Historical events

[Pikeman]

Will genuine historical events like the Black Death or the crusades be reflected in the game and have an effect on gameplay, E.G. 1/3 of your population dying in the year 1348? If not, there should be!:cool:

[fireball21]

they should have a historical part to the game. they should add in a few famines too.

[vyanvotts]

hmmm historical events could be good, but it would be kind of annoying if you knew exactly what year they were going to happen. one could prepare for the black death and use it to there advantage, but the AI wouldnt. prehaps there could be a certian percentage of this risk happening, say 50/50. so if one is to spend time preparing for the black death there will be a risk involved....will it pay off? or will it not?

[golddigger]

Originally posted by vyanvotts
hmmm historical events could be good, but it would be kind of annoying if you knew exactly what year they were going to happen. one could prepare for the black death and use it to there advantage, but the AI wouldnt. prehaps there could be a certian percentage of this risk happening, say 50/50. so if one is to spend time preparing for the black death there will be a risk involved....will it pay off? or will it not?

As I recall my history; the rats that carried the Black Death came with the Mongols. And as the Black Death spred, they used the pledge-filled corpses as 'wepons' and hurled them over the walls of the cities they attacted.

[fireball21]

maybe they should have them but not in the year they really happened so there is no preparing for them. they also have them at different time every time a new game is started so you dont know when it is.

[Pioneer]

I think that the Black would be something so catastrophic - a loss of a third to a half of any given population - that preparation of any sort would be futile. Given that it particularly harmed monastic communities where people lived in close proximity and further weakened the Church through the loss of so many priests who would have to attend to the dying there could be a feature to weaken the effect of monasteries and churches. But irruptions like the Mongols could be randomised to within a plausible range of years. Alternatively though or also - like in Medieval Total War - they could attack in such numbers as to make precautions pointless.

[Moorkh]

Considering that the player is, in fact, kind of rewriting history through his actions, historical events should not happen as they have in actual history. After all, they are all consequences of history, themselves, so if you change history, it is very likely that they happen differently, if at all.

Instead, there might have to be triggers (hidden from the player's eyes), which then start a 'historic event'. For example, if we say the plague originated in central asia, let the trigger be the moment the current ruler of Kazan or Astrakhan (assuming the game map reaches that far) first captures a major mediterranian seaport the plague starts a random number of years thereafter and spreads from there along the trade routes that are currently in use in the game starting from that city. Other in-game or random factors should then determine how badly a region is hit by the plague. This way, historical events would still happen if the game is progressing the same as actual history but would happen logically if the game develops differently.

Of course, this question has almost certainly already been determined by BSS and I'm pretty confident I'll like the way they're doing it. ;)

[vyanvotts]

Originally posted by Moorkh
Considering that the player is, in fact, kind of rewriting history through his actions, historical events should not happen as they have in actual history. After all, they are all consequences of history, themselves, so if you change history, it is very likely that they happen differently, if at all.

Instead, there might have to be triggers (hidden from the player's eyes), which then start a 'historic event'. For example, if we say the plague originated in central asia, let the trigger be the moment the current ruler of Kazan or Astrakhan (assuming the game map reaches that far) first captures a major mediterranian seaport the plague starts a random number of years thereafter and spreads from there along the trade routes that are currently in use in the game starting from that city. Other in-game or random factors should then determine how badly a region is hit by the plague. This way, historical events would still happen if the game is progressing the same as actual history but would happen logically if the game develops differently.

Of course, this question has almost certainly already been determined by BSS and I'm pretty confident I'll like the way they're doing it. ;)

yeah, that idea sounds good to me

[Pioneer]

One of the sources of the Black Death - the besieged Black Sea port of Caffa - does not appear to be on the map. Given that there would be an expectation that plague would ravage Europe in the mid fourteenth century and given also that the route (or one of the routes) whereby it was transmitted from the depths of Asia are off map, it will probably trigger at a fixed time in the game. The plague as far as I know ravaged even those places where the conditions conducive to the rat borne spread of the bacillus. So those parts of Ireland not under the authority of the English king and his Justiciar in Dublin suffered, as did the more urbanised English colony. But the effect was substantially less so there could be some means to lessen its effect in colder less urbanised areas. Your idea does seem workable and I hope that the developers give consideration to it.