Honestly, a lot of these ideas I either don't like (although maybe they could be tweaked into something better), or I like but I think are out of scope. I'm not sure I like this one of mine either, but hey, maybe it'll inspire somebody. It's inspired by the campaign events.

What about an event that occurs when the most pathetic civ is on the ropes and on the verge of surrendering. They find a way to escape by entering the Arnorian pocket dimension, simultaneously releasing the Dread Lords. Their planets are ceded to the Dread Lords and their ships and starbases disappear.

Some number of turns later, if the game is still going on, they return with all the techs (but cannot win a tech victory anymore, so there is no "cheese" win) and colonize a new planet, or possibly just outright take their old homeworld back. Maybe some renegades of their race release them again or maybe they are just so much more 1337 than the Dread Lords that it only takes them a year to figure out how to escape. The race has its aggression boosted a bit too so that it takes its window of opportunity to reassert itself as a galactic power rather than just making peace with everybody and being essentially a minor race.

This could at the same time help make the Dread Lords event suck a little less, since they'll still have no ships but they will have a few planets with some infrastructure right off the bat.

Also, by far my favourite idea is something that turns a minor civ into a major civ. It could be a bit difficult to get them started though, since probably every other planet is colonized and they have just one.

I like that idea of re-introducing a defeated civ. That should be easy to implement.


A few more ideas (I don't think these should be terribly hard to implement, either):

A swarm of ancient Arnorian-made nanobots has swarmed the galaxy, clinging to all warships and destroying any ships that fire their weapons. Initiating combat or invading a planet will now result in the immediate destruction of that ship. Peace is the ONLY option.

A growing fascination for huge, mega-starbases is taking over the galaxy. The size of starbases' spheres of influence has doubled.

Cosmologists have long believed that star systems took billions of years to form, but evidently they were wrong. An ancient supernova in sector (x,y), in a matter of weeks, has subsided and collapsed to form a new, infantile star system!

A mysterious time anomaly has erupted in sector (x,y) [similar to the one in Star Trek: Generations]. When the anomaly is surveyed, every ship that was ever destroyed in the game re-appears!

The Torians and the Terran citizenry, weary of the constant war between their two races, have mutinied against their leaders and refuse to fight any longer. The war is over. Mandatory peace treaty, and they can't start another war with each other anytime soon.

Citizens' desire for trade amongst the civs has intensified, desiring more and more luxury goods from other races. An empire-wide morale bonus equal to your trade income every turn applies (in other words, if you make 100bc trade income in one turn, you get +100 morale bonus that turn).

The remains of a great ancient space battle in sector (x,y) was recently discovered. 30 "starship graveyard" anomalies appear, all clustered in one area.

An unknown rip in the space-time continuum has created lots of wormholes (at least 2 per sector) all over the galaxy. No one knows why.

A giant subspace seismic wave ripples through the galaxy. Almost every object in space (planets, stars, asteroids, ships, starbases) moves one square in a random direction. (this will cause some planets to be literally right next to each other)

A mysterious error has occurred in the universe. Everything in the universe disappears, and crashes into a strange new computer-god environment known as "Windows". Oh wait, Stardock has already implemented that one...

Ouch man.....does Galciv2 support Macintosh for that matter?  


Actually, windows would be a chaotic place where system idle process is the powermongering overlord! And just when you thought it couldn't get any worse, Norton starts sucking power out of windows! And the Drengins start conquering RAM!

......come to think of it, that wouldn't be a bad game! I wonder if someone can mod this into Galciv2-(Mumbles of incoherently).......

There are so many ideas in this thread so I'm not sure if something like this has already been suggested......
How about a Mega Event that affects the space-time continuum? Depending on the size/power of the Mega Event maybe a few subtle changes to the game to maybe huge changes that throw the outcome into a new direction.

More anomalies keeps coming up, I thought I might quickly toss in an explanation as to why that is, though I suppose the Devs have already figured this out.

Anomalies can roughly be equated to the 'goody hut' from Civilisation, after all they contain techs, money, experience ect. The key difference here however is that while any Civ unit can pop a goody hut only the flagship can survey anomalies. Sure you can get survey modules by doing additional research but that tech takes quite a long time in the early game (and you still have to build ships to carry them), to say nothing of the futility of building the Galactic Guidebook.

Essentially there is a, albeit short, series of upgrades that allow one to partake in the 'anomaly race'. Where things fall down is that by the time those upgrades are taken the race is over and the looser is whoever took the time to grab the extra techs/projects. Setting the number of starting anomalies higher won't prolong the race by any measurable amount, it'll just increase the benefits each race garners.

In order to make the Guidebook and its fellows more practical anomolies need to come and go. With multiple waves of anomalies you'd see players equiping survey modules on every ship even in the late game. Multiple wave anomalies could even introduce 'surveying' as a game strategy in the same way that 'maximum growth' or 'steady build up' are now.

Giving the new waves thematic concepts would be great too I think, as per Tetleytea's suggestion for the discovery of a starship graveyard.

If you're going to add an anomaly event, do those of us who don't like them a favor and let us finally and truly turn the things off, would you?

Sure, why not?

It would be nice to have a window to decide what events can happen. For example, if I don't like the Pirates event, I can disable that event from eer occuring. However, the events that I don't disable might not come in anyway....but that doesn't mean they can't!

-

I want anomalies and Mega events to have some choices to be made just like the planetary ones

This wouldn't apply to initially playing a custom race, but how about this mega event: a mad scientist figures out a way to transpose the personalities of you (the player) with the leader of an opposing empire. All of a sudden, you have to play as one of the AI's empires, and the AI in turn picks up where you left off with your own empire.

That would be more of a pain. Especially at end game when you are about to invade the enemies last planet and- OH NO! You are switched and you lose.

idea idea
less of a mega event but yeah get this what if this event is trigger able when lets see when ever a conqured home worlds moral drops below 35% there is a small chance that race will rebel and start anew with half of your techs mostly war techs and all the ships in orbit and half of the improvements giveing them a small hope at become a power again




another idea is this one of you scientists has a break through and notices some thing no one else could *need creativeity but has a 1 in 100000 chance of happening when you research your first tech allows you to research a new tech tree it could be a millitary tech tree or my favorite a industry and research tech tree

As long as the event really doesnt turn sandbox mode into a campain game, where we'd have to resaerch this, and then go here and then build something else etc. Lets not make it too compliacted either.

i have idea how about a genetic mutation at gives a 50/50 chance at increase in point or decreas in points. That way a player might have to get rid of an ability or weaken it or better yet more points to spend.

Firstly, while mega events should shake up the galaxy and everyone's plans, please do not overdo it so that you have to restart from scratch or making it completely impossible to win (your choices before the event should still count, for good or for worse ...) I would prefer less dramatic events so you can instead have more of them! Also, the best events are events that you can / are forced to actually ACT on, not just telling you that you just lost x and y.

That said, I could suggest the following I personnaly would like:

- an unknown disease starts to spread in the galaxy, starting on 1 random planet (or more!) and spreading through the Trade Routes and any other ship traffic to/from that planet ... Could e.g. lower planet population, and happiness. An affected but smart player can even try to export it to his enemies!

- A new popular ideology, the "Right to Decadence", demands that people be given the right to party and enjoy life instead of just working and going to war. The bar for keeping populations happy is drastically increased for some time, with certain unrest as result ...

- A precursor race threatens all or some civilisations with extinction if they do not pay a monthly tribute not just in gold but even in sacrificed population! If you do not pay, and sacrifice x million people per month, they arrive with a fleet to attack the colony acting in hybris ... NB good civs should not sacrifice their citizens.

- A precursor race is willing to sell e.g. a new technology or a battleship to the highest bidder! There might be several versions: they might ask for gold, or even for influence points or colonies.

- The United Planets is breaking apart: it has started meeting every month in a crisis session to vote on whether to exclude a particular civ from all its future meetings ... You can get excluded by the others against your will if you lack influence, but you can also try to exclude e.g. the major trade powers ...

- the Senate is taken over by an opposition party through secret and unfair manipulation. Until you put a fortune into spying, they will do everything in their power to ruin your dreams of power.

- A fanatical dogmatic movement is spreading rapidly: there might be several versions, e.g: against free trade (trade routes lose income and are attacked everywhere); against the moral ruin of modern life (all star democracies or star federations lose in influence and may be attacked); pacifists against war (it becomes almost impossible to push through a war vote in the senate and military production is cut by 25%); ecologists against industrialisation (dramatic loss of production and social unrest) etc.

Space Currents:
Due to unusual star emisions, several 'currents' in space appear. All ships traveling along the current get a huge speed bonous for as long as they are in the current.

Old weapons:
Inspired by "Beserker", robotic ships from a distant galaxy have arived in ours. They seek to eliminate all life, atacking ships indriscimintlay. If they find an un-defended planet (or destroy a planets defenders) they can sterilize it, destroying all people on it, all improvements, and rendering it uninhabitable.

How about a few comic-book-inspired events? Let's see...

The Galactus Event: a very powerful entity (perhaps even unbeatable) appears in the galaxy, and starts devouring worlds, one by one. It could leave them barren, or even destroy them completely and leave asteroid fields in their place. Would work best in larger maps, and if it appeared right on top of the most powerful civ.

Mirror Universe attacks: suddenly all civilizations get attacked by their counterparts from the mirror universe; only perfectly neutral civs are left alone.

The Skrullians are among us: an unknown civ slowly infiltrates the most efficient spies ever encountered in all civs.

World War Universe: the two most powerful civs are suddenly at war, and every other civ (including the player) must choose a side to support.

How about a take-off on the "5 pc per week" event. but nnot as devestating. Like an area that bisects the galaxy at a random location where all ships move at reduced speed, instead of the entire galaxy. This could bith help and hinder the p[layers, depending on where this thing lands.

Alternatively, you gan have a band, 1 pc wide bisect the galaxy where all ships must end their turn before crossing. So if you have 3 moves left you still must stop at this band, but on your next turn you can cross and continue as usual. Kinda like when a tank reaches a river in the game Allied General.

A battlestar galactica event

there are two ancient races locked in an eternal war. The one being chased shows up first and then a couple of turns later 2 to 10. The first one is trying to get from one corner of the map to the other se to nw if you see what i mean.

when the first one enters a system ie planet. They give you a chose you can give them so much in credits. if you refuse they attack your planet and if they win the ground fight they take its production for 4 weeks/or something along those lines. whenever they get so many credits they then will request or use a spaceport to build themselves a new battlestar. if you allow them to use your spaceport they then upgrade one of your factory spaces to a 300% bonus tile.



however the second race comes on the map chasing the first one. they follow the exact path that the first one did. when they catch up they have a major battle where in the first one always wins and the second loses. but the second race receives reinforcements every so many turns and continues the chase. when the second one enters a system and finds that you choose to help the first one they attack. otherwise they leave you alone.

something like that


and to liven it up a bit randomly choose one of the home planets. and if the first race actually encounters that planet it turns over all ships to that race.


the first race ships should consist of one huge ship armed with black holes and the best defense of all three types. the fleet would also have about a dozen or so tiny hulls similar armed.

the second race would have one to three huge ships similar armed but no defenses.
ie every time they appear they have one to three huge ships.

Whew. Just read through this whole post and the breadth of content and ideas is astonishing.

Kudos to Aircool and Lord Null -- thought their ideas were especially awesome.

Fans of ideas like the Tree of Life, a ship captain / fleet going rogue and disrupting relations, the mad scientist who invents a major race's subspecies, ExtremeDanger's Faith
Conversion, the double agents, the galactic Mad Cow idea, the giant space creatures, and the galactic network worm that infects research buildings (I had the same idea!).

Got a few ideas of mine own. Some disclaimers: I have imperfect knowledge of how every aspect of this impressive game works, and am such a lurker I might be posting ideas that have come up before. Apologies for anything moronic.

MEGA
- Scientific Calamity -- a groggy scientist screws up with the particle accelerator and his entire research building explodes, filling a research building tile with a graphic of a volcano / earthquake fissure / radioactive cloud. Could change the tile from usable to terraform-able so you can recover it later in the game. If we're feeling nasty, maybe it takes up multiple tiles (any square configuration) but that might make it destroy 1 per galaxy improvements, which would be a bummer. But I guess that's the point -- it's a mega event. Gotta deal, right?

- Uplift -- any given race suddenly has a breakthrough in genetic engineering and has the power to "uplift" (a la David Brin) certain other native species. Could open up a new Gengineering branch on the tech tree at two levels, the first of which allows for a population rate bonus but with hampered "population quality" that gets brought up to 100% after the second tier is researched. Thinking of this like the extreme colonization mechanic . . . and in fact, in might not need to be a Mega event at all, but just something else for us to focus our precious early-game research weeks on! (Also -- someone should REALLY do an Uplift Universe mod for GC2).

- Virtual Reality Disaster -- an alien agent slips a program into another civ's Virtual Reality Center(s) that overloads their brain / leaves it impossible for them to leave the, er, Matrix. The result? 5% of the pop on the affected planet(s) dies, and all virtual reality centers are downgraded back down to the previous tech level as the civilization refuses to go anywhere near the things. A corollary might be that the suffering civ gets a boost to its spy production rate as more civilians are willing to enlist in fighting a shadow war. The Virtual Reality Module trade good cannot be trader to this civilization.

- Gift from On High -- an amateur astronomer on one of your worlds notices that a pulsar deep in a neighboring galaxy has actually been blinking out a message over the past several centuries. After a long all-nighter in the archives he determines the pulsar's actually been blinking out the plans for a tech in binary -- you gain the new tech, but not before he proudly posted the results of his finding on his blog. All civilizations gain this tech (could be random; could be thematically appropriate, like Ultra Life Support).

- Going Green -- a massive eco-friendly movement is sweeping the galaxy -- citizens of all races are clamoring for more environmentally responsible goods, and the changeover in R&D and manufacturing drop social output 20% one year, and 10% the next. After the 2 year period is over, all planets receive a +2 planet quality. Could also just happen to one civilization, but maybe that would only happen on certain planets so the civ wouldn't be crippled.

- Think someone mentioned your little AI bot guy doing something . . . along those lines, just for humor, what if your AI bot takes five random techs and defects to the Yor? Or better yet, replaces the Yor leader on the diplomat screen?

OTHERS
- Love the idea of a Hero unit that affects nearby ships -- and maybe planet quality, if the hero ship is docked there. Could try doing it like Espionage, giving a civ the opportunity to raise heroes . . . or make it an emergent property of #/enemy ships destroyed.

- Mining Anomaly -- after mining stations have been upgraded a certain amount they can also turn up Precursor vessels or the general early-game anomalies -- provides some extra incentive to upgrade Space Mining.

*

I definitely like any ideas that require a non-standard addition to the tech tree in order to compensate.

Thinking of these ideas is more fun than working. Maybe I'll post more tomorrow. Thanks for the great game Frogboy/et. al. -- has the most replay value of any game I've ever owned. Looking forward to playing v1.6!

I notice a lot of ideas do deal with the addition to the tech tree. While the plague event was ok, i don't think this should be the result of other Megaevents. It really just becomes an exercise, for a turn or two you switch your research to this new tech, maybe even adjuat the sliders and you're done. i guess the problem i have with it is the inability of the AI to react as efficiently as a human player. So any event dealing with a must-have new tech will be a plus for a human. The one time i did get the plague event i had the required cure in about two turns. There were some AI players that had virtually no population left and still didnt do the research.

I may have said this before, but i'd rather not have Megaevents that practically turn sandbox mode into a campain.

What are the chances of megaevents happening at the same time? i know there's usually a long time between them but i was just curious. Wouldn't it be cool to see the pirates show up after the peacekeepers are around?

One idea I saw bounced around a while back was that survey ships could monitor planets or stars and use that information to help your race. This could lead to all sorts of new things going on; there could be some sort of event where survey ships can look at uninhabited planets and get bonuses from those planets. Conversely, if a survey ship monitors a habitable (but unclaimed) planet, it could slowly grow in potential, but can be claimed at any time.

Hello everybody,

I read through all the posts, and ended up signing up for an account here just to share this idea, i hope it is liked.


simply: some scientist, (or other believable entity with it's own motivations) finds a way to stop hyperspace travel. The scientist builds up his/her network of dampening fields along all the boarders between controlled spaces of the civilizations. Then shuts down all space travel for all civilizations.

The scientist demands cash payments from each civilization. Promising when any nation pays off his/her demand that civilizations's space will be opened up for travel once again.

But, the scientist understands that weak nations don't have very much money, and strong nations should have more, so the scientists's cash demands are relative to the military strength of each nation.

The desired effect of the mega event would be that:

Week nations would be travel paralyzed for 3~5 weeks, and uber-strong races for 15+(balanced, perhaps 10-15) (to achieve this cash payment would be something like (Military strength)^2, times some constant)

Weak races which were being picked on would have upwards for 10 turns to develop, reinforces and clean enemy craft from their space, while stronger nations would be paralyzed.

The payment method would have to prevent ship construction or the big nation would just a-mass a huge army pay of its dues and attack, so i would suggest that Military spending on each colony would be put directly to paying off the debt. as well as a cash settlement option.



The goal is a small galactic re-balancing, Large aggressive nations find themselves essentially 10 weeks behind the smaller nations they were attacking.



more devastating versions of this mega event would also damage research effectiveness, claiming that the usual scientific conferences, meetings, and gatherings can not occur without space travel so production of research is halved till travel is re-instated.



well, I hope that was worth signing up for. best wishes all.

How about:


1. An emergency UFP vote is called. All agree that the UFP needs a president. A vote for who the president is carried out by normal influence, with the condition that the top 3 most powerful civs can't be the President. The president then has the special power of deciding exactly what law is voted on at the next meeting, and can veto any law that wins by a small minority.
The President is president for the entire game, or until this event pops up again.

2. Tone down the Pirates event, by giving less ships overall, but the ships given come from actual civs, mainly. Give the pirates a secret homeworld that has to be discovered and conquered in order to end the pirate attacks and desertions.

3. Give the Dreadlords one fighter as an escort, to avoid them being nipped in the bud.

4. One alliance at random results in an actual merger of the two civs into one civ, getting all the techs and planets that each had after a month of planet inactivity (no production/research). The player always benefits from this if their civ is picked. Preferably this would be weighed so the alliance chosen should be the weakest one in the game.

How about this one:

MEGA EVENT: Those Who Go Before

One minor race suddenly vanishes off the face of the map, and their homeworld turns into a PQ 26 world. The player later recieves an emissary appearing as a being of pure light, speaking incoherently about something they call "That Which Lies Beyond Mortality," and is penalized or rewarded based on their relationship with that minor race. Examples of results could be:

Ally: the player immediately gets the Greater Knowledge (or whatever it's called, the one beyond Discovery Spheres) technology, putting them on the path to transcendence themselves (although, without Discovery Spheres, it's going to take a LONG time to research up to Technological Victory.

Close: the player recieves a packet of encrypted data from the former minor race, doubling their research rate for six months before they exhaust its secrets.

Friendly: 1.5x research for six months.

Warm: the player recieves a +1 PQ bonus to their richest world.

Neutral: the player gets a nice note and a couple of hundred bc.

Cool: The player gets a polite goodbye note with 1 bc.

Wary: The player gets a wedgie and loses some influence and approval because he got pranked by a noncorporeal entity.

Hostile: The entity uses its supernatural powers to kick every single male of the player's species in the genitals. Approval is halved for six months, and population growth is also halved.

At War: Not only does the entity kick every single male of the player's species in the genitals, it does so with such force that most of them die. Population falls precipitously for three months (so much so that many planets are dropped to 0 population), and population growth is halved for another year.

Mega events:
Flood. Planet turns to aquatic and anything build to it is destroyed.

Nuclear accident. Planet turns to radioactive and anything build to it is destroyed.

Something that turns planet to Barren, like giant sandstorm

Massive meteor hit the planet and increase it's mass or some alien artefact does that. More mass->more gravity