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Danevang

Danevang

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Jan 16, 2006
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Sorry if this has already been brought up, but I couldn't find it.

In CK1 one usually ended up having a very large amount of children, who all grew up, and required titles and so on. Rarely did I have problems finding an heir amongst my kings children. However, that was really very unhistorical and unrealistic. Child mortality was massive in the middle ages, and caused a lot of concern about the inheritance of the throne. As an example, the Danish king Erik Medved (1274-1319) had 14 children, and none of them lived past the age of 1. The wife of Valdemar Atterdag (1320-1375) had one child every year, for 12 years, and only 3 of them survived the first year, and only one, the later Queen Margrethe (later Queen of the Kalmar Union), survived her parents.

So...I'm sorry to say it, bit I think that we should have many more dead children in CK2, compared to CK1. Let legitimate heirs be a real(istic) problem. :)
 
I agree.
Though mortality rates could vary greatly between regions (dependent on climate, wealth, size of population centers etc), an infant mortality rate (1) upwards to .5 wouldn't be unrealistic (a quick internet search gives an infant mortality rate of .2163 for the white population in the US as recent as 1850).
All in all, child mortality should be at least .5, upwards to .75 IMO.
On the other hand, I've a feeling that the number of stillbirths and maternal deaths wasn't too far off in CK (could be that I've been unlucky in many games tho).

An related topic; I've found that plagues and epidemics have little or no impact on my court's overall health in CK. Not saying the Red Death should make an appearance, but one should at least expect some of the courtiers to get ill when the plague is raging through the populace.

(1) "Infant mortality" is live birth, death within the first year. "Child mortality" is death within first 5 years.
 
CK's current child mortality rate is more or less consistent with a historical one which allegedly was about 30% in Middle Ages. Certainly the real rate should have varied a lot through the era and area.

Though, a birth rate (fertility) might be a bit lower, and percentage of stillbirths a bit higher (and moddable) in CK2. Maybe younger children (under 1 year old) should have a lower health value representing their vulnerability.

One idea related to the theme might be introducing a new Cultural Advance 'tehnology' - a Medicine - which to research; enhanced skills in the science and art of healing (and overall hygiene) would increase a character's chance of preventing and surviving illness in particular province.

Helvetesguten said:
An related topic; I've found that plagues and epidemics have little or no impact on my court's overall health in CK. Not saying the Red Death should make an appearance, but one should at least expect some of the courtiers to get ill when the plague is raging through the populace.
Click to expand...

I guess it depends on a game, I have had games where about third of my court was buried because of the plague.
 
Remember that the child mortality rates for children of dukes and kings was lower than that of peasant riff-raff. You can't pull "historical" numbers and say that those are to be used for king's offspring.
 
Count of Reval said:
CK's current child mortality rate is more or less consistent with a historical one which allegedly was about 30% in Middle Ages. Certainly the real rate should have varied a lot through the era and area.
Click to expand...
After doing a bit of searching, I'll moderate my proposed .5/.75 rate to .3/.5
There are understandably few hard data from the period, but the .3 infant mortality rate and the upwards to .5 child mortality rate seems to be the most used.
 
safferli said:
Remember that the child mortality rates for children of dukes and kings was lower than that of peasant riff-raff. You can't pull "historical" numbers and say that those are to be used for king's offspring.
Click to expand...
While the children of nobility certainly would be less likely to suffer from malnurishment, they would just as suspectible to the diseases endemic of the period as the rest of the populace.
Also, given the level of medical expertise in the relevant time period, being able to afford doctors wouldn't be a guarantee for good health.
After all, how many children's diseases are curable by blood letting and prayer? Just prayer on it's own seems a safer bet.
 
Ruler's children (or the main heir at least) currently get a 'survival bonus' (as a modifier in an illness events) in CK, if I remember correctly.
 
As much as it will pain the people who want absolute accuracy, there were times in CK1 when I would have prefered a fudge towards fewer, healthier children.
 
in CK1, you can already increase child-mortality or even the mortality-rate of all characters, since it is all done through events.
 
I changed the CK1 event to an expected 50% child mortality with modifiers for ruler's child, etc.

Medicine could be another area where Islamic practitioners had an advantage. Major Islamic urban centers had hospitals more advanced than their European counterparts as well as other medical practices refined based on experimentation from Galen and other classical medical writers. With the invention of alcohol distillation, antiseptics were also developed.
 
Amallric said:
Medecine hasn't really improved between the Dark Ages and the very end of the XVIIIst century in Europe.
Click to expand...

I can't agree with that. As CK pictures a life of the noble in High and Late Middle Ages, we can't say they didn't get any medical treatment at their time by the methods that were discovered or implemented more broadly after the decline of Rome. One could take Avicenna's The Canon of Medicine alone (written in 1020, translated into Latin in the 12th century) to fill the Medicine advance's 'tech-tree'.
 
I would suggest the higher mortality rate of children of below 2 be included by lowering fertility rather than health. That way they are simply never born and thus you don't get a bunch of dead 1-year-olds clogging up your "rulers children/siblings" section.
 
Keinwyn said:
I would suggest the higher mortality rate of children of below 2 be included by lowering fertility rather than health. That way they are simply never born and thus you don't get a bunch of dead 1-year-olds clogging up your "rulers children/siblings" section.
Click to expand...

Or maybe a small section for dead offspring that can be toggled on/off.
 
Keinwyn said:
I would suggest the higher mortality rate of children of below 2 be included by lowering fertility rather than health. That way they are simply never born and thus you don't get a bunch of dead 1-year-olds clogging up your "rulers children/siblings" section.
Click to expand...

I'm a bit on the fence for that one. Reason being, my main argument for increasing infant and child mortality even more than proposed is that many children dying and low age would never have found their way into charters, or be confused with sibblings of the same name who survived to adulthood. So 1) child mortality across all strata of society was quite high, but 2) historically many, probably most of those children have been forgotten as no sources survive to document their birth and/or death (which comes close to Keinwyn's proposal)...

Still I'd rather see higher birthrates with subsequent higher infant and child mortality. Note that female death during pregnancy or birthing might also need re-adjusting. While it happened quite often in CK-I it was nowhere near historic proportions it seems, at least I rarelly ever saw men marry 3+ times in CK-I in a short span of time, a rather common event in the medieval period. Likewise male mortality related to hunting, military training and battle...
 
Caranorn said:
I'm a bit on the fence for that one. Reason being, my main argument for increasing infant and child mortality even more than proposed is that many children dying and low age would never have found their way into charters, or be confused with sibblings of the same name who survived to adulthood. So 1) child mortality across all strata of society was quite high, but 2) historically many, probably most of those children have been forgotten as no sources survive to document their birth and/or death (which comes close to Keinwyn's proposal)...

Still I'd rather see higher birthrates with subsequent higher infant and child mortality. Note that female death during pregnancy or birthing might also need re-adjusting. While it happened quite often in CK-I it was nowhere near historic proportions it seems, at least I rarelly ever saw men marry 3+ times in CK-I in a short span of time, a rather common event in the medieval period. Likewise male mortality related to hunting, military training and battle...
Click to expand...

The big point is that it should still be fun. If half of your games end due to lack of heirs people will not like it. Perhaps we should get different levels for player dynasties and non-player, but that would be tricky to balance, so maybe just a different system for courtiers.
 
Seli said:
The big point is that it should still be fun. If half of your games end due to lack of heirs people will not like it. Perhaps we should get different levels for player dynasties and non-player, but that would be tricky to balance, so maybe just a different system for courtiers.
Click to expand...

Your game doesn't have to end, as you'd just adjust your laws so that other people besides only your kings children would inherit. It works like this in CK1 too...you know, if you have the proper inheritance law and you don't have any chrildren, your brother will inherit, or a nephew, or what ever. It's like that in CK1, and was like that in real life too. So loosing a lot of children won't end your game at all.

(I'm playing a CK1 game now where my king only has daughters, and the kings brother stands to inherit if my king dies. They're only 2 years apart though, so let's hope he doesn't. :) )
 
Amallric said:
Medecine hasn't really improved between the Dark Ages and the very end of the XVIIIst century in Europe.
Click to expand...


Not exactly. The environment changed quite a bit at least for the nobility.

In the dark ages, even kings slept in the straw along with their servants and dogs, but as times progressed they started having luxuries like beds and better living condition which would result in less child mortality. Also there was some progress in medicine even though it was pretty much trial and error and then leeches.
 
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