Events, and Mega Events in GC3?

Favourite Events:

Dread Lords - In theory at least. They are usually wiped out pretty fast, if they appear late in the game. Early game though, they can become quite powerful.

Plague and Disease - My favourite race are the Yor. 'Nuff said.

Toursim - More money is always nice. As I usually have the biggest population, I will also get the biggest part of the tourism income.

Econ Boom - Same as above.

New minor race is appearing (Jagged Knife, I-League, Fundamentalists, etc.) - More people to conq... er, talk to.

Hated Event:

Subspace Tear - I prefer playing on Immense maps, so being forced to move at 5pc per turn is quite painful.

Events I'd like to see:

Space-monster attacks

Encounters with unknown vessels

In general, something similar to what SotS has. I want to have the feeling, that there is more out there, than just the major and minor races.

In didn't play many games with random events, probably because I'm more into building up an effecient empire, more than dealing with other stuff.

I did like finding precursor ships early on in the game and the terraforming event; making a new 20+ planet. Economy changes also made it interesting. As for mega events; didn't like them, so usually played without them.

What events I want to see in GC3?

- Star going supernova (coupled with a mission like evacuate the planets in it's orbit)
- Asteroid on a collission course (send a fleet to intercept it or build something to deflect it)
- Super Volcano's on planets (evacuate or stabilize)
- Rogue planets passing through the galaxy.
- The Flying Spaghettimonster! (upset with how it's creations are doing, coming to clean up shop.)

Okay, that last one is just a joke

Basicly, I'd like events that give you a little side-mission, it keeps the game interesting.

Just to follow up on that .... and kinda finish  off that one, with a lead into this one ... I know this will sound kinda crazy to some ... but, its worth developer reading time as a way of triggering ideas blah blah.

These things aka Jagged Knife are always difficult to conceptualise, if there is no military background (as such at Formation Command Level) with the Developer(s). Go find a few books on WW2 battles - there are lots of them - where the outline of the preamble and aims of a Battle are shown, along with the actions and tactics employed. For example, aka Jagged Knife ....

In Winter of 1944, there was a massive surprise attack by the Germans through the Ardennes Forrest, along the tactical Boundary between the Americans and British, with the main line of attack through a weak American Infantry Division in the Ardennes Forrest (it was there as a "rest" area, no one thought the Germans could mount a Strategic Offensive through such thick forest). It became known as "The Battle of the Bulge"..... and it nearly succeeded in smashing the Allied armies in Western Europe. It took some nifty work by General Pattern in the South, and General Montgomery in the North to counter-attack and throw them back whilst the infamous 101st US Airborne Division held Bastogne in the main line of the German Advance, totally surrounded and outgunned - the 101st did a great job holding out. The weather cleared after 5 days, which unleashed the Allied Air Forces. Pattern and Montgomery counter-attacked - and the Germans were beaten back, but it was a close run thing. All in all it took a month of hard fighting to turn things around.

That was WW2's Jagged Knife on the Western Front.

Now .... lets not go down the historical route mimicking blah blah ..... thats not the point. The point is the developer inspiration that can be attained from these kind of historical actions can be considerable.

In a GalCiv context, The Battle of the Bulge (aka WW2) was their Jagged Knife.

I liked 'em all.

Right now the only thing I can think to add would be having those same single/empire-centric random events hit the other empires as much as mine. To my mind, it would make the single-player games feel more "alive".

If you are advanced enough to be flying around space you can tell whether a star will go super nova several hundred million years in advance. But, I wouldn't mind if some of those uninhabited systems blew up and caused communication problems, or crop failures or maybe an environmental change in nearby systems. But if one of my systems blew up I would be pissed unless I was made aware, beforehand, that the star was a little problematic.

It's difficult to anwer. I like all the events and mega events.

Obviously, I can get quite annoyed by some of them and their timing but that doesn't mean that the events are bad. Jagged Knife one can actually end being quite good to have if it happens when you are at peace and can muster quickly transports because it's a nice chance to get planets that you could only get by declaring war on a major civilization.

Right now, no ideas about new events that hasn't been already mentioned.

In terms of events:

Andromeda Strain: A pandemic starts from a planet and spreads. Either research the cure or slow the spread by disabling trade. Researching the cure gives large diplomacy bonuses. Researching it as a biological weapon gives you huge bonuses to invasion fleets, large diplomacy penalty.

I like mega events that change the world and make maps more interesting more then little events that present you with moral choices and little rewards.

Some ideas for universal  events would be:

Subspace Shift: All wormholes are randomly mixed up, and lead to different exits. Several new wormholes are created.

Mysterious Signal: A mysterious signal travels through the galaxy. As a result new anomalies are created through the galaxy for everyone to explore.

Mutagenic Plague: A mysterious plague breaks out across the galaxy. All planets lose population and population growth is cut in half. A new technology called Mutagenic Vaccine appears in the tech tree that removes the growth penalty. This research is valuable and can traded to other players for diplomacy points or resources.

Ancient Outpost: A ancient fully automated space station activates. It starts to build hostile robotic ships that wander the galaxy.

Mental Parasites: Your Intelligence agency comes to you with alarming news. A alien parasite has secretly spread across the galaxy. Moral decreases and planets and ships have a chance of rebelling to a new minor faction. A new technology called Psychic Scan appears in the tech tree that stops this.

New Faith: A new religion has started to spread across the galaxy. All players must choose to accept it or not. Accepting it increases moral but decreases combat power. It also allows you to build new Temple improvements. Making the same choice as another race boosts your diplomatic relationship and making a different one decreases it.

Personally I like the Telenanth or alien artefact events more than the rest.  There's a bit of excitement when suddenly one race becomes a bigger threat that they were before.

I also like the events which mess with tourism and trade, making them as important as tax income.

I'm not particularly wild about the Jagged Knife event.

I liked the Dread Lords event but I never get to duke it out with them anymore.

As for new events, I think that it might be nice if there was one that messes with hyperspace travel in a localised area, for instance if a star with no habitable planets were to reach the end of its life and collapse into a black hole, ships might have to go around it.

Well, at least we ought to have good population growth and the people (aside from moralists and certain religious groups) ought to be pretty happy, though perhaps not with the government.

Only matters if stable wormholes are added to the game (which I'd like - having a shortcut between a couple points of the map could make for some rather interesting games, especially if there were a random event which could result in part of my empire getting cut off from the rest of it); since all the wormholes in Galactic Civilizations II that I can recall are single-use anomalies, having them change where they end up doesn't really matter - it was going to send my survey ship off to some random location and disappear from the game, so why should I care if it now goes to a different random location.

If Galactic Civilizations I had stable wormholes, that would be different, but I haven't played Galactic Civilizations I in a very long time.

Its likely this cannot be developed in one go, but could be spread over Expansion Packs enhancing as time goes on. The start point is the establishment of Supply Routes, Convoys and their protection. This fills a major gap in Galciv, the concept of Logistics - what to do in a Game Play sense with the "Rear Areas" and Combat Resupply. At present, essentially, rear areas are left alone - for sure a couple of events - but in the scheme of things, near zero happens - that would not happen for real with Logistics, their Supply and Protection.

The supply of weapons, ammunition and food is key to any invading force, whether they are Ground, Air or Space based. That spawns the concept of Supply Chains, through which the needed supplies flow. In reality today - on the ground at least - that means a constant movement forward of those supplies in land and sea convoys or by air. Transpose those Logistic Principles that exist today in the Real World into GalCiv terms, including intermediary Supply Dumps holding the supplies as forces move forward.

Once you have the base network of Supply Routes Established, that opens the door to much more gameplay in the "Rear Combat Zones" that threaten and /or enhance those supply chains. Those concepts are realistic, one of the issues in any Army is Resupply, and the protection of the resupply routes and convoys.

When those routes are translated into  GalCiv terms by fixed roots between Planetary Systems, the framework is laid for as much (or as little) activity in the rear areas as you wish, such as enemy infiltration and attacks on routes and supply dumps. The scope is near endless once the concept of Supply Chains is established in the Game, and the effect of non-arrival of supplies in front line Units - from a game design point of view, you can turn the tap on or off in terms of Logistics and related Issues depending on the effect you want. The first step is get the concept of Logistic Routes in place to build on later in expansion Packs.

I liked Events and Mega Events, but wish they were much less dramatic and more incremental, more natural than artificial.

I'm not asking for Event chains for every random pop-up, but they have within them variables that'll slowly, or rapidly, decrease or increase then chances of the events affects expanding/elevating. Like when companies balance MMO's, maybe increase or decrease certain abilities and item spawns by small increments rather than increasing the "Warriors Attack by +50 pts, we'll do so by +10 pts to see if that's good for the class, and maybe +10 more to see how it all rounds out."

Sucks when a Mega Event is so instantaneous with all its full repercussions that its like you get the wind knocked outta you. If there is an economic downturn galactic-wide, let it it with 10% of its effects for one turn, till its tenth turn with 100%, and then last as long as the event would normally. Not that instant -100 income splattering you for a good portion of the game.

If technology is being researched slowly galactic-wide, let it increase the chances of an Event narrow-minding citizens of the galaxy, slowly increasing the influence bonus of cultures or whatever at incremental steps. 

This thread sparked a bit of silliness in my brain...

'Mega Event: Elvis has been spotted in your empire.  Throngs of fans are flocking to his concerts, and watching his holocasts.  +5 to happiness, and -5 to productivity for all of your planets for 20  turns'.

Probably just an 'event', but Elvis was a MegaStar, hence a 'Mega-Event'.

I really hate the spy spam event. Considering that at times I have to deal with 50+ agents, the cost of getting rid of them is too large to handle.

I'm also not fond of the Jagged Alliance event. Sometimes I got lucky and retain core planets, but most times I lose too many core/strategic planets that really mess up the game (plus getting all my tech lead wiped out is not fun specially late game)

New events:

Industrial Accident: Causes a random planet to lose half of its Factory-class buildings, the planet gets "radiated" lowering production for X turns.

Research Disaster: A failed experiment caused a warp bubble that slows down time in a random planet, a wide area around the planet is affected causing ships to slow down and planets and mines to reduce production.

Wheel of Misfortune: Last night's episode caused massive riots, production is halted, people die, but somehow influence grows. Guess There is no such thing as bad publicity. Affects a random planet + all planets within a certain radius. Effect lasts for X turns.

Will of Wills: The Terran known as "Lucius Magnus (PhD)" started a self-help course to overcome fear, unfortunately due to a faulty translator, people misunderstood the term fear. Soldiering increased by 50 points, transports hold 50% more soldiers (per module)

White is the new black: You found a hidden button behind a dusty panel at an abandonded progenitor lab, of course you pressed the button! Resources change randomly their type.

There's going to be a lot more events in GalCiv III than GalCiv II.  However, i suspect there will be more player control (at the beginning of the game) in terms of their frequency and power.

I don't know if you guys knew this but in GalCiv II I hard-coded the events in C++.  Or in other words, I'm an idiot.  It meant that each event was very labor intensive and there was no real granularity in them.  You could either have them or not.

But in GalCiv III, the events are XML driven (ala Elemental). Heck, that also means modders can add their own events and it means that events can have a severity scale which means they can be hooked up to a setting UI.

Hardcoded stuff should be kept to a minimum anyway. Game-mechanics should never be hardcoded.

But what's the possibility for events that give side-missions?

Though game mechanics that aren't hardcoded prevent Stardock and developers from making substantive expansions and DLC when the community can easily do just the same. I support em' too.

I know Mega Events are meant to do foundation-rattling effects upon what would be a "stable" scenario, but I'm just asking for what I think is better for them, and the overall games balance and fluidity is that they take time to fully reach their mass when triggered.

If there was a Mega Event that killed 3/5's of the galaxies population, every single planet, I'm cool with that - till I realize next turn I instantly incurred this whoop-de-do. Mega Events would have so much more substance to them if they could possess dynamic that allowed players and A.I.'s to manipulate and exploit them, and even reduce the severity of their effects upon their own civilization, or region, or even galactic-wide.

What if this Mega Event called "Galactic Bubonic Plague" like every other MG, in ten turns from the start of its activation, naturally raised the severity of its penalties or strength of its effect by 10% every turn, till it hit 100%, than lasted normally like it would, for another 10-50 turns as Mega Event's do, or permanently like the Jagged Knife one. 

Now, what if the Yor decided to invest all their incredible researching power into the Event-exclusive technology "Vaccine" that completely negated the MG from affecting that civilization any longer. It takes them 5 turns to accomplish it, and because of such, out of the eligible population of theirs to mathematically drop-off, only 50% did. They're probably now at this point the only civilization to have the most population due to this miraculous save-throw, and they own the least amount of planets too.

But also, due to the total sixth civilizations in the galaxy present, four of them diverted their technology research to the Vaccine, and regardless of whether they completed it in time or not to avert their eligible pop from being lost, they collectively provided bonuses to everyone that researched it. Since 4 out of 6 partook in their own survival, the Yor instead of just saving 50%, ended up having the research cost reduced, and saving more of everyone's population by around 16.7%. I such with math, I know.

May I propose something that would seem a bit heretic in some people's mind?

How about the capacity for the major players to PROVOKE events and major events? Like, be the ones to awaken the Dread Lord; as a form of Godzilla threashold; opening the cage to the monster you have found, to unleash them on your ennemies, as they have more to lose than you.

Or perhaps you are the one who provoke the Galaxy-wide virus?

I guess 'provoke' has different meanings though? I mean do you 'provoke' the Realm Divide 'event' in Shogun2? I mean you kinda do, but you kinda dont dpeending on how you look at that.

Except that Realm Divides kind of affect you, and you alone. It's litteraly a reaction of people fearing your ascendency to Shogun.

I was thinking of maybe do stuff akin to Sword of the Stars's secret project. You stumble on a Za'ha'dum-like planet, and you are given the option to start researching its technology to awaken the owners of the place. It'll cost money, and take some time, but you may just delay that decision until you feel it's... necessary.

I very much disliked mega events, but given that there was an option to turn them off, and it sounds like that will still be possible in game set-up, I'm glad those who do like them will have more goodies to enjoy next time around.

For what its worth, I think we can look at history for a good set of events / mega events see reply #3 for an example. To look at world history and see what plagues and or (depending on outlook) early biological warfare that played out and reeked havoc on civilizations in just our small piece of the pie would be refreshing. Not to say that we should have the option of giving blankets to a newly discovered alien civilization or anything but one has to wonder at whether or not some of the dramatic events in our own history were engineered. That being said it lends a lot of credence towards a forward thinking player that knows that x plus y will result in z. On the other side of the coin I think that any event that can be enacted due to player influence should carry a %25 chance that it backfires and the player takes end result of event. This mentality should also be carried to the AI, so for instance if an event is likely to be triggered by colonizing planets in proximity to an non-allied race the AI has to gamble on %25 chance that their civ will be adversely affected and be cognizant of such an event. However the AI shouldn't be privy to all the events, just those that are in a sense player controlled.

Or am I completely off base here? 

Is this also the reason that "sliders" were never added to adjust the special (manufacturing, research, morale, etc) bonuses that would randomly appear on planet tiles?

Obviously, by my asking, I'm suggesting that frequency sliders for all of the game variables would be really nice (and it sounds like this is how you're leaning as well). 

As far as random events go - in GC2 I find them to be fairly ancillary since I tend to build a fairly solid foundation (thus none of the events end up being particularly destabilizing).  My favorite has probably tended to be the plague - because it's a research-based solution and it punishes all the foolish short-sighted AI races that don't prioritize research (I usually play on a slow research setting). 

The availability of more profound random events (with sliders, of course) would be great - and would make for the possibility for far more interesting games.

-tid242

My desires regarding events, and especially mega-events is how they are implemented rather than specific monsters/disasters/discoveries: make sure that they apply to both the live players and the AI. 

In GCII (and GC) too many times the mega-event was detrimental to the live player, and often was of such severity that it ended the game.  Space monsters and pirates were often unstoppable, and targeted only the live player.  Given that the events were random, too often the devastating events occurred when the live player was still struggling with the AI (that's right, I didn't find the AI a walk-over) and effectively ended the game.

In GCII, a precursor "Ranger" would be discovered by a side (live or AI) that was struggling at the time.  However, the Rangers found by the AI were normally 10X the strength of those discovered by live players, and often were stronger than any fleet the live player could field. 

The result was I often disabled the mega events to avoid such sudden game-ending occurrences.  Hopefully, random events will be more balanced in GCIII.