izigame.me

*FYI some of this is out of date with a recent patch, but the game pace and balance has improved and looks like more is coming*
I wanted to give a one to one response to the top review right now, because it misses the mark entirely. This is in reference to Cantore's review, which is currently in the top spot.
1) "1) The amount of spice you need to bribe the empire with always goes up. By a few hours into the game, you will have an extremely high spice tax rate that you will be forced to contribute. Failure to do so brings some really hefty consequences to one or more of your resources. And, it gets worse - it compounds each time the deadline is missed."
Spice is life. It's the most essential resource in the game, and you can't just ignore it. My guess is that the reviewer missed that you can control the slider that balances how much spice you stockpile vs how much you sell for cash to the CHOAM. As Smugglers in one game, I built my entire economy around black markets in enemy territory so 100% of my spice went into the stockpile for the Landsraad or periodic mission bribes. In another game, I took control of the Polar Cap, built a water harvester, and earned a fortune selling water and buying spice from others. You can expand your territory to find more spice fields. You can go down the research tree to build more crew on each harvester to extract more per territory, as well as build spice silo builds to produce 20% more. You can research to allow orinthopters to boost any harvester's they are over. You can search for ? items all over and assign missions to find stockpiles. You can buy spice from other factions by trading whatever resource you are specializing in. I've beat the game on normal or hard with each faction and never once missed a spice tax, but I always had to think about spice.
2)"2) Given much more major battles exist in the end game, you would think there would be some way to offset the amount of spice you need to contribute; or a way to gain independence from them. There isn't."
See above. The CHOAM/Stockpile slider is where its at. As for gaining independence and just refusing to contribute, YOU CAN DO THAT TOO! There are ways to offset the penalties for missing tax day, and keep your favor with the Landsraad. You can focus on earning Influence and Intel, then run agent missions for "Political Audits" that boost your Landsraad standing +30 each time. There's HQ buildings that let you earn +1 Landsraad every tick. So you can generate an economy that can allow you to sell every bit of spice you get.
3) "3) REALLY SEVERE debufs exist in the game, and exacerbate further when other factions start messing with your manpower and health restore on your troops. I am TOTALLY against magic debufs, and this game has a LOT of them!"
There are two types of debuffs. The direct buffs and debuffs that you can apply via agents, and the ones you can vote for/against doing the councils. To help counter agents, you can assign counter intelligence agents to catch and punish the factions that are hitting you with them. You can also vote for harsh punishments for a faction if they use one of these. You can of course run your own agents to build your own buffs and debuffs, and this is necessary. If you see that your force is being debuffed and you can't use your own agents to match... pull your forces out! Come back when you're better prepared.
4) "4) The periodic faction voting is meant to debuf another faction so you gain an upper hand on them. I hate it personally. It should be votes on actually meaningful things, not just everyone against me. I find myself putting all of my votes into stopping the worst of the consequences so I don't get debuffed to death! It's stupid and really pointless. It needs a serious overhaul!"
Here's another part of the economy you can specialize in! You can absolutely build enough influence to control these votes. In the early game, its hard to pick more than one, but some factions specialize in manipulating this. As Atredies, you can bring Lady Jessica to give you the ability to remove debuffs. Smugglers can set bounties for factions to vote a certain way against a certain faction (and man do they like to vote for the things you pay them to). Harkonnens can secretly corrupt a vote that a faction may want to have so that the winning faction loses Landsraad standing. Buildings can generate influence for votes, you can trade for the resource, etc. As you build your standing, you could become Speaker of the council and get a chance to reroll one of the three options each week.
5) "5) The units. You have soldiers, but there's a MASSIVE penalty to having them... but you need them, or you'll die quickly. The more units you have the more manpower you don't have. You have to offset this with a bunch of recruitment stations all over the place by the time the game is well underway. Even then, if the enemy messes with the manpower or your health regen - you're cooked."
Manpower and water, another resource! Of course, you could do like I did with the Smugglers and build an entire Drone army run on nothing but money and batteries. Or you can earn some manpower by placing agents in the Space guild. You can specialize in a strong militia to protect each of your locations. Harkonnens can end up with a crazy strong militia in place if you build right. Place your missile batteries in the right spot and you can cover multiple territories for the cost of very little manpower. Well placed airports let you shuttle around a defending force to assist your militia wherever you need them (or ride the free worms if you're a Fremen).
6)"6) Units don't have any specialty skills or icons. They're just a unit with more or less number values than another. It would be nice to have the military line unlock special skills that a unit can perform, or a defensive or offensive boost. As it stands now, the game is more worried about unit consumption of manpower, power, and water; all of which is of no affect during a battle."
Every unit has a unique ability, some more passive than others. Atreidies like to have a varied army because each unit benefits the others in some way and some get stronger for each unique buff they get from others. Harkonnens inflict self damage, but can run agent missions to take drugs that keep you from dying. So you're holding out at one health hoping to finish things off quickly. Fremen can bring an advisor that boosts their strength for lone soldiers (and the run speed for everyone). You can then bring the unit that deals a ton of damage on its first attack, assassinate something and RUN. Smugglers are stronger against units as they lose supply (basically stamina), particularly their snipers. Their aoe attacker damages supply. Agent missions can damage supply. So theirs lots of strategies to exploit this. Each faction also gets a drone unit that works differently. It can cross territory that soldiers would have to walk a long ways around. They don't generate vibrations to draw worms.
OUT OF SPACE. MOVING TO COMMENTS.