Events? e.g. volcanic eruptions in Civ6

[Leyrann]

I just feel like, in general, tiles changing is too much. I've been thinking about it quite a bit, as it's proposed every now and then by someone, but I don't see how it could ever work out well.

That said, what was fun in civ 2 was that you could also use engineers (late-game worker/settler units (they were one unit back then)) to terraform tiles. Mountains became hills, desert became grassland, etc, all ending in a triangle of hills - plains - grassland - hills. On top of that you could do something (I don't remember what it was - had something to do with mining iirc) to turn a tile into forest.

And yes, you could use it to undo the global warming, but it also contributed to the global warming counter, so you didn't really get anything done that way.

The thing is (sorry for the unorganized post btw), single tiles are too important in this game. If one plains tile turns into desert, it just feels really bad. If you'd have "composite" tiles, however (this is an idea I have been fiddling with when I was thinking about maybe creating a 4X game myself), consisting of, say, six parts each, you could have a tile that is first 6 times plains (with 6 food 6 production) into 5 times plains 1 time desert (with 5 food 5 production). This, however, requires a very different system, and wouldn't fit into civilization. Citizen food requirements have always been 2, and they should stay 2. And therefore, grassland food should also stay 2, and plains food should stay 1, and lets keep it simple and keep their production 1 too. And the rest is derived from that.

 

[Manifold]

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...

The idea is, as I wrote, that an event only effect one continent, so that the same world region will not be affected by more than one major event per game. And it should be playable, so there must be a turn limit (e.g. 40 turns in epic?) how long the event Little Ice Age has an effect. The peak of the effect should take place be in the Renaissance era. In later eras the effect to the people would not be so hard.

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.

You will get the tiles back after the effect is over. That also means you get your desert back, when the Little Ice Age changed it to plains before

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.

Mh, that is not optimal planing - but you can use your useless workers to cut down the new grown woods.

Also, 80% of the tiles? That's freaking insane. There was something like a 2-3 degrees Celsius temperature change for the duration.

As I wrote, I did not mean that 80 % of the continent will be ice or tundra tiles. If a desert tile change to plains it is positive, or?
There are also a lot of other compensation, as I suggest before.

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.

In the Renaissance era the game turns are not only one year. So units can wait for the frost and cross then. My proposal was to make warfare on this continent easier, that's why I suggest also +20% for building military units. There were a lot of hot wars in the Little Ice Age like the Eighty Years' War...

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)

The Mayflower reached the New World in 1620.

The community balance mod had a thing where rivers could flood and pillage farm tiles..

That´s good news for implementation.

...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.

Teddy told me that every game.

I just feel like, in general, tiles changing is too much. I've been thinking about it quite a bit, as it's proposed every now and then by someone, but I don't see how it could ever work out well.

Again, it is just for a limited round number and after the end of the Little Ice Age all tiles change back fast.

The thing is (sorry for the unorganized post btw), single tiles are too important in this game. If one plains tile turns into desert, it just feels really bad.

Hey, that brings me to a new idea:


The Dust Bowl event:
This event can pop up in the modern era one time per game by a Chance of 10 % per game.

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 step by step one or more tiles from ice to tundra to grassland to plains to desert.
At the same time improvements get lost.
80% of the tiles of the continent should be affected by at least one change to hotter climate.
Rivers can always be crossed with just one movement point, because there is no water in the river bed.

The visibility for all units is reduced by one to the minimum of one.

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

Compensation:
This event also change cold tiles to good tiles so the negative effect mostly only effect plains.

For every affected tile within the city limits the affected cities get +1 GPP for Great Writer and Musician (maximum: +5 GPP).
Every affected city get +20% for building military units - recruiting unemployed and refugees.
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.

Every affected Civ get a bonus of +50 % for building Naturalists till 30 rounds after the end of the event.

All affected Civs get the new steam achievement: Buried in the Dust Bowl event

 

[Jarms48]

The Australian scenario has these in abundance, most were pretty annoying. There were games where I lost my explorer before the first 10 turns, others where they found gold and survived until the end of the game. If there is RNG events added, they'd have to effect everyone, and the range of these effects shouldn't be incredibly drastic.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

First, everybody go take a look a Sukritact's Events and Decisions Mod for Civ V, which introduced both general and specific (to individual Civs) Random Events with, in some case, a variety of different responses to them that you could choose from. Lots and lots of good ideas there.

Second, some observations. Any set of Random Events has to have both Positive and Negative possibilities, or any competitive gamer will simply turn them off: purely negative results will NOT make any of them happy.
That said, there are a lot of ways to provide both negatives and positives, some in the same Event.

For instance, Plague that removes X % of your population may seem totally Negative, but historically,, after the Black Plague in Europe wages went up (labor was scarce) and the survivors had more land to work - result, from the Plague you get higher Happiness or (in CVI terms) perhaps an extra Amenity in all cities affected by the Plague, which lasts until their population reaches its pre-plague level.

Volcanoes destroy things - negative, but in Civ as it has been configured in Civ V and VI, you cannot afford to lose an entire city, so they (and tsunamis, which are largely the results of volcanic/seismic activity) have to be toned down for the game. Again, perhaps a random chance of losing X % of population AND having areas 'pillaged' and even a Building destroyed or damaged requiring repair (wth Gold or a Builder's Charge)
BUT Volcanoes also give you access to some interesting materials: Obsidian, or 'Volcanic Glass', which actually makes a sharper edge than primitive bronze or iron, so can substitute for copper/bronze/iron for weapons (say, Aztec Eagle/Jaquar Knights, anyone?). And, volcanic ash (tephra) makes a very fine waterproof cement for construction, so could speed up building all sorts of things. In fact, being waterproof it was the primary material for many Roman docks and harbor facilities, and would be required for certain Wonders (the Pantheon in Rome had the largest free-standing (concrete) dome for centuries) - perhaps Volcano in your city limits could give you access to an extra Trade Good (Obsidian) and reduce by 25 - 50% construction of Harbors or Seaports (or even Lighthouses).

A Seismic region obviously can give you Volcanoes, Earthquakes, and Tsunamis, all negative. But it also tends to have Hot Springs or Thermal Baths, and many cultures have valued these for both medical and cultural/health reasons. So, could allow you to build a Spa in a city for extra Trade income (tourists come for the Cure!) - see all the towns along the Rhine with 'Bad' in the title, some of them like Wiesbaden, dating back to the Roman Empire and attracting Roman and later visitors the entire time.

So, with a little tweaking and a careful attention to providing Alternatives Good and Bad, Random Events would be a great addition to the game. If nothing else, they give the gamer something else to react to and deal with, and the game (Civ V and VI) doesn't have enough of that at all right now.

 

[Manifold]

The Australian scenario has these in abundance, most were pretty annoying. There were games where I lost my explorer before the first 10 turns, others where they found gold and survived until the end of the game. If there is RNG events added, they'd have to effect everyone, and the range of these effects shouldn't be incredibly drastic.

I understand your point very well. Your explorer is away and you didn´t get any challenge or compensation. That is just misfortune and would make me angry too. And a small positive event is just childhood happiness and at some point it becomes a habit.

The events we were thinking about are not just negative or positive. They should be challenging. Major events could give a change to the usual gameplay and strategy. When the player uses the positive effects well his Civ will overtop the negative effect. But this will maybe in another direction than the player planned before. Easy example: The player has less units and can´t conquer a foreign city at the moment. Then he loses a city by an event but gets some military units for free and has the opportunity to conquer a better city than his own city. IMO one city is not incredibly drastic, or?

...so what could be the right compensation for the loss of your explorer?
Maybe some faith or Great Discoverer Points... or you get a production bonus for warriors (someone of your people wants revenge)...it depends on the way your explorer is lost.

 

[Leyrann]

I understand your point very well. Your explorer is away and you didn´t get any challenge or compensation. That is just misfortune and would make me angry too. And a small positive event is just childhood happiness and at some point it becomes a habit.

The events we were thinking about are not just negative or positive. They should be challenging. Major events could give a change to the usual gameplay and strategy. When the player uses the positive effects well his Civ will overtop the negative effect. But this will maybe in another direction than the player planned before. Easy example: The player has less units and can´t conquer a foreign city at the moment. Then he loses a city by an event but gets some military units for free and has the opportunity to conquer a better city than his own city. IMO one city is not incredibly drastic, or?

...so what could be the right compensation for the loss of your explorer?
Maybe some faith or Great Discoverer Points... or you get a production bonus for warriors (someone of your people wants revenge)...it depends on the way your explorer is lost.

I'd just like to point out that the scenario has no faith, great people or military units.

 

[dunkleosteus]

Are volcanoes visible from the start of the game or are they a specific event that triggers without warning? Maybe they look like regular mountains until they erupt or you get some sort of tech that lets you see them.

It would be cool if volcanoes spawned on the borders between continents. Maybe they give an extra couple faith or science adjacency bonuses to campuses and holy sites? But you can't settle next to them.

Regardless, if we had volcanoes at all, Kilimanjaro and Eyfjallajokull would have to be included.


In the events and decisions mod, your preparedness for random events was often a factor. If you didn't have the gold lying around, sometimes you just took it in the teeth. I wonder if we should have random events that *are* strictly negative but that can be prevented with proper preperation. For example, maybe if traders are traveling alone in an otherwise Fog of war area, pirates or bandits could pillage it without actual barbarians present. Would require a military or naval presence along trade routes if you wanted to protect your trade without actually increasing barbarian spawns which would be a pain.

 

[Manifold]

Are volcanoes visible from the start of the game or are they a specific event that triggers without warning? Maybe they look like regular mountains until they erupt or you get some sort of tech that lets you see them.
It would be cool if volcanoes spawned on the borders between continents. Maybe they give an extra couple faith or science adjacency bonuses to campuses and holy sites? But you can't settle next to them.
Regardless, if we had volcanoes at all, Kilimanjaro and Eyfjallajokull would have to be included.

People of all times and still settle near volcanoes and the craters and in them as well!!! Even if they know the danger. Often there are healing hot springs...

There should be a warning (small earthquakes before the eruption) one turn before, so it should be possible to move the army away.
The invention of a Tech "Nature Philosophy" should give you one round more to flee with our best units.

In the events and decisions mod, your preparedness for random events was often a factor. If you didn't have the gold lying around, sometimes you just took it in the teeth. I wonder if we should have random events that *are* strictly negative but that can be prevented with proper preperation. For example, maybe if traders are traveling alone in an otherwise Fog of war area, pirates or bandits could pillage it without actual barbarians present. Would require a military or naval presence along trade routes if you wanted to protect your trade without actually increasing barbarian spawns which would be a pain.

I have an idea for pirate hunting event, if the prevention fails. The barbarian pirate ship that pillaged your trade route get marked like the barbarian scout after spotting a city. The loss-stricken shipowners give you a production bonus of +20 % for naval units for 10 rounds to take revenge. Also the shipowners expose a bounty on the marked barbarian pirate ship. So if you or someone else catches the pirates you or someone else get the pillaged money back and the bounty.

I'd just like to point out that the scenario has no faith, great people or military units.

Sounds like Tetris

 

[The Kingmaker]

I'd love to see Civ6 incorporate a "living world" into the game. It could include not only natural disasters like volcanoes, earthquakes, floods and droughts, but also weather and roving wild animals.

Watch as your earliest hunter-gatherers chase buffalo or try to catch and domestic the aurochs. Chase off hungry lions and wolves like in Civ4. Keep them away from your herds!

Dry spells and blizzards could threaten your food supply (and therefore your population) but you might just as often get bumper crops, discover mother lodes while mining, or find surplus resources.

Imagine if you had to domestic different animals before you could put them to use or build the associated units? Horses, elephants, camels.

Mastering our environment has been humanity's greatest challenge since the Stone Age. I remember how SimCity used to have various natural disasters that the player had to overcome.

Firaxis would need to balance the percentage of each type of event of course. Maybe 30% beneficial, 20% detrimental and 50% neutral/indeterminate?

 

[Infixo]

I am working on a mod that implements natural disasters into the game. It's a great idea and quite a challenging experience in programming. I will start soon a dedicated thread but for now, if you want to dig more into the topic, I have a few questions.
1. How many events in total, should there be in a standard 500-turns game? Bare in mind that events are player-independent, they affect the world.
2. Assuming the following types of most popular events, how would you split the above number among them? Events: earthquake, flood, meteor, tornado, tsunami, volcano, wildfire.
3. For a Standard size map, what would be a typical size of the affected area? You can give approx. num of tiles, or say e.g. 3-tile radius, etc.
4. Assuming that events can cause 5 levels of damage: minimal, moderate, extensive, extreme, catastrophic, what would be an effect on: a unit, a building, district, tile improvement that was hit by an event with given damage-level?
5. What would you like to know about the event? What information should be available (e.g. in a pop up, notification, report, etc.)?
6. Should AI react in any specific way to those events? What would you expect?

 

[Leyrann]

I am working on a mod that implements natural disasters into the game. It's a great idea and quite a challenging experience in programming. I will start soon a dedicated thread but for now, if you want to dig more into the topic, I have a few questions.
1. How many events in total, should there be in a standard 500-turns game? Bare in mind that events are player-independent, they affect the world.
2. Assuming the following types of most popular events, how would you split the above number among them? Events: earthquake, flood, meteor, tornado, tsunami, volcano, wildfire.
3. For a Standard size map, what would be a typical size of the affected area? You can give approx. num of tiles, or say e.g. 3-tile radius, etc.
4. Assuming that events can cause 5 levels of damage: minimal, moderate, extensive, extreme, catastrophic, what would be an effect on: a unit, a building, district, tile improvement that was hit by an event with given damage-level?
5. What would you like to know about the event? What information should be available (e.g. in a pop up, notification, report, etc.)?
6. Should AI react in any specific way to those events? What would you expect?

1. I'd want to see one every 10-15 turns, but that's most likely more than most people want.
2. Of these, not a lot. For earthquake, tsunami and volcano maybe one or two per game in an empire with some 10 cities, for flood and wildfire maybe up to five as long as long as they're not too close to one another (so no two of the same within, say, 50 turns). For meteor... It would be a huge one, I suppose, and I'd say, at most once every 3-4 games. I'd mostly want to see minor events that are one tile only though. For example, finding a silver vein in a mine, and consequently a silver resource appearing on the tile, or (a civ 4 event modified for civ 6) someone leaving behind a lot of valuable books for the Library, which gives it +1 science per turn for the rest of the game. Also, I feel like events should be positive more often than negative, or at least negative-made-neutral if you do something, because otherwise people will just feel like the system is only messing them up all the time.
3. Big ones should probably be up to 7 tiles in size, maybe a meteor would destroy seven in a circle, or an earthquake would demolish four tiles in a line. Smaller events should happen at a particular tile. Imo it shouldn't scale with size of the map.
5. I liked the civ 4 system where there were typically multiple ways to react and you had to choose one.
6. Depends on the event.

 

[Infixo]

@Leyrann As for now I am focused on natural disasters, not events in general, and as the name implies they are strictly negative. They may have some collateral positive effects, but main event is always negative.
Ad. 1/2. It seems that reality will not make it to the game in this case When I was doing research, I found out that those events are actually quite often. Fortunately, they happen very often in uninhabitated areas, so we don't care. But earthquakes - commodity. Tornados and hurricanes as well, etc. Volcanos are rather rare. So we actually have to focus on really disastrous events, like 7+ earthquakes. Or wildfires that take out 10000+ km2, tsunamis that go couple miles into the land (very rare). Etc. And still throughout 6000 years of human history there were thousands of such events.
I am planning for a system that an event is actually inevitable so you might want to include in your strategy. That would mean approx. 100-120 events per game split into: earthquake ~20, flood ~15, tornado ~15, meteor ~5, tsunami ~10, volcano ~10, wildfire ~25. If the entire map would be taken by players, that would be ~10-15 events per player. Not many, actually. Because events may also happen in areas that will not affect human player.
Ad. 3. I plan to adjust event range to the map size. Especially the big maps which can be 4-8 times bigger than standard. You need to cover more area with the event to have the impact on the empire, simply.
For a standard size (8 players) map: earthquake is 3 tile circle, flood depends on terrain (e.g. fill not flood Hills) so I usually get 10-15 tiles flooded, meteor is 2-tiles circle, tornado 5-6 tiles in a line (like tornados are moving), tsunami takes 1-2 tiles inside the coast (can be stopped by mountains) in the range of 5-7 tiles, volcano - 1-tile circle around the mountain, wildfire - depends on flammable material and wind direction (randomized) - usually 5-10 tiles.
These parameters are for small-standard-large maps. For duel-tine all ranges will be 1 less, for bigger maps more (e.g. for Giant Earth 2 tiles more).
Ad. 5. Natural disasters are rather hard to react. Maybe later in the game, when some technologies are discovered. But the event itself - what would you like to know? Not react, just know.

Edit. Ad. 1/2. The frequency also is dependant on map type. On Islands you might expect more tsunamis and volcanos, less flooding; on Pangea more wildfires and tornadoes. The numbers I've given are for Continents which I treat as a reference map in terms of terrain variations.

 

[Infixo]

I have published the first playable version in "Unreleased Mods" section here.

 

[Manifold]

I have published the first playable version in "Unreleased Mods" section here.

This is GREAT! I will test your mod next.

Did you think about compensations for affected civs? And is it possible to make a game rule that every continent could only be affected by the same number of major events? But I will change for this to your mod thread

 

[Manifold]

I'm still going to think about really big events not only small things like "your mine is collapsed". I mean the major events that occured in the history and changed it like the Cimbrian War, the Little Ice Age and the Dust Bowl events as I wrote before.

This Civ part looks like the Huns did not get a second representation because of Scythia. But the Huns had such a major impact of the world history that I was thinking about an event that could honor the Hunnish devastation.

The Scourge of God event

This event just pop up when one Civ reached the medieval era. It occurs one time per game by a Chance of 10 % per game.
The affected continent may not already affected by another major event and is immune to later major event.

Graphic and acoustic intro: The Huns are coming - with the Sabre Dance from Aram Khachaturian.
+ Sean Bean reads something about the history of the Huns:
"They were the sons of witches and wolves and came from the large swamp in the east. They were ugly and evil...
In the year 375 they sweep the land of the Goths as a plague...later under their most terrible ruler Attila they invade France and Italy and just a last coalition of the last free Men against them and a miracle saved Europe from ruin."


Effect:
A huge Hunnish/Barbarian mounted army (20-30 units) occurs on the affected continent at the biggest uncivilized free place with mostly plain tiles.
These Horsemen of the Apocalypse running around trying to loot and raze cities.

These units can not fight and pass through Apostles. Apostles act as impassable mountains for them.

With these units can be interacted in two more ways than just fight against them. 1) for a certain sum of gold the Hunnish unit disappear (tribute). 2) for a certain sum of gold the unit becomes yours (mercenary, like the levy from the army of a CS).

After 30 turns (in epic speed) the Huns disappear. Attila dies in marriage bed.


Compensation:

For 30 turns religious purchases with faith are half price.

For every killing of a Hunnish unit the other gets +1 GPP Writer or +1 GPP Musician.

Every affected Civ, that has lost a unit o an improvement/City against the Huns, get +10% for building military units for 15 turns. This bonus is cumulative, so when a Civ loses 10 units or improvements in 15 turns the bonus production is 100 %.

If a barbarian unit is attacked but not killed by Huns within the borders of a Civ, this Civ gets the barbarian unit for free.

After the disappear of the Huns that Civ that killed the most Hunnish units get the free Great General "Flavius Aetius, the last of the Romans" He gives bonuses to adjacent mounted units.

All affected Civs get the eureka for the stirrup tech.

All affected Civs get the new steam achievement: Withstand the Scourge of God event


By the way I only can recommend the mod of Infixo just everyone to try it out.

I have published the first playable version in "Unreleased Mods" section here.

 

[Zaarin]

@Manifold I love the idea of major events like that; it could really shake the game up from the current "eternal snowball to victory" stratagem.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

@Manifold: Great Implementation of a very-much-needed Game Mechanic!

- But if I can expand the discussion just a bit...
The entire game needs to be much more Dynamic: right now, almost everything happens in a few discrete Events: you discover a tech/civic, get access to X, Y or Z. All Resources of a given type appear all over the map at the same time, etc. All Tribal Villages and City States appear at once, all Barbarians are Barbarians All The Time. All are single events, then Static.

I think the game needs not only Random events, but also a near-constant change in the relationship you have with both the map and the Non-Civ Groups - Barbarians and City States.

For instance, not all Gold or Silver resources (or Iron, Coal, Oil, etc) should appear all at once. As technology advances or by sheer Chance, 'Strikes' can happen any time, and materially affect how you play the game: the relatively-sudden influx of silver in classic Greece to both Athens and Phillip II's Macedon, in fact, had a huge effect on those two states. The Gold Strike in California resulted in a massive population shift in the 19th century USA - these, if nothing else, would keep any gamer 'on his toes'...

Not only the Huns, but the various Celtic/Gaulic 'Migrations' that plagued Rome (and Greece and even Asia Minor) or the Goths, Avars, Magyars, Bulgars et al who pressured the Roman borders were all much, much more persistent than the current 'Barbarian Outbursts' in Civ VI. The Gamer who, like Rome or China, has a border with a large unsettled area has both an opportunity to settle new cities in the area but should also face probably on-going headaches from Barbarian Outbursts - not as massive as the Scourge of God, perhaps, but more persistent.

Parenthetically, I think not all City States should appear magically at midnight on 1 January 4000 BCE. Later in the game, a Barbarian Camp left alone or a Tribal Village ('Goody Hut') left un-pillaged should be able to turn into a new City State, giving you a new Diplomatic/Economic/(possibly) Military Challenge/Opportunity.

As I posted earlier in this thread, add a bunch of Natural 'Disasters' that include both negative and (potentially) positive effects, Variable Resource Appearance/Enhancement, Dynamic Barbarians/City States/Goody Huts, and I think the level of excitement and Required Decision-Making per turn would be dramatically enhanced to the betterment of the gaming experience.

 

[Morningcalm]

Quest events could work, and less punishing random events (volcano eruptions that give some sort of advance warning and some sort of decision you can make to offset certain penalties) would be great. Unfortunately the Australian scenario's random events are like the worst of Civ IV's random events--arbitrary, random, and with little player choice. (The best Civ IV ones were quests or cool story-based choices that deepened the sense of immersion--I recall in particular spies being ransomed, the chance to end the war over a kind gesture to the enemy's soldiers, etc.)

 

[Leyrann]

Quest events could work, and less punishing random events (volcano eruptions that give some sort of advance warning and some sort of decision you can make to offset certain penalties) would be great. Unfortunately the Australian scenario's random events are like the worst of Civ IV's random events--arbitrary, random, and with little player choice. (The best Civ IV ones were quests or cool story-based choices that deepened the sense of immersion--I recall in particular spies being ransomed, the chance to end the war over a kind gesture to the enemy's soldiers, etc.)

The Australia event were meant to be harmful, however...

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

People of all times and still settle near volcanoes and the craters and in them as well!!! Even if they know the danger. Often there are healing hot springs...

I've got to comment on this point, since I live next to a number of volcanoes (Mount Rainier, Mount Baker, Mount St Helens). Volcanic ash is a fertilizer (in moderation - a foot-thick layer from Thera doesn't help a bit!), so that generally, land around the volcano is more productive. Volcanoes provide access to tephra, which makes cement/concrete, an exclusive building material for structures (Roman harbors, aqueducts, roads) and Wonders (the Pantheon's dome) and obsidian, a substitute for bronze or copper as a tool/weapon material. Just as important, almost all volcanoes have a religious/cultural influence on the people living near them. Look at Fujiyama, or Olympus and Ida in Greece/Crete - for that matter, count up the number of Natural Wonders in Civ V that were volcanoes - no other natural feature was so heavily represented.
In short, there are a number of reasons to settle near a volcano and take your chances with the occasional 'Earth Belch' it also provides

I have an idea for pirate hunting event, if the prevention fails. The barbarian pirate ship that pillaged your trade route get marked like the barbarian scout after spotting a city. The loss-stricken shipowners give you a production bonus of +20 % for naval units for 10 rounds to take revenge. Also the shipowners expose a bounty on the marked barbarian pirate ship. So if you or someone else catches the pirates you or someone else get the pillaged money back and the bounty.

I like the way you think.
Name the pirates, and if the offender is "Jack Sparrow" you also get a single Great Work for a modern Writing (screenplay), but then have to remove two Great Works of Writing for the stinkers that follow the first one...