Random Events Mod

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hi there, congrats on a great mod idea, and thanks for past, current and future hard work on it.

Now, with regard to putting in events that nobody would want...Is there any way at all that some sort of random events configuration file, like an .ini or something can be included where the mod user can simply turn each random event on or off at will?

Love the mod, but don't want that massive devastating earthquake? Turn it off in the mod options. Or, even have the world devastation events defaulted to off, but included with the mod download...?

I have no clue about modding in general, let alone Civ specifically, so I don't know if that's possible at all?

Oh, and what about a nice topical bird flu event?

Personally, I think that bird flu could be a realistic event (starts with biology?), but meteor impact is VERY irrealistic.

 

[Argh]

but meteor impact is VERY irrealistic

True, so make it VERY VERY unlikely Or, better, (if possible) go down the random events options route I mentioned.

Personalise your own selection of civ-destroying natural disasters. "And would sir like a volcanic eruption with his coffee? No? Might I recommend the 50 foot tidal wave instead then?"

Edit: Meteor impact could have like ONE chance of happening for the WHOLE game, and even that be low. Imagine the stories the few "lucky" people who experienced it could tell. "So, there I was, about to take my elephants round the mountains to FINALLY smash those bleedin' Romans, when, stone me, a bloody great meterorite beat me to it. Phooom, all of the Roman Empire gone. Just like that".

 

[Therapist]

It's funny, this topic came up, I am actually watching something regarding asteroid strikes on the earth. According to the History Channel, the asteroid that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs, the resultant cloud was thought to have lasted months(100s of years as you have asked seems excessive), not years resulting in a massive plant extinction, etc. I have never heard the theory regarding a meteor strike in central Europe, do you have any sources I can read? As far as I know and is generally accepted is the dark ages were the times when the Roman Empire fell up to the renaissance and restoration of European culture. It was thought that "proper" civilization had come to an end. Along with lack of research, plagues and famines it was generally a "dark" time for Europeans. Am I crazy here or can someone back me up on this?

 

[upthorn]

Hi all, if you're wondering where the next release is...well I work shift work, 2 early shifts (6am to 6pm), 2 late shifts (6pm to 6am) then I have 4 days off, I only just started testing the new earthquakes on the end of my last day off. Also there's a bug with the olympics eras changing before they should.

On my last 4 days off I pretty much spent my whole time working on the mod. A lot of the time was spent re-writing the code after I learned how to do stuff better rather than putting in new features.


If I put in something like this then nobody would want to play it. Imagine how you would feel if a meteorite hit the middle of your empire, having -1 food and gold in a 25 tile radius for 200 turns. Something with such major consequences sort of belongs in its own "world devastation" mod (which sounds pretty cool actually )


That's easy to do in python code. The hard part would be doing the graphics because all the bonus tile graphics are done in 3d and at the moment there's no way to create your own 3d models for the game.

Well, in light of some of the things people more knowledgable than I have said, it would realistically be more like one or two turn, which would be much less annoying. Personally, I was only really thinking that it should last long enough to cause one bout of starvation in the affected area. (That number was a gross misestimate)

Part of the point of the 20-30 tile radius, though, is so that there's more than one nation affected. Maybe instead of -1 gold, though, it should be -1 happiness and/or -1 health. As for the graphics, I was thinking you could use the graphics for fallout, but give it a different name.


In reply to

Personally, I think that ... meteor impact is VERY irrealistic.

I need only link http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/CINameSort.html

Current total number of confirmed impact structures: 172

 

[Shamier]

I have litterally no info on that dark age idea, but I assume he means that famines were started due to the light of the sun being dulled by a meteor impact which led to riots and thus led to a lack of progression, as well as the fact that the starved peoples were decimated by plauges.

There seems to be a theory as well that the bigger volcanoes around the world erupted and the resulting ash/whatnot particles got to the atmosphere thus blocking the sunlight for a longer period of time (don't know about years but long enough anyway) and that's why in the "dark ages" they might have had less food and thus people might have had more diseases.
(Atleast it was in one of those disaster documentaries...).

Maybe that would be a nice implementation as well to this "random events mod" or then the "World devastation mod"
Seeing as volcano eruptions are quite common and according to some, the biggest ones can be quite nasty so there could be a effect "greater volcano eruption" which would decrease food income in larger area around it and a random farm destroying effect to show the effect lack of sunlight has on the farming... (or something like that).

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

In reply to

I need only link http://www.unb.ca/passc/ImpactDatabase/CINameSort.html

Uhm, how are the impacts in the last 3000 years? It seems that in the human hystory we had more earthquake than meteor impact, no?

Then, if the probability of impacts tends to 0, we can said that it could be 0 in a realistic scenario. Ergo, no to the impacts.

 

[lobosan]

Yes, a separate "World devastation mod" thread would be more appropriate but I hope that DireAussie doesn't mind this discussion.

Catastrophic, world altering events such as massive meteorite impacts ("Deep Impact" Hollywood extravaganza or from the mass extinction theories), massive volcanic eruptions (Krakatoa eruption in the 1800's), spectacular climatic inversions ("Day After Tomorrow" more Hollywood), small/short climatic variations ("Little Ice Age" - Western Europe from ca.1150 to 1460), and plain old seasonal changes would all have one thing in common - they change the Civ4 terrain during game play!.

There can be 2 general types of terrain changes. For example:

* Terrain Features Changes:
- Oasis and Floodplains appear and disappear
- no Terrain Feature <-> Jungle <-> Forest <-> no Terrain Feature
- Ice (impassable) can cover any Base Terrain
- Hills can appear or disappear on all land Base Terrains except Peaks

* Base Terrain Changes:
- any land Base Terrain <-> Coast <-> Ocean
- Desert <-> Grassland <-> Plains <-> Tundra <-> Snow
- Peaks (impassable) can replace any Base Terrain

Ideally, the mod would not change any Terrain stats but just flip through appropriate Terrain Feature and Base Terrain permutation.

 

[upthorn]

Uhm, how are the impacts in the last 3000 years? It seems that in the human hystory we had more earthquake than meteor impact, no?

Then, if the probability of impacts tends to 0, we can said that it could be 0 in a realistic scenario. Ergo, no to the impacts.

In the last 3000 years there have been at least seven, and maybe as many as nine meteor impacts. (two of them happened between 2000 and 6000 years ago)

A game of Civ4 spans 6050 years. So, if it were to be totally realistic, there would be from 12 to nearly 20 meteor impacts during a game. However, only about 1 in 8 is major (causing dust clouds and the like). So, they should be in with a probability of about 1 every 2750 years.

 

[yotaku]

I made a few changes to your mod, and added another event - volcanos.

I figured I would post it here for all to enjoy. And incase you want to steal parts of it for your next version.

Changes:
Olympics are more likely to be held in larger, more cultual cities.
Randomly, mountains will become active volcanos
Randomly, active volcanos will errupt killing population in nearby cities, and destroying all nearby improvements.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

In the last 3000 years there have been at least seven, and maybe as many as nine meteor impacts. (two of them happened between 2000 and 6000 years ago)

A game of Civ4 spans 6050 years. So, if it were to be totally realistic, there would be from 12 to nearly 20 meteor impacts during a game. However, only about 1 in 8 is major (causing dust clouds and the like). So, they should be in with a probability of about 1 every 2750 years.

This is what I mean: the catastophic impact is really improbable in an historic scenario.

 

[palme]

I made a few changes to your mod, and added another event - volcanos.

I figured I would post it here for all to enjoy. And incase you want to steal parts of it for your next version.

Changes:
Olympics are more likely to be held in larger, more cultual cities.
Randomly, mountains will become active volcanos
Randomly, active volcanos will errupt killing population in nearby cities, and destroying all nearby improvements.

Nice, I will test it as soon as I can. A mistake I've already found: The volcano-picture is just the locoust-picture with another name?

 

[davymark8]

in response to firefly, improbable doesnt mean impossible, so maybe if there was an option at the begining of the game you could choose:
1. no random events
2. realistic frequency (i.e. very rare)
3. more than realistic frequency (i.e. rare but more frequent than realistic)
4. apocalyptic frequency (common frequency)

and maybe more frequencies in between, that way people could choose what type of game they want to play, sort of like picking options in custom game.

 

[Rufus T. Firefly]

in response to firefly, improbable doesnt mean impossible

I know, this is why there is always a winner on lotteries.

What I mean is that because it is a very rare event, it is useful than having a reanimation room in my house.

 

[yotaku]

Nice, I will test it as soon as I can. A mistake I've already found: The volcano-picture is just the locoust-picture with another name?

Actually that picture isn't used. I was using that while I was developing. But thanks for pointing that out, I'll remove the picture so that future versions are smaller.

 

[DeathCyclops]

yotaku, could you post a screenshot of what the volcanoes look like?(erupting or not...or both, doesnt matter) Good job btw

 

[upthorn]

This is what I mean: the catastophic impact is really improbable in an historic scenario.

Actually, given one every 2750 years, the probability curve has 2 to 3 major impacts per CIV game, (assuming it lasts until score victory).

 

[DireAussie]

I just posted version 1.1

Earthquakes are now in, and a mini-restructure to the code by putting my revised screen code back in and getting rid of the inflexible popups.

I made a few changes to your mod, and added another event - volcanos.

Thanks, will take a look now!

 

[DireAussie]

I took a look at the volcanos mod - nice work!

There are a few bugs I noticed - existing mountains can be overwritten. Also the other one you probably know about is that mountain names aren't maintained between saved games. Another thing is that the volcano mod isnt compatible with old save games - something I have accounted for in the version 1.1 code.

I'll fix up the bugs and put the volcanos into version 1.2.

Also another thing I noticed is that the random number seed for the randint function must be written to the save game itself and reused during reloads, because the mountains retain their names if you save the game, load and then reload again.

 

[yotaku]

I took a look at the volcanos mod - nice work!

There are a few bugs I noticed - existing mountains can be overwritten. Also the other one you probably know about is that mountain names aren't maintained between saved games. Another thing is that the volcano mod isnt compatible with old save games - something I have accounted for in the version 1.1 code.

I'll fix up the bugs and put the volcanos into version 1.2.

Also another thing I noticed is that the random number seed for the randint function must be written to the save game itself and reused during reloads, because the mountains retain their names if you save the game, load and then reload again.

Why do you think the random number seed needs to be saved? The volcano locations are stored by adding a resource to that location in the map. And the mountain names are stored as landmarks, which get saved when you save the game anyway. The only thing saving the random seed would do is make it so that if you save the game, and then a volcano blows, you could reload and know that the same volcano was going to blow at the same time. Which I suppose might be desirable. But I'm not sure.

I will look at your new version, as it sounds like you have learnt some new things.

Currently I'm looking at making a civil war event. Right now, I'm looking at using relative population size, happiness, and religious seperation as some factors in desiding if a civilization is at risk of a civil war. Any other ideas would be appreciated.

 

[DeathCyclops]

how about putting in floods,forest fires, and/or whirlpools (for disasters) and maybe parades(something like +2 happiness) traffic on roads(reduces movement on roads until cleared) and ummmmmm.... (cant think of anymore right now)