Getting disasters to work

[SigniferOne]

I'm having a great deal of trouble getting disasters to occur. Literally none of the events I've tried -- flood, volcano, earthquake -- really fire, after 20-30 turns going by. The closest I've gotten is have the volcano sometimes issue puffs of smoke during the Rebels' turn, and begin to issue lava, but return to normal texture as soon as my turn begins. It returns to regular texture every single time, without fail, as soon as it hits my turn (so the eruption happens for half a second).

Any ideas on why all this might be? Is there some "no disasters" switch that can be turned off somewhere?

[Gigantus]

In my experience disasters only 'play out' if they happen in a region of the player. If they happen in a region of the AI you get the message, but you don't get the animation most of the time as by the time the event plays out (is finished) the players turn hasn't started.

[Withwnar]

In my experience disasters only 'play out' if they happen in a region of the player.

With campaign script generated ones I think it comes down to tile visibility.

TATW does this in CS...

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
  and I_NumberOfSettlements england < 1
      
  add_events
  event volcano mordor_destroyed
  date 0
  position 287, 134
  end_add_events
    
terminate_monitor
end_monitor

...with a MORDOR_DESTROYED entry in historic_events.txt. When Mordor (england) loses their last region the Mt Doom volcano erupts and you see this custom historic events message.

If I add this monitor before that one...

monitor_event FactionTurnStart FactionIsLocal
  ;give all Mordor regions to Gondor
  give_everything_to_faction england sicily false  
end_monitor

...then I see this at campaign start:

• message and eruption when playing Gondor
• FOW off: message and eruption when playing any other faction
• FOW on: no message and no eruption when playing any other faction. Even when I then turn FOW off the volcano is idle; no smoke, lava, etc.

In the first case Gondor can see the volcano from its now-owned nearby settlements.

Whether this all happens the same way for scripted events I don't know.

[SigniferOne]

Hmm if that's the case, then in my OP, the region with the Volcano was owned by the Rebels, so when it came time for their turn, I saw the flowing of lava for 0.5sec, and then it disappeared when my turn started. It's possible that it was fo the Rebels faction to see, and ended when their turn ended.

But I still didn't get any notification? My "warning" was set to false btw, because Disasters tutorials say that having it on true disables Volcanoes.

Secondly, the Voclano was just one disaster I tried. I tried to set a flood on my own city, but nothing. Nor did an earthquake happen. Hmmm...

[Gigantus]

I haven't been very successful doing it via the script for any of the disasters, not sure if the 'regular' (historic event file) way is any more successful. The flood creates noise but no animation via script, the storm one is a fickle one too.

[Voice of Treason]

...remember, the frequency is listed as years, not turns...and to change the seasons to all false etc to increase the chance of occuring...
...(if I rememeber correctly) you can also delete any region or climate line (apart from volcano which is map restricted)...
...I dont think Horde/locust/dustbowl are in game?...I've never gotten them to occur...
...Though you can increase the magnitude, it seems you can't really increase the lethality (except by continously spreading plague of course)...
...also, i am not sure whether some events are only specific to you, Volcano being the main one, (apart for core scripted)..they never erupted until i conquered Sicily/Italy...
...If you increase min max of storm/ earthquake to say 40/50...the storm will do decent damage to agents and armies underneath, eg kill 3 priests and your army of 1986 soldiers if increased enough (remove location to occur over land)...
...a flood, not sure but i think it might mainly effect your faction?, and I've never really seen it do much damage beyond destroy buildings in one of your towns (see old pic) except once, when 2 sieging enemy armies seemed to disappear, but that was the only time...and it seems you can still move through it,build forts/towers over the flooded land after...
...If you increase the earthquake magnitude, it will cause huge ripples over the continent, but again only seems to do minor damage to your own faction, nothing of Extinction Level Event unless you're supposes to whack the min/max up to a 1000 or something?...but your map would flip off your monitor...
...this is all I remember from my experiments a while ago...

...Edit, a min/max scale of 40/50 was just overkill to witness it occur/effects ingame, you probably wouldn't keep that for your campaign...
...I also think you could edit min max stats midgame?...so you could play around with the variables to test...

[irishron]

I have noticed one thing in the descr_events.txt concenering earthquakes.

The first one at Aleppo is announced global. The one at Iconium and two at Alexandria don't show unless the player is there.