Disasters in civ5

[Hypernova]

Well I agree that there should be some natural disasters as feature of terrain and random events, also. It adds flavour. But they certainly shouldn't have a large effect on the outcome or direction of the game. That should be based upon skill.

Yes, at least really bad disasters should be really rare. It would be interesting to have fault lines running along the edges of hexes like rivers. You would only know their exact location later in the game and they would be like the negative equivalent of discovering your city sits on oil or something. They would also let you prepare for earthquakes by making them more selective.

 

[helpless_writer]

Considering how detailed the interface is I would like disasters.

Flooding for example, because then the need for dams become needed. Then hurricanes/ tornados, because then (if they do a Civ Revolution type of thing) then you'll need to train more carpenters. And so on and so on

 

[Camikaze]

If you know that a certain tile is susceptible to natural disasters, then having them would be a really good addition to the game, enhancing the need to plan. However, if you have no way of knowing of the risk, then it is a bad feature.

 

[CornPlanter]

Well, two thirds are voting for disasters in the poll, so maybe they do...

Honestly, I doubt this poll is representative. I'm wondering how many of these voters actually played the game, got disaster and continued playing. How many of them did enjoy losing the game due to a random disaster. The game they put their hearts into, adopted perfect strategies, made good decisions, did everything right for five hours, and nevertheless they lost due to some disaster.

Theoretically many things seem nice, until you actually face them.

Yes, at least really bad disasters should be really rare.

The rarer they are, the more stupid they seem from gameplay perspective. As I wrote earlier. If you want something that works, make them very common. And give players a chance to prevent them or the damage they do or something like that. Otherwise they will get ignored in a form of save/load.

 

[Loppan Torkel]

Honestly, I doubt this poll is representative. I'm wondering how many of these voters actually played the game, got disaster and continued playing. How many of them did enjoy losing the game due to a random disaster. The game they put their hearts into, adopted perfect strategies, made good decisions, did everything right for five hours, and nevertheless they lost due to some disaster.

You realize that was an answer to someone on the internet claiming that most people don't want the feature?!
Perhaps there could be a minor chance that games are lost due to disasters, but I also believe that most people would be annoyed if that happened frequently. My guess is that Firaxis would try to make it a good feature and a nice addition to the game if they decided to implement it.

Theoretically many things seem nice, until you actually face them.

The rarer they are, the more stupid they seem from gameplay perspective. As I wrote earlier. If you want something that works, make them very common. And give players a chance to prevent them or the damage they do or something like that. Otherwise they will get ignored in a form of save/load.

Big, random disasters should come late and affect all civs similarly, there's no fun in getting wiped out while the opposition doesn't lose a city, most people get that. Although being punished throughout the game with frequent, minor random events could also get pretty annoying imo.

The question in the poll is mostly if you think that some form of disasters could be good and fun in civ5. Not your worst case scenario..

 

[Hypernova]

The rarer they are, the more stupid they seem from gameplay perspective. As I wrote earlier. If you want something that works, make them very common. And give players a chance to prevent them or the damage they do or something like that. Otherwise they will get ignored in a form of save/load.

You may be right about the save/load thing, but I think a big disaster, so long as it's not too big (no destroyed cities could be a rule), could be very interesting.

If you know that a certain tile is susceptible to natural disasters, then having them would be a really good addition to the game, enhancing the need to plan. However, if you have no way of knowing of the risk, then it is a bad feature.

Exactly, that's why faultlines would be good from an earthquake perspective, and in fact any disaster can occur only in certain places - there can be hurricane belts etc.

 

[grant2004]

Some of these disasters are over the top, and would be very frustrating, small disasters like we've seen in CIV IV would be good, as long as there are some nice positive events as well.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm in favor of disasters.

Yes even big ones. The thing to note about big disasters, is they should realistically affect more than one civilization. Bubonic plague should affect your neighboring nations as well. A asteroid strike (assuming a large one) would lead to global cooling and should affect all civs. But that one would be difficult to implement.

 

[Jean-Luc Picard]

The most simple solution is to make it like it was done in Space Empires series.
They had random events including disasters but when you were starting the game you could choose the maximum "size" of events - like local (fire from forge in Civ4 terms), nationwide (like giving all your Axemen shock promotion) and global (ones that are proposed in this thread).
This way everyone can adjust the level of randomness he or she wants to have in every particular game

 

[Bluetooth]

No, I don't like it, it's only annoying.

 

[Magma]

I am not sure I want this. I remember the plague in WC3 and I could hardly control or prevent that. If there do come disasters I at least want to be able to fight back somehow.

 

[CornPlanter]

You may be right about the save/load thing, but I think a big disaster, so long as it's not too big (no destroyed cities could be a rule), could be very interesting.

Well it certainly comes down to personal tastes so no need to argue... but I'd just like to ask you one question. Do you play Civ4 with events turned on, @ Emperor level or above, and do you enjoy Hurricane, Vedic Aryans, random diplo minuses and stuff like that, which can literally cost you the game?

If you enjoy it, there's nothing wrong, it's just that your personal taste differs from mine. But if you never tried it, you probably want to

 

[Mercade]

Disasters are for SimCity; I'm not a fan of them in Civilization.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Let me add this other caveat to my support for disasters-& events in general-they should be an *option*-so that those of us who want them in our game can select it, whilst those who hate them can leave them out. Oh yeah, thats right, like in BtS .

Aussie.