Any way to remove plague from the game?

[Varmir]

I would not be much bothered, since I have huge income and a few militias would not be a big deal to retrain. But:
1) They seem to happen to settlements just a few turns before they can be upgraded.
2) They happen to settelements where you have high rank characters, who may die from this crap.
3) They happen to settlements where you have some elite units and they will have to go far behind to your main cities to replenish.
4) At around turn 90, every turn there are 1-2 settlements afflicted. At round 98, I have 31 cities...what will happen when I will have 100???

I usually reload before the turn, do some things more like infiltrate a city etc to change the RNG...But this is getting tiresome.
Any way to completely remove that annoyance?

[Lifthrasir]

If you move characters, agents and/or units from an infected settlement to another, then you're spreading the disease. Once you have one settlement infected, do as we do in RL nowadays: keep it in quarantine.
Another option is to send infected spies and assassins to your enemies territories. It might work with other agants as well (not sure as I haven't tried). A kind of bacterialogical warfare if you like

[Varmir]

If you move characters, agents and/or units from an infected settlement to another, then you're spreading the disease. Once you have one settlement infected, do as we do in RL nowadays: keep it in quarantine.
Another option is to send infected spies and assassins to your enemies territories. It might work with other agants as well (not sure as I haven't tried). A kind of bacterialogical warfare if you like

Yes I know these 2 things and I am practicing the 2nd A LOT!!! It is a kind of an exploit. I think that the AI should be programmed to have its own spies in its own settlements like us, so they should not be infiltrated so easily.

I learned this the hard way when they used spies to make some major cities rebel. I then sent my spies in the city and discovered 2 assassins and 1 spy. After 1 turn it was 0 assassins and 0 spies xD Also the city calmed down.

[Jurand of Cracow]

In such discussions I always wonder what does the word "Historical" mean in the SSHIP. What do we consider historical? How would we like the gameplay to be?

[Varmir]

In such discussions I always wonder what does the word "Historical" mean in the SSHIP. What do we consider historical? How would we like the gameplay to be?

True that. At least is there a way to make it prefer settlements other than those mentioned above? It really likes screwing you up instead of being a product of luck. The 4 categories I mentioned are the 90% of the occasions that plague breaks out and especially when you have to retrain elite troops back in the citadels in your heartlands, it is really annoying. When it is in a random city, I barely care. When a high rank governor dies (thank God it is rare) I really hate it.

The real difference between history and this game and mod is that in this one you try to conquer the map.

[Jurand of Cracow]

The real difference between history and this game and mod is that in this one you try to conquer the map.

There're people doing that, eg. Alavaria


But for me something different is important:

I assess any M2TW mod in 5 categories:

1. Gameplay: is the game immersive; are you forced to play the best you can; is the AI and diplomacy reasonable; is there money-recruitment balance achieved; are the different mechanisms well interconnected and conditioned (like ancillary<>script<>usefulness for the player); are there pure stupidities or strategies open-to-abuse.
2. Historicity: is the historical role-playing credible; is playing the game in a historical way rewarded; how does the turn of the events in-game reflect what I perceive historical, do the factions/rosters/provinces/resources/buildings feel historical to my taste, is there a good trait/ancillary mechanism that reflect things I'm reading in the books; is the map like a true map.
3. Battles: how does it feel to play them; how does the BAI behave; are the units reasonable/historical/nice, how does the battlefield feel like (trees, hills, water); are there stupidities and bugs related to fighting.
4. Artistic values: a.) graphics: how do the map, the battlefield, the battles, the units, the 2D pics look like (so all the stuff related to models, animations etc.); b.) sounds: music, voices, other.
5. Technicalities: are there CTDs; how does the UI look like; how many bugs and unfinished issues linger; are there guides and explanations on how to play.

What I’m looking for in a Total War mod

I’m most interested in points 1, 2, and 5, while less in 3 and even less in 4. In particular, I’m looking for:

• A challenging game: I do everything I can to win. I don’t give the AI money for free, I don’t turtle just for turtling – I turtle because it’s a superiors strategy. The need to make choices: there shouldn’t be easy choices and obvious solutions, everything should come at a price so every action should be well thought-out.
• A feeling of “gaming a story as it was in the books on history”: the armies, the cities, the generals, the rebels, the crusades, the deaths, the civil wars and family feuds – everything should be there. Fast conquests should be possible but at risk of falling apart.
• Management of the faction: investing in the buildings, keep an order, safeguarding the borders) to be an equally important goal of the game as the conquest. I'm a Civilization-raised type of person (I mean: Civ 1 of 1991) that means I'm a devoted builder.
• An interesting development of the traits. The characters should take traits and ancillaries based on their actions. The traits should be historical (reflect the middle-ages’ reality according to our best knowledge of history), meaningful (each should be relevant for the gameplay), logical (eg. they cycle-of-life: young and middle-aged generals get the traits fast, but in the old age they're losing them; as a result the oldest generals should not be the best, but those of 30-50 old for fighting and 40-60 for governorships), producing consistent personalities (one general should not have completely contradictory traits).
• The relevance and interplay of various mechanisms in the game: everything should have consequences, no chrome just for the sake of chrome. Interactive events are woven into the fabric of the game, the scripts should have an impact on the traits, the traits should condition the options for the player of using a particular general etc.
• Battles that are played to win, not easy or based on exploits. Especially, I’m looking for the BAI behaving reasonably given the pace of the battles (in some mods it’s faster, in some slower). I think the battles are an exciting part of the game that makes the Total War games different from, say, Europa Universalis type of the games

[Dekhatres]

dunno how to disable plague but i recall seeing an entry for plague in descr_settlement_mechanics.xml (open it with notepad)

<factor name="SPF_PLAGUE">
<pip_modifier value="1.0"/>
<castle_modifier value="0.75"/>
<city_modifier value="1.5"/>


try setting them to 0.0, mybe that fixes it

[Varmir]

There're people doing that, eg. Alavaria


But for me something different is important:[/LIST]

1st of all kudos to Alavaria for doing this at turn 170. Impressive!

I agree with you (this is why I play this mod, anyway) but I just find some things I like to report. I was maybe over-reacting about compeltely removing plagues, but I noticed it prefers certain settlements to hit which leads to frustration. Historically, the Plague was not chasing important persons, elite units or settlements just before they upgraded their walls. It was random.

[Sarkiss]

actually it wasn't random, there was clear cause & effect... and it spread most rapidly alongside the trade route and these obviously involve large and wealthy cities. hence more of a chance of large city getting it, which is nicely represented in the game afaik.
the issue is, some cities start so huge and squalor is very high from the get go and that increases chances of the plague outbreak, i think?

[Gigantus]

The plague is a random disaster, see the aptly named descr_disaster file (copied from default file)

event        plague
frequency    20
winter        false
summer        false
min_scale    2
max_scale    5

That doesn't however stop scripters to trigger it via events in descr_events and\or the script as well. While I could agree that triggering it intentionally sucks, removing a historical event because of it's inconvenience seems somewhat lazy. There was a major plague event in the time frame of this mod and won't blame the modders for not accommodating this request.

Any of the required changes would need a new game start anyhow, if you are ready to do that then simply trace the files I mentioned for plague and remove those entries.

While there has been speculation that in the game trade routes help spread the plague that has never been conclusively been proven. Given the habit of the AI of moving characters between settlements and occasionally merging armies that would be the primary reason for non scripted infection.

Just remembered an extremely easy way of 'removing' the plague: it has been first used in the americas campaign (and never anywhere else to my knowledge) and only requires an entry in descr_sm_factions for the factions that should not get effected by the
plague: can_transmit_plague no

[Aquila SPQR]

To be honest I don't remember how it looked like in other mods because I had few months' pause when it comes to playing M2TW, but my last SSHIP game yesterday was very strange when it comes to plagues. Byzantine empire, Sebasteia and Malatya - these two cities were hit by plagues almost constantly for the first 30 turns after conquest. I built all health building there but nothing worked - I had plague after plague after plague. I was maintaining quarantine of course.

[Gigantus]

It could have been additional scripting, apart from descr_events it might have been in the campaign_script as well.

[Lifthrasir]

I think that MWY may have added something in the script to limit the population for the biggest settlements

[Jurand of Cracow]

I think that MWY may have added something in the script to limit the population for the biggest settlements

I don't think so. There's nothing I can see in the script that would prompt it.

I think the reason for the frequent occurance of the plagues is the sheer number of population in the SSHIP settlements. It's visibly higher than in vanilla and the other mods. The balance in the Med2 engine is calibrated to much lower values. By default, the probability should go up as the population rises. In the SSHIP the high population numbers prompt plagues very often. Changing the values in the descr_disaster file, as hinted by Gigantus, it's indeed the way to lower them, imo.