Health
General:
Injuries and Diseases were a big problem in the first days of colonization.
However, this aspect is pretty much ignored currently in CivCol.
Me and some other modders had a lot of brainstorming about this aspect.
(Probably more than about any other one feature.)
We had come up with a variety of different concepts.
Most of them quite complicated and extremely hard to program good AI for them.
This concept is different though.
We should be able to teach AI how to handle it.
Feature:
1. There would be a health-factor for every city.
Range -5 to +5.
-5, -4 --> Very Bad
-3, -2 --> Bad
-1, 0, +1 --> Normal
2, 3 --> Good
4, 5 --> Very Good
There will be warnings, when Health is too low.
2. Health would be negatively influenced by:
A) Terrain where you build your city.
Many city-plots with some Terrains will have negative effect.
Marsh --> Diseases caused by insects.
Thundra --> Diseases caused by cold weathre.
Dessert --> Dehydration
So every 3 city-plots of one of these TerrainTypes will give -1 Healthrate.
B) City-Size
People at that time were very unhygenic and huge cities often had many sick people.
Every 3 Citizens you would get -1 Healthrate.
(So cities below with 1 or 2 Citizens would not be affected here.)
C) Citizens working in Factories
Factories used to be places where a lot of pollution and injuries happened.
Every 5 Citizens working in a factory will cause -1 Healthrate.
3. Health would be positively influenced by:
A) River at the central city plot.
Fresh water was always very important for health and will give +1 Healthrate
B) Healer's House and Hospital
The buildings themself will give increase of Healthrate.
Healer's House will give +1 Healtrate
Hospital will give +2 Healtrate.
C) Workers employed in Healer's House / Hospital
Experienced Healers (Specialists) will give +1 Healthrate.
Any other will give +0.5 Healtrate.
D) Medicine spent
When clicking on the Healer's House / Hospital you will get a dialog.
(It could also be a button.)
Within the dialog, there will be a slider which will allow you to set the amount of Medicine spent every round for healing your citizens.
(On the rigth side you can see the effect, e.g. +1 Healthrate.)
Of course you can only spend it, if it is available as good inside the city.
Healthrate Increase Medicine = Amount Spent * 3 / Number of Citzens
Example:
9 Citizens in City.
To get +1 Healtrate you would have to invest 3 Medicine every round.
4. Effects of Health
A) Health would become part of calculation for
Satisfaction.
(Satisfaction is important for production bonusses and military strength.)
Of course, some aspects of Satisfaction would change.
E.g. City size would not directly affect Satisfaction but indirectly throug Health.
B) Low Health rates will increase food consumption and result in little chances for death of colonists (usually only at very bad health-rate , don't worry)
C) High Health rates lowers Growth Threshold and result in little chances for spontaneous birth (usually only at very good health-rate)
D) Low and high health-rates could trigger positive (Learning of Professions, City-Celebration, ...) or negative (Disease, Riot, Stealing of Food, ...) Events.
5. AI
European AI would produce Medicine by using workers, build Healer's House and Hospital already.
There would be some logic to let AI distribute Medicine quite equaly throughout its colonies and also use it to increase its Health rate.
Also European AI would buy Medicine from Europe if it cannot produce enough / does not have enough stored.
(This would be done without affecting prices in Europe.)
Also AI does not tend to create enormously big cities considering number of citizens.
Native AI would not be affected by this feature.
Summary:
Of course the values I presented here are only a first suggestion for balancing.
(There would be many xml-settings to perform balancing of this feature.)
Health would become one more dimension in gameplay.
It is not too complicated to handle for Players and AI.
Only really big cities get problems here.
With smaller cities in the beginning of the game, everything should be almost as usual.
However, Health is something that you should keep an eye on.
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Feedback ?
)
I was just giving some feedback on what my struggles were with how it would fit into the game in a historical sense. We all love the game or rather the potential of the game as it evolves, so I'm assuming we are all interested in that period of history? But hey, majority rules, if the wider community is interested in such an idea, go with it. 
(see here: )
It is an element that has sorely been missing from col94 & civcol. Will the health concept affect Indian civs as well, i.e. smallpox epidemics?
