Global Catastrophe

[MiloMilo]

I don't know, I think random is not the best way to go with this stuff. Remember market crashes in SMAC? After saving up 3000 credits you're left with 400? That just sucks, there was no workaround or strategy to counter it.

I think Destroyer's first idea was to have scheduled, scripted game changing events. E.g., like he said, an alien invasion. Maybe after you send your ship to A.C. something finds it and follows its trail back to earth. Invent a few future techs (hell, borrow from SMAC!) and all civs scramble their way to some kind of effective resistance - or maybe some decide to help the aliens... etc.

Or after a diplomatic victory, you think that everything is hunky-dory, when nukes start going off. Fringe elements don't like your new world order. So they take stolen nuclear weapons and blast the world to hell. You're left in a blasted desert world, road warrior-style, with different factions duking it out for different resources, like water. New techs can include genetic tinkering to make mutations that let people live off pollution, etc.

The point is, stuff like this either interrupting or following the modern age will make the modern age into another transitional age, rather than the end of the story. Wow, if you could have different ones depending on which victory condition you (or the AI) fulfill... talk about added replay value. Theseus would have incentive to become a peacenik!

[Coracle]

The Great Depression wasn't a "random event". It was the result of some very ill-advised economic policies.

[MBD]

Wow... really... no kidding?? Boy, thanks very much for the history lesson.

As I said, I'd like a random event LIKE (as in having the same characteristics or effects as) the Great Depression, including possibly such things as decreased productivity and severe unhappiness in all the cities of every civ. Losing some productivity might hurt, but suddenly having 2 or 3 more unhappy citizens in every city could be fatal. The weaker democracies would almost certainly collapse.

[Destroyer]

Originally posted by MiloMilo


I think Destroyer's first idea was to have scheduled, scripted game changing events. E.g., like he said, an alien invasion. Maybe after you send your ship to A.C. something finds it and follows its trail back to earth. Invent a few future techs (hell, borrow from SMAC!) and all civs scramble their way to some kind of effective resistance - or maybe some decide to help the aliens... etc.

Yeah, that would be something you decide before you start the game (either a random or selected event), just to mix things up later in the game. I just think it would give a different edge to the game - rather that designing a set scenario, you actually play out the game from the start, so you in effect determine you starting strength by the way you have played out the first chunk of the game.