Dune: Spice Wars – House Harkonnen Faction Guide

Dune: Spice Wars sees the titular planet become a key battleground, as four factions vie for control over Arrakis. The antithesis to House Atreides, House Harkonnen are the brutal previous owners of Arrakis. Where the former is diplomatic and cares for relationships, the Harkonnens care most for their profits and little for human life, especially the resilient Fremen.

Here’s everything you should know about House Harkonnen in Dune: Spice Wars.

 

House Harkonnen Faction Guide

Features and Abilities

The Harkonnens are masters of economics and control. This is perfectly symbolized in their cornerstone ability – Oppression.

For a cost in manpower, the targeted village will increase its resource production for a set amount of time, however, there’ll be an increased chance of rebellion in the given village, so you need to be ready to put the annoying clamoring populace back in line with your militias and military. Luckily, this House gets an increased base Manpower generation of 12, compared to the Atreides and the Fremen.

Despite their tendency for economic exploitation, the Harkonnens start off with a disadvantage in that all their villages have a 10% resource generation penalty. However, the Oppression ability can help offset this, and also the fortress-like nature of the Harkonnen helps in mitigating this drawback. Every recruited militia unit in a village increases the resource production rate of the village by 5%, so even two militia can easily offset the built-in Harkonnen drawback.

While the Harkonnens may not be as well-liked as the Atreides, they do still have diplomatic acumen in their final base feature. As House Harkonnen, you’ll be able to track how each faction spends its influence so that you can better plan your moves and seek out trade opportunities.

For Hegemony-related abilities, at the 5000 threshold, the Harkonnens gain the benefit that their troops increase in strength and agent recruitment speed doubles, as long as one village is under the Oppression effect, giving the player all the more reason to keep using it. At 10000 Hegemony, you’ll gain the ability to sacrifice agents to increase the speed of completing missions.

 

Councilors

The Harkonnens have their roster of Councilors to choose from with the first being Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen. Their ability allows the player to corrupt a specific Landsraad resolution, which will reduce Standing for the elected faction. In addition, the house will receive 10 influence for every defeated rebel unit, something the Harkonnens will see often if they actively use the Oppression ability.

Next up is Rabban Harkonnen who gives all villages an extra militia slot, making them a veritable stronghold. Also Rabban makes the Oppression ability last five seconds longer per recruited militia, just to squeeze that extra bit of resources out from the population.

Piter De Vries buffs Harkonnen units such as the Stealth Probe and the ornithopter. Both units now produce intel when in territories of opposing factions. The former also avoids supply loss altogether, while the ornithopter gains stealth, which makes it difficult to spot.

Iakin Nefud, the captain of the Harkonnen guard, affects the military whereupon defeated units will refund half their cost in resources. Finally, Iakin also reduces the cost of the combat drugs agent mission by 50%.

 

Army Roster and Tactics

The Harkonnen army is defined by overwhelming strength and the ability to hit harder as their health degrades. So just when you think the Harkonnen forces may falter, that is when they will be most deadly and hard-hitting.

Just like the Atreides, the basic Harkonnen unit is the close quarters Trooper. It exchanges the Atreides’ above average armor for slightly increased base strength to hit harder and an ability that increases the unit’s strength rating by up to 50% based on how much health it’s lost.

While melee units will nearly always receive damage, to help drive the Trooper’s ability to full potential, the Harkonnen’s bring their grenadier-style unit with the Gunner. Along with having an explosive attack that deals damage to enemies adjacent to the target, Gunner’s will also lightly damage nearby allied units, which for the Harkonnen battle doctrine does more to power their forces up.

Further specializing in their fast attack melee prowess, the Vanguard is the quintessential glass cannon unit with a morbid ability. Vanguards will gain an additional 10% strength and 1 armor for every unit that’s been defeated nearby with the buff stacking up to five times, regardless of friend or foe. These units are great to keep in the back of the fighting to let their buffs stack up and then move in for the kill against a weakened enemy.

An odd unit to be sure, the Stealth Probe is the lead element of any Harkonnen assault force due to its stealthy camouflage keeping it from view until getting close to the enemy. It has little strength, low health, and not much armor so it’s bound to die quite quickly, but it’s the unit’s ability that makes it fit into the aggressive Harkonnen battle tactics. When the Stealth Probe gets destroyed it grants all nearby allied units a significant bonus of 20% extra strength, which can stack up to five times leading to a massive strength spike in a fight.

The House Guard is the Harkonnen elite unit that essentially acts as a souped-up version of the basic Trooper and definitely wants to be at the front amidst all the fighting. The Guard’s ability increases the unit’s strength by 50% and adds 5 armor when the unit drops to 20% of its health.

Strategy

The Harkonnen strategy is arguably the most utilitarian and direct of all the factions. It’s also, in its essence, the inverse of House Atreides’ grand strategic approach. The Harkonnens prefer to take their time to build out and create massive resource-rich villages that they Oppress to maximize their profits, all to set up a powerful economic base.

This means the Harkonnens want to expand selectively and at a modest pace, as gaining too much territory will spread them too thin and make it difficult to respond to raids and rebellions due to all the Oppression. Also, unlike their Atreides archenemies, Harkonnens can pillage villages for economic boosts without taking them over, which can help jumpstart their economy without the expensive and grueling process of administering and securing all the land.

Slow and steady is the name of the game for the Harkonnens in the early and mid-game and they must take extra care when selecting which regions to expand into for optimal resource generation and extraction.

While diplomatically the Harkonnens start at a disadvantage compared to the Atreides, the Harkonnens should definitely challenge the Landsradd Council by ramping up Influence production to offset their reduced amount of votes and go for key council resolutions that will slow down the faster-moving factions, such as the Atreides.

Given enough time, the Harkonnens can very much go for the Governorship of Arrakis’ victory Charter if they play their cards right. Alternatively in the mid and late stages of the game, once the Harkonnen economy machine gets going, you can easily go for a military victory and bury all the other factions with endless hordes of units that get stronger as the fighting keeps going, while the rest simply get ground down.

The Harkonnens are also highly adept at subterfuge and underhanded dealings. They gain extra Hegemony for performing agent missions, so be sure to actively utilize your spies and emissaries to enact the baron’s will on Arrakis.

While the Harkonnens may seem brutish and aggressive, unlike many other “evil” factions in sci-fi strategy gaming they require more finesse. So what approach will you take, will you be as cunning as the baron Vladimir himself or more straightforward like Rabban?

Dune: Spice Wars is available on PC.

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