[DESIGN/GRAPHICS] Natural disasters

[Locutus]

I agree things should be set up such that reloading is useless, I actually thought the current system already worked that way (with the seed for the randomizer being stored in the savegames), but I could be wrong about that.

The thing about Volcanos that's so interesting that it's up to the player to decide if he settles next to one or not: do you want to take the risk of having a city there for the bonus resources or do you stay away from it to avoid damage? That's hardly arbitrary if you ask me, that's entirely free will.



Some random thoughts on ideas for random events:


Negative

Flood: every turn x tiles (where x depends on mapsize and g.eventchance, default on normal map could be 1) are flooded. Floods can only occur on low land tiles (Plains, Grassland, Swamp, etc) bordering the sea or with a river on it. If a flooded tile has no city on it, there will be no effect. Otherwise, resource collection is reduced by y% (where y depends on g.eventintensity, default could be 20). Floods can be countered by City Walls (offers say 50% reduced chance of being affected by a flood if it strikes and reduce damage done by 50% when it does) and Battlements (same as City Walls, only 25% (cumulative)). Floods can often been predicted and people can evacuate and board up in time, so the only effect of floods would be in lost productivity.

Fire: every inland and non-river city has a x% chance of being hit by fire (where x depends on city size and g.eventchance, default could be something like 0.2 per pop). Fire can kill at most y% of the pop in a city and destroy at most y% of the buildings (where y depends on g.eventintensity, default could be 5). The chance of a fire hitting and the damage done could be prevented by an Aquaduct and something like a Sewer System (each 50% less chance of being hit, 50% less damage (cumulative)). Great city-wide fires are rare in present times so 100% prevention rate should be possible in modern times. Also, cities near rivers or coastal areas have a natural protection against fire, though in reality this isn't always 100% as I'm proposing here (notable example: London).

Earthquake: every turn there's an x% chance of an earthquake occuring somewhere on the map (where x depends on mapsize and g.eventchance, default on normal map could be 20). A random mountain/hill square is picked for the earthquake: the tile itself (epicenter) and all surrounding tiles (radius of 1) are affected. Units in the epicenter would get at most 4*y% damage, units in the radius at most 2*y% (where no units should ever be killed and y depends on g.eventintensity, default could be 5). If there's a city at epicenter, at most 2*y% of the pop can be killed and at most 2*y% of the buildings destroyed. For a city in the radius the same applies, only with y%. The effects of an earthquake can be fought with technology: for every advance in the Construction branch, the damage in cities is reduced by 10%. Hospitals reduce the population damage by another 20%. Units inside fortresses and cities with Barracks (and/or City Walls) are get 50% less damage.

Drought: every turn there's a x% chance of a civ being struck by a drought (where x depends on g.eventchance, default could be 0.5). If a drought occurs, food production will be reduced empire-wide by y% for at most z turns (where y and z depend on g.eventintensity, defaults could be 10 and 4). Droughts can be fought with technology: for every advance in the Agriculture branch, there's a 0.05% less chance of a drought occuring. Granaries and Food Silos reduce the effects of the drought for individual cities by 5% each.


Mixed

Meteor strike: every turn there's an x% chance of a meteor strike occuring somewhere on the map (where x depends on mapsize and g.eventchance, default on normal map could be 10). A random square is picked for this. If it's a Beach or Shallow Water tile, all tiles within a radius of 2 experience floods. If it's a land tile, the tile undergoes the same effects as the epicenter of an earthquake (surrounding tiles remain unaffected though). Regardless of location, the tile gets a bonus production of +y for z turns (where y and z depend on g.eventintensity, defaults could be 50 and 3), which comes from the minerals of the meteor.

Volcano: pretty much as The Big Mc described, there would be a small chance of a volcano erupting (say 0.5% on default -- and always at least 20 turns apart) but the surrounding terrain would be extra fertile (say +5 for all resources). The effects would be double that of an earthquake (except that units *can* be killed), where the volcano tile itself is the epicenter. The number of volcanos per map should always be rare and AIs should never settle on the volcano tile itself.


Positive

Resource Discovery: every turn, there's a x% chance of the possibility that new trade good is discovered (where x depends on map size and g.eventchance, default on a normal map could be 2). A random tile is picked, if it already has a trade good than nothing happens. Otherwise, if it falls within someone's border, there's a 2*y% chance of a new trade good appearing, if it falls outside everyone's border threre's a y% chance (where y depends on g.eventintensity, default could be 25). If the good is indeed created and it falls within either the borders or the line of sight of a human player, the player is notified of the discovery.

Ruin Discovery: same as Resource Discovery, except it always take place on land tiles and they create a goody hut rather than a trade good.

Baby Boom: every turn, every city has a x% chance of being struck by a baby boom (where x depends on g.eventchance, default could be 0.01%). If this happens, the city gets a 1 free extra pop point per turn for y turns (where y depends on g.eventintensity, default could be 2), as long as a city has a positive growth rate.

Rally: every turn, every city has a x% chance of witnessing an inspiring speach by a powerful leader figure (where x depends on g.eventchance and happiness, default could be 0.01% + 0.005% for every point above neutral happiness). If this happens, the resource collection in that city rises by y% for z turns (where y and z depend on g.eventintensity, default could be 30 and 3).

Years of Plenty (for lack of a better name): same as a Drought, except that the food production is increased rather than decreased. Is unaffected by technology and city improvements.


There are plenty of other ideas that could be added here (most notably Disease, but MrBaggins already provided a nice example on how to do that). Note that the chances of events happening are always low and the effects small (will of course need lots of playtesting).

Note that it would probably be best to disable random events for the first 20-50 turns altogether, as a setback so early on would be a definite game-killer (just as with Barbarians).

[MrBaggins]

Originally posted by Locutus
I agree things should be set up such that reloading is useless, I actually thought the current system already worked that way (with the seed for the randomizer being stored in the savegames), but I could be wrong about that.

The thing about Volcanos that's so interesting that it's up to the player to decide if he settles next to one or not: do you want to take the risk of having a city there for the bonus resources or do you stay away from it to avoid damage? That's hardly arbitrary if you ask me, that's entirely free will.
*SNIP*

I see a couple of issues

1) A lot of these are completely random and thus you have no chance to avoid them (unless you wish to connect churches/religion with avoiding catastrophy which would be statistically incorrect, from a historical perspective.)

A player shouldn't feel at the whim of a random event that he can do nothing about, unless its a story component. Are you trying to say that we should make disasters a narative part of civ?

2) The random number generator is problematic in that adding an additional choice changes subsequent random picks... thus a player could avert an event by generating an additional situation forcing a random roll.

Even if you avoided this, by seperating in-turn and between turn random seeds, you still have the problem of a variable number of cities, which again, could be manipulated to avoid an event.

You couldn't pre-ordain a number of these events at the beginning of the game, as you've stated, due to a variable number of cities... although this event in this location might work, and it would only happen if a city was actually there...

[SMIFFGIG]

locutus those are great ideas, they could be worked upon greatly and added to (by my self at least but im sure i talk for others too)

MrBaggins, i think the concerns you have just issued are petit compared the large scale of things, but of course to be taken into consideration.

[The Big Mc]

I think locutos has had some good points. but with a meteorite shower would it not be better with a good like moon metal something very expensive as everybody wants a moon metal sword.

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by MrBaggins


I see a couple of issues

1) A lot of these are completely random and thus you have no chance to avoid them (unless you wish to connect churches/religion with avoiding catastrophy which would be statistically incorrect, from a historical perspective.)

A player shouldn't feel at the whim of a random event that he can do nothing about, unless its a story component. Are you trying to say that we should make disasters a narative part of civ?

Well I think there is evidence that natural disasters have been(and will likely continue to be) part of the rise and fall of civilisations at various points in history. The fall of the High Egyptian Dynasty has been atributed to years of devestating drought - caused maybe by an El Ninio event elsewhere in the world(possibly caused by a huge volcanic erruption!).
And there have been many others(The burning of Rome/the last Ice Age etc).

So the RL precidents exist - BUT we dont have to make them so devestating with a sliding scale of severity and the choice to have them on/off, its really just a way to add a little more life to the build walls/build warriors/attack other civ type play.
If done well IMHO it would add to the whole civ experience, cause sometimes s**t happens - and triumph over adversity is part of all our histories, its why we are here today

2) The random number generator is problematic in that adding an additional choice changes subsequent random picks... thus a player could avert an event by generating an additional situation forcing a random roll.

Even if you avoided this, by seperating in-turn and between turn random seeds, you still have the problem of a variable number of cities, which again, could be manipulated to avoid an event.

You couldn't pre-ordain a number of these events at the beginning of the game, as you've stated, due to a variable number of cities... although this event in this location might work, and it would only happen if a city was actually there...

Yes i'm not sure the 'every turn' thing would be the best way to go, sure its just probability - but i have rolled five sixes in a row on a six sided dice before

Maybe we could store a variable at game start, based on the amount/severity of the random events you want, that would trigger the random roll every X amount of turns. X being a randon number of years based around those start up choices.
So it would have to count the years/turns in the game.

e.g.

I want to experience a huge meteor strike, so i select maximum settings for random events(maybe two choices for: Occurance and Severity?). This gives me that seed(lets call it Raneventtrigger) based on a random call between 10-50(years), so every 10-50 years the roll is made to see if i get an event and what it is and how severe it will be?

I guess the years could be turns if easier to count(so 1-5 turns in this example kinda thing).

I need a bit more explanation on how you could avoid an event dependant on the amount of cities you have?
I would like it not to matter what the player does or doesn't do unless it was a specific event like disease which the player could do something about(like build apothacaries/and or keep a low population?etc).

But for most events like Floods/earthquakes/volcanoes/meteor strike/Drought etc, these are natural disasters that just happen - the player just has to deal with the aftermath(but could lesson the effects of certain ones like Locutus mentioned).

@ Big MC........Moon metal? Well i'd prefer Moon Cheese i think - to feed my population when times are hard
Maybe for the Fantasy version?

[The Big Mc]

Originally posted by child of Thor
@ Big MC........Moon metal? Well i'd prefer Moon Cheese i think - to feed my population when times are hard
Maybe for the Fantasy version?

you know what i mean i just think that if we get space up and running. we can add new space terrain like asteroid fields with there own goods like "metal" a meteorite crash could for a limited time be a supply of this revolutionary metal.

[child of Thor]

you want space in CTP2 soooooo bad dont you

It just made me smile a bit thats all

I know of a 'moon-disk', from prehistoric europe..........but im not familiar with moon metal, or that it was a sort after thing......well except in one of the Conan novels

[Gilgamensch]

Yes i'm not sure the 'every turn' thing would be the best way to go, sure its just probability - but i have rolled five sixes in a row on a six sided dice before

That is exactly what I am afraid of as well. I just don't want to have my empire distroyed because of a serious of bad luck. Then I could play CIV 3 with it's combat model (no insult meant).

[child of Thor]

Ah yes, but Gilgamensch - you can turn off these events So dont worry - you wont have to say that evil word around here

EDIT: well in theory it would be nice to turn of these events as they dont exist yet! - and have them as a scaleable selection.

[The Big Mc]

if anything happens it should not badly hurt the idea is to hold you back a few turns to stop warlord from attacking every civ they can get to. The small tap could hold you back to allow the other civ to be better prepared and as such more fun the kill

[Locutus]

Originally posted by MrBaggins
1) A lot of these are completely random and thus you have no chance to avoid them (unless you wish to connect churches/religion with avoiding catastrophy which would be statistically incorrect, from a historical perspective.)

Well, that's why we call them random events, isn't it? That's the whole point But you most certainly can do something to stop them, or rather to limit (and in time eliminate) their effects: build the city improvements and research the advances I mentioned. In the examples I listed, the effects of all negative events except Drought can be reduced by 50% in the first Age. And since the effects are already fairly minor to begin with, I doubt many players would be seriously annoyed by them. Personally, I would find a medium or large stack of Barbarians appearing inside my borders a lot more annoying than most of these effects. They are smaller than the effects of random events in Civ1 (and Civ1 only had negative events), and personally I liked the events of Civ1 a lot, they added atmosphere to the game -- something CtP2 could do a lot better in.


As far as the exact generation of events goes, I don't really mind myself. Having an event every x turns works just as well for me. And if we would indeed roll all the dices at the start of the game, that would avoid any kind of cheating through reloading and the like. Of course, in that case it would be necessary to do more of the events coding in the source code then rather than in SLIC (since SLIC can be reloaded). But that works for me.

[Gilgamensch]

(and Civ1 only had negative events),

Are you sure? The goodie huts had both and except the usual babarian plague can't remember anything else.

One thing which disturbs me with those random events: Can the AI handle it? No doubt that the normal player can handle it (most of it, at least) For MP games it could be fun

[Ekmek]

I'd lean towards having it off for the AI unless they are the leading power. Only because even if the guys get the AI improved its just human nature to learn faster and find the best answer etc. The random event would be something to keep the human off balance. The AI is all calculations and throwing a variable would limit its ability to challenge the Human. Except in the cae where the AI is leading in military power I think an earthquake or plague might restore balance and keep the human playing instead of rebooting.

[Locutus]

Originally posted by Gilgamensch

Are you sure? The goodie huts had both and except the usual babarian plague can't remember anything else.

Goody huts work the same in all Civ-games. Civ1 had fires, floods, I think earthquakes too and one or two others.

One thing which disturbs me with those random events: Can the AI handle it? No doubt that the normal player can handle it (most of it, at least) For MP games it could be fun

Just depends on their build lists. If you want them to actively fight disasters, make sure buildings that prevent them (in my examples City Walls, Aquaducts, Food Silos, Hospitals, etc) are high in the build lists. Which for the most AIs they already are AFAIK (though it differs per mod of course).

[Gilgamensch]

Civ1 had fires, floods, I think earthquakes too and one or two others.

Me thinks, me has to play again I can't remember those

...buildlist....

Sounds ok for the examples you have given, but what about (i.e.) if you being hit by a drought and teaching the AI to rushbuild those buildings? (In other words, setting priorities)

I'd lean towards having it off for the AI unless they are the leading power

Doesn't sound good for me, just hitting the human? Why?