I'm with the growing consensus here that Events in their current form are a bit too much. They are fun, though, and with a bit of work I definitely see VEM being better off for having them.
It does seem to make sense in terms of gameplay/fun to make most events positive, but perhaps a bit less powerful than they currently are. Certainly most events shouldn't happen more than once per player per game, and it would be nice to have some sense of balance of advantages gained through events across players.
Per-turn/percentage costs
Also, as is, the lump sum
Gold costs add an unnatural-seeming incentive to keep cash on hand to the game. I can see temporary per-turn
,
,
,
, etc. costs (e.g., -50%
or -50%
for a few turns) working much more elegantly. I envision most Events looking something like this:
A new smelting process developed by the smithy in Istanbul shows great promise, but is potentially hazardous to workers.
-Devote research to making the process safer. (+4
per turn indefinitely, but -50%
for 20 turns)
-Push the process into production immediately, ignoring the health concerns. (+4
per turn indefinitely, but -33% surplus
for 20 turns)
-Let the local governor handle this. (+1
per turn indefinitely)
or
The colosseum in Istanbul is drawing record-breaking crowds!
-Direct resources towards hosting shows of patriotic propaganda. (+5
indefinitely, but -50%
for 20 turns)
-Stage elaborate talent competitions to entertain the public. (+3
indefinitely, but -50%
for 20 turns)
-Let the masses decide. (+3
for 20 turns)
[all these % costs are for the affected city (Istanbul) only, not empire-wide.]
, allowing the player to choose
either the benefit or the cost with the first two options – or opt out by picking a third option offering a smaller benefit at no cost.
There would be similar negative events as well (where the costs clearly outweigh the benefits, and the third option gives a smaller negative but no counterbalancing benefit), though fewer in number.
(Yes, this could lead to a lot of per-city micro-ing whenever an Event occurs, but 1) micro-ing your city to produce less hammers to avoid the penalty still means you're incurring a cost, and 2) if Events only occur every 25 turns or so, that's not a huge deal, IMHO. Ideally, you'd be able to check out the affected city before making your choice. A notice would pop up after the per-turn penalties stopped: "The talent competitions in Istanbul's coliseum have become self-sufficient and no longer require the city's
.")
Luck balance
Even this would have to be balanced to control for luck though. (I just quit a game I started with Egypt going for a Culture victory because, on turn 17, a Monument controversy randomly gave me +6
Culture per turn in Thebes. I wouldn't have felt I earned it even if I did win!) The very element of player choice that makes Events fun and interesting means that they're sure to net benefit players, so it's important to make sure good things don't all accrue to a single lucky player.
The most elegant solution I could come up with is introducing dependence based on some kind of "past luck" variable, call it d, that measures how unlucky each player has been so far this game (or, equivalently, how much you "deserve" some good fortune soon). It'd work something like this:
Each turn...
if + event, decrease d by 30 [if a good event happens, you're much less due for some good luck next turn]
if no event, increase d by 1 [if nothing happens, you're slightly more due for some good luck next turn]
if - event, increase d by 30 [if something bad happens, you're much more due for some good luck next turn]
with
probability of a good event = 0.03 * 1.02^d
probability of a bad event = 0.01 * .95^d
, so that each Civ would have a good event around every, say, 25 turns or so. But a Civ experiencing a couple good events close in time would probably have to wait a while for the next one (unless balanced out by a negative event), and a Civ hammered by a couple bad events in succession would likely get some kind of helping hand soon.
edit: I realize all this would be no small deal to implement! Events are moving VEM into the right direction; I'd just like to see them tweaked a bit, and I'm just saying, if I had unlimited time and technical expertise to do it, this is what I'd try.