Old Age Request

[PyroStock]

its worthless to ever recruit some units because they literally only last 1 year.

Was this with Growth3 too?

Morkilus said:
Ummm... People get sick more easily when they get old, and they usually die because of it.

True. I wouldn't expect cripple & lost eye to appear more than disease, but I would expect to see weakened a lot more than disease.

[Agrajag]

Ahh, I understand. I (mistakenly) thought that you thought that aging does not cause disease, and must have a high chance of causing it.

So yeah, I agree that old age is very dangerous, I rarely bother playing any nation with aging mages, or if I do then I have some elaborate plan to mass forge/cast items/spells that reduce/halt old age.

Also, I find that the way aging currently works is a bit... Too much... Since old age causes afflictions and disease, and disease causes lots of affliction as well, old people seem to completely fall apart more than the death of "natural causes" you'd expect.
Sure, people died really young in "those times", and often of some affliction, but they weren't generic horror movie zombies that fall to pieces.
And besides, wouldn't you find it far more amusing if instead of death by disease you'd get messages like "Yctimell slipped in the tub and bumped his head. At his age, it proved fatal." (amusing in a morbid sort of way) [or just "Yctimell's heart gave out and he is no more." or "Yctimell's soul has been released from his body, perhaps to be kept by you."]

[Chris_Byler]

PyroStock said:

Was this with Growth3 too?

Growth is anti-thematic for Abysia. They shouldn't need to take it (and can't afford it).

I posted in another thread the suggestion that Abysians, specifically, should be immune to death scale for aging-affliction purposes the same way they are for supply purposes; it's thematic for them to burn out, but it's not thematic for them to be penalized for living in a burning hellish wasteland; they *like* burning hellish wastelands.

And they really, really need those points back to be anywhere near competitive, so it'd be a balance improvement too.

True. I wouldn't expect cripple & lost eye to appear more than disease, but I would expect to see weakened a lot more than disease.

Chest wound, too - that nasty hacking cough. And limp. Actually, lost eye or blindness is appropriate too - cataracts, which there was no nonmagical way to treat in the time period covered. (A nonfunctioning eye is the same as a missing one from a gameplay perspective - you might as well gouge it out and replace it with an Eye of Aiming/Void.) Crippled could represent broken legs/hips that healed badly - the old have brittle bones and there were few nonmagic means of making them heal properly. Ditto armloss - a useless arm is as bad as a missing one.

Even mental afflictions like battle fright or feeblemind could represent senile dementia.

There's lots of afflictions that should be more common than *immediately fatal* diseases (and that's not even counting the possibility of new age-only afflictions, like arthritis, gout, or palsy). Maybe we need a new severity level of "chronic disease" that doesn't kill you quickly, but has a smaller-than-fatal-disease chance of causing additional afflictions? Lots of old chronically ill people linger for years, even decades (and did so even before modern medicine).

On the other hand the real killer diseases shouldn't be limited to the old... but I assume that wasn't included for gameplay reasons (outside of disease-causing spells, items, and units, at least).

[Morkilus]

I'd like the idea of different kinds of diseases; it'd open up the door for many new and sadistic spells. It'd make sense for a unit to get malaria from a Heat3 swamp province, gangrene from a battle wound, and hepatitis C from sacrificing too many blood slaves

[Loren]

Morkilus said:
I'd like the idea of different kinds of diseases; it'd open up the door for many new and sadistic spells. It'd make sense for a unit to get malaria from a Heat3 swamp province, gangrene from a battle wound, and hepatitis C from sacrificing too many blood slaves

Blood slaves are unusually pure virgins--why should you get anything from sacrificing them??

[PyroStock]

Chris_Byler said:
Growth is anti-thematic for Abysia. They shouldn't need to take it (and can't afford it).

Thematically they shouldn't need growth. Realistically, old age has hindered Abysia so if you want to use those old mages you take growth. There's plenty of indy mages with old age too & I've noticed the better longevity when I take growth. Growth can also be good for income and bloodhunting. There's more than one way to play a nation.

Chris_Byler said:
Chest wound, too - that nasty hacking cough. And limp. Actually, lost eye or blindness is appropriate too - cataracts, which there was no nonmagical way to treat in the time period covered. (A nonfunctioning eye is the same as a missing one from a gameplay perspective - you might as well gouge it out and replace it with an Eye of Aiming/Void.) Crippled could represent broken legs/hips that healed badly - the old have brittle bones and there were few nonmagic means of making them heal properly. Ditto armloss - a useless arm is as bad as a missing one.Even mental afflictions like battle fright or feeblemind could represent senile dementia.

Some of those are more of a stretch, but sure anything to make Abysia more playable.

[Ewierl]

Chris_Byler said:There's lots of afflictions that should be more common than *immediately fatal* diseases (and that's not even counting the possibility of new age-only afflictions, like arthritis, gout, or palsy). Maybe we need a new severity level of "chronic disease" that doesn't kill you quickly, but has a smaller-than-fatal-disease chance of causing additional afflictions?

Don't forget the timescale here. It may seem like a rapid death for us who process a turn every 20 minutes in SP, but when a mage gets cancer, he's still going to live another 8-10 months minimum before he actually dies.

[Falkor]

Could someone explain what's the effect of growth/death scale on old-aged mages?
Do they come younger/older by recruitment? Or is the chance of getting affliction lower/higher?

[Sombre]

I don't have a problem with how fatal disease is, like the poster of this thread I just don't like the fact that old age almost always seems to cause disease. I don't know how true this is but it /seems/ like your 800 year old uber hag or necromancer turns 801, gets the old age tag and is dead by 802.

[vfb]

I nearly always take at least growth 1, and it seems I get an affliction in late winter in about 1 in 10 D0 mages. Of those, maybe 1/4 is disease. Am I just lucky? What kind of disease rates are you getting?

Here's a question: does it matter how old the mages are, in respect to getting afflicted in winter? If maxage is 50, are you more likely to get afflicted if you are 75 rather than 51?
If that's the case, it could just be the types of old mages I've been recruiting.