Events - feedback needed

Ok, I finally decided to start working on events. I did some small changes in the past and some bigger ones recently, but now I want to finish that.

There are plenty of events, and I am not sure I can every review them all one by one. Especially as debuggin events is really painful.

So, what events you think need changing? removal? total rewrite?

Currently I think the worst offenders are:
Constelation events - mostly fire in early game, and most of them do nothing as you need to have specific mana/religion/civ etc. to use the only working option. I think they should be merged and given some more options.

Mana events - many are designed according to schema: have certain mana or suffer. I have disabled the worst one (Muire goblins), but stioll, I think that we should remove most of them keeping the most interesting ones and add more options to deal with them, dependant on different types of mana, but also other things.

Volcano - disabled for now, was firing way too often and did nothing except ugly feature. I have an idea to make it destroy improvements on some of surronuding tiles (but not cities), but add extra food to some tiles. Also, the peak will remeain unchanged or will change to volcano terrain type that is very simillar to peak except small graphical change.

Ok, waiting for feedback/suggestions. The more specific, the better.

Reserved - to list changes

I think my gripe with the events is that they are too much black or white. If I can pay/have the right mana, it's all benefits. In the contrary, it's all negative.

What would be great is events offering 'mild' options, that is having a upside and a downside for each option you can choose, eventually having one clearly good option with drastic prerequisites. That way you'd have to think which option to choose carefully, depending on the situation you're in. (more events like your undead hero tomb, which is great !)

I agree, and that is why I started this thread.

Or rather. I agree, but can't do it on my own.
Need info on specific events that need changing/merging with what (names please...) and that is why I started this thread.

But don't get me wrong, general feedback is also welcomed.

I agree with you with the constellation part, it's almost always pops up in the beginning so there isn't much you can do to benefit from it.

The pay money I am not so against, because it forces you to have certain amount of gold and if you are willing to spend that.

Probably my favorite ones are the ones that give you great people (great bard or -5 to happiness) or the goblin orphan.

Actually some of the event can be quite tricky for me to figure out what they do exactly.

Don't know if this would work, but you can have random events that are similar to quest given in Fall from heaven.. the kind that's like "create 10 swordmans or get this resource by turn x type" and give special promotion to units.

One of the random event promotion I really liked is the adventurer promotion, without it I always had to think three or four times before explore a lair. Maybe you can have a random event which you pay for the adventurer promotion on one of your units?

Or maybe more events that spawn animals like penguin and birds, that's always fun..

I really hate the "captured unicorn" event, it feels like it was written by a 12 year old ("shiny bits for the win!")

I still don't understand what effect the two choices in the "werewolf attack" event have on the game (do they do anything?)

I remember the "barbarians at the gate" event was a real nuisance early in one of my games, it involved a barb archer running around my capital and a prompt for action every turn, i sent four warriors after him, they died, and then i restarted. not fun. :/

I like the constellation events, they add nice flavor. Though maybe the ones that have a global effect like increasing birth rate or happiness should let you know via mouseover text, they're a lot less useless then most players probably ever realize.

I think there should be events tied with religions. Like, in a city with Order, a Demagogue is doing a speech to convince the people that the current government is flawed and too chaotic for their good. You could have a long series of such events, the more complicated involving interaction between religions, other than Order-AV which already exists.

moshi said:

I really hate the "captured unicorn" event, it feels like it was written by a 12 year old ("shiny bits for the win!")

[...]

Click to expand...

I don't know. I'm usually a very serious dude when it comes to breaking of immersion or gaming stuff overall, but that one had me laughing.

Opera said:

I think there should be events tied with religions. Like, in a city with Order, a Demagogue is doing a speech to convince the people that the current government is flawed and too chaotic for their good. You could have a long series of such events, the more complicated involving interaction between religions, other than Order-AV which already exists.

Click to expand...

I can imagine the riots in a city containing all religions at once.

Seriously. There should probably be an event for having all religions in a city at once, just because it's so rare.

moshi said:

I really hate the "captured unicorn" event, it feels like it was written by a 12 year old ("shiny bits for the win!")

Click to expand...

let me answer to that one ( after all ,i coded it )
it's a reference to this story by KillerClowns http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6985928&postcount=14
which itself is a reference to a rule the FFH design team decided to make : Nothing that could be in the bedroom of a five years old girl can be in FFH.

the writing style is made to stick with the balseraph style of the story.
It's more a fun Easter Egg than a real event

Where the constellation events taken out? I haven't seem one in ages. I must say I get the Unicorn one a lot.

While not popular, shouldn't there be more natural disaster type events? I mean hurricanes, earthquakes, locusts and famine are all something that happen from time to time.

Plus I think that one event should be fixed is the 'werewolf' at the gate since to me it always seemed to be an event where one might get access to a werewolf if one wasn't able to get Halfmorn. Certainly it would rarely happen as often times the ravenous werewolf is going to die before it promotes but have the chance at werewolves is to good to pass up.

Zombies, perhaps instead of skeletons from lairs and the like, you get zombies would would be semi-strong critters that if they kill a unit, that unit becomes a zombie. Getting damaged by a zombie would cause the unit to become diseased and have a % chance every turn to become a zombie itself unless cured.

I think I've mentioned this before, but either as a event or a goody hut result, it would be nice to come upon some wandering tribe and get a unit like used in Fury Road that allows you to add to an existing city in the same way as a Awakened or Reborn. For that matter, I wish you could use settlers in this way. It was always nice in Alpha Centauri to have larger cities build a unit that would subtract 1 size from the city which then could be added to other cities.

I don't know if there is a way to limit an event and maybe to weight it towards earlier in the game but I just thought of a potentially neat event based on the old Black & White game. In a sense this would be a different take on the Minister Koun event.

You'd get a pop-up saying as mystic had a vision and he and his followers want to leave your kingdom which would set up the following options.

You could deny their petition: This would either get you some but give you a boost in gold or they'd escape and you'd lose 1 population.

You could let them go. Here you could just let them go or let them go with your blessing which would cost some money (to show your support you'd help outfit them). Either way, you'd lose 1 population.

If you let them go or they escape, somewhere on the map a city would be founded. Now you'd not know where this is so you'd have to find them later. Now if you just let them go or they escaped, they would be a minor leader from a different Civ. If you let them go with your blessing, they'd be a minor leader of your own team.

If this city survives by the time you discover them, you would have the following choices.
A) If they escaped, they'd hate you and probably go to war with you or at least be very cranky at you.
B) If you let them go, they would offer to become your vassal.
C) If you let them go with your blessing, they either could become your vassal or you could simply absorb the city into your own empire.

A complicated event, but I would think that with the coding for the Breach and the Minister Koun event it is probably doable.

arkham4269 said:

I must say I get the Unicorn one a lot.

Click to expand...

6 times, same city, first 150 turns.

can you say unhealthyness was NOT a problem?

Meeber said:

Actually not Zombies but Ghouls. Since in D&D ghouls can make other ghouls and Zombies can't. Now there could be another event that could involve Zombies.

Click to expand...

Well I was thinking more of the idea of 'classic' Romero' zombies. Although the zombies depicted in the novel World War Z: Oral History of the Zombie War (http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780307346612-5 are more "real" in that the virus that creates the zombies acts as a sort of rabies; the zombies are compelled to bite and spread the infection. I mean I've always wondered if 'Romero' zombie (as seen in Night of the Living Dead and many other films) want to eat people, where do new zombies come from? I mean if they eat you, not much left to become a zombie, right?

Anyway while FfH itself was based off a D&D campaign, as far as I know there hasn't been any sort of concerted effort to mirror it up to D&D. If they had, I believe the Luirchirp would have been Gnomes instead of dwarfs. That and the Svartalfar probably would have had a origin closer to the Drow.

In keeping with my broken record of posts dealing with vassals, colonies and other things regarding minor civs, I was thinking of an event that would be interesting for any faction.

It would be a tweak of the event where colonist/refugees come from another faction. What I was thinking (if it could be coded) would be that you would get a settler that you could use to spawn a city that you own. However, the city would have the builds mirroring the Civ that they came from.

So basically you'd have one city that would act as if you had the Conqueror or Tolerant trait and had taken a city of that Civ.

Since that city would have to start as a population of 1, it would take a while to make any difference unless there would be a way to add the racial build trait to a city and instead of a settler, having a +1 added to an existing city. This, obviously, would be more powerful if it happened to a larger city.

I would think this would be a separate event from the existing event since it is more powerful.

I finally had some time to play Orbis game or two and this time I remembered to take notes about things I’d like to mention. I played with option ‘living world’ to get more events.
As you mentioned, worst offenders are constellation events. They lack options to chose from and often trigger too early to even give you chance to adopt state religion. They all are names _EVENT_SIGN_??? and generally there are two kinds of them – just giving some effect or requiring certain state religion.
Aeron, Arawn, Bhall, Camulos, Dagda, Mammon, Nanotosuelta, Oghma, Sirona, Sucellus and Tali all need some mouse over info about effects they provide. Those are simple events and I don’t think that enchanting them is top priority, but you can always add option to pay some gold to get better bonus (or suffer less severe malus). Can’t say anything specific, as I have only a louse idea what they do
Ceridwen, Cernunnos, Danalin, Esus, Junil, Kilmorph, Lugus need to trigger later. Is it possible to make them require somebody, not necessarily player to discover appropriate religion founding tech ? This way, you’d at least had chance to have religion. Golden ages/Great Prophets should cost you more money than now (something like 150-200 gold) and weaker option (“Let them celebrate and see if they can be of any worth to us”) for about 50 should be available. This second option would be available if given religion is present in city, but it’s not you state religion (this would require making them ‘city events’ if they are not now). I’m assuming those unit won’t leave you if not following their religion.
Ceridwen: Mobius Witch. As they start with random promotions, they are often useful.
Cernussos: Fawn or some bonus health. Upgrading forest near city to Ancient would be nice, but don’t know if it’s possible (and even if possible, it might be more trouble than it’s worth)
Danalin: Drown/Stygian Guard. Waterwalking units are always useful.
Esus: Ratcatcher or some espionage points if possible.
Junil: Crusader ?
Kilmorph: Free Bank building.
Lugus: Radiant Guard, maybe with some extra anti-spy promotions.
Just some ideas, surly better or more fun options are possible

And some thoughts about other events:
Event_Witch: Boring Maybe saving witch should cause 1 temporary unhappiness and have 50% to give you free Mobius Witch (or adept, but as you can see, I like witches ;>). Evil civs (or maybe Sheaim only ?) should be able to recruit witch (“Give her choice – join us or die”)
Event_Sickness: More boring version of Event_Devastating_Plague. I don’t think there’s need for two similar events, so I’d simply remove it.
Event_Graveyard: It might need some option for Scions. Coping from other event should work
Event_Ancient_City: Nice, but it seems it steals research from someone else. As it is excavation, it doesn’t make sense.
Event_Bareke: Too good IMHO. Maybe it should trigger off unit and have chance to kill this unit when trying to rescue Bareke ?

Kalina said:

IEvent_Witch: Boring Maybe saving witch should cause 1 temporary unhappiness and have 50% to give you free Mobius Witch (or adept, but as you can see, I like witches . Evil civs (or maybe Sheaim only ?) should be able to recruit witch (“Give her choice – join us or die”)

Click to expand...

While having set options is nice, perhaps having more events like this that will have random outcomes. For example, in hoping to get the happiness bonus, you elect to kill the witch. Then you might get.
A) The witch dies and you get your bonus
B) You try to kill the witch but she escapes and now you have a barbarian mobius witch to deal with.
C) Before you kill her, she curses you and then your city gets hit with a certain amount of turns of sickness
D) In trying to kill the witch, you break the curse on her and she becomes an adept for you.
E) You kill the witch but it's familiar goes enraged; a random pack leader animal is spawned. (While this might seem like a bad thing, if one has fauns or rangers, you just got a 'free' animal)

I agree with the 'not killing the witch' options of the above. Some other options would be.
A) "This isn't my nose, it's a false nose!" Get a boost but at the cost of some turns of
B) "You soft-hearted fools!" You don't kill her but she turns out to be a witch who then flies away after cursing you similar to C but with an added due to your people being ticked off at you!
C) "She turned me into a newt!" Let the witch go but in return she casts a spell that will give a unit some sort of good promotion like lycanthropy or perhaps she gives up her familiar and then a unit gains a tiger or lion animal totem.

I haven't seen the ages in FfH or Orbis for awhile so I'm thinking they were taken out. However if they are still there but we don't get a pop-up, perhaps this could be used to help tweak the constellation type events?

I mean couldn't you tie events to when they could happen by what era you are in? Ones that need to come early could be tied to the ancient era and later ones to the 'modern' era.

On that note, in some versions of Civ, the player that first gets to the next era would get a bonus. Now back in the day it was an extra tech which was really powerful. Perhaps the different eras might give a different bonus. I think at one time in some FfH/FF/Orbis forum we all took a crack at renaming the eras to more accurately reflect the game. The 'modern' era I think became the Era of War or Empire or something martial like that. Whoever gets to that era first, for example, might get a great general, maybe a free unit or just some bonus towards a martial tech.

Something to think about.

I have found the event where the traveler offers to tell you about places around Erebus either doesn't work for me or I've already explored the area. Of course I tend to play on small maps and often playing as Scions so I have Theromoch to run around finding things for me. Still, it really just seems a 'wasted' event. I'd rather see something like:
A) Places of Danger: Would show all existing dungeons
B) Places of Death: Would show all existing graveyards
C) Places of Life: Would show all existing lairs

Or maybe you'd just get a certain % of the above.

I'm thinking if Orbis has the "most hated enemy" (I can't remember) I think it would be nice to have:
D) Home of Our Ancient Enemy: Would show the capital of your worst enemy

A little one: EVENT_LIBRARY_FIRE requires Water Mana. It could use one more option, maybe evil only, giving change to save library while losing some (2-3, 1 seems not enough). "Save the books, they are more important than people !"