Do you want random events?

[Nikolai]

No, reread the thread, particulary the part about Civ1.

[Gaal Dornik]

Do you want random events?
Yes/No Disasters

Random events can be positive too. In any case i would rather prefer not to have them in the game, because i feel somehow they just dont fit in Civ4 concept. How many of them do we know. Virtually nothing. Recent tornado, yes. But creating tornados every few turns or so is imho just silly cause it didnt happen in real history. It reminds me rather on SimCity 2000

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by LordShiva
You mean, now we need to build even more buildings? An "earthquake" building, a "volcano" building, a "riot" building, a "tsunami" building?

I build all the buildings anyway. Have to do something with all that excess production I always have. I build castles even after gunpowder, because I like the one extra culture point, the AI keeps a lot of obsolete units around for centuries and because I think they look cool.

[WolfEyes]

What's the fun of a vulcano erupting and destroying one of your major cities? You can't do anything to prevent it neither can you act on it and show your managing skills. It just happens. That's it.

That's where the management skill of 'foresight' would come into play. If you don't want to risk a city being destroyed by a volcano, don't build near one.

Speaking of random events in other games, I really liked the random events in GalCiv, especially the choices you could make regarding them.

[Silver14]

If they did include random events I wonder if they could expand the abilities of the great prophets around them. Perhaps you could use a GP to stop a bad event from happening to your civ, or to grant a beneficial event to your civ. Maybe even have a GP predict a bad event to happen for another Civ. But this isn't exactly a 'god' game.

[Dis]

random events ala SMAC

Those were good because not all of them were negative events.

[_BuRjaCi_]

No no I'm not saying we should create new buildings just assing these ability's to existing ones but lets be logical, Brodway for example does NOT prevent earthquakes but a an aqueduct might stop a fire ( but I don't think fires should be in). And some random event's should be positive.

[Generaldoktor]

I just changed my civs to go to war. (I don't go to war much in Civ4 ) I just noticed I had seven years of "anarchy" because of the combination of civs, I changed. Conceivably, going back to my "peacetime" civs would take almost as much. While not "random," this is definitely an "event." And why would you have "anarchy," just after winning a war, to return to a peacetime footing? Its almost as if an "economic recession" is built in as the second period of anarchy. So this is another form of "event" we already have.

[Badtz Maru]

They could make them not random - have something like GP points for each city, except they are for events that would otherwise be random. The kind of points might be based on the kind of terrain nearby - if the city is on the coast and theres a certain number of squares of ocean tile nearby, you might have a higher chance of being hit with a tsunami or storm, if you're in a cold region you'd get blizzards, mountains could lead to volcanoes or earthquakes, plains would give you tornadoes. Some buildings or techs would effect the frequency of certain disasters or the amount of damage done - for instance, Radio would make weather events less likely, perhaps with a bonus for having a broadcast tower.

To make it unpredictable while still deterministic, you would hide the points from the player, and make them harder to predict by running them through a multiplier that will vary constantly based on information not available to the player (but not random). If you are in the lead in certain ways, you're going to build up disaster points quicker, but each turn it would be comparing you to the other civilizations by a different factor - i.e. culture, military, exploration, money, culture again, and hide that from the player as well.

Throw in some positive random effects that pop up if the player is below average in score - things like free units, cultural upgrades to cities, promotions, bonuses in relations. Instead of having terrain determine what kind of random events show up in a particular city, you could use a variety of values that ensured that the bonuses happened to cities that needed them. For instance, a city might produce bonus event points at a high rate when it has recently changed possession or been attacked, or if a lot of units that city produced were lost in warfare. I think a lot of people would be willing to take occasional disasters to have the chance to get some free units when they are starting to take a beating and other goodies.

Of course, it would be optional, and it's probably too much for a patch, but it would be possible to have an interesting and varied form of 'random' events that were not random and kept the gameplay interesting and balanced.

[Generaldoktor]

Originally posted by Badtz Maru
They could make them not random - have something like GP points for each city, except they are for events that would otherwise be random. The kind of points might be based on the kind of terrain nearby - if the city is on the coast and theres a certain number of squares of ocean tile nearby, you might have a higher chance of being hit with a tsunami or storm, if you're in a cold region you'd get blizzards, mountains could lead to volcanoes or earthquakes, plains would give you tornadoes. Some buildings or techs would effect the frequency of certain disasters or the amount of damage done - for instance, Radio would make weather events less likely, perhaps with a bonus for having a broadcast tower.

I'd like to see some rationalization of the terrain before that. One person commented on the "why I hate this game" thread, if it's still around, that every potential city site seemed to have formulaic terrain; a little desert here, a little flood plain there, some jungle or tundra thrown in, almost without regard for distance from poles, overall climate and whatever. I found I agreed and also with his assertion that it was more rational in Civ3. Make the terrain flow naturally according to the laws of geology/climatology on this planet, then assign the event values accordingly.

[Symbiance]

I think having random events would be a lot of fun. Everyone here seems to be thinking along the lines of the random events being these catastrophic events that completely change the balance of the game... Those, i agree, don't sound like fun.

but, there could just be simple things that jump in that just add a new layer of strategy. For example, just going along with the idea of a natural disaster... A random event could be that one turn your scientists (or prophets if you're not into the industrial age yet) say they predict a major earthquake is going to happen near one of your cities within X number of years. You then have that many turns to do your best to take action, which would be where the strategy comes in... for example, you could create a bunch of scientist specialists in a city in an effort to have them research the solution in the form of a Great Scientist--when the great scientist is produced, you use him to prevent the disaster. The result of you successfully preventing the disaster then could give your culture an overall bonus to your science output, due to the things you learned while preventing the earthquake.

But, you could also go many routes with that... have options. Like maybe work toward a great engineer instead so he can build a great work that saves your city from the effects of the earthquake, which would then give that city a big bonus to its production... or you could sit back and do nothing, causing that city to lose a certain percentage of the population, but at the same time giving you a bonus to your relations with other countries due to their sympathy over the disaster.

and these events could be as small or as large-scale as you want... maybe have the smaller, more manageable disasters happen more often, and have a few large-scale disasters that would only happen once every 50 games or something.

Granted, I don't know whether or not it would necessarily fit with the overall concept of the kind of game Civilization is trying to be... but it wouldn't necessarily have to add a bunch of new buildings and terrain types to the game to implement, and I think it could add a fun new element to the game if done well.

[Generaldoktor]

I just found another new "existing" event. Try switching your civics off emancipation to go to war or something. I've got seven guys "protesting" (i.e. no production) and I can't starve them, there have been two starved since the "protest" started , (out of a city originally of 27) and they were both worker bees. I can't switch off food to "production", there's some disclaimer built in there that won't let the governor do it when food prod is below substinence. One of my largest cities contributes virtually nothing to my war effort. Change civics my a-s!

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Symbiance
but, there could just be simple things that jump in that just add a new layer of strategy. For example, just going along with the idea of a natural disaster... A random event could be that one turn your scientists (or prophets if you're not into the industrial age yet) say they predict a major earthquake is going to happen near one of your cities within X number of years. You then have that many turns to do your best to take action, which would be where the strategy comes in... for example, you could create a bunch of scientist specialists in a city in an effort to have them research the solution in the form of a Great Scientist--when the great scientist is produced, you use him to prevent the disaster. The result of you successfully preventing the disaster then could give your culture an overall bonus to your science output, due to the things you learned while preventing the earthquake.

No scientists have ever predicted with any reasonable degree of accuracy when an earthquake will strike.

No great scientist has ever prevented an earthquake.

No civ has ever received a culture bonus from surviving an earthquake.

Natural disasters that you can prevent = BAD and unrealistic

Natural disasters that you can't prevent = BAD and frustrating

[Silver14]

Inventing a machine that can cause natural disasters for your opponents = Priceless

[Soltz]

Random events could give a bonus to researching some tech.'s

- floods could encourage agricultural reseach
- earthquakes encourage construction
- famine encourage pottery (granaries)
- blizzards give defense bonus (eg Russian winter vs. Napoleon, Hitler)