Game Concept: Torrential Rain

Torrential Rain

I think a cool game concept would be torrential rain. This is basically a heavy downpour that will have positive and negative effects on your empire.

Positive effects

Anywhere that you cannot normally irrigate, basically places without fresh water, will be irrigatable for 10 turns. So, if torrential rain occured, my 10 tile plains island without fresh water can be irrigated, for only 10 turns. If my workers are still irrigating when the 10 turns run out, they can still irrigate until their action is finished.

Negative effects

- 4% (1 in every 25 tiles) of grassland in your empire is turned into marsh.
- 2 river cities in your empire will lose a population point.

Miscellaneous

- The first negative effect of Torrential Rain doesn't occur anymore when Sanitation is discovered.
- Torrential Rain occurs twice a game, on two random turns.

If there are events in Civ4... and there should be!
I like this idea about the rain, and there should be other temperature events!

mmmm....I don't think that's worth to be included

Throughout the history of Civlization natural disasters and climate events have been very significant. Flooding has eneded or severely damaged civs. Earthquakes have leveled a good part of cities(San Francisco). A typhoon even saved Japan from invasion.

Although I think the duration of weather affects should be based on time elapsed, so most of them would only last 1 turn until the late-middle to early-industrial age. I do think, though, that weather events should be restricted to certain domains. LIke in SMAC, mountains and hills would be a moisture barrier. This means that weather occurs along river out to coasts and ranges.

I think they should also implement droughts(reduced food production), hurricanes/tornadoes, earthquakes(damaged buildings, possible pop loss).

How about short climate fluctuations, like the Little Ice Age? Grasslands and Plains to the north would become tundra, and so on.

Ice age
flooding
tornadoes
huricanes
disease
drought
famine
and earth quakes should all be optional in civ4 and the player decides to have them or not. With weather/natural disasters the game becomes horribly comlex, but much more realistic.

Vizurok said:

If there are events in Civ4... and there should be!
I like this idea about the rain, and there should be other temperature events!

Click to expand...

The consensus among game designers is that most players do not like things they have no control over (random events should be in, and the player should be able to turn them on/off), I do not think they will make it.

Double post.

I get that most people do not like random events like these so they will not take the time to include them but set up the code so they are modable, include the basic structure to include the ability to include random events... so people that really want them can make them.

of making them completely random, weather affects should be a strategic consideration. They would also not do anything super-malicious like destroy buildings. I will demonstrate what I mean.

Flooding:
Areas near certain rivers(those are randomnly determined and occasionally change based on time/pollution/technology initiatives) will be clearly marked as being a flood region, maybe with different risk levels. Every so often(more for high risk areas) a flood would occur. Flooding would stop food accumulation past consumption and production past waste for one turn. It would also incur extra maintenance on certain structures(cleanup) and an overall gold penalty(disaster relief and cleanup/reconstruction). These penalties would be small, especially as technology developed and unique initiatives(new production item) are built.

Drought:
Areas on the inland side of mountain chains would be at higher risk, especially if they are far from rivers. Droughts would reduce food production and commerce(from agriculturaly related products=many products). Risk would also be able ot be viewed.

Tornadoes:
Not sure how different areas would be prone one way or the other(best left random). Risk would be able to be viewed. Would incur a cleanup and maintenance penalty.

Hurricanes:
Around islands and coasts near equator. Similair affects to flooding, but more severe in terms of cost. Once techs related to Public Alert Systems was developed, human cost a lot less.

Earthquake:
Faults would have to be drawn below the map. Cities along it are at very high risk. Could cause a lot of damage(high gold cost) and stops production for one turn. Damage reduced greatly by technology.

Of course there would be other disasters(especially a model for wild fires). Players would know where areas were high risk, influencing whether or not to accept the risk of developing those areas. It could also influence research decisions towards those techs that would help reduce the impact of nature if certain disasters were plagueing your civ.

How about flood control systems? Workers could build levees in flood prone areas to reduce the threat or penalty. You could also build aqueducts that carry water from river to a drought-prone area.
Blizzards should also be a consideration, but more of a military-oriented one: No surplus food, but all unit movement points down one, unless already one, and possibly a one HP damage penalty.

unfortunately whoever said that most players do not like events they can not control must be right..cause the "plague" idea which i thought was great is not even on option in a regular C3C game...i think waether patterns (rainy era/ice era/ ect.) would be great..that and if they had moving water (just some minor animation..a wave hitting the shore once in a while) terrrain , Air/Naval warfare and more transport units would all add to the playability to this...being way behind wouldn't be so useless if u happen across an iceburg floating by while moving a sub or something.

i think in general players don't like things they really can't plan for or have a good idea of when to expect. That's why bad climate affects should be regional, have lighter penalties, and you should know if there is a high risk of such affects. Then you would know that crossing a rough channel would give you a great rear attack, but you could lose half your force in the choppy seas. You would also know that your settling near an earthquake fault or a regoin with regular famines/flooding.

-0blivion- said:

Torrential Rain- Torrential Rain occurs twice a game, on two random turns.

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Is twice a game enough...?

It should be more like three time every age (prehistoric, medieval, industrial...)

Also, the player should be able to turn the random weather effects on/off because many players (my friend, for example) hates games that have random effects like weather.