Ideas for what I'm talking about here (some 4x games have these, some don't, but I really like them, or at least the option to enable them):



Magic accidentally summons a portal to hell, a demon city is founded on the location. A new demon AI player is added to the game and is fully functional. Can conquer cities, can win the game, it's a new player. RIDICULOUSLY powerful, about the strength of 3+ people. An alliance would be completely required to stop them, or at least a super strong mega player. Completely alters the game by adding a new mega player that must be stopped ASAP. All wars must cease, game looks completely different.



Undead lords rise from their graves. Much akin to the above, except they start out fairly weak and just gradually start raising undead. Not as powerful as the demons (or even close to their strength) but a much more common event. The draw here is that if they take a city or win a battle they get a new undead horde to add to them. Can snowball up. Not powerful enough to warrant completely stopping wars to deal with them, but if lucky or unchecked will become a large threat.



Pact with the devil. Get a demon army for 50 turns, but at the end of those 50 turns the army is reinforced (or remade) and comes back at the player who summoned them with renewed strength. Maybe it happens for the player whether he wants it or not.



Mages decide your fragrant disregard for the dangers of magic must end. An anti-mage army is spawned to attack you unless you forsake or significantly reduce your magic use.



One of your cities rebels. It becomes a new player. A new playable AI (well, playable if you loaded the save or dropped in anyway.) It can be allied with, it can be reconquered, enemies can save it from your grip. The catch here is each rebellion race has slight differences between the master race. For example, the rebellion vampires don't bleed their subjects to death but rather only take enough to make due (with of course their own drawbacks for doing such.)



Anyway I could go on. Point is I want things to happen that just make the game ... different. Things happen that ARE NOT according to plan. Plans are fun, but chaos is where the real fun (especially in multiplayer) shows up. Obviously with an option to disable the uh...lets call them "chaotic events," but the option to have them would be great. If you ever played multiwinia the evilwinians were one of my favorite things to happen because it just changes the game drastically. Rogue AI in Sword of the Stars made the game so much different. In Civ3 a player having cities rebelling that eventually went on to win the game was just one of those surprising twists that made it more fun. Suddenly there's a bigger fish in the game and the entire political environment changes. For those of you saying "oh that's totally not cool" well imagine how it worked in real life. The Crusades, the Jihads, the invasion of Spain, the Mongols (this is the big one.) Think about how the Native Americans felt when suddenly Europeans started to land on their shores. Think about how the Greeks felt when these young upstart Romans were conquering areas.



It just, to me, makes the game more interesting. You could definitely use player score to determine likelyhood for these events happening, with the bottom half immune to negative events to keep a semblance of fairness in the game.



Yes ES had events, but it didn't have completely catastrophic events.

The majority of the events you mentioned don't have any where to put an option. I was always a fan of how you could choose different options to get different effects from an event. Also demonic magic Penguins. They should be a thing.

i disagree with you on the catastrophic events for es though, i just started a new game on disharmony and quite a few cataclysmic events happened. there was a massive money laundering scheme, a mad scientist that ruined my industry, and finally a galactic plague that killed 3 population per turn for 6 turns. im sure there could be more catastrophic events but there are still some in the game.

The first suggestion about the demon lord appearing and becomes a player. What happens if you are already got 8 factions in game and then this ninth one appears I do not think the system would cope with that. The other way if it powerful as 3+ people what happens if you player 1 v 1 you would not get enough of alliance to be able to take it on.



ES events were much about timing and deciding on an action it might put you at disadvantage but doing so might give an advantage to your allies. Some of them getting them early game can make the game really hard. Ie sacrifice you highest level hero. If he you administrator then that could be a series blow to your game.



DarkMeph

that is pretty harsh, that kind of event must help harmony quite a lot

the disharmony events are actually pretty awesome, they really added a bit of complexity to the game. Natural disasters, famine, drought, and other issues like what used to affect lords of the realm 2 would be great. Also random mercenaries and whatnot would be kinda cool to hire on to help if you have the funds, but also have it so that some may go bandit in your territory if they are not paid off.

Cyphs wrote:
the disharmony events are actually pretty awesome, they really added a bit of complexity to the game. Natural disasters, famine, drought, and other issues like what used to affect lords of the realm 2 would be great. Also random mercenaries and whatnot would be kinda cool to hire on to help if you have the funds, but also have it so that some may go bandit in your territory if they are not paid off.

This, pretty much. I just hoped they could be a bigger part of the game if you so chose. In Disharmony you're looking at maybe 2-3 at best of the big (read: BIG) choices, and even then they're not thaaaaat big. I just like a little choice and chaos effecting the game.

i think it would be nice if pirates had a bigger presence in the late game.