Reaper's Due disease out of balance

[ZombieHunter]

• Disease happens way too often
  
• Hospitals rarely fend off disease
  
• Closing the gates messes up the council
  
• Your character gets way too many maladies
  
• Physicians are, for the most part, morons

In general Reaper's Due DLC needs rebalanced.

[Ea0]

What did you expect of a "fun" DLC that's about death? Joy and happiness? :D
I don't own it but I'm not particularly interested in it either...

[ZombieHunter]

Well its not that the content is bad, because it is not. It is the fact that disease rarely feels random and often comes at the worst times as if there is some other algorithm under the hood that fires it off when certain conditions are true.

Right now diseases happen far too often and its the same round of diseases all the time. The plague portion is actually very cool but the small diseases like camp fever, slow fever, measles, etc all happen much too often.

[Random]

• Disease happens way too often: it depends on the current century and hospital level of the county, thus diminishes over time and is mostly avoidable with up to date hospital infrastructure (upgrade construction tech on each tier FIRST)
  
  
• Hospitals rarely fend off disease: they do but it is offset somewhat by the massively advantageous NEW prosperity mechanic, effectively reducing your hospital tier by 1
  
  
• Closing the gates messes up the council: Agree, I personally do not ever close my gates, even for the black plague.
  
  
• Your character gets way too many maladies: is subject to your health modifier (or lack there of) and learning stat of your physician.
  
  
• Physicians are, for the most part, morons: intrigue menu recruited physicians are usually garbage. You are far better off inviting a holy man to your court for 25 piety until you get one with over 15 learning (usually closer to 20) and then assigning them the honorary title "pysician" they will use their superior learning stat to cure practically everything and over time gain more learning as well as the pysician trait anyway.
  
  

  In general Reaper's Due DLC needs rebalanced.

  
  No, just requires better documentation and explanations of mechanics. the vast majority of things can be dodged by simply having a competent pysician with over 15 learning. Players just need to adjust their priorities to place construction technology first, allowing you to be AHEAD of the disease curve making you and your court practically immune.
  
  The Gregarious trait will also offset the spam of "successful treatment" cash tips to your physcian with a verbal court announcement of praise increasing your entire courts opinion of both you and the physician itself, which also doubles up to practically kill revolts and sway your council to be heavily in your favor.
  

[KG]

I'm with Random on this. I've found Reaper's Due to be a worthy expansion. I always try to recruit a physician via decision. About 2/3 get sent down the road to butcher someone else's court, but it can also turn up an interesting or very good physician from time to time. Between that and a decent hospital in your counties, epidemic diseases still happen but they're rarely crippling, mostly just interesting flavor.

Prosperity/depopulation and prosperity events are a wonderful, too. They make being a "good" ruler more engaging.

Being able to request a vassal end an internal war is a godsend. If I need realm peace or just want to maintain the balance of power I can do so without imprisoning a quarter of the realm.

[Mabdarogan]

You can use the Game Rules to balance diseases yourself, I actually use the "more" option.

[p.sahlstroem]

Completely agree with Random, KG and Mabdarogan. I have to admit that my first few games after Reaper's Due my rulers were dropping like flies, but then I adjusted and now my rulers seem to live longer than before. Current game, every single ruler has lived to 50-70 years of age (one even hung in for almost 20 years with cancer, due to a godly physican with learning 30+ (and other stats in the 25+ range) recruited through intrigue and appointed as court chaplain and tutor to two whole generations of my dynasty :-)

[gregoryk64]

Put my down with the camp that thinks RD is fine as is. Yes, epidemics have a tendency to show up at inopportune times, but when exactly is a good time for smallpox to break out in your realm?

As mentioned in the earlier posts, like most of the major DLCs it requires a shift in strategy to overcome the challenges. Choose the hunting, family or theology focus to boost your ruler's health. Theology is a great one because you will sometimes get an event to seclude yourself in prayer that can miraculously cure even the most terminal diseases. I've had kings cured of cancer and leprosy this way.

Having a good court physician is a must. I recommend finding a character with a minimun INT skill level of 18. They aren't that hard to find, even if you have to invite them from other courts.

Keep your heirs close and in court with you whenever possible. This will prevent them from doing stupid ♥♥♥♥ that can get them killed or hacked up by a poor court physician.

Geography also seems to play a part. Although I almost exclsively play with a 769 start, I've found that Scandinavia stays pretty much free of major diseases for a long time. I've had games starting with a chief in Sweden or Norway where I didn't have a major epidemic break out for at least 100 years.

You can also make epidemics work to your advantage. Have a malcontent councillor or vassal that's causing trouble? Assign them to command a retinue and park it in the middle of a slow fever outbreak. The problem will be solved relatively quickly.

[markdb92]

if you want to protect your ruler put him on a army and move him around to avoid the stuff.

[Throwitinthecooker]

Reaper's Due was late game and time of peace filler but with added mechanics via the patch that were much needed to fix game breaking bugs introduced with Conclave. I personally can't play without it and think it is next to none in terms of Paradox dlc for CKII. Next up M&M appears to have mechanics that have to do with controlling your allies during times of war to make them far more useful which will be even more of a game changer. Just takes a little trial and error and patience to figure everything out, thats all.

[Merkatz]

Normally I'd say that it's fine. However certain parts of the world always seem to get slammed by disease.

My current game has me in Italy and it just seems like disease after disease. I once had consumption and typhus outbreaks overlap, only to have measels pop up shortly after.

Also, the games seems to hand out great pox too often.

[ZombieHunter]

Again I'm not complaining about the content I'm merely stating my experience in many different playthroughs. I, too, like Merkatz am seeing disease after disease after disease with no end in sight. Perhaps its a dice roll but it needs some type of limit. At one point I had 3 diseases circulating my counties. So many dialogs popping up it was ridiculous.

[gregoryk64]

Originally posted by ZombieHunter:

Again I'm not complaining about the content I'm merely stating my experience in many different playthroughs. I, too, like Merkatz am seeing disease after disease after disease with no end in sight. Perhaps its a dice roll but it needs some type of limit. At one point I had 3 diseases circulating my counties. So many dialogs popping up it was ridiculous.

In your case it might be worth turning down the occurance of epidemics in the game options before you start a new campaign.

Also, geography is a factor. Southern England is Pestilance Central, as is Italy, with lots of stuff tending to pop up in in French territory. Plenty of disease in the Byzantine empire, too. Slavic and Germanic pagan lands tend to fare better. As I mentioned in a previous post epidemics are very rare in Norse territories and don't start coming with any regularity until the kingdoms start to build up and effectively raid, which makes sense. Probably too spread out and cold for the bacteria to thrive until population centers get big.

But no matter where you start, once the black death starts it's first big red wave from the east, everybody on the map gets a taste.

[Merkatz]

Everyone but nomads gets the Black Death. My only real 'complaint' about Reader's Due is that it seems to like handing out syphilis like candy.

I'd be understanding getting it on seduction focus lechers, but I've had characters that I've played since they were children come of age, contract generic symptoms (fever, malaise, etc) then be handed Great Pox when as far as the player knows, is a loverless virgin.

[gregoryk64]

Originally posted by Merkatz:

Everyone but nomads gets the Black Death. My only real 'complaint' about Reader's Due is that it seems to like handing out syphilis like candy.

I'd be understanding getting it on seduction focus lechers, but I've had characters that I've played since they were children come of age, contract generic symptoms (fever, malaise, etc) then be handed Great Pox when as far as the player knows, is a loverless virgin.

If the parents have a history of great pox, there's a chance the children may inherit the disease.

[The Cure]

Non epidemic disease is out of control, but they have rules for that. Epidemics however are great after Reaper's Due.