I used to think disasters were mostly harmless and inconsequential

Socrates99

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Two seperate games my early game has been completely wrecked by disasters.

The first was an Incan game where I had disasters at 4 because they'd never been a problem before and I kinda enjoyed them. I spawned near 3 volcanoes and had so many eruptions I couldn't get my pop over 4 and constantly had to rebuild my terrace farms.

After that experience I dropped the intensity back to 2 and had no trouble for a few games until I started on a large flood plain as Rome on deity. I was penned in by some mountains, Russia and Mongolia so I wasn't able to expand much. 5 cities on a huge map. No big deal, I have legions to take care of that problem right? I had 4 legions built in Rome with an encampment and barracks. I was staging my army in Rome and denounced Genghis to whittle him down before he got his UU. The next turn a 1000 year flood hit and Genghis hit me with a surprise war wiped out half my flood damaged units and took one of my cities. I fought back and recaptured my city plus one of his and had an emergency called on me. Russia swooped in on my other front, Genghis fought back and my short stint as glorious Ceasar wallowed in mediocrity. I still blame that flood although Genghis is a pain on a good day especially with difficulty bonuses added on.

It's like everything else, disasters have less impact as the game progresses but the wrong ones in the early game can hurt bad.
 
Well, 3 volcanoes destroy surrounding tiles quicker than builder can be trained. At disaster lv4, I try not to place district next to volcanoes and on floodplain (until dam). Tall cities suffer more, in one game, a blizzard killed 11 citizens in my 2 tall cities. The AI seem get less serious damage (because RNG or they are too lazy to improve tiles?)
 
I had a Mali game where my suguba and holy site cluster got wiped out by sandstorms 3 times, along with my iron twice. I ended up so far behind despite having an almost ideal looking start position.
 
Disasters are really inconsistent. Volcanoes are mostly awesome to have. Floods are terrible. Dust Storms are fantastic. Hurricanes and Tornadoes are awful. And of course coastal flooding is a bad joke.
 
Yup and when you have to go coastal for your civ and get your capital hammered, once at T45 and once at T100 when you have invested time and thought it just sucks.
I had 1 game where I was being attacked, got a builder out to chop in walls and a tornado whipped her away. Just poor luck but sucked. Lost a city due to a random event.
Volcano settling is a choice you make, early flooding is needed to get flood plains flooding (like they never flooded before) but hurricanes are just crap and you cannot even turn them off.
Hate it, hate it, hate it.
 
Well, with that Inca game I would have had to go nomad a good 8-10 turns just to get away from the volcanoes. Not much choice there. I will admit I was pretty drawn to the idea of volcanic soil fueled terrace farms. It just never panned out.
 
One of my first GS games, first as the the Ottomans, the Arabs built their capital right next to an active volcano. I decided to not raze it like I normally would just to see how badly it got hit (I was playing on max disasters I think). Over the course of the game that city never got past size 5 because everyone kept dying to eruptions - the holy district was being razed again before I could repair it. I think it lost like 30 population by the time the game was over. If it wasn't for their free settlers I don't think they would have ever got a second city out.
 
I only play with disaster level 2 but they are much much much too destructive, especially the sandstorms. It happened several times that my capital's infrastructure was completely destroyed within two rounds. That was five or six districts, each with three buildings in it, nothing more than a pile of ashes left. Took dozens of rounds to repair them all.
Generally I like the concept of natural disasters in the game, but currently they tend to make the game almost unplayable sometimes.
 
Also, the increasing cost of builders also makes it much harder, many tiles to repair & rebuild =_=
 
but currently they tend to make the game almost unplayable sometimes.
They are a setback and a challenge but the fact you have no avoidance strategy against them. Hurricanes are particularly devastating looking at the xml.
 
The first was an Incan game where I had disasters at 4 because they'd never been a problem before and I kinda enjoyed them. I spawned near 3 volcanoes and had so many eruptions I couldn't get my pop over 4 and constantly had to rebuild my terrace farms.
Sounds like a job for Liang.

I don't mind disasters being devastating, as long as they hit approximately with even probability on everybody. Dust storms have been nerfed a bit, which is good, because they were really OP. Hurricanes are really bad, which would be a great balance counter for coastal cities having other advantages over inland cities ... only they have not, quite the opposite, as discussed at length elsewhere. I have yet to be subject to frequent blizzards, but I had one game where I was in a tornado belt and kept having my district razed every time I had them rebuild, while my neighbors had nothing, which was pretty annoying.
 
They are a setback and a challenge but the fact you have no avoidance strategy against them. Hurricanes are particularly devastating looking at the xml.
On the one hand, hurricanes make sense with how devastating they are. But on the other, they really need to be tweaked because there are few coastal cities that can ever recover from them.

Although that can make sense applying to real life (example: Galveston was the most prominent seaport in Texas, and one of the biggest in the U.S. until 1900, when a hurricane razed the city and Galveston never regained it's prominence that it once had), this is a game, a game needs balance, and city-razing hurricanes should be rare enough that you aren't given a heart attack every time you think about settling near the coast.

So once in a game or two when a hurricane wipes out a city or two? Sure. But it shouldn't be super common either. Either there needs to be some limit on the amount of apocalyptic hurricanes, or there needs to be a damage adjustment since hurricanes are so devastating. Or make a way for cities to recover more easily from damage from disasters. I always get frustrated when it takes 50 turns to REPAIR a district seemingly out of nowhere.
 
Firaxis has stated that some weather systems will frequent some paths over others.
If there is a city location that gets repeatedly hit by a hurricane, it implies that area has a high probability of weather-related problems.

So conclude that isn’t a good place to invest a lot of resources into a city! Duhh!
 
Sounds like a job for Liang.

I don't mind disasters being devastating, as long as they hit approximately with even probability on everybody. Dust storms have been nerfed a bit, which is good, because they were really OP. Hurricanes are really bad, which would be a great balance counter for coastal cities having other advantages over inland cities ... only they have not, quite the opposite, as discussed at length elsewhere. I have yet to be subject to frequent blizzards, but I had one game where I was in a tornado belt and kept having my district razed every time I had them rebuild, while my neighbors had nothing, which was pretty annoying.

Even probability for each civ does not result in fair outcomes unless the frequency is very high across the board. To illustrate why this is, consider a disaster that has a 10% chance to end the game outright for each nation. That's still even probability for each civ.

Disasters in Civ 6 are not that extreme, but for anything that deals game-altering damage without realistic gameplay agency it's a lesser version of the same concept. A negative that detracts from strategy influencing the outcome, rather than adding to it. It's annoying that some people claim that a reduction in strategy increases strategy, but so it goes.

At least they're not as bad as Civ 4 events were initially.

Although that can make sense applying to real life (example: Galveston was the most prominent seaport in Texas, and one of the biggest in the U.S. until 1900, when a hurricane razed the city and Galveston never regained it's prominence that it once had), this is a game, a game needs balance, and city-razing hurricanes should be rare enough that you aren't given a heart attack every time you think about settling near the coast.

Galveston was very damage. Hurricanes doing that in the scale of Civ turns (which are 5+ years for much of the game) is silly. It implies every hurricane is worse than Galveston. Considering that coastal cities are already neutered in Civ 6 introducing an event stronger than its historical counterpart to punish an already weak option so severely is awkward.
 
Firaxis has stated that some weather systems will frequent some paths over others.
If there is a city location that gets repeatedly hit by a hurricane, it implies that area has a high probability of weather-related problems.

So conclude that isn’t a good place to invest a lot of resources into a city! Duhh!

If the game does not permit a player to determine in advance what will make a proposed city site more vulnerable to destructive hurricanes, then the game is just trolling the player (Ha, ha, you guessed wrong! Sucks to be you!). The game does provide that sort of information about sea level impacts, which allows a player to make a reasonably informed decision about where to place a city, and which tiles to invest in, and whether and when to monitor atmospheric CO2 levels and when to beeline Computers. As near as I can tell, no similar information is available for hurricanes, which makes those storms a particular source of frustration for players and leads rational players, at the margin, to avoid settling coastal cities and, therefore, significantly reduces their interest in playing civs with sea-oriented bonuses. Telling a player that "once your city has been hammered by one hurricane, you should assume that same city will get hammered again and again, so you're well advised to cut your losses and write-off that city" is not helpful in a strategy game. Nor is implicitly telling players "if you don't like excessive randomness when playing Civ A, just play another Civ".
 
this is a game, a game needs balance, and city-razing hurricanes should be rare enough that you aren't given a heart attack every time you think about settling near the coast.
Well said
"if you don't like excessive randomness when playing Civ A, just play another Civ".
Exactly, or another game.
 
So just give the option, to turn hurricanes OFF or let adjust intensity, severity in a range.

Don't force players to like what other players (presumed majority) like.

(I wanted disasters to be in the game, but when in the end the outcome of ALL "disasters" will be good, very good or great, then I'll have no problem to switch them off. Completely.)

.
 
(presumed majority) like.
I will presume the majority have not been hit by a hurricane.
Look, uit is OK to lose a builder at a key time, a bit annoying but hey
But to lose every district in your capital and it will take 50+ turns to recover, they can shove their game.
 
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