The Black Death

[Zenicetus]

I was reminded of this by a BBC article linked on several blogs today, about how the "Little Ice Age" drop in climate temps (14th to mid 19th centuries) might have been caused by the depopulation of Europe due to plague, resulting in farms going fallow, and the forest regrowth scrubbing CO2 from the atmosphere:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4755328.stm

I didn't play the original MTW. Did it include a Black Death event? Would the Black Death in MTW2 add or detract from the game?

Obviously CA will do what they want with this, but it would be an interesting *option* to have a timed plague event you had to cope with, where 30-50% of the population (including troops) of the major factions died off in a short perid of time. I'm just not sure I'd want to have it forced on me. This may be a case where historical realism just wouldn't be that much fun.

[Umar bin al-Khattab]

There was a Black Death even in MTW. It mostly caused unrest in the Britannic region. I say that the Black Death, a historical event, would add to the MTW2 experience. The more factual accuracy, the better IMO.

Now, I also think that the Black Death should be avoidable. In the provinces/cities that you build many public health buildings, the plague should not hit. This adds another strategic aspect: Do I train vast armies or ensure public health?

[Watchman]

"Public health buildings" ? Europeans at least didn't have any... but then among the main reasons they suffered so badly was specifically the literally shitty conception of hygiene of the time. I've heard odd minorities with traditions or religious practices that helped maintain a rather higher degree of it, such as the Jews and Gypsies, on the whole got off much lighter (the Gypsies also apparently stumbled onto a reasonably workable quarantine practice). Which, of course, duly put them on the hit list of assorted flagellants and other raving loons for suspicions of being responsible for the plague...

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Anyway, the Black Death caused such impressive mass deaths it ought to have an obvious effect to economies of the affected regions. When half your peasants are dead of disease and the rest are hiding in the woods in hopes of avoiding it, productivity obviously takes a hit.

[Vladimir]

[

"Public health buildings" ? Europeans at least didn't have any... but then among the main reasons they suffered so badly was specifically the literally shitty conception of hygiene of the time. I've heard odd minorities with traditions or religious practices that helped maintain a rather higher degree of it, such as the Jews and Gypsies, on the whole got off much lighter (the Gypsies also apparently stumbled onto a reasonably workable quarantine practice). Which, of course, duly put them on the hit list of assorted flagellants and other raving loons for suspicions of being responsible for the plague...

Talk about a rock and a hard place.

Anyway, the Black Death caused such impressive mass deaths it ought to have an obvious effect to economies of the affected regions. When half your peasants are dead of disease and the rest are hiding in the woods in hopes of avoiding it, productivity obviously takes a hit.

There was some consideration of personal hygiene in Germany where some bath houses did exist. This is in sharp contrast to some loony group in France that believed bathing excessively (as in more than twice a year) was harmful to the body. Historical realism ends when you hit the "next turn" button so I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to stress public health more than Medieval Europeans.

I agree that you should suffer a massive income and productivity loss depending on how hard it hits you. Of course knowing this gives the player an unfair advantage but that’s why there are difficulty levels.

[Peasant Phill]

The effect of the plague in MTW was the (premature) death of your faction leader and the loss of income in the province it happend.

Appart from certain minorities, certain regions were also spared for the most part. I'm quite sure about Flandres ( something to do with the eating a lot of fish and the wealth of the cities) and some other region (don't know its name) because was to secluded that almost no travelers past it (and thus couldn't be effected)

This is just al from memory so don't shoot me if you don't agree.

[Vladimir]

OK I finally read the dafted article and there's a problem. One of the reasons the Black Death killed so many people is because an increasingly colder climate was damaging crops. The bad harvests lead to poor(er) health conditions and a virtual playground for the plague. I'm quite sure that the weather was cooling BEFORE the Black Death occurred and I wonder about the base motivations of those who did this "research".

[Watchman]

There was some consideration of personal hygiene in Germany where some bath houses did exist. This is in sharp contrast to some loony group in France that believed bathing excessively (as in more than twice a year) was harmful to the body.

Hey, monks rarely bathed. Know what it was referred to as ? Le odore sancte... Fact is, for the duration of Middle Ages and well afterwards Europe just plain smelled pretty bad for the most part.

Historical realism ends when you hit the "next turn" button so I don't think it's unreasonable for a player to stress public health more than Medieval Europeans.

Heh. Well, we do happen to have the benefit of actually knowing the whys and hows of diseases and the germ theory. And note that we've only had it since about mid-1800s... you can read some pretty grim stories on how crazy things were, by our standards, in for example hospitals back then. Would you believe it took rudimentary comparative statistical analysis of childbed death rates before folks started figuring out there might be a point in doctors-in-training desinfecting their hands after the morning's autopsy session before they went on to the gynecology wing...?

Ugh. It's not actually such a wonder folks became pretty obsessive-compulsive about cleanliness and hygienie for a while once the microbes were figured out.

[Casmin]

I highly recommend the book "The Great Mortality". It mentions that when very young children are malnourished they live with the consequences of this for the rest of their lives and in particular poor immune responses. There was a great famine during the early 1300's so that by the time the children of that famine were well into adulthood the plague hit.

When reading about the plague you realize that it took a million factors to fall into place for it to all happen. That's probably one of the most amazing aspects of the topic.

Some figure in Europe stated that in order to save onself from the plague one had to get a small dose of it. This may sound like a type of vaccine 700 years ahead of its time but it was really just a matter of conjectural superstition imo. People were hovering over cesspits and latrines breathing in the fumes trying to "immunize" themselves.

Some Italian cities implemented quarantines, however, they had minimal effect.

From what I remember, the book states that one of the only people not affected by the plague in Europe were Irish who didn't live in towns but in the mountains and such.