Random Events Poll

[DaveMcW]

What do you think about random events in BTS games?

 

[WastinTime]

I can't remember the last time I played a non-HOF game. So don't suck the fun out of the game by "forcing" me to turn off random events. I'll never get to see what the events are if they're banned.

Similar debate...

I sometimes wonder what Civ IV would be like with Barbarians on. At least they allow you to turn them on if you want to and it's still legal for HOF play. But I don't recall playing barbs much.

 

[Denniz]

I am a strong proponate for leaving the Random events in. I think that we can remove any events that prove to be too unbalanced. Of course, we could use some help identifying those, if any.

So maybe the question should be, should they be a required option?

 

[uthertepes]

I think that random event have a problem with slavery. With this type of civic the risk of revolt it's high and change mechanics of play..imho...

 

[ori]

I am a strong proponate for leaving the Random events in. I think that we can remove any events that prove to be too unbalanced. Of course, we could use some help identifying those, if any.

The only ones I think might be potentially unbalanced are the ones that provide all your units of a certain kind with a free promotion early on. All the other events either have a minor impact that is no stronger then discovering a metal in one of you mines or require investing so much that the reward is not unbalancing IMHO. Those that might need tweaking I think could be these (because they give you a huge advantage at a time (usually very early) when you neighbors will find it difficult to counter it:

Event60
     Bowyer
     Prereq: ARCHERY  
     Obsolete: NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER
     Active/Weight: 35/50
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All your Archery units gain the     Combat 1 promotion[/LIST]

Very early, OTOH you won't be attacking with archers usually and Protective Archers are much stronger anyway (Protective with this though... Still mainly a defensive advantage...

Event61
     Horeshoe
     Prereq: Pastured Horse AND road OR railroad  
     Obsolete: STEAM_POWER or STEEL or SCIENTIFIC_METHOD or ARTILLERY
     Active/Weight: 30/50
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All your mounted units gain the     Flanking I promotion[/LIST]

Again very early and Flanking I is a nice bonus, though it will probably not be game breaking, still it might be worth considering to add a prereq like horse archery or so to move this event out of the early rush period (Note: I believe most if not all events should be kept, if necessary it is just as easy to move them to later periods than to disable them...)

 Event82
     Axe Haft
     Prereq: BRONZE_WORKING
     Obsolete: NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER
     Active/Weight: 25/200
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All Axeman units gain the Shock     promotion[/LIST]

Easily one of the only ones that are so unbalancing that it might need to be disabled - axemen already counter all Melee units, with this they even counter other axemen, OTOH there still are chariots to counter them, but face it the AI does not nearly build enough and even one spear in this SoD beats everything there is

Event83
     Tower Shield
     Prereq: MINING
     Obsolete: MACHINERY or FEUDALISM or MUSIC or PHILOSOPHY or CIVIL_SERVICE or THEOLOGY
     Active/Weight: 20/200
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All Melee units gain the Cover     promotion[/LIST]

And here comes the second one - Quecha rush with this event anyone? at the very least the Prereq should be Iron Working or something like this not mining...

Event84
     Smokeless Powder
     Prereq: GUNPOWDER
     Obsolete: RIFLING or STEEL or SCIENTIFIC_METHOD
     Active/Weight: 40/200
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All Musketman units gain the Pinch     promotion

[/LIST]Since hardly anyone builds muskets anyway this is not too bad, but still maybe worth discussing

Event86
     Firing Pins
     Prereq: MILITARY_SCIENCE
     Obsolete: STEAM_POWER or SCIENTIFIC_METHOD or ARTILLERY
     Active/Weight: 25/200
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All Grenadier units gain the Pinch     promotion[/LIST]

This one OTOH might be a bit unbalancing, however it is pretty late and has a very narrow window of actually occuring that it might be ok

Event143
      Charismatic
      Prereq: Police State civic AND NATIONALISM or PRINTING_PRESS or EDUCATION or GUNPOWDER
      Obsolete: None
      Active/Weight: 65/100
          Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All Gun units gain the March     promotion
[*]+2 happy faces in all cities[/LIST]

All Gunpowder units with March, mix in the usual Medic3 unit and this is a very powerful SoD. however still a late advantage and few people actually use Police State for any length of time, so the prereqs might be ok to ensure that it does not happen too often...

Quest11:
     War Chariots
     Prereq: THE_WHEEL AND State Religion
     Obsolete: MONARCHY or LITERATURE or CODE_OF_LAWS or AESTHETICS or MATHEMATICS or ALPHABET or HORSEBACK_RIDING or IRON_WORKING or METAL_CASTING
     Active/Weight: 25/200
         Aim:
         Build default number of players for this world size +1 Chariots (7 for standard)
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All     Chariot units gain the Combat 1 promotion
[*]Spread     your state religion to 5 own cities[/LIST]

Nice bonus if you planned to rush with chariots anyway OTOH very short timespan and not too unbalancing...

Quest12:
     Elite Swords
     Prereq: IRON_WORKING AND State Religion
     Obsolete: MACHINERY or FEUDALISM or MUSIC or PHILOSOPHY or CIVIL_SERVICE or THEOLOGY
     Active/Weight: 25/200
         Aim:
         Build default number of players for this world size +1 Swordsmen (7 for standard)
         Result:[LIST=1]
[*]All     Swordsman units gain the City Raider 1 promotion
[*]All     Melee units gain the Drill 1 promotion[/LIST]

This IMHO is the only quest I find difficult to defend - free City Raider Swords are just very powerful - maybe at least include an additional prereq like Alphabet or so to reduce the likelyhood of a very early rush...

So maybe the question should be, should they be a required option?

Apart from very few ones I don't believe they are more or less unbalancing then goodie huts - after all some people actually restart dozens of times in the lower difficulties just to pop a settler or two - OTOH they might disrupt well laid out plans (for a few turns) if suddenly a mine is destroyed or you loose a road or whatnot, so I would be strongly in favor of giving players the option of using them or not...

I think that random event have a problem with slavery. With this type of civic the risk of revolt it's high and change mechanics of play..imho...

I have no problem with that one, Slavery is easily the most (ab)used Civic in the early game and giving it a chance of having a disadvantage as well won't deter anyone from using it, but does make it a bit more challenging to do so - this actually is one of the few good reasons of forcing Random Events on (maybe even make it active in 100% of games )
Edit: since the new patch should be out within the next 3 or so weeks and they are bound to change some stuff in there (because of a few bugs in the events codes) it is well possible that some adjustments will be made for balancing purposes as well, so maybe wait for the patch before actually deciding to get rid of events

 

[Harbourboy]

I think they should be optional, just like barbarians. Barbarians can have a positive or negative effect, and so can random events.

 

[Shoot the Moon]

I agree with Harbourboy, optional is best.

 

[IglooDame]

Optional, yep.

(I've become one of those that plays all my SP games with the HoF mod loaded.)

 

[Denniz]

Making "No Random Events" player's option is one thing. But, if we have to eliminate some unbalancing events, they would probably not be available when using the HOF Mod just for fun.

 

[dutchfire]

Making "No Random Events" player's option is one thing. But, if we have to eliminate some unbalancing events, they would probably not be available when using the HOF Mod just for fun.

Modular XML? (No idea how it works, but from what I've read, modular xml would be ideal for such a thing.)

 

[Shoot the Moon]

Perhaps have an an option "Balanced Random Events" that would take out the unbalancing events. It would be required for HoF play, but if you wanted to not play an HoF game you could leave it unchecked. Note: I have no idea how complicated that would be to implement, as I am not a programmer, so feel free to inform me of how complicated doing that idea would be.

 

[Denniz]

Modular XML? (No idea how it works, but from what I've read, modular xml would be ideal for such a thing.)

Is that something implemented in Civ4 or are you talking RL?

Perhaps have an an option "Balanced Random Events" that would take out the unbalancing events. It would be required for HoF play, but if you wanted to not play an HoF game you could leave it unchecked. Note: I have no idea how complicated that would be to implement, as I am not a programmer, so feel free to inform me of how complicated doing that idea would be.

All the events are in XML file(s). Toggling between versions of an XML file to load depending on flag is what we are talking about. I don't know if the SDK has hooks that early in the start up. It something we would check into when we get to that point. Other options come to mind but are not necessarily workable.

A lot of things are possible with enough time and effort. The problem is taking a coder into doing it.

 

[ori]

Is that something implemented in Civ4 or are you talking RL?

he is talking about something detailed in this thread especially post #3
Unfortunately modular xml is disabled by default in the civilizationIV.ini and since they did not implement loading an .ini from a mod this would only work if people would set their own .ini to load modular xml manually.

 

[Denniz]

he is talking about something detailed in this thread especially post #3
Unfortunately modular xml is disabled by default in the civilizationIV.ini and since they did not implement loading an .ini from a mod this would only work if people would set their own .ini to load modular xml manually.

I think I remember looking through that thread before. The modular stuff is additive rather than conditional.

Basically, prior to BTS you could only replace the whole file to add content. With Modular you now have the option to leave the original file alone and just add your content in a sperate XML file.

In order to optionally enable/disable certain specific events, we would need to create a method to conditionally load or not load an XML file with those events. That is sort of what we are doing with the Advisors, BTW.

 

[Misotu]

Like WastinTime and IglooDude, I only play with the Mod loaded. So I agree - optional or I'll never see them

 

[Gflat]

I'm a fan of leaving it optional. Since the random events happen to the AI Civs as well, it is somewhat naturally balanced. Does anyone know if AI civs recieve/can complete quests?

 

[KMadCandy]

Does anyone know if AI civs recieve/can complete quests?

in the "i know i read it but i can't find it right now" category, i read that they get the same quests we do (if they've met the pre-reqs), but if they complete them it's just by happenstance. like, they don't know how to plan the goal of "ok i really ought to build 7 libraries pronto" but they just might manage to build 7 libraries before the quest goes obsolete.

 

[ori]

There is a flag for all events that allows to determine whether the AI can receive the event (quests are just events but with more complex triggers). By default all are set so that the AI can receive them just the same as the human player (iAIValue).
I have seen the AI complete quests which require building a number of units of a certain kind - I am not sure that there is a strategy involved just because they got the quest

Spoiler on the other hand :

Whoever (Blake ? ) wrote this code for event handling by the AI left some very interesting comments - my favorite is:

//Oh wow this sure is mildly complicated.

there is quite a lot of decisions being made regarding events - so it is not impossible that the AI actually knows what it is doing with a quest...

 

[dutchfire]

I've definetly seen the AI complete some quests.

 

[HolyHandGrenade]

I love the random events, they make the game less calculateable. But to allow the Vanilla feeling for those who loves it I voted for "optional"