Natural Disasters

[Stylesrj]

Why don't we also add Giant Death Robots (GDRs) to the game too? They can a be a natural disaster. Like Barbarians (their own side!) they go around, deliberately causing damage. However, they'll be the "Evil" GDRs. During this though, the "Good" GDRs will arrive and fight the Evil GDRs. If the Good causes any damage to your cities or improvements, they say "Sorry" and claim it as collateral, which they're just as bad as the Evil when it comes to damage (they might destroy deliberately, but claim collateral). When the Evil GDRs are defeated, the GDR Disaster is over. The only thing that can counter this disaster is the Awesome-O-Quasai-Perfection-Super Giant Death Robot which requires the technology, Theory of Perfection (requires Fibre Optics (for the Internet), The Internet Wonder in any Civ and 100 Future Techs) and the AOQPSGDR can be used against the enemy Civs and causes massive damage against them. However, you do need to replace the team of Power Rangers it's run by....

Yes, I got the ideas off Perfection's GDR thread, please don't sue! Anyway, you'll have Good GDRs like Optimus Prime and Evil GDRs like Megatron (both with badass battles and lots of cool shots showing their fighting) and plenty of all sorts of GDRs.

The GDR Disaster would begin in the Industrial Age, and will have the GDRs mentioned in Perfection's thread, up until the later Modern times, when all the GDRs are armed with nukes and cause the world to be destroyed

GDRs don't capture cities, because they don't need them. Any city that is taken over by a GDR is razed and is turned into a crater, which hinders normal units.

GDR disasters however will be rare and should be allowed to be turned off separately (with the option being "No Awesome Giant Death Robots....In this game.... ever!")

 

[King Flevance]

I think if natural disasters come in, there should also come with them ...um... good disasters? Like for instance, out of nowhere a pop-up box says:

"A breakthrough in military tactics has been discovered in city X. All troops inside gain 20 xp."

Not all of the random events should be bad otherwise why would you turn them on? I think if some good ones were thrown in as well, they would be alot more fun and worth the 'risk'.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Natural disasters would be good when they make a huge impact near the capital of a runaway AI civ. That would make Deity a bit easier.

 

[Ankh-f-n-Khonsu]

I think if natural disasters come in, there should also come with them ...um... good disasters? Like for instance, out of nowhere a pop-up box says:

"A breakthrough in military tactics has been discovered in city X. All troops inside gain 20 xp."

Ummm... In Civ IV parlance we call that a "Great General", except that it's even more flexible than you would have it.

Not all of the random events should be bad otherwise why would you turn them on? I think if some good ones were thrown in as well, they would be alot more fun and worth the 'risk'.

A good question. One reason is that when you have the game in hand midway through, a volcanic explosion next to your science center or a stream of GDRs rampaging around your capital can make the game interesting again. Another reason is that the volcano can also explode next to your foe's city, so that the "disaster" can be a benefit to your own civ.

 

[Rusty Edge]

This is gold! If there's some way to balance the death and destruction, people might actually turn disaster options on. I'm not too keen on alien invasions but it would seem reasonable to let the victim civs maybe pick up a few advanced techs out of the deal. If volcanoes developed new land or improved the fertility of the nearby land (which they do), they wouldn't be such a nightmare. Imagine a volcano destroying your farm but the resulting tile will get an extra +2F on top of the farm bonus when you rebuild. Earthquakes could reveal resources like copper or aluminum by shaking mountains into hills and enabling access to the materials. And like goony said, when (not if) Godzilla strikes, you can pick up a movie or two as "compensation".

Great!

Or how about flooding? We have floodplains. Suppose they flooded once in a while. It woulf fill in irrigation ditches with mud, & destroy villages & hamlets.
However , it would fertilize the valley, boosting farm profits &food production when you rebuild your farms.

A walled city would be protected from flood damage.
Perhaps windmills adjacent to the floodplane would protect the plain from flooding ( or at least reduce the damage),
and an upstream hydro plant could do both, until you reach another tributary down river. The three Gorges dam would protect the entire river system on which it's built.


A volcano could clear jungle.

 

[Rusty Edge]

I'm all for random events and I would leave them "On" if the probability of occurrence is the same for AI civs as it is for human players.

I believe that random events would help alleviate late game ennui. Part of the excitement, for me, in the early game is not knowing for sure what's going to happen next. Currently by mid or late game the thing is on rails and the human player just has to keep shoveling towards the outcome.

I think that summarizes the drawback to Warlords very well. You often reach a point where you know who's going to win and what kind of victory it's going to be and it's only a matter of when. At that point it feels more like work than a game, and it loses that "Just a couple more turns!" feel.


2.08 helps a lot. But I find myself wanting more of anything that made earlier versions interesting, be it a naval or air force element, trade & diplomacy, natural disasters, or civil wars. I think I feel my first thread coming on.

End Rant.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Have you ever heard of Plate Tectonics? I understand it's too slow for humans to notice, but maybe plate boundaries can appear, and those would be the areas where volcanic eruptions/earthquakes are most likely to occur. Once you research Computers, you can see plate boundaries.

 

[LucyDuke]

Have you ever heard of Plate Tectonics?

It aggrivates me to no end that the maps don't reflect this. If there were a map generator that was based on actual geological principles, I'd never use anything else. Rather than being completely randomized, if we had realistic maps, any seismic activity would be a lot more predictable. You wouldn't need Computers to figure out where the plate boundaries were - it would be apparent from the map. The maps that the game comes up with now don't have any logical geology behind them. (If anyone familiar with the map generators knows better and wants to tell me how wrong I am, I welcome it, because I want to be wrong about crappy maps.)

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

I'd like the maps rolled in CIV to stand with geological principles like Continental Drift, not just completely randomized.

An Idea:
Lets suppose you are sending a submarine off to spy on an enemy port city. That submarine might identify ocean features such as mid-ocean ridges, seamounts, trenches, etc. I'd rename the unit "Harry Hess" if such a thing happens.

 

[Dominico]

I love the idea of earth changing events.

I used to love in the other version of civ, i forget its name, the one where you could live in space and under the sea (that rocked) that game had flooding, which destroyed whole swaves of land!! It was great to get tech good enough to get into space, or into the sea, to limit the destruction of global warming.

Also im sure in this game everything affected global warming, coal power etc, not just nukes as i guess civ models its warming on (which is pretty weak since it just deserts bits of land...)

Fun!

 

[Windukicks]

I think if natural disasters come in, there should also come with them ...um... good disasters? Like for instance, out of nowhere a pop-up box says:

"A breakthrough in military tactics has been discovered in city X. All troops inside gain 20 xp."

Not all of the random events should be bad otherwise why would you turn them on? I think if some good ones were thrown in as well, they would be alot more fun and worth the 'risk'.

i love the idea... i never really thought about that

 

[Stylesrj]

Civilization: Call to Power had great features, but SMAC is still better... my CTP keeps crashing (and it isn't pirated, the CD must be worn out)

 

[weasel77066]

I would love to have a random earthquake strike and wipe out the French empire.

 

[30+]

I would love to have a random earthquake strike and wipe out the French empire.

Agreed . Destroying French people is never a bad thing. As for the rest, I would never play the game with such conditions, so definitely "an option".

 

[Stylesrj]

What about an event that wipes out the Aztec Empire early in the game? Oh wait, that's called early stack 'o doom on Monty!
My mistake!

What about a plague of locusts attacking your farms in a city area, and it lasts a few turns (the farms are not destroyed, the land can always be reused without having to tear down the farm) and during them, farms produce nothing. When you research Industrailism, you can manufacture large numbers of pesticides to wipe out the locusts disaster and save the farms.

You know how the planet consists of the two sides wrapping around with oversized poles? That's a donut world. What if there was a Homer Simpson event where a giant Homer Simpson would appear over the world and say "Mmmm.... donut world" and take a huge chunk of it out, wiping out whatever was in that area at the time, hopefully Montezuma and making the area unihabitable forever as it's a big chunk of the planet taken out and it's a big hole in the world which slowly fills in with water. Then Homer goes away and does not return because the donut world wasn't as tasty as he thought it would be, so he does not eat anymore

Yeah.... I better stay off the Kool-aid (If I had any that is, figure of speech, go figure)

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

Desert Locusts?!!!! That would make Civilization scary!

I would pesticides at Biology or Medicine if I were you, not Industrialism. I think it makes more sense to put a farm-saving thing with the techs that allow farm quality improvement.

 

[Jet]

If there were a map generator that was based on actual geological principles,

[Map Script] Tectonics!

The ones that come with the game are based on pasting and layering 2 dimensional fractals.

 

[Stylesrj]

I couldn't think of a good technology for pesticides, I was about to choose Environmentalism

Perhaps if your ships are sailing in a large ocean, there's a chance that a sea monster will rise from the depths and swallow your ship whole. Or if you've got a heavy unit like a settler or a tank rolling in a desert.... worm sign! A giant sandworm could eat those units. However with appropriate techs, you can get someone to lift off a skin flake of the worm so it cannot burrow and you can then ride it. With the sea monster, you can get a mind control device and capture it and then you have your own sea monster which is hidden from all ships and strikes with a deadly attack on any sea unit, but cannot attack land or cities

While we're at it, give Barbarians siege weapons. I mean, they pillage improvments anyway, unlike Mind Worms, and then only Spore Launchers destroyed improvments which annoys me greatly because Mind Worms are playing fair.
What do you think of my ideas now?

 

[LucyDuke]

[Map Script] Tectonics!

The ones that come with the game are based on pasting and layering 2 dimensional fractals.

You are my hero. Well, you and the guy that wrote the script.

 

[Swein Forkbeard]

I couldn't think of a good technology for pesticides, I was about to choose Environmentalism

Perhaps if your ships are sailing in a large ocean, there's a chance that a sea monster will rise from the depths and swallow your ship whole. Or if you've got a heavy unit like a settler or a tank rolling in a desert.... worm sign! A giant sandworm could eat those units. However with appropriate techs, you can get someone to lift off a skin flake of the worm so it cannot burrow and you can then ride it. With the sea monster, you can get a mind control device and capture it and then you have your own sea monster which is hidden from all ships and strikes with a deadly attack on any sea unit, but cannot attack land or cities

While we're at it, give Barbarians siege weapons. I mean, they pillage improvments anyway, unlike Mind Worms, and then only Spore Launchers destroyed improvments which annoys me greatly because Mind Worms are playing fair.
What do you think of my ideas now?

REAL natural disasters please!

I didn't notice that barbarians were not allowed to build siege weapons! They now have the ability to build spearmen (although I have not seen barbarian spearmen), so I assume the patch makers are making the barbarians stronger!