If other sovereigns can give me quests, then I should be able to give them quests as well, but why would I want to do that?  If there is a valid reason for me to do that then I'm fine with it.  If there isn't then I don't want AI sovs giving me quests just for the hell of it.  If the AI can do it, then I should be able to do it as well, and have some sort of reason for doing so.

I definitely don't like most of Krotho's quest ideas above.  They are basically just thinly disguised punishments for building your empire.  The only one that seems like something other than punishment is the new animals in the arena one.  I don't want quests to keep my populace from being sad or anything else that just averts a negative.  I've got no problem with emergent quests in and of themselves, I just don't want to feel like I'm doing chores for my cities.

If you're looking for situational quests there may be inspiration in another Civ 4 mod. Rhyse and Fall of Civilisation had a feature the designer called "stability". The calculation was largely silent, you only got an indocator saying if you're country is stable or not (several different scales there) and whether it was going up or down. I'm mentioning this because the calculation was based on close to every aspect of a country's situation and I'm sure you can glean some situations from it that could be used to base a quest.

A guide to Rhyse's stability.

http://rhye.civfanatics.net/wiki/index.php?title=Rhye%27s_and_Fall_of_Civilization_guide_to_stability

What about AnitQuest?

The other kingdom knows you are on a quest so they send their henchman to stop you?

I have to agree with some of the other users, i´d really like to see quests that support the idea of a dynamic and living world and which also offers the player interesting strategic choices  - but without major locations like fortresses "popping up" out of thin air.

For example, how about a "dragon egg" quest that works like this: Due to a random event (or possibly the fullfilment of a quest?), a faction you´re at war with, "steals" the egg of a dragon, which then gets placed within a particular city of that faction. The Sovereign of this faction threatens to destroy the egg, if the dragon doesn´t do his bidding. So the faction orders the dragon (maybe still as a neutral unit and not under direct control of that faction) to rampage the land of the player, who then gets a quest offering that could play out similar to what Frogboy laid out in the orignal post.

The player would therefore have a number of chioces what to do next. Does he
- try to kill the dragon,
- wage war against the enemy faction and conquer his cities in hope to find the egg or
- does he follow the questline to get the eggs location?

One could go even further with this and give the player the next time the opportunity to turn the tables:
He could steal the dragons egg from his lair (due to a powerful stun spell or by getting the dragon to leave his lair unprotected for a short time or something like that) and then - the dragon still a uncontrollable Unit - give him simple commands like "attack city x/ faction y" "defend City Z" and so on. And - as Frogboy statement seems to imply that AI factions can also solve quests - a enemy faction would also be able to try and bring the dragon egg back to the dragon, who therefore would join that faction.

I´d really really love to see quests in the game that offer that kind of flexibillity and interaction with the game world.

I'd like to see that too, but I've not yet seen a TBS AI that could do a halfway decent job of participating in a military alliance, much less something with the potential complexity of 'you take parts B, C, and F, while I take A, D, and E.'

Or were you maybe thinking of something like the player and an AI both contributing units to a questing group, with only one sovereign having field command?

Even better: player steals the dragon's egg and then gifts it to another faction (or hides it in someone else's city), thus framing them for the theft. Then you offer to help the dragon recover it and get in its good graces.

Thus the skill/stat check to determine if you're cunning, charismatic and lucky enough to bluff the dragon.

Under quest requirements, add "avoid"; several units are spawned across the map, and move randomly (or towards a destination).  Having these units come within X squares of your units results in failing the quest.  If the spawned units successfully reach their end destination or number of turns, you win.  Nothing throws a wrench into strategically placed units like the wandering bull in a china shop.

Winni

I have an idea for something similar to quests, prophecies. They're basically quests, but with a certain structure.

A Prophecy can be triggered at the beginning of a game, or after specific events, like conquering a town, defeating another player, discovering a monster lair, or similar things.

Like any prophecy, it will foretell the coming of a hero, or of a great evil, or something similar. It can give a precise date, a vague date, or it can specify an event after witch the prophecy will take place. Unlike a quest regular quest, the player does have ample time to prepare, or to try and interpret what it meant if it was to vague. Perhaps some for of researcher can be assigned to make sense of it, by spending some money.

Another difference from regular quest would be that a prophecy implicates a larger portion of the game. For example, the same prophecy can foretell the doom of a player, and the success of another. Meaning that when it begins, one player suffers a loss in some area, and another one revives an advantage, depending on what role they play in the prophecy.

When the time of prophecy finally comes, the player could help fulfil it, if it is beneficial for him, or try to stop it from happening. Each outcome would have an effect, fulfilling a beneficial prophecy would grant that player the reward promised. Failing to fulfil it could bring disadvantages, or maybe delay it.

Now for the fun part. A player could have the possibility of melding in the prophecy of another player. Let's say the prophecy player A receives calls for a hero to defeat a great beast and consume it's power to become a great champions. If player B kills that hero before he kills the beast, he would have stopped the prophecy. This would not earn him a reward directly, but it may bring the wrath of the gods upon the player A, and ensure he looses what was promised to be a great and powerful champion.

I'll give an example of what I am referring to. I'm using Master of Magic as a template.

Prophecy text and commentary notes:

"Beware great king, for when the savages of the wilds besiege your city(first city is attacked by neutral raiders), and the power that feeds your empire is snuffed out(mana shortage, all nodes stop producing power), a great evil(neutral and very powerful enemy, like a dragon) will arise in the south(general location of said evil). It shall descend upon your kingdom and wreak havoc. Powerless you will be to stop it, and great suffering will come. (dragon doing that it's best at)

But fear not my lord, for one shall arise to stop the evil. A child born from the shadow of stars(hint to the name of the hero, Darkstar) will come to you and pledge his loyalty. Guard him well, for when the time is right, he shall send the evil ravaging your empire back into the darkest depths from which it spawned.(doing what a hero does best).

(now comes the reward part)And when the evil is vanquished, the land shall be full of life, and for five seasons your harvest shall be bountiful and the envy of all other kingdoms.(for certain duration of time, food production sky-rockets). But be warned my king, should you fail, the evil shall have it's drink of your kingdom, and one day it shall return for your life.(in case of failing to kill the dragon, it will run amok, leave, and return after a few years to do it again)"

Prior to time of prophecy:

Hero Darkstar offers to work for the player. If he is accepted the prophecy can be fulfilled, if not, it is still can be, but to a lesser extent. They player could be able to kill the dragon without the aforementioned hero, but doing so will negate the harvest bonus.

Time of prophecy:

The dragon appears and starts to attack player controlled villages. The player can then send Darkstar to deal with the dragon. If he succeeds, the prophecy is over, good ending. If he fails, the dragon lingers for a few more turns doing bad things, then he leaves and returns after a few years. At that point there won't be a hero of prophecy any more, so the player would have to deal with the beast himself.

This was a small scale example. Like I said, a prophecy could implicate other players, and if the children of the sovereign are controllable units like he is at the beginning of the game, they could be part of a prophecy. The complexity of prophecies would be largely determined by the skill and dedication of whoever writes/codes it. At the high point we could end up with a retelling of Baldur's Gate in Elemental. And the rewards for prophecies would not be things that you can get from normal quests. For example, one of your heroes could become a demigod, an island filled with riches could rise out of the sea, a comet could strike your enemy, and other things that could effect the game on a large scale.

Because of this, prophecies could be optional, as in they could be toggled on or off at the creation of a game. And in the game, they would not come around very often, but each player should experience one every few hundred/thousand years.

I hope I managed to explain my idea well enough for it to be understood.

PS: A Time Travel spell would still be awesome.

I second the idea that questing should be an optional path to victory. A bit like it "settlers of catan" if you have no space for expansion, you will focus more on development cards.

Maybe if you have a small empire and cannot expand more, for whatever reason, you are more likely to focus on quest. If you have a large empire and do a lot of conquest, you might do little questing because each little event might be banal to you.

If you have a large empire and don't want to bother about questing, it could be a good opportunity to give quest to other players. Pay any body X gold to solve this problem in my kingdom. It saves you the ressources and the managements. But a smaller empire player, which probably have less things to manage, might be interested to put some time to do the quest.

Yea, except the devs are still sketching or still not sharing any back story details about just how serious the Elemental cataclysm was. Is the study any sovereign-hired scholars do based on recovering past knowledge, building knowledge again from scratch, or some combination of the two?

Even if they aren't ready to talk about it to us peanut gallery folks, I kinda hope they've already made a fairly firm decision there and are working the research UI with that in mind, instead of just boldly building research trees and putting off the explanations for them until its too late to consider how story and functionality might interact.

Oooh, this coming across hints of quests is actually quite a cool idea. It would be cool if you could just read some description of a ruin without getting the feeling that this actually is a quest. Then later, as you find another pieve of the puzzle, you start scratching your head as somethings sounds quite familiar... Then you as the player will need to puzzle the pieces together, find missing clues and eventually be rewarded for your curiosity.

Of course not every quest should be a scavenger hunt like this, but to have a few of these would be very nice.

I also like the idea of having different possible solutions for quests. What I do not like however is knowing how a quest will end. To that end, I would like to see a mechanic that ensures rewards are randomised. SO if you decide to keep the dragon egg - to get back to the example on the first page - you will sometimes be punished by mommy, sometimes mommy never finds out, sometimes you will be rewarded with a baby dragon that grows stronger as time goes by and sometimes break the egg.

This randomised reward system makes it so that it rewards role playing in such a way that you are free to do what you want to do because every course of action - even the 'evil ones' - can have it's merits and you will never know what will pay off. This way whatever course of acion you pursue is viable in such a way that it may or may not be rewarding.