Tamur
10-01-2004, 18:00
Last night I loaded up a saved game and, just for fun, decided I'd track down the plague and spread it as much as possible.
Luckily the Gauls were infected, in Patavium. After a rough seige battle I got in there and got my general infected! Wohoo! He headed south the next turn, and I had a chain of cavalry infect all my settlements in Italy. I tried infecting the Julii but it didn't work, even when I sent my infected diplomat to talk with one of their family members. Ah well.
Anyway, next turn I shipped over to Greece and infected the entire Peloponnesus and mainland, then just hit the next turn button over and over.
Twenty-five years later, seven of my faction's twelve family members were dead of plague, I had lost about 40,000 citizens (about 15% of my empire at the time), and about 3000 soldiers. Thesallonika, Athens, and Syracuse rioted. Syracuse and Athens were seized by rebels, and then snapped up by Carthage and the Greek Cities, respecitvely.
Happily, the Greeks got the plague from Athens, and they spread it. The Carthaginians just sat in Syracuse and the plague burnt out fairly quickly there.
An interesting side effect was that, as soon as the plague had burnt itself out, I had a gigantic population boom in the family --- fourteen children born in less than three years. I'm not sure if it was simply coincidence, or if that's built into the game.
All in all, and interesting experiment. It had much less effect than I had expected --- I was thinking plague like in the 1300s which wiped out half (or more?) of the population.
Luckily the Gauls were infected, in Patavium. After a rough seige battle I got in there and got my general infected! Wohoo! He headed south the next turn, and I had a chain of cavalry infect all my settlements in Italy. I tried infecting the Julii but it didn't work, even when I sent my infected diplomat to talk with one of their family members. Ah well.
Anyway, next turn I shipped over to Greece and infected the entire Peloponnesus and mainland, then just hit the next turn button over and over.
Twenty-five years later, seven of my faction's twelve family members were dead of plague, I had lost about 40,000 citizens (about 15% of my empire at the time), and about 3000 soldiers. Thesallonika, Athens, and Syracuse rioted. Syracuse and Athens were seized by rebels, and then snapped up by Carthage and the Greek Cities, respecitvely.
Happily, the Greeks got the plague from Athens, and they spread it. The Carthaginians just sat in Syracuse and the plague burnt out fairly quickly there.
An interesting side effect was that, as soon as the plague had burnt itself out, I had a gigantic population boom in the family --- fourteen children born in less than three years. I'm not sure if it was simply coincidence, or if that's built into the game.
All in all, and interesting experiment. It had much less effect than I had expected --- I was thinking plague like in the 1300s which wiped out half (or more?) of the population.