civverguy
Emperor
It gets really annoyed when hurricanes destroy non coastal tiles. Once I had a hurricane random event destroy an inland mine on a hill.
Worst Random Events
- Thread starter attackfighter
- Start date
Poker is a game based on gambling against odds. In poker you are gambling based on the fact that you do in fact know of the odds of your hand developing one way or another. You know your odds and you go forward based on your own perception of luck versus odds. This is gambling. Should I only move my ships out to sea in such a way that I calculate how many ships I will need if an entire stack is sunk? Not every hand in poker can be a straight flush. Sometimes at least you can in fact rule it out based on the cards in your hand and/or cards shown depending on the type of poker.
The game I had a couple days ago when I got to watch as my entire Battleship group, which was enroute to escort a group of transports into Shaka's territory, mysteriously dissapeared was not an odd I could forsee or calculate for. I knew that my group of ships was more than a match for his fleet of Destroyers. Even if I had a few bad bounces I would still come out on top. Without any escort at all however, I got to watch my entire offensive army sink while Shaka sent his stack across the ocean relatively unharrassed by me since my combat/blitz battleships were gone. My remaining 3 battleships could only pick off a couple destroyers before Shaka landed his enormous SoD.
So...
-My shoreline defense/escort team dissapeared.
-My SoD sunk.
-His SoD ran amok in my empire taking my capital and pillaging about half my towns before I could counter it.
-If I had split my Battleships up they would have been picked off one by and sunk by his navy.
All because I forgot to turn off random events. I will now stop a game if I realize I have forgotten to turn them off. Not worth the aggravation.
1_more_round
Chieftain
- Joined
- Aug 2, 2009
- Messages
- 30
Excellent analysis and summary.
arikajohnson
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2005
- Messages
- 41
There's no worse feeling than hearing the sound of buildings being destroyed (you know the sound) one after another and sitting there thinking, "Is this ever going to end?"
obsolete
Deity
Since you are talking about a STRONG player, then certainly these players would be playing on a STRONG level. And now here-in lays the problem..
On a STRONG level, running the Metalcasting--> Forge gambit.... is not quite so recoverable there partner. In fact, it's game-breaking when that happens.
Losing your Forge when trying for Collusus there, is not recoverable. (Nobel or settler, fine). But not levels where you are talking about. It's definitely game-breaking here.
And you honestly mean losing your entire invasion fleet is recoverable? YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME....
And I would sure like to see how one magically whips a bunch of spears from a 3000+ BC barb uprising event. Considering you won't even get a metal hooked up yet. In fact, I'll bet you 10-1 you wouldn't even have been revolted to slavery yet anyhow...
There's a few deity players out there though, who would love to take notes though on how such feats are miraculously carried out. Perhaps you could write some definitive article with instructions on how to do so.
TheMeInTeam
If A implies B...
- Joined
- Jan 26, 2008
- Messages
- 27,995
Here's your article:
Custom game -------> make sure the "no random events" box is checked.
Until they are actually balanced, that is the optimal move. I actually wish I could force them off in the forum games I host sometimes, but the option to enable them is there for players who like them (aka suckers)
.And no, losing about 20000
worth of units when an AI is pushing culture is not recoverable. Obsolete is not the only good player to have noticed that some events are punishing enough (or advantageous enough) to be game breaking. There's probably two handfuls of events that can screw you even if you're playing optimally, should they hit at the wrong time.This forum correctly does not give as a community give extra weight/voice to its best players. Even so, it is a bit tiresome for players several levels behind to preach about how "good players can counter x", when they've never even won a game at that level. Event balance is not dependent on player skill. Having weaker players defend events by implying that good players can overcome them is somewhat annoying. It's an insult to every player who attempt a rational argument for or against event balance. Many of us play at a skill that challenges us, and having events that can warp the outcome of the game is anything but balanced. I don't want to lose because some archers appeared before I could research BW, and I don't want to win because I got tower shields or every single gunpowder unit I own or produce for the rest of the game getting march. If you're going to PREACH SKILL, how about endorsing things that ACTUALLY REQUIRE SKILL, rather than dice roll events? We're not playing monopoly or the card game war here.
attackfighter
Emperor
I'd say it's recoverable all the way up to emperor. Possibly even a bit farther, although I've never bothered to play higher then emperor. The game wouldn't go the way you envisioned it, but the human victory is almost enevitable at emperor, so long as you play cautiously and know what to do.
Personally I only play civ to kind of roleplay my empire, and pretend it's a real civilization playing throughout history. I don't really care about skill aspects in any game, although that doesn't mean I don't improve. In Team Fortress 2 and StarCraft I got really good without really trying and even though there are some obvious inbalances in those games (demomen and protoss) I still overcame them. Overcoming demomen and protoss meant I had to give up certain styles of play, but it didn't keep me from beating them pretty consistantly. In civ you might have to give up certain styles of play, like going for the collosus or making D-Dayesque attacks, but the random events can't cause an auto lose (except for the barbarian event) if you take enough precautions.
A high ranking spy of yours was caught in Germany and now the strongest AI on the map is going to declare war against you! Even though you were completely diplomatically protected from this otherwise! Let me guess you should outproduce every AI militarily all game at the highest levels in order to make this not so bad?
Good Luck!
I want to make a more intellectual fact based argument, but repeating past things said by others on this very thread just seems hollow. So I will just call bs.
r_rolo1
King of myself
In line of the above post:
A AI is less than 20 turns away of getting a cultural victory. You have your fleet in the water to raze one of it's legendary cities. Bermuda triangle event.
You are using Theocracy on propose to avoid to lose by AP. AI gets event to spread AP religion in overseas cities and you get it in one city . AP vote for diplo win.
So tell me, what has a bigger impact on your game, a crappy start, or a forge burning down? As a STRONG player, you no doubt refuse to reroll after an unfortunate start where you only have 2 tundra deer and a beaver in your BFC, poor expansion opportunities and Montezuma and Catherine are your closest neighbors. Starting with multiple gold or grassland gems in your BFC opens up just as many options as Tower Shields. And guess what, all of it is random. Come back and let me know if you decide to only play a single WBed map where everything is precisely balanced, using the same random seed each time to avoid different hut pops or losing your warrior early on to a bear. And if you play at a difficulty level where your entire game is on a precipice and failing to get the collosus means defeat, having one less corn in your start would have killed you just as effectively.
Funny isn't it, that the bolded part was my entire point. Indeed, unlike what you argued before, events are entirely separate from skill just like every other random part of the game. It's not even the random component with the greatest effect on gameplay and your odds of victory, (with the sole exception of the early archer barbarian invasion) with starting terrain, resource distribution, and your neighbors all having greater effect. We are also not playing chess here. Randomness is built into the very nature of the game.
1) You can't end up with tundra in your BFC unless you move your initial settler.
2) You're barking at the wrong guy. Of all the players here obsolete is one of the best and knows how to play with both barbarians and events on, two things which I really dislike. If you look at his latest series (The Industrial series) you'll see how he had some horrible starts yet still managed to win, sometimes without building a single Cottage.
I know he doesn't need me defending him, but his Civ skills are lightyears ahead of 75% of the people here, and he's better than at least 90% of the people here.
Okay, enough bum-kissing for now.
1) You can't end up with tundra in your BFC unless you move your initial settler.
2) You're barking at the wrong guy. Of all the players here obsolete is one of the best and knows how to play with both barbarians and events on, two things which I really dislike. If you look at his latest series (The Industrial series) you'll see how he had some horrible starts yet still managed to win, sometimes without building a single Cottage.
I know he doesn't need me defending him, but his Civ skills are lightyears ahead of 75% of the people here, and he's better than at least 90% of the people here.
Okay, enough bum-kissing for now.
1) I'm pretty sure you can depending on the map script. I had a start with the Perfect World script where my food source was made up of tundra deer. I rerolled that one, but then I'm still a relatively weak player.
2) I'm certainly not challenging Obsolete's skills with the game. His series in the Strategy section makes it more inexplicable that he would adamantly insist events are gamebreaking but yet soldier on through horrible starts that are just as random and even more damaging to the odds of victory.
Just because Perfect World does something doesn't mean it should. In fact Perfect World is quite broken. Perfect World has started me off in the middle of the ocean enough times that I stopped using it. Non-broken map scripts will never start you off with tundra, ice, or desert in your BFC.
Edit: I should note that perhaps the Fantasy World script may do this. I'm not 100% sure as I infrequently play with such a script.
I think the biggest problem I have with your statement is that you are equating a below average start to that of losing 2,000-20,000 hammers worth of units, or an instant "you lose" caused by random events. We may just have to agree to disagree here.
No, I'm actually equating below or above average starts to forge burning down or tower shields. I'm equating catastrophically bad starts, like some of the really odd ones you can get on fractal, or some highly unfortunate neighbors to the Bermuda Triangle. I've already agreed that the insta-lose Aryan invasions are gamebreaking, and non of the other barbarian invasions are actually "you lose."
*except when they are...
Example: You meet all of the conditions (you just researched a tech, or popped a tech from a hut) and the very next turn, instant barbarians. Unless you have 15 warriors chances are you're going to die. Also the spawn code is broken. Also the lemming code is broken....so they're not always instant death, just sometimes, and they're broken. Thus they're perfectly acceptble to play with, right?
You are still talking about the Vedic Aryans. All the other barbarian events come well after you can build axemen and spearmen, and they counter all the other invasions except the axeman invasion, which they sort of counter.
attackfighter
Emperor
You can change your strategy to avoid those events, just go for an early victory, get the AP yourself or put more effort into diplomacy. There're definately strategies that can lead to victory no matter what (except barbarians), so choosing to use the more dangerous paths is your own problem if your only aim is to win.
Also, all video games are dependant on luck. Take StarCraft, the game with the biggest pro scene ever (televised matches, players making 6 figure salaries, etc.); in starcraft you can insta-lose depending on your build order. Now if you can insta-lose in StarCraft, the most competetive game out there, why is it so bad when it happens less often in a game like civ? Maybe you should accept that civ isn't all about competative play, or else get into something that is.
Indeed, in Starcraft competitive play, all games are on one of a handful of maps, the one being used known to all players beforehand, and which all players know like the back of their hand. No need for scouting, since that might introduce a random element into the game, and the players can identify where their opponent's bases are pretty much from first contact. Reducing randomness to that level with Civ would require some serious gutting of the game.
