I always get way more negative events than positive ones. At first I thought is was only in my mind (forgetting the good and only remembering the bad) but in my current game I kept an eye on them and I got 12 negative events in a row and only a single one positive and that was a useless quest.

I wonder, is it because there are much more negative events, or has it something to do with the difficulty setting? I play on Monarch.

As it is now, I'll play without events from now on. Getting almost only negative events is not fun :nono: At least one should only get one negative event in 20 turns or so. I had several mine accidents, slave revolts and floods within the crucial first 100 turns of the game (epic) and my forge was destroyed while building the Colossus :mad:

my hero ori has posted the Random Events List. (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=236727) it includes the "chances", which is really the percentage of games that the event is active. even if the event is active, it might not happen to you, of course.

difficulty doesn't change it at all. except to make some of them all the more painful :(

I kept a list of events during my last game. I got 7 "good" ones, of which 4 turned out useless, and 9 "bad" ones: my 10 AI opponents got, between them, 25 good and 17 bad. (Some of the AI's events occurred before I had made contact and so produced no in-game messages: they showed up during the replay). Thus I got more events than any AI civ, and a higher proportion of unfavourable ones.
The most irksome was just after I got Flight. The very next turn an airliner of mine crashed in my neighbour's land, giving him 1000 EPs against me: three turns later the same thing happened with my other neighbour. I'm thankful that I had only the two civs contiguous with mine. On the other hand, one unfortunate AI city got hit three times by monsoons.

I brought this up with the developers. And some other ones did too. I told them that it is Unfun to have more negative events than positive ones. Maybe they can re-weight them in the next patch

I had a game where i turned up the number of events, (set it to 50%) and not only was i getting almost all negitive events, the exact same events were happening on the exact same tiles. I had 1 mine collapse 5 times. another volcano erupted 3 times destroying all 3 mones around it each time (all 3 of the spots were gold, my only source of it) and a single farm hit by 4 tornados, each happening within 2 turns of it being rebuilt. There is definatly something wrong with the rendomness, because it is not random.

In my previous game, there were no less than 8 occurences of the plane crash event within only five turns! :rolleyes: It was especially annoying because the first one was a plane of my worst enemy crashing in my territory and I got 1000 EP towards him and thought 'yeah, finally something good happened'. And the very next turn one of my planes crashed in his territory and he got 1000 EPs too :mad:

The other crashes involved other AIs... I guess nobody ever boarded a plane again after that series of horrible accidents :lol:

yeah i think they should weight all negative events like 10%-15% less, not for realism but for fun value

I experimented with the randomness of events by reloading a a game that was lost anyway numerous times. Result...after 4 turns, every time I reloaded, I got the same negative event and after about 10 turns I got the same quest. That was over 6-7 reloads.

Hey.

I am also bothered by the seeming randomness of "random events".

I don't really understand why it written in the Civilopedia, that random events may depend on the style you play the game. In my last game, Gandhi got two serious bonuses first for Swordsmen ("larger shields" - cover promotion) and then for archer ("master bowyer).
It happened in the ancient or classic era and he waged two or three short wars before.

And what about the quests??? What triggers the quests? In this last game there was only one quest, of which I was only informed in the replay :)

So, random events are pretty cool - but they should be regulated better.

I experimented with the randomness of events by reloading a a game that was lost anyway numerous times. Result...after 4 turns, every time I reloaded, I got the same negative event and after about 10 turns I got the same quest. That was over 6-7 reloads.

That's because the game uses a random seed. That's a number that's used to generate 'random' results (computers cannot truly generate real random numbers due to their design, it's just not possible). Well, the random seed does not change on reloading the game so the results will always be the same for that game.

BUT you can check the option "generate new random seed on reload". Then every time you reload the game a new seed is generated and you get different results.

Hey.

I am also bothered by the seeming randomness of "random events".

I don't really understand why it written in the Civilopedia, that random events may depend on the style you play the game. In my last game, Gandhi got two serious bonuses first for Swordsmen ("larger shields" - cover promotion) and then for archer ("master bowyer).
It happened in the ancient or classic era and he waged two or three short wars before.

And what about the quests??? What triggers the quests? In this last game there was only one quest, of which I was only informed in the replay :)

So, random events are pretty cool - but they should be regulated better.
they are not regulated at all, they really are random - quests are no different from other events.
The problem with more bad events than good events is probably due to the fact that quite a few of the bad effects do not have any prereqs so they can occur every turn, while most positive ones have prereqs so on average you have more negative ones in the random pool...
One thing that does have a tremendous effect on the number of events you get is how fast you progress through the tech tree - the later eras are set to produce more events so if you vastly outtech the AI you will have much more events than they have. This of course is only the case on lower difficulties...

In one of my games a quest only happened when everyone possesed a certain tech - I tried with several reloadings.

(It was the Noble Knight quest - it began when I gave the tech needed to the last who had not researched it)

In one of my games a quest only happened when everyone possesed a certain tech - I tried with several reloadings.

(It was the Noble Knight quest - it began when I gave the tech needed to the last who had not researched it)
reloading is not a valid test since the random seed that governs randomness in this game is preserved upon reload ;)
This Quest does not require all civs to know a certain tech - it just requires the player who triggers it to know it. It still is a random occurance (i.e. unless you mod the game you need to fulfill the prereqs AND the random numbers have to chose this event to trigger and not some other event).

the more ironic Imo is when you get 3 or 4 times in a raw the same mine collapse
after you paid to improve the "security" each time, i mean i though it would had been logical if after one mine collapse , if you paid for repair that this mine will not be "eligible" for any collapsing event until , i don't know, maybe 50-100 turns ?
Although it seems to be always the same tiles ( more or less ) who got catastrophic events ..

^ So true, there should be some mechanism preventing such repeat of events.

also all the the AI's would often be hit by the same event at the same time. (50% event possibility for each country) and eveyone would be hit by a tornado, or everyone would have a fire, not some having tornados, some having fires, some having mine collapses.

to Ori

load save is a valid test for random occurance IF you clicked "new random seed on relaod".

Otherwise

i strated a new game yesterday (noble) and i am CARPETBOMBED by not only random events but GOOD random events. I am at approx 610 AD and I had three or four slightly bad events (a quarry and a pasture destroyed) and several very good events e.g. a spontaneus golden age, peace brokered, three quests (two very easy), a "joyful wedding" and so on. Before that I got four tribal villages two of them containing techs and two others containg a hundred golds.

What's that??? Is it possible that there is a "sucker" and a "blessed" mode triggered automately before you start the game? :) :)
Seems not so likely :)

I think someone stole my luck and gave it to you ;)

no one says that random events are to help you / good ones and bad ones balance themselves out...
they exist to make the games more different from each other, more unique.

m'kay, this one destroying your forge when building the collossus is bad.. :D

to Ori

load save is a valid test for random occurance IF you clicked "new random seed on relaod".
you are right - I usually assume that people saying reload does not work don't do this :blush: :goodjob:


Otherwise

i strated a new game yesterday (noble) and i am CARPETBOMBED by not only random events but GOOD random events. I am at approx 610 AD and I had three or four slightly bad events (a quarry and a pasture destroyed) and several very good events e.g. a spontaneus golden age, peace brokered, three quests (two very easy), a "joyful wedding" and so on. Before that I got four tribal villages two of them containing techs and two others containg a hundred golds.

What's that??? Is it possible that there is a "sucker" and a "blessed" mode triggered automately before you start the game? :) :)
Seems not so likely :)
that is the way randomness can work ;) sometimes it does cluster favorable results, sometimes it sucks :cool:

Although the negative events can be annoying, none of them are really that devastating. Except for the early barbarian hordes. And slave-revolts can end up being a pain too, but it's only one turn...

I had several mine accidents, slave revolts and floods within the crucial first 100 turns of the game (epic) and my forge was destroyed while building the Colossus :mad:

Wow, I thought this was due to spies and since they were successful, the game "covers up" the true meaning on why <insert negative result here> happened.

Example:

Spy sabotages building - forge is destroyed while building the colossus
Spy sabotages mine - Mine collapse due to tornado
Spy contributes to revolt - Slave revolt uprise in <insert city name here>

This isn't the issue?

If not I guess I have been lucky enough so far to not have been subject to a spy sabotaging anything of mine. Never seen "So and So's Spy just stole your treasury" or anything like that.

that is the way randomness can work ;) sometimes it does cluster favorable results, sometimes it sucks :cool:

This is precisely why I am not a fan of the random events. The notion some people have that luck all miraculously evens out in the end is pure fallacy; at least over a single game. In my last game I had slave revolts, a barbarian invasion (cost me two pop of capital), several buildings destroyed (including a cathedral), towns completely destroyed by natural disasters, absolutely nothing good happened. Well ok, I did get +1 commerce on a jungle tile that wasn't even within my city's fat cross.

Of course, in my next game I will probably be farcically lucky to make up for it ;). But if I am too lucky, it almost feels like cheating. The one good thing about being unlucky is if you come through it, it can be far more fulfilling.

BumpNsubz, i had for example a customs house destroyed by a spy and it told me that a spy did it, but it didn't tell me who. excellent choice of building to destroy, since i was at war with almost everybody so my trade routes there were internal anyway :). i've had similar things with tile improvements, and seen screenshots like that for people that got spaceship parts destroyed :eek:! sometimes it does tell me who, or i catch them before they do it (that's my favorite of the 3).

so i think (altho i can't be sure, since i don't read code) that if a spy sabotages something, you always know it was due to espionage. you just don't always know who the culprit was. i'm curious about whether it tells you when they steal a tech or gold from your treasury, since that's kinda different.

so i think (altho i can't be sure, since i don't read code) that if a spy sabotages something, you always know it was due to espionage. you just don't always know who the culprit was. i'm curious about whether it tells you when they steal a tech or gold from your treasury, since that's kinda different.

The game tells me when spies steal techs just like when they destroy improvements, not sure whether that would apply to every instance though.

If not I guess I have been lucky enough so far to not have been subject to a spy sabotaging anything of mine. Never seen "So and So's Spy just stole your treasury" or anything like that.

I think this can depend on how much the AI invests in espionage (based on their character), and their attitude towards you. When Peter was my neighbour, if his attitude was cautious I would see a pattern of improvements being destroyed, water supply being poisoned, techs stolen etc. If he was pleased, it would all stop, then at cautious, it all starts happening again.

The good events are generally much better than the bad events anyway, so unless I'm getting non-stop slave revolts the random events are beneficial most of the time.

I was at war with Sitting Bull and then he agreed to capitulation.

Then the soldiers started ____ their wives and I got +10:food: in every city.

I got at least 5 "post-war" population booms after that.


+60:food: in all cities :)

also, when I was besieging Cahokia, the capitol of Native Americans, there was a slave revolt and their defence bonus dropped to 0%. What kind of timing is that? :D
I also got +1 :hammers: to the forge in Paris. Couple of Hurricanes too and some cultural bonuses.

I like random events. Especially before the industrial age. The quests are pretty cool.

I want more quests :)

In my current game I got mostly good events. That's some small atonement for my bad luck in the last one ;)

Btw, if something is destroyed by spies there's always a message "A [something] was destroyed by enemy infiltrators". So you can easily tell sabotage from random events.

I had a game where i turned up the number of events, (set it to 50%) and not only was i getting almost all negitive events, the exact same events were happening on the exact same tiles. I had 1 mine collapse 5 times. another volcano erupted 3 times destroying all 3 mones around it each time (all 3 of the spots were gold, my only source of it) and a single farm hit by 4 tornados, each happening within 2 turns of it being rebuilt. There is definatly something wrong with the rendomness, because it is not random.

How do you turn up the ocurrence of random events?

*Quest spoilers*

In a recent game with the Byz, I received the chariot quest and got all excited as I had a horses resource soon after the event triggered.
I timed it to perfection that all 10 chariots were produced the turn before I entered the Classical era by means of the Oracle/CoL slingshot, and was dissapointed to find out that I gained absolutely nothing (except having 10 chariots of course).
I had no state religion - I was going to go for Confucianism when I got CoL, so there was no spread of belief. I also built the chariots in cities with barracks so they were already at Combat 1 level, so both possible rewards were wasted.
If only I knew beforehand what they would've provided.

Also, in the following game, I saw the Vedic Aryans message appear at around 3200BC and quaked in my boots as I had only 2 warriors, one of which was exploring. Luckily I didn't see them appear - I'm guessing that 4 or 5 chariots would appear outside my capital if I was their unlucky target.

If only I knew beforehand what they would've provided.


:mischief: ;)

ok to add something more: of course you gained something - the combat I is also given to all chariots that are produced later... But for the Benefits just refer to my sig :p

Nice work Ori.

I don't know whether to read through some of the quests or not. D'ya reckon it's cheating?

I don't - but then again I already read all of them ;)
Its really just up to yo if you have fun discovering new events/quests then don't read ;)

random events are just that - random.
Sometimes you might get a chain of bad events (none of which are really game breaking, except for that archer invasion), sometimes you might get some good ones.

But the good ones you get CAN be game breaking - for instance in this one game i got first a greed quest for a copper resource located just next to my capital in a just established and unprotected enemy city - which i promptly razed and received 5 free axemen. Next turn i get a tower shield upgrade which gave all my new axemen free cover.
Do i need to say that i easily won that game?
Imo no sequence of bad events can give you such a huge advantage when you need it.

Sorry for double-posting but I don't know how else to find this out.

Is there a way to increase the chance of random events/quests? I enjoy these but they don't happen as often as I'd like, especially at the beginning of the game.

Thank you,
Sremaj

two ways:
copy program files\firaxis games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\assets\xml\gameinfo\civ4erainfos.xml
to
\my games\beyond the sword\custom assets\xml\gameinfo\civ4erainfos.xml
open that file using any texteditor. It has the following value for each era:
<iEventChancePerTurn>X</iEventChancePerTurn> with X being the chance for X per EVENT_PROBABILITY_ROLL_SIDES (see below). usually it is X%. Changing this allows you to change probabilities era specific.

If you want to increase the probability over all eras its easier to
copy program files\firaxis games\sid meier's civilization 4\beyond the sword\assets\xml\globaldefines.xml
to
\my games\beyond the sword\custom assets\xml\globaldefines.xml
open that file using any texteditor.
It has a tag
<DefineName>EVENT_PROBABILITY_ROLL_SIDES</DefineName>
<iDefineIntVal>100</iDefineIntVal>

Decreasing this value increases the probability of events - be carefule not to use a value smaller than the highest <iEventChancePerTurn> from above.

And Welcome to Civfanatics :band:

Thank you for the prompt response, Ori. And thank you, I plan to utilize these forums for any/all Civ-related issues in the future! :king:

In my current game, the "surplus game" event has occurred 7 times up to 1200AD, all to AI civs and 3 of them to the Khmer. I have had 4 good events and 5 bad; the 8 AI civs have had, between them, 13 good (including "surplus game") and 16 bad, an average of 3.6 events per AI civ compared with 9 for me, possibly because mine is the largest empire.
No evidence of bias.

now. SOMEONE explain Greed to me.


E.g. It asks me to capture a copper resource from Saladin, but the resource is NOT in the BFC of any arabian cities.

So i captured the surrounding cities of Saladin. And I dont think my cultural border was immediately strong enough to cover the copper.


Then it tells me that i lost the quest of greed. !!!!?


I dont think 150 turns has passed.

IIRC, if it doesn't go straight from enemy territory into your own, you don't get the bonus.

Last night I got the Mediator event in an Always War game ... that mediator might be a smooth talker, but he can't beat the game settings. Even though I choose the Yes option, I was still at war afterwards.

In a recent game Elizabeth's planes kept crashing in my small OCC territory. I kept letting her have access, and by the end i'd gotten about +6 from just through those events. I was so friendly with her, i saved and declared on her, and she was still friendly during the war.