Disease Control, wide or tall hospital structure.

[TheDungen]

Lo folks I thought it was time to discuss the best way to disease control in the game as it is. I have found that building wide with hospitals and trying to get an even base level across many provinces is way more bang for your buck than spending on fewer more upgraded hospitals.

Did anyone else have a different experience?

 

[ApocalypseMao]

I put a hospital in every county I intend to hold forever. The capital county's hospital is much further along, due to how tech spreads. I invest in the rest as the upgrades are unlocked. IIRC, hospitals only boost disease resistance in the county they're built in. So, they need to be built everywhere you care about.

 

[Hootieleece]

I've been trying a bit of both. Building low level hospitals in all of my demesne and maxing out the capital as I can afford it. It's not perfect but it definitely helps in a myriad of ways.

Especially since AI seems to neglect building them.

 

[-Malovane-]

Depends where you are, I suppose. In my recent game in Ireland, I haven't had an infection cross over from mainland England since I built level 5 hospitals on all the counties bordering the main island. Given booming economy, I think the resistance was 50% or so.

Since then I've built level 6 hospitals across Ireland, and decked them out with all the options, as I had nothing else to spend the money on. Still waiting for plague to roll around to see if it has any effect. A level 4 hospital did virtually nothing to prevent severe depopulation on my capital during the Black Death. I'm thinking about loading up provinces along the English channel with level 6 hospitals to provide an extra layer of protection.

 

[Dakilla TM]

I always try to max out my capitol's hospital, while the other counties I own I tend to build sparingly as tech moves along. In essence I do a bit of both

 

[thevmag]

Since I'm rolling in international currency, I'm in the privileged position to build hospitals everywhere I want, but upgrading them is limited to local tech. So, old and new capital have the best hospitals around, while everywhere else has sortuv middling hospitals that focus on disease resistance with few, if any, additional dressings.

And now that I'm getting hit by the Black Plague, I get to test both the Deep approach and the Wide approach. So far, really deep hospitals and shallow, spread-out hospitals both risk catching an epidemic (50% and 29% resistance are nowhere near 100%, after all), so the big, deciding factor will be how hard they're hit by it.

My call: Build hospitals wherever you can, upgrade them where you can; but if money's tight or you're projecting that you'll need those finances elsewhere, focus on your main interests firsts. With no 100% guarantee against disease, any given holding will get sick eventually.

 

[klopkr]

If minor epidemics spread through neighboring provinces would it make sense to build a wall of hospitals on your border? Then only minor epidemics that start in your nation will be able to enter right?

I haven't gotten to really see the mechanics since my first game is as a tribal.

 

[TehJumpingJawa]

If you look at "% resistance given Vs monetary cost", it's obvious that defence in depth is the best strategy.
That's of course based upon the assumption that infection probability is linear.... it might not be.

 

[ApocalypseMao]

If minor epidemics spread through neighboring provinces would it make sense to build a wall of hospitals on your border? Then only minor epidemics that start in your nation will be able to enter right?

I haven't gotten to really see the mechanics since my first game is as a tribal.

Hospitals just reduce the chance of epidemic, nothing stops them completely. It also depends on the size of the border. As King of England, there's no way I can afford to build and upgrade hospitals in every coastal county. I'm building tall in the sense that only my personal demesne gets investment in hospitals.

 

[Hootieleece]

Also if your counties are prosperous it makes it harder to stop the plague or any epidemic because Prosperity directly effects the Hospitals Disease protection Bonus.

 

[TheDungen]

I put a hospital in every county I intend to hold forever. The capital county's hospital is much further along, due to how tech spreads. I invest in the rest as the upgrades are unlocked. IIRC, hospitals only boost disease resistance in the county they're built in. So, they need to be built everywhere you care about.

Ah but you forget, disease can't get to your provinces if it can't get to provinces adjacent of your provinces and not to those of it can't get to those adjacent to them By building a wide disease resistance I limit how many provinces that a outbreak will have time to spread to in my realm before it burns itself out.
I got to admit my perspective is a bit skewed since I loaded RD up in an old save where I have almost very good income, but I found that blowing on all my money on getting the highest level hospital in my capital didn't really help that much, what helped was getting a hospital and the first upgrade in the entire kingdom. Because while I sometimes still get outbreaks into the kingdom they rarely get more than two or three provinces in. Usually no where near my capital. As far as I can tell it's basically a potential threshold, like in quantum tunellng modeling. The likelihood should decrease exponentially with the size of the field. While adding tall should add up linearly.

If a disease has a probability of p% of spreading into a province every month (1-you resistance%), then the chance that it'll spread to a province and then on to the next province next month is p1*p2 to spread to a third province is p1*p2*p3. If we for simplicity's sake say they all have the same disease resistance say 5% (First upgrade on hospital less than 500 wealth per piece) then we can express the probability that a disease will spread into a province by 0.95^x where x is the shortest distance from the disease to the province we're interested in. As you can see the probability decreases exponentially. While asfaik the extra buildings always cost twice as much as the ones before them but only give 5% extra disease resistance flat each.

Or have I committed some kind of brain fart here?

If you look at "% resistance given Vs monetary cost", it's obvious that defence in depth is the best strategy.
That's of course based upon the assumption that infection probability is linear.... it might not be.

What no I felt the other way around that the upgrades seemed to get more and more expensive while always giving the same +5 disease resistance. Which is why I felt it was abetter bang for your buck to go wide since you can get 50 basic hospitals for the price of one highest level upgrade.

Hospitals just reduce the chance of epidemic, nothing stops them completely. It also depends on the size of the border. As King of England, there's no way I can afford to build and upgrade hospitals in every coastal county. I'm building tall in the sense that only my personal demesne gets investment in hospitals.

That's why you build a wall that's every province from your capital to the border. you can't stop it for certain but the likelihood that it will reach you capital decreases exponentially as you add more provinces to your wall.

 

[RoverGrover]

I'm unsure on strategy effectiveness, but I do feel like a lot of this could be helped along with a hospital price reduction and a higher priority for the ai to build them. That way your dukes and counts should be able to build some themselves. As is, that isn't really feasible and definitely doesn't seem to be happening in my game. The ai seems to embrace the plague with wide open arms and a pet rat to boot.

 

[ApocalypseMao]

That's why you build a wall that's every province from your capital to the border. you can't stop it for certain but the likelihood that it will reach you capital decreases exponentially as you add more provinces to your wall.

What do you do when your capital is a port? And why do I care about some other noble's peasants. I gave them the county so they would deal with that. I'm not building them a hospital when mine could be better, and not even my own hospitals get priority over castle town upgrades and military buildings. I'm 2 centuries into a 769 start and I've just finished every available building in my 6 counties. Even then, why should I build hospitals when I can start filling my empty holding slots?

 

[Rationalsanity]

I've found that the high level hospitals are so ludicrously expensive that they aren't worth it.

 

[TheDungen]

What do you do when your capital is a port? And why do I care about some other noble's peasants. I gave them the county so they would deal with that. I'm not building them a hospital when mine could be better, and not even my own hospitals get priority over castle town upgrades and military buildings. I'm 2 centuries into a 769 start and I've just finished every available building in my 6 counties. Even then, why should I build hospitals when I can start filling my empty holding slots?

Because it means your characters won't have to go into seclusion also less depopulated provinces means more taxes for you.
As for your capital beign a port, no problem diseases don't spread to sea provinces if they haven't spread to any adjacent land province first as far as I can tell. Open sea provinces for an example (no land adjecent) never seem to get them.

I've found that the high level hospitals are so ludicrously expensive that they aren't worth it.

Yes that was my feeling too, I mean the last upgrade alone costs 5000, I can get more then ten low level hospitals for that.

 

[Xinkc]

Who needs hospitals when you can get cats?

 

[thevmag]

Yes that was my feeling too, I mean the last upgrade alone costs 5000, I can get more then ten low level hospitals for that.

That's why I encourage those who cannot afford fully upgraded hospitals everywhere to instead focus them on their most important holdings. I don't know how well "a wall of hospitals" holds out, considering...

Speaking of my own nation only, a wall of hospitals did nothing to stop epidemic from getting through. Disease resistance at less than 100% means they're getting in, hospital or no.

Funny enough, my cousins in Mongolia are enjoying plague-free holidays. They've got maybe 1 or 2 hospitals for the entire viceroy, yet nothing. That region hasn't been nomadic since the 9th century, so I'm chalking that up to luck.

 

[TheDungen]

How does the spread of a disease work? Does every province that have a disease have a chance of spreading it to every adjecnt non diseased one? To one adjecent none diseased one? Does the disease try to spread to a set number of provinces regardless of it's current size?

Also how does it burning out work? does it burn out after a certain time? after it's spread a certain number of times? All this would be valuable information to learn how to control it. (if the latter then the wall scheme become very interesting since stopping it from spreading to you means it'll spread outside your borders and kill your enemies for you).

That's why I encourage those who cannot afford fully upgraded hospitals everywhere to instead focus them on their most important holdings. I don't know how well "a wall of hospitals" holds out, considering...

Speaking of my own nation only, a wall of hospitals did nothing to stop epidemic from getting through. Disease resistance at less than 100% means they're getting in, hospital or no.

Funny enough, my cousins in Mongolia are enjoying plague-free holidays. They've got maybe 1 or 2 hospitals for the entire viceroy, yet nothing. That region hasn't been nomadic since the 9th century, so I'm chalking that up to luck.

Fully upgraded hospitals everywhere? There's no way you can do that without cheating unless your realm is really small. I'm just saying you get more disease resistance per wealth from a field of basic hospitals than from upgrading your demesne to top tier. I spend t a great amount of cash on that when I started it did nothing. Then I went wide, build basic hospitals in an ever widening circle in my realm and I haven't had a disease come inside of 5 provinces of my capital in over two centuries. I just had a huge explosion of smallpox is the Mediterranean, for while I was concerned but the disease never got closer than mid aquitaine (I rule from normandy), and I wasn't even finished with building basic hospitals in aquitaine when it started.

 

[klopkr]

Hospitals just reduce the chance of epidemic, nothing stops them completely. It also depends on the size of the border. As King of England, there's no way I can afford to build and upgrade hospitals in every coastal county. I'm building tall in the sense that only my personal demesne gets investment in hospitals.

But Maybe as england you could build two strong hospitals on the border with scotland to keep their filthy diseases out? I'd call it hospital's wall.

 

[TheDungen]

Here's an interesting update, if you land a holy order they will max out their hospitals really quickly.