The Plague and Peasant Rebellions

The Plague will eventually arrive (sometime between 1337 and 1355), and when it does, fiefs that are "plagued" will promptly lose about half their population. Owners should adjust their spending levels in these fiefs, as most spending is based on the population (which has now, regrettably, changed.)

The following technobabble is from the spec for the program. It explains how the plague starts, spreads and its effect.

fief.plague=Current period losses due to plague

fief.plague = rnum*(cnt.plaguerate)*fief.pop;

The plague effects bring down fields and industry as well as population (in a ratio of 10:8:9, POP:FIELDS:INDUSTRY). Death rates are such that about half the populations will die off.

Each season thereafter, every un-plagued fief will get it from an adjacent fief that has had the plague. The Plague spreads at the rate of three fiefs per season (it used to be one).  There is no chance of it skipping a fief.

You know a fief has been plagued because the year of its last infection will be in the fief file PLAGUE field (otherwise, that field contains nothing). Once a fief has been plagued, it will not be plagued again.  Plague the reoccurrence may be added in the future.

Note that the above spread routine is not completely realistic, but it is close enough for now. If you want to do it up historically, then make the chance of spread to adjacent fief 80% and give each port in the game a 40% chance of getting it (for the first time) each season. This would be a more complex piece of code and can wait for roll out or late

The Plague always starts in one of the fiefs listed below.

Genoa
Naples
Papal States
Florence
Venice

Initial plague should show up in the Herald .

Probability of Death of in a fief hit with plague

Player Characters 10%
NPCs 20%

The following refers to the Great Rebellion, which is not yet implemented.

There is a chance for a peasant rebellion in the non-England portions of the map starting the year after the plague ends. The chance starts low (1%). It increases slowly for the first decade (+1%/year), then more rapidly (+5%/year). When a rebellion is indicated, a separate roll is made for each province, with a 30% chance that every fief in the province rebels.

The chance of a peasant rebellion is calculated separately for England than for the rest of the map. England does not begin checking until four years after the plague is gone, the check is made only every 2.5 years, and the chance of rebellion increases half as fast as elsewhere. Once a rebellion is indicated, the checking of provinces proceeds as it did for the Continent.