Random Events

[TheMeInTeam]

I loved Civ 4`s random events. They always popped up just when I was beginning to nod off in a game and renewed my interest. Now in Civ 5 when I get bored there`s nothing to wake me up unless I start a war, which I hate doing.

Random events also adds a realistic unpredictable touch to the game. They should never have been got rid of.

Random events in their Civ IV implementation are not justifiable from a strategy or balance aspect. They were poorly implemented.

To call them realistic, however, is strictly inaccurate. 40+ year forest fires, losing a larger navy than the world has ever known, being forced to declare, random golden ages (which are an abstract concept being very non-abstractly applied already)...no way.

It doesn't take 20 years and 10% of a nation's coffers to replace a forge in a single city, either.

Worst of all, happening at the wrong time they completely ruined planning to the point of a losing position in a close, competitive game. As a feature they were only partially defensible in SP, but weak even there since the # of events that required any semblence of strategy was low.

 

[Dgodus]

As a feature in SP it's easily countered by using the world builder to undo a completely unjustifiable event. I miss the quests most of all, mini games and mini goals within the whole can really make or break a game. Although it hasn't broken Civ 5 (or even close) I played through a much higher percentage of my Civ 4 gamescompared to 5, but yet Civ 5 is a better game in nearly every aspect, for some reason it just doesn't hold my attention all the way through.

You can have strategy and randomness intertwined, and frankly should. Like I said in nearly every aspect Civ 5 is better than 4 other than my desire to actually see a game through to the end (archeologists did very little to cure my mid game boredom/typical building phase)

 

[Dgodus]

An old Madden game had a feature (which you could disable) which skewed the rng towards the team get beat badly but left things unchanged in closer games.

This could be implemented for random events/quests. Minor changes like crude oil or clunker coal.

 

[headcase]

I know the Communitas mods used to have random events, I'm not sure if they still do.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I played through a much higher percentage of my Civ 4 gamescompared to 5, but yet Civ 5 is a better game in nearly every aspect, for some reason it just doesn't hold my attention all the way through.

Are events the cause of this? I suspect the hidden extra time cost in civ V and rate of meaningful choices vs turn times vs how often important decisions need to be made on a given turn to be the culprit.

The only thing worse than mashing "end turn" for a culture win in Civ IV BTS was doing it in civ V vanilla . Then you wait 20+ seconds every time you hit it (IV) or 50+ in V. In a bad case where culture is 100 turns away you're talking 2000 seconds of literally doing nothing, or a half hour of just pressing end turn in civ IV (or almost an hour and a half in civ V).

If you already know the outcome or know it's overwhelmingly probably, spending such a large amount of time on it loses feasibility quickly.

 

[Jaybe]

TMIT, but if there were Events in civ5, there would be things HAPPENING during those supposedly-empty turns in the late game. Things to keep you interested perhaps, so you might actually have to consider NOT 'just pressing end turn' ... or paying the consequences of just doing it anyway.

For me, the point is there would be more emotional involvement, higher anxiety levels regarding something UNEXPECTED happening. It might not be game-changing, but then again it MIGHT.

BTW, I consider your whole philosophy of deterministic strategy to be ... specious. As if you would prefer there not be a RNG involved. Otherwise I have difficulty seeing where your vehement opposition to the concept of random events is. Is it that once you consider that you've won the game, that you HAVE won the game regardless of how many turns remain???

 

[TheMeInTeam]

TMIT, but if there were Events in civ5, there would be things HAPPENING during those supposedly-empty turns in the late game. Things to keep you interested perhaps, so you might actually have to consider NOT 'just pressing end turn' ... or paying the consequences of just doing it anyway.

If you're seriously saying this, then I expect you've not experienced much of the civ IV events in detail. Very few of them required any thought at all. So now in addition to mashing "end turn", you also have to close a pop-up box and maybe shell out a small sum of cash, maybe rebuild something. Soooooooooooooo deep!

It might not be game-changing, but then again it MIGHT.

No one *random* event in a strategy game should be decisive. Ever.

BTW, I consider your whole philosophy of deterministic strategy to be ... specious. As if you would prefer there not be a RNG involved.

There is no fundamental requirement for an RNG, aside from helping the AI make decisions on what to do. A friend of mine made a deterministic combat mod for Civ IV, so a small # of people have actually seen deterministic combat in civ.

Otherwise I have difficulty seeing where your vehement opposition to the concept of random events is.

In concept, events are potentially fine. In practice, they were a travesty in Civ IV, among its greatest flaws (along with AI that pursued no VC at all and the utterly broken vassal mechanics/apostolic palace condition).

The breaking point for events in civ IV is that a lone event could have an enormous impact on the outcome of the game. This provided little opportunity for randomness to "average out" or allow the civ that adjusted to events the best to wind up ahead...in fact most events required no adjustment whatsoever. That was a big problem with them.

The reason my opposition for events is vehement is that their Civ IV implementation was so poor that they directly undermined the core gameplay of the civilization series.

Civilization is a turn-based STRATEGY game. Let me emphasize that, because in my previous event debates it's been a missed point a lot:

Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game.

Now that that's out of the way, what is the strategy? A maximization of a given number or numbers that (due to finite resources) comes at the expense of other possible numbers. What was placed on top of that core is a historically themed game that progresses based on turns. All of these are core, crucial and non-RNG based elements of civ:

- Worker turns
- Settlers
- Cost of units
- City growth
- Tile improvements
- The cost of structures
- Cost of wonders
- Timing structures and wonders become available
- Unit movement
- Promotions
- Combat strength
- Civ unique benefits
- Tile yields
- Tech tree progression
- Social policy costs
- Social policy benefits
- Tenets

Just off the top of my head. Players just accept these things, then turn around and make a nonsense argument that somehow combat can't possibly be deterministic in a game that is almost entirely deterministic, or that large-impact events are somehow a good thing in an environment where the core premise is one's ability to maximize returns based on known quantities. It's ridiculous.

For events to possibly be acceptable in Civ V, these requirements must be met:

1. No one event is game/outcome changing.
2. Every event forces the player to think, IE the proper response to it varies.
3. Consistent proper reactions to events provides an advantage over those who don't make those reactions.

In other words, they need to contribute in a meaningful way to the core game experience of Civ V. Civ IV's events failed so utterly, ludicrously terribly (with the exception of a handful of quests) that any expressed desired to reintroduce them in that form is outright repulsive. It's comparable to suggesting that sometimes, when you build a granary, it instantly razes your city, but only 3% of the time. Civ has no place for crap like that, but asking for Civ IV events is actively asking for that kind of stuff.

Yes, that angers me. There are a lot of ways this game can be improved, so seeing active effort into making it markedly worse is not a welcome concept .

 

[shaglio]

2. Every event forces the player to think, IE the proper response to it varies.

It’s been a long while since I’ve played Civ 4, so I don’t remember exact examples of random events. But I thought they sort of went like this:

A sword of remarkable quality was crafted at your Forge in [city X]. What do you chose to do:

-Spread tales of a magical anvil drawing tourist from across the land! (Your Forge gains +1 Gold)
-Raise worker wages in an attempt to produce more high-quality weapons. (Lose 50 Gold, your Forge gains +1 Production)
-Tell everyone to get back to work. (Nothing)*

Those seem to require the player to think and provide small, non game-changing bonuses. But I do recall some events that would cause the loss of tile improvements if you didn’t spend money to fix them immediately (My memory isn’t the greatest). Those latter types I could do without, but my completely made up example wouldn’t cause too many problems.

*I also remember certain options being grayed out if you couldn't meet the requirements. Like, in my example, if you didn't have 50 Gold, you couldn't choose that option.

 

[MKDELTA3]

I hated the random events in Civ 4. Most of all I hated the "any mountain is a volcano"-thing. I could have accepted things like that if there were volcano tiles with a certain risk of erupting so that I could avoid them unless totally necessary. But no.

I did kinda like the plagues from that one mod...even if they were totally crazy and about as enjoyable as drinking molten lead. But there was some masochistic enjoyment in being the receiving end of a divine retribution for building festering pre-medieval megapolises.

 

[klail]

I wish they had random events too!

Civ 5 is already very random. As the most obvious example -- your starting spot. I don't think adding random events makes it substantially more random than it already is.

 

[Scirocco16V]

I don't miss the random events at all. I don't want "random" interfering with my planned strategy. Unexpected or unaware-of things, sure, but not random. For that matter, I'm having trouble thinking of anything I miss from BtS in BNW, but it has been a long time since I played IV.

 

[whyidie]

If you're seriously saying this, then I expect you've not experienced much of the civ IV events in detail. Very few of them required any thought at all. So now in addition to mashing "end turn", you also have to close a pop-up box and maybe shell out a small sum of cash, maybe rebuild something. Soooooooooooooo deep!



No one *random* event in a strategy game should be decisive. Ever.



There is no fundamental requirement for an RNG, aside from helping the AI make decisions on what to do. A friend of mine made a deterministic combat mod for Civ IV, so a small # of people have actually seen deterministic combat in civ.



In concept, events are potentially fine. In practice, they were a travesty in Civ IV, among its greatest flaws (along with AI that pursued no VC at all and the utterly broken vassal mechanics/apostolic palace condition).

The breaking point for events in civ IV is that a lone event could have an enormous impact on the outcome of the game. This provided little opportunity for randomness to "average out" or allow the civ that adjusted to events the best to wind up ahead...in fact most events required no adjustment whatsoever. That was a big problem with them.

The reason my opposition for events is vehement is that their Civ IV implementation was so poor that they directly undermined the core gameplay of the civilization series.

Civilization is a turn-based STRATEGY game. Let me emphasize that, because in my previous event debates it's been a missed point a lot:

Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game. Strategy game.

Now that that's out of the way, what is the strategy? A maximization of a given number or numbers that (due to finite resources) comes at the expense of other possible numbers. What was placed on top of that core is a historically themed game that progresses based on turns. All of these are core, crucial and non-RNG based elements of civ:

- Worker turns
- Settlers
- Cost of units
- City growth
- Tile improvements
- The cost of structures
- Cost of wonders
- Timing structures and wonders become available
- Unit movement
- Promotions
- Combat strength
- Civ unique benefits
- Tile yields
- Tech tree progression
- Social policy costs
- Social policy benefits
- Tenets

Just off the top of my head. Players just accept these things, then turn around and make a nonsense argument that somehow combat can't possibly be deterministic in a game that is almost entirely deterministic, or that large-impact events are somehow a good thing in an environment where the core premise is one's ability to maximize returns based on known quantities. It's ridiculous.

For events to possibly be acceptable in Civ V, these requirements must be met:

1. No one event is game/outcome changing.
2. Every event forces the player to think, IE the proper response to it varies.
3. Consistent proper reactions to events provides an advantage over those who don't make those reactions.

In other words, they need to contribute in a meaningful way to the core game experience of Civ V. Civ IV's events failed so utterly, ludicrously terribly (with the exception of a handful of quests) that any expressed desired to reintroduce them in that form is outright repulsive. It's comparable to suggesting that sometimes, when you build a granary, it instantly razes your city, but only 3% of the time. Civ has no place for crap like that, but asking for Civ IV events is actively asking for that kind of stuff.

Yes, that angers me. There are a lot of ways this game can be improved, so seeing active effort into making it markedly worse is not a welcome concept .

...so you're ok with random events, if done properly ?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It’s been a long while since I’ve played Civ 4, so I don’t remember exact examples of random events. But I thought they sort of went like this:

Most are not. Most are like this:

1. Your forge burned down. You can spend money to keep it or lose it.
2. Forest fire! Spend money (you won't have any) or get for a while.
3. Barbarians spawn in busted areas and lemming script your city.
4. All of your naval units on a given tile disappear. Even if there were 200 units there.
5. Free golden age!
6. Congratulations, have 8 from nothing.
7. We are going to penalize you for using the best early civic available, but not enough to make it worth avoiding, and not evenly with other civilizations.
8. Build 7 castles and we'll give you a likely diplomatic victory.
9. You have declared war on three civilizations! One of them gets a bunch of tanks.
10. Your science rate is increased or decreased for one turn.
11. Your theater burned down. If you have money you can replace it instantly.
12. Let's just remove all these tile improvements nearby, no matter how long they take...

Junk.

Your example is one of the better examples of events, but in virtually every case you would take the bonus at the expense of 50 . are far more valuable than in civ IV, and that gets multiplied by any infrastructure you've built. If nothing else, it's a more efficient ---> conversion than any other means you've available even at the baseline +1.

As a result, you'd always take the if available (and using binary research sliders and brokering tech for , it generally will be), and otherwise the (no reason to avoid that option based on your description). So, after seeing such an event a single time, any rational player who is even a little competent would pattern-recognize it, pick , and continue play. That's not a lot of game depth, but it's a lot better than the events I listed at least.

Civ 5 is already very random. As the most obvious example -- your starting spot. I don't think adding random events makes it substantially more random than it already is.

Fun logic! Let's apply it:

- You have been stabbed in the leg with a knife. Because you are already experiencing a lot of pain and have a life threatening wound, why not let someone also slash your arms and chest with a knife? The wounds won't be nearly as deep and not life threatening, so it does not substantially increase your risk of death! That means that slashes would be fun! Let's slash!

.... Let's not use that logic then.

Besides, Civ V has taken pains to mitigate the imbalance of spawns BIGTIME since civ IV. Spawns are much less ridiculous now, for a number of reasons:

1. Tall > Wide, so land distributions are less painful (one civ getting 20% of land or more on standard maps without a war was a painfully ridiculous advantage).
2. Starting bias further lowers the odds of a screw job with a lot of civilizations.
3. Scenarios and custom maps bypass spawn limitations entirely, if desired.

They're still a problem (though less so) but why add more problems? How many Civ V games are "spawn losses"?

For that matter, I'm having trouble thinking of anything I miss from BtS in BNW, but it has been a long time since I played IV.

Good BTS features that should be in BNW:

1. Waypoints and efficient UI queue.
2. Permanent Alliance option (off by default)

BNW is pretty feature rich, and in other cases 1UPT or other basic design choices (SP, tenets vs civics) alter what could realistically be brought into Civ V.

I WOULD say vassals, but Firaxis has never proven it could create a working vassal state mechanic right up through 3.19, so if they did that in Civ V it would be a first, not a IV port .

...so you're ok with random events, if done properly ?

Yes, just as I wouldn't mind Apostolic Palace, "done properly". Events could be handled in a far more abstract fashion, or proc based on more reasonable conditions, or proc more frequently but be far less impactful than IV's and if they followed my rules above, could easily add to the Civ V experience rather than subtract from it (and events that penalized intelligent play in Civ IV were the worst of all).

 

[Scirocco16V]

Good BTS features that should be in BNW:

1. Waypoints and efficient UI queue.
2. Permanent Alliance option (off by default)

I WOULD say vassals, but Firaxis has never proven it could create a working vassal state mechanic right up through 3.19, so if they did that in Civ V it would be a first, not a IV port .

Yes, all 3 of those would be nice. Especially the 1st and 3rd.

 

[Socratatus]

Random events in their Civ IV implementation are not justifiable from a strategy or balance aspect. They were poorly implemented.

To call them realistic, however, is strictly inaccurate. 40+ year forest fires, losing a larger navy than the world has ever known, being forced to declare, random golden ages (which are an abstract concept being very non-abstractly applied already)...no way.

It doesn't take 20 years and 10% of a nation's coffers to replace a forge in a single city, either.

Worst of all, happening at the wrong time they completely ruined planning to the point of a losing position in a close, competitive game. As a feature they were only partially defensible in SP, but weak even there since the # of events that required any semblence of strategy was low.

Whatever, I still think they were great. I guess this is one area where I didn`t see the need to finetooth pick it to pieces and ruin my own enjoyment of the random events. far as i`m concerned we have a less flavour, sterile game now and not truly strategic in a realistic way. in reality no strategist could ever guarantee that his plan would go without the process of some thing random throwing a monkey wrench into his plans.. like the weather or an unfortunate event that derails it. happens all the time.

You can`t function as a true strategist in reality if you can`t handle random situations life might throw at you (and it does). It`s what life`s all about. A real strategist is one who can recover from something unexpected, get back on track and continue. That`s why I enjoy it in-game when it existed.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

like the weather or an unfortunate event that derails it. happens all the time.

Yes, inclement weather over 10 years as an adverse impact on an army, which also needs 10 years to march outside its own country and yet can somehow be supplied across the world with ease. We're really going for REALISM here, aren't we?!

You can`t function as a true strategist in reality if you can`t handle random situations life might throw at you (and it does). It`s what life`s all about. A real strategist is one who can recover from something unexpected, get back on track and continue. That`s why I enjoy it in-game when it existed.

You can't function in a debate effectively while using fallacies, either. Please do avoid canned arguments that don't actually apply to the points being made!

I'm citing gameplay reasons that events in Civ IV didn't work, and gameplay reasons that very few of them required any strategy at all. Please, if you quote me rather than someone else, answer me and not someone else .

By the way, unexpected =/= random.

 

[charon2112]

I like the idea of random events in general because they add a little bit of flavor to the game. As someone who plays more for role-playing fun than trying to have a super structured, "I want to win in 100 turns and I don't want anything happening to jeopardize that" game, I love 'em. Especially when they're creative. I also like having two kinds, minor events, and really game changing, very rare major events. Like, 1/3 of your cities secede and form a new country. Civ IV's events weren't implemented well and weren't that creative. But they could be done very well in Civ V if time was dedicated to writing them.

 

[PhroX]

I can't see how randomly having a third of your country seceed would be fun. Now, sure, if you had been mismanaging your empire for some time, if the people were unhappy, if they were recently conquered cities and so on - much like in the fantastic Revolutions mod for IV - then succession would be fine, because it's a proper mechanic that can be managed and most importantly be interacted with. In fact, I'm of the opinion that a mechanic like this should've been incorporated into Civ 5. Empires are far too stable as is. But for the game to suddenly say "oh, by the way, you've lost 4 cities just because" is a god-awful mechanic.

I'm not a "I want to win in 100 turns and I don't want anything happening to jeopardize that". If I know I'm going to win 100 turns in advance, I stop playing as it's boring. As such I love it when things jeopardise my victory. But I want those things to be logical - an AI civ realising I'm in position to win and attacking me, my people rebelling because I've neglected their happiness and so on. Not "the computer screws you over because a dice roll came up 1".

 

[charon2112]

I can't see how randomly having a third of your country seceed would be fun. Now, sure, if you had been mismanaging your empire for some time, if the people were unhappy, if they were recently conquered cities and so on - much like in the fantastic Revolutions mod for IV - then succession would be fine, because it's a proper mechanic that can be managed and most importantly be interacted with. In fact, I'm of the opinion that a mechanic like this should've been incorporated into Civ 5. Empires are far too stable as is. But for the game to suddenly say "oh, by the way, you've lost 4 cities just because" is a god-awful mechanic.

I'm not a "I want to win in 100 turns and I don't want anything happening to jeopardize that". If I know I'm going to win 100 turns in advance, I stop playing as it's boring. As such I love it when things jeopardise my victory. But I want those things to be logical - an AI civ realising I'm in position to win and attacking me, my people rebelling because I've neglected their happiness and so on. Not "the computer screws you over because a dice roll came up 1".

It was just an example, and that one would be a negative event. Some events should be positive and some negative. If implemented well, and if they work in the narrative of your game, they can be a lot of fun. I'm someone that likes the random element of civ games, random terrain, civs, etc. I enjoy random events for the same reason. They shouldn't happen often, but a couple thrown in each game is enough.

 

[kaspergm]

Random element already exists in the game. It's implemented in all of its layers. You get random maps and then resources "randomly" appear after you get certain technologies. City states give you (more or less) random missions, barbarians camp spawn in (almost) random locations and so on.

I'm actually kind of in favor of random events returning, but I have to say that from several of those things you mention, these things are everything but random. Starting locations and resources have pretty strict scripts connected to them in order to secure that starting locations are as good as even. Yes, there are weaknesses in the scripts (Tundra start, anybody?), but still, these things are far from random. And to make a point in favor of those speaking against random events, the one part where randomness does kick in - namely in which bonus resource you get - most players are pretty aggravated by the fact that they introduced a completely unbalanced luxury resource (Salt) along the way, which just goes to show that this game is very sensitive to randomness.

When that is said, I did like some of the random events in Civ4:
- The ones where you would get a minor diplomatic modifier (positive or negative) with a neighbor (something about a religious marriage) was ok to me.
- The ones where you would get a minor bonus from one of your buildings (like, this town gets renowned for its fine racing horses, or this city walls are known for a miracle) also were cool.
So I would like to see some small and insignificant events like this, simply because it would add some flavor and variation to the game. But larger events like "your whole army randomly disappears" is not fun, realistic or not.