Game changing random events!?!?!

To give scale, a Mega event would be...each of your planets now have 3 spies on them, or 1/4 of your empire decided to split from you, the new max speed in the game is 5 parsecs, uber-pirates now infest the galaxy (each ship equal to one of those rangers you mentioned)...

Those are what makes them Mega and the two you mentioned, normal. So just be glad that you did have mega events turned off....those REALLY toss the scales in the air.

I've never found much use for those ranger ships. Just too darn slow.

Perhaps in a game with the Yor in majority control of the galaxy...

I also found the rangers far from indestructible. Usually my opponents find one - it's just a matter of a concentrated effort to avoid and later destroy that ship. The AI may not be able to deal with that situation properly, though.

Well, you do have mega events turned off, which saves you from the inevitable "turn off mega events" answer.

So, with that being said lets move to automated response #2. Reload a previous autosave.

Don't like an event because you feel its too powerful or skewed? Reload a previous autosave.

Go into options and change the autosave feature to something like 2 or 3 turns. That way when something happens you dont like, you only lose a turn or 2. Also helps if the game crashes.

Personally, I actually enjoy those balance-tipping random events. They make the game less predictable, and therefore force me to adapt, instead of just unwinding a carefully planned "winning strategy" again and again. I also don't think that random events are "magic", imho they actually make the game more realistic. In real warfare, you will *always* have unforseen events on a grand scale. Developing a strategy that is flexible enough to cope with such events is one of the great challenges of strategic thinking.

Regarding the events you mention, I found that their actual effect is less than it seems. The Ranger is a powerful ship, but it's really just one (slow) vessel, so an otherwise stronger opponent can still wreck half your empire while you are trying to decide at which of the half-a-dozen battle grounds your one invincible ship would be needed. The other event, while it certainly *sounds* dramatic, never had much of an impact in my games.

Anyway, if you don't like these random events, it should be possible to mod them out. Ask in the modding forums, I'm sure someone there can provide with the necessary information.

Side note: You should have played the first release of GalCiv 1. It featured events like giving a random civ 40+ corvettes in the early game - as player, you could really feel like single man in a dinghy, powerlesly being at the mercy of the tide of random events, which could throw you in any direction.

Was backlash against this kind of thing part of the reason why normal events were reined *FAR* in in power, and mega events were made an option? I only came into GC2 toward the end of DA, a few months before TA came out, so I'm interested in the history of the game. Sometimes, it's just nice to know where a game's developers have come from, so you can get a better idea where they're going.

Ugh, I had that happen about 4 hours into an "Immense galaxy" game *sad face*

So it sounds like a good game start option would be to also allow turning regular events off. No harm to those who like them, and for those of us who want a more predictable game against the AI we don't have to keep reverting to save games from before the event.

Umm, this was in 2003, so my memory is a bit fuzzy. AFAIR, there *was* some criticism about random events being too strong, which got acknowledged by Frogboy, and then the random events were toned down pretty quickly. Or at least the devs limited some very powerful events to the later game stages, so that they wouldn't totally ofset the balance. I can't tell whether this had an effect on the design of GalCiv 2, you'll have to ask the devs for that.

Yep. Before I wrote my first post in this thread, I actually checked the game options, because I somehow expected such an option to be there, like in most modern strategy games that sport random events. I was a bit surprised that it isn't, although personally not bothered, since I wouldn't use it anyway.

But yes, generally it's a good idea to include such a option. There are gamers who like the unpredictability and the need to adapt that random events add to a game, and there are gamers who enjoy developing an intricate strategy, and then implementing it on a more predictable game. Making such events an option is an easy way to give both groups what they want.