Ultra-Blight WTH

[Atlar]

I'm playing an emperor game at the moment as the amurites. Blight just struck me and its totally insane. Almost every of my fivteen cities has been reduced to 1 population, even 20+ ones! After 15 turns the blight counter (for unhealth) is still averaging at about 30... Fortunately its not that big of a deal in this game cause I effectively have won the game before with vassalaging the only real oponnent. But if I would be in the midst of a real war I would be dead meat. Especially because the AI civs don't seem to suffer at all from the blight...
So, whats going on here? Its my first emperor game so maybe its because of the difficulty? I really don't know much about the mechanics of blight (other than it starts at ac 30 and wears off somehow), so please enlighten me!

 

[nzk13]

its probability based, so something like that could theoretically happen, but its not very likely. i think the mechanics are the same for every difficulty, so emporer should be same as settler. id like to see a screenshot. got one?

 

[Atlar]

Sure, share my pain :

Before:


After(bout 15-20) turns later:

 

[nzk13]

impressive.

 

[Emptiness]

If you are using an older version of the mod, you may want want to upgrade to the latest version. In an older version there was a bug that caused blight to hit much harder than is intended (almost twice as much potential unhealth).

In the current version of the mod, blight is really not so bad as long as you build buildings. Not only do buildings increase your city's total they also directly reduce the amount of that blight causes. A city with plenty of buildings and some spare may not even notice blight. In contrast, if you have lots of resources and grow your cities large without building buildings (which will mean little or no spare and also no blight reduction from buildings) then your cities will suffer horribly.

I noticed that pre-blight you had cities that were already in -. Having blight hit when you have cities in that situation is generally catastrophic.

 

[Atlar]

Thanks for the reply. It seems you are right with the older version. I just read in the manual that blight should add up to 15 unhealth to a city's balance but my cities had over 30 ^^. Besides that I really had almost now health buldings
Can you tell me where I can see what version I'm using?

 

[Atlar]

Ah just found it in the faq:

How do we know what version/patch of Fall from Heaven we are running?

A: In the 'Mods/Fall from Heaven 2 030/' directory (or whatever version you are dealing with) there is a readme file. That will have the patched version in it, ie: 'Fall from Heaven 2 0.30e' or whatever.

 

[avalonnn]

Also -- did you you cause negative health in cities by

building a forge in every one

chopping down all the forests

etc?

 

[Atlar]

Yup, the old ones had forges and I didn't bother to raise health over the happy cap (I mean that the cities would grow bigger as the happy cap) and my newly conquered ones only received money and research buildings.... so part of the catastrophy goes on my part but as emptiness said my version of the game causes a blight that is twice as hard as it should be which crushed my already filthy cities

 

[nzk13]

well then, whaddya expect?

 

[Morkonan]

Blight may end up killing me.

I just got into a World War. There wasn't any other choice, really. So, now I am at war with the entire World, seven other civs on a pangea map. Oh JOY! It's me (Bannor) and Bassium against everyone. Trouble is, Bassium isn't doing much about it.

I just got through defeating somewhere around 250+ units worth of Stacks of Doom with one 130+ stack I've been grooming for the intial battle, feeling mighty proud about it and planning a masterful counter-attack then, on the next turn, WHAM!

Blight crits you for 100,000,005 pts..



So, I had been working very little with health problems. I really didn't have many so the +Health buildings were not a huge priority compared to preparing a good World War footing. My cities are now decimated, I'm in the middle of a World War requiring constant reinforcements against relentless evil enemies bent on my destruction... My only hope is to try to work towards getting other Civs free from the Vassalage of two evil Superpowers and getting them on my side. Not a good prospect. There aren't going to be an Secret Weapons to come save the day.. it's a slugfest..

However, the point is that Blight is very deadly... It definitely needs to be planned for ahead of time. +Health buildings seem to be critical. Unfortunately, the AI doesn't have to worry about this...

 

[Emptiness]

However, the point is that Blight is very deadly... It definitely needs to be planned for ahead of time. +Health buildings seem to be critical. Unfortunately, the AI doesn't have to worry about this...

The AI can be badly hurt by Blight. It is a myth that the AI is not affected. The AI builds + buildings and trades for resources, and so generally fares well - but no better than a human who had made similar preparations. I have seen an unprepared AI whose cities all starved to size 1, so I know that the claims that the AI receives special protection against Blight are false.

 

[Morkonan]

The AI can be badly hurt by Blight. It is a myth that the AI is not affected. The AI builds + buildings and trades for resources, and so generally fares well - but no better than a human who had made similar preparations. I have seen an unprepared AI whose cities all starved to size 1, so I know that the claims that the AI receives special protection against Blight are false.

Interesting. I noticed that my chart standings in production took a desperate tumble when Blight struck yet the AI's did not. Based perhaps on their handicap bonuses?

Blight's initial hit was devastating. But, things are not as bad as I feared. Yes, it's terrible and more than decimated some of my largest cities. Production has been cut in half for most cities. But, my civ is eeking along an existence at 50% research to still show a profit and keep armies in the field. When one of my SoD's has to go outside the borders, the support costs are sometimes painful at the moment.

I did not notice any drops in AI sity populations with Blight. At least, not like mine. But, a turn after the initial hit, I did see classic green pollution over the Mercurian's city. Is it possible that you can't see the green haze over AI cities if you're either not allied with them or didn't previously own them? Could that be what leads to the false claims, if they are such, that the AI is not effected by Blight?

 

[Breunor]

In my current game I think blight won me the game. I playing the Ljoslafar and was ready for it. Having all of those forests help health.

I was next to the Lanun, we were in a 'sniping' war. My army was very storng on defense. The blight devastated them, their cities went down to 1 and 2; mine were hit but not like htat. I started out producing them badly even though we were on immortal and ploughed them over.

Best wishes,

Breunor

 

[Emptiness]

Interesting. I noticed that my chart standings in production took a desperate tumble when Blight struck yet the AI's did not. Based perhaps on their handicap bonuses?

Not really. Blight does not produce any production penalty, directly. It can force you to shift population away from low-/high- tiles to work high/low- tiles in order to reduce starvation - which indirectly lowers production. If the AI is not showing a production decrease, this most likely means that it has enough buildings and surplus to weather the Blight without shifting population to less productive tiles.

I did not notice any drops in AI sity populations with Blight. At least, not like mine. But, a turn after the initial hit, I did see classic green pollution over the Mercurian's city. Is it possible that you can't see the green haze over AI cities if you're either not allied with them or didn't previously own them? Could that be what leads to the false claims, if they are such, that the AI is not effected by Blight?

No, you cannot see signs of unhealthiness on unallied cities - and yes, this could certainly be one of the things that leads people to believe that the AI is not being affected, especially when no actual population decrease takes place.

 

[Morkonan]

Not really. Blight does not produce any production penalty, directly. It can force you to shift population away from low-/high- tiles to work high/low- tiles in order to reduce starvation - which indirectly lowers production. If the AI is not showing a production decrease, this most likely means that it has enough buildings and surplus to weather the Blight without shifting population to less productive tiles.

Understood. That's what I was trying to imply. I didn't mean that Blight somehow directly effected production.

 

[Blankk]

If you are using an older version of the mod, you may want want to upgrade to the latest version. In an older version there was a bug that caused blight to hit much harder than is intended (almost twice as much potential unhealth).

In the current version of the mod, blight is really not so bad as long as you build buildings. Not only do buildings increase your city's total they also directly reduce the amount of that blight causes. A city with plenty of buildings and some spare may not even notice blight. In contrast, if you have lots of resources and grow your cities large without building buildings (which will mean little or no spare and also no blight reduction from buildings) then your cities will suffer horribly.

I noticed that pre-blight you had cities that were already in -. Having blight hit when you have cities in that situation is generally catastrophic.

I'm playing on Patch M and blight just hit. I'm playing as the Sheaim and I'm running Sacrifice the Weak and a few forges. My health was negative in a few spots but I had graneries/smokehouses and a few herbalists/aquaducts in random places since I read this thread.. also have 10 "health" resources. I figured I'd be alright... and I more or less am okay (better than the enemy civs ) but I'm seeing pretty crazy amounts of blight.

My capital with a gran/smoke has -29 from blight. My production city has a gran, smoke, aqua, herb and has -25 from blight. All of my older cities are well within the mid 20's... the 3 newer cities I have are 15-20 in blight (and still growing mostly thanks to sacrifice the weak ). Is this normal? I can't imagine how screwed I would be if I wasn't running sacrifice the weak.

 

[Emptiness]

My capital with a gran/smoke has -29 from blight. My production city has a gran, smoke, aqua, herb and has -25 from blight. All of my older cities are well within the mid 20's... the 3 newer cities I have are 15-20 in blight (and still growing mostly thanks to sacrifice the weak ). Is this normal?

How much you get from Blight is based on the population of the city (and then modified by other factors), so without also knowing the populations of those cities on the turn that Blight hit there's no way to say whether you experienced normal or abnormal levels of .

 

[Blankk]

How much you get from Blight is based on the population of the city (and then modified by other factors), so without also knowing the populations of those cities on the turn that Blight hit there's no way to say whether you experienced normal or abnormal levels of .

ahhh, I thought I read it was a flat amount in the manual but I see that I read it wrong. thx

 

[Vae_Victis]

How long does the Blight last?

I just had my first FFH game ruined by it. I was 400 turns into a Deity game where I was in second place score-wise and had already conquered 5 of 11 opponent civs.

Every one of my cities had a Herbalist, Granary, Smokehouse, Aqueduct, etc in it plus plenty of resources. My largest city was 19 pop and smallest was 10 pop. All had health caps of 20+.

The pop 19 city got hit with +33 Unhealthy, the smallest city got hit with +18 Unhealthy. Those numbers are in addition to regular Unhealthiness, so my pop 19 city had an Unhealthiness of around 55.

15 turns later I had only 1 city that was above 1 Pop and it was still dropping. Using Worldbuilder and saves I noticed not a single AI city lost a pop point in those 15 turns.

Since every one of my cities had every +Health building available and none were over or even even with the Health cap what could I have done differently? I chopped plenty of forests but having all my cities reduced to 1 pop seems a tad drastic of a punishment for chopping forests. Is that the intention?