Tragedy of the Events

[Enginseer]

In my effort to rework events I had noticed a particular problem with this. Why are Events disabled in most playthroughs? The main issue is fairly simple in 4 issues that I found when discussion of civ 4 random events:

Randomness

• You're not guaranteed anything and one could be hit with the same negative events multiple times while one could not be hit at all. This explanation leads to why ancient ruins getting disabled, you can't have that type of randomness.
• This problem could be mitigated with documenting events and preparing... but it still hurts when there isn't exactly a probability of something happening or not at all.
• But again guaranteeing events? That's just saying you'll get a buff either now or later. That's not exactly the purpose of random events.

Yield Inflation/Deflation

• Some of the events are outright OP or too strong. If you get one of these big events, you might even just win!
• It's a hard delicate issue that seems to be impossible in addressing.

No exact thought on how to implement new ones / Bugfixing

• With so many potentials into the events, it's been several years that it got undeveloped.
• Bugfixing is hard and INCREDIBLY annoying to diagnose.
• Can't really blame the modders. It's unpopular to the players so why do modders even bother?

"Good" and "Bad" Events

• I like good events. I don't like bad events. Well of course no one likes bad events. It's natural to not like bad events especially with the bad events we're dealt with.

Questing Events

• These were... experimented with Advisor Events in the Community Events to some degree of success in the sense that the player had the option to just ignore them or take them on.
• There isn't exactly a uniform format on how to make these questing events stand out and better, however.

What is there to be done? I really don't know. That's just my thoughts. There are some fans of players who enable events because they like chaos and randomness in that game, and there are some that don't. Overall I concluded the solution to this problem was to add more and more meaningful events. The powerful ones would dilate but the randomness of having a massive revolution in your city would also be significantly smaller as well. But is that really a viable solution? Sure the same problem arises, but perhaps a different set of events can be made... a new vision: The Great Equalizer.

Perhaps something we might see in the next release of VP... someday probably from a return of some modder or someone...

 

[Padre19]

I'm glad to see you here.

 

[Gizmoman]

I don't necessarily dislike bad events, but most of them are constructed in a way that if your in the wrong situation when they trigger they massively punish you. Like if the flooding event strikes just as you finished building something, now you're forced to take the full brunt of the flood, which in turn might just be 3 pillaged farms (whatever) or 8 lost buildings.
Other events using gold/culture/hammers to trigger are kinda the same, would be nice if you could go into debt to pay for them.

I'm over all happy to see a lot of the positive events just moved over to the background (plentiful harvest and so on), it does kinda make bad events seem over-represented (which they definitely aren't) however. In actuality most of the bad events seems to be so nerfed that they only really trigger in cities with catastrophic happiness levels.

On randomness, the only thing that really comes to mind are the two early events that can possibly give +1 faith to monuments and shrines, not sure what I would do about that however. Worth mentioning however that I really like randomness and definitely do not disable ancient ruins.


As for over all the events that stands out to me as the most fun are the Community events civ-specific events as well as religious founder-specific events, although that second category never seem to trigger enough to get beyond the second step.

 

[DeAnno]

Advisor Events

I think these are kind of a nonstarter as long as the random Advisor screen CTDs are a thing.

As for events in general I leave them on, and some of the more predictable ones do drive certain interesting things in your play. For example the Baths event is very good no matter how many Baths you have, and it triggers pretty quick, so it makes a lot of sense to rush out your civ's first Bath to get that clock firing fast (iirc you can either get a Great Person or +1 happy per city or something a little lame in comparison.)

One thing I don't like with events as they are now is some of the choices are very unbalanced. For example with Nomadic Incursion I'll only very rarely take anything but the pop or the unit, the Border Points you get are too low to be worth it except if you are Expanse, and the Gold+Barbs is only good in very specific Aztec-like situations.

 

[salty mud]

I disable events for some of the reasons you've listed. Some are crazy OP (I was getting so many good harvests in one game my cities were growing practically every turn) while others are just plain annoying (settle a city next to a babbling brook? Be prepared for Katrina style floods every 10 turns). Compared to the otherwise excellent balance in VP, not sure what went wrong with events.

 

[CppMaster]

I disable bad events, because some are just annoying and uninteresting to deal with, like breaking farms. Then I disable good events to event things out. I disable the rest of the event, because I don't consider them balanced and polished.

Overall, IMHO events introduce additional noise that makes the game less interesting and more annoying, so why even bother?

 

[CrazyG]

I played with events for years, but I've disabled them for a long time now. I think overall you have the right idea here

The main problem I had was primarily randomness of good events. Getting them too early or too late was swinging games too much for me to enjoy. It felt like the timing of events could add more difficulty than the difference between Deity and Immortal. In particular I remember dedicating monuments potentially being the difference between first religion and not getting one at all.

Farm burning is the only bad event I remember that clearly, it was far too common on several patches. It wasn't uncommon to repair a farm and have it be torched the next turn. Building an early worker who goes for a farm, and having it get torched before you get any extra food felt like a slap in the face.

Generally bad events were a lot less impactful in my experience. I don't think many bad events really influenced my gameplay decisions (except for that volcano one, which resulted in me just disabling events if I played Inca).

 

[Padre19]

Personally, I always play with the events enabled.

 

[glaivemaster]

The randomness is part of the issue, but I think also it's the lack of control. Civilization is a strategy game, and the events don't have much strategy to them - the ones that do are kind of hidden strategy too, like the Bath event that Rhys deAnno mentioned.

Since it feels like a lot of the events are natural disasters, it feels fair to compare to Civ 6: Gathering Storm. In that you can see where the risk of floods are, and you can research/build to prevent them, or choose to ignore them and hope they don't impact you too badly. Regardless of how well we believe it's implemented, and the randomness that is still inherent, you can see the major difference is the level of control you have. In VP events if your city is repeatedly experiencing floods you just have to sit and take it. Even in the Atomic era, your civilization never quite manages to figure out how flood defences work?

This is perhaps exacerbated by how few events there are compared to how often they trigger, too. It's not just that the bad events kinda suck, but it feels like you're being hammered by the same 2-3 all the time. Even when the events are entirely positive it still feels tiring to see the same thing happening all the time in every city. These should be unique occasions, not just the same old "hey, this coastal city has fishermen. So does that coastal city. And that one."

I think for events to be interesting you need to have an awful, awful lot of them so that you don't see too many repeats, and the rise of your civilization feels more unique. At the moment, every empire goes through the same series of floods, old harbor-men, monument dedications and eventual baby booms regardless of anything else. They have about as much variation as entering a new era: it's not a case of if, but when.

Events also need to feel like they have some relevance to how you're playing, and perhaps provide some direction, too. Now I'm sure some of them do. I've never looked at the background, but I'm sure the corruption event is based on unhappiness somehow. More like that, where it feels that the way I'm playing has allowed a thing to happen makes sense. People going down the authority tree might have more events to do with troops and rogue generals, while people on Tradition might have troublesome aristocrats and decadent monarchs.

Finally, it's tough to implement bad events in a game like Civilization, where the general course of a game is going to be progressive: you're always moving forward and upward. There's not much rise and fall in a game of civ, so a bad event that sets you back is just harmful, not enjoyable. This may be the biggest issue, but if there's not much ability to bounce back from a bad event, it really can just drag you out of the race. It's all very well talking about how historically, floods happened and they badly affected cities and civilizations, but in this game we're focusing on civilizations that started in the stone age and progressed only forward until the space age - historical catastrophes just don't seem to have a place.

 

[hokath]

I played my last two games without events because I was testing other things and I wanted to have the sterility.
To be honest, I think I preferred it. Quite a lot.
Kind of weird to realise after spending I-don't-know-how-long making events :S
I don't think it's numbers or diversity, I think its just the randomness and the break in the flow of gameplay they cause.

 

[andersw]

I like to make plans, if the game throw random things at me it becomes more of a lottery where its very hard to make precise plans.
And sure there is the option to play with events, huts, random personalities, random strategic and lux with a full random landscape, does it make the game more fun?
maybe for you but not for me.
Getting hit by even a small negative (or positive) event in the early game can have a massive long term impact because of scaling.
Also floods, floods, floods, did I mentions your farms GOT FLOOODED.
I can get the idea of trying to even out the board but these negative repetetive events does nothing for the entertainment.

Spoiler :

 

[kawyua]

the title lol. the varience of the events is a little bad, but I'd also blame the fact that decisions aren't interesting in these events. There is like no decision space with something always being better than others. events are very unmemorable except when negative things happen, which isn't fun. also some events sort of warp the game so uh.

 

[Gazebo]

Randomness to the degree provided by events is, unfortunately, just part and parcel of...well...random events. I do think that adding more events is the key to balancing the issue with staleness/repetition (floods?), however as far as events being a gameplay balance concern, that's tough to adjust against. Only a few key events stand out (like monuments) that are make-or-break for games, whereas most are just speedbumps or slight boosts.

At this point I feel pretty good about the Community Events package- I think I may just bundle it with VP.

G

 

[CppMaster]

@Gazebo
Btw, how about a checkbox turns off all the events? Right now to do that I have to find and uncheck all 5 types of events, which is not a big deal, but it's little cumbersome and has to be done every time I install a new VP version.
If you don't want an additional checkbox, then could you at least rearrange those 5 checkboxes, so they are next to each other? That would be way easier and faster to set it up.

 

[Asterix Rage]

I like good events. I don't like bad events

I like both.

I do think that adding more events is the key to balancing the issue with staleness/repetition

Of course. More events equally distributed around all players.

 

[Vhozite]

I used to play with all events on, but then I got hit with a flood that pillaged a farm and destroyed like 4 of my buildings in the city. After that I turned off bad events.

The good and neutral events are ok, but the bad events just feels like tile repair simulator.

 

[Stalker0]

In my effort to rework events I had noticed a particular problem with this. Why are Events disabled in most playthroughs? The main issue is fairly simple in 4 issues that I found when discussion of civ 4 random events:

Randomness

• You're not guaranteed anything and one could be hit with the same negative events multiple times while one could not be hit at all. This explanation leads to why ancient ruins getting disabled, you can't have that type of randomness.

Yield Inflation/Deflation

• Some of the events are outright OP or too strong. If you get one of these big events, you might even just win!

"Good" and "Bad" Events

• I like good events. I don't like bad events. Well of course no one likes bad events. It's natural to not like bad events especially with the bad events we're dealt with.

I'll address each one of these in turn.

1) Randomness: There are actually two different problems here.

First, there is the randomness of just having events with different bonuses. There is nothing to fix here, there will be people that like randomness (like ancient ruins), and those that don't. You already have a toggle to turn events off, that's all you need there.

However, to me the bigger problem is that many events repeat over...and over....and over....and OVER again. I don't mind that I get flooded, I do mind the three time in a row I get flooded. Adding more events can help, but that's a bandaid. The true fix....when an event comes up, it should not be repeatable, and if it is, there needs to be something to ensure it doesn't repeat frequently.

2) Yield Adjustment: I haven't played the community event mod before just the base, and I don't think this is too bad of a problem. There are a few (the +1 faith to shrine event is the worst culprit in my mind), but those can be adjusted.

3) Good/Bad Events: We already have toggles for those in the mod, so again this is fine to me. People can already tailor it the way they like.


I am now going to introduce a controversial, but what I think is the "actual" reason that events have not seen a lot of love. They are the one gameplay altering mechanic in the game that is both a part and not apart of the mod. The event system is a part of VP (its even turned on by default even time you start the mod), but we can't really give any feedback in the core forums. When discussions have occurred in the past the answer is "if you want to update events than you can add or modify your own events". In Github terms, its the one entry we can post that consistently gets the "not going to fix" tag.

Now I know the community events is a separate project, but again that's the problem. Its not VP, its a separate thing...but it kind of is VP all at the same time. That lack of core handling and inclusion is why the system has not gotten the grind and polish that so many other systems have.

G made the statement earlier that he thinks Community events may be ready to include whole sale. My thought would be....if that's the case than I think we reopen the events for formal discussion in the main mod....and the community will polish those events to a nice shine.

 

[InkAxis]

Overall, I definitely agree that one of the most major issues with events is lack of support. If it's integrated into VP, you should be willing to fix bugs and balance issues with it. If the devs aren't willing to do that, don't incorporate it into VP.

As for the events themselves, here are some of my suggestions.

1. Less Randomness

Spoiler :

I think events are fine when the outcome is random, but getting hit with the same event several times in a row hurts. Perhaps something could be implemented where you only get one event type each era? Or, we could go even further, what if each era had two events, one bad and one good? That way if you got a bad event, you could at least know a good one was coming along. But that might take out the randomness aspect too much, so I'm not really sure people will be a fan of that. One of the most common suggestions is to add more events. I think that too little events is certainly a problem - but it is only part of the problem. But if we are going to add events, then I think we need to think about what kind of events should be added.

2. Types of New Events

Spoiler :

I think that if we are adding new events, we need more options and choices. Bad events are much more fun if you can decide what to do about them. If an event is just "3 farms get pillaged, nothing you can do about it" then that's boring and unfun. There are already many events like that, for instance the one where you have to blame one of the governors for something (can't remember exactly) and you got a choice between -1 ; or -1; or -1; etc. That way, you at least feel like you have a say in the events, and that these events are something you actually partake in, and not just something that happens to you. But anyway, I believe that a lot of events are already like this and so what I'm saying isn't exactly ground-breaking. Another thing is that the events should be more specific to what is happening. If your GPT goes negative, there should be an event for that (not always a negative one - we don't want to make a bad situation worse). I know civ specific events exist so I would say more like that, except for you precise situation now. Of course this would mean adding a lot more events. Lastly, I would also add more risk/gamble events. One of the events I remember has a choice something like "invest gold for a 50% chance of a harbor appearing". These events should have an option that is safe - you just get a benefit/loss (depending on if its a good/bad event). Or, you could risk something and potentially win big/not lose stuff that you would have from a bad event. Also, these events shouldn't just be invest X gold for X chance, I think that they could be very interesting. For example, what if you could spend culture instead? That would make the choice very different depending on how you're playing. If you have a lot of culture that could be a risk you are willing to take. But on another playthrough your choice could be different. And obviously it could be any resource, investing culture, science, faith, etc. You could even invest units ("Two of your military units go to an elite training ground. 50% chance to return with 2 levels or a great general").

But for the most part, these type of events have been more or less added, at least in part - what kinds of new events can we add to make events more interesting?

3. Requirement Events

Spoiler :

This is an idea I've had for a while and it is similar to "quest" events. What I was thinking is, what if there were events that came up when you reach a certain amount of things done. Like building 10 harbors, or getting 5 Great People, or winning your second war. That way, the events could still be random with what decisions you make, and there would still be the normal completely random events, but you know you can work towards something. And, these events could also not be exact. For instance, what if building 5 harbors gave a 50% chance of the event, and then every harbor after that would increase the chance of the event, up to 90%? That way you can work towards getting events, but not be sure exactly when they will come. Obviously these events would have to be spread for multiple things - getting CS allies, unlock tech or policies, meeting civs, spreading religion, etc. They would have to be balanced such that every play style gets about the same benefits, so there should be bonuses for Tradition, Progress, and Authority civs. Now of course, with this plan there are several difficulties. I have identified two. The first is the amount of events needed. We'll probably need a lot of events, as there can be a lot of conditions met. I think we can limit the amount of events by first off only having each type of event fire once per game, or maybe once per 3 eras or something. So you can get an event for recruiting 5 Great Scientists, but you'll only get it once. This also helps with balance. However, there will still be a lot of events that need to be made and there's probably no way around that. As I stated at the beginning, if we want to fix events, it requires support from the dev team. The second problem is what will trigger these events. I think that building events pose a particular problem. If we are going to have events for building buildings, then we'll need to decide what buildings can trigger events. I would recommend buildings that not every empire has, such as hotels. But there aren't that many buildings like that. So we should also add buildings like harbors, etc. If it's a really common building, we could even make the events not show up after a while. So for instance after 60 turns of unlocking the building, it is impossible to get an event, so only empires that rush for that building will get an event. And for all events like this, the chance should increase the amount of times you do it, but still be low. For instance, you have a 10% chance when you get your second CS Ally to trigger the event. Then 20%, then 30%, and so on, but it will cap at 50%. We could even add something where you can not do the event eventually. So if you reach the 50%, but miss it a certain amount of times, then it gets set to 0% and you can't do the event. That way, you can't always rely on a certain event being available - it's still random.

Sorry for the incredibly long post (I had to use spoilers for text ) but I really think events have a lot of potential and could be great.
But, these are just my suggestions, we could change this a lot and a lot of the things I suggested are optional. We could also add the advisors giving you hints on what will trigger events, like others have suggested with quest events. But what do you guys think?

 

[Recursive]

@Gazebo
Btw, how about a checkbox turns off all the events? Right now to do that I have to find and uncheck all 5 types of events, which is not a big deal, but it's little cumbersome and has to be done every time I install a new VP version.
If you don't want an additional checkbox, then could you at least rearrange those 5 checkboxes, so they are next to each other? That would be way easier and faster to set it up.

Uncheck "Enable Events System".

 

[CppMaster]

Uncheck "Enable Events System".

With this checked I don't need to set other checkpoints? Cool! This what I was looking for It could also grey out these checkboxes to make it obvious