Heh, here's some information for you Event writers out there

from Stardock Forums
Just figured out that you can not set a Good Option for a Colonial event to have a positive % effect.

In other words, even if you set the seed value to +10%, GalCiv gives you a negative percent in-game.

I don't know if this holds true for Random events too, as they are much harder to troubleshoot.

Also, the PopChange values appear to be bugged, putting it to zero works fine and as advertised, no effect. However, putting in anything other than zero definitely does not work as advertised.

There's no real pattern to it (other than you don't get the number you want). Seems there's enough randomization involved to cloud the issue. But here are my test results:
Less than 100 M, no effect
100 M = 2 M
150 M = 4 M
200 M = 4 M or 5 M
300 M = 7 M
5000 M = 125 M
6000 M = 136 M
7000 M = 155 M

I didn't test much further than that.

So it looks like if you want a significant PopChange, you have to go really big. 'Course, if StarDock fixes this bug, your event is going to be really out of whack.

Once again, this might only be for Colonial events, Random events happen at (duh) random times so consequently don't lend themselves to vigorous testing.

Of course, I might be hallucinating. Anyone disagree with my results?
1,974 views 12 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock Forums Top
Is it not possible to test Random Events by moving CoreEvents.EVENT to another directory, so that only Test.EVENT (where Test.EVENT contains the event you want to test) is in the Data directory? Particularly if there is a way to increase the probability of a Random Event occurring?

End transmission.

~SDC~
Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top
What about events that remove population?

~SDC~
Elemental: Reforged
Reply #3 from Stardock Forums Top
Actually you can do this by just changing the GoodOptStr01 to 9 instead of 11, and vice versa. I think I can get it to work for positive values but negative values for the evil option always go positive. This may be entirely different for random events as they are harder to test.

To sum up, 11 always generates negative numbers, 10 is either totally random or it's set by whatever number(negative/positive) you give it and then randomizes the number, and of course 9 always gives positive numbers. And you can put these in any of the Good/Neutral/Evil OptStr's. Not sure if it has any wierd effects though.. So very confusing.. :notsure:

I don't think I had the population wierdness you were having Hawaii.. I'm pretty sure it took away a billion people when I put -1000. I'd have to play with this more to be sure though.

I've also noticed that percentages are only used on colonization events and NOT random events..although you can use them I don't know if it has any effect or not. Also, colonization events ONLY use bonuses and never penaltys. For example, a colonization event may have "%s%% Research bonus" and a random event might say "%s Research penalty". Even if the "Research bonus" is really a penalty. Why the difference with the percentages and words? Do they even matter? Could I put something like "Technology Ability Raised By %s"? Just some observations I made while looking at the CoreEvents.EVENT file..
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top
And I think I messed up when testing the negative values for the evil option. I used the RANDOM events for the colonzation events and I only looked at the abilities screen..So yea..I'm an idiot..It SHOULD work both ways. :)
Reply #5 from Stardock Forums Top
Ugh, and I suppose if you enter a negative number it gives you a negative bonus as well? So I guess it's not as simple as they subtracted the seed value from the effect instead of adding to it? It works as if they took the absoulte seed value (randomized, of course) and subtracted it from the effect?

Bill

~SDC~
Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top
Captain Bizarre: I routinely only feed GalCiv the event I want to test by removing all events but the one I want. The problem with Random events is there's no way to trigger them. You could play 50 turns and never see one. Controlled testing under these circumstances is impossible.

Phaedyme: Events that remove population are bugged in the exact same way.

Nephrinn:
a) Hmmm... interesting what you say about the OptStrings being the root cause. I will have to play with that. I'll post the results of my tests tonight.
b) I'd be interested to see your results of PopChanges, if they don't match mine. I loaded up literally dozens of colony ships to even numbers (10500, 5000, 4500, etc.) so any change would be obvious, and dropped them off on planets to trigger Colonial events. The resulting PopChange was always very very tiny compared to the expected PopChange. But maybe there's something specific to my machine that's causing these results. I'd be interested to see what results others get.
c) I don't understand what you mean by "I've also noticed that percentages are only used on colonization events and NOT random events". I'm pretty sure they do. Could you elaborate?
d) Yes, the words you type in have no effect on the event itself. Its the effects you set that matter. So it is very easy to mess up and type Research when you mean Economic and confuse the heck out of the player.

Bill Ko: Roger that. For Good, Positive = Negative. Negative = Negative. Have to test Neprinn's theory that it's the OptString that matters, and not the GoodValue.
Reply #7 from Stardock Forums Top
"c) I don't understand what you mean by "I've also noticed that percentages are only used on colonization events and NOT random events". I'm pretty sure they do. Could you elaborate?"

Well just by observing the CoreEvents.EVENT file, all colonization events are applied with a percentage attached, while random events do not. For example "%s%% Research bonus" would be in the game "20% Research bonus" while as a random event no percentage is attached, so it's just "%s Research bonus" and "20 Research bonus" in game. I'm guessing that the percentages are only for show, and not for example, applying a percentage instead of a a true positive/negative number..
Reply #8 from Stardock Forums Top
Yes, but they affect the civ attributes. Which are all percentages (save Speed and Trade Routes) , as viewed from the Domestic Policy screen.

Whoever wrote those events just wrote them a little differently, that's all, I believe.
Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top
OK, did some more testing, and GoodOption is definitely bugged and will always yield a negative number.

What I believe Nephrinn is describing is that you can put in 9 for the GoodOptStr, but what it displays is the randomized EVIL value, not the randomized GOOD value. Drop into Planet Details after running an event configured like this and you'll see what I mean. The negative GOOD amount is applied, regardless of what shows up in the Option text in-game.

Essentially, the Option text has *no* bearing on the outcome of the Option. You could type in "Gain 1 Trillion people, +2% Research Bonus", but the game would ignore this. The result of the option is governed by the Good/Neutral/EvilOption values, and PopChange.

So it looks like GoodOption and PopChange is definitely bugged. Hopefully Stardock will see this and put it on the list of things to fix.
Reply #10 from Stardock Forums Top
post it in the bug report section

i noticed this too just recently..though i think it is
only for colonial events and not random events

Doug
Reply #11 from Stardock Forums Top
And I just figured out that not only can you not have a positive effect for Good, you can't have a negative effect for Evil!

Looks like GoodOption will always yield a negative number.
NeutralOption can go either way.
And EvilOption will always yield a positive number.

Hopefully it won't be too difficult for Stardock to remove this hard coding and allow a little more flexibility for us Event writers.

~SDC~