Random Events

[Seravy]

Ok, so can we make all 5 of those events target a wizard first, and then target a city; and anything that targets a city just has to target a city owned by the wizard chosen in the target wizard procedure?

That's exactly what the game does currently, yes.

Then we can make the target wizard procedure look for human and: strongest AI on same plane (if towers are not open); and strongest AI on either plane (if towers are open)?

Yes, if we cut the current "pick weakest at higher weight" procedure then that opens up quite a bit of space.
I don't like this idea though. How much impact the event has is way too subjective, and I don't think your suggestion has a very good correlation with it.
The human part, yes. The AI, nope. The most relevant AI is the one the human is currently trying to defeat. Which might or might not be the strongest. It really is a 50-50 shot pretty much, either the player allied with the strong person to beat everyone else (I often do this), or attacked them first (I also do this sometimes)...

More importantly, I listed what I think about each event. Some are more relevant on the strong person, others on the weak person. So no, I don't think picking the strongest AI helps making the events more relevant. Not significantly, anyway.

[Nelphine]

I agree, I would like to have it on an event by event basis. However, you indicated you had severe space restrictions, so I don't think that works.

Worst case, I'd be fine with the population > 7 limit. (or somewhere around there.)

And while it might have the most impact on the game if its the AI the human is fighting... you also always keep an eye on the strongest AI. So at least you would NOTICE what happened. But I agree its hard to judge well what it should hit without doing an event by event basis.

[teelaurila]

I'd say less is more, so how about:

City events target random city without considering wizard. These are predominantly bad, and with this target the largest empire a bit more likely. Simple 1-100 on the array, repeat until an existing city is hit.

When target wizard is needed, use the strength bar weighing. (Does this also mean at the later game, when all overflow, the weighs are equal?) This would mean marriage and wizard-only events. Could also be just a random wizard.

Algorithm -wise one can of course pick a target wizard first anyway, if that makes it simpler, just not use it when picking a random city.

If we then want the human to be hit more often (as is these happen maybe 2 per game, could be 10), increase the overall chance of an event. I think I would prefer this. Also we might re-think the first turn cut-off? If we want events to have more consequence, I'd say it's much better to have more events, than to painstakingly try to find more relevant targets for each event. Perhaps we'd need to reduce the chances (or duration) for conjuction and flux, though, and maybe reduce stroke's impact (particularly on SoM research), if events become significantly more common.

For flavor I would prefer the rebellion to only occur when unrest penalty is 1 or more, and marriage only if 1 or less. But I suppose not worth the effort (nor space).

[Bahgtru]

For flavor I would prefer the rebellion to only occur when unrest penalty is 1 or more, and marriage only if 1 or less. But I suppose not worth the effort (nor space).

Or if there currently are rebels in the city, I found it super weird to lose a completely pacified city.

[Nelphine]

Life could never have a rebellion - I'd rather not see that.  Instead I think of rebellion as also including a political coup, instead of just an actual rebellion. (Local mayor simply wants to be king, even though everyone on paper loves you.)

And diplomatic marriages often occur between people who hate each other specifically to avoid being killed. If that neutral klackon city married to you, you can't raze it.