Would a c4c with less randomness be more enjoyable or not?

[ADHansa]

I want some feedback on a thing a have bin thinking about, nothing that will probobly ever see the light of day, but still something i would like to see if other see it as i do.

I have played a lot of Civ4Col (My steamaccount is closing in on 1500 hours of RoR, but a lot is just as a closed window while doing other things) and i have thought quite a bit on what i wanted c4c to be.

One of the major things for me is that the randomness of the game bugs me a lot, with dock speciallity draws, hut results, diplomacy, events, combat outcomes. I feel that especially after playing this long, i know the game so well that i want to be rewarded for playing well and carry through a well though strategy, not for getting lucky randomisations that gives big advantages.

So i have thought, what if their where no randomness in the game. Except for a map generator or a lot of pregenerated maps. On any givven map you would theoreticly be playing a game that would with the same moves, would create the exact same outcome time after time.
For example instead of
- dock draws you get immigration points that can be exchanged for specialists
- hut results you get scouting points that you can cash in for stuff
- diplomacy you can get favour points that you cash in for good stuff or hostilaty points that triggers bad effects at certain threshholds
- random combat fixed damage is assigned.
So for example if you wanted a priest, you had to either save invest enough gold to recruit him, or immigration points to exchange for him, or favour points with the archbishop provide for favour points. Or when you visited a tribe, you would get favour points with their leader, that you could spend on map revelation, alowing a visiting unit to live among the natives, getting gifts or whatever options there was to choose from.

What do you think, would a game with this logic be intresting or just to predictable?

 

[Commander Bello]

A certain amount of randomness surely benefits the game.

Although I agree with you that many random events in this game cause much too severe results, your proposals would lead to a game which the AI can play even less than now.

As you correctly pointed out, one of the most critical areas is immigration.
Say, under the first 10 immigrants you have a Seasoned Scout, a Carpenter, a Priest, a Hardy Pioneer and a Statesman, you will have a completely different game. The problem is that specialists seem to be much too strong - but changing this opens other cans of worms, as weaker specialists lead to the schooling system and teaching by Natives becoming less interesting.

 

[Nightinggale]

I agree that getting the right experts early on makes a completely different game from when you never get what you need. Also if you can train farmers/fishermen where you end up building will benefit you a lot and not being able to train those can be annoying.

However simply removing the randomness isn't the answer. The randomness ensures that even if you restart on the same map, you will get a different game. By not being predictable, you are forced to consider the current situation more and are less likely to be able to simply run a game on some sort of template where you do the same over and over.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

It would seem to be that a simpler solution would just be to try and remove the 'best' and 'worst' random things.

So the dock draw would be make a change that stops specialists being available at a discount at all.

So you can't get the dream run of specialists like Bello said. You have to slog through and 'play well' to get those all important power players. Same with goody huts I would guess.

Other than that I don't know what other randomness you would need/want to remove that 'massively' impacts from a pure 'luck' perspective.. Except for those times when your unit dies against all odds!!