The plague is insane!

[Shahed]

The impact of the real Black Death in Europe cannot be underestimated - most of us will never see anything a tenth as bad, even as global warming bites. I suggest that if you're interested in seeing just how awful the plague was, and what the long term effects were, you could do a lot worse than read Norman Cantor's superb book, In the Wake of the Plague: The Black Death and the World It Made. You can find it here, if you're interested: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Wake-Plague-...e=UTF8&s=books

Thanks. The reviews look terrible ( I don't give them much value most of the time anyway). I'll check that book out, sounds like a good read to me.

I'd also like to say thank you for this awesome game. It is amazing how far you guys have come since STW. The evolution of the series and the success of your work is stunning.

Congratulations !

What happened in Asia at the same time? Did any of the large Asian civilizations (China, Japan, India, Persia) face similar extinctions due to the Black Plague

EDIT: New map from wiki.


About the Middle East....

Middle Eastern outbreak
The plague struck various countries in the Middle East during the pandemic, leading to serious depopulation and permanent change in both economic and social structures. The disease first entered the region from southern Russia. By autumn 1347, the plague reached Alexandria in Egypt, probably through the port's trade with Constantinople and ports on the Black Sea. During 1348, the disease travelled eastward to Gaza, and north along the eastern coast to cities in Lebanon, Syria and Palestine, including Asqalan, Acre, Jerusalem, Sidon, Damascus, Homs, and Aleppo. In 1348–49, the disease reached Antioch. The city's residents fled to the north, most of them dying during the journey, but the infection had been spread to the people of Asia Minor.

Mecca became infected in 1349. During the same year, records show the city of Mawsil (Mosul) suffered a massive epidemic, and the city of Baghdad experienced a second round of the disease. In 1351, Yemen experienced an outbreak of the plague. This coincided with the return of King Mujahid of Yemen from imprisonment in Cairo. His party may have brought the disease with them from Egypt.

and Asia...

Asian outbreak
The Central Asian scenario agrees with the first reports of outbreaks in China in the early 1330s. The plague struck the Chinese province of Hubei in 1334. During 1353–1354, more widespread disaster occurred. Chinese accounts of this wave of the disease record a spread to eight distinct areas: Hubei, Jiangxi, Shanxi, Hunan, Guangdong, Guangxi, Henan and Suiyuan (a historical Chinese province that now forms part of Hebei and Inner Mongolia), throughout the Mongol and Chinese empires. Historian William McNeill noted that voluminous Chinese records on disease and social disruption survive from this period, but no one has studied these sources in depth.

It is probable that the Mongols and merchant caravans inadvertently brought the plague from central Asia to the Middle East and Europe. The plague was reported in the trading cities of Constantinople and Trebizond in 1347. In that same year, the Genoese possession of Caffa, a great trade emporium on the Crimean peninsula, came under siege by an army of Mongol warriors under the command of Janibeg, backed by Venetian forces. After a protracted siege during which the Mongol army was reportedly withering from the disease, they might have decided to use the infected corpses as a biological weapon. The corpses were catapulted over the city walls, infecting the inhabitants.[3] The Genoese traders fled, transferring the plague via their ships into the south of Europe, from whence it rapidly spread. According to accounts, so many died in Caffa that the survivors had little time to bury them and bodies were stacked like cords of firewood against the city walls.

source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_death

It seems it reached the Middle East as well, but did it kill off as many as in Europe ?
How is the impact on the Middle East in game ?

And some people say games are not educational....

[Aenlic]

How is the impact on the Middle East in game ?

In my Moorish campaign, I took Arguin. Unfortunately it appears to have been suffering from the plague. As soon as I took it, my new governor and the imam with him both immediately contracted the plague and I noticed that the town also had the plague symbol. I didn't get a plague event notice, of course; because it apparently started when the town was still rebel. The next turn after taking the town, I did start getting the plague messages. When the plague finally subsided in the town, it was another turn before the plague left my general and imam.