Events in Civ4?

To Firaxis: Clearly events are not going to happen in Civ3. Fine, but I just want to add my two cents by telling whoever decides to develop Civ4 (I’m assuming it will be Firaxis) that a scripting language can come in very handy to both designers and players. It could potentially add much to the game –too much to outline here. Don’t overlook this feature. (Please?)

See a poll on Civ3 Events
here.


For those who don’t know:
Basically, a scripting language consists of triggers, actions modifiers and conditions. These can be applied to virtually any aspect of the game. So, if you want to have certain things happen at certain times or under certain circumstances, you would just input the appropriate parameters into the interface (probably a game editor) and voila. The extent of the scripting applications are only as limited as the game itself.


It is my belief that if implemented properly—in a user-friendly format—this could set a new standard for strategy gaming. Hopefully if events once again become a reality for CIV, the new language will feature new and different applications not seen in other games and allow players to go above and beyond what has been see to date.


(You don't have to comment if you don't want to, but please vote. Thanks.)

I think this would be very good

yeah, like in Civ II?

Scripted Events are verry interesting. But the have to be balanced.

Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings has some triggers, but the are not very deep.

Good events will never come at the same moment. I am thinking of the following Model:

Event = A (an event is a massive disease in certain cities for example)
Factors that influence the chance of Such an event:
B --> The Presence of Aquaducts, Sewer systems and Hospitals
C --> The Presence of Multiple Types of Food
D --> The Presence of Doctors/Dentists/Apothecarians in your city(ies)
E --> The Presence of Swamps in the surrounding
F --> Lack of Food

For example with a low A (only one of the three buildings present), A lack of food (F), Only one type of Food and Swamps in the surrounding (E) The Chance is 10% that there will come an epidemy. Each turn this chance will increase..

The City Size must influence this, because most of the factors will against you in the beginning (low city sizes)

In my opinion it is usefull to have an health advisor who gives you information about the different 'health factors' in your cities. Such an advisor can make the problems 'visible'. With a larger budget this advisor will do his job better. For a large empire you maybe need multiple advisors for the different regions.

While IMO events/scripting is not necessary for a good game, I will concede that they would make life much better for modders. I can see where they could be used to very good effect (and where they *will* be used to bad effect, by many but you can't get the gold without digging through the dross...).

Does anyone know Railroad Tycoon 2?
They have a nice editor for events.
You can set conditions for events to happen (date, build railroad in that region, money...), you can set the probability with which the event happens, you can set the effects and duration, and you can even set the event to be considered regularly like each year or so.

The reason Firaxis didn't do this for CivIII was that they wanted to sell their own mods. There are some problems with this however, that I'm rather certain they encountered:

1. People want to make their own mods not necessarily just play somebody else's. Hence no interest.

2. People want to try a mod out and keep it if it's good, delete if it's not interesting to them. Making people pay for that is not going to encourage a lot people to keep playing the game.

3. Firaxis has to support all of the mods they sell. No way around the fact that that costs money and developer time. It's costing them right now with Conquests.

4. Mods are typically short lived. They have a lot of turn-around. With the way gaming companies have to go through publishers and distributors and the hassle of marketing, it's hard to imagine that a company like Firaxis could keep up with the day-by-day lusts of gamers.


I would advise Firaxis to leave modding to the gamers. It will keep the game alive for a lot longer and leaves the original game developer's resources to do what they really should be doing, developing new games. Also, the modifications can spur ideas for future features.

An absolute must!

There were some great scenarios made for Civ II which made extensive use of scripted events (such as the Odyssey).

It will allow a far greater range of imagination for the modders...

There should be an 'only for scenarios' option

HELL YEAH BRING IT BACK!

In warcraft 3 (my favourite RTS game and my second favourite of all time) you could totally change the way everything worked for your pleasure it was so fun making triggers on map editor, great idea

Flak said:

The reason Firaxis didn't do this for CivIII was that they wanted to sell their own mods.

Click to expand...

Far from true. The real reason was that the code base was fragile and not set up for scripting, and it would have taken them almost as much work to put it in as to rewrite the entire code base.

They gave the players all the same tools that they used (with the exception oif PhotoShop etc.) to make scenarios. There is nothing in Conquests that you can't recreate given the time and skill.

This is not to say that Firaxis and Atari didn't plan on making expansions. They did. The industry business model assumes at least one expansion for all successful PC games.

The good news is that Soren has said publicly at the GDC that C:IV will use Python for scripting. So, you can rest easy. This thread may as well be closed as it's OBE.

As WS said, adding scripting to a game that wasn't designed for it is a monumental feat. A good scripting engine requires hooks into the source code in many different areas, in fact, yes, you have to program the game with the express purpose of allowing scripting. If you don't do that from the start then it's 99% impossible. Which is why I never expected scripting from Civ 3.

Was Civ2 designed with scripting in mind? Not as far as I know. The macro was added later in the Conflicts in Civilization XP.

The macro was primitive (notice it´s not an actual macro ´language´) but it changed everything. I went from playing the vanilla game (Original Civ2) on occasion as a step up from Civ1 to heavy-duty modding (including experimentation with alternative formats for the vanilla game) when CiC came out; FW/MGE enhanced the macro by adding wildcard and tech triggers, which made for some of the most inovative modding in gaming IMO.

An equally primitive macro incorperated into the Civ3 program doesn´t seem too far-fetched to me but apparently it just wasn´t possible.

But then, Civ3 was something of an upgrade of Civ2; Civ4 will be a whole new ball-game.

Let´s see what will happen.

If they choose to go in that direction I think the focus should be on designing a highly user-friendly editor for modding purposes--to the point where a newbie can start designing simple scens after a few hours of use--and many applications in the vanilla game (e.g. random events a la barbarian invasions, fluctuating climate, tribal population movement/incorporation into a civ´s cities, uncontrolled urban sprawl, etc.). Civ3 already does this in some ways: GLs, Plagues, volcanoes, GAs.

The good news is that Soren has said publicly at the GDC that C:IV will use Python for scripting. So, you can rest easy. This thread may as well be closed as it's OBE.

Click to expand...

You may be right. Can you elaborate? (Haven´t really kept up with news. )

Just what I said. CIV will allow users to write Python scripts. Go to www.python.org to learn more about Python scripting. Does this mean that you'll need to know a little programming to set up scripts? Yes, it probably does.

It remains to be seen what 'hooks' will be exposed to Python, but concievably anything and everything. That should allow a lot of customization.

So for those who want the power to mod and have the ability, there are many possibilities for them.

Python is an open source scripting language so I assume that will allow for a lot of flexibility.

However, newbies writing scripts just doesn´t seem realistic to me.

´Hooking´ Python into various functions in the editor (i.e. pre-written scripts viewed by the player as options in the editor) would be better. Granted, this would place limitations on modders but as long as there is plenty of functionality--all scripts you could ever need for the game´s purposes--then this would still be lightyears beyond what Civ2´s simple macro offered (or even the various trigger functions offered in games like Starcraft and AoE:2--both of which use editors BTW).

Just to be clear on what I said in my previous post, the events interface will have to be even simpler to use--select pre-written scripts--than that of SC; and that´s saying a lot because SC´s editor is one of the most user-friendly I´ve seen to date. (I´m talking something so user-frindly, even gramps could put together a simple script after a few tries.)

Also, wouldn´t you need a compiler to create new scripts? Only hard-core modders will be willing to DL and use this stuff. Players with a casual interest in modding just won´t bother.

To give you an example: just look atr how many problems newbies had with Civ2´s simple macro when working with the Events.txt file. A P-O-S though it was IMO, the editor that shipped with MGE made life a lot easier for many players.

Civ3´s editor made modders out of many players that weren´t even aware Civ2 could be edited. A user-friendly interface goes a long way.

In other words: no scripts. An elegant syntax alone just won´t sell.

(I can´t picture having both options because the new player-written scripts wouldn´t be available in the editor´s interface.)

A simple soultion would be to make a Civ3 like editor for basic scripts and mods that will generate Python code and XML as needed. Those who can handle and need the full up scripting can have it. The thing is, Firaxis wouldn't have to write this. Any skilled programmer familar with the format of the scripts and what is allowed could do it.

Since Firaxis is hooking Python into it, they seem to be catering more to the hardcore modders - Python's an actual programming language, not a bunch of buttons on the screen. With that being the case, I'm excited about the possibilities of what some of the good programmers can cook up for the game in the future.