Life expectancy

[Brian Shanahan]

Thats not true. Mediaeval people live relativly long! Expecial the nobility. The short living story is a lie from the Age of Enlightenment. Ages of 60 are really common.

You're only partially right. Life Expectancy in Medieval Britain from birth was only 30. However, if you managed to survive to 21 then you could reasonably expect to live to your sixties <wikipedia>. Up until modern times kids died a lot before the age of five (one of the prime reasons for having large families, at least one will live), and young mothers, especially, died in childbirth or due to complications with carrying.

 

[marat271]

Being over 40 years old was considered rare at the time, many died in the youth from diseases, and it is too common to survive diseases after you've contracted them. Life expectancy should be much lower, though with the possibility to grow old, albeit it should be rare.

 

[Sarog]

They might be getting assassinated. Quite common death cause among heirs in CK2.

A successful assassination gives you the "died in a suspicious accident" reason though. I always get confused when a healthy 20 year old man gets "died a natural death" as though he died of old age.

 

[Lord Samuel]

Being over 40 years old was considered rare at the time

As stressed before, not so uncommon when belonging to the aristocracy or the clergy.

 

[Lord Strange]

No, what was rare, as others have already said, was making it into adulthood. Many fun and interesting diseases for young (and therefore generally weaker) people to catch. Once you made it past those early trials, you were probably pretty strong immune-wise, since the weak had been winnowed out.

 

[Thure]

You're only partially right. Life Expectancy in Medieval Britain from birth was only 30. However, if you managed to survive to 21 then you could reasonably expect to live to your sixties <wikipedia>. Up until modern times kids died a lot before the age of five (one of the prime reasons for having large families, at least one will live), and young mothers, especially, died in childbirth or due to complications with carrying.

"At age 21, life expectancy an additional 43 years (total age 64)."

So... If you don't died as child you will life for 64 years!

A male member of the English aristocracy at the same period could expect to live, having survived until the age of 21[18]:

1200-1300 A.D.: 43 years (to age 64)
1300-1400 A.D.: 34 years (to age 55) (due to the impact of the Black Death)
1400-1500 A.D.: 48 years (to age 69)
1500-1550 A.D.: 50 years (to age 71).

That sound very old, see you? 64, 55, 69, 71!

The nobilty became old in this days. Walther von der Vogelweide was around 60. Edward I of England was 68. Henry III 65... etc.

 

[Persiani]

Life expectancy statistics of middle ages is so low because of kid dying at a young age and even at birth. Otherwise people lived to 60 or even more back then.

So being over 40 wasnt so rare if you were able to survive the childhood years

 

[Brian Shanahan]

"At age 21, life expectancy an additional 43 years (total age 64)."

So... If you don't died as child you will life for 64 years!



That sound very old, see you? 64, 55, 69, 71!

The nobilty became old in this days. Walther von der Vogelweide was around 60. Edward I of England was 68. Henry III 65... etc.

Am, that's partly what I said. What I should have also mentioned was that we should be seeing adult nobles lasting regularly into their 60's (outside war), about 50/50 into their seventies and rarely into their eighties. But on the other hand we should aslo be seeing, on about 15% of the time, a family of 8 children being reduced to one adult (it actually happened twice in my mothers family in the last 150 years, with her grandfather, and great-grandfather both being the only surviving child). Child mortality should be a lot higher than it currently is, with historical research often giving figures for total mortality amongst children (usually off data supplied exclusively from Noble sources) of between 35% and 50%.

In my three generations of Muslim rule, I've seen 2 deaths to children born to a character I'm playing. That (even with the small size of my sample, of about 30 total) is a massive outlier statistic, compared to reality.

 

[Persiani]

Am, that's partly what I said. What I should have also mentioned was that we should be seeing adult nobles lasting regularly into their 60's (outside war), about 50/50 into their seventies and rarely into their eighties. But on the other hand we should aslo be seeing, on about 15% of the time, a family of 8 children being reduced to one adult (it actually happened twice in my mothers family in the last 150 years, with her grandfather, and great-grandfather both being the only surviving child). Child mortality should be a lot higher than it currently is, with historical research often giving figures for total mortality amongst children (usually off data supplied exclusively from Noble sources) of between 35% and 50%.

In my three generations of Muslim rule, I've seen 2 deaths to children born to a character I'm playing. That (even with the small size of my sample, of about 30 total) is a massive outlier statistic, compared to reality.

Get CK2plus mod you will see them all dying. If I get 8 children I'm lucky if 4 survive.

 

[Bad_Haggis]

Child mortality is low because the ammount of kids you have is low, otherwise the game would slow down due to all of the dead characters.

 

[pizi]

A successful assassination gives you the "died in a suspicious accident" reason though. I always get confused when a healthy 20 year old man gets "died a natural death" as though he died of old age.

Are you sure? I think there are three outcomes of a successful assassination:
- you know who ordered the assassination
- it was a suspicious accident (so you can guess that this person was assassinated but you don't know who ordered it)
- it was an accident (no proof that this person was assassinated)

 

[Yxklyx]

Are you sure? I think there are three outcomes of a successful assassination:
- you know who ordered the assassination
- it was a suspicious accident (so you can guess that this person was assassinated but you don't know who ordered it)
- it was an accident (no proof that this person was assassinated)

I'd be interested to know if this is true as well. as I've had suspicious "natural" deaths. I don't have a problem with current longevity rules - I get a nice blend of old and young rulers. I'm not seeing consecutive old rulers as the OP. Maybe there's something genetic being passed from ruler to ruler that he's encountering?

 

[Maizel]

Infants also seem to almost never die.

Ive never even seen a wife die in labour yet, 800 hours in.

 

[Bad_Haggis]

I'd be interested to know if this is true as well. as I've had suspicious "natural" deaths. I don't have a problem with current longevity rules - I get a nice blend of old and young rulers. I'm not seeing consecutive old rulers as the OP. Maybe there's something genetic being passed from ruler to ruler that he's encountering?

Possably higher than normal health.

 

[Sarog]

Are you sure? I think there are three outcomes of a successful assassination:
- you know who ordered the assassination
- it was a suspicious accident (so you can guess that this person was assassinated but you don't know who ordered it)
- it was an accident (no proof that this person was assassinated)

I have never successfully assassinated someone and had the "natural death" (which isn't the same as "died in accident") tag come up. They are always marked as "suspicious accident", and the death tags aren't subjective to the viewer. So I'm 90% sure that it isn't the result of an assassination. Far as I can tell, dying a natural death at an absurdly young age is the result of a combination of RNG and having a low base health integer. This is what kills you at old age if you are otherwise healthy, so as far as I understand it, if a character's base health is low and gets unlucky in the RNG, that character can essentially die of old age at 20. Not that I mind deaths at young ages; people should die more frequently. Death at a young age should be the result of disease or accident though, not premature old age. Being told that my heir died of natural causes at age 20 isn't as good for story purposes as having him die from consumption or being skewered in a joust.

 

[grumphie]

Infants also seem to almost never die.

Ive never even seen a wife die in labour yet, 800 hours in.

i dont think dieing in albor is included, but ifant deaths are simulated by a much lower fertility rate than historic. otherwise all the dead children would only clog up space.

 

[groan]

I'll agree with those saying that the life expectancy is fine as is, but diseases and wounds REALLY should be something you're scared of getting. At the moment, every time my character gets ill, or even some of the more serious diseases, they recover in a few days/weeks time with usually no side effects. Illness and wounds should be much more apt to cause early death then they currently are.

 

[bmullins0118]

CK2+ balances this perfectly.

 

[MartinSWE]

One fun thing was that right efter I said that wounds should have a higher risk of killing characters my King of England died after a wound lead to a disease which killed him. Guess I should have kept my mouth shut

 

[GothicEmperor]

One fun thing was that right efter I said that wounds should have a higher risk of killing characters my King of England died after a wound lead to a disease which killed him. Guess I should have kept my mouth shut

I've found that negative health effects stack quite noticeably. Any 2 effects in combination will most likely half someone's health or more, greatly increasing the chance of death. Considering wounded and stressed aren't hard to get, it is something to watch out for.

Maimed, for example, is really bad. It's generally just-about survivable on its own, but any sickness turns it into a daily Russian roulette.