[DESIGN/GRAPHICS] Natural disasters

[The Big Mc]

Yes will be some good reading.

I will say that I have played smac and found that some random events do make the game feel better like the golden age and increased food. But the bad ones close to the cities are really bad that’s why I want them to the side of my cities so ok it disrupts my tiles for one or two turns but if the tile imps are repaired afterwards and everything goes back to the way it was, what’s the problem.

[MrBaggins]

Ok... here are the quotes from the article...

From general negative game experiences...

Bang, You're Dead. Sudden and arbitrary setbacks don't go over well. It is simply human nature that people don't like to have things taken away from them, especially when the decision seems arbitrary and capricious. Players don't want to spend hours building a beautiful city to have it suddenly and arbitrarily disappear into a crevasse. This is particularly true of major setbacks, but is true of setbacks in general.

From 'steady progress'...

Emphasize "rewards" and minimize "punishments." It is a simple fact of human nature that players love to claim credit for their good decisions but they are considerably less fond of having to take responsibility for their mistakes. This is, after all, the entertainment industry-playing a computer game is supposed to provide an escape from whatever real-world unpleasantness we'd prefer not to think about. Who wants to boot up a game just to be punished?

In my years of observing game players, I've found that the harsher a "punishment," the more likely players are to resort to cheating-or to quasi-cheating such as repeated saving-and-restoring-in order to end-run the game system. This further reduces player enjoyment by forcing them to drop their suspension of belief and use a Windows dialog box. If our game tries to "resist" save/restore by making it difficult to do through the interface, it simply increases the torture as the player drops to a DOS prompt and copies files around. On the other hand players hardly ever resort to cheating when they've just received a reward. So a game which uses a range of light, moderate, and lavish payoffs can distinguish between different degrees of successful play while discouraging players from breaking the continuity of the game by cheating. Whereas a game which distinguishes between those same degrees of play through a system of punishments runs a much higher risk that players will simply reject the outcome.

Bear in mind the distinction between punishments and "plot reversals," the latter being pre-planned events (e.g. the princess is kidnapped) which are not directly the player's fault and serve to advance the storyline. Plot reversals serve a valid role. Whereas a punishment, in which something is taken away from a player because of a poor decision, risks alienating the player from the game experience.

[Gilgamensch]

Yup, that is some more reasoning against it.

[child of Thor]

but Brian isn't a god, so we can afford to annoy him

An example i'd use is from the game M.U.L.E - one of the classic computer games of all time.

It had random disasters/events, none of which were so crippling that it could destroy your game - sure it was annoying when your mule upped and ran off, or you missed out on a good harvest of energy because of atmospheric disturbances etc, but it added alot to the gameplay.

It got the balance perfect and as a result was a better game for it.

CTP and Civ games do fit into the same kinda mold, and i would argue that if its a player selected feature - then there is no harm in it, it just adds to the players choice which is a good thing

Is it a priority? Not really, but if some guys want to play around with the idea and try to see if it can be done - then why not?

(warning-i'm sure it will be a lot of work to do!!)

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by child of Thor
but Brian isn't a god, so we can afford to annoy him

Not a god, maybe... but Brian knows his stuff, CoT... its no suprise that RoN is winning all of these awards.

[Gilgamensch]

CoT,

I remember this one very well, sweet old times. Didn't know you sush and oldy as well

Yes, this game was fairly good balanced. But you remember when your mule went crazy and it was your only food one?????? That was a kind of killer........

But the big difference is that through this you couldn't loose your empire and a game only lasted ~30 minutes. But if you spent 'hours' on a CTP2 game and it is being flushed down because of one (i.e.) meteor-strike

[child of Thor]

EDIT:

True Mr.Baggins, but you have to be wary of industry back patting - off course with RON it might all be justified

And in the article he was going on about un-balancing and game destroying random events(not what we want in CTP2), i'm sure even he enjoyed M.U.L.E at some point

And Gilg - i'm a 'young' old man , and have played games since the early days

[The Big Mc]

Is it possibly a natural disaster out side there lands would be good they could have a reward for not making there city there. We could add it to the code that a volcano does not erupt if a player is at the side of it but the grassland slowly lose there futility to the point that they are natural grassland tiles again

[Gilgamensch]

that would be actually against reallity. Volcano ash is one of the best soil to harvest onto.

[Locutus]

Random events (both positive and negative ones) can be a real asset to the game as they can add much atmosphere, but extreme caution is required. They should be fairly infrequent, their effects minor and it should be possible to counter them and/or their effects. In other words, you have to very carefully balance them to prevent players from getting annoying by them.

It should be possible to set the frequency and/or intensity of random events at the start of the game (where the default value would be very low), including the option to turn them off altogether. There's no rush in implementing random events, this can be done at any time.

Most of the implementation can actually be done in SLIC. The only changes to the code I can think of would be a slider or two at the start of the game which set one or two variables accessible from SLIC (g.eventchance and possibly g.eventintensity), which can then be used by SLIC coders to control the events. Of course, it would be useful to add some new SLIC functions that can influence to a city's food, production, commerce income and maybe some other things that might be useful for event effects. The only other code change I could think of would be to control the number and placement of map features such as volcanos, but that can probably largely be controlled in the tilefile already.

[MrBaggins]

Many, if not most single players would be tempted to just reload a negative random occurance.

Perhaps we should have an "iron-man" option.

[Gilgamensch]

Iron-man option? What for?

If you play 'serious' you already have it, don't reload.

But just changing the game, that you have to use it:

As we have to use this wonderful SM-product called Windoofs, which is so reliable, that I think is not an option.

Against a well balanced option I am not so much against, but meteor strike and similar, which is rather devasting I don't like.

If you can counter those disasters with buildings and we can teach the AI to use it properly then I don't see so much issue with it.

[child of Thor]

you know....i might just enjoy the odd metor strike! Like i've been playing for 1500 years, i'm on the brink of taking out the biggest AI civ when caboom! I'm hit by a huge meteor that near wipes me out And maybe i build a few more temples next itme

The idea is kinda soothing in a Zen kinda way

Still this should only be an option for the player - those who dont like it can select it off(like with barbs etc).

[Maquiladora]

cot you great hippy

Its abit like using the retreat option, someone who uses that is probably going to reload when a disease wipes out their capital.

Someone also mentioned in the civ future forum that if you had more trade routes then the diseases would spread further and quicker.

[MrBaggins]

If we have anything like this... preordain the timing.

You could randomly determine a number of events (probably disease... gelogical or astronomic events aren't IMO good 'civ' concepts) at the start of the game... thus reloading would make no difference.

I can't imagine how you'd prepare or avoid a meteor strike, and a volcano seems too terribly arbitary, and open to powergaming.