I had my events setting on a random island set to rarely, so I figured I'd be pretty safe. Boy was I wrong. I think it couldn't have been later than the end of the first year when a hurricane struck my little island.

It wiped out somewhere between 4 and 6 buildings and the relief check came in but only covered like half of the buildings if that.

Seriously, Hurricanes just suck big time. I think that is likely to be the last time that I play with events turned on at all.

Surprisingly, the Palace, which is the tallest building on the island and thus prone to the most gale force winds did manage to survive without any damage.

I do now have to wonder what other "events" might be in the game that I might want to have come up and that by turning off events I'll never see them.

However this could have been a lot worse, it could have been very late in the game to the point where I would not be able to notice which buildings were destroyed by the hurricane, since the destroyed buildings don't leave any rubble behind to indicate what the building was. In stead I am told on a piece of parchment how many of each building was destroyed and how much relief funds have been sent to me.

It would be great if when a building is knocked down by a hurricane that it leaves rubble in it's place that when moused over tells me what building it was so that I can replace it.

When I place a building on my map I do so for a purpose, either to provide something for my island or to make things look right. I rarely if ever slap down a building just to place a building. So you have to figure that I pretty much want to replace a destroyed building with the exact same building to keep things all nicely balanced and running properly. So leaving a swatch of rubble with an mouseover telling me what building it was would have been really really a nice finishing touch.

See Post #5: http://forum.kalypsomedia.com/showthread...8#pid21548

I would also like to see rubble. Had an earthquake and well some buildings just dissaperd....

Yeah it sucks when you can't see what got destroyed. I really hate the llama flu. If that happens in the beginning of the game it can ruin the economy becuase no one will come to your island during the llama flu. With out new people coming to the island its very hard to grow the economy.

Took me 15 minutes to find the apartment building that I recently lost...really lame.

Just so that people understand. When I said, that hurricanes suck big time, what I meant was it sucks to have one visit my island, not that the feature in the game sucks.

But I still stand by that there really should be rubble left behind to let me easily find the building and a tooltip popup telling me what the building was.

It would so suck having a tenement knocked down and having all those people go shacking on me until I could find where it was and have it rebuilt. That llama flu doesn't sound like much fun either, however that would at least make for a nice financial challenge if the economy starts tanking due to lack of immigrants and workers.

Disasters are a part of life and a good gameplay feature that I am sure will be used much more once people have played through a couple of times.

I like the idea of the rubble pile...that is something that could be implemented in a patch.

Right. How many Hurricanes are tracked over (let's just choose Cuba since I know where that is), Cuba each year or Jamaica? How many of them actually hit the islands? I guess my thing is that hurricanes hitting the island each time that I play a game should not really happen. Granted in a 50 year time period there could be several hurricanes, however for gameplay sake and sake of the players sanity, it seems to me that either they should reduce the possibility of a hurrican and or earthquake from happening or put those two specific events on their own triggers like is done in Anno 1404, where we can turn off tornados (hurricanes maybe) and Disease, and other disasters specifically. That gives the gamer more choice in what kind of disaster the player will see.

I have no problem with other events that might be considered disasters as long as they don't devistate my buildings on my island.

Now, place a pile of rubble, and a tooltip to let me know what it is, and I'll be more than happy to NOT need to have the two bulding destroying events happen in the regular cycle of events.

I really don't quite fully understand why it bugs me so much that buildings simply disappear when they are destroyed instead of leaving something behind after the storm, somebody once told me that I should use it as a chance for reurbanization of my island, but quite honestly that has just never flew with my way of playing.

Actually, when I said that I would never play with events turned on, that wasn't quite true. Once I get done with work today I plan on playing with events turned on to their fullest setting just to see how bad the game bombards me with earthquakes, hurricanes, llama flu's, and whatever else the game might have up it's virtual sleeve. Because now Im curious just to see what all is available as an event. Heck I may not even build anything, just turn it on ff>> and see what comes up.

I also ask for a rubble pile where my once glorious empire once stood. As for Hurricanes and other forces of nature. It's just life.

loosing 6 buildings is tough. in the first year even tougher. on "rare" setting this is very bad luck. the most i lost was 2 farms, a tenement and the diplomatic ministry.

for each disaster the damage is random. it wont be the same houses and probably less if you load a savegame and let the same hurricane happen again.

if you turn events of you will miss out export-price changes, earthquakes and more. on the lowest setting disastrous events are likely to not appear more than twice in 50 years at most, so that was really bad luck.

the carribean is the place where all the hurricanes that hit the us and mexico develop. there are a lot of them, and even if they might not be allready that strong there, theres damage. its just not in our media.
hurricanes are massive stormssystems with hundreds of miles in diametre, and it does not have to hit an island directly with its eye to cause devastation. even if you are just hit by the outer areas of a hurricane, thats still a mighty blow that can create havoc.

im saying that in my opinion the hurricanes are implemented just right.
maybe exept for that ugly ugly skybox, i mean come on, it really is 3 times less the optical standard than the rest of the game. and the skybox is recognizeable big time. look at these vertical stripes... and i miss to see a hurricane in the skybox. there could be a static one (like the nuclear test).

rubble piles are an necesary addon. i tend to search a good cameraangle and try to watch the city so i see which houses colapse. but on a big, developed isle it can really be a hassle to find out which 2 out of 15 farms got destroyed, while the factories run empty.


should it be possible to build over the rubble, and the rubble that overlaps should be staying?
or should rubbish just be demolishable like buildings, so first a worker has to tear it down before the space can be used?



now one thing that bothers me: the aid i get should not come in form of money, but free houses!

if its part of my stategy to be deep in debt for a while, the whole game is broke when i loose buildings.

devs:
i can see you took out the wage-restrictions to make the game easier, but have you considered the problem mentioned above? its basically the same thing.

I had one hit just after I had made an election promise to improve housing... it cleared out 2 tenements..

Not great timing...

It's funny, in other City Building games, I had natural disasters... They really annoy the hell out of me... In this, not so much.

you are right. in tropico 1 the disasters scared the living siht out of me, i tend to just select rare in tr1. havent played the sandbox excessive enough for a final statement, but for the campaign, they kinda lost their scare a lil bit (as there aint so much money worries

I too am amazed at how such a poor banana country manages to sweep the destroyed buildings so easily while it's real world counterpart takes EONS of years before said ruins cleared.

I mean come on! Place some rubble there or something, a mark if you can't add a rubble a mark can suffice.