Rhye's and Fall of Civilization guide to plague

From Rhye's Mods Wiki

by Pacifist

Plague, what a depressing event. In fact it will depress your economy, production and military more than anything else in early game. The key is to get Biology and Medicine before everybody else does (so you can go kill their vulnerable troops).

Contents 1 How plague spreads 2 What happens when plague hits a city 3 Things that determine how quickly you recover from plagues 4 Things to do when plague hits

How plague spreads

Randomly, plague will hit a city. Through trade routes (both sea and land) it will spread, so unless you're an isolated kingdom like the Incans or Aztecs before the Europeans see you, you will get the plague eventually. Sometimes closing borders with a civ that's immediately in your trade routes might help, but it will only delay it by a turn or 2, and the political repercussions aren't worth it. The New World civs have a particular plague (smallpox) that will hit them when they encounter Old World civs after 1400. It will only affect them and cannot be spread back to the latter. Better get it early and over with.

What happens when plague hits a city

Your most vulnerable unit in that city will die (usually civilians like workers first). Then your remaining units will take a hit every turn until they either die (for early units with low hitpoints like warriors) or they eventually recover. Any units within a 2 block radius will also have the same effect, and if healthy units go near a stricken city, they will start to take hitpoints. As long as you have the plague, your city will die 1 population per turn. Your towns/hamlets will also wither back to cottages.

Things that determine how quickly you recover from plagues

• health (either by resources, buildings or civics (environmentalism))
• population (the more pop, the less healthy)
• number of cities stricken
• surrounding terrain (jungles and floodplains=bad; sea and forests=good)

Things to do when plague hits

First of all, reload to the previous 2-3 turns and do something radically different (maybe the random generator will spare you the plague). If that doesn't work, you need damage control.

• move all units 2-3 blocks outside of the city (yes, this will mean some unhappiness). Ideally workers should move at least 3 blocks beyond any city or road. If you have obsolete units (warriors or war chariots) might as well station them in the city for some happiness.
• alternatively, if you have enough ships, move your units onto them and sail away: they will not be harmed by the plague.
• Once I had a really large capital (Kyoto) which refused to work when I moved my units away. (Plus Japan is so tight that there's no room to hide). So I moved every unit I had into that city. When plague hits that city, only one unit died, and the others stayed in the quarantined city until the plague is gone.
• if you still have slavery, whip your remaining building projects (don't whip units unless you absolutely need them; in fact if you're building a unit, switch to a building temporarily). Remember, the lower your population, the less unhealthiness and the quicker you recover, and you don't want population losses to go to waste (since they're going to die anyway, might as well contribute to your infrastructure).
• build lighthouses, aqueducts, grocers (if not already automatically built)
• trade for healthy resources with other civs. If you have no wheat or rice, try to trade for them (they have 2+ for health with granaries and farms, whereas other foods like crab, clams and fish may not apply to your inland cities).
• if you can afford to delay getting copper or iron, when you are whipping your buildings, the leftover is usually enough for a warrior (12 hammers). Why not let the cheap warrior (who's providing happiness with monarchy) die of plague first rather than you expensive cannon or knight? (In fact I keep at least 1-2 warriors in each city routinely, even with "advanced" civs like Netherlands, France and Portugal) So much for making obsolete units die, since I keep about 10 warriors if I have 5 cities. :]
• declare war on neighboring civs with no units inside their cities! Remember units that are previously healthy that go near stricken cities will take a hit, so make sure you can take the city quickly.
• Smallpox used to inflict no damage on conquistadors, but now they do, so protect your siege weapons.
• When you conquer a city with plague, even if you had just finished plague, if you don't have medicine, you will get it all over again in all your cities, so it may be better to wait.
• research biology and medicine early (in fact the AI doesn't prioritize this until all the military and production techs are researched, so you can get pretty good tech deals by getting medicine first).
• If you're in jungle land (Mali, Khmer, Inca, Aztecs), switch to environmentalism if you have a lot of jungle and forests preserves built already. (it's a moot point since if you have medicine you won't have the plague, but environmentalism is wonderful for growth in SAm, SE Asia and Africa, and all those free specialists are great)