Random events discussion thread

  When I was new to GalCivII,  the random events were significantly game-changing,  especially the pirates event.

  Now that I play at crippling difficulty (huge or gigantic maps),  most of the events are another challenge in my game;  both myself and the AI can handle them - the balance of the game is not upset,  indeed they usually merely speed up the process of wiping out the weak .

  Only the Jagged Knife megaevent can be a catastrophe if it occurs early where I have lost several vital planets and surrendered the game.  However,  this is rare,  and I think "great!" if an enemy race comes off badly from it.

Bumping this as I'm currently playing an excellent random event-dictated game.

It was an attempt at playing as the Iconians on an "epic" map - Immense with 9 opponents (all of the good and evil races, plus Arceans and Krynn) plus 8 colonizing minors (thanks, by the way, qrtxian for your thread on this subject which taught me how to do this). Everything set to common & random events on frequent (I usually play on occasional out of fear of the Knife, especially on the big galaxies, but thought I would try increasing the random factor).

I started in a huge cluster of high-quality planets, all on my own, with the Torians, Drengin, Yor and Arceans across a huge gulf of space to my south, and the Drath across another gulf to my west, and spent the first year expanding and researching without really meeting anyone. Then, just as the Drengin and Torians showed up to grab some of my planets and I grabbed a toxic world deep in Drath territory, it all went pear-shaped.

Literally within 5 turns of each other, I had the Mega Pirates and the Super Spies show up. It was so early that the Mega Pirates weren't unbeatable, but because the Arceans and Yor had researched their passive speed boosts and the Altarians had researched to Warp Drive, the Pirates seemed to have all of these bonuses together (I think this is the way this works - they get everyone's research like the Knife or Vegans do, right?).

Hot on the heels of this, the Drath flipped from good to evil (bad for me) and began inciting the Yor, Krynn and Korath to attack me. Then the Fundamentalists showed up, taking about 15 evil planets including the Korath homeworld, the Vegans popped up in my territory and the LentzLandians (who had a small empire of three or four planets sandwiched between the Yor and Drath) stole all the Altarian techs and began building powerful ships. I began pursuing the cultural strategy as best I could without starbases, only to have "native influence" permanently increase after I had flipped about a dozen colonies. Meanwhile, the UP passed the trade federation ruling twice, so those trade routes that had been established at least survived the pirates.

So by about the third year the immense galaxy was home to no fewer than 21 different factions, with all races struggling to restore order against the pirates and the warfleets of the Drath's various pawns utterly failing even to make it to my Empire. By year 6, I finally met the Korx (based on the far side of the galaxy) after breaking out of the pirate blockade and fighting the Yor to a standstill. By year 8 or 9, things are more or less back to normal, with the Drath having surrendered to me (but not before the Telenanth boosted their powers), the Yor to the Arceans, and an Iconian-Altarian-Torian three-way pact maintaining the peace while the Arceans and Krynn are now my allies, but not the others'.

What I have found fascinating about this game so far was how the rush of events completely changed the normal pace of the game - military buildup was delayed for game-years, allowing me to research the diplomacy and ethics techs, build the hyper-distribution center and the good achievement buildings, and research medium hulls and the good special PD. I dominated in my area, but the rest of the game (across the gulf) was played out by the AIs and it really feels like I have emerged into a galaxy where a huge amount of history has already taken place. The fact that the pirate fleets are being reinforced by the surrendering races means that they have stayed a serious threat even though most races are now building better ships than the initial pirate ones. The AIs also coped differently - the Drengin and Torians never managed to fight the Pirates on their own and needed my help, while the Korath and Altarians have largely driven back the pirate fleets from their territory. Sending constructors or transports out into the black alone remains perilous, however.

The other thing that struck me and that I hadn't noticed in the past is that the Pirates don't seem attack minor races' starbases: the Carinoids and LentzLandians appear to have benefited immensely from this as they managed to grab resources lost by the majors AND effectively gained free ships to guard them.

Finally, my other recent games have been far more laid-back in terms of events, but I have noticed that my recent games seem to tend towards the Vegans and I-League showing up, minors stealing tech, disease, the Telenanth, unlimited range and the spies, while some of the others never seem to appear (Dread Lords and Peacekeepers, for example).

Wow, that seemed to be a very chaotic game you got going there!

It calmed down - finished it today after giving up on conquest and just going for a research victory. There were no more galaxy-shaking events, just the usual reproduction-wormhole sorts of things and an influence boost for the Korx, but it was a good laugh and I'm definitely going to play a couple more games with frequent random events! Hell, it was worth it just to see the LentzLandians become a more formidable galactic player than the Drengin or Torians...

MisterAedan -

Great game!

I just had my first encounter with the Peacekeepers. Eager to get into a fourth war, I immediately initiated the first battle... and hardly scratched them. But this was a fleet of four of my outdated medium ships against their two or three huge ships. They started the second battle, which turned out a lot better for me. Their fleet of three attacked my fleet of one light frigate and 26 advanced fighters. They won, but lost two of their ships.

After that, I rallied fleets of my latest ships and purged my territory of Peacekeepers (about 1/5 of the immense galaxy). Then I sent fleets to eliminate the peacekeepers in Terran space because they were blocking my invasion ships (and, to a lesser extent, because they were killing people that I wanted to kill).

Anyway, now that that's under control, I just have one more problem.

At one point earlier in the game, the Drath got that god-like event and they've been getting stronger and stronger. Sure, they're one of my allies, but I still want to fight them at some point. I'll have to think about the best way to go about this...

Now that depends how far are they into the god-like stage.

Normally, I would not be worried since this is the Drath we are talking about. BUt if they gain too much from that event, they can prove to be tough.

Are you sure it's the mega event version? There's two types of that event - the normal one, which isn't very dangerous at all, and the mega event, which is. You should be able to see the effect it's having if it's the mega event - for one thing, their military production and research should have gotten a massive boost. If you remember when it first happened, the mega event also has a cinematic of a ship flying over a desert, while the normal event just gets an image.

No, I'm guessing it's the normal one. But they've had it for a long time, and their military rating is now well over 300 (mine is a little over 100). They're pretty advanced technologically, but I think my ships are still tougher on an individual basis. Plus I can still outrun them.

The event I've been having most often recently is the Jagged Knife, pretty much get that one in each Korath game I'm playing. While it's a nuissance setting me back and requiring me to rebuild population and quite a bit of my planets once I've reclaimed them, I tend to go after all Jagged Knife planets before the AIs do, so in the end I come out stronger. Still, I wouldn't mind to get some other mega event once in a while, it's been ages since I had any of those.

  I too,  get them in almost every game for several consecutive games,  then they don't appear at all for many games.

  I noticed that the Independent League takes over only the most unhappy planets,  I am wondering if there is a similar condition for the Jagged Knife.  They have appeared both when there is galactic peace and when there are wars,  so it's not that.

The wiki seems to suggest there's a chance of the Jagged Knife appearing whenever planets "revolt". I guess this means whenever planets are culturally flipped?

I wouldn't know, other than that they seem to appear more often when I'm in the lead planet-wise. I'd love for the Jagged Knife to show up when the Torian AI is stomping the galaxy but no such luck so far

I've been fortunate enough to only deal with the Jagged Knife once. Still, it easily overshadowed any other unfavorable event I've experienced. Not really looking forward to the next time we meet.

Question:

Is there an event that grants unlimited Logistics or something to that effect?

Someone mentioned this on Youtube and I want to know if it is true?

Nope. There's an unlimited range event, but logistics will cap out eventually.

Based off of my own games, I'm beginning to suspect that events featuring the appearance of a new race of any sort - Vegans, Dread Lords, Jagged Knife, I-League, whatever - relate to how many minor races are in a game. They seem far more common the fewer there are. As all of them (even the Dread Lords) are technically minor races, it's possible that the game may have a limit on how many minors can be in play at any time, so that if you're playing with the full 8, new races can't appear until one or more of the starting minors is destroyed.

It could also just be a coincidence, as I haven't really studied this in detail. But I've wondered about it for a while, and it certainly seems suspicious that both the I-League and Jagged Knife appeared in the first 3 years of the first game I've played in a while with a small number of minor races.

I was thinking that too.

I also suspect that the Random Events were set up to antagonize and weaken the strongest player(s), be it human or AI.

Does anyone notice this?

There's also a scenario you can play that gives you unlimited logistics.  Haven't played it myself but it's in the wiki...

unlimited logistics?!

Now that is fun!

Bring on the Star-Wars-Sized Battles! 

Just so you know, the scenario (Unlimited Power) doesn't actually give you unlimited logistics. Just much, much bigger logistics then normal. This still produces some big huge battles, but I saw at least one person complain about this, so I figured it was worth remarking.

Also, you have to play as the Drengin, and there's Dread Lords present who will use fleets. Both those elements can be modded away, though, if you feel like it.

First off, I've really enjoyed reading this post! Full of the stuff that keeps me coming back to galcivs2.

Was wondering how many planets generally are taken by the jagged knife in your experiences? Yesterday a total of 42 defected across the gigantic map I was playing, mercifully only 2 of mine. It's a pain in the arse really as I am, regretfully, a strategy game pacifist and by no means a proficient one.

  About the Jagged Knife again,  I think I found a clue in their profile as to whose planets they take over:

  Good civilizations are affected more?

  In this recent megaevent for me,  I was "leaning good" (the pointer was about a quarter of the way from neutral to the evil end,  in "government and ethics"),  They took over 3 out of about 13 of my planets,  all 3 were the most distant from my home planet.

  I am playing a gigantic galaxy with rare abundantly habitable planets,  tight clusters stars,  so I expect I will conquer only some of the JK planets;  then make peace and try some extortion.

I hates me some Jagged Knife.  From what I've seen, they seem to be stuck with minimal AI and CPUUsage, making the part about taking your planets back just one epic slog rather than an actual challenge.

For minors, there can be up to 13 in a game.  Not sure how it relates to how often they'll pop up, but you are able to force up to 13.

From what I've seen, the Jagged Knife can actually do things if left unharmed long enough. I had one game where they stole only one of my planets, which was on the border with the hostile Drengin and Torians, so I decided to let them live as a "buffer state" of sorts. Eventually that grouping of their planets was largely overrun by the Torians, but before then they actually built freighters and sent them to me and the Thalans. (I was the Altarians, which suggests against the theory that they hit the good races worst).

If there's any of the pop-up minors I'd like to be able to mod to be smarter, though, it's the Fundamentalists. A smart incarnation of the Jagged Knife really might be kind of annoying, but I'd like to see the Fundamentalists actually do something sometime. I'd say the same goes for the I-League, but they seem pretty smart as it is.

This reminds me of a game I have played where the Jagged Knife showed up and took over 120 planets, 11 of them were mine! I immediately declared war against them when a blessing from God showed up, a mega-plague swept through the civilizations and the Jagged Knife is too stupid to research the cure, leaving their population to rot.

Out of their initial planet and population count of >120 and >1.3 Trillion Citizens, the game end with them bested to the point where they are only left with about 4 planets and less than 20 Billion Citizens. They never researched a cure at all.

That game is the deadliest in terms of how many people lost their lives over the course of the game out of all of my games.