Best defense or cure against disease?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

On prevention, there's two avenues. Battle and other.

On other...
1). Have enough supplies. Keep a bag of wine on hand in your castle garrisons. Be cautious when invading Ermor, or being a cold nation invading a hot, death scale land.

2). Leprosy - have a decent magic resistance.

3). Kill anybody likely to get Burden of Time up, especially death heavy pretenders leading nations with no death mages and plenty of years left till old age.

4). Don't play an a nation with mages with old age. If you do, growth scales can mitigate the effects somewhat.

When it comes down to the battlefield, however, there's not much you can do to prevent it other than reduce damage taken. I do hear regeneration does reduce the chances of gaining afflictions, as well.

I doubt this has been useful, but you did ask.

[Valandil]

Gift of health, too.

[Sensori]

Valandil said:
Gift of health, too.

I already mentioned that, btw. ;p

[Sombre]

If you have regen and disease, when you're in a battle you can regen back up to full health, so for example nature bless can be effective on sacred mages with old age, provided you can get them into battle.

[Rytek]

Ive noticed that some units which change during battle will heal afflictions. For instance, Sorcerors from Machacka. If they are diseased from being old you can send them into battle by putting them up front, when they "die" and turn into their big spider form, they can get rid of afflictions. Same as any of them that change. Lama's, Jaguar warriors, skinshifters, etc.

[Tuidjy]

The "lose afflictions on transformation" has been declared a bug, and may be fixed.
Then again, there are scores of more serious problems I'd rather see addressed.

[QXel]

Gift of Health.
Definitely.

Against old age too, obviously.

I (very very) often (ok, almost always) include N5 mage strategy in my games.
[I only play SP, no time & patience for MP, sorry guys ( ]