Could random events make end game less boring?

This brings up a question that I've had for the past few days. Whatever happened to volcanoes, the ones on civ 3( yes, I just remembered ). I'm not actually saying I missed them, in fact they were quite annoying, but I just think it added a little more strategy to the game(avoiding expansion near there, etc.).

So, is it so simple as 'the volcanoes were just too annoying' to get rid of them?

 

I don't think volcanoes were regarded as annoying ... but probably not well liked enough to make their inclusion worth the effort.

 

There's a good reason why you can't destroy buildings.... you try demolishing a nuclear plant in just a few days. It could take years to decommission a nuclear power plant, because you'd have to shut down the reactor, dispose of the waste and then pull down the structure without contaminating anything. You try doing that with the click of a button.

Besides, selling buildings could get you wealth, which was a bit too easy when you could just build a cathedral, sell it and then rebuild it the next turn then sell it again.... you get the idea.

I once built a nuclear plant. It went boom a few turns later. I thought that sucked because in Civ 3, it'd only do that when the city was in revolt, and the first thing the rioters destroy is the nuke plant. I never build nuclear plants. Either coal or if I have the Hoover Dam, then I'll skip the power plants (unless I'm Japan, Shale Plants provide me production!) unless it's another continent, then I go for the coal or Hydro

EDIT: When were there volcanoes in Civ III?

 

I think there should be faultlines as a hidden terrain feature, although I know it would be difficult to include. Also I beleive random events such as terrorist attacks or resistance (not by culture) should happen based upon your reputation among other civs as well as your own. Plague would be a nice touch as well, but only if the city has a high sickness level. Possibly even good random events evoked by great happiness or religion besides WLT*D

EDIT: You've never seen the volcanoes in civ 3? They blew and spread fallout...

 

They were introduced with C3C. Basically they were just mountains which had an (albeit low) possibility to explode and damage anything around them.

 

Random events a la Gal Civ II would be really nice!

 

I agree random events in GC2 are really good and add some fun to the game.
In a game like Civ4 perhaps some randoms events could be linked by particular conditions in game for example Tsunami whicch are caused by global warming, or disease which spread around all your cities which are caused by a city which is unhealthy since a lot of turns.
I would really like to see a late game barbarian like the Mushrooms in SMAC.
They could be terrorists or a mix up of natural disasters and social events.
I would really like that random events could be enabled during all the game but the end game IMO needs really something to boost the fun because it is too linear.Really hoping that they will improve end game in the next xp because another xp about ancient times would really suck

 

I am lipstick SS btw I just could not remember the password for icemanjsg or that e-mail address

Once when I was play GC II a minor civilization assassinated one of the leaders of the ET looking Aliens then a more militaristic party came to power! And declared war on me and the minor race as they believed I supported them in the assassination of their great leader. Something similar to the First World War I suppose.
How cool would it be civ 4 if this happened and you killed Catherine and then Peter took over, lol.
If Im honest i preferred the game gal civ 2 but hated the combat and the fact i could not play on a lan with my friends so I have played civ4 a lot more.

 

I think everyone should be asking "Why do I think the end game is boring?" before they go about hypothesizing about how much random events would fix that.

Fact: the end game is boring because, as another poster also mentioned, you're comfortably winning.

In that case, what the heck would random events do? If you're already comfortably ahead, then random events would simply be an annoyance that you deal with quickly. If you're neck-and-neck with your opponents, then random events provide an exogeneous swing factor that could make or break your game - and that's not my idea of fun... playing for several hours to be in a competitive state with my opponent only to have the game won or lost simply because of the random number generator in the game.

If you're considering a random event that is significantly swingy enough to make a comfortable lead into something worthy of attention, then that is TERRIBLE game design. Because that means in any appropriately-difficult game, the end game will be decided not by your skill, but by a cascade of random events.

The fact of the matter is is that Civ 4 is a game that rewards long-term skill. Adding greater levels of variance will only undermine it. Sure, one could argue that there's already a bit of luck when one considers the randomness of terrain and the placement of luxuries, and that combat is all about luck. However, in the first case, dealing with randomized terrain and random luxury placement is the test of skill that makes civ 4 a great game. Random events in the end game cannot have this impact for reasons that I already described.

In terms of combat, yes, while an individual conflict has alot to do with luck (as anyone who lost a fight with 99.6% odds of winning can attest), an entire game's worth of fighting represents inevitability. Put another way, if every conflict you have has 50% chance odds of winning but you have exactly the same number of troops as your enemy, then if you win the entire war, then that was due to luck. Because guess what? The next war in which you do the same thing or in the next game you play in which you do the same thing, you could just as easily lose. That's luck. However, if every conflict you have has 50% chance odds of winning, but you appropriately have twice the number of troops or more than your enemy, then if you win, that was due to skill. Sure, you may have a freak game in which all your troops die to a lone, fortified spearman (although anyone with skill would've known when to stop the war and rebuild), but the 99.9% of other games you play with that strategy will result in a victory. That's skill.

As such, random events in the end game can only add a limited amount of variance. If you add too much, then you marginalize the importance of skill. If you add too little, then all you do is make it more annoying for people with enough skill to have comfortable leads and make skill more irrelevant for people who only have enough skill to make games close. And there is no such thing as a "sufficient amount" of late game variance, because just the idea of late game variance undermines what makes Civ 4 great.

Remember: why do you like Civ 4 more than Civ 3 (if you do at all)? For me, among those reasons are the fact that I don't have to rely on the emergence of a Great Leader to finish a Forbidden Palace thanks to rampant corruption levels, the fact that I don't lose an army of tanks to a fortified spearman on a mountain, the fact that some of my key cities are absolutely devastated because global warming (despite the fact that I, personally, have dealt with pollution as best as I can) turn key, productive/food healthy tiles into desert at an escalating rate, or the fact that I can't build an Ironworks in a city that actually has decent shield production because it doesn't have the right resources in its borders, etc. I like Civ 4 because it, much more so than Civ 3, is a guarantor of skill. If i outskill my opponents, I am going to beat them in the end and not have alot of my game circumstances be ruled due to chancey events.

As someone else suggested, if the end game is consistently boring that you're considering random events to "spice" things up, just up the difficulty. If you are getting demolished in the early game in that new difficulty, consider it a new challenge to work your way up and become a better player. Because I guarantee you that no one here has a comfortable lead in a perfectly normal Diety-difficulty game.

 

for the record i don't think late game is boring. I just like random events in all other games i have played.

lol just got this funny event in my head of a borg cube somehow attacking my empire lol.

 

Well, you don't need to think the late game is boring to want random events. I think that random events would happen in all stages of the game and would make it more interesting especially if you arent bored with the end game.

 

whether or not you're bored with the end game, i believe random events would make the game worse simply because more variance = less good civ 4.

 

Some of my best experiences with civ in the past were in the customizability of Civ2:Test of Time. The engine allowed for 4 unique maps in the same game. I eventually customized the game so that there were ancient civ tech levels up to modern and slight futuristic and finally to distant future techs so you got a much broader range of play. After you researched "future tech" you unlocked intersteller travel and now you could build your space ship and go to other planets. Whole new worlds to explore and colonize with futuristic technologies. I also played around with having "native peoples" on each planet so they would progress the same way your civ would, but on the new planet. Some were hostile and others peaceful. It was eventually the limitations of the engine that made me stop modding for it. I could never get the "space transport" unit to work correctly. I could load units on it like a ship and "jump" to the next planet, but I couldnt move the transport with the units remaining inside. Anyway, thats getting off track. I would love to be able to have whole other planets with thier own races and a whole other tech tree that goes beyond "future tech". Our machines have the power now, so why not incorporate that functionality into the newer games.

SMAC still, IMO, has the best "mapping" system. Oh the joys of gobal warming/cooling with underwater colonies and the thrill of dumping a planet buster right on the enemy capital and leaving a crater where 3 cities used to be. Couple that with the customizable units and you have an excellent game that holds your attention for hours (sometimes days) at a time. My only drawback to SMAC was not having my "own" race. Sure you could change the names and such, but underneath it all, I was still the spartans.

But I digress. As for the original post, random events would be nice to an extent, but end game shouldnt have to end at "future tech".

Thanks for letting me ramble on