I'm all for them as long as they are optional elements of the game. It would also be nice to trigger them during game play from time to time with unknown results prior to triggering however.

I'd like a settings tab with at least three tiers.

No events.  For the hardcore balance freak, MP ladder nuts, people that absolutely hate luck, that sort of thing.

Minor events.  For those of us that don't like receiving a ranger when everyone has basic shield tech.  Yeah, you know what I'm talking about you damned Arnorians.  All the entertainment of the events with none of the cataclysmic effects.  Someone reveals a location here, you find a rebel unit there, but no dragons offer their services out of the blue in return for first pick of the corpses.

All events.  Self explanatory.  Every now and then, a volcano decides the prime real estate of the capital is a great place to live.  I enjoy this style occasionally, but ranger wins and losses in GC2 are fairly irritating.  The +10 planet quality radial boost, I loath beyond description.  When it turns the entire bloody map of 50+ desolate rocks into prime real estate, ruining my small game halfway through.

yeah, I don't know what happened there.  I guess I just got to excited about the unbalanced spells and my brain 'filled in the blanks' when I read your post.

I really like psycloak's tier idea.  I'm all about the options that aren't hard to do, and really it would be pretty easy to have events orginized into tiers rather than 'no events' and 'events'.  Have maybe  -  'tournement events' that are only very super minor events that maybe could even help force balancing (if somebody steals all the good resources early game, then maybe the 'discovered mine of gold' or 'arranged marraige that puts this neutral city now under your control'  events would trigger to help ensure at least the game was balanced for sure early on.  - Then minor events like psycloak suggested, 'fat dwarf king gives you gold because he's nice' or 'pirates raid a town, you lose some gold, but your unit there gains some experiance because he fought them off."  - major events where events would be rare, but everytime they happened it really effects the game, so only those unbalancing events, and lastly - all events!    I mean, I'd love to give feedback on that kind of thing in the beta.  

With such a supportive beta community I don't see why we (the fans) couldn't help do that kind of thing with SD (I mean they'd have to program it of course) but we could possibly make a thread of all the events found in the game once we have them and orginize them into  the different sets once we actually see them.

I imagine the game unbalancing events are like 'your town pissed off a god, now all your first born children turn to frogs' > MASSIVE population hit to a town.   or possible 'great rains come and the world floods.   Sucks to be you (except the guy with the random floating island)'  or maybe something along the heaven vs. hell great fights where deamons and angels flood the world(s) of elemental in a fight between neutral factions (suggested in another thread, but I don't remember which).

which reminds me... why isn't there already a 'random events idea' thread?

I think something like this would be really cool.  Or several that each attack different players.  Gates of the underworld opens up and demons come out is an option.    Some events may be unbalancing and this would be it.   I can see how a monster appearing back behind your front lines would be a problem unless other players face the problem as well.

Actually, now that I think about it, a single monster could still work without being to stupid broken.  I guess some sort of world destroyer like cthulhu that would teleport around the map and slowly walk towards wizard capitals (he'd have to walk slowly or stop to ruin the land or something to give time for armies to come to stop him).  After a certain amount of damage is delt with him (something fair for an army charging I guess based on the amount of time the game's been active, obviously early game can't compete with the fire power of near end-game monster) He'd decide this meal wasn't worth it and he'd teleport somewhere else in the world and attack another channeler.   Eventually he will either get a channeler and feast on their power (or whatever he wants.  I imagine cathulhu wanting wizard brains or essence or something.  Some beast may just want a nice populous city to munch, or maybe a magic node to steal? crystal, whatever) or decide he's been beaten up so much there must be a better, less troublesome, world to ravage and he could go there instead.

Its still a bit unbalancing since the first wizard hit will have to scramble to drop what he's doing and take out the beast, at which point other wizards could take advantage (the moment guys leave the front lines to fight a huge monster, other guys cold do a quick push to capture a few cities while bolstering forces back home to prepare as well, but they too would need to be preparing as well, so it wouldn't be just stupid.)

Hate 'em. Thankfully GC2 let you turn them off.

How the AI responds to mega events is important, too.

If a huge, pissed-off dragon spawns between several kingdoms, will the AI awknowledge the threat, put aside differences, and help you take it down? Or will the player be forced to deal with such threats by himself? If aliens invaded earth, don't you think we'd all team up to fight them (I hope so)?

You wish! YOUR sort will be the first against the wall!

I want lots of crazy things to happen from day 1, but that's just me.

In the end, I want all kinds of stuff to happen. Both small turn-based events (as in Dominions 3), random locations and such (as in GalCiv2), to other events (for example, building a new city (like colonizing a planet in GalCiv2), or truly major superevents (some triggered by a number of things, others completely random).

Edit: There are some that infuriate me, thought. As an example, getting an extra city in Civ3; Not to be confused with getting an extra settler. Suddently, without you having a say in the matter, there's a spontaneous city in the middle of nowhere, that may break your intended pattern of cities. I realise that a lot of events may have a greater effect, but this is basicly an implementation matter. For example, an extra settler achives basicly the same thing, but without being annoying as hell.

I was more specifically referring to people who collaborate with aliens.. aliens are very fickle! However now you mention it!

I had just assumed this would be on offer, I certainly hope it is I mean with SD's promise to vet everything for quality I love the idea of being able to download a pack of canon faithful high quality random happenings that can occur in a game I play 5 months after launch or whatever. Would be a great way of keeping the game from ever getting stale (along with all the exciting potential modded units/races etc too) having events occuring that i've never encountered before every time I play for as long as I want to keep coming back to the game.

I like random events. Random events are good.

I want there to be a slider for the chance of a random event happening per turn. Minimum would be zero, maximum would be 5% or so. The slider will go in jumps of 0.5%.

Ideas for random events:

A) Quests (like in civ4). All players get the quest, the first to coplete it get the prize.

  1) 'First player to build 12 forges gets the prize'.

  2) 'Slay the Dragon (and loot his horde)'

B') Political decisions.

  1) 'Your settlers have encountered a tribe of natives what shall we do with them?', where you need to choose a course of action, like 'enslave them'/'slaughter them'/'assimilate them'/leave them alone'. These kinds of events should have consequences, forcing the player to choose between short term bonus to long term bonus.

C) Map changes.

  1) Large map area is being changed plains-->grassland or hills-->mountains.

  2) Discovered a new resource.

D) Complex. Here's an example I would kill to see implemented.

'A scout barges into your throne room. He informs you the the great blue dragon Cakhol'amok has been sighted near the hamlet of Mulenheim. What are your orders Your Excellency?'

Options available: 1) 'Send the troops and dispose of this vile reptile' 2) 'Send a cart with {specify amount} of gold to the wyrm' 3) 'Send a messanger to the creature, and invite him here to see me'. 

If chosen option 1, you get an Elder Blue Dragon near one of your hamlets.

If chosen option 2, depands on the amount you sent, he will either accept the tribute or attack you.

If chosen option 3, depands on the streangh of your empire, the dragon might actualy come peacefuly. You can then negotiate with him for his services/protection.

is that before or after the sword of the coast expansion?  I felt that (at least in the fully expanded version) they had plenty of bizzar random events like finding whatever (it changes a lot) and being able to choose if you are going to turn this into an advantage or sacrifice something to make it an even greater advantage.

Maybe they will let us write up our own random events, or include additional random events in those updates.  I mean, honestly if elemental v. 1.2 > 1.3 changes included adding 10 extra random events that would be a nice treat for those who purchased through impulse.

I like the 'random' events in GalCiv 2 too, when you found a colony how often you'd find something that wasn't noticed on 1st sweep like a hidden pirate base or a strange gas.   I feel it happened maybe almost too often in GalCiv 2, but they were fun when I had to pick.  I often felt bad when I kept picking the mean responces even though I wanted to be a nice guy.  They were just so often the best idea, and were not always so bad (I mean, no worse then I feel focing children to attend public schools are anyway, you know.... exposing to brain pods at the sacrifice of some pain or something.  Its for the 'greater good' in the end.)