Random Events

[Ailedhoo]

One thing I greatly enjoyed in Beyond the Sword was the random events that help make the game even more organic via setting in motion things not of your control and setting your response to it in order to help forge the nature of your civilization. I was not disappointed though that they did not appear in the primal Civ 5: it is important first to get a game running before setting the extras.

Now I would suggest the return of events as a means of not just giving reaction but also a new diplomatic feel via having reactions on events. We could also process consequences of chosen events as a means of adding additional narrative to the experience. We could even allow events like barbarian hordes or an armed group with an opposing ideology wishing to overthrow your government as additional challenges for the game via the event system.

Of course there will have to be measures to ensure they do not break ones’ game or dominate diplomatic reactions to the player but these are basic thoughts of the return of random events.

 

[Glassmage]

YEA! If I live next to Krakatoa I better get hit by negative yields from volcanic ash.

 

[Bechhold]

Would like to see the return of random events like in IV, but would like some of them to offer Diplomatic "events" for example tensions arise between your two allies, choose a stance.

 

[CivilizationRox]

I like the idea of random events. That made Civilization 4 Beyond the Sword more intense.

 

[Inspector Javert]

Count me in as wanting random events. It would be very cool if your Social Policies factored into what random events you had or ways to respond to them (IE A confidence vote against you if you have the "representation" social policy.)

 

[Strategia]

What I'd also like to see is sequential or otherwise related random events - say, you get the "jilted noble bride" random event, that gives you a % chance that you get a later event where one of the bride's family members murders the groom as an act of revenge, which can set off a string of feud events. If you attempt to make peace, you could improve relations with another civ and end the feud - but the other civ could be milking it to worsen relations, counteracting your efforts (making peace would make the other civ happy with you, but your noble family wouldn't appreciate your meddling in their affairs, giving you an Unhappiness penalty; therefore, allowing it to continue or actively encouraging it would give you Happiness, since your nobles like it when you support them).

This would allow you to affect other empires as well as your own, depending on your decision; if they keep trying to make peace, they're going to keep renewing their Unhappiness penalty, and if you're stoking up the fire on your end it could eventually result in serious trouble for the opposing civ, such as a building (funded by their nobles) being destroyed, or even a rebel unit (common people fed up with the feuding or incited by your agitators) appearing outside an enemy city. It wouldn't dominate diplomatic relations - a noble feud wouldn't outweigh good trade relations or a Declaration of Friendship - but it could be a way for you to sabotage the enemy before espionage proper appears, or alongside existing espionage efforts.

Certain sequential events, if properly managed over a long period of time, could even be used to weaken a larger, more powerful civ, perhaps even by souring relations with a third party until they go to war, allowing you to jump in and take over some of their land without getting horribly curb-stomped.

Of course, sequential events don't necessarily have to affect other empires as well. For instance, if you get the "Collapsed Mine" event and spend the required money to rebuild it, you could later get an event where civil engineers have studied the mine's collapse and the rebuilding effort, and come up with a plan to increase mine safety across the board, allowing miners to dig deeper and further without risking disaster. If you spend the money (depending on the total number of mines in your empire), mine yield could be increased by +1 everywhere, or you could choose to just improve mine safety without digging deeper, giving +0.2 per mine, or you could choose to sell the plans to mining companies (instant lump sum of gold but +0.1 per mine), or make them publicly available (+0.1 per mine for all known civs and/or +1 diplomatic relations with every known civ).

Other sequential events could be a volcanic eruption, followed some time later by geological studies in an attempt to predict the next eruption. Dropping some money to fund ~3 such studies could give a prediction with accuracy within a handful of turns, which then allows preparations to be made when the next eruption is due, which would reduce the damage from the eruption and possibly increase happiness as well.

I may be getting a bit sidetracked, lost in the details, but that's just how my mind works. In any case, my point is this: In addition to "just" random events, I'd very much like to see random events that trigger (or give a % chance to trigger) other events further down the line, that build upon the (decision made in) the earlier event. I fully understand that any official implementation of this would be quite limited (as I recall, BtS did have this ability, but I only encountered one event (something to do with bandit activity and a lack of food) that had followup events, and the quests of course), but having the framework in place, especially if specific decisions can be tracked as variables, would be a great boon to modders.

 

[claestw]

Sequential events are prone to be to repetitive, though. You'll easily get to the stage where you'll say, "oh, not another collapsed mine! I've had a mine collapse in every one of my games!" And you find yourself waiting or preparing for such events and taking the most advantage out of them. They're too predictable once the initial event occurs. I think Civ series random events need to be just that, random. Although such a system could very well be used to build immersive scenarios.

I like events that change individual tile yields. Or events that add a non-removable specialist, say, or even a special super worker that can build only farms in one turn.

The goodie huts are essentially random events. I'd love to have some of that in later stages of a game, instead of just grinding out the rush to the spaceship or watching culture or steamrolling through AI territory bee-lining for its capital. Just to make later games more interesting.

 

[Strategia]

Sequential events are prone to be to repetitive, though. You'll easily get to the stage where you'll say, "oh, not another collapsed mine! I've had a mine collapse in every one of my games!" And you find yourself waiting or preparing for such events and taking the most advantage out of them. They're too predictable once the initial event occurs. I think Civ series random events need to be just that, random. Although such a system could very well be used to build immersive scenarios.

It's contingency planning, essentially. If you know that certain events might occur, you could prepare for them, but there's no guarantee that they actually will occur. And even if they do, the followup event should only have a certain % chance of actually happening (for the "collapsed mine" -> "mine safety" followup, I'd say 5% or so), so most of the time it'll just be the one-off event. And you're right about certain events becoming repetitive; I can't count how many times, in Civ4, I've had my mines collapse, or my brides jilted, or fires destroying my buildings, or giant elephants sighted, and in one coop game, my ally got excellent yields from the same deer tile three times. My ally and me have also received the goddamn "holy mountain" quest (and subsequently failed it, after spamming cities everywhere there was a mountain - once, one of my cities' passive border expansion even caused my ally to fail) so many times it isn't funny anymore. That's just the way events work. That's why sequential events, at least in the vanilla game, shouldn't be guaranteed followups; there might be one or two, but the potentially really powerful ones like the continued feuding or mine safety I outlined above should have a chance of around 5%, and normal followups maybe 20% max. They'd be a little extra on top of the existing events, making random events just slightly less random and making the game world feel more alive, rather than just rolling the dice to see what happens next. And like I said, having that framework in place would be beneficial to modders and scenario builders, giving them the ability to do pretty much anything they want with it.

 

[Atwork]

C5 would benefit a great deal by a return of random events, but in revamped form. Here's some vague thoughts.....

1. Events should tie into religion, espionage, SP, diplomacy, and world events.

2. They should be mostly positive events (catering to the critics of random events--who don't like them simply because of negative events).

3. Other events should result in the player having to make difficult strategic, tactical, or policy choices.

4. Negative events should be rare and nerfed. For example, instead of hurricane destroying a building (or multiple buildings), the result should be minus 15% food storage and minus 2 hammers for 5 turns, or something along those lines. Enough to hurt some, but not so much that you want to go reload the game. Similarly, positive events should be balanced--nothing extremely beneficial.

5. The point of random events should be to add a little spice, a little depth, but not to significantly alter the outcome.

 

[Bechhold]

C5 would benefit a great deal by a return of random events, but in revamped form. Here's some vague thoughts.....

1. Events should tie into religion, espionage, SP, diplomacy, and world events.

2. They should be mostly positive events (catering to the critics of random events--who don't like them simply because of negative events).

3. Other events should result in the player having to make difficult strategic, tactical, or policy choices.

4. Negative events should be rare and nerfed. For example, instead of hurricane destroying a building (or multiple buildings), the result should be minus 15% food storage and minus 2 hammers for 5 turns, or something along those lines. Enough to hurt some, but not so much that you want to go reload the game. Similarly, positive events should be balanced--nothing extremely beneficial.

5. The point of random events should be to add a little spice, a little depth, but not to significantly alter the outcome.

This. This. This. I think as Random events happen to other Civilizations and not just you the option to help should also be expanded, for example a mine collapses offer to send emergency help(perhaps immobilizing a unit for X amount of turns) and so forth.

 

[mitsho]

Quick Information, VEM actually has Random Events, here titled as opportunities, even if the pool of opportunities is quite low at the moment still.

 

[claestw]

I actually loved VEM but couldn't play it anymore with the combat animations. (Which reminds me, combat animations should really be forced to shorten itself when there's a large difference in strength, so it doesn't take forever to mop up half-dead units.)

There's a fundamental problem with designing events, though. There's only so much variation you can have in this game. You either change yields (of tiles/cities/nations), resources (popping gold, finding horses), or units (promotions, upgrades, convertions). Any event of consequence will end up being one of few categories and they start to feel repetitive.

Perhaps a historical events system would be a nice variation on the theme?
Perhaps events could be designed to happen where you may need it most?
Perhaps events could be used as a secondary means to influence faith and diplomacy?