Disasters

[Kobra]

Some natural disasters should randomly happen during the game. Here's a list of existing disasters or some ideas :
* Black death
* Erupting volcano
* Pollution (optional please )
* Floods : randomly destroy some buildings, kill citizen, create disease and terraform some plains into swamps
* Drought : no food at all for a city, kill some citizens
* Prosperous year : 1 turn with +1food, +1gold per tile (not really a disaster)
* Earthquake : destroy some buildings
* Tornado : appears somewhere in deserts, seas, plains and move randomly on the map, destroying roads, farms, buildings (in cities), units and citizens (in cities) during 1, 2 or 3 turns.

Any other idea ?

 

[Civrules]

There should be some more than were in C3C, and there probably will be, considering the possibilities with the 3D engine.

 

[Nooble]

I don't think a tornado should be more then one turns. Does a tornado actuallyy go on for 1 year?

 

[Kobra]

You're right

 

[Lockesdonkey]

No, but tornadoes do come in clusters and a system can last a few weeks; since tornadoes in the real world are yearly events, it's probably a good idea to have these tornadoes represent the truly terrible ones, like the ones that flattened southern Ohio and northern Kentucky a few years ago.

 

[dh_epic]

Natural disasters are a horrible idea. Nobody likes to lose (or win) by random luck.

 

[Lockesdonkey]

What're you talking about? Disasters should be in, for realism's sake...but you're right, they shouldn't be sufficient for you to win or lose by them. Instead, they should be significant annoyances which can hamper you, but only on rare occasions actually destroy you, and then only as the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.

 

[Kobra]

Nobody likes to lose
It won't destroy an entire civilization (although some ancient civs were) but could affect some regions of your empire. Nobody likes Tornados or floods, but they regularly happen. Nobody like to lose because the land he appears was simply a desert. Nobody like to lose because of barbarians, but they randomly appeared.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yes disasters SHOULD be in, but the chance of them happening AND how bad they are, should to some degree depend on player actions. For instance, the reason Plagues in civ3 work is because player actions can minimize both the occurance and their severity. If anything, they should have tied player actions even MORE closely to these factors.
In addition, I think there should be an inverse relationship between a disasters SEVERITY and its length. So that a very severe disaster will last no more than 1 turn, wheras a very mild disaster may last for 5-10 turns, say!
Oh and, lastly, they should NOT be game breakers. It should always be possible for a good player to be able to recover from even the worst disaster-even if it occurs in the modern age!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[Chazbagel]

Tsunami
Hurricane
Ice Caps melting (Late Modern Age).. that would flood all coastlines.. make them coast.

 

[Princeps]

Here's my ideas...

Famine: Very common. Preventalbe, but very common in dry areas.
Flood: Rivers could flood...
Forest fires: Would happen in dry forests.
tornadoes: They would happen in some areas all the time.
Earthquake: Common in areas that are near the ''edge'' of the continent.

Disasters would destory buildings, kill people and even units, of course.

 

[RollaDuck]

How about...
Some chance of a natural disaster occuring once in every turn somewhere in the world? Each terrain type has a characteristic disaster:
Moutains--Go Mt. St. Helens on you (one bad reason to build a city on a mountain, half pop in settlers, bye bye city, or if it's early enough in the game, you get Pompeii).
Hills--mudslides.
Forrests--fires.
Grassland--famine.
Plains--tornadoes.
Desert--locusts.
Jungles and Flood Plain already have disease and this can be a basis for deciding magnitude of disasters, except for the Mt. St. Helens/volcano effect of mountains.
And I like the idea of rivers and the sea producing their own disaster. Which would make those tiles more vulnerable. Once again, though, not game-breakingly so. (Like the Borg appearing in Birth of the Federation. See that game for a way random events can make or break you.)

 

[dh_epic]

But the only function of a disaster is to pull someone back. Even if it doesn't make them lose outright, destroying their civ, to fall behind even a few turns because of a random disaster is dumb luck.

The only way to ensure fairness would be if everyone has an equal chance of encountering natural disasters of equal severity. This is hard to do in a game like Civ where the maps are randomly generated. Geography is already too much of a "luck factor" in the game. Imagine how much worse that would be if floods were in the game.

And Aussie is right -- for every disaster that would be suggested, you'd need to suggest a way for a prepared player to overcome it quickly, and a way an unprepared player would be screwed. And the answer can't be "micromanage it after the fact". The answer needs to be something that rewards actual strategy and foresight.

 

[Commander Bello]

But the only function of a disaster is to pull someone back. Even if it doesn't make them lose outright, destroying their civ, to fall behind even a few turns because of a random disaster is dumb luck. [...]

The implementation of (more) disaster would be a good idea, but dh_epic is right in saying that they should not be allowed to break a nation's back.
So, there could be a rule in the editor stating that any disaster is allowed to happen only *after* the 100th turn of the game or only after the player has met a certain threshold of cities or inhabitants or whatever. Additionally, if the worst case would have happened - the complete destruction of a city - no lethal disaster will happen to the same player within the next 50 turns. (All numbers of course are just examples and could be anything else).
Under these circumstances, I guess disasters would be acceptable.

 

[Chazbagel]

Desert-Sandstorm

 

[Princeps]

Desert-Sandstorm

I don't think thats really a natural catastrophe, since they are quite common in deserts...

 

[Chazbagel]

ok. im sorry.
Would'nt it blow if your civ was experiencing all of those disasters at once

 

[crimson238]

On disasters, I'd like to see the ice caps melting.. and the whole coast being flooded. Personally, though, The idea never sat exactly well with me. If they are implemented within the game they need to be regulated. I also don't like the idea of setting hard limiters on them in X number of turns.
What I think should happen is that disasters are based upon the ammound of human incursion to terrain as well as moddification of the terrian (Cut away all the trees in the world, and the temperature rises, ice caps melt, strip mine an area and you risk mud slides, build too close to a flood plain and you get flooded, build on a fault you get earth quaked ect...) This way, the player (and ai's) actions directly effect the probaility of a disaster. As such, players can adopt stratagies to deal with them.
Further, for all the siesmic/flooding disasters.. i just hope there is a distinguishing mark on the terrain so we know where building is dangerous.