Epic Ideas

I like them.  It would also be cool if failure on an Epic quest by any player AI or Human leads to these.

Assassination of a Foreign Dignitary

At a banquet held in your honor, one of your allies' ambassadors was stabbed with a tradition Dagger of Vengeance. The dagger was marked with your clan's symbol. This act has enraged their Sovereign. The assassin was your nephew Lafayette, though why he did it is not clear. It matters not. The bells have been rung and the castles stocked.  Prepare for the ravages of war!

Not going to read these, just in case something similar is added.  But I assume these fit under the "random events" category.  Which, quite frankly, I know will be in the game but not sure the current status of.

We are essentially think of random events to be added. Mine is straight out of GalCiv2 if anyone noticed. 

I did, it's a great one if done right.  They'd have to pick a faction with enough power that you wouldn't want to piss them off otherwise, or one that you regularly traded with.

Earthquake

An earthquake has ripped across the continent. It seems to have stirred spiders up from every crack and shaded spot. Groups of spiders are randomly placed across the land.

Knight of honor

A champion knight joins you to regain the honor lost in a battle agains mites

100-Year Flood

All tiles within (x) spaces of water are flooded for (y) number of turns.  Cities in the affected area lose all production/mana/gold for the duration.  Non-stationed units (including monsters) are pushed inland, taking damage for each tile moved.  Any construction (improvements, shards, outposts) is destroyed.

Ice Age: Several locations become snow terrain and arctic monster lairs spawn.

Lost Isle: A ancient island long lost to history rises from the ocean.

Earthquake: Several areas of flat  terrain becomes mountains and other mountains become flat terrain. Monsters rise from the depth of the earth and random improvements are destroyed in all cities.

Woken Dragon: A Cumbercoil dragon spawns and wanders the world.

Treasures of Heaven: A comet crashes to the earth. Be the first to the crater in order to secure it for yourself. 

Age of Fangs: A powerful Beast Lord spawns. Tougher and tougher beasts spawn everywhere until he is destroyed.

Father of Storms: A powerful hurricane ravages the world. All units take 50% damage and are randomly teleported within 15 squares. Air elementals spawn around the world.

Drought: Food production is reduced by 25% for 50 turns. Random areas turn to desert.

Flood: Production is reduced by 25% for 50 turns. Random areas turn to swamp.

Earthquake should unearth shards as well!

That could be its own event.

Crystal Shift: All shard resources are destroyed. An equal number of new shards spawn around the map randomly.

And lost it will be since there is no boats. "Raise land" + LoS needed to deal with it

It would spawn close to land....

or rather just enough raise land spam

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

seanw, have you tried modding in events?  Are they even moddable?  I'd be interested in helping if you wanted to try.

Well I'm not Seanw but I have looked at the event XML and you can mod them in. You can spawn monsters and apply spell effects from what I have seen. All the events I have suggested above where stuff I thought would be possible to add in via modding, although I am not 100% sure of the details.

I have made a few events. The biggest detractor though is that you cannot spawn a goodie hut from a random event. That means every event has to add a basic game modifier to the game. The trigger for random events is always a population trigger. Right now each time your nation reaches 100 population, the event has a chance to trigger. I don't think we can actually spawn any resources or anything like that until the event system gets some polish. But alot can still be done with what we have.

The Black Plague:

A massive plague spreads across the lands, reducing all population by 60% and killing all units. 

Or Freeze Sea... Which is a water version of Raise Land I have been asking for and recently noticed art assets for. Although it hasn't been implemented yet. Frogboy has mentioned adding Islands and none boat ways to get to them. Hopefully this is a start.

When it comes to the war causing events I would prefer something more then just forcing you into war. How about granting everyone a piece of a super artifact and if you collect all of them or just more then half you get a huge boost. That way people are fighting for something not just artificially entering a different state.

Say a creepy old wizard gives every Sovereign a piece of the Crown of Blood. They soon become obsessed with collecting the other parts and paranoid about everyone coming after their piece. Thus savage no holds barred war breaks out until someone collects over half the pieces and completes the crown and gains the use of it's powers.

Cool, thank both of you   that's good to know.  I might try to mess around with one.

They can't add goodie huts though?  There's that new store-buyable scroll that spawns quest locations (which I love), maybe it's there now?  Or are quest sites significantly distinctive from goodie huts? 

that would be a cool spell

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

There is code to tell the game to spawn a goodie hut. It is used in many quests. Events use a different trigger though and this trigger is bugged. That is why we can't spawn goodie huts from events. Most every quest you see will use the spawn goodie hut function, that is when you have a tile to go to during a quest. 

What that nice little item-quest thing does is allow one quest to connect to a new one. I am rather secretly working on a quest series that uses this little gem. In the style of the American author Hawthorne, I will tell no one until it is complete and then burn most of the copies once it is released. 

I smell bluffing going on...

Sincerely
~ Kongdej

I will release some sample quests as soon as they are finished. Much like Klingons, I don't bluff. 

Plague of Frogs - a rampaging hoard of Stardock CEOs devastate the land