It's nice that in Civ III a military unit fortified in marsh or jungle can lose hit points to disease, but this really isn't going far enough. World War I was the first war history in which there were more recorded fatalities due to actual combat than disease. I think that prior to the discovery of some advance (antibiotics would do nicely as an offshoot of medicine/sanitation) military units should regularly, though also still at random, lose hit points, no matter what terrain they are in. Certain terrain types, like marsh and jungle, should increase the odds of a unit becomming diseased. Also, no unit should die from normal disease, though of course it could be weakened to one hit point.
I'm sure a lot of people won't like the randomness of this, but I think it would certainly increase the accuracy of the game. After all, it's pretty silly to think that a SOD of ancient or medieval units could march across an entire continent and arrive at its destination as healthy as when it left. Perhaps there could be an option to turn this off, so that those who don't like seeing their painstakingly assembled armies succum to illness can do so.

Well, how an army would fare crossing terrain depends upon the terrain. Crossing, say, a nice lush plain in a temperate climate, like Iowa in the American Midwest, I don't think you'd be seeing too much disease in the nicer months, not unless your troops were really stupid, pooping in the river and then drinking from it further downstream.

Jungle can be hell on troops, even in modern times.

I don't think you'll see much support for this, though, who wants to see half of a SoD, so carefully assembled, fall over and die of disease on its way to the next enemy city?

The abstracted way Civ3 handles disease through jungles and swamps is good, I think. It's reasonable to take the risk of being in those types of terrain, and lose points off your armies; but like Ivan pointed out, a lush grassland would take much less of a toll off the army units, and really shouldn't strike down the HP of a unit.

One thing that might be nice is the possibility of contagion; say you have a unit in a jungle tile that gets sick, if it moves back into a city, it can infect the citizens there, and they begin to die, unless there is a hospital in the city.

If you move a unit stack through the jungle, and one unit gets sick, same thing, if you leave it with the stack, it can infect other units even once the stack moves to nice terrain like grassland or plains.

It will be interesting to see how far the concept of "Health" goes in cIV. Maybe each unit will have its own abstract health separate from HP.

This is a very good idea. It simulates how it actually would have been like for a general. Also, does anyone think it would be concievable that units crossing tundra or mountains lose health or even die, from say hypothermia or pneumonia. Anyone like this particular idea?

@Tank_Guy:

Very reminiscent of Hannibal's march to Rome.

The problem is, I don't particularly like the idea of completely losing units because of this. Part of me doesn't like to think of losing more than an HP or two.

Civ is a strategy game, above all else, and sometimes too much random realism can take away from the strategy of the game. The trick is to find the balance.

That's why I'm interested in how they handle the "health" concept. I'm confident that it will enhance the inherent strategy of civ and not detract from it.

But look at all the armies that tried to capture Moscow, Hitler, Napolean, etc. they lost a lot of men due to frostbite and the like. I was thinking like if they kept them fortified in those areas it would be a problem, unless they were in a fort, which could lessen or even eliminate those effects because of the protection from the elements provided by the forts.

Also to help combat disease, maybe the Civ team could implement say a MASH unit to lessen the effect of disease in its radius of effect. Though I think to take it this far would make the game a little too real, which would, as Darwin420 stated earlier, take away some of the more fun aspects of the game.

Also for those of you that do not know, MASH stand for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. They could improve health, and only combat disease NOT eliminate it.

I certainly don't think most terrain should be capable of killing off a unit completely-with possible exceptions for tundra and desert, but still feel the addition of disease would be a more realistic element, and not terribly difficult to work into the game. For those who don't want to worry about it, make it something that can be turned off, like culture flips. I don't really think that a unit that reduces it is particularly needed either-by the time these units were created, the value of penicillin was pretty clear, I still think that, like disease from floodplains, it could be overcome through an advance.

I do like Ivan's idea of contagion though-it would certainly add something to the game.

Also for those of you that do not know, MASH stand for Mobile Army Surgical Hospital. They could improve health, and only combat disease NOT eliminate it.
Heheh, then you could have the good ol' 4077... *whistles the M.A.S.H. theme music* :o :mischief:

Contagion existed in CTP, but it was pretty tame and only introduced thru biowarfare. If things were nastier, like getting the Black Plague as you can in some of the Conquests scenarios, things would be more interesting. A deadly plague could start in one civ near a lot of jungle and spread to other civs across the world. It would be neat if the player could see this coming, i.e. you get a message from the foreign advisor: "Sire, the Roman cities are dying away from a deadly plague! Antium and Rome have gone from size 12 to size 6! It's coming this way! What shall we do?" You might then desperately try to insulate yourself by cutting trade, deliberately pillaging roads and ordering foreign nationals to leave your cities lest covert back and forth movement bring the plague upon you. This might anger an already infected civ, already straining under pop loss and lost production, and they may decide to attack your forces with infected units... Horrors!

If health is a separate abstract, I could see lots of interesting interactions because of the new in depth unit interactions that will be scripted. Your horsemen are exhausted from moving through the desert, and can only move once per square because the horses are dehydrated. Or, your pikemen are so weakened by hypothermia and frostbite from crossing the tundra to defend Moscow from rampaging Turkish Cavalry that they can no longer defend at double value vs. mounted units, because they can't effectively wield their pikes quickly. And so on.

Ivan, that is a really cool idea! :thumbsup: :smoke:

Also, lets say large concentrations of men in the same area would increase the chance of contagions and disease. They would be sharing similair water supplies, close contact, and there are other issues from camping. Stagnant water and being sedentary would encourage insects to spread disease, along with vermin. For arbitrary numbers, we could say that five troops in a square is the optimal limit, any more and you start having crowding problems. Fortresses would raise this limit.

sir_schwik is right,

even without a big-name disease, the breakdown in sanitation in field armies at war is the traditional biggest killer of soldiers, than even other soldiers.

I certainly don't think most terrain should be capable of killing off a unit completely-with possible exceptions for tundra and desert, but still feel the addition of disease would be a more realistic element, and not terribly difficult to work into the game.

What if every 2 or 3 turns in a desert or harsh tundra (not soft), your unit lost a health point due to people freezing to death/ starving/ of dehydration.

In jungles, there should be a much higher chance of a unit catching a disease (c'mon, 5% is WAY too low). I'd like 10-15% while moving; 15-20% while stationary. :)