Draginol

Join Date 03/2001

+137

Would people want Mega events?

Even as an option?

First, what is a mega event? A mega event is a randomly generated event that dramatically alters the game play.

What are some examples of mega-events?

Allied War. Three of the 9 players who are already friendly decide to ally together and declare war on everyone else.
Plague. A space plague that will gradually wipe everyone out unless a particular research item is found.
Culture Shock. A particular alien civilization gets their influence boosted by 10X and players have to decide how to combat it.
Ultimate Doom. A particular civilization is getting their abilities increased by 1% each week (turn). Eventually they'd be gods. What is to be done?
A horde of space pirates begin wiping out the defenses of each race.

You get the idea. The mega events are UNbalancing. They would disurpt strategies. And they would be optional.

The question is, do people want this stuff enough to justify the effort involved in creating them. And what sorts of events would people want?

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It sounds interesting, I think I'd want to see events that encourage coalitions to be formed to deal with them. The allied war example would encourage the other races to co-operate, the space pirates might not.

I'd like to see things that can be countered by bargaining with your neighbours rather than just hoping that mega death pirate horde doesn't drop on my systems.

Naturally these events would need to be infrequent but I do like the idea that the whole game could be blown open forcing me to deal with it.

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I think i would like to see mega events, but maybe have a button to turn them on or off like the AI algorythm.

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Count me in.

When I play these games, I don't see myself playing it like a game of chess, where I'm trying to win on an even playing field, with well defined and pre-existing rules, and no surprises apart from what my opponents do under those same rules.

Instead, I see it more like I'm "writing" history as I play through the game. Winning or losing a particular game is secondary to simply having an interesting story and interesting situations develop during the game itself. I'd actually rather lose a game because of something totally unexpected and cool happening that I wasn't able to adapt to well enough, than win a game by plodding on methodically to the finish line.

For me, a truly great game is one that's not only fun to win, but fun to LOSE! Losing because the AI had a better start or balanced its books better than you can be demoralizing, but losing because all hell broke loose when some cool event happened... well, that can be downright fun!

With that in mind, I'm not worried about how unbalancing they are (especially since they'd be optional).

-Cauldyth

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I like where this is going and have decided to stop reading posts and actually make one on this subject. My only idea (other than giving this eight thumbs up) would be to either expand the current tech tree, OR create a seperate one for the plague mega-event. I say this because I'd love to have this large list of things to look into that doesn't come with a gaurantee that it's the right choice in order to get through this plague, rather than have an obvious and easy to reach choice. I think that it would build great suspense. Also, regarding all the events in general, I was wondering if part of the plan with these would be to have each AI class respond to them differently? For example, using the plague again, would the altarians stop everything they are doing and try to cure the plague via research, while the Drengins randomly choose one race to blame the plague on and instantly try to destroy them as if that would fix it, and finally the Yor Collective would laugh at the meatbodies and either totally disregard the plague or put an onus on disrupting research of other civs.

I'm salivating now, best to let you just do the work and the thinking.

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Sounds good to me. The single best thing about this game is the replayability. Random events, random map generation and the simple fact that no two games play out the same is what keeps me coming back. These events would just make it that much better....just be sure to keep it as an option. Getting nuked by a pirate squad of death would probably make me want to turn it off for the next game or two.

Just pulling ideas out of my head....

Galactic Dark Ages. Roll back all (or part of) the tech tree. Move constructed buildings and ships back to earlier techs or destroy them.

Hm, that's all I have for now. I need to get back to keeping the Arceans from smearing me across several sectors of space.

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Most definately. It would certainly add more immersion; a sense of playing in a dynamic, real universe and not just a "chess board" to paraphrase Cauldyth.

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Abso-friggin-loutly...

the more the merrier.. lots of good/bad/in-between...

But there needs to be a way to increase/reduce the frequency... and respawning space anomalies...

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Megavent #6: Several tears have opend in spacetime, resulting in "Wormholes" that can be traversed by our ships, instantly taking them to a random other tear. These tears seem to be near major star systems.

Can you imagine a wormhole in your backyard? this could TOTALLY shift the power balence of a game. It could provide instante passage to the enemy home world. Of course they culd use it too, so it give a 'hole new front to cover. The implications are tremendous.

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I very much like the idea of mega events for the game, it would definately spice up the game.

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Brad, you and your team would first have to revamp the "trade" screen. As it is now, there is no way to coordinate with allies. So if there are any game-altering events that require cooperation, make the change. The folks at Creative Assembly (makers of the Total War series) have a good interface that might be worth emulating.

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Just chiming in here again to place a second motion towards the wormhole event (hey, we gotta get those in there somehow, eh?) and the revamped diplomacy/trade screen ideas.

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#5 - Oh, you mean bring pirates back to original game levels?

Yes, Yes, YES!

The other stuff, too.
But, I miss the old pirates.

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Mega-events that drastically alter the course of gameplay, and significantly impact how things are run? I would like to see that very much. As mentioned earlier in the thread, I agree that I'd like to see some options for frequency - basically things that make it so that I might or might not see an event in a single game, vs. seeing major events every 4 or 5 years or so.

I think any option that can really shake up gameplay would help to make memorable games. That time I teched up and steamrolled the computer sort of just blurs together, but that time I was just getting into stride when a mega plague knocked me off balance, and I spent most of rest of the game fighting that off, while fighting tooth and nail for supremacy is much more exciting.

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How about a Dread Lord invasion?

A Dread Lord fleet with a troop transport arrives from one edge of the map and starts to close in on the nearest inhabitted world.

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some ideas for the events:
1. nebula class event like a warp storm effecting several large chunks of the galaxy (requirement to research an new propulsion style)
2. Some sort of entity that would appear and require vast amounts of firepower and ships to destroy.
3. minor race that grows into a major race(possible fill the vacum of a collapisng major race or after finding several dreadlord ships and using them to carve out an empire)
4. having the mega event tied to one of the events that get triggered when you colonize a world would be neat i.e you save the worms instead of getting a PQ bonus and the evolve into something useful...
5. Giant explosion that destroys sevral systems (dimensional research facility goes up and takes several systems leaving and big wide space empty... just gases and asteroids left)
6. An A.I revloution that pushes back the civ's(might be like the cylons)

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I'd have to vote yes in a new york minute- sounds like it would add alot more fun to the game

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on/off button might be good, so that inexperienced players don't screan 'that's not fair' - but i think experienced players would like it. perhaps some events could be back-story based? (drengin/torian, yor/iconian) or alignment based conflicts (good vs evil with neutrals changing sides as the wind blows)

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Alstein

Join Date 07/2004

+55

Yes, as an option. And it's an option I'd always turn on. I'd only turn it off for MP if MP came in. Really, the one area I was really disappointed in GC2, and feel that they should have done better- was in the events.

They should have been of the quality and probably the style of the Europa Universalis series- that would have added a ton of fun to the game.

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I'd love mega events, if the AI responded to them. I'd hate to see a race start getting +1% to all stats a turn, only to have to kill that race without any help from anyone else.

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Definitely. I would love to see this.

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I would love it. It adds something to the game that can't be easily measured. It's the shock of having to completely rethink your game strategy and if you make enough of them, they can always be new and exciting. I'm totally in favor it.

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Ultimate Doom. A particular civilization is getting their abilities increased by 1% each week (turn). Eventually they'd be gods. What is to be done?

don't we have this one already? its the random event where the race discovers an artifact or some crystal (there are like 3 random events with similar effects to this) and slowly becomes more powerful and 'must be destroyed or we will be enslaved by them'

Anyway, the Mega Events sound like something really cool and give some major twists to the game.

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I love "Mega Events". I like having to really refocus my strategy because something strange and unexpected happens. It's a lot of fun to have to react rather than just playing my game.

Perhaps a few could be (off the top of my head):

Defection- a portion of a civ's ships/fleets/starbases join another civ.

Revolution- conquered planets revert to the old civilization that controlled them (perhaps even if that old civilization was eliminated).

Hyperspace turbulence- all ships that moved in the previous week are destroyed.

Limited resources- random galactic resources are used up and disappear from the map.

Corporate collapse- All trade routes are eliminated.

Economic collapse- tax income is halved.

Disappearance- a random AI civ is completely eliminated (including all ships and starbases) and all planets revert to uncolonized status with no improvements.

Anyway, I think Mega events are a great idea!

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I like them! Especially Plague,Culture Shock, and Space Pirates. Oh Sweet chaos!

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Love the idea of Mega Events as well as al of the ideas posted above.

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