Old Age - 80% afflicted in 1 round.

[Corwin]

FrankTrollman said:
The Old Age afflictions all hit (or not) during the winter of each year. So there really is an "old age day" when all the old men get afflictions.

That being said, in my Tien Chi game I currently am at turn 27 and I have received precisely one affliction on a celestial master all game. If you don't have a Death scale, old age seems to be pretty forgiving.

-Frank

Same here, I am currently playing Tien Chi as well. No aflictions so far, turn iether 16 or 20, don't rememer for sure.

But I think it is because CM have very long lifespan. Chance of afliction depends on it.

[curtadams]

That was bad luck. My rough impression is that the life expectancy of an old unit is 3-4 years. However, even that is bad enough that I only use old units when I have no alternative. I pretty much hire them for key forgers and key battlemages - the ones doing the critical stuff nobody else can. I've not found them worth the trouble as artillery battlemages (although, to tell the truth, I'm pretty unimpressed with artillery battlemages anyway in Dom3) and I'd never hire them as researchers.

[Epaminondas]

I am not so enamored with Marveni and Agartha for this reason in the Demo. At least Marveni can easily acquire Nature gems, and some of their old age Druids come out with Nature magic skills. But Agartha is an entirely different issue, with all their high-powered mages coming out with old age...

[Villan]

You must have hit some bad luck somewhere there, I'm playing EA Agartha, and in about 60 turns exactly one of my about 20 oracles has gotten diseased. No one else has gotten a single affliction, and even the poor guy is going to get a lot more research in before his hit points drop to 0. And I'm playing with Death-1 scale.. The fact that their max age is 400 helps them a lot.

Overall I'm quite happy with how age is working. It adds nice strategic decisions that aren't always nobrainers. Haven't played Abyssia yet though

[Endoperez]

Maxage affects rate of afflictions. Agarthans, long-lived Celestial Masters, Gygjas (if they are old, I don't remember), Crones who are old but have lots of Nature magic boosting their maxage... they all are less likely to get more afflictions. Philosophers probably have maxage 50, and are thus more likely to get afflictions that most mages given as contradictory examples in here, and Abysians are the nation that suffers the most AFAIK.

Death magic protects from afflictions. I'm not sure of the rate, but Death 4 or 5 probably makes the mage totally immune to old age, and only few Ktonian Necromancers got nasty afflictions in a game in which I had Death scale 2 or 3. It didn't last very long, and I DID get couple of diseases and few other afflictions, but it was a minor effect.

[alexti]

I don't see much problems with Druids. Some of them get deceased and die, but they're cheap, you can hire them everywhere and they still can inflict some damage on the enemies before dying, even when sick.