Comet sighted event..

[TurtleShroom]

I legitimately do not understand why people want the Event mecahnism phased out/removed. Events are meant to challenge you with sudden, random happenings that can benefit or harm you and your country. Like in real life (and especially in politics), unexpected things can come out of nowhere and drastically affect everyday life.

 

[Peachrocks]

I legitimately do not understand why people want the Event mecahnism phased out/removed. Events are meant to challenge you with sudden, random happenings that can benefit or harm you and your country. Like in real life (and especially in politics), unexpected things can come out of nowhere and drastically affect everyday life.

Sure and this isn't so bad but the word you used here is challenge and many events clearly lack that. Whether it's through the fact there isn't a choice or its a non choice where one option is clearly better than the other or the fact your people don't learn from an event (good or bad) and the fact some of them are kind of out of context whether it's because of who you are playing as or that you had another event recently that contradicts a new one, it just takes out the very reason events exist in the first place and lowers them to just being annoying pop ups.

The trial, the trial, the trial, the trial, the trial. Seriously my eldest son must be a massive douche or I have 20 sons and am so far withdrawn from public life, I'm in the public life of another country.

I'm not saying to remove them, I'm saying to rework them into something meaningful.

 

[Kagemin]

I think it would be cool if the random events had something that either makes it less likely to fire again for a certain time period, or outright puts them on a cooldown.
The events themselves are fine mostly (sometimes a bit weird or nonsensical in some situations, but you can't account for everything), but it can get silly if the same thing happens several times in a row.

 

[Dewit]

Essentially, everything that events model should be replaced by a system that I as a player must seek out and interact with purposefully, and the resulting effects should be consequences of my decisions. Off the top of my head I can envision skeletal structures for three or four fairly simple management systems that would eliminate some 90% or so of the events in the game.

They kinda going this way in HoI IV for decisions.
So indeed, there is hope.

Can you put one of those 'skeletal structures for a simple management system' by which you mean a decision tree, I assume, up in here, please.
I'm very intrigued how you envision them.

3. You have no control over the majority of events. They are completely random. You might get several good bonuses back-to-back, or you might get several successive slams so severe it brings your nation to its knees. This is sensible for a simulation, but it's terrible as a game mechanic.

Don't see this so much a a problem since some simulate actual events that are otherwise hard to simulate ingame like the Byzantine refugees event.
Moreover shit also happens in real life you have no control over or could ever see coming, still you have to deal with.
There should be random events in any case, but I guesss you take issue with the amount of those.

 

[yerm]

Comet sighted is just a lazy joke at this point. Adding another option line likely takes a few minutes to update an xml or something, and can be likely done by an intern. Actually having events that pulse over a region, or better yet the whole world, rather than a by-nation MTTH ticker? Well, that would take some doing!

So, again, comet sighted is a running gag and amusing and hue hue to the hue, but if nobody is going to actually implement something remotely cool like events that hit several people at once and aren't beholden on the by-person MTTH system, who cares? It's only amusing for a very small group of people, and even then mostly just a hearty one-time chuckle. Then it's back to being a poorly-designed event that has no logical basis for hitting only a single nation other than it's easier to just do things using the built-in event system. If you wanted comets to hit globally, you'd have to crank WAY down its chance and then have it spawning for anyone spawn it for everyone, which would make comets more frequent the more nations that exist.

Or, you could add a separate event timer for regional/global events, completely removed from these random by-nation ones, but that would probably take effort. Is it worth the effort? Maybe, possibly not, but unless something worthwhile is being introduced I think Hans the intern is better used updating tooltips and displays to be accurate than adding more lines to event files as part of a beaten to death gag.

 

[Dewit]

I'm too in favour of regional/global events that happen simultaneously or within a short confined time period (week(s)/ month(s)/ max a year).
That would be a cool new mechanic and comet sighted is perfect for this.

 

[net.split]

I legitimately do not understand why people want the Event mecahnism phased out/removed. Events are meant to challenge you with sudden, random happenings that can benefit or harm you and your country. Like in real life (and especially in politics), unexpected things can come out of nowhere and drastically affect everyday life.

Because it could be better! I off-handedly mentioned some quick skeletal concepts in mind for how to do this, but I didn't put any in that post (it was already a bit long). It's proven to be a little divisive, so let me illustrate more clearly the sort of thing I'm talking about.

Let's say we keep all nation-specific event chains, stuff like American Dream and Women in History -- all that works the same. Now let's also keep the existing positive events (but tone down some of the particularly powerful ones maybe). We'll gather all the negative events and move them.

We'll have a new screen you can pull up with four meters. Three of these meters represent the internal state of your nation in various ways -- let's say Infrastructure (Administrative), Arts (Diplomatic), and Law (Military). If you don't like those labels, feel free to swap them in your mind with something you like better. The fourth meter is Government Power.

All four meters range from 0-100. Government Power builds over time, while Infrastructure, Arts, and Law decline over time, all at approximately the same rate. You can spend Government Power to boost Infrastructure, Arts, or Law by an equivalent amount. So, you could spend 10 GP to boost your Arts by 10. Of course, since you have three declining meters and only one climbing meter, you can't keep all three afloat just by using your Government Power.

When one of the meters reaches 0, you get a negative event associated with that classification. So, if Infrastructure bottoms out, you might take a stability hit. If Law bottoms out, you might take a hit to your Manpower. Remember all those negative events we set aside before? This is where they go. After the event fires, the meter fills back up to some level and then begins to decline once more.

You can also choose to spend Monarch Power to boost the associated internal meter. So, you can use Admin Power to boost Infrastructure. That way, you can completely avoid negative events if you want, but you'll have to regularly spend some MP to do it.

You can get various bonuses to help you manage this subsystem. National Traditions, National Ideas, Idea Groups, high-end buildings (using the new building system coming next patch), government types, religious bonuses, and more could all help by boosting Government Power's increase rate, reducing the decline rate of the internals meters, or increasing the baseline level after a negative event fires. There are also penalties; Westernizing would increase the rate of decline of each meter, for example.

The current level of the four meters could be added somewhere on the main interface screen so that you can tell when you need to go in and manage it. You could also set it to Auto, directing your Government Power to be automatically spent in various ways (focus on 1, split across 2, spread across 3, boost lowest, use AI routines) if you don't want to deal with it.

This system has tons of benefits:

• It's simple.
• It preserves the unpredictable nature of events as well as their existing content.
• It ties in well with many other game mechanics.
• It's consequence-driven. It is your choice if you're willing to risk negative events or spend up front to avoid them.
• It reduces the number of out-of-nowhere popups (and these will generally be positive, which is more palatable if not quite perfect).
• It is trivially expandable. You could work positive events into this system, for example, by having them fire if you boost a meter to 100 (and then reducing the meter back to 50 or so after the event fires).

Not quite sold on the details of this one? We could do plenty others. There could be a queue of "monarch decisions" that build over time up to some limit. At any point you can choose to fire one of these decisions to get a negative event (adjusted so that most of these have a choice as to which negative to suffer), but you gain Monarch Points for doing it. If your queue fills up, you take a penalty to Monarch Point acquisition.

We could literally do this all day, brainstorming dozens of fun subsystems that preserve the good elements of events while reducing or removing their problems. Unless you really think the current event system is the best possible implementation, why wouldn't you want to see it improved?

 

[Dewit]

Your first Idea sounds good to me.
I like the association with the monarch power points and it improves player agency.
However, I have are a couple questions (regarding details)?

1. Why not stick to Ducats for infrastructure, arts and law(-enfocement)?
2. What happens when the meter hits 0? I assume, it would reset to a certain value (50/100)

 

[net.split]

I think an option to spend Ducats on the meters would improperly advantage rich nations. In particular large empires could afford to never have anything bad happen to them internally, which is counter-intuitive. If anything I'd rather give tiny nations a bonus so that the meters drop more slowly as it's easier to manage their territory.

When one of the three internal meters hits 0, it would reset to a value, yes. There would be some default (50, 75, something, depends on details of drop rates and more), but it can be modified by ideas, religions, and other things. Nothing would happen when your Gov Power meter hits 0.

Of course details can go any sort of way really, as the main point is just showing alternate ways to handle events so that the game is more enjoyable and strategic

 

[Dewit]

Of course details can go any sort of way really, as the main point is just showing alternate ways to handle events so that the game is more enjoyable and strategic

Point taken.

I think an option to spend Ducats on the meters would improperly advantage rich nations.

Hmmm, how about Ducat costs being modified simlar to the way the stability cost modifier works (higher costs through low stability, religious unity, overextention, etc.)

I kinda don't want to see yet another power point or mana thingy and money is currently, in particular mid-late game, just a number.

 

[Jephery]

If events are having such a large effect on you that you feel the need to dig through event files so as to dodge them you should probably consider refining your play style first.

They absolutely have a huge effect. 1 stab is 100 admin, 5 base tax. 2 war exhaustion is 75 dip, 7.5 base tax. Going from 100 to 0 legitimacy from a series of bad events is a swing of 2 dip rep and 6 unrest.

Rebels spawning events hitting at a bad time and location can swing a war against you.

Knowing what all the Hindu personal diety events and what is required for triggering them is essential for getting the most out of being Hindu. I.E. Surya gives you a 4/4/4 or better heir if you have no heir with 10 year MTTH. That is insanely powerful and no where mentioned in game.

Each idea group has its own set of events with its own enabling, disabling, and MTTH triggers. Maximizing the gain out of an idea group means making sure you get the most out of your events.

I.E. I'll truce break 5 years since my last idea group event pulse (which I'm keeping track of), because I know I have a good chance of getting +1 stab from Religious, so I'll go up to -2 without paying admin. But I wouldn't know that if I didn't look up the events from the idea groups.

I would say that if you're not planning around what events can do to or for you, you're not playing optimally.

 

[Subbak]

I.E. I'll truce break 5 years since my last idea group event pulse (which I'm keeping track of), because I know I have a good chance of getting +1 stab from Religious, so I'll go up to -2 without paying admin. But I wouldn't know that if I didn't look up the events from the idea groups.

Except Religious can also give you -1 stab. Which is another problem : for most idea groups, there are events that give a boon and events that take the same thing away. That makes the events associated with the idea group hard to use. If I'm in the market for +1 stab events, what I want to see the least is a -1 stab. Similarly, if want reduced AE from influence, I don't want to get the extra AE event. OTOH, maybe I could choose to get +1 stab event at the cost of sometimes extra AE, or the other way around. If boons and banes for each group where in different categories, the choice of idea group for events (and not just for ideas) would be more meaningful.