Mod the plague

[biggamer132]

I'm surprised to see this. You don't see any improvement over the latest one?

I didn't really play much on the first version that had the plague, but what happens in that I have 2-3 units in each city before the plague and ended up with 0-2 at most. In terms of workers, I assign them to work on something and a turn after the plague spreads, they're all gone. Even taking troops out of the cities doesn't help - I sent my war elephants to the hills north of Parsa and they were all gone within two turns.

what do you mean?

The (Very Solid) (Unstable) marks that used to show up next to the names aren't there anymore.

 

[vra379971]

A few issues.

The plague is right now is broken. I get it, fine. it kills my troops (too many, but fine as troops were most likely NOT to get sick.) The thng about it, it that historically, yes, you'd get it, then, I'd move on. Quickly. This thing stands around for hundreds of years. Make it stay 5 turns, max. It does plenty damage in that time.

 

[jgbaxter]

Rhye, I'm no where near the mod maker you are (to state the obvious), however, I do playtest games.

Any event in any game that causes widespread chaos and the self-destruction of the player even if it was preventable is to a degree seriously flawed.

This is (was- until you fix plague) the best mod our there for civ, bar none.

I was stunned that you increased the sickness in cities from plague before you even saw players reporting that plague worked.

Anyway, the basic rule of fixing a problem with beta testing is zero in on the issue, make a dramatic change in the opposite direction to see if the issue is (over)fixed, then proceed to ratchet up the changes to where you feel is reasonable.

Eg. you want plague to be a 60/100 in effect, you are getting 99/100. You don't make what you think is the right change to 59/100 for the simple reason that the change might only be 98/100. You make a huge change to 30/100 and see where that change REALLY brings you. Then you ratchet back that 30/100 to 45/100, then 52.5/100 and so on.

In the case of plague, plague kills units (we know there's other issues but this is the immediate game breaker). So. Stop killing units completely.

With the first semi-random plague, deal out a damage hit of 1 pt in the city that has plague, .5 to the adjacent area, .25 beyond that. Do this each turn for the length of that first plague. For the second plague double the damage to a base 2, the third plague a base 3, and so on.

One of the main things you want to do with plague is to kill old units, this will still do that. trust me if I have maceman and I'm hit with a plague that lasts 7 turns those maceman even with healing are half way dead. I'll probably still have maceman for the second plague and those maceman are probably going to start having casualties. The thing is, for those plagues, the units aren't old. The plague will likely kill any of my units near a plague center that are 3-4 strength, which in most cases will be my out of date units.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I'm coming across like I know anything, I'm just trying to give my thoughts and be productive so I can play your mod. I appreciate the mod and I missed playing it the last week while I waited for the new release... now I have to wait all over again.

 

[Rhye]

The (Very Solid) (Unstable) marks that used to show up next to the names aren't there anymore.

press f2

Quickly. This thing stands around for hundreds of years. Make it stay 5 turns, max. It does plenty damage in that time.

Hundreds of years? It's 6 turns average. It can be 4 up to 8 depending on the health

I was stunned that you increased the sickness in cities from plague before you even saw players reporting that plague worked.

This is because of your compaints of cities not being sick and fully growing during plague periods

 

[Elhoim]

Rhye, I'm no where near the mod maker you are (to state the obvious), however, I do playtest games.

Any event in any game that causes widespread chaos and the self-destruction of the player even if it was preventable is to a degree seriously flawed.

This is (was- until you fix plague) the best mod our there for civ, bar none.

I was stunned that you increased the sickness in cities from plague before you even saw players reporting that plague worked.

Anyway, the basic rule of fixing a problem with beta testing is zero in on the issue, make a dramatic change in the opposite direction to see if the issue is (over)fixed, then proceed to ratchet up the changes to where you feel is reasonable.

Eg. you want plague to be a 60/100 in effect, you are getting 99/100. You don't make what you think is the right change to 59/100 for the simple reason that the change might only be 98/100. You make a huge change to 30/100 and see where that change REALLY brings you. Then you ratchet back that 30/100 to 45/100, then 52.5/100 and so on.

In the case of plague, plague kills units (we know there's other issues but this is the immediate game breaker). So. Stop killing units completely.

With the first semi-random plague, deal out a damage hit of 1 pt in the city that has plague, .5 to the adjacent area, .25 beyond that. Do this each turn for the length of that first plague. For the second plague double the damage to a base 2, the third plague a base 3, and so on.

One of the main things you want to do with plague is to kill old units, this will still do that. trust me if I have maceman and I'm hit with a plague that lasts 7 turns those maceman even with healing are half way dead. I'll probably still have maceman for the second plague and those maceman are probably going to start having casualties. The thing is, for those plagues, the units aren't old. The plague will likely kill any of my units near a plague center that are 3-4 strength, which in most cases will be my out of date units.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I'm coming across like I know anything, I'm just trying to give my thoughts and be productive so I can play your mod. I appreciate the mod and I missed playing it the last week while I waited for the new release... now I have to wait all over again.

Personally I agree that going to the other "extreme" (not killing units outright, but doing incremental damage) is worth a try.

 

[NickSD]

February 8th Plague Status Report

Now using new version.

Begun game as India.

Plague wiped out all my military, and workers in Iron Age.

Rebuilt workers and military and began building access to resources.

1320, military not yet rebuilt. All workers killed by plague AGAIN.

Is plague really meant to make it impossible to build resources or military EVER?

Nick

 

[biggamer132]

Yeah, the plague basically shot my chances of winning my last game as Persia to the point where I had to quit. By the time the first one hit, I was doing decently well, but the plague killed most of my troops and I had to rebuild my city garrisons at the expense of infrastructure. Finally, the second one hit right as I was finishing rebuilding, and what was looking like a promising game was just done. AGAIN, I had to rebuild my units at the expense of banks, universities, and other improvements that would have helped me keep up in tech, and when I saw that the other civs had units I wasn't even close to, I gave up before I got torn apart.

 

[vra379971]

I'd swear the plague in my Nubian city was there well past that Rhye. I can check though, should still have a save.

Also, as I noted, Plague would be better off hurting troops, with a only decent low chance of killing anyone unit.

 

[Rhye]

I'd swear the plague in my Nubian city was there well past that Rhye. I can check though, should still have a save.

Also, as I noted, Plague would be better off hurting troops, with a only decent low chance of killing anyone unit.

really?
Another bug then.
The only save I need is when you get it (when you still have the skull in the scores. When it disappears, the plague shuld be gone)

 

[Barak]

Plague was also known to kill off the weakest first. Those with stronger immune systems COULD live through it (if speaking of the historical plagues). To that end, could we make the plague only kill off the weakest units, while only weakening (severely) the strongest in terms of HP?

For example, plague hits a civ. The military units in the cities get sick, killing off those with say 0-5 exp, while only weakening those with more than 5 exp.

Is something like this possible?

 

[mitsho]

As I recall the intention behind plagues is to kill off the masses of units the AI has to accelerate the loading times anew. It thus would make no sense to just hurt them. But I believe that Rhye will finally find a way to balance it right serving both purposes, just let him to his work

mitsho

 

[Whitefire]

Rhye, I'm no where near the mod maker you are (to state the obvious), however, I do playtest games.

Any event in any game that causes widespread chaos and the self-destruction of the player even if it was preventable is to a degree seriously flawed.

This is (was- until you fix plague) the best mod our there for civ, bar none.

I was stunned that you increased the sickness in cities from plague before you even saw players reporting that plague worked.

Anyway, the basic rule of fixing a problem with beta testing is zero in on the issue, make a dramatic change in the opposite direction to see if the issue is (over)fixed, then proceed to ratchet up the changes to where you feel is reasonable.

Eg. you want plague to be a 60/100 in effect, you are getting 99/100. You don't make what you think is the right change to 59/100 for the simple reason that the change might only be 98/100. You make a huge change to 30/100 and see where that change REALLY brings you. Then you ratchet back that 30/100 to 45/100, then 52.5/100 and so on.

In the case of plague, plague kills units (we know there's other issues but this is the immediate game breaker). So. Stop killing units completely.

With the first semi-random plague, deal out a damage hit of 1 pt in the city that has plague, .5 to the adjacent area, .25 beyond that. Do this each turn for the length of that first plague. For the second plague double the damage to a base 2, the third plague a base 3, and so on.

One of the main things you want to do with plague is to kill old units, this will still do that. trust me if I have maceman and I'm hit with a plague that lasts 7 turns those maceman even with healing are half way dead. I'll probably still have maceman for the second plague and those maceman are probably going to start having casualties. The thing is, for those plagues, the units aren't old. The plague will likely kill any of my units near a plague center that are 3-4 strength, which in most cases will be my out of date units.

Anyway, I'm sorry if I'm coming across like I know anything, I'm just trying to give my thoughts and be productive so I can play your mod. I appreciate the mod and I missed playing it the last week while I waited for the new release... now I have to wait all over again.

I have played, and won, 7 out of 7 games with the plauge. One of them was as the Aztecs and I barely squeaked by with Japan and France coming to my aide to crush America. In every instance except my current game (Rome/Warlords v 132) I had my units and my workers wiped out a minimum of 2 times (4 in the cases of Persia and India). At first I figured it was because I got lucky, but after 7 games I've realized it's because I'm playing it right. So, here's a few tips from observed behavior. Not from reading this or another thread or looking at the code.

1) Never leave Slavery

I doubt many do, but I find it essential for surviving the plague. When I whip 3-6 pop from a city, the duration of the plague lessons by several turns. This allows me to switch to building units sooner.

2) Build Aqueducts

My building order post-mathematics is generaly Granary, Barracks, 1 unit, Aqueduct. This building above all others seems to prevent serious outbreaks of the plague. Which makes sense since a major contributing factor to the plague was the lack of fresh water to wisk away trash and human waste.

3) Control your Population

After you discover Guilds - and even before then if you control a large amount of territory - You should be able to keep a 10 health buffer. I find that with a 10 health buffer in all of my cities, I can stop the plague from spreading completely.




In my recent game as Rome, I had the plague spread up through Spain and stop once it hit Carthago, Rome and Mediolodium. The only other city to catch it was Athenae. Even better, well worse for me, is that I prevented it from spreading to Russia, Arabia, Turkey, Persia and Babylonia. The only civs ravaged by it in Europe were England and Spain with Vikings and Germany catching a mild to severe case; although hardly crippling. (I'll upload the save when I get home if you wish)

 

[jgbaxter]

This is because of your compaints of cities not being sick and fully growing during plague periods

I'm not saying it was a bad idea, I think it's a good idea to deal with that problem of the plague being easy to remove from a city and not having the city sick. I was pointing that out to bring note that before we make it harder for a city to mitigate the effects of a plague, we need to not kill all the units.

 

[Barak]

New game (Germany) in 132, and once again my first plague kille every military unit within 2 turns. Also, once agian Trukey is not effected at all while every adjoining nation is.

 

[None_Existant]

I play as Egypt and go for a cultural victory (cuz thats easy ^_^). For some reason, one of my cities had the plague sign above it the whole game, but didnt actually have the plauge. Anyway, the plague landed on the Romans which had been at war with the Greek for about ~10 turns before making peace. The war along with the plague apparently shattered their army. Contuaray to the Barbs getting it, the barbs actually moved in and took down Rome.

Also, i sent a GM to London later when another plague hit. I never saw him again. Mebbe it was a glitch or he got killed by a barb... eh.

Toning down the plague would definetly be appreciated. (The plague hit me too, but since I was makign egypt a wonder factory it only killed like 3 workers and my whole army of 5 units xdd)

 

[archontophoenix]

In v132, it still seems to be the case that units more than 2 spaces away from a city with a plague don't get killed. So keep your army 3 spaces away from any city, and then when the plague comes along and wipes out your neighbors' defenses, move in as soon as the plague has passed. At least that appears to be working in my current game.

Nice exploit, but to be more realistic, large concentrations of units should act like large cities in terms of their susceptibility to plague damage. Historically, armies in camps and on battlefields have been, if anything, more susceptible to disease than the general population.

 

[Rhye]

In v132, it still seems to be the case that units more than 2 spaces away from a city with a plague don't get killed.

not totally correct

I play as Egypt and go for a cultural victory (cuz thats easy ^_^). For some reason, one of my cities had the plague sign above it the whole game, but didnt actually have the plauge.

If you all want this bug fixed, I need your savegame of before the skull in the scores by your name disappears

 

[NickSD]

3) Control your Population

After you discover Guilds - and even before then if you control a large amount of territory - You should be able to keep a 10 health buffer. I find that with a 10 health buffer in all of my cities, I can stop the plague from spreading completely.

What's a 10 health buffer?

 

[Lone Wolf]

Well, that's really funny.
XII century. Scene In The Medieval Kingdom.

The King: I say, my court of advisors, we are in a deep trouble. That terrible plague has reached all the nearby kingdoms, and I think it is only a matter of time before my land holdings will be affected by it. What shall we do? By the way, I really like, that there are no slaves in our kingdom, instead we have a great caste system, which really helps our culture.

The Main Advisor: Sir, you should make your population slaves again!

The King: Do you mean that slaves are imuune to that disease? That's really strange...

The Main Advisor: No, Sir! But they're slaves, so you are able to kill lots and lots of them, 'cause they have absolutely no rights.

The King: Why I should kill my people?

The Main Advisor: Well, Sir, you understand, it is really crowded in our cities. Too much populations means lots of unhealthiness. If you kill the most of you population, the rest will have more healthy living conditions.

The King: But the plague will kill them with same effect.

The Main Advisor: Oh, Sir, the plague is a very special disease. Our troops are immune to all usual diseases. Seems like a man, when given a flail and clad in armor will be always healty. But, the plague kills the soliders too.

The King: Oh, my. Well, then do what you like.

A somewhat surrealistical bit of dialogue, I think...

 

[garrinchaya]

Very good one, Lone Wolf