunch of Agents while also investing heavily enough in military to break through someone else's defenses. They'll either break off their attack in order to fend off the counterattack, or they'll say 'F it' and destroy a Main Base while they can. If they succeed, you WILL be their next target, so you might as well start researching those military developments you neglected earlier while you wait for the assassination to work. You won't be able to destroy their army unless they really overextended, but you will be able to defend yourself long enough for the wetwork squad to get the job done, and that's the same thing.

The End: Here faster than you thought.

It's over already. 250 ratings doesn't get you as much as it used to, I guess.

If you died in some spectacularly terrible way or failed so dramatically that you just gave up on that game, be sure and let me know so I can help you figure out what you could've done differently. Or so we can all have a good laugh at your misfortune.

If you found some information in this guide that's obsolete, congrats. 5 Internet Points for you. That and $1.50 will get you an Arizona Iced Tea, depending on your state's tax situation.

Remember, occupying a foreign region is almost always a bad idea. This is just a video game. In real life, the locals know the land better, can make more interesting food and drugs out of the local edibles, and you'll live a lot longer as a welcomed guest. Who knows, they might even share their spit coffee with you.

Bonus section: I'm bored, what else should I play? (i.e., where else can I read super cool guides about weird video games?)

If you really love board gamey video games like this with entirely too many avenues to win and funky mechanics, check out Solium Infernum.

If you like the 'SURPRISE TRAITOR' part of Dune: Spice Wars but you wish it was more like Among Us and cold instead of hot, give Project Winter a spin.

If instead you just want to smush armies against other armies and pretend like you're playing the mythical sequel to Heroes of Might and Magic III (the one with the overland map and the improbably huge armies clashing on hexes entirely unlike the overland map), then go play Hero's Hour.

Still here? Looking for some bizarre Internet achievement? OK, if you basement gnomes give this guide 500 of the same award I'll ask for a recommendation on which game to make a guide for next, and the first commenter after I ask chooses the game. Unless it absolutely blows, in which case I'm covering Niche. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

[knigt76]

that was hilarious. and informative. but hilarious. XD

[DexDearborn]

Thank you for putting this together! Especially as someone coming back from the early access before the new factions

[Best Cat Dad]

Jesus, we've got a new chapter of Dune saga here. I enjoyed the "Plan" part almsot as a plot for a book.