Narrative Events discussion

[MutilationWave]

I feel like my strategy is suffering because I don't have the narrative events memorized. I'm not talking about discoveries (goody huts) here. How do you folks incorporate narrative events into your games?

Additionally, narrative events are unbalanced. For instance Egypt (already a very strong civ even after the nerf) gets 10+ events while other civs get two.

Finally, are there any resources you use to track narrative events? The fandom list is incomplete.

 

[Bactrian]

I haven't played Civ 7 for months and months, but when I did, I didn't worry about the narrative events at all. They never seemed particularly impactful. More, even though I play on a high difficulty level, I've never been a planned-strategy min-maxer type of player anyway. I would rather the events not exist or there be WAY more of them so that they're less predictable.

 

[Leucarum]

For some civs they are very impactful - Persia practically gets given a free army of immortals. I'd argue their events are one of the best things about them.

Others are very forgettable - the Egypt Medjay quest might be the most "newbie trap" thing I've seen in a game.

 

[MutilationWave]

I haven't played Civ 7 for months and months, but when I did, I didn't worry about the narrative events at all. They never seemed particularly impactful. More, even though I play on a high difficulty level, I've never been a planned-strategy min-maxer type of player anyway. I would rather the events not exist or there be WAY more of them so that they're less predictable.

I have to disagree about the impact. 50 , 75, 100 gold, science, etc in the early game is huge. Some of the events have massive rewards like the army Leucarum mentioned.

 

[uppi]

I feel like my strategy is suffering because I don't have the narrative events memorized. I'm not talking about discoveries (goody huts) here. How do you folks incorporate narrative events into your games?

I try to remember those with disproportionate rewards. The others, I take as they come.

Others are very forgettable - the Egypt Medjay quest might be the most "newbie trap" thing I've seen in a game.

Huh? That is absolutely one to memorize: You can get a militaristic attribute point if you know what is coming and prepare accordingly.

 

[Leucarum]

Huh? That is absolutely one to memorize: You can get a militaristic attribute point if you know what is coming and prepare accordingly.

Really? I thought the reward was some gold for builsing more Medjay than you need if you pick that option. I prepare to stand corrected but even then it just kinda proves OP'a point.

 

[phoenixician]

I have to disagree about the impact. 50 , 75, 100 gold, science, etc in the early game is huge. Some of the events have massive rewards like the army Leucarum mentioned.

I agree. I think narrative event is one of the more underappreciated aspects of civ7. While they are numerically small boons and don't carry the game for you, they often add significant momentum in the early turns (akin to herdables in AoE series if you play those games). That said, I personally don't go out of my way to try to memorize all of them for a few reasons:

• There are thousands of them by now--it's just not practical nor deemed worth my time to do so. Maybe one day someone with enough passion and modding skills will make a mod to keep track of them.
• Most generic narrative events are determined randomly each game, though with a few exceptions. All of them are not reproducible every game due to chance. Narrative events specific to leaders and civs are guaranteed 100% reproducible, but great persons' are not.
• Unless the rewards are attribute points, they scale unfavorably as the game goes on.
• Many of them have trigger requirements that are steep or just make you stray away from what you want to do.

Still, the most important ones that worth aiming for are the ones in Antiquity associated with improving resources such as hides x2, sheep, cotton, wine, silk, iron x2, fish, and dye x2; or slotting in/slotting out policies (almost all of them in Antiquity). These are convenient because they reinforce settling for resources in early games, which is what you want to do most of the times. Most of these aforementioned resources are also valuable in early game as well. For the ones associated with policies, just slot in and out any new policies you get to fish for trigger--small hassle, but quick and easy; there are specific ones that are probably worth keeping in the back of your head:

• Tool Making + 2 irons
• Priesthood + 1 altar
• City Guard + peace w/ all
• Clan Network + 1 hide + 1 horse
• Honor Policy + 2 disperses

These policies are positioned early in the civic trees, where your yields are at most scarce, so they're always worth to fish for. Last 2 are probably not worth as much as other 3, since their rewards are +% production and +culture. Again, their trigger is based on chance, so you won't get to trigger all of them, thus I rather not bother memorizing the ones that require you to invest any type of resources or straying away from the planned strategy.

 

[MutilationWave]

Thank you, I had no idea about making sure to slot each policy in and out to check for triggers.

 

[uppi]

Really? I thought the reward was some gold for builsing more Medjay than you need if you pick that option. I prepare to stand corrected but even then it just kinda proves OP'a point.

Yes, which is why you want to pick the other option (disperse an IP with a Medjay within a time limit). But if you are heading out once you get the quest, you are unlikely to make it. So, you have to know that this event triggers on training the second Medjay and have the first Medjay (and maybe two singers and a commander) in position to fight the IP you want to disperse.

And yes, I agree with the point that to play optimally, you would need to know all of them. I just cannot be bothered to also learn all those 25 science or culture ones.

 

[vorlon_mi]

The only one I feel the need to memorize is the one with Morse code (LOL). Most of the others have been pleasant surprises.

Having written that, I have been making a point to try a different leader every game, often with different civ choices. So I've not really set myself up for seeing the same events more than once.

 

[disjointaccount]

The only one I feel the need to memorize is the one with Morse code (LOL).

Yeah, I've done the number puzzle one enough times to be able to instantly recognise the correct answer, but I always forget to pay attention to the morse code for the next time, and can never be bothered looking it up.

 

[A_Most_Foolish_Fool]

I feel like my strategy is suffering because I don't have the narrative events memorized. I'm not talking about discoveries (goody huts) here. How do you folks incorporate narrative events into your games?

Additionally, narrative events are unbalanced. For instance Egypt (already a very strong civ even after the nerf) gets 10+ events while other civs get two.

Finally, are there any resources you use to track narrative events? The fandom list is incomplete.

On one of the Discords, there is a document of narrative events being compiled here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/13nExDMDYZRRqUQxkvmoQo3m27TbHbM38tt6uXEve60A/edit?tab=t.0

Each civ generally has at least 10 narrative events and a lot of them are fairly easy to trigger (which is part of why Jose Rizal is quite a bit better than many think in single player specifically).

 

[King Flevance]

I feel like narrative events are going in a direction not intended by developers where players are learning the triggers and gaming the system. I feel like the narrative events were meant to add flavor to the game through "unpredictable events", not to be calculated based on the code where players hunt them to result in predetermined conclusions. Like stacking a deck. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I think a great way to remedy this is to reconfigure the narrative events to work more like questlines. When the game is rolling stats for the age like resource generation on the map and what crisis will appear, it should also generate a random narrative chain for the player to experience. This way it will be a specific series of events and the player is allowed to choose their path down those events. An event chain that will become familiar to every player over time - but it will have variance based on the path you choose. It would also be easier to balance these event chains against each other vs. random chance. This way you could even have the exploration age have some cool powerful questlines like the fountain of youth or el dorado. But if all questlines have relatively equal powerful outcomes it becomes a game of "how do you want to proceed?" not "which path is the most powerful?"

 

[A_Most_Foolish_Fool]

I feel like narrative events are going in a direction not intended by developers where players are learning the triggers and gaming the system. I feel like the narrative events were meant to add flavor to the game through "unpredictable events", not to be calculated based on the code where players hunt them to result in predetermined conclusions. Like stacking a deck. Perhaps I am wrong about this, but I think a great way to remedy this is to reconfigure the narrative events to work more like questlines. When the game is rolling stats for the age like resource generation on the map and what crisis will appear, it should also generate a random narrative chain for the player to experience. This way it will be a specific series of events and the player is allowed to choose their path down those events. An event chain that will become familiar to every player over time - but it will have variance based on the path you choose. It would also be easier to balance these event chains against each other vs. random chance. This way you could even have the exploration age have some cool powerful questlines like the fountain of youth or el dorado. But if all questlines have relatively equal powerful outcomes it becomes a game of "how do you want to proceed?" not "which path is the most powerful?"

I don't know that I agree with the notion that it is unintended. The devs are clearly pushing to try to improve the multiplayer experience and they made a leader whose mechanics are based around getting narrative events. If they are able to add even more narrative events for each civilization/leader, I could see a system like you have proposed working well, but I also suspect that we won't see much more in the way of new narrative events for existing civs (except for specific things that are intriguing from a historical perspective).

This isn't really related, but I really do appreciate all of the effort that went into crafting each narrative event as they do help to add a lot to identifying with your civ and leader choices while also letting the team's historians get to have some fun in writing about alternative historical timelines.

 

[King Flevance]

I don't know that I agree with the notion that it is unintended. The devs are clearly pushing to try to improve the multiplayer experience and they made a leader whose mechanics are based around getting narrative events. If they are able to add even more narrative events for each civilization/leader, I could see a system like you have proposed working well, but I also suspect that we won't see much more in the way of new narrative events for existing civs (except for specific things that are intriguing from a historical perspective).

This isn't really related, but I really do appreciate all of the effort that went into crafting each narrative event as they do help to add a lot to identifying with your civ and leader choices while also letting the team's historians get to have some fun in writing about alternative historical timelines.

I could be wrong and it was intended but I personally don't like games that WANT or even require you to go look at a "wiki" (guide) to understand how to benefit in-game. The in-game decision should clearly spell out the end result for choosing a decision if these are meant for competitive environments. However, it is presented in a way that intentionally makes the outcome a mystery without outside information as though it is for flavor. And 'fishing' for events can be powerful which seems like a poor decision for multiplayer because it creates a divide between power gamers who will chart such things and those who don't. Then even if all players chart such things to fish for events, an RNG determines who gets it. So even when you make it fair, it is random - which isn't really fair.

I do appreciate the attention that went into making all these events as well. I actually think they do a good job at flavoring the game. (What I suspect was their intended purpose) However, now I am seeing all these posts and comments about gaming the event system to stack advantages and it actually turns me completely away from any multiplayer desire. I think the game having events be a more controlled environment with a few good options adds variety and keeps the strategy focused on in-game mechanics, not meta-game mechanics.

 

[A_Most_Foolish_Fool]

I don't know that it adds as much complexity as it would appear at first glance? Narrative events seem to get a little weaker as the game progresses and the multiplayer experience is all about war at the moment since combat strength bonuses skew the balance of the game significantly (with Lafayette being considered broken there and military endeavors being quite strong). The only narrative events that one might really consider studying right now (assuming that you are not playing Jose Rizal in a competitive sort of setting, which would likely be unwise anyway due to the turn timer and Rizal's lack of a military endeavor) are those super early ones that provide tempo or those that provide codices. Even then that is a lot less study required than the hidden information associated with choosing a given civ (due to the UI of civ selection being a bit underdeveloped and not showing all of the bonuses in a civ's civic tree) and the narrative events provide a much smaller edge than you get from knowing all of a civ's bonuses and planning around them.

As someone who likes to nerd out about a game's given mechanics, the narrative event system and Jose Rizal are ways to always have new depths to the game to explore and new ways of enjoying the game (though I suppose it helps that I really enjoy the in-game lore that these events add as well).

 

[MutilationWave]

I don't always min/max games but I definitely do civ. Thanks for the ridiculously long list. It's wild that such random things (many are not that random) could give something as valuable as an attribute point. I can't ignore that.