Also, I have to disagree with Seared on this one, random bad effects and uncontrollable things (and good ones! like harvests, deserts turning to grass lands new resources...) are a part of life and a VERY important part of nations. The Tusnami left a horrible hit on Indonesia and Thailand and it will take them, i believe, if ever 10 years to return to the tourist empire they were. Also, if New Orleans were to recover by herself it would take at least 10 years. In civ what the govment aid is nonexistent, would it have been it could be cleaned in a turn or so: 1-2 year, quite realistic. Also bad weathers has turned around whole wars! say, if the weather would have gone horribly wrong on D-Day, who knows? acctauly D-Day was almost canceled because of warnings about bad weather! good and bad events are a defiant part of our life, and of our planet, they should be given a fair part in civ IMHO.

It's a real think tank on how weather could be implemented in the game and was an eye opener for me.

I would also like to see some positive effect come out of the weather scenario - like those previous mentioned. I realy like the volcanos in Conquests.

A lot of other games are now including the realism of weather and I think it adds to the feel of the game a lot. Perhaps someone will get up the courage and find a way of adding a mod including weather. Other wise we'll have to wait for CivV

Yes, but remember you don't have the control over the disasters the same way we do in real life.  These events are important in real life!  There is no compassion in the game...  The AI isn't going to go 'Oh poor people, we should send aid!', nor is there an international red cross that people donate to.  In game turns, any disaster can just as easily be represented by a 'hah' ala Nelson and a popup box showing you the middle finger with the following dialogue boxes:

"Bad news sir, half of our costal cities have been destroyed by a tsunami"

"The Babylonians, Egyptians, Carthage, Romans, Perisans, and spain have all decided to use this time to declare war on us"

"You have been screwed by random event 'insert name here':

Radio button 1 : Good, I like weather.  Maybe a hurricane will get me next.

Radio Button 2 : Retire soon after the invasion as you no longer can defend your nation from enemies.

In real life, there is no victory conditions.  When these disasters like a hurricane or Tsunami strikes, those are REAL PEOPLE.  When these disasters occour in a game, it's just an opportunity to exploit to get closer to the victory condition.  We could add weather disaster to the Risk board game if you wanted to as well...  Every hour get somebody to kick the table really hard and any army knocked off the board dies to an earthquake.  Does this in anyway help the game?

Curious, but have you ever lost a capitol city with 5 wonders to a volcano before?  That is such a pain in the...  And took a rather fun game and made it just a bitter taste.

addite:

Just so you know, thats 10 turns worth of production (assuming we're in late game time frame).   What exactly do you think (civ game terms) can be taken away from cities and rebuilt in 10 turns?  A temple in a small costal city will probably take 20 turns to rebuild.  Even a single road and mine on a tile takes several years to rebuild the imporvements.  (And could you see that.  massive tsunami, everything fine but temple!)

If we take Rita and said 'it destroyed the factory in houston' (not a bad estimate maybe?) along with all the tile improvments around it...  Even with many workers, you wouldn't be able to reimprove the terrain in 5 years.  And the factory would take many many years to rebuild...  And if the terrain losses get rid of irrigated tiles, the city might start to drop population (which would be millions of peeps at one shot).  Far cry off the few thousand hey?

Remember weather is on a daily basis and it's affects are rarely long term (desert changing to grasslands?  ummm  wha?).  When one turn represents a full year the little daily affects are pretty much meaningless.  If you could find a way that a major hurricane can strike and not have it take away 10 turns of production (which can represent anywhere between 250 and 10 years)...  then maybe.

So did the allies cancle their invasion for that turn and plan a new date next year for an invasion?  Sorry, lets try for 1946...  If thats a no go, we can rescheudle to the 50's hey? Or do you think they would have cancled it and gone in the next day (instead of the next year).  Civ game play, there no effect.

Thats the clincher, as I see it.  Weather is only day to day.  How would that be represented in turns that last AT LEAST one year in length?  Long term weather is called climate, and this is already represented through different types of terrian. 

As far as natural disasters go, ahh, I dunno.  I can certainly think of lots of ways that that can cause games to go sour.  Realism is fine, until it hampers fun.

I guess I just don't believe in tampering too much with this type of stuff.  I feel that if you try to do everything, you won't do anything well.  Just what would adding weather do?  I can't really see much benifit it would have to the game.