So, the rate of death is really high.

[Hamiller]

I just started a game as a coptic High Chief. The coptic popes die like flies to different diseases. And unlike catholic priests they are young - most of them under 30. I wonder if that's a bug of the cleaning up-algorithm which regards them as irrelevant.

 

[GCRust]

I kinda like the death rate, at least in regards to the Black Death. Started up Reaper's Due with my Solomonid game and promptly had a Black Death flare up in India and devour the whole world. By the time the smoke cleared, every realm had fragmented and splintered.

It was like coming into a whole new world. I spent the next 30 years putting my realm back together. It's been great fun, and kept the game interesting.

 

[Narr666]

Mmmh, playing my first RD game and Death rate is fine so far. It is more than before, but it feels right that way (not because I don´t know the infant mortality statistics stuff, more so it feels pretty realistic). I get sick about three times a live, which is, concerning my actual live experience in the 21st century, a good number. My first character died with 57 on cancer, which sounds reasonable, lost one child to the flu as teenager and one (-> Which was my sister then) to cancer with 27. One brother had a sudden infection with death, but that was poisoned wine I gave him.

Looking at my suuroundings:
I am pretty heathy, but I would be dead in the 8th century on my liver and I would be maimed concerning a little accident with a scissor in my 20s, which is fine today of course of medicament and an operation. My girlfriend would be dead on an allergic shock, one of my best friends would be crippled due to a skateboardaccident, my mother would have lost her eye, my father would be dead of a heardattack in his 50s. I don´t know many people who would be alive by now without the medical treatment of the modern times.

Don´t get me wrong, I know that the people didn´t die like flies back then, but in my game so far it feels quite right.

 

[Rags17]

For less anecdotical results, how about sharing your dynasty stats? Just use the new 'dynasty_stats' command from the console, to see how many static (defined in the history files) dynasties are left.

I did not know that you could get stats about your current campaign using the console !

Do you know of any more, or more importantly - do you know of a place where I could find them all ?

I can handle the rate of disease and death for my own court, but the side-effect is that my court becomes and orphanage for all the realm's dead nobility. Having to weed down the numbers of kids in my court by assigning them mentors outside my court does slow things down and becomes a little tedious.

On the plus side - lots of vassal children running around in your court means a lot more chances for slips, falls and "accidents" !

Mmmh, playing my first RD game and Death rate is fine so far. It is more than before, but it feels right that way (not because I don´t know the infant mortality statistics stuff, more so it feels pretty realistic). I get sick about three times a live, which is, concerning my actual live experience in the 21st century, a good number. My first character died with 57 on cancer, which sounds reasonable, lost one child to the flu as teenager and one (-> Which was my sister then) to cancer with 27. One brother had a sudden infection with death, but that was poisoned wine I gave him.

Your anecdote made me realise a big new wrinkle in the game that wasn't there before RD - how will you know when your "stomach cramps" is a sign of dysentery and not of a failed assassination attempt ? This makes it a lot harder to know when you are being targeted, which is only a good thing !

 

[Mztr44]

While I think the new mechanics are great. Things like this are just a little absurd....

 

[ferbenz65]

I think the Death Rate is perfectly fine and fun (although I haven't gone through a Black Plague yet).

The funny thing for me is that now and with this Death Rate, after years of playing the game, for my first time ever, my character reached 80 years old!!!

 

[Aries666]

While I think the new mechanics are great. Things like this are just a little absurd....

Even babies/children get cancer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_lymphoblastic_leukemia is the most common kind.

 

[Narr666]

"One brother had a sudden infection with death, but that was poisoned wine I gave him."

Okay, after sleeping, I now understand that this joke does not work in English very well.

 

[Chairman Noob]

Even babies/children get cancer, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acute_lymphoblastic_leukemia is the most common kind.

They can and it's fine if it happens to like every 10000th baby in the game, but I've seen it several times already all around the map in just about 30 years of gameplay.

I think most diseases are more or less okay the way they are, but cancer is way too frequent.
I'm not sure if disfigurement == leprosy or the result of physicians cutting off runny noses to cure the flu, if it's the former it's even more ridiculously frequent.

 

[Aries666]

They can and it's fine if it happens to like every 10000th baby in the game, but I've seen it several times already all around the map in just about 30 years of gameplay.

I think most diseases are more or less okay the way they are, but cancer is way too frequent.
I'm not sure if disfigurement == leprosy or the result of physicians cutting off runny noses to cure the flu, if it's the former it's even more ridiculously frequent.

In one of the dev diaries there was a graph showing the total number of characters at any one time was between 10k and 20k so a rate at several times in 30 years at 1:10000 seems pretty accurate.

 

[gremlok]

My first ruler went insane, and hired a horse (Horse M.D.) as his personal physician. Best dang doctor he ever had. Cut out his eye when he got cancer, made it another 20 years - Ludewijn the Great died at the ripe age of 60, in his bed. A story for the ages.

Suffice it to say, this is fantastic.

Love it

 

[Zaras]

Remember, people in the Middle Ages had a relatively decent lifespan if they survived childhood and weren't involved in a war/famine/major disease outbreak. And nobles often did even better.

As far as I know, this is true. So if you want realism in CKII, increase the rate of infant deaths, miscarriages and probably childbirth complications, but children should be rather save from death by disease once the reach the age of 6 or so. Especially the number of cancer affections is currently unrealistic. This is the Middle Ages, people didn't smoke tobacco back then and several other cancer sources (asbestos fibres, radioactivity, mercury from coal power plants, endocrine disrupters from artificial hormones or plastics) were not present in the environment either.

Of course, CKII is only meant to be realistic, in so far this doesn't result in bad gameplay. Handing out counties and duchies to the right nobles is part of the challenge of the game, but it does get annoying if they keep dying to soon. Also, this death rate makes empire and dynasty building near impossible. An essential part of the general strategy to keep an Empire stable is to hand out as many titles as possible to dynasty members. If those keep dying, this doesn't work.

I always was under the impression that the challenge level of CKII should be roughly the same as in EUIV. It would be very tough to conquer the whole map, but not impossible. Currently however, I am failing at one of the prerequisites, firmly establishing my dynasties hold on an Empire or even Kingdom title. There are just to many deaths, even with frequent reloading of autosaves on non-ironman.

I am quite sure that this frustration is something that should not happen according to the paradox game pillar: https://www.paradoxinteractive.com/en/game-pillars/ The journey currently isn't rewarding; learning how medieval dynasties work isn't the problem, not having the resources (living dynasty members) to effectively play the game is the problem.

I will probably do one more attempt.. and use the ruler designer to give my character 10 sons. Aside from that, I will rather play dwarf fortress until this issue is fixed. That game is currently less frustrating.

 

[Narr666]

It´s very interesting how different the death rate is perceived. My games don´t feel like i.e. Zaras at all. I don´t perceive it as "broken". But regarding the amount of discussion I feel a game rule coming.

 

[Zaras]

I tell you what happened in several of my games: I bought Conclave and Reaper's due last week together, after I finally got the "Red Sea Resort" achievement with my Buddhist Indian Empire in an older version (yes, single county holy wars through Persia and along the Arabian coast), and wanted to try Empire building now with the latest version.

With the current version, I had to deal with revolts to increase council power in most games soon after starting... since those revolts were often easily winnable I ended up with several imprisoned vassals.. but even I after I got through the difficulties of getting the right to revoke titles, I can't really use it, because I don't have enough dynasty members to hand these titles out to. And even if I managed to raise 2 or 3 sons to adulthood (reloading, if necessary), one of them is surely going to die before having heirs of his own.

 

[Narr666]

No offense Zaras, by speaking about it is "interesting" I actually meant that. It is really interesting how different it is perceived.

I since those revolts were often easily winnable I ended up with several imprisoned vassals.. but even I after I got through the difficulties of getting the right to revoke titles, I can't really use it, because I don't have enough dynasty members to hand these titles out to. And even if I managed to raise 2 or 3 sons to adulthood (reloading, if necessary), one of them is surely going to die before having heirs of his own.

I am curious about that, because I don´t understand that really. 2-3 sons is not really few. For a christian ruler, in my opinion it is quite normal, even before RD.

But I don´t get the problem with the titles. You can give more than one title to your son and you can easily give titles to Courtiers.

 

[Zaras]

No offense Zaras, by speaking about it is "interesting" I actually meant that. It is really interesting how different it is perceived.



I am curious about that, because I don´t understand that really. 2-3 sons is not really few. For a christian ruler, in my opinion it is quite normal, even before RD.

But I don´t get the problem with the titles. You can give more than one title to your son and you can easily give titles to Courtiers.

I was playing a Hindu ruler with 3 concubines... getting 3 sons to reach adulthood was hard enough. And a few months after I give the oldest one a title, he dies.

 

[LordDamien]

I was playing a Hindu ruler with 3 concubines... getting 3 sons to reach adulthood was hard enough. And a few months after I give the oldest one a title, he dies.

I would not give titles to my eldest child. I would only give out titles to my other children and my loyal courtiers and vassals ( Curious with 3 Concubines how many kids did you have in total?) since it would be worrying if you only had 3 sons reach adulthood. how many children did you have in total ?

 

[Narr666]

I was playing a Hindu ruler with 3 concubines... getting 3 sons to reach adulthood was hard enough. And a few months after I give the oldest one a title, he dies.

Mmmh, maybe don´t know India enough, I would give simply the titles to my courtiers as a Christian. But in my game in England everything is fine. I have about 3 sons each Generation and two survive.

 

[Dakilla TM]

I've been playing a game as the king, later Emperor of Italy for the past few days and I gotta say, I've seen both spectrums. I've seen multiple family members get cut to hell with camp fever and have a random kinsman on the throne, all the way to my entire realm engulfed in smallpox and yet barely anyone noteworthy died. I think it's just the RNG mechanics at work and I'm fine with it.

Plus, isn't there an option to tone down the diseases and epidemic pop ups? If not, adding it would be a nice fix, while players like me can still live dangerously

 

[Rags17]

I finally managed to get a game started as the Duke of Lombardy in 1077 after getting CTD's any time I tried to start in England (yes I am going to report that).

A few years in I developed a rash which turned into the full-blown Great Pox, my wife quickly got the same illness. My blind mystic German physician recommended the dead hand cure which made me feel a LOT better (+3's across the board !), but my wife became a lunatic (presumably from all the itching) and died a few years later. I died shortly after her but I was 72 so I count that as "old age".

No issues with diseases at all, some smallpox in Denmark, Mauritania and Somalia, measles has just broken out near Venice but I'm still good.

I'll second anyone who claims that this is probably the best DLC ever !