Erroneous event - German Social Unrest

[Mike Parker]

There are a series of German events. I wish I remembered the name, but anyone that has played Germany will likely know the ones I am speaking of. It basically says the German people are unhappy that the war is taking so long. The responding options are something like

Damn - Social Unrest increased by 5 (or 6 or more depending on the exact event there are several)

Show them this is only way to win the war - Social unrest increased by 20 (or more) and PP decreased by 200 (or 300 or more)

Okay here is the problem.

If you pick Damn you lose 5 or 6 or more social unrest. (or rather gain it however you think of it, your production drops by that percentage). if you pick the alternative you lose 20 or 30 social unrest and the PP.

So for example suppose your at 100% social unrest with 650PP (meaning no problems your at 100% efficiency) and you get the 5% 200P event. if you choose Damn option your now at 95%. if you choose the othe option your at 80% social unrest and 450PP.

No rational person should EVER choose the second option. Now here is what I THINK should happen, and indeed what I think the intent of this event is.

You choose the Damn option and you lose the social unrest.

You choose the second option you lose the PP but you GAIN the stated amount of social unrest. I.e. you spend PP for a propaganda blitz and your people calm down, the wording of the event sure seems to indicate this is how it should be, coupled with the fact that the event as it operates now has a second option that should never be chosen!

[cpdeyoung]

I got a kick out of it when I saw it too. I think you are correct in your analysis, but till then "Damn" it is!

Chuck

[doomtrader]

Personally I would choose the second option.

[Mike Parker]

Doomie,
 
Are you saying there is something we are missing?
 
When you use the second option, you lose the PP 200 or 300 it seems and your social unrest gets worse by much more than the 5 or 6 if you choose the other option.

[doomtrader]

Trust me [8D]

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

Trust me [8D]

I took the second option in my recently completely game.

Sad to say, the only effects is noticed were the missing PPs and social unrest that seemingly took forever to rise.... [:(]

I guess you're saying some bad thingy was avoided? [&:]

[Mike Parker]

Well I am not sure losing the 200 PP and then 20% of the German income until SU recovers can be counter acted easily.  When I get a chance I will look at this event in detail and see what flags it might be setting for other events.

[Mike Parker]

I think I see what he is saying.. or why he is saying it.
 
If you just keep saying "Damn" the event will keep having a chance to occur, and the higher your War Effort, the worse the SU hit is.  You get hit in small bites, 3 4 5 6 but you will keep getting unrest.  However if you EVER take the other option, pay the PP cost and the one time SU hit, this event will no longer fire.  The longer you put off doing this though the more it will cost you in PP.
 
So it might very well be better to take the one time SU hit of 20 and pay your 200 or 300 PP rather than suffer the 'death by a thousand cuts' having this event fire off over and over and knock you down by 5 and 6 SU a pop.
 
 

[cpdeyoung]

Aha, I do trust, when verified!

Chuck

[Romdanzer]

Ummm....yes - if you look into the event script --> the event is NOT shut off if you choose option 1. It IS shut off if you choose option 2 (!!!).

So the correct choices in this event are:

Option 1: Small hit in SU - but possiblity of event reoccuring again in future and again and again as long as you take option 1. A reoccuring event-chain so to speak....

Option 2: Big hit in SU and large PP loss - HOWEVER this event "chain" is then SHUT OFF!

NOW which option do you take?

Romdanzer

[RandomAttack]

Yet another event that you can't interpret without going to the code... [&:]

[doomtrader]

RandomAttack,
If we put the exact information about the choices, then who will pick up the first option?

It's somewhat like in real life. When you have got a demonstration, you can spend limited resources to calm down the people, or you can spend a lot of money for reform.

So in this case you can just reconsile with the society mood, or try to explain them why such thing is happen. If I would write straight that the second option make no more demonstrations then you will never pick first one. But the point is that in different games you will try different options.

[Mike Parker]

I have to agree with Randomattack.  The event needs more information given to the player, as it is the information you give makes one choose the first one everytime.
 
You should do something like the following with the information given
 
Damn - (SU +6 And social unrest is likely to reappear)
 
Propaganda - (PP -200 SU +20 and there is a good chance further problems will be avoided)
 
Then do a slight redesign of the event where the flag is set only 90% of the time or something.  That way you can give some information about the event so we can make an intelligent choice, but not make it an automatic every time.
 

[doomtrader]

I'll see what can be done

[Mike Parker]

Doomie,
 
Just a suggestion though.  I come off kinda critical sometimes, if you feel strongly about the event, leave it as is (although I will get around to suggesting a text rewrite for clarity).

[Hard Sarge]

Doom, I know what you are trying to say, but what the players are saying, is they are not getting enough info, to make the choice, the way alot of these are worded (and some of this may be in the tranlation ?) is not worth going for

the way alot of these are worded, it is not a choice, it is one, decent choice, two lousy choice (but in the code it could be a good one, but the player doesn't know)

plus we have a number of events that come up, that there is no choice, but it is worded as if there should be

IE

event will say something like

due to reseach, we may have found a way to improve our Armor forces

1.) buy Armor Div for 70 PP
2.) buy Armor Div for 350 PP

which one is the player going to go for ?

but with in the code for the event it could be
1.) pick one and no chance for advancement on the reseach tree
2.) pick two and gain 1 level of Armor tech, and lower the cost of Armor units by 40 PP

now, the 2nd one does look much better then the first one, but the player will never know (unless, he spying in the code/events)

[doomtrader]

That's why I'm going to take care of clarification in an elegant way, not to explain it directly but to give better hint.

Also an idea of limited chance to fail when you picked second option seems attreactive, but I'm not sure how time consuming it will be.

[willgamer]

ORIGINAL: doomtrader

RandomAttack,
If we put the exact information about the choices, then who will pick up the first option?

Events should never offer options that are completely one sided. [:-]

I'm not saying they need to be balanced, but even if choice A is the best 80% of the time, there ought to be situations where perhaps choice B is attractive.

In the above social unrest, how about halving the penalty for the choice that leads to the recurring event?

You should be able to write fuller explanations within the context of two viable choices. [:)]

[PDiFolco]

Well, the current event is a bit confusing, but above all I can't seeany connection between it and history ... Did someone noticed "social unrest" in SS controlled Nazi Germany by 44-45 ??? We could (should) have an event for the Stauffenberg conspiracy, which may well have ended the war in 44, but social unrest and production hit is fantasy...[8|]

[Mehring]

Events should never offer options that are completely one sided.

Exactly. Otherwise it's just a question of learning what does what every time. In this case the player with the most knowledge of code wins. Surely the idea of such events is to make the players make judgements related to their current situation. "Can I afford the social unrest hit now, or should I put it off and wait until France has surrendered? Will putting off dealing with the problem compromise future wars?" etc etc