04-08-2005 23:14									#31
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quote: Originally posted by Solver Random events that have a large effect . You're preparing a naval invasion, 3 transport ships escorted by 3 warships... poor, hurricane, 4 out of 6 ships gone.

Dear Solver,

Large effect is being assumed by our knowledge of Civ3. However, the effect should not be that large, and unit cost should be smaller. I always wondered why a single unit loss is so "costly", that we would not risk any suicide activities.

I would rather have the effect of unit loss being smaller, and the occurence of unit loss being greater.

And, I am for secession wars.

	04-08-2005 23:20									#32
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quote: Originally posted by Xorbon I agree. The only way the idea would make any sense is if it was a part of a scenario where turns represented days or weeks. Storms don't last for years and years here on Earth! If there are any random events, they shouldn't be city-destroying kinds of events (although I do kinda like the volcanoes in C3C). And there should be technologies and city improvements which the player could build to reduce (or eliminate) the chances of a bad random event happening.

I forgot! I always wanted to have pack ice, permanent ice, and icebergs on map. Icebergs can move for quite some time as long as they are not near equator.

Still, storms are accepted. They can last for one turn. Can't they?

	05-08-2005 00:49									#33
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quote: Large effect is being assumed by our knowledge of Civ3. However, the effect should not be that large, and unit cost should be smaller. I always wondered why a single unit loss is so "costly", that we would not risk any suicide activities.

Well, but whether the loss of a unit is "costly" depends, doesn't it? Firstly, it makes sense, as units represent large army groups. Secondly, there are cheap and expensive units. Thirdly, there's how you lose them. If you lose a unit but weaken a defender in a city, it's not a costly loss. But if you lose a ship and 4 of your most expensive units aboard it to a random event, it's costly - and I'd say it's pretty frustrating.

	05-08-2005 02:01									#34
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Still, sh** happens. And it happened all over the mankind history.

But it IS a good and realistic thing. If very rare, of course... Otherwise would be annoying and frustrating, like said by Solver.

	05-08-2005 02:16									#35
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I can take such a thing if it does not have an irreversible effect. Unit slowdowns on ocean, yes. Inability to enter storm squares, yes. However, ever since SMAC, I hated anything that would cause me to lose a unit/city, gain something substantial or such.

	05-08-2005 03:31									#36
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quote: Originally posted by Solver I can take such a thing if it does not have an irreversible effect. Unit slowdowns on ocean, yes. Inability to enter storm squares, yes.

Sounds like a good compromise.

	05-08-2005 04:55									#37
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quote: Originally posted by Aro But it IS a good and realistic thing. If very rare, of course... Otherwise would be annoying and frustrating, like said by Solver.

I take the opposite view. If it's very rare, then don't bother with it. I think random events shouldn't be rare; they should be frequent (though smaller). Then they're just part of the game. If you have random events once or twice per game, they can really knock things out of kilter, but if you have a dozen or so smaller, random events each game (per player), it's just another thing. With infrequent random events, it seem unfair; one civ may get an earthquake which enables the others to outstrip them. On the other hand, if one civ gets an earthquake, another gets a flood, another suffers from the plague, another loses their fleet in a freak storm, etc., the fairness issue doesn't apply nearly as much. There's a big difference between 1 random catastrophe happening to me and none to you as compared to 13 happening to me and 11 to you.

	05-08-2005 05:17									#38
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Ok, your idea seems to work too. I don't know exactly how this kind of thing should be designed, but I would like to see random events altering the curse of the game. Not in a decisive way, more like an avoidable thing (like a storm in the ocean), or you can have your fleet disperse and thrown away without control for one turn or two… (doesn’t matter how many years has passed, this “time count” simply doesn’t make sense at all), or an earthquake may break your roads and RR…
Not hard enough to be frustrating, but only the necessary to spice up the game with the unpredictable.
A good game experience includes a bit of frustration, sometimes…

	05-08-2005 06:08									#39
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Of course, if there are random events, there should be 'good events' as well as 'bad events'. You could have bumper crops and spontaneous discoveries, just to name a couple.

	05-08-2005 06:39									#40
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For sure

	05-08-2005 10:54									#41
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I see zero, let me repeat ZERO strategic depth values of the storm event as originally suggested. There may be some "fun" factor in it, for some, but this is a TBS, and I rather they spend time on diplomacy or AI than on this thing.

	05-08-2005 11:02									#42
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quote: Originally posted by MxM I see zero, let me repeat ZERO strategic depth values of the storm event as originally suggested. There may be some "fun" factor in it, for some, but this is a TBS, and I rather they spend time on diplomacy or AI than on this thing.

I agree. I don't want Civ to become a RTS. I hope I won't live long enough to see my settlers cut some wood or extract gold from the nearest mine, and me building an upgraded forge with an arrow tower to defend it...

	06-08-2005 11:09									#43
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quote: Originally posted by sophist I take the opposite view. If it's very rare, then don't bother with it. I think random events shouldn't be rare; they should be frequent (though smaller). Then they're just part of the game. If you have random events once or twice per game, they can really knock things out of kilter, but if you have a dozen or so smaller, random events each game (per player), it's just another thing. With infrequent random events, it seem unfair; one civ may get an earthquake which enables the others to outstrip them. On the other hand, if one civ gets an earthquake, another gets a flood, another suffers from the plague, another loses their fleet in a freak storm, etc., the fairness issue doesn't apply nearly as much. There's a big difference between 1 random catastrophe happening to me and none to you as compared to 13 happening to me and 11 to you.

and maybe get a higher rep score by sending aid?? if one choses

	06-08-2005 11:42									#44
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Please no, random disasters will remove the fun just as much as polution wack-the mole does right now. Remember, this is a STRATEGIC game the only kinds of disasters whose effects last long enough to effect things on the civ time scale are the same "city is distroyed" disasters that would riun a game. A bad storm that messes up a battle would be a bad roll of the RNG.

	06-08-2005 20:07									#45
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quote: Originally posted by Impaler[WrG] Ship after steam power could be imune or it could be linked to some kind of tec, imunity to these storms would then greatly improve your navel power.

Not after steam power. WWI was temporarily averted in 1903 when a taiphun wrecked British and German cruisers in Somoa. Only the American ship surived, which is why it is today, American Somoa.

	08-08-2005 15:42									#46
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In response to various critisims and Ideas here is a refined version.

When ship and Hurricanes encounter ships their is a mock combat between the ship and storm. The storm has a combat power just like a unit but it ofcorse dose not die if it losses. Storms (2x2) have combat power sufficient to easily destroy/cripple early vessels. Hurricanes can take out mid game ships. By the late game ships will rarely be sunk even by Hurricanes though they will feel some sting. Combat promotions might also be given out to navel units for surviving storms to help mitigate the effects of losses.

At some point you can discover a "Mererology" tec or something along these lines that will reveal all storms/Hurricanes and other weather events on the planet (it dosent reveal terrain it just show the storm out in the black fog-o-war).

The point of making the storms persistent each turn was to make them Easier to avoid. Because a storm only moves 2 or 3 spaces each turn if you steer clear of them your safe. On the otherhand plowing strait ahead into the unexplored ocean will be riskier. Much like encountering an IOD in SMAC the safe option is to go slow and be prepared to run away (thus their is strategy involved here). The storms will ofcorse randomly dispate and randomly spawn but the chance that this will happen right on top of your ship is much smaller if the storms spawn rarely which is possible only if they are persistent.

Hurricanes will ofcorse spawn in equitorial waters and preferentialy move westward. When they hit land they dispate (the smaller storms also dispate when they make landfall but they have no effect when they do so). The tile that the eye hits has a high probability of lossing one or more improvments much like a Fungal Pop in SMAC. A coastal city might loss populaton or more likly some city improvments. Ocean based improvments can also be wreched by Hurricanes.

It sounds like many people are oposed to strong random events of any type, their would ofcorse be a way to toggle random events (hell where supposed to be able to mod the game down to the source code). I like and always use random events in SMAC but the storms proposed here are hardly worse then the ever-present mind worms of SMAC which give the player something to "fight" against in the early game.

	08-08-2005 17:14									#47
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quote: Originally posted by Impaler[WrG] It sounds like many people are oposed to strong random events of any type, their would ofcorse be a way to toggle random events (hell where supposed to be able to mod the game down to the source code). I like and always use random events in SMAC but the storms proposed here are hardly worse then the ever-present mind worms of SMAC which give the player something to "fight" against in the early game.

We already have them in Civ series. They are called "barbarians".

On a gameplay point of view, there is a serius problem with this kind of "catastrophic events": they hit the weaker civ more hard than any already strong.
None want a game where you know you are the sure winner after the first millenium.
While the target of a long, great game is to keep things balanced enough to keep the player happily involved, any random event that will weaken an already weakened country is *bad for game*, realistic or not.

Pollution tried to force the more productive country to slow down spending research turns into ecology-related discoveries, producing environment friendly city buildings (mass transit, recycle center) instead of units/financial buildings, keeping ready a mass of expensive workers for cleaning purpose.

We need something on the same line (without the "wack a mole" part, of course ).

	08-08-2005 17:33									#48
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quote: Originally posted by Impaler[WrG] In response to various critisims and Ideas here is a refined version. Because a storm only moves 2 or 3 spaces each turn if you steer clear of them your safe.

Since when a multiple-years lasting storm is realistic on Earth ?

	08-08-2005 17:40									#49
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Since when is

-unlimited RR moves
-transport through land and sea going slower than a snail
-cities at the size of a small country
-leaders living 6000 years
-despotic republics and democracies

realistic on Earth?

It's all(and more) in Civ.

	08-08-2005 17:40									#50
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quote: Originally posted by M. le Comte Since when a multiple-years lasting storm is realistic on Earth ?

You've never lived in Manchester, clearly.

	08-08-2005 20:03									#51
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Heavens no!

	08-08-2005 20:46									#52
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quote: Originally posted by molly bloom You've never lived in Manchester, clearly.

I hope I won't ever...

	08-08-2005 20:55									#53
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quote: Originally posted by Nikolai Since when is realistic on Earth?... -unlimited RR moves

That's realistic ! It's normal that yours units have unlimited moves when using railroads. Even crossing the whole Asia with the Transsiberian takes less than three weeks ! And a turn is at least one full year.

quote: Originally posted by Nikolai -transport through land and sea going slower than a snail

Ok, there you're right. But this doesn't mean it should not change...

quote: Originally posted by Nikolai -cities at the size of a small country

So very small "country then". Let's say "the size of a region" or "the size of an agglomeration". And it doesn't shock me that in a game called "civilization", we don't run villages.

quote: Originally posted by Nikolai -leaders living 6000 years

er... I don't want to die every three turns.

	08-08-2005 21:18									#54
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quote: Originally posted by M. le Comte er... I don't want to die every three turns.

And some people don't want to have their civ to get severly wounded every now and then. It's the same thing really. Both would be problematic from a gameplay point of view.

	09-08-2005 00:11									#55
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I am a supporter of random events, but not a supporter city-destroying types of events. The main reason I support them is because they'd add a bit of flavor and variety to the game. Civilization is basically a complex board game. I see random events as a sort of 'chance card' that gets drawn from a deck each turn. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. If balance between weak and strong civs is an issue, the 'random event calculator' could be made to roll more favorably for the weaker, and less favorably for the stronger.

Visible, multi-turn storms are a bit weird to me though. If a storm was visible for just one turn, then maybe I'd be okay with that, but I'd prefer a behind-the-scenes random roll to a visible storm.

	09-08-2005 00:17									#56
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quote: Originally posted by Xorbon If balance between weak and strong civs is an issue, the 'random event calculator' could be made to roll more favorably for the weaker, and less favorably for the stronger.

I completely disagree. I like random events, but if the game is unbalanced, the fix is to rebalance the game, not to drive players nuts by manipulating the rng to tear them down when they get big. Random events cannot be enjoyable without being truly random.

	09-08-2005 07:07									#57
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One idea I've had is for a random event (or even the outcome of the random aspects of battles) being decided several turns before being announced or played out. That way, players won't be as inclined to load an earlier turn just to try to change the outcome.

I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement, though...

	09-08-2005 14:42									#58
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quote: Originally posted by TimeTraveler One idea I've had is for a random event (or even the outcome of the random aspects of battles) being decided several turns before being announced or played out. That way, players won't be as inclined to load an earlier turn just to try to change the outcome. I'm not sure how hard that would be to implement, though...

It's a quite common code, indeed.
It's called "seed" series. Random events usually aren't "random" at all, but are computeted given a different seed to obtain different series of numbers (battle odds, virtual dice numbers, etc.).

If the programmer save the seed before the turn take place, you get same effect (same "random" computing series of numbers) every time you rollback reloading last turn.

IIRC, in Civ the seed concept is already used with free villages, to define the kind of bonus or horde of barbarians you'll get out.

Seed concept is also used with terrain generators, to produce the same map every time you use the same seed.

	16-08-2005 01:33									#59
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quote: Originally posted by Anaximander I kind of like the idea myself. However, I don't think that any ships should be immune from the storms effects. Typhoons wreaked havoc on American fleets a couple of times during WWII. Even today, if one of our fleets took a direct hit from a hurricane it would be a disaster. 150 mph winds and 80ft seas do some serious damage.

Modern ships with radar should be protected better in storms than small wooden ships.

	16-08-2005 02:29									#60
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quote: Originally posted by SSBLoveU Modern ships with radar should be protected better in storms than small wooden ships.

They are better protected by their ability to know the storm is coming and then move accordingly. Storms still seriously damage and sink modern ships.