Occasional events

[Igor]

A way to make the game more interesting, at my look, is to use occasional events - some rare events which may happen or may not.
Before next turn starts, game program uses dice to check out one of possible occasional events for every player.
Occasional events can be, for example:
< Dwarf celebrations. All dwarfs drink wine and sing songs, and no fighting
< Opposition in the Senate (disagreement). All cities make pause in production in this turn
< Ardor of citizens. Every cities, which produce light infantry, produce two units in this turn
< Storm. All units at water can't move this turn
< Strong wind. All flying units can't move this turn
< Golden rush. All gold mines, as income buildings, bring twice more income this turn
Etc.
Hope, occasional events can make the game more interesting and cloreer to reality.

[Moonknight]

As long as these are evenly distributed, i think this would bring some excitement to the game...

[Igor]

Moonknight, what you count as 'evenly distributed'? Hope you know what size of bad beat can be depended on dice. After you will lose a row of fights with 80/20 advantage, you will see no excitement in any occasional event.
Btw, occasional events are supposed to be applied to all players in the game in the same time. But may be would be interesting to create a personal occasional events, for example double production of a city, or lost production in it. Would be interesting, I think

[magian]

This could be fun. Every player should be affected by each event. So, if a plague kills half the units in every city, make it every players' city, and not just one player.

[KGB]

Before we get Random Events I'd like to see the ability to build units with extra strength, extra movement and potentially faster (reduced time to build) and maybe even with more hits.

Otherwise I think an occasional random event might be fun if it wasn't game breaking. Lots of games have used this concept successfully.

KGB

[Igor]

I think that occasional/random events ought to be not so big. They must not to kill half of units in a city. But such event could drop time counter of one city production to zero. If there is green dragon, building there, and he has 2 of 4 turns completed, random event can drop these 2 turns to 0. Other way, random event can raise time counter from 2 to 4 and production will be completed 2 turns earlier than normal mode. This probably affect the game just a little and would be funny and interesting.
Same for other events, I think they ought to be not big.

[KGB]

I would suggest having positive events only (extra income, extra production, extra movement etc).

The reason is people in general hate having negative things happen to them and tend to remember those events with more anger than having positive things happen to them (that's why people moan forever about bad beats in poker and hardly ever talk about the lucky river card to steal a pot).

KGB

[tabanli]

that's why people moan forever about bad beats in poker and hardly ever talk about the lucky river card to steal a pot.
KGB

Isn't the Rounders a great movie? Here is my outstanding bad beat:

Holding AK flop came K-K-2. Raise re-raise and finally all in. He turns K-2

So Kudos to good events.

[Igor]

Positive events more funny, of course. But let me put light at the other side of this medal. Thing good for a player is bad bit for his opponent. Additional movement for attackers will a big surprise for defending player who may be have counted attacker's move points and built defending accordingly with it.
Game is such thing, which rare gives positive emotions for both opponents because only one of them is winner.

[Chazar]

A lot of these sound game breaking and hard to account for by good planning. So good care is needed.

For example:
I would dislike things like one city dropping production: if it hits a city producing scouts, no one cares, but if it hits a 4/5 dragon, it is certainly devastating - and more importantly massivly frustrating!

On the other hand, just delaying production in all cities of all players by one turn (i.e. preserving partial production), appears a lot more acceptable to me, since it hits everyone and each type equally, and everyone has to adjust.


So the events should be things that require all players to make small adjustments, that can be planned for, e.g. weather might increase or decrease view ranges of all units in a turn, gold income of all players increasing/decreasing by a common percentage, etc.