Dune Spice Wars factions guide and tips

We take a look at the factions in Dune Spice Wars, along with tips on how to play and focus the nation.

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Shiro Games and Funcom launch Dune Spice Wars in Early Access, bringing Arrakis to video games for the first time in 20 years. You’ll get to interact with the noble and peaceful Atreides, the more vicious Harkonnen, and explore the dunes with the Fremen. However, the developers are adding extra factions to the game. Here are all the Dune Spice War factions you can play and a rundown on what you can expect.

Read more: Dune Spice Wars gameplay tips.

Dune Spice Wars factions

At the launch of Dune Spice Wars early access release, there are four different factions you can play as. The first three are some of the more iconic peoples of Arrakis. House Atreides are the rulers of Arrakis, especially in the period of the Denis Villeneuve film. Then, you get Harkonnen, the more militaristic faction and the former rulers of the planet. Then there are the Fremen, the human natives on the planet that want Arrakis to be left alone and preserved with its more natural attitude. Then finally, we have the Smugglers. The Smugglers are not necessarily a canon faction, but they represent the peoples who love money and underground trading common in sci-fi settings.

Below you will find the bonuses for each faction along with tips on what the factions’ playstyles are. When we give you an overview of general tips on how the faction plays, you will then see councilors and bonuses below them, so you can see how pairs and strategies come together in the early, mid and late game. Keep these in mind to truly reap the rewards from your 4X strategy throughout the game.

Dune Spice Wars: House Atreides guide

House Atreides is the more bog-standard faction. You have decent military support options, along with decent peaceful playstyles if you would prefer to win the game through diplomacy and economy. You will be able to build strong and vast empires using this faction thanks to the peaceful annexation option, while getting plenty of early buffs through the Landsraab. This can even be your win condition. Alternatively, you can go the wide empire and use the villages to build strong manpower and military functions, or go heavy on an economic playstyle and manipulate trade to your advantage. It is the more beginner-friendly faction for sure that offers a range of flexible playstyles.

Bonuses

• Peaceful Annexation – This allows you to peacefully annex neutral villages.
• Other factions lose no authority from treaties with you.
• Benefits from a higher Landsraad Standing.
• Cannot pillage neutral villages.
• At 5k Hegomony – Gain 10% Solari while under a positive Landsraad resolution or 105 military power under a negative resolution.
• At 10k Hegemony – Ignore Charter prerequisites except for necessary Landsraad Sanding.

Councilors

• Lady Jessica – Impose a treaty on another faction for 50 influence.
• Duncan Idaho – increase relations with Sietch by 100%. , -10% authority to annex a village.
• Thufir Hawat – Your agents have one additional trait. Villages gain +20% resource production for 2 days when their region is targeted by one or more operations.
• Gurney Halleck -Unlocks Veteran Militia unit and military units start with 1 more experience level.

Dune Spice Wars: House Harkonnen guide

House Harkannon’s playstyle very much relies on military conquest. The ideal playstyle is to conquer as much land as reasonably possible and manage your water supply. Then you can build your military power, oppress villages and get stronger forces when you head to battle against other factions in the mid and late game. Use these mechanics to your advantage every time you defend or attack an enemy faction, gaining those military power benefits very few factions can compete with outside of certain situations or from Landsraad military buffs.

Bonuses

• Can use the Oppression ability on Harkonnen villages.
• +5% village resource production per active militia
• Always knows the influence flows of the other factions
• -10% village resource production.
• At 5K Hegemony – While one valley village is under oppression, gain 10% unit power and +100% agent recruitment speed.
• At 10k Hegemony – This allows you to assign an agent to a mission to reduce its cost and preparation time. The agent is sacrificed.

Councilors

• Feyd-Rautha – Can use corruption on Landsraad resolutions causing loss of Landsraad standing for the elected faction. Gain 10 influence upon killing a rebel.
• Piter De Vries – unlocks the Stealth Probe unit – suffers no supply limit drain and gains one intel production in enemy territory. Ornithopters gain infiltration, making them only visible at close range.
• Rabban – Gain one militia slot and oppression effects increased by 5 seconds per militia in the village.
• Iakin Nefud – Refund 50% of a military unit’s cost upon death. -50% reduced cost on combat drugs mission cost.

Dune Spice Wars: The Fremen Guide

The Fremen are a more flexible faction. You can win through the military by using the sandworms to outmanoeuvre your opponent. Ideally, you only want to do late game conquests to get that bonus military power when you have a lot more hegemony. This will help you break down an opponent’s empire, and thus their economy. Alternatively, you can play diplomat with Steitch and have them help overwhelm your foes by making friends inside an enemy’s borders. Both of these tactics are good since your foes drain very little supply by the end of the game, so you can afford to send units on very long-range military expeditions and not have to worry about supply burning units.

It means in the early game you want to ideally play passive and build a stable foundation for your empire. You also want to head into military technology so you can get those caravans that ward your faction with the ability to supply while out in the deserts. This allows you to do deep strike missions thanks to the supply and stealth focus of the faction, targeting key resource plains of an enemy faction, such as spice fields.

Alternatively, you can play a very economic heavy save by using the knowledge of the spice field to your advantage and pressure your opponents into weakness as the Spice tax gets high. You can then use the Chani Kynes councillor to play diplomacy and cause rebellions against opposing factions you can then intervene to create pressure against your foes.

Bonuses

• Military units have -30% daily supply drain 
• Allows you to form alliances with Sietch outside of your territory
• May use thumpers to ride Sand Worms.
• Limited acces to the Landsraas.
• At 5k Hegemony Thumpers are generated passively and they attract larger worms that travel further.
• At 10k Hegemony – Military units gain power according to your hegemony (up to 2-% at 25000 hegemony).

Councilors

• Chani Kynes – Can incite rebellion on Landsraad resolutions, generation rebellions in other factions if the resolution passes. Gain 0.5 intel production per adjacent neutral region.
• Stilgar – Every new Village captured increases Sietch detection progress. Grants 1 authority production per exploited Spice Field.
• Mother Ramallo – Start with the Shai-hulud Temple which reveals the location of all Spice Fields.
• Otheym – 10% unit speed and gain the perk Sand Killers, who grants units with no nearby allies 20% power and 2 armor.

Dune Spice Wars The Smugglers Guide

The Smugglers are a faction that relies heavily on manipulating the economy. The two main playstyles are finding regions in which you can make a lot of water, along with generating plenty of Solari. You then want to focus those resources on building underground headquarters and using that to gain science from your opposition. You can also create buildings that siphon resources, collecting them until you successfully attack a village for huge payouts if you want for the eco into military playstyle. However, building networks is a gradual process. You should spend the early game getting as many villages and then infiltrating your opponent’s in the mid-game by building a strong economy earlier is the general playstyle.

You can then get some diplomatic power after 5k Hegemony, allowing you reliably swing votes if you wanted to, rather than leaving it to Harkannon and Atreides to get the buffs. You can then reliably head off into a militaristic or economic victory and manipulate your hegemony scores that way. This aids the Smugglers passive which pays enemy factions to vote for whatever you want others to vote for. Either way, you’re looking at a largely economic game, with added diplomacy or military in the later stages of the game.

Bonuses

• Can install Underworld Headquarters in opponent’s villages.
• Can place Bounty on Landsraad resolutions.
• Improved interactions and options are available from Arrakis Black Markets.
• Limited access to the Landsraad.
• At 5k Hegemony – unlock contraband offers and gain 50 votes and the Landsraad.
• At 10k Hegemony – Allows the training of Mercenaries, mercenaries get 20% power and are bought with gold and train incredibly quickly. 

Councilors

• Staban Tuek – Underworld Headquarters produce +5 Solari per adjacent region containing an Underworld Headquarters. 0.5 influence per Underworld Headquarters.
• Lingar Bewt – Reduce the authority cost to annex a Village depending on the available water. Reduce the cost to install Headquarters depending on the available water.
• Drisq – All agents have the merchant trait. Infiltration levels can’t be lower than 1.
• Bannerjee – Gain 305 more when pillaging a village. Gain plascrete by pillaging a village.

This concludes this Dune Spice Wars factions guide. Why not check out our Dune hub for more tips and tricks on the game?