Diseases

There are 16 Diseases. The Old Range was 1 to 200 with 9 of the 16 at range 100.

With this adjustment to the CIV4PropertyInfos the range is 25 to 350.
Range value count:
25- 1 Common Cold (raised from 1)
50- 1 Scurvy (stayed the same)
75- 2 Dysentery, and Scarlet Fever (both lowered from 100)
100- 3 Cholera, Diphtheria, and Measles (same)
150- 3 Anthrax (raised from 100), Leprosy (raised from 100), and Malaria (same)
200- 2 Bird Flu and Swine Flu (raised from 100)
250- 2 HIV (raised from 100) and Thyphiod Fever (raised from 150)
300- 1 Smallpox (raised from 200)
350- 1 Plague (Bubonic) (raised from 200)

I think these values are reasonable and still have a relatively short span as the min/max values go from 0 to 100,000.

Hopefully this will tone down the sudden erratic jumps to a more rise and fall wave.

This mini modmod Only deals with at What Level the Diseases is activated.

@T-Brd,
Why is it so important that Common Cold starts at 1? What does it matter if it starts at 25. Do you feel that Disease Must start immediately upon founding your 1st city at game start? I don't. I think it's more rational for to build up a little before any disease, even the Com Cold, starts.

JosEPh

Toffer90 said:

That is more or less how it's supposed to work now (the original idea behind disease property). Alternatively one could add a mix of bonus and penalty for too low diseases as well like "obsessive cleanliness" that give positive health at the cost of other things like negative happiness, less productivity or something. I think this might be annoying as one has to keep an even tighter watch on property values.

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If you are too clean, this isn't good for your health either. Your skin houses alot of different bacteria and fungi, which are harmless or even beneficial. If you use anti-bacterial soap continously, this will harm your skin and/or destroys the harmless bacteria and therefore frees the room for harmful bacteria.

Another thing in this direction are allergies. You can actually cure some allergies by injecting (mostly harmless) parasites - or parts from them - in your body.

Faustmouse said:

If you are too clean, this isn't good for your health either. Your skin houses alot of different bacteria and fungi, which are harmless or even beneficial. If you use anti-bacterial soap continously, this will harm your skin and/or destroys the harmless bacteria and therefore frees the room for harmful bacteria.

Another thing in this direction are allergies. You can actually cure some allergies by injecting (mostly harmless) parasites - or parts from them - in your body.

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All true, I just wanted there to be something positive in there, perhaps fake happiness, is the answer; people thinking they are happy when they are actually quite the opposite. ^^

EDIT: Why didn't I think of bonus to tourism right away, that makes far more sense.

Is "Thyphiod Fever" spelt that way in game? If so, it shouldn't be, because it's Typhoid Fever instead.

Toffer90 said:

All true, I just wanted there to be something positive in there, perhaps fake happiness, is the answer; people thinking they are happy when they are actually quite the opposite. ^^

EDIT: Why didn't I think of bonus to tourism right away, that makes far more sense.

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But what about Crime and both Pollutions?? They also don't have any effects for values below 0?

Faustmouse said:

But what about Crime and both Pollutions?? They also don't have any effects for values below 0?

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too low crime could result in autobuildings called "restricted personal freedom", "p2p outlawed" or "three strikes law (see french legislature)" and "big brother see you".... lol.

-increased revolt chance perhaps.

Faustmouse said:

But what about Crime and both Pollutions?? They also don't have any effects for values below 0?

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No crime should make a community richer. No damaged property, it is safer to invest money etc.

Arakhor said:

Is "Thyphiod Fever" spelt that way in game? If so, it shouldn't be, because it's Typhoid Fever instead.

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It's actually Worse in the file Arakhor, ThyphoidFeaver and ScarletFeaver. I just hope it's spelled the same incorrect way in the Schema.

JosEPh

Well, just provided that the localisation is correct, the code is irrelevant, provided it's consistently bad.

Toffer90 said:

too low crime could result in autobuildings called "restricted personal freedom", "p2p outlawed" or "three strikes law (see french legislature)" and "big brother see you".... lol.

-increased revolt chance perhaps.

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A while back I proposed that we have an inverse crime level and call it Oppression, which would be negative effects from negative crime. Koshling pointed out that it would be impossible, well mostly impossible, to get the AI to work with that properly.

JosEPh_II said:

There are 16 Diseases. The Old Range was 1 to 200 with 9 of the 16 at range 100.

With this adjustment to the CIV4PropertyInfos the range is 25 to 350.
Range value count:
25- 1 Common Cold (raised from 1)
50- 1 Scurvy (stayed the same)
75- 2 Dysentery, and Scarlet Fever (both lowered from 100)
100- 3 Cholera, Diphtheria, and Measles (same)
150- 3 Anthrax (raised from 100), Leprosy (raised from 100), and Malaria (same)
200- 2 Bird Flu and Swine Flu (raised from 100)
250- 2 HIV (raised from 100) and Thyphiod Fever (raised from 150)
300- 1 Smallpox (raised from 200)
350- 1 Plague (Bubonic) (raised from 200)

I think these values are reasonable and still have a relatively short span as the min/max values go from 0 to 100,000.

Hopefully this will tone down the sudden erratic jumps to a more rise and fall wave.

This mini modmod Only deals with at What Level the Diseases is activated.

@T-Brd,
Why is it so important that Common Cold starts at 1? What does it matter if it starts at 25. Do you feel that Disease Must start immediately upon founding your 1st city at game start? I don't. I think it's more rational for to build up a little before any disease, even the Com Cold, starts.

JosEPh

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1) We're not talking about EVERYONE having the disease, we're talking about a % of the population having it. Pretty much at any time anywhere you are going to find people suffering from a Common Cold.

2) What makes negative disease (a completely disease free state) even have meaning if you can still have no disease at positive levels?

3) Why wouldn't you be suffering from diseases at the start of the game before your civilization has learned to do anything about it? If anything I'd think it would be much worse but for balance sake, a mere cold is enough.

4) Having a little disease doesn't really effectively mean anything until you start getting enough food and health modifiers to start overcoming the unhealth penalty. I have no problem at all making that a little harder than easier since this uniquely C2C challenge has become a very enjoyable aspect of the game.

5) Again, it's mostly just a matter of 'diseases actually start at 25, not 1' that feels really off-kilter. If there were a minimum disease level of 0 I wouldn't feel this way. If there were a way to start cities off at -25 disease that would be far preferable to establishing the cold as starting at 1.

Either way, I really wish I could've finished the more advanced disease stuff where it wouldn't be so static whether a city had a disease at a particular disease level or not.

1) We're not talking about EVERYONE having the disease, we're talking about a % of the population having it. Pretty much at any time anywhere you are going to find people suffering from a Common Cold.

2) What makes negative disease (a completely disease free state) even have meaning if you can still have no disease at positive levels?

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Exactly. Having no disease is virtually impossible, there's always someone somewhere with a disease to some degree.

What I can think of is having different levels for each disease, with the first level starting really low (like -10000), and at 0 it means it's "moderately" spread. A more simple version would be to only have a "generic disease" with levels spanning between like -10000 and 10000, with specific additional diseases (smallpox, etc.) that would trigger at certain levels (or through events).

3) Why wouldn't you be suffering from diseases at the start of the game before your civilization has learned to do anything about it? If anything I'd think it would be much worse but for balance sake, a mere cold is enough.

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I agree, and from disease could probably replace some of the base you get in a new city. Maybe even the additional from population since disease/pop already increases per po - no need to have two mechanics achieving the same goal.

The advanced disease mechanism would've enabled varying degrees of a disease to be represented in terms of the % of the population suffering from the disease. Not to say it can't still be done but to do so with the basic disease system might be a little too overpowering unless the diseases started adding +% unhealth instead of flat modifiers. But even that wouldn't be quite right... +% unhealth OF a base amount might be more like it.

Why was this Property not set from Just 0 to XXXXX and No inverse (neg. values) or "Sink" as Rwn says? If your attempts at suppressing disease get to be below 0, then the value returned should be zero. That eliminates the whole neg. range perceived (by some) problem. ( I see no problem with getting Disease to neg range as it acts as a buffer for When and not If you run out of Disease countering Builders and an ever expanding out of control # of Healer units stationed in every city.)

And since No basis or buildings or Property values were ever designed for the "-" range, then these arguments are irrelevant. At a setting of 1 the Common Cold (CC from now on) introduced 5 disease which generates More than the game has any allowance to overcome for a long time in Preh era. Quickly accelerating the further build up of making hitting the 50 or 100 mark extremely fast. And with the Core Disease settings you are hit with a total of 12 diseases as soon as you hit the 100 level. This is what makes the Disease numbers jump so wildly and makes it so hard to get back into any semblance of control early game. And everyone knows that humans, as a species, were so disease ridden in ancient times that we all died off!

Even with it set in This Modmod at 25 there is still being produced that is hard to balance. So for this modmod I totally disagree with the assessment being made about -/neg. range and % of pop sick at game start.

And if you have not tested/tried this modmod, then to make such valuations about CC needing to be at 1, or -200 or what ever, is without game play basis. And is just conjecture and a bit on the presumptuous side. Just sayin'.

I asked Hydro when he made crime (and said disease, pollution and flammability would soon follow) if this was going to become the main focus of the Mod and become the #1 problem you would have to deal with. His answer was No. But the Stark and irrefutable evidence is that it Has. You have to have you right side panel in city screen set to properties to Constantly watch the nefarious Crime and Disease levels that influence Each and Every build decision you make on every single turn. I Totally resent that. There are other parts of the Mod diminished because of this overbearing burden.

Okay I'm stopping here cause this is making my blood pressure rise.

JosEPh

My lastest vanilla game (on a pretty recent SVN update) is only on Noble, but is by far the biggest problem my empire is facing. By just 4,000 -6,000 BC, my capital's disease rating is already in the multiple hundreds and is showing no signs of coming back down any time soon.

In this respect, I totally agree with what Joseph is saying.

JosEPh_II said:

Why was this Property not set from Just 0 to XXXXX and No inverse (neg. values) or "Sink" as Rwn says? If your attempts at suppressing disease get to be below 0, then the value returned should be zero. That eliminates the whole neg. range perceived (by some) problem. ( I see no problem with getting Disease to neg range as it acts as a buffer for When and not If you run out of Disease countering Builders and an ever expanding out of control # of Healer units stationed in every city.)

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I really don't care what the upper and lower limit is set to as long as the game never allows you to hit the limit in any way. CC could be unlocked at -1000 disease for all I care it makes no difference. Otherwise I agree with everything you said in your post: Population has a way too drastic effect on these properties for my liking; there should be more buildings that give disease, crime and negative education so that it is not only determined by pop (crime is actually not bad in this regard).

Toffer90 said:

I really don't care what the upper and lower limit is set to as long as the game never allows you to hit the limit in any way. CC could be unlocked at -1000 disease for all I care it makes no difference. Otherwise I agree with everything you said in your post: Population has a way too drastic effect on these properties for my liking; there should be more buildings that give disease, crime and negative education so that it is not only determined by pop (crime is actually not bad in this regard).

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Diseases like the Black Death usually travel via trade routes. So adding disease to trade routes would be logical.

The Black Death originated in Asia, killing 25 million Chinese in the 1330's, and travelled along the silk road towards the city of Caffa near the Black Sea. The Tartars were sieging Caffa in 1346, and when their soldiers became ill with the Plague, they catapulted the corpses of the soldiers who died of the Plague into the city (sources speak of "mountains of dead"). The local population became infected. People fled the city by ship to various parts of Europe, spreading the disease from harbour to harbour, among the common trade routes, causing a big epidemic in Europa that lowered the population from 75 million in 1346 to 50 million in 1352. It caused a complete breakdown of society (many people locked themselves into their houses or fled) and gave rise to the Flagellant movement where people tortured themself every day in public to atone for their sins before God.

The Plague epidemic came back to Europe over 30 times, causing many millions more deaths until the 19th century.

The denser the population, the more people died. The thinly populated areas in Europe were the least affected.

JosEPh_II said:

Why was this Property not set from Just 0 to XXXXX and No inverse (neg. values) or "Sink" as Rwn says? If your attempts at suppressing disease get to be below 0, then the value returned should be zero. That eliminates the whole neg. range perceived (by some) problem. ( I see no problem with getting Disease to neg range as it acts as a buffer for When and not If you run out of Disease countering Builders and an ever expanding out of control # of Healer units stationed in every city.)

And since No basis or buildings or Property values were ever designed for the "-" range, then these arguments are irrelevant. At a setting of 1 the Common Cold (CC from now on) introduced 5 disease which generates More than the game has any allowance to overcome for a long time in Preh era. Quickly accelerating the further build up of making hitting the 50 or 100 mark extremely fast. And with the Core Disease settings you are hit with a total of 12 diseases as soon as you hit the 100 level. This is what makes the Disease numbers jump so wildly and makes it so hard to get back into any semblance of control early game. And everyone knows that humans, as a species, were so disease ridden in ancient times that we all died off!

Even with it set in This Modmod at 25 there is still being produced that is hard to balance. So for this modmod I totally disagree with the assessment being made about -/neg. range and % of pop sick at game start.

And if you have not tested/tried this modmod, then to make such valuations about CC needing to be at 1, or -200 or what ever, is without game play basis. And is just conjecture and a bit on the presumptuous side. Just sayin'.

I asked Hydro when he made crime (and said disease, pollution and flammability would soon follow) if this was going to become the main focus of the Mod and become the #1 problem you would have to deal with. His answer was No. But the Stark and irrefutable evidence is that it Has. You have to have you right side panel in city screen set to properties to Constantly watch the nefarious Crime and Disease levels that influence Each and Every build decision you make on every single turn. I Totally resent that. There are other parts of the Mod diminished because of this overbearing burden.

Okay I'm stopping here cause this is making my blood pressure rise.

JosEPh

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I don't have any issue with anything you've done here except that one point. In fact, the only reason I mention it is because, otherwise, this is probably all valid for the core.

I think it's a good thing that it takes a long time to get past one pop and get to the point of growing. I probably enjoy this part of the game more than most of what follows. 1 Unhealth doesn't seem like its ever too stringent in any situation really.

What frustrates ME is that crime and disease CAN be eliminated completely. Totally unrealistic imo. Even the most impressive efforts to do so have proven impossible throughout history.

Oh, and yeah, we WERE suffering from a tremendous amount of diseases in the Ancient era. Life expectancies were somewhere around 30-40 from what I've read.

But I don't mean to expand on an argument here. Just saying I think it's important to make positive disease always have something there. (It wasn't set to min at 0 because as it is currently programmed the system cannot be set to do that - AIAndy and I have had some discussions on how to make it possible but it would take some interesting manipulation of code to do so.)

Something else to consider here too... the impact of unhealth is pretty minor as a game effect overall. I think it PSYCHS the player more than anything. All it means is less food. Which means slowing pop growth. If severe enough it can mean negative food but it has to be tremendously severe to get to that point. This means what unhealth represents is some citizens are dying before 'old age/natural causes' gets them (and that's only if the city hasn't been able to counter all of it.) So all unhealth really represents is a reduction in age expectancy. It's always, therefore, going to be nearly impossible to stay on top of unhealth entirely because as soon as you do, you're growing quickly as a result, that growth ushering on yet more unhealth itself. It can truly frustrate the player that considers it anywhere near as important to control as unhappiness, which can deeply impact productivity of the population already earned. Unhappy is truly horrendous. Unhealth is about 25% as important to control.

Again, since we know human history is anything but being all about nations going all out to make sure everyone will generally live to a ripe old age, is it not simply realistic that it should be nearly impossible to maintain fully healthy cities for long?

I get the impression that requests for "balancing" disease/crime/education really means: nerfing those factors so strongly that they can be ignored without much consequence. Which makes me think they don't like the concepts of these properties to begin with.

Noriad2 said:

I get the impression that requests for "balancing" disease/crime/education really means: nerfing those factors so strongly that they can be ignored without much consequence. Which makes me think they don't like the concepts of these properties to begin with.

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Well, I think diseases need to be more spread out. Everything happening at 150 or 200 is a problem for gameplay, realism and any other criterion you can think of.

However, the values currently given by this modmod, where all the threshhold changes that matter are increases - often of 50% or more - would nerf disease far too much I agree.

None of my cities in my current Ancient era game have ever hit 350 disease. Even though I was taken by surprise by the unhealth hits when cities reached 200, 1 health care unit was enough to reverse back past that magic number (and in most cases there are disease-reducing buildings remaining to be built too). No city ever went into net unhealthy at the 100 level, and even when cities go into net unhealthy, it's barely even a nuisance, since they eat 7 or 8 extra food at worst...

I suggest the diseases currently at 100 should be spread so that they are all 10 disease apart (ie. built at increments of 10 between 60 and 140), and the pairs at 150 and 200 (assuming I'm reading the opening post correctly) could be moved to 140/160 and 190/210 respectively.

I have to agree with TB. I think that most of the hate against diseases and is just a matter of OCD. Those who think or diseases are really really bad, please consider playing a game where you ignore it completely. Your cities will grow slower indeed, but on the same time you have less effort to deal with crime. And slower growing cities is not something that will make you lose the game.