Natural Disasters and Epidemics

[Brutus66]

I have found that if I build a fortress in a jungle square and move troops into it, sometimes they die of disease. I think that is a very nice touch on the part of the developers.
I just wish that they would have included earthquakes, volcanoes, floods, and/or epidemics in the game.
Imagine a foreign ship, adjacent to one of your cities, starting an outbreak of yellow fever? For playablility, it doesn't have to wipe the city out, just maybe halve its population and threaten to spread to other cities connected by road (anybody remember the bioterrorist in CTP2?).
Thoughts?

[Dienstag]

Wow, I never noticed the units could die of disease in jungle fortresses! That is a nice touch. Personally, I don't recall ever building a fortress in jungle, and don't foresee ever doing so, disease or no. But still a nice touch.

I too would like the occasional natural disaster. I'm not so fond of epidemics; they're realistic, yes, but they're close to the end of the list of things that I would like to include for realism's sake. That's just my preference.

Just having earthquakes, volcanoes and hurricane/typhoons would be some nice added game immersion though, if done right.

[Coracle]

I've never had TROOPS die of disease in the jungle.


The whole Natural Disaster/Plague thing is historical - but too variable. It would seriously mess up the flow of the game and likely be an annoyance only.

Much of Civ III is very poor on history (such as their mod), but this aspect of History should be Optional only. If the user could toggle it on and off, great. I wish they'd do that with this Culture Flipping crap.

[nationalist]

Originally posted by Coracle

Much of Civ III is very poor on history (such as their mod), but this aspect of History should be Optional only. If the user could toggle it on and off, great. I wish they'd do that with this Culture Flipping crap.

I think that it could be a nice touch and would add to the strategy. BTW, why do you hate Culture Flipping so much Coracle?

[Peter Triggs]

Actually, Immortal Wombat has already written some code that adds Natural Disasters (plagues, volcanoes, earthquakes, stuff like that) for the CTP2 mods. He'll probably adapt it to Civ3 when they bring out an expansion pack with a scripting language.

edit:spelling

[YC4B4U]

I would want a fairly complex model (ie more than just a probability of an event occurring).

- Floods that occur on large rivers in high rainfall areas
- Known volcano locations or areas where they occur
- Earthquakes on fault lines or borders of Tectonic plates

These events generally shouldn't destroy things but rather cause loss of life, reduce unit health, cause loss of function for buildings for lengths of time (say 5 turns).

Otherwise don't have anything at all...

[Ethelred]

I like the idea in general. It certainly would be usefull for scenarios. I don't have any interest in short time period scenarios but it would be usefull for those that are interested.

Any of the disasters should have a way to mitigate them or even elimintate them. For instance improved construction for earthquakes.

The original board game had disasters. Giving them to your opponents and avoiding them was an important part of the strategy. I hated getting civil disorder. Floods could be so bad for some of the civs they made them very difficult to win with. Egypt was often devasted by floods.

[GeneralTacticus]

It says in the manual somewhere that units fortified in jungles have a chance of fying from sisease. After losing one of my spearmen to disease once, I've never fortidified units in jungles again.

[Brutus66]

Thanks, GT, I was starting to think I hallucinated the whole thing. I'll take a screen shot if I see it happen again.

- Floods that occur on large rivers in high rainfall areas
- Known volcano locations or areas where they occur
- Earthquakes on fault lines or borders of Tectonic plates

Sounds like a great idea, and I agree that it should be an optional thing you could toggle off (like pollution should have been).

[HuntrIsGod74831]

Personally, i don't think that that kind of natural disaster should have the same kind of effect as an ICBM attack (halving the population), but the natural disaster would have an even worse effect (possibiliy of spreading it to other cities in your empire).

[Immortal Wombat]

Originally posted by Peter Triggs
Actually, Immortal Wombat has already written some code that adds Natural Disasters (plagues, volcanoes, earthquakes, stuff like that) for the CTP2 mods. He'll probably adapt it to Civ3 when they bring out an expansion pack with a scripting language.

I agree with everything in this post apart from the over-optimistic use of the word "when"

[notyoueither]

Hey IW.

Mike B has said that he wants to add the powers of scripting, without the script. What do you think of that?

I myself find it hard to believe that you will be able to add concepts to the game without something like scripting, but I'm no expert. However, he may have some ideas that I am incapable of guessing at. We won't know till the fat lady sings.

As of the chat he seemed to be engaged in a battle with the other coders to stop hard coding variables, so that they could be included in the editor.

[Venger]

Originally posted by nationalist

I think that it could be a nice touch and would add to the strategy. BTW, why do you hate Culture Flipping so much Coracle?

Far be it from me to speak for another, but since I think culture flipping is such crap, allow me to take a shot...

1) It has no historical basis

2) It seems to happen during the strangest times - i.e. when I am kicking AI butt and have a large standing army in the city...

3) It doesn't make the game more fun, or harder, just more tedious, and random.

Alas - if they let us turn it OFF - everyone's happy.

Venger

[Peter Triggs]

Originally posted by Immortal Wombat

I agree with everything in this post apart from the over-optimistic use of the word "when"

I couldn't find the sarcasm smiley.


NotYouEither:

I myself find it hard to believe that you will be able to add concepts to the game without something like scripting, but I'm no expert. However, he may have some ideas that I am incapable of guessing at. We won't know till the fat lady sings.

Very true.

[Immortal Wombat]

suffices.

Oooh, I'm mad. I typed a big fat fuck of a reply, and then the whole damn thing went and got lost in the cybervoid between my PC and the newreply page.