1st 2 days in FFA and I have already suffered ~dozen earthquakes (1 country had 2 inside 10 turns) and that's against randomness and I have gotten other negative things ~5 times and positive things maybe 3-5 times.

way to mess up starting.

earthquakes are stupid

yo mamma!
:P

got some more and worst was 10 buildings eq.

translation: TOTALLY fluffED UP START OF SET!!!

youd like your randomness to be.. less random?

havent had one earthquake, myself. you can close this thread, now.

less negative randoms, ~15 eqs inside 3 days and ~5 other negs.

if same trend continues alot turns will be spent on rebuilding than what strat needs.

Unless you start to do construction booms, which would be crazy, earthquakes are useless. Do we really need a random destruction value?

no.

i've lost few 100 buildings to eqs in ffa so far.

I have been on an earthquake binge lately, in every server.

me too. but as long as other players are also having them, I'm ok.

some get more and some get less, so far no eq in alliance.

i can reduce the frequency of them i suppose =/ or the sevarity... i dunno

ORRRRR

have a magnitude feature!! =D

from 1 to 11! which does like nothing to DESTROY ALL BUILDINGS?

:)

Nope, nope and nope. I would definitely be all for a reduction or elimination.

frequency is "bit" high if inside 3 days gets 15 eqs. rate has dropped since start of set but not gone.

Should just remove Earthquakes from the game.

Earthquakes really add nothing of value to the game (there are no strategic choices to make about it), and only causes frustration (you cannot mitigate them), and can make/break a rank or two on large countries near the end of the reset.

The random Booms and droughts/strikes/etc don't add anything to the game either (again, there are no strategic choices to make about it). I'll suggest removing them as well (but keep the booms from the Bonus points).

The ones that have a positive flipside I am ok with, but it's not like you can have a "construction boom" and build 500 buildings this turn instead of 70 or whatever.

The random booms/droughts don't add anything but don't make a major impact. They are harmless or pleasant surprises I guess. I kind of like them simply for "flavor" purposes. It's fun to read about your workers doing overtime or whatever maybe for a new player. But remove them if you think you need to.

On the other hand, Earthquakes are just ass. They can knock down like $500,000,000 worth of buildings on a big country at the end of a set. What the fluff is that?

how about a construction boom?

construction booms don't help near end of set since construction cost would be higher than gains would be.

what the fluff is that? that is us playing a game and not counting on our fingers.

this game should be more like doing sums and far less like playing a game, i tells ya!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_chance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_skill

Also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_Thrones
which, though related, is not to be confused with
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Game_of_Thrones

this is true. remove variance from explore rates, as well. if it says i explore for six acres, none of this three or eight bullfluff. games of chance? i'll play that war card game. also remove suiciders, because they often hit people who have never harmed them, which is pure chance. and make it so that we can not determine a countrys dr, as being online when a country gets out is purely chance.. or i suppose setting an alarm, but we play a game of skill not a game of setting alarms. and time to market for goods needs to be perfectly even for all of us, as goods hitting in four hours or in five hours is purely chance.

Haven't you seen the solo server gdi rules? They have tried to remove suiciders. It is a crock if you ask me.

You're missing the point.

Chance events in a game is only good if it offers the player __meaningful choices__ to make. Chance in poker/blackjack is interesting, because the player can then make a meaningful decision to bluff/fold/etc.

If you're getting attacked "by chance", that is meaningful because it means your country looked attractive for some reason, maybe it was landfat, or it was the biggest target a suicider could attack. There are mitigating choices that could have been made, by boosting defenses to look less landfat, or by joining GDI, or getting tanks/SDI/warfare.

Having variable market times doesn't add or remove meaningful choices to the player, but serves as a method of randomizing things such that market manipulation is significantly harder between players (market transfers, etc).

Variable explore rates are there not to add/remove meaningful choices, but to enforce the fact that there won't be a "best 100 turn optimized startup" that someone can figure out. You still have startups guides that you can follow, but they are more generic in nature ("explore 1 bpt worth, build").


When designing game features and mechanics, the key thing to understand is
- Is this mechanic fun/interesting?
- Will it frustrate players?
- What does the game mechanic hope to achieve?
- Does the pros outweigh the cons?

Earthquakes as a game mechanic does absolutely nothing but frustrate players. It's not fun, it is not interesting, and doesn't serve any purpose other than to "make things random" (like explore rates), nor add meaningful gameplay choices. Variable explore rates does not particularly add meaningful gameplay choices, but at least they don't detract much or frustrate the player much either.

Lol vic. A player can always still suicide. It's just going to always be by PS, it really isn't that difficult for someone to go all-jetter and PS a large country once every day and forcing it to go war with you.

The GDI changes on solo server reduced the practical "suicide-able" range. A 20k land country can still easily suicide a 50k one, but a 5k one can't.

the meaningful choice you desire from earthquakes is your choice between a ten a forty or a seventy thousand acre country. unless im mistaken and an eq on 10k is the same as an eq on 70k?

frustration? .. what do you smart folk call it, a guassian curve? i cant spell the term let alone understand it. this is frustrating. remove :(

unless marshal agrees with xin, then its confirmed and apoligies will subsequently be offered

(pros and cons are entirely subjective; what might be a pro for one may be a con for another)

This is not a meaningful choice

Earthquakes are garbage

and yet the choice between continuing to add acres or stockpile is meaningful

youre given an opportunity to mitigate the negative effects of earthquakes. people simply choose not to for whatever reason.

you want to grow your economy to win.. i understand this. with a massive economy youre left with a larger possibility for ruin.

but with less land comes less money and less chance to win. welcome to a world where, even though there are consequences, you are only ever left with choices. people gamble defense against cost per turn. you gamble high profits for.. fractionally less high profits `if` an eq happens

and yet the choice between continuing to add acres or stockpile is meaningful

youre given an opportunity to mitigate the negative effects of earthquakes. people simply choose not to for whatever reason.

you want to grow your economy to win.. i understand this. with a massive economy youre left with a larger possibility for ruin.

but with less land comes less money and less chance to win. welcome to a world where, even though there are consequences, you are only ever left with choices. people gamble defense against cost per turn. you gamble high profits for.. fractionally less high profits `if` an eq happens

You're funny, braden.

we'll wait to see if marshal confirms this, also.

on a side note.. how do you know what i look like?

i mean.. wait, what?

i won't even bother trying to figure out your sarcasm.

We've talked about this before, I think the two-attack restriction is garbage, it ought to be one. The bottomfed should have the ability to fight back. No reason I shouldn't be able to toss off a nuke at you if you grabbed me.

I don't recall if I mentioned it, but I have been suicided on a disproportionate number of my sets back so far. In Express, by someone I didn't hit at all (before I knew the GDI rules changes), and in Team now in consecutive sets for 1 grab. Part of the risk, and I advocate leaving those players with the opportunity to hit me back if I grab them. I wish they wouldn't self delete after, but hey, part of the game.

sarcasm from me? not likely.

I'm thinking more like you will have free building credits (ok sorry thinking utopia here). but since earthquakes destroy buildings, we should have some boom to counteract it (just like where droughts have their counterpart booms).

of course, earthquakes does not really just destroy buildings but also waste turns so I'm not sure if free building credits are enough..

the 2nd turn of my PS - An earthquake occurred destroying 801 buildings!
the very next turn after my PS - our people demand a tax rebate, lowering tax revenues this turn!
3 turns into rebuilding - A drought occurred severely impacting food production!

Just wanted to share my frustration.

Your farmers must have been very disappointed

Really, that makes the perfect point about earthquakes, oldman.

Drought - no impact, you're not a farmer
Tax rebate - lost 1/2 of one turn of income. so, maybe $10m? $15m?
Earthquake - lost $120,000,000 if you did building cost bonus, otherwise $240,000,000!!!!!

it is clearly way way way too detrimental, and the tax rebate, which is like 1/10th as painful, also has a boom that more than counteracts it!

I had an earthquake today on 52k acres.

An earthquake occurred destroying 86 buildings!

Yep. 86.

fully built?

Of course fully built. I have more BPT than the destroyed buildings too.

you got very lucky then, my eqs are 100+ buildings lost once i get to ~10k acres.

Ban earthquakes

Magnitute of 8.9 on the ritcher scale hit my country today. 855 acres.

You people need to stop building on active fault lines....

The entire earth is one according to this game.

there is 1 fault line and all our countries are built on top of it.

This is from way back in the day, and the coding may have changed. But as I understand things, each turn you run as a small chance of an "event" happening. Not sure of the order, but when an "event" happens, there are two "rolls" one for postive/negative and the other on what type of event (proudction, oil, farms, cash, earthquakes) though earthquakes have no postive. But in order for each "type" option to be enabled you had to have one building correspdoing to what the bulding did. So to minmize earthquakes, having one min of res, ez, farm, oil, and IC, would enable all roll types and make the earthquake roll less likey to occur.

Now that I spent 5 min thinking that through, the code could be very diffrent today. So maybe I can stop having casher builds with 1 farm and 1 oil rig.

The 1 of every building trick doesn't work in EE, so it is definitely different.

An earthquake occurred destroying 834 buildings!

yay!