We're considering adding a new option for spending bonus points to address player complaints about earthquake damage: "Earthquake-resistant construction". This would be a single time purchase similar to free GDI and would be available on all servers except for Express. The exact numbers aren't decided yet, but right now I'm leaning towards a cost of 16 points and a reduction of earthquake damage by 95%. The current maximum damage that can be inflicted by an earthquake is 4% of non-cs buildings.

Please share any thoughts that you have on the idea.

I support this 100%!!

This would be great. Then i can laugh at Hash and tell him to get the bonus points every time he whines about earthquakes :)

It's not gonna break or change the game. Go ahead. Just as long as it dont take time away from more important changes...

IMO it'd make more sense for a UN type deal where you get paid some type of relief package after an earthquake or drought etc. Instead of a bonus, maybe just an optional thing like GDI that's cost $/acre with a bonus that makes joining it free?

Just remove negative events. No one likes them, and they don't add to the playing experience IMO.

I think the reason they are in the game is because everyone who works with code wanna add rng, for whatever reason, but that is just my own bias maybe.
This is all inherited from Mehul who showed interest in his e2025 for like 2 years then left for utopia.

I think this suggestion makes EQs finally add something to the game tho, ironically. Because now there could be options, there is a decision to be made about how to deal with them, whats most worth it for you etc. They been in the game forever with none of that. All you could decide was if you should rebuild or not, haha.

Weren’t there also tornadoes in the past? I think they were removed!

I should also point out I'm against all random events so that includes booms(unless you use bonus points for them because then it's not random). Having the option to use bonus points to reduce earthquake damage at least gives you another option though =)

Yeah, players whould be able to cash, buy, stock and repeat with no variance or obstacles. Earthquakes are just as bad as players hitting real players ingame. The land players get from bots is rightfully yours and nobody should have the right to challenge that - and the game should not be allowed to remove hard earned buildings, regardless of event ratio affecting all players equally. ITS MINE!
If anyone disagrees then you dont play to win and break records and you're a griefer.

Every time I see an earthquake happen, in my mind I'm like "Mehul is suiciding me" and laugh.

I couldn’t have said it better myself! I was also thinking how unfair it is that some players have more land and more cash than I do. I would like a system to where they can be taxed and some of that reallocated to me to even things up. We can only have a just community here if everyone has equal resources regardless of skills, effort or intelligence!

Given how Prime usually feels on this topic, I would say he is being sarcastic Req..

Particularly this bit: If anyone disagrees then you dont play to win and break records and you're a griefer.

I dont see why this isnt covered under ' luck '

There's an argument that could be made that anything that doesn't push players towards conflict, diplomacy, or the public market is just unnecessary fluff that could be removed. I also think there's a counter-argument that the game is supposed to be about running a country and ideally the experience cannot be entirely simulated within a spreadsheet. In that sense, earthquakes are perfectly reasonable and players have a choice as to how to deal with them.

The current implementation isn't great because there aren't very meaningful choices, there's a lot of variance in damage, and an earthquake at the wrong time could cost a player a win. A more robust implementation might be something like larger countries getting more earthquakes than smaller countries and players being given a choice to construct earthquake resistant buildings which cost slightly more than regular buildings. However, all of that is too much work for the payoff. I doubt there are any seismologists which play the game. So this is somewhat of a compromise.

How about you pay 8 points to make 1 building type resistant for the rest of the set? That will reenforce specialization and make a real choice what is more important CS or your premier building type.

if you wanted to make earthquakes more interesting there should be a discount to rebuild with the same building type, even if it was only small like 20% the same as destroying land

does luck already reduce quakes? its pretty hard to check since its hard to even identify the quake chance, but its nice to know its 4% max

and since im pretty sure weve seen a lot of single digit quakes id assume its pure random 0-4% quakes, maybe with a minimum of 1

even lucks effect on the good and bad booms is pretty hard to get a handle on, and because explore isnt really a meta right now except maybe team and tourney it doesnt get a lot of play

can you do reports on points spent on the different bonus options per server? would be interesting in balancing them

If I were to guess I'd say EQ_size=rand()*rand()*0.04*buildings.

It definitely seems totally random in that 0-4% range. I think there is something in there to protect your cs already though because I rarely lose any.

The only purpose random events serve is aggravate players, there's nothing worse than stocking on 40k acres and one of those earthquakes happen in the last day of stocking, if the top spot is being disputed in a close battle of a couple hundred NW an earthquake just lost you the round, have a swirvey day!

That's why you never won? :P
I would be mad too if that ever happened, I think I got like 30-40 wins and I dont think I ever got 2nd because of an earthquake.

There are many other forms of randomness tho. Like when the goods come to the market, perhaps its too late and that food stocking casher already played his turns. Such things are are maybe not random but when people play and what they choose to do is unknowable unknowns to us which means we can assume but in the end the outcome will look random to us.

While I don't think they add anything to the game at present I don't understand at all the fascination with removing them. But I compared our profiles, KoH, and it seems earthquakes have been really mean to you over the years so I can't say I wouldn't have the same strong opinion of them if I were in your shoes. :P

Yeah no I haven't won cause I still suck at netting lol

Either I'm too good, or you are pulling a double ninja move here to trick me into thinking you are serious about me being serious about prime being serious!

Well played, sir.

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Truthfully I don't really care about EQs. To me, they are benign, not good or bad, just there.