Frogboy's Original Post (OP) of Aug. 23, 2012, entitled: "Coming Soon: Fallen Enchantress on Steam" included a list of 15 questions (well ... 15 numbered paragraphs ... not every one was literally a question) including a Question #5, which requested ideas for Random Events.  You can find the OP here: 

          https://forums.elementalgame.com/429972

This would be a logical place to post your ideas.  Several folks have already come up with some great suggestions, including whole lists of them, in a couple of cases.  (See, for example: geekanarchy's reply #115, DsRaider's reply #6, and Jean=A=Luc's reply #26.)  The only problem is, that there are already about 160 Replies (addressing some or all of the 15 questions) in response to the OP.  So, I suppose there is a risk that your suggestions might get lost in the crowd  ...   but,  Good Luck !        

Please keep events random and not as a result of the player dominating. It is way too gamey have such mechanics in the game.

"Oh, you're winning? Have some dragons to make the game harder. Where did they come from? They just appeared, cause fuck you."

You might as well spawn extra units for the AI if they are losing. I mean, what happened to the enemy competing on even terms?

More events sound great. The more gamechanging the better.

About this event in particular- wouldn't it buff Tarth instead of hurt them?

If Tarth is winning, such an event might just hand them the game, seriously.  Just a thought off the top of my head, and I don't think this is necessarily problematic, as long as there are other random events.

I also wanted to see some minor random events- like what you had in FFH2.  Not everything has to be epic. 

What I'd really like to see- is modders get their hands on this, make some events, and someone from Stardock batch up and adjust the best events as needed into post-release content.  

I can't wait to mod.

As for trigger, an Idea I had to keep the player in the game is that you could view each player as an novel story. In a novel, in order to keep the reader reading, there must be a series of interesting events that occurs for the story to be interesting. If you end up with a down or too much events, the reader will not be pleased.

Maybe it could be interesting if the player could keep track of how busy is the player. If a player is in war with 2 players and have tons of problem to manage, then few events would spawn to him, because he does not have any free time and he does not care.

On the other hand, the player isolated on an island with little things to do would get much more random events and quest to keep the player buzy and in the game.

A cheap way to implement this could be that any random event or quest that a player does not want to do is simply passed to the next player. But if you do that, there must be consequences for failing a quest "like in warlock" to prevent players from accepting all quests and not complete them. Maybe it could drop his reputation or something specific to these quest/events and the quest/events are assigned in order of reputation.

I actully like the idea of 5 dragons unexpectedly spawning outside the capital. Escpecially since you have dominated the rest of the map

Having a good lore behind it doesn't really change the fact that you're stacking the deck against the player with a domination-type event. It's a pretty rotten way to design a game.

Oh how little you know, lol.  XML is hard to get into.  It looks so daunting to people that have no idea what things mean, even though it really is simple as far as a design goes.  I think Bellack was asking for a screen that took out all the code and was filled with text boxes instead.  It could be made Im sure either by these guys, or a modder after launch.  It would be a cool little standalone ap though.  You could call it iFE.

Im with Bellack.  I dont always want to win.  If you win every game you're not going to find much joy in the re-playability.  I want to get severely punished for no good reason every once in a while just for the sake of being severely punished for no good reason.

How about a random event where one of yours or the AI army (or hero) defects from one side to the other while your at war.  That could really get you pissed off.

If you the underdog you get it.

If your killing them they get it.

The text is "we could no longer watch you pillage these people's homes and kill their children.  Good day sir!"

lol, what do I know.

I'm with Heavenfall on this.  Making creatures randomly appear out of nowhere to wail on the player just because he's winning is a big turnoff for me.  I'm okay with the other players getting together to oppose the leading player (whether AI or human), as that's occurring within the game rules, and is a natural aspect of how they should be playing anyway.  That said, it shouldn't be that all players suddenly go after the leader.  The leader should still have some allies, who are "playing for second place" so to speak, but riding the coat-tails of the leader.

Now, I'm not opposed to end-game dynamics that spice it up, but they shouldn't be just some random event, they should be something the player can anticipate.  Examples from other games:

1. MoO2: Attacking Antares (though this is under the player's control).
2. Warlock: Battling the opposing god's avatar.
3. Distant Worlds: Battling the Shakturi.

Late "game-changers" are an awesome addition, but they need to be tied to the game mechanics, and be able to be anticipated to some degree by the player.  The game just suddenly cracking you across the side of the head with a baseball bat because you're doing too well would make me turn off random events.  That would be unfortunate, because I like the other ones.

When mega-events were proposed for GalCiv2, I was very excited.  However, after actually trying them out in practice, I found myself invariably turning them off.

Yeah, I'd go so far as to break my personal rule of never modding a game to actually mod that out.  It would drive me nuts.  Again, random slaps in the face are not good.  Game mechanics should be used to address these sorts of late-game problems, instead of having the game step in and arbitrarily take things away from you and/or arbitrarily give things to your opponents.  If you want to give the underdogs a chance in the late game, then implement some game mechanics that give them a chance.

Those mechanics can be as over the top as you want, as long as they aren't just random punches to the head.  As a simple, silly example: if 5 or more players ally together, they are able to summon a horde of otherworldly creatures to smite their opponents.  During normal play, it's extremely unlikely that 5 or more would ally, but they may do so in the late game when facing a dominating player.  A mechanic like that would (1) give underdog players a chance to stop an imminent win by the leading player, and (2) give the leading player a hell of a fun ride as he's about to win, but one which doesn't feel artificial, and one which he can anticipate to some degree.

Making 1000 dragons appear might be overkill, but there is a way to make winning based events work. The key is to use fair effects when the only cause is that one player is dominating. For instance, we desperately need a not so random event that allies all remaining weaker factions against the one that is about to win. That is not cheating, that is something that would actually happen. We can add it as a random event to spark some interesting endgame scenarios. There are alot of endgame scenarios I would like to see added.

More to the kind that apparently killed Heavenfall's whole family, I would like some of those too. It would be unfair to pile on difficulty once the lead player starts to get ahead. But since we are talking about a .1% chance, it seems more like a rare and exciting challenge. Something you will only see happen once or twice, but it will always be in the back of your mind that such terrible things can happen. Honestly right now, once you pull ahead in the game there is not much challenge left. There is really just a long slog of easy battles leading up to a win. I don't think the game should be using events to balance other parts of the game that need work, but I do think adding a random "fuck you" into the game is both hilarious and exciting. I also think adding in a random "we see you are losing, here is some help" makes things more exciting as well. The difference is making these events rare and interesting. The key is make people both hate and fear them. It is what makes the game exciting.

Another kind of random event that could be added is a sort of themed chance card throughout the game. Each game could be marked by an overall story so that it feels more immersive. I would really like to see some classic fantasy added to the realm with random events. Now that we can spawn goodie huts, the possibilities are limitless. Here is what I mean:

Oldish Parchment IV: Oblivion Doors

The Dragon's Tear that holds the walls of this plane together has been stolen. Dozens of rifts have opened between our realm and the fire plane. This is surely the work of Sarog. It is up to the powers of the realm to recover it and close the doors to the fire plane. (Many Fire Gates open around the realm, offering a Pits of Namtur like quest across the realm.) It would be interesting to have this sort of theme explode into the game about 150 turns in. I think most players will even enjoy some parody of the classic fantasy stories. You can of course choose to make things more or less silly as you see fit.

Adding these three types of events would add so much to immersion and storytelling. It is especially nice that the overall theme of a game can stay in the quest log to stay in the mind of the player long after the event is over.