Bring out y'r deaaaad !

This was brought to my attention by Whacker, praise be-eth to his soul.

Has anyone noticed that the plague happens a lot more in 1.2 than it used to ? I'm not talking about the scripted Black Plague event that is supposed to happen historically, but rather the random outbreaks of plague in high population cities ?

Now, I'm playing Lusted's LtC which, among other things, boosts pop growth a bit and ups population thresholds as well (meaning you need more folks to become a City, Huge City etc...) which may compound the issue but even in vanilla I've had outbreaks pretty much all over the place as soon as my walls reach the last or next-to-last levels.

I tried searching the /data *.txt and *.xml files for the word "plague", but all I found was the effect of the disease on public order (in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml), and a trigger for an advisor. That advisor pops up when a city has high pop, low health and no sewers. Obviously a leftover from Rome, but it leads me to believe that maybe, just maybe, plague outbreaks might still hinge upon the existence of sewers, which we can't build in M2TW...

I'm probably wrong of course, in this as in all things, but it's bugging me. Anyone know whether the plague mechanics are hardcoded or not ? And if not, where are they ?

descr_disasters.txt:

Code:

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event                plague
frequency        20
winter                false
summer                false
min_scale        2
max_scale        5

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Now the 20 is probably to be divided by some number that is hidden somewhere and it certainly is higher than 100 as otherwise you'd have massive plague outbreaks every turn. I'm also guessing this is run at end of turn for each settlement a faction owns, simple reason that you see the symbol popup once you press end turn and it only occurs in settlements.

Good find ! I figured descr_disasters was meaningless, but that's because I checked the /data one, not the /date/world/base/ one.

But there's gotta be more to it than that... not only is 20 not a percentage, but a min number of turns between events (check the comments at the beginning of the file), but health/sewers/poplevel isn't taken into account, and that goes against empirical evidence.

The file is interesting though. Anyone ever got locusts ? :)

So you HAD to go and post a thread about it!!! I was honestly about to PM you my short findings so far, but I'll just go ahead and do it here... :rolleyes: :grin:

As Factionhair pointed out, that file seems to govern this. I edited mine and made it something nuts like 200, but I still get plague almost every turn in at least one settlement. Methinks one needs to start a new campaign to make these changes happen. Am about to do so, will report back with results.

:balloon2:

Disaster file is only loaded for new campaigns, yes.
And I have yet to find a pun for Whacker.

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Originally Posted by FactionHeir

Disaster file is only loaded for new campaigns, yes.

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That's what I've read so far, yessir.

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And I have yet to find a pun for Whacker.

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Replace a certain letter of my handle with the letter 'n'. Or get on the IRC channel, the regulars in there have a few good ones that probably shouldn't be mentioned in here. :grin:

@Whacner : I can't help it, I'm both morbidly curious and terminally anal :sweatdrop: . What I don't understand I just can't get out of my head :dizzy2:

Well either of those modifications would get me banned :p

Yes.

Asked and Answered