Brad Wardell's views about technology, politics, religion, world affairs, and all sorts of politically incorrect topics.
Even as an option?
Published on September 12, 2006 By Draginol In GalCiv Journals

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?

  1. Allied War. Three of the 9 players who are already friendly decide to ally together and declare war on everyone else.
  2. Plague. A space plague that will gradually wipe everyone out unless a particular research item is found.
  3. Culture Shock. A particular alien civilization gets their influence boosted by 10X and players have to decide how to combat it.
  4. 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?
  5. 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?


Comments (Page 3)
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on Sep 13, 2006
these sound good but id like to see some like: the torian confederation has found a long lost precouser fleet of 100 ships and declares war an all nonallied races or finding some sort of mega ship/ robot to justify sending billions of people to their dooms...
on Sep 13, 2006
I'd love some mega events, it would be great seeing a dreadlord fleet coming out of nowhere about to anihalate my fleet.  
on Sep 13, 2006
I like the idea of mega events! And more ethical choises too, basicly anything that creates variety to the gameplay.
on Sep 13, 2006
I'd love to see mega-events added. Ideally it'd be an option you could enable even from within an existing game, and could adjust their likelihood (ie: if I'm running away with a game, toggle mega events on, at high probability, to throw a monkey wrench in things and see if I could handle it).

Other thoughts:
- An option to make the bad mega-events more likely to happen to the top dogs and good ones to the underdogs (ie: space pirates most heavily infest the leader race's territory, one of the weaker/less dominant races more likely to recieve the Ultimate Doom boost)
- Perhaps have not just some mega events, but also some big events and some medium events: stuff that isn't quite so cataclysmic, but might also be more common. There's already some of these, like the precursor ranger events and the economy boom ones, etc, but I'd like to see more variety of those.

Event ideas:
- A cosmic flux causes a whole new set of wormholes, wrecks, etc to appear across the galaxy that can be explored. Or it causes a few of them to randomly appear every turn. (Actually, I'd love to see this as an settable option outside of the mega-events!)
- Invasion - many cool possibilities:
- Giant space creature attacks, cutting a swath through the galaxy. Possibly a planet eater. Massively tough, requires races to repeatedly attack to wear it down.
- a new fully-populated system appears in the galaxy , populated by an advanced hostile race (ie: Dreadlords).
- A massive invasion/colonization fleet (from one of the races not currently in the game) appears at the edge of the galaxy and carves out a niche for itself.
- Refugee swarm: numerous (but defenseless) colony ships (possibly from assorted races including the player's) appear across the galaxy (fleeing from menace elsewhere), colonizing any/all planets they encounter (and then maybe joining their associated race's civ) and disrupting territory lines.
- A star starts to go supernova, evertually destroying the system after X turns of warning, and afterwards, leaves behind many rich asteroid fields and/or resource points (or perhaps even a white dwarf system) and a huge nebula that slows all ship traffic through it.
- A galaxy-wide warp-storm that prevents ships from traveling faster than some crippling speed (ie: 2-3 per turn), or reduces ships to, say, quarter or one-third speed. This might last for X turns or be permanent. Perhaps some technology could be researched that could be placed on ships to counteract some/all of the speed restriction.
on Sep 13, 2006
And they would be optional.

Then a definite yes!

# 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?

Hmm, I thought this was included already?
on Sep 13, 2006
Just to add my voice, yes, yes and YES again.

Who would say no, when u have the option to turn them off or on?

Any new features u add to the game that r optional, r a no brainer. New features extend the playability of game, retaining a players interest. Also in the end game, a mega event would spice the game up considerably.

  Good idea Frogboy.  
on Sep 13, 2006
I'm going to say NO.

Against most by what I read. The reason is that I'd always have the options set to OFF when playing Metaverse. These would ruin the game, especially if they happened early on.

Whatever strategy you'd been working on would go Poof.

Stardock works very hard on this game and the resources could be placed elsewhere, I imagine most everyone would set the switch to off when they cared about the outcome.

Mark
on Sep 13, 2006
If one would design it right and it adds to the gameplay instead of changing or destroying everything player has worked for earlier, I'm all for it. The things listed sound good assuming like the research part for the what-ever-doom is easy enough so it won't destroy you if you're doing reasonably well and putt all efforts in finding the sollution.
on Sep 13, 2006
Well, I have do say:

I do not care about the outcome. I care about the game itself, the fun I have to play, and the sweat that results from a close-match struggle against...

- The Drengins
- The Yor + Drengins
or in my actual game - Drengins + Altarian + Torian + Arcean + Drath.


I KNOW I haven't played the optimal play, I done my best to NOT be the friendliest player of the galaxy, trading with only 1 civilization (Terrans). But, hell, I love it!

Something random once in a while that could blow the game wide open would just be great.


But I don't want just any "random events", I want things that are powerfully installed in the map, set a random, and gives more random "landscape" that the mere positionning of stars and planets. I want to have an Anor colony about 2 sectors from my homeworld. They are friendly, but quite isolationist and xenophobe. If i get within 10 parsec of their homeworld, I see 1 ship with 15 speed, 200 weaponry (in the 3-4 first year!) hunting the tresspassers to death.

Until, off course, I have a big ennough fleet to try to conquer them, with their super-developped planet..

ye know, special "key" planets, with their own special species.
on Sep 13, 2006
Another way to ask, what other cool things would you not be able to do if you did this?

Where on the priority list would this feature go?

Mark
on Sep 13, 2006
Yes, please.

Dreadlords should definitly be a Mega-event.

I'm going to say NO.

Against most by what I read. The reason is that I'd always have the options set to OFF when playing Metaverse. These would ruin the game, especially if they happened early on.

I would have it on in my Metaverse games (=every game since I only play Metaverse) but then I think having fun is more important then getting the highest possible score.
on Sep 13, 2006
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.


I wish we had that and space monsters like that.
on Sep 13, 2006
I would have it on in my Metaverse games (=every game since I only play Metaverse) but then I think having fun is more important then getting the highest possible score.


AMEN
on Sep 13, 2006
I love the idea ... even if it costs me the game. I am playing to be a character in a story and if that story involves a dreaded wumpus invasion that blows me away, so be-it.

Though you would definitely want to make this optional, and I think that you would also want to include the frequency of said mega-events within that option.

Dano
on Sep 13, 2006
Simple answer = Yes!

As long as we have the option of switching them off and can use them in MV games please. I dont mind what Mega events you come up with bit please none that spawn huge amounts of miniature ships everywhere
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