[R&F] Emergencies Thoughts

After seeing the developers deep dive earlier this week, I'm not sure for others, but I was expecting a bit more and a bit more random than what was described. Don't get me wrong, I think it can be a very good system, but as it was described, I'm afraid it might become too mechanical and predictable.

I'm hopeful for 3 things:

1. The modding community comes up with additional "emergency triggers" that the AI will also take advantage of. In other words, I hope this has been soft coded vs.scripted and reactions are intelligent by the AI vs. hard defined. As they mentioned about the governors and the ability to change/create more, I'm hopeful the same will be said about emergencies.

2. Additional DLCs include additional emergency triggers/emergency conditions. I wasn't anticipating an emergency system that was fully trigger based -- but given that it is, a few additional ideas for triggers:

a. Situation where a spy destroys an industrial zone or spaceport -- in my mind, this would be equivalent to a state sponsored terrorist activity and would elicit a more "global" response.

b. Situation where a government type is selected for the first time by any civilization. Specifically, I'm thinking Communism and what happened with the Allied response to the Russian Civil War after WW1. Here, the bonus to a country going communist and holds on could be huge.

c. Situation where a civilization founds a 2nd (or x) city on a new continent -- basically try to emulate the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the reaction by the English, Portuguese, Dutch, etc. in the late 1500s.

d. The founding of the LAST religion -- other civs with other religions could try to snuff it out before it can spread -- I'm thinking here the equivalent could be the protestant reformation and where containing it was unsuccessful.

e. A trigger based on rebels coming out due to lack of amenities/war weariness -- tho this could be really doubling down on a bad situation for a civilization.

3. As these emergencies play out, there is more tension around making the choice to join/not join. The penalty/rewards appeared reasonable, I'm just hoping that in actual game play it feels natural and fluid.

As another poster has commented on -- until we see all of the systems interact with each other, in the live and wild environment, it is hard to know if they got to the right balance. However, after the developer let's play, this mechanic feels that it may be too scripted.

 

The historic events and emergencies help create a narrative, and that's certainly a welcome thing for a civ game.

 

Emergencies would be awesome addition...but because of terrible AI it will become wasted addition.

 

I think its highly unlikely that the AI will be able to threaten human players when the human is the target of the emergency. But it will be a different story for AI target emergencies. They will be able to succeed and fail against each other and the decision to join in as a human could be very interesting.