Dune: Spice Wars today received a new batch of free content with the deployment of Community Update 4, which makes two more factions playable in Conquest mode.
The ones in question are the Smugglers and Fremen, with the latter bringing a “unique twist, focusing on the liberation of the planet rather than the traditional Conquest gameplay.”
Dune: Spice Wars Community Update 4
Three new battles, two for the Fremen and one for the Smugglers, are also available in the mode. Furthermore, achievement hunters can work towards unlocking seven new achievements.
Dune: Spice Wars’ Community Update 4 also introduces six new map types in both single-player and multiplayer modes.
Highlights include The Great Flat, described as “a vast expanse with extensive Deep Desert.” Players spawn far from each other, expansion is harder to pull off due to the large distances between regions, while maintaining mobility and claiming water sources are vital for anyone chasing victory.
Another large map, The Populous Basin includes “numerous small regions, ideal for building strong defensive clusters of villages.” Players spawn near each other and close to the center, putting them in a great position to expand outward.
The remaining additions are detailed in the Steam post dedicated to Dune: Spice Wars’ CU4. A new statistics screen is also available now in the main menu, detailing our performance with each faction.
On top of these features, the 4X RTS has also received a slate of balance changes and bug fixes, as per the official patch notes:
Balancing
Conquest
- The “Water Gift” secondary objective has been reworked to be slightly more challenging.
- It takes 8 -> 10 controlled territory to validate the conquest objective, in great houses conquests.
- “Spying Initiative” bonus gives +5 -> +2 max agents.
Common
- The “Insider Trading” development gives 1 -> 2 influence per share sold and removes CHOAM selling cooldown and max influence during the landsraad council.
- It is now possible to steal a nuclear warhead by annexing the village where the silo is built.
- 30% CHOAM bonus gives +100 -> +200 max influence.
- The resolution “Landsraad Support” gives 2 -> 5 landsraad punishers.
- The resolution “Spacing Guild Resources” gives +20 -> +10 armor to affected Main Bases.
Atreides
- Rangers have 1 -> 0 armor and 18 -> 17 power.
- Heavy Weapon Squads have 1 -> 0 armor.
- Gurney gives +5% attack speed per level to ranged units instead of +1 armor
- Gurney does not reduce the attack speed of his target anymore.
Harkonnen
- Iakin Nefud rework:
- When Iakin reach 0 health, he steals the health of an ally ground unit at short range, instead of dying.
- Any unit death at short range gives +1 power and +0.5 armor.
- “Cannon fodder” skill:
- Level 1 ally unit at short range permanently becomes Cannon Fodder, and suffers the following effects:
- Loses 10% of health every day.
- Cannot regenerate health in villages or gain experience.
- No Solari upkeep, and no Command Point requirements.
- Half of the unit cost is refunded upon death in combat.
Smugglers
- Main Base Extension “Hidden Explosives” no longer reduces the main base armor, instead it makes it unable to attack for a day.
- The “Bounty” resolution modifier gives 20 -> 10 solari per vote placed on a resolution.
- Lashon Hara gives 1 infiltration level in a faction every time a successful trade takes palce with that faction.
- Lashon Hara produces 10 -> 15 solari and 1 -> 2 influence par infiltration level in another faction
- Staban no longer gives any solari.
Fremen
- During Wormriding, sandworm moves at a speed of 15 -> 25.
- Jamis trades 10 authority for 10 -> 30 manpower.
Corrino
- Irulan rework: Every building can be constructed one more time anywhere on the map.
Ecaz
- Can break truce, with a +100% penalty on standing loss and no damage bonus.
- Perfected units cost +50% -> +100% but take +100% -> +50 % longer to recruit.
- Perfected units now cost 100% more to heal.
- Whitmore skill consumes Champion’s Trophy every 5 -> 4 seconds.
- Can no longer build its Garden in a region where hostile units are present. Building the Garden also interrupts any unit that had the order to attack it.
Vernius
- With the development “Automated Defense”, Neural Node attacks with an attack speed of 10 -> 6.6.
- Nuwa and fight-engineers no longer leave repair mode when all drones at range are repaired.
- C’tair rework:
- +1 gear slot to every unit, but using that slot increase the unit’s requirement by 1 fuel cell.
- Ally non-mechanical units at short range are stealthy.
- C’tair is stealthy.
- “Evasion” skill: Next attack executes, and removes C’tair from combat.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed building refunds when canceling being incorrectly counted as resource gains, which led to potential exploits with resource gain multipliers.
- Fixed a bug where a harvester on a spice blow could transmit a maintenance-center-like buff to the next region when crossing a border.
- Fixed worm speed during wormriding being affected by the Deep Desert debuff.
- Fixed Chani giving her buff to flying units and sietches.
- Fixed units from discoveries appearing in a shuttle at the rally point instead of directly at the discovery location.
- Fixed conquest bonuses granting units on operation use, causing units to appear at the rally point instead of where the operation was performed.
- Fixed discovery at full progress being locked indefinitely if the reward was no longer valid.
- Fixed the Support Intelligence spying mission not applying to ongoing operations.
- Fixed the Hired Help conquest mission lacking a second phase against Vernius.
- Fixed annexation cost display in multiplayer.
- Fixed various crashes.
Dune: Spice Wars is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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