Dune: Spice Wars – Ultimate Factions Guide

The House that controls the most spice will control Dune.

Definitive Guide to Factions

Note: Credit goes to glythe

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.

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 Landstraad resolutions (vote system). These factions start with free “votes”. To make a long story short the Landstraad 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 (more on this later).

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

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.

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 Landstraad 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).

Harkonnen:

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

This is an “always” pick option if you ask me. If someone is beating you in Landstraad 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 (which is very hard to get overall until late game you only get it from paying taxes). 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.

I’ve never bothered to use combat drugs and instead won fights with micro/tactics as it has a huge problem of draining their supply. Making that better is nearly pointless. Getting lots of “refunds” on death should not happen often vs AI. This might get much better in a year when MP exists.

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”

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, caps at 500 and since spice fields are limited this would be hard to make good use of unless playing on a large map.

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.

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 Bonuses

House Atreides

Default bonuses:

• Peaceful Annexation is only valuable to take far away locations without connection “trash provinces”.
• The problem with this is that you can already use the support drone to help you get to far away places.
• 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 Landstraad 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 Landstraad standing. In short this means you can take Landstraad 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?

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 AI 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.

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. Now you can have tanky troopers that do tons of damage. 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.

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

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.

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 base bonuses

• Can use Oppression on Harkonnen Buildings
  Gives you bonuses to production and build speed. Keep an army between three cities and cycle the ability. One army of 3-4 units can handle revolts for three nearby cities.
• +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 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.

10 Hegemony

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

This is something I have n

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.

Ever used because of the whole “kill an agent” aspect. No thanks.

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.

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.

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).

There are 9 options. (Patch just added two and changed whisperer’s lair).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

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).

• Limited access to the Landstraad

The Fremen are even more restricted than the Smugglers as they cannot hold council positions.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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Special Faction Missions

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

Special Notes:

You cannot hold any office besides Governor.

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

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).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

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)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.