Events? e.g. volcanic eruptions in Civ6

[Talis_eldar]

Imagine random event like tsunami destroys your most powerful city or cripple it beyond recovery. Or random uranium discovery resulting in a nuclear apocalypse 15 turns later. In a tournament multiplayer game.
I started to hate random events after Civ1 tragic story involving pirate raid event (destroys all accumulated production torwards current project) and Hoover Dam wonder. 1 turn before finishing afromentioned wonder, the city where the wonder was building got hit by pirate raid event and 580 lost this way. 2 turns later an enemy civilization has finished this wonder and become a runaway leader in space race. The whole 4-hour long game is lost because one single RNG twist! And to add more insult, the Automobile tech that rendered obsolete barracks in my city (and all others worldwide) was discovered by very same rival!

Maybe random events can be set as a map property like "No Barbarians", "No Science victory" ... In addition type of random events can be individually enabled or disabled. Like volcanic eraption enabled, pirate attack disabled.
So who likes adrenaline and chaos can open them. In addition those random events can be set to triggered manually like in SIMCITY . After late game if you want chaos you can trigger a random disaster. There are so many games i played that it was obvious that i will be victories because while i am in atomic era my rivals just trying to attack me with slingers.
Last idea: Those random maps can work in a scenario game only. Like vikings or polland scenarios.

 

[dunkleosteus]

What if it happens to both you and the AI, but it also happens to both you and the AI that you sometimes find something (copper, iron, diamonds, etc) in a mine? That way you can get a punishment or an extra reward, net zero (or really more than zero because a pillaged mine can be rebuilt by a builder for free, while a discovered resource stays).

I dont like the word "punishment". It's an obstacle, and it should feel like one. Negative events should be dealt evenly to all players, and the severity of events may be dependent on difficulty. Barbarians pillaging your trade routes are sort of an example of an "obstacle" that exists already in the game. It directly holds you back, but it's just part of the game.

I think these sorts of events should be risk/reward based: Events are more likely to happen in areas that are better, for example maybe a river floods. Rivers are a great place to settle a city, but if you do, maybe that gives you a chance for a flood. Civ 4 had volcanoes (if I remember correctly) and this would be fun, if volcanoes had some sort of benefit. Maybe the volcano never erupts the entire game, and whatever culture or faith bonus it provides (or maybe hot springs?) are just a boon to your civ. Maybe a lava flow wipes out the mines you had at the volcano's base. It should be give and take.

Everyone knows that warm, wet climates are better in civ 6 than cold ones. You want grassland, jungle and forest, not tundra or desert. But warm, wet climates are cesspools for malaria and grain rot. Is it worth it? Probably, but it might cost you.

 

[Manifold]

I generally don't like them.

The way I see it, I shouldn't be punished for an action I am going to be preforming anyway regardless (e.g. mine collapses because I build mines for production).

Your opinion is welcome!
IMO a game about the history and rise and fall of civilizations without any natural influences ends at least midgame in boredom. It becomes a mathematical formula (although the AI Civs act mostly random as well).
History of mankind without natural impacts isn´t possible.
Think about a world without
the winter which stopped Napoleon in Russia, the Great Blizzard of 1888 in NY, the eruption of Mount Tambora, 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the Little Ice Age, the Saint Marcellus' flood, the Black Death, the divine wind (kamikaze) which stopped the Mongolian invasion of Japan, the collapse of Teotihuacan, the Plague of Justinian, the crossing of the Rhine in the winter of 406, the flood which gives the impetus for the Cimbrian War, Ten Plagues of Egypt, the Minoan eruption...

some of them changed the world and history of mankind massive, some of them are just suitable to bring some variety, special graphic effects, sounds and challenge back to the game - my personal opinion

I am sure it is just a question how the implementation is done

 

[Leyrann]

You do have a good point with those. Some context on the events for those who don't know them and why they changed the world (or as much context as I can give):

The Russian Winter stopped Napoleon and (over a century later) Hitler. Then again, this is also just because Russians are more accustomed to harsh winters, and in both wars Russia used the scorched earth tactic to great effect.
Eruption of Mt Tambora: Caused the "year without summer" (1816), in which it froze in July nights and a huge amount of crops was destryed, causing mass starvation all over the world (but mostly in Europe afaik).
Black Death: Killed off a third of the European population between 1347 and 1353, and came back every now and then to ravage countries for some five hundred years.
The divine wind: There have been two Mongolian invasions on Japan, both of the times they outmatched the Japanese by far, and would have succeeded without doubt... Were it not for a hurricane thwarting the landing both times.

Anyways, a proposal I wanted to make for the events, you could do the options like this:

-All events off
-Negative events off
-Positive events off
- (default) No events off

On top of that, you should always be able to react to events in different, meaningful ways.

 

[dunkleosteus]

I heard it was the mud season that did them in. Both Napolean and Hitler launched their campaigns in June. Apparently Russia has a "mud season" twice a year and it completely messed up both campaigns.

 

[Browd]

Yep, it's called Rasputitsa (supposedly translatable as "time without roads" or "season with bad roads"): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rasputitsa

 

[Leyrann]

Hitler actually started his invasion in October. He had wanted to start earlier, but some problems (I believe Italy losing a war, but I'm not sure) delayed him.

 

[Browd]

Last I checked, June 22, 1941 was in June that year, not October: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

 

[Alucard648]

You do have a good point with those. Some context on the events for those who don't know them and why they changed the world (or as much context as I can give):

The Russian Winter stopped Napoleon and (over a century later) Hitler. Then again, this is also just because Russians are more accustomed to harsh winters, and in both wars Russia used the scorched earth tactic to great effect.
Eruption of Mt Tambora: Caused the "year without summer" (1816), in which it froze in July nights and a huge amount of crops was destryed, causing mass starvation all over the world (but mostly in Europe afaik).
Black Death: Killed off a third of the European population between 1347 and 1353, and came back every now and then to ravage countries for some five hundred years.
The divine wind: There have been two Mongolian invasions on Japan, both of the times they outmatched the Japanese by far, and would have succeeded without doubt... Were it not for a hurricane thwarting the landing both times.

Anyways, a proposal I wanted to make for the events, you could do the options like this:

-All events off
-Negative events off
-Positive events off
- (default) No events off

On top of that, you should always be able to react to events in different, meaningful ways.

As for event settings, here is a one idea that had been in my mind for ling time, since Civ 4.
Each event should have specific level, that determines overall impact on the game flow. For instance, a level 1 event adds minor yield modifier to specific hex, like Parrots (+1 gold to a random hex) or Sour Crude (-1 prod. to Oil hex). While something that could make or outright break the game (like one that can outright wipe a city regardless of it`s size) receives a level 8. And an option at initial game setup could ban powerful events (like level 6+) while allow less powerful random events to occur in the game.

 

[Leyrann]

Last I checked, June 22, 1941 was in June that year, not October: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Barbarossa

Oops, my bad. I'm pretty sure that they delayal is considered part of the reason they lost, however, as the plan was to win the war before winter.

 

[Leyrann]

As for event settings, here is a one idea that had been in my mind for ling time, since Civ 4.
Each event should have specific level, that determines overall impact on the game flow. For instance, a level 1 event adds minor yield modifier to specific hex, like Parrots (+1 gold to a random hex) or Sour Crude (-1 prod. to Oil hex). While something that could make or outright break the game (like one that can outright wipe a city regardless of it`s size) receives a level 8. And an option at initial game setup could ban powerful events (like level 6+) while allow less powerful random events to occur in the game.

A slider of some kind would be awesome imo.

Also, as a chemical engineering student, I'd like to add that I believe you should be able to counter that -1 prod to Oil with a 1 maintenance building you can build in the city/industrial zone (basically, the building reverts the event at the cost of 1 gpt). Of course that's event dependant, but it would fit well. All oil can be used, but some parts just require more work than others.

 

[2012Jarrett]

I feel like this could also be a way to introduce climate change into the game. Every time I build an oil well/factory/coal mine I can't help but think "this would be terrible for the environment if it were real." In addition to rising tides (no pun intended) or population loss in coastal cities, stuff that damages the environment could have a chance at damaging infrastructure. Like a coal mine could catch fire and Centralia everything in a 3 tile radius, your oil rig could spill and pillage a ton of sea tiles you're working, stuff like that. Maybe a nuclear plant has like a 1% chance of exploding like a devastating nuclear bomb on its tile. Replacing it with cleaner forms of energy or building other things would reduce the chances of this happening.

 

[Leyrann]

I feel like this could also be a way to introduce climate change into the game. Every time I build an oil well/factory/coal mine I can't help but think "this would be terrible for the environment if it were real." In addition to rising tides (no pun intended) or population loss in coastal cities, stuff that damages the environment could have a chance at damaging infrastructure. Like a coal mine could catch fire and Centralia everything in a 3 tile radius, your oil rig could spill and pillage a ton of sea tiles you're working, stuff like that. Maybe a nuclear plant has like a 1% chance of exploding like a devastating nuclear bomb on its tile. Replacing it with cleaner forms of energy or building other things would reduce the chances of this happening.

So... One percent chance of exploding? That means that it explodes on average once in a hundred turns. Turn it around, if you have 100 nuclear plants, one explodes every turn. A turn, late in the game, equals a year (or even less). The USA has 99 nuclear reactors (some 65 plants, but some have more than one reactor). That means, that, if this were a realistic system, on average the USA would have one nuclear explosion per year.

Yes. One per year. That's your proposal. USA only, mind you. There's also a lot of power plants in Russia, China, Japan, France, Germany, etc.

Same holds true for some other things you proposed - you're grossly overestimating their danger to the environment. You know what's a real danger to the environment? Old refrigerators or insectiside. But yeah, if you'd put that in the game, you'd have something like "once you discover refrigeration, one grassland tile turns into plains every turn until you discover environmentalism", or something like that. Which isn't exactly fun gameplay (or even event-related). Besides, ever come across global warming in, for example, Civ2? It's not exactly enticing gameplay. It really is more of an annoying thing that happens when you're playing the game well and don't have a legion of engineers (upgraded settlers; who back then also did the stuff workers/builders do) standing ready to clean up pollution... And even then, it was possible that global warming occured before you had a chance to remove pollution (literally, I'm not joking).

/rant

 

[dunkleosteus]

If you wanted global warming to be an interesting mechanic, you'd have to change a number of mechanics in the game. Currently, there is no commercial or domestic use of strategic resources: coal and oil are not used for cars, factories or trains in civ 6; there is no global market for oil as there is in real life, nor much need for these resources.

So that would have to be possible.

Another thing you'd have to do is make buildings obsoletable. This is sort of possible with walls but for the most part, every city needs every building from every era. You'd need to be able to remove a coal power plant to upgrade it into something better.

Thirdly, you'd really need a world cogress a la civ 5 to make global environmental action possible. If you decide to try to curb warming but other civs dont agree, you might as well try to catch smoke in your hands.

As for the effects of global climate change, I think desertification is a bit extreme for a global warming event, on the time scales that are relevant in the late game. More frequent natural disastors like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, landslides and wildfires (if they existed) would be a more reasonable representation of this.

Desertification is actually viable on a scale of thousands of years though, and did occur historically, often to the detriment of ancient civilizations.

Civ is not a good game for this to be implemented in though. Civilization has a very simplified version of history: capital cities are all founded 4000 BC and exist throughout the entire game. In reality, Civilizations rise and fall many times. In civ, time is always an advantage: a city founded in the mid to late game will never be as goor as an ancient city. In reality, every city in America and Canada were founded in the last 450 years, and they are comparable to all the best cities in the Old World in terms of development and technology.

When desertification made certain areas uninhabitable, people abandonned their cities and moved somewhere else. This would massively cripple any civ.

There aren't any good solutions to this: the production you put into buildings will massively set you back, and you'd have to improve all the tiles of a new city quickly to make it self sufficient.

An improper solution might be to make settlers build instantly: as soon as you select the unit, your city's population goes down by one and you get a settler. With this system, you could basically depopulate your city- over 6 turns, convert a 6 population city into 6 settlers and a city ruin. Additionally, settlers would have to be able to join another city to increase it's population instantly (internal immigration, which was pretty common historically).

Things that would be important if you did this: the housing limit would have to be absolute: if you exceded it, your people would start dying, regardless of how much food your city generates per turn. There would also be other balance issues, because there would be a large meta behind moving your population around to maximize growth throughout your empire

 

[Leyrann]

If you wanted global warming to be an interesting mechanic, you'd have to change a number of mechanics in the game. Currently, there is no commercial or domestic use of strategic resources: coal and oil are not used for cars, factories or trains in civ 6; there is no global market for oil as there is in real life, nor much need for these resources.

So that would have to be possible.

Another thing you'd have to do is make buildings obsoletable. This is sort of possible with walls but for the most part, every city needs every building from every era. You'd need to be able to remove a coal power plant to upgrade it into something better.

Thirdly, you'd really need a world cogress a la civ 5 to make global environmental action possible. If you decide to try to curb warming but other civs dont agree, you might as well try to catch smoke in your hands.

As for the effects of global climate change, I think desertification is a bit extreme for a global warming event, on the time scales that are relevant in the late game. More frequent natural disastors like hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, landslides and wildfires (if they existed) would be a more reasonable representation of this.

Desertification is actually viable on a scale of thousands of years though, and did occur historically, often to the detriment of ancient civilizations.

Civ is not a good game for this to be implemented in though. Civilization has a very simplified version of history: capital cities are all founded 4000 BC and exist throughout the entire game. In reality, Civilizations rise and fall many times. In civ, time is always an advantage: a city founded in the mid to late game will never be as goor as an ancient city. In reality, every city in America and Canada were founded in the last 450 years, and they are comparable to all the best cities in the Old World in terms of development and technology.

When desertification made certain areas uninhabitable, people abandonned their cities and moved somewhere else. This would massively cripple any civ.

There aren't any good solutions to this: the production you put into buildings will massively set you back, and you'd have to improve all the tiles of a new city quickly to make it self sufficient.

An improper solution might be to make settlers build instantly: as soon as you select the unit, your city's population goes down by one and you get a settler. With this system, you could basically depopulate your city- over 6 turns, convert a 6 population city into 6 settlers and a city ruin. Additionally, settlers would have to be able to join another city to increase it's population instantly (internal immigration, which was pretty common historically).

Things that would be important if you did this: the housing limit would have to be absolute: if you exceded it, your people would start dying, regardless of how much food your city generates per turn. There would also be other balance issues, because there would be a large meta behind moving your population around to maximize growth throughout your empire

Basically you'd just be creating another game, tbh.

 

[Manifold]

And in Civ4 tsunami could wipe completely a coastal city, complete with all your navy.

The Cimbrian War event:
This event just pop up in Classic era one time per game by a Chance of 10 % per game.
Sound and opening screen: The sky darkens + storm bells ring + woman screaming + lightning and thunder surprise the player waiting for the turn + Sean Bean reads something about the history of the Cimbrian War.

A random Civ losses a coastal city completely with everything in it.
The affected Civ gets some compensation.

For each lost population point from the extinguished city the affected Civ gets 1 special unit for free: the naked berserks (swordman with 3 movement points, bonus in attack, bonus when fighting in enemy territory and pillaging cost just 1 movement point).
Also all barbarian units in the range of 10 tiles to the extinguished city join the affected Civ.
The affected Civ gets a a global battle bonus +3 for 30 rounds (in epic speed)
The affected Civ can choose one neighbor Civ to be at war immediately without any penalty.
This chosen neighbor Civ gets the great general Gaius Marius after loosing three units within the 30 rounds.

Both the affected Civ and the chosen neighbor Civ get the new steam achievement: Cimbrian War event

 

[Lazy sweeper]

Oh! I see! Batterial war!
Just send a Plagued Carrack unit to pillage a food tile in Brazil or Inca empire to wipe them out! Cool! (Well not so cool in reality perhaps)

Japan was pretty good from early times in building anti-seismic structures, and quite every civ in the world, had improved their harbors districts for ship protection, or even made inland ports ( A famous one was inland of Rome, connected to the Sea by a three mile canal).

But water canals are not easy to build like roads, more possibly, natural features were used for military and commerce advantages; commercial harbour districts needs a lot of flat land around to prosper, while military harbours chose very rocky and hidden spots, well protected and more easaly defendable.

Also Earthquakes should stick to fire lines, so plate tectonic should be very relevant, or there would be total randomness in these events. Same goes for Tornadoes. They follow cold/hot air patterns. Way more unpredictables, it would still feel wrong to get a Tornado in the middle of a very cold region, or a earthquake were the first vulcano is 100 tiles away.

 

[Manifold]

Also Earthquakes should stick to fire lines, so plate tectonic should be very relevant, or there would be total randomness in these events. Same goes for Tornadoes. They follow cold/hot air patterns. Way more unpredictables, it would still feel wrong to get a Tornado in the middle of a very cold region, or a earthquake were the first vulcano is 100 tiles away.

This brings me to an idea:

Events could be continental bound, so that the same region will not be affected by a major event twice.
But every event can occur on every continent to make it unpredictable, for example the Little Ice Age could effect the Australian continent instead of Europe.

And the boarder of the continents could be potential hotspots for earthquakes/tsunami and volcanoes.

The Little Ice Age event:
This event just pop up in the Renaissance era one time per game by a Chance of 10 % per game.

Sound and opening screen: snowfall in Spain and Italy or/and a nice painting from Brueghel or Avercamp + Sean Bean reads something about the history of the climate anomaly from 1570 to 1715. In world history the Little Ice Age occurs in the Northern Hemisphere. It was a hard time for ordinary people and farmers. It was the peak time of Witch-hunt and burning in Europe. And the wolves came back with new grown woods in the land of people.

But at the same time it was the birth of the modern time with the Reformation and Early Capitalism in Europe, the Colonization of America and at the end it led into the Age of Enlightenment and Romanticism.


Effect:
In this time period (The number of rounds should be determined by testing, e.g. on epic speed 40 rounds) a random continent chances mostly every turn one or more tiles from desert to plains to grassland to tundra to ice. At the same time improvements get lost, sometimes woods are growing.
80% of the tiles of the continent should be affected by at least one change to colder climate.
Rivers can always be crossed with just one movement point.
Ice floes occur at the cost of the continent.

After the frozen period all tiles change back but 4 times faster.


Compensation:
For every affected tile within the city limits the affected cities get +2% (maximum: 50%) science, culture, gold and faith.
And more +1 GPP for Great Artists (maximum: +5 GPP).
Every affected city get +20% for building military units.
For every starved citizen the city generates a settler for free.
For every 3 lost improvements by the change of a tile a free worker occurs.

All affected Civs get the new steam achievement: Bitter cold in the Little Ice Age event

 

[Leyrann]

The Little Ice Age actually lasted until halfway through the 19th century.

It is, by the way, related to reduced sun activity, and could happen at any time, from ancient to information era. Also, it would not be unlikely to strike in multiple regions at the same time, though the Little Ice Age was mostly confined to Europe (there's probably some people out there who know why, but I'm not gonna bother looking that up).

That said, I can tell you, from playing Civ II with global warming, that random tiles just changing overnight feels terrible for the player and is the epitome of annoying gameplay. It's definitely not something I want in my game. The same holds for improvement, and even moreso with builders having charges - at least in 4 or 5 it would mean you had a reason to take out the useless workers you always had hanging around during renaissance era.
Also, 80% of the tiles? That's freaking insane. There was something like a 2-3 degrees Celsius temperature change for the duration.
And for rivers... Just because it's a bit colder doesn't mean a flowing river is going to freeze over, most certainly not when it's a big one (and small ones aren't represented on the map anyways), and even if it did you might just fall through it and find out that the ice hadn't grown because of the flow. Good luck surviving that. I'd actually dare say crossing a frozen river is more dangerous than a non-frozen river. And once again, there's a lot of difference between, say, mid-France grassland and south-Sweden grassland, which extends to wheter rivers freeze or not.
Lastly, I very much doubt that it had much to do with the actual renaissance, as that started a good 100 years earlier, and colonization started some 50 years earlier. (using your start date here as I don't know by heart when it started)

 

[dunkleosteus]

Actually modifying the map due to global warming is a bit insane unless you're doing something like melting ice tiles.

The community balance mod had a thing where rivers could flood and pillage farm tiles, but that seems tedious too. Maybe a small % food drop or something? But tbh I'm not sure it's really a fun system unless there is something you can do to fix the problem, and with global warming there really isn't. Would be pretty amusing though if one player declared war on the other for using too much coal or something, because that actually sounds like something that would happen if global warming was added.

"Hey! Not on MY planet, buddy!" and then they fight.