Anyone else getting raped by random events

Not yet. But I'm starting to worry!!!

no, but I'm being VIOLATED by low morale issues

i can fix morale. can't fix random events

~SDC~

I'm more of a tech leader, and in 2 consecutive games I've gotten the random event where the council votes on how many techs you get to "share". I vote for none, since none of the other races have a tech I don't. Of course they all vote for 10, turning my hard earned tech lead into smoke.

Then again if I had any say in what the council voted on, I'd sure as hell turn it to my favor. Like making sure the Evil races never build Terrorstars, no one can attack my freighters, races at war have to pay taxes to the rest, ect...all things I've seen the UPC do when it was most inconvenient for me.


~SDC~

I love the harsh random events. They can radically change a game and watching all the other empires scramble to react is funny.

I had that "tech share" UPC thing happen to me today. You should've seen my jaw hit the floor :notsure:

On the other hand, my tech advantage was so much that not long after, I was already 5-6 techs ahead and could still get some leverage out of my research.

The immediate downside of the tech share event is that the other races reap the immediate benefits that add to abilities. On the other hand, they still have to produce structures, ships, etc., so if you've been produced advanced units and structures, you'll have the upper hand for quite a bit still.

You know, I love the random events (and UPC events) in this game, even when they crush me. It keeps the game exciting, and keeps your sharp on all fronts (political, militaristic, etc) to be able to respond effectively to them. If you can, that is

Well it's not all bad. I just had a random event on Earth that changed it to a class 35 planet! I've also had econamy booms as well.

Well, I can definitely relate. I was playing, keeping even with the Yor, and a recession hit. I was never able to recover, and I quit. It lasted a looong time. Of course, I had built up too much -- way too much -- infrastructure. I did a lot better building only a ittle infrastructure in my next game.


~SDC~

The random events are, IMHO, way to powerful. I appreciate the concept of adding a bit of luck/variation into the game, but they shouldn't be able to completely rebalance the game.

It's cheating the player to say "I'm sorry, we know you worked real hard to become the number one civ, but now, due to circumstance you have absolutely no control over or way to prevent, you're being reduced to space dust".

Random events should be able to hurt you, but never enough to essentially kill you.

- Ash

I agree with Asharak on this. I've lost all my games because of random events. They are almost all negative on YOUR empire and uncontrollable most of the time. There should be more positive ones. It's the most difficult thing to handle in all the game.

I'm only about 4 hours into this game total, and I've already become highly aware of the fact that the random events are totally unbalanced. In particular - the "+14 to all planets nearby" one and, early game, the finding of a precurser ranger.

The whole point of a strategy game is to live and die by your brainpower... not to lose to some random piece of crud event. If I wanted that, I'd go play Yahtzee.

I thought I read somewhere that GC wasn't going to be like other games where you had no control on events, but rather you are given the time to take appropriate and corrective action.

Bullocks.

/ds

My problem is not that random events are powerful, but that they have the power to make you lose without even a chance to recover. And it seems that the underlying AI, though they are separate, all tend to focus on YOU. I think the AI should create an interactive universe and I know stardock has done that to a degree. It's one thing if the computer does something very human like by tryin to grab some land for itself when you are weak, but if random events completely ruin you, maybe the other races should be affected somehow so that it's not an instant 'game over'. Also, I want to know if these are truly 'random' events. They tend to happen a lot more and a lot more severe when i am doing well. It's not so easy to just topple a powerful empire. It's like saying 9/11 made America get taken over by terrorists.

~SDC~

holy cow... speaking of random events. one just came on me in a new game without warning. fundamentalists 'broke off' and took 3 of my 5 worlds with them. i think that's pretty frickin whack.

~SDC~

I don't know, I personally find all the heavy-handed things-both good and bad-pretty novel. It's not like there is any INSTANT DEATH events, though some can feel like that. I hope they don't mod them down too far if they do at all.

losing 65% of my worlds after everything has been colonized in a small galaxy is as close as it gets to instant death unless the AI is set to Fool.

~SDC~

I feel that some of them are going way overboard. Some of the more powerful random events should only happen later on in the game where people at the very least have a chance. I can't count the number of times early on I have been crushed easily.

I remember one game where I was in a tiny universe and on the fifth turn or so I believe(maybe of been a little later) the Drengin got the random event that boost there planets quality. Things went fairly quickly downhill later on, with them eventually crushing everyone including me.

They are neat and interesting I give them that, but can be very annoying. I don't play for two or three hours just to have the game ruined by a random event that wipes me out. That is just not fun to me.

For some reason though, I still like that game, even if I am complaining.

~SDC~

agreed. I still love the game :/

~SDC~

glad SOMEBODY knows how to handle morale in the long run. For me, I've had to bend over so often I now look FORWARD to my annual physical; its less painful than frickin around with morale issues for the whole game.

In a recent game the Fundamentalists appeared in their crusade to 'kill all things evil'. With this 2 Drenigin worlds and 1 Yor world defected, killing both those empires as it was a small galaxy (although the last Yor world kind of hung around, but they were essentially dead).

They also got a huge tech lead. They were far ahead of me, and doubly far ahead of the other AIs. They were also gifted with the dreaded 'minor race' uber economy.

And finally on top of all this their 'quest to kill all things evil' soon included myself (chaotic good), the Torians (pure good), the Altarians (chaotic good), the Arceans (neutral), every other minor civ, and of course the last Yor (pure evil) star.

.. and on top of all that they were winning..

.. and they were colonizing worlds..

.. ARGH!

post script -

It was actually a medium galaxy, and I did finally win through cultural domination. LOL

I think you guys are blowing this out of proportion. It's not common to lose the game for things like this, is it? And besides how is this really different from the random aspects of your starting planet/nearby systems? Significant impact, but you can cope if you're good enough.

Just add an option during game setup to turn off random events. Many old strategy games have this feature implemented already.

Random events are OK, but some of them are simply too powerful because they come in too early. The Draginol came at me when I had just gotten battleships, so I could do nothing to stop them. What's even worse is that I've heard stories of people facing the Draginol or fundamentalists when they have just gotten defenders. No one can stop the Draginol with only defenders.

i was having a good game where i was comfortably leading. then i get this "something evil is happening on one of my planets". this evil takes over which i can live with but they show up with ships that are 10xs mine and i have battle cruisers. they now just destroy all my ships. there is no way i could have equally powerful ships at this point in the game. sort of frustrating.