Should the game have 'natural' diseases?

Oddly enough, causing a disease outbreak would fall under the wing of life magic. Curing a disease outbreak could be either life or death magic.

A disease is not meant to kill. All a disease wants to do is exist, killing off all of its potential hosts would counter productive. Normally what happens is a percent of the infected die off and the rest develop an immunity. Dealing with disease using live magic would amount to keeping people alive until they can build that critical mass of immunity versus the disease.

The more direct way of removing disease is to kill the disease itself or its method of transmission. Rats are spreading the plague? No problem, just kill em all. Of course that brings up the problem of dead rats everwhere, which makes this a far from perfect solution.

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In game terms disease should be determined by population density and hygein. The more people you have living in one place the more a disease has a chance to spread. If the population is very sparse then a single strain could die off before it can spread a significant amount. Good hygein can't eliminate the possibility of disease entirely but it can negate the effects of dense population to some degree.

Desease could also be created by the element water, air and earth. Maybe fire, but I don't find a reason...

A desease can come from contaminated water, stinking air or overflowing drainage system (earth/mud).

The cure can come from 'holy water', 'healing plants' (earth)

I think, we could find a way for every element to create or cure a desease...

If there's some disparity between the elemental schools when it comes to causing/curing disease that might lead to some interesting diplomatic interaction, e.g. requesting that someone cure your dieing populace of plague. This could lead to some fun evil extortion opportunities if you were being asked to help and you were their only option

Although obviously this disadvantage for those that couldn't cure diseases would have to be balanced out in some other area or it would just be annoying

I'd love to see a more involved natural disease system in place. Lots of games take it into account, including Civ and Total war, but like you said it's usually just an abstract factor considered in population growth/loss. One notable example are the plagues in Medieval II: Total War. There, individual cities can be struck by plagues and affects their populations and all garrisoned units. If you move one of those garrisoned units to another city there is a good chance that the plague will be transfered with them; and military units as well as special units like diplomats, spies, generals, etc, can all be killed by the plagues.

With the planned caravan system this would become even more important. In order to prevent spreading the plague from one city to another you'd have to quarantine it; but if the city isn't capable of self-supporting its own population you might want to send in some shipments to prevent a total disaster (this actually wouldn't need to spread the plague, but if there's a max # of caravans you can have it might tie some of them up until you let them leave). Or, if the plague-stricken city is responsible for the majority of a key resource or product, you might want to risk shipments out of the city, which would be a major risk.

That said, if they do implement natural disease in such a comprehensive manner I'd like it to be optional. Sometimes I like being able to build vast, sprawling cities with huge populations without having to worry about such petty things as disease  

If there is a spell that causes disease, I'd say there should be random events that cause it too.   Depending on how bad it is I would put it untir major event or minor event (maybe there could be different levels of outbreak)

Yeah, quarentine on a city should lock down all trade.

I can see earth and water having natural cure spells that would cure disease as well.

For fire you could do something like Heat wave (Global Warming?) that could cause famine resulting in starvation. Not a disease but it would have the same end result on population.

I don't think we should try to find the same effect for every element.    The elements should be different.   I think that only like 1 or 2 should be able to create disease and famine, and 2 or 3 should be able to counter it (notice the 2nd number, the number of counters, is greater than the 1st, but still not all of them.)

For fire you could do something like Heat wave (Global Warming?) that could cause famine resulting in starvation. Not a disease but it would have the same end result on population.

I agree with what you are saying - you don't want every element to have the same net effect but in different packaging. So maybe the heat wave would affect food production (as opposed to wiping out population directly), with only water countering it. Maybe the Heat wave would make some squares (like Tundra) more productive so if it was a global effect it would help some areas and hurt others. Or if it was a more localized effect it could still be used as either beneficial or harmful depending on the terrain it was cast on. So I think it would behave quite differently than a "plague" but could still be countered (by water, obviously) and would be a nice analogous spell, for balance, to the other elements' "plague". Another solution to the Heat wave as a negative effect would be to have trade in place to get food into the affected area.

Yes, provided diseases aren't "feature creepy." I like the idea of diseases [not in real life, mind!], even something simple like "City X loses Y% of population per turn," but I don't want to manage a highly-complex and involved disease model in addition to everything else. The good news is that disease models are fairly intuitive, so players could probably figure them out without too much hassle.

Basically, diseases can keep things interesting and offer different strategies (siege a town and let a plague do the rest), but what I don't want is micromanaging a health system down to every apothecary and healer

diseases and such are a major problem for mideval civilizations, so that seems like that would be a reasonable random event.  I think it would really set the flavor for struggling to rebuild the world, since once population gets to a big size a disease is very likely.  

Making it a spell just lets you spread out the features.  So if you make a diseased animation and all that for cities, it will be worth the time and effort.   no matter what it is a little bit of feature creepy (since its something special, everything that isn't a main feature is feature creep) but it spreads it out to make it make it I think worth it.    I vote there should be some sort of disease feature

that and they already have a type of disease event in galciv 2 so it shouldnt be too dificult to port and edit it to fit in context

yeah, okay diseases would be cool but only as long as they don't dominate my game time. I'd like the diseases to scale according to early-middle-late game (and relative size of the game). Tie naturally occuring diseases into population size/density and make them increase in likelyhood depending on city size/health/etc. Some buildings to help prevent the spread or mute the affects will aslo be necessary (somebody said apothecary and herbalist, good ideas). I'm not sure I like the idea of being able to transfer disease (mistakenly or not) via trade or resource caravans to your other cities. However, i'm not 100% here, maybe if there was an interesting way to go about preventing it from happening (ie so that it's not automatic) like using a curative spell on caravans coming from that particular city. But i do like the idea of being able to send a naturally occuring disease to an opponent's (enemy or ally) city.

and i certainly don't want to see Channellers casting R Jordan's 'albino midget disease' after 4 turns. 

I do like the idea of Channellers being able to access 'disease' spells at some point in the game, maybe even 'sickness' early on (maybe that's an unnecessary distinction but you get what i mean). And counter-spells would be required. I would like to see some generic curative spells that can take the edge off the more serious 'disease' spells. I'm not saying they should be cheap nor that they would eliminate the ill effects, just that they should reduce its affects and can be used on diseases or sicknesses generally (and specifically can help prevent the spread of some diseases)

no, yes, it shouldn't be major at all.   Like a disease should strike and cause a blip in your production and such for a little.  Similar to the mana changes when 'conjunctions' occur in the original MoM (except money and production, not mana, and only effecting certain areas)

So if a channeler cast it on a town, that town would hurt, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.   I also imagine it a late game spell like 'corruption' was in the original MoM.

I think deseases could also be harmless. We are only talking about disastrous deseases which kill people. But there also can be deseases which are not that harmful but cause negativ effects.

There could be a bad acne, which reduces the population grows, because no one likes each other anymore. A psychological desease would do the same. A desease which causes health problems, can bind the people to bed, so no one will produce anything anymore until they are cured, because no one was killed.

When you talk about diseases being life magic, you're assuming that the world of Elemental would use the germ theory of disease. Maybe, in Elemental, disease is caused by miasma, vapours, the humours being out of balance, bad chi, evil spirits, or magic.

Effectively, reducing the population creates the same effect.(Don't forget, popultaion numbers are, normally, a simplification of an enourmously complex piece of information)

I'm not making that assumption--I'd prefer that there be no germ model. But we're still (impatiently) waiting for an Integrated Metaphysics post from the devs, so we have no way of knowing how much 'science' will apply to the game mechanics.

And because I'm such a bad threadjacker that I can't even reliably herd my own posts, I have to half-agree with the talk about elements and diseases. The half I agree with is that I want substantive distinctions between the 5 powers, not simply the same spell lists with different UI skins--and IMO, this should underly any additional differences generated by faction membership and however 'good' and 'evil' work out.

The half I don't really agree with, especially given my agreement with Nights Edge above, is the idea that any particular element might have no potential for affecting health. In the WoT framework, the strongest healing webs (which can also be used to harm or kill) involve highly complex use of all 5 elements. Depending on how the metaphysics for Elemental work out, it might require a true '5-star' channeler to work the greatest magics for healing wounds and curing or causing diseases. Or maybe it is almost pure skill, and all you need is at least a scrap of power in all five areas. After all, whether or not germs are involved, we're talking about fairly subtle effects when compared to something like throwing lightning or knocking over a watchtower.

Medieval disease was usually the result of large population growth without proper sanitation infrastructure being put in place to cope.

As an example. The "Black Plague" of Europe was not "caused" by rats, the rats were simply the spreading agent of the outbreak. The "cause" was the abhorent piss poor sanitary practises in the major cities of Europe of the time.

In game, if not by Magic means, disease could be added to the Pop. as a result of not having the proper controls in effect. I build a city and it Pop. grows and grows but if I do not buy that one Tile (whatever that tile would be) that will maintain that Pop. level, until the next growth level is met, disease begins to take hold. It's most direct effect would be an ability to re-inforce your armies, as they are built directly from your cities Population base.

Complexity is fine, but I would agree with the idea that if it gets put in, it has to be dealt with easily, and perhaps have a heavy cost factor on either end of the whole "do I really need it" vs the "what is the cost of not having it"...

Diseases could also be tied to a specific place, such as tropical forests or swamps. It's like in Dominions 2 and 3: when playing the lizardmen, you got the Miasma dominion and any hot-blooded living entering gets the disease and looses 1 hitpoint a turn...until they die, even if they go out of the zone.

That would do some nice addition to the thread about wild zones in the map. There could be a land of swamps with a nation of lizardmen or perhaps just ruins (and loot to gain) guarded by some monsters or militia. If you want to conquer it or retrieve the treasure, fine, but know that the entire army you'll have sent will die eventually, even if they accomplish their mission.

For information, at the end of the XIXth century, when France conquered Madagascar, it lost 4'600 men by malaria and only 26 by combat!

Well, europe was actually better than parts of asia at the time, where I guess sanitation must have been worse.   The black plague actually caused less deaths in europe than the 30 years war (which was happening around the same time, and often the black death gets deaths added to its toll because it gets lumped with the war).

For some reason people always think of europe when somebody says "black plague" even though it started and killed more people in asia.  We (as western culture) just have for europe records of it taught to us I guess.

But yes, the point is that it would be interesting.

In Civilization IV, you have the health of a city, and it doesn't really do much except adjust population growth if you can't meet health requirements.   If we had a similar mechanic, then a major disease outbreak could have a chance to occur whenever there is a lot of unhealth in a city (of course the spell would force it)

If disease can spread, it should be limited by race.   maybe not much of a factor since both men and fallen are (or at least were) human.    If we sued classic MoM races though (or for the sake of user created ones) things like Beastmen, Klacken, trolls, and dragon-guys (forgot name) shouldn't be able to get the same diseases as regular humans since they are so far detached.  (i'd say that beastmen, trolls, and dragon-guys could have the same since they are from the same world and in theory of similar ancestery.  There are no humans are myrror by nature and most of arcana's races are human-like, klacken and lizard men being the exceptions)

In truth I was annoyed by Civ IVs interpretation of "health" in game. I thought that it was far too common for your cities to be emitting green smoke, because you didnt have the right resources or improvements... which was a major turn off in a visual aspect especially  not to mention infuriating that as you played on harder difficulty levels it just got harder to maintain!

On another note, I would be happy to see specific diseases caused by magic and even by terrain like in Civ IV... just as long as its not showing my city stinking up the countryside ill be happy Anyone else agree this was annoying to watch?

The idea is good, but it carries more then a bit of danger of becoming similar to the "cultural/ethic independent colonizing and migrating" thing in Master of Orion 3. Complex, well thought out, worthy of a masters degree and in the end very very difficult to control (therefore failing).

Any "autonomous spread" system would have to be tested to hell and back in order to reacb an acceptable level of ceertainty it wont break games here and there.

I would agree that any kind of channeler would have to have soem opportunity to combat disease if it does get in, because I can already see two or three tactics that would effectively render them severely hamstringed if they couldnt.

I agree it would be nice to diversify though. Just some thoughts (not thought thorugh very well , just something that would give each side its own feel)

Life - inocculate - channeler powers the spell and over a number of rounds infected people get less and less ill untill the disease dispappears (yep I stole that idea ^^ ), production incerases again as more people are once again fit to work.

Water - cleansing flush - immediate cleaned pop if acces to large bodies of fresh water. rest of the cities need to be supplied with the cure though caravans. (making them specialty caravans - player controlled)

Fire - healing fever - production drops significantly for a number of turns while the populations "sweats it out"  If the disease has been around long enough some people might not be strong enough to survive the fever

Earth - Healing herbs - potions get concocted that will cure the disease and need to be transported to other cities without acces to...a swamp...forest....whatever.

Air - Benevolent breeze - stops the spreading of the disease immediately. People already infected will have to deal with it in a natural way (assuming less then 100% fatality here)

2 ct

edit: for numerous typo's :/

I wouldn't want to be clearing up after disease all the time, in the same way that I hate it in the Total War games when I'm constantly struggling against rebellion as I approach the 50-province mark. Or the stupid stack of workers automated to clean pollution in Civ 3. I'm not saying that this is what anyone's suggestions are leading to, just that it needs to be kept in mind.