One random event: Game over. Serious balance problem on small map

Hehe,
I encountered a similar problem during my first game (still playing it).

I planetary council or whatever voted on where to place some galactic zoo...which would double the income of a planet at a risk. I actually voted to get it since I'm always hurting for economy.

A while later the zoo had a problem...and spawned 3 critters with attack 80/defense 5...pretty brutal considering I'd just started producing frigates which are nowhere even remotely close to that power. The critters instantly wiped all my spaceships and starbases in the area, proceeded to start wiping my trade routes...and continue to be a nuisance. I've killed one (after years and finally developing antimatter missles, which still are weak vs the critters). Kind of a brutal event considerning I have about 6-8 sytems and 12 or so planets..on a small map playing 'beginner' opponents in my first game.

I can't wait to see what the galactic prison ends up doing to my planet.

The galactic prison? Easy. The prisonners will hijack 3 ships and will basicly destroy all your stuff (starbases, ships...) they are very powerfull ships. It always happens to me when this event is voted in the UPC. Good luck or simply start another game. (:(

i had the same thing happen to me with the zoo..those monters can really cause problems. whenever they appear i just cross my fingers and hope they pick on something else.

Does anyone know what they are motivated by or attracted to? Or do they just destroy?

I think there really has to be something done about the random events, perhaps somekind of definition of when certain random events can take place...early, mid, or late game. Just my opinion of course.

~SDC~

how about a switch to turn the damn things off if we choose. hmmm I think that option has been offered to gamers before........

the early/mid/late game option would be the best. I don't want the events turned down, but I do see where some events could be too much at a certain time.

Did you have any stations in the area?

Yes.. a HUGE one that was destroyed by the generated ship.

Military upgrades?

Many many.. in fact it was a military resource starbase. On a small map its well worth one's while to enhance production in what few sectors you have a presence using a starbase.

Did you have any ships guarding your planets?

All ships at the system (most of my fleet) were booted off the system. I lost them all trying to retake it. Keep in mind that one other aspect of this is that a smaller map results in less over all production, making you less technologically capable of dealing with events.

Were you actually warned about the event before it happend? I was

There was a message about growing evil on one of my systems and the suggestion I abandon it. However.. as this is a 4x4 map, abandoning 75% of your production is not a viable option.

I think extreme events on a small map are a problem because:
1) Much higher odds it impacts your capital
2) Much higher percentage of your total production is lost

This was a game ender.. and it was the equivelent of drawing a card that said "You Lose".

The events are NOT balanced for smaller maps.. and this needs to be addressed. I would also say that there are others which are not negative which also imbalance a small map. For instance.. the one which granted one of the aliens a QL 45 planet.. on a small map where most of us have 3-6 systems, this is hugely imbalanced.

EVENTS NEED TO BE SCALED TO THE MAP SIZE.

Regards,

Artuk

btw- This wasnt the prison one, it was a precursor event. That one actually did end another game of mine.. but as I was already losing I presumed my getting whomped by the prison ships was the result of poor play.

Hmmm. I seem to be lucky. I have never had one of the prison outbreaks or zoo breakouts (but I have had the Draginol attack).

The number of times I've been wiped out early on in a game due to a random event is alarming. This needs to be fixed. Preferrably with sliders/options to customize this feature.

On a side note, when you get a message that a civilization is doing destabilization espionage on you, there should be a way to directly respond to that event. Declaring war might be too much. If you demand money or tech, etc do they know why you're doing it and stop their espionage? Doesn't seem to be a way to warn them to specifically stop what they are doing.

March 30, 2003: Tweaks, fixes, and events...
Changes:
+ Some random events come later in the game.

Hopefully this will alleviate the problem, but I fear if the date an event enters is not linked to map size, and some events restricted based on map size, it may not help the small map players enough. I also think that home worlds should be off limits on system stealing events on small and tiny maps.

Regards,

Artuk

~SDC~

Another fun event I keep getting is the one (usually on a small map) where 1 of the other major races gets this mysterious tech boon that 'will gradually over time make them powerful' and me their slaves. The only choice is to immediately attack them if you can. As stated, on a small map with limited resources one can't always spontaneously genocide an opponent.

The destabilization is annoying. I guess you counter with propoganda. The annoying thing is when you know someone is doing it and can't tell them to stop (as they seem to be able to say to you).

I got the damned Draginol event late in the game. Medium sized map, I controlled about 1/3 of the galaxy, had influence over 65% of it, and was the military and economic powerhouse.

Bam, along comes this event, which spawns these ridiculously powerful ships all over (no explanation for that, since the event only took over one system in my territory), and every turn the new system churned out several new ships at an impossible rate. They proceeded to decimate my navy, destroy every base I have and all my trade routes. After they took over another system, I made peace by giving up 2 other systems. Now the Draginol are demolishing all the other civs.

This event was just way too unbalanced. It basically ruined my game, and did so unrealistically (cheating for the Draginol). It's one thing to make a challenging event, another to make an impossible one and frustrate the player. This needs to be toned down a bit. I'd suggest making the Draginol ships less tough and their production a bit slower. That would give us a chance against them, at least.

The Draginol even dosn't come up out of no where. You get a couple warnings about it before hand. I"m pretty sure that, for one thing, you can abandon the colony and escape it that way.

~SDC~

I only got one warning about it, and I had no way of knowing, being a newbie, it would be that overpowering!

And how do you abandon a colony? Is the manual "load em on transports" method the only way? I think there should be a quicker way...

It's been heavily toned down in 1.01a. But to abandon a colony click on planet, click details and press the "abandon colony" button.

~SDC~

How can you people complain? That's the beauty of this game, it's actually difficult! I love stuff like this, all too often games throw in a kink which makes it really hard but complaints come up and it gets changed, or newer games are weakened because of this (Good example if anyone plays it is Dynasty Warriors 4 (PS2), it's pathetically easy even on the hard difficulty when compared to past attempts), the whole point is to work around it. Besides, this in a empire management (I hate the semi-official 4X name) game, do you think every bad thing that happens is going to just not happen because you don't want it too? Gee, I'm sure a few hundred billion people in Human history would love that to be true.

~SDC~

Ceyan, I think there's a difference between having a difficult game and having a sudden event pop up that ruins your game, which is why some complain. The issue for me is not that the Draginol event occurs, but that it occurs in such an overpowering manner that requires the AI to cheat for them. There's no other way they could produce ships as fast as they are without cheating. Things like that, more often than not, tend to frustrate game players. First and foremost it's a game, and that should be considered over any historical notion of "what about civ x in the past that had something similar happen?"

All this being said, Frogboy, don't get me wrong--I am seriously loving this game. I haven't spent this much time playing a game continuously in ages, and I can't recall having more fun. It is beautifully done!

I actually agree with Ceyan. Life is hard. Sometimes, you just get screwed and there is little you can do about it. Sometimes, the plague comes and wipes out 3/4 of the Europe's population. I'm pretty sure medieval Europe didn't WANT that to happen, and people probably complained, but it happened anyway, so they dealt with it!

I would not be against having an OPTION to turn off this kind of event, but Please don't make it a standard. Give the choice. Maybe even give score bonuses for choosing standard random events.

Difficult is fine, serendipity sucks.
I had the prison thing and it dropped three ships with 265 HP each. I rush bought a planetary defense and sent in a battle something other there in one turn. Some how and I have no clue why, two ships blew up attacking next turn. The last died on the following turn.
I dislike random events, but that is just me.

Please, don´t "tone down" simply the random events. I love it when a really difficult random event happens. It is like in Sifi-Books- They dominated the galaxy until.....( Historians picked up the remains of the human empire 1000 year later)....

Suggestions:

1. Put in an slider for random events:

1. no events
2. few
3. normal
4. many

2. Put in a slider for the difficulty of events:

1. puny (I like the screens but they won´t have an impact on the game.)

2. normal (Okay they have an impact if handeled badly

3. Hard (Never feel to secure as a galactic powerhouse...)

I have had the zoo twice now -the first time i voted for it got it and the critters actually ended up as a good defence unit against the Drengin who were trying to wipe me out.
The second time i thought i don't want these monsters as they will cause havoc but the United Planets voted i should have them anyway.
The other one that got me was a vote to stop the production of Terror stars which was passed. I was just about to have mine functional.
I decided to go back to an old saved game and bought enough infuence to stop the measure going through.
I suppose in hindsight i could have just pulled out of the UP and pressed ahead anyway.

Hmmm...the thing that bothers me about this is the idea that map size should change the rules. If you were going to scale events around map size, then there's no point in having variable map sizes. The whole point of different sized maps is having to use different strategies, adapting to the environment you're playing in. Playing a small map means assuming the risks that those random events pose, while other events may have their impact lessened for the same reason.

For what its worth, my opinion is similar to Boris'. This is a game. A game is meant for entertainment, only sometimes meant to be "historically accurate" or a "true representation of how life is". I like random events as much as the next guy, and I certainly think they should cause difficulties, and require the players to adjust their strategy or rethink their position. But if a totally random event just crushes your CHANCES of winning late in a game after hours of planning and execution, that ceases to be entertaining. The game can be difficult enough without having something like that happen, hence my usage of the the phrase "CHANCES of winning the game". If I want REAL life, I won't play computer games. If I want something CLOSE to life, but still allows me to escape and be ENTERTAINED, I'll boot up GalCiv.

~SDC~

I quite enjoy events, even if they set me back seriously. For EU2, another gaming classic, there was a community-driven mod called Super-scaled Events which basically created versions of every random event in the game with effects scaled to fit the size of your empire. That way the effects were always relevant rather than sometimes trivial and sometimes overpowering.

I haven't looked at GalCiv modding yet (need to get a better feel for the game first) but with the right triggers (starfleet size, economy size, sectors controlled, number of colonies) it might be possible to do this for GalCiv.