(Before we get started: in the previous part I implied it was possible to build military dockyards in provinces with no natural harbor, but in truth you can only build a tier 1 fishing port. Oops.)



Hey Demiansky! Check this out! Your favourite city is being filled with corpses!



Welcome back to doomsday. Expect a lot of deaths in this part. Also, boring mechanic explanations. Apparently you guys like that stuff the most. Weirdos.



So, the plague mechanic. I gotta say, it's one of my favourite mechanics of the mod because it's always interesting/terrifying to watch the plague spread from province to province. You can never be fully sure what places get hit and what places are spared.



The purpose of this mechanic is to slow down population growth (especially urban) in the early stages of the game. Later on, the plague epidemics become weaker and weaker and population can grow freely. This is also historical simulation because that's what actually happened in Europe. Therefore I'm also fairly certain only Yurop gets them. Would be cool/horrible to witness Chinese megacities with hundreds of thousands of population lose half of their inhabitants, but that can't happen. They still get plenty of famines though.

The plague usually spawns in 2-3 different places around Europe and the Middle-East. This time muslims got hit hard: both Granada and Baghdad got the plague.



There's different severity levels of the disease. The black icon means "You're Fucked" and is the second most terrible thing you can see in the game after HRE bordergore. We'll see more levels soon. Plague gives hefty penalties to a lot of things, but the best/worst effect is that it kills people. A lot of them.



By the way, that miniscule rural goods bonus is just there to make the modifier appear on the trade map.



Also note how neither city has lost any pop yet. That'll happen in a few days once the exciting/grim calculations run. Those negative modifiers should be the least of your worries if the grim reaper goes on tour in your nation.



That yellow province modifer in the left edge shows flood trauma. Provinces along flooding rivers can get those. I'll explain the mechanic in more detail later on. It's usually better to get floods right after the plague, for it washes all the corpses away and saves a lot of work.

The plague has spread to Granada's neighbouring provinces. Malaqa got fucked. This shows how the plague doesn't just get weaker as it spreads, but can get reinvigorated by doing the opposite (uninvigorate?) to a juicy/unfortunate pocket of people (aka cities)

Terrain also affects spread. Rough terrain (mountains, hills, forests) slows the spread (dear Danes and Dutch, your terrain is not 'hilly' or 'mountainous' if there's a couple of knolls dotting the countryside. Stop complaining about the terrain being wrong in game and book a flight to the alps or the scandes to learn a few things about geography) while flat terrain (plains, farms, Kansas) quicken the spread.



Terrain, however, won't save your coastal cities.

Using special map mode we can see how many cities there are in Iberia and what potential the plague has to spread. Looks like it'll quickly spread along the mediterranean coast to Southern France. Yay/Fuck.

You're not completely helpless when the extremely uninvited guest arrives. Via the state menu you can access plague measures, throw money at the grim reaper and pray it goes away.

There's three options: closing the ports (if coastal), restricting trade or training plague doctors. You know, those guys with freaky masks that protected the wearer from catching the disease from air. No, medieval people weren't dumber than we are. Just read the introduction of Decamerone to realize they had a rough idea of how the plague could spread despite not knowing about microbes. Read the rest of the book to realize what perverts people were back then and how nothing has changed.

The first option gives you two further options: "nicely ask the burghers to close the ports" and "FUCK OFF WE'RE CLOSING THE GOD DAMN PORTS AND I AIN'T GONNA LISTEN TO YOU FAGGOTS WHINE ABOUT IT". We don't have any burgers because we are an undeveloped shithole and McDonalds hasn't opened a fast food restaurant here yet, but if we choose the second option we still lose trade power.

Similar thing here. While the option for closing ports costs bird mana, restricting trade costs paper mana and gold. You also lose any center of trade bonuses if you have any.



Plagues are kinda like blue shells in mario kart. If you're a highly developed country with a lot of cities you get fucked. If you're a bunch of barbarians you barely feel anything as the grim reaper inserts its bony fingers up your ass. In a way, it is a rubber band mechanic, but you only lose population and pop eventually recovers. Infrastructure is not affected.

Not only that, but if you're a rich top dog you can just hire doctors and lessen the impact of the grim raper. The more money you spend, the more legitimacy you get, as well. Paper mana cost remains the same.



Basically it's not like the blue shell at all. Why did I make that comparison?



Duke Charles decides not to take measures against the plague. First of all, it seems to only be in Iberia. Second, why would God punish him and his duchy? He's pious and has done his best to keep his subjects pious as well.

How delicious/horrifying. Granada lost 60,000 people, mostly urban. I know I should be feeling bad about this, but it's like playing Plague Inc., you get this morbid satisfaction watching people die in droves. Right guys? Don't you all feel the same? I'm not crazy, I swear!



Mmm, I'd like to fuck a horse.

Baghdad lost 50,000 urban folk as well but also 40,000 rural folk. The plague does not discriminate. That's why the dance macabre paintings exist.



Oh wait, it still has 3 upper class. Nevermind.

The Death Metal concert tour is a big success! Skulls are appearing all over the place!



Here you can see how the grim reaper hopped on a boat and sailed across the Gulf of Almeria to two port cities on the other side. That's why you close ports. But burghers are capitalists first and humans second so they don't give a fuck and don't want you to interrupt their trade.



It's just like in Plague Inc., where you see anchors, you'll soon see the disease. If you like that game you'll like this mechanic. Or, well, you'll get to know how the rulers of all those nations felt when you spread your dysentery causing nerve raping airborne disease in their homelands. Can't guarantee you liking that.



You can see orange and yellow icons now, representing milder disease outbreaks. Their penalties aren't so bad and they kill a smaller proportion of the populace.

The Middle-East is getting fucked. But that's enough about today's news, let's get back to the game: the Middle-East is getting fucked.

I didn't notice it at first but there was a third plague spawn in Kaffa (didn't notice because the large trade node icon covered the tiny fucking province). I'm not sure if province trauma increases the severity of the disease, by the way. It might.



Oleshye's city got wiped off the map, pretty much. From 2 urban pops to 0 in the blink of an eye. How satisfying/horrific.

Here's some mild plague in hilly provinces. Barely any people die from mild plague and the penalties are minor.

Meanwhile in Barcelona: BLAMO! The plague got stronger.

Here's Aleppo, a major center of trade. Expect it to get fucked.



No plague can fuck it as hard as the syrian rebels and the government did. Fuck both of them.

The plague causes province trauma after a while. and trauma combined with poor weather (did I mention the mod simulates weather?) can cause famines. So if you're lucky, you can first get raped by the grim raper, then starve from famine. The fun can be doubled!

Time to take a break from the misery/fun of the plague: a letter has arrived in Nantes from King John of France.



After John got released from captivity and returned to Paris years ago, he wasn't too happy to hear that Charles had married some noble without his permission. But Charles provided compensation which would also bring their families even closer: John would marry his cousin.



Many years have passed but the King still has no heir. Chances are he can't get his dick hard because of erectile dysfunction, but obviously he's not going to publicly announce that. No. Instead, he blames his wife. Clearly she is unable to bear children and is as barren as Lapland.



The letter Charles received tells how the King will ask the Pope to grant him a divorce and formally apologizes for having to do so while also chastising Charles for giving him a flawed waifu.



Charles is shaken by the news and immediately writes a letter to the Pope in Avignon. If the King divorces, the House of Blois will be disgraced. This must not happen.

Back in Iberia... yeah, things aren't going too well. The plague has also reached Southern France.

I was right, 40,000 burghers and 50,000 peasants died horribly/wonderfully. A devastating plague usually wipes out half of the population (sometimes less, as in Baghdad's case). I once saw Paris get hit by one and its population dropped from 210,000 to 100,000.



Poor Aleppo. But hey, at least most of the city didn't get bombed to shit and no thousand years old minarets were destroyed.

Plague doesn't just jump from one port to another. By restricting trade you want to get rid of center of trade modifiers precisely because of this: they too help the plague spread.

The disease jumped from Tunis to Palermo and Naples. From those cities it will keep spreading further.

Here's the biggest city outside of China and India: Cairo. 340,000 people ready to die from a horrible sickness. If the plague comes here, a disaster of enormous magnitude/a personal outburst of euphoria will occur.



Extent of the plague in Western Mediterranean November 1377. It's spreading rapidly in Southern France. Toulouse got hit badly/nicely.

The plague keeps spreading in the east as well, but its effects are milder. Transylvania and Russia have mostly avoided the disease.

Levant and Southern Anatolia sure haven't avoided it. The Chupanid horde suffers especially, for it is embroiled in a civil war and a war against Georgia. It'll take decades to get rid of those red province trauma modifiers.



However Charles is more concerned about his cousin's marriage than the rumours of the Black Death's return. His fears are laid to rest when a letter arrives from Avignon, declaring that the marriage will not be annulled. King John is not pleased, but he still considers Charles to be his friend and ally.



Constantinople is free of kebab but it won't be free of dead-ab.

The Chief of Canary islands decides to try out this cool new religion and becomes a serious worshipper of ＪＥＳＵＳ

Oh. Only 40,000 people died. How disappointing. I mean, relieving! God has clearly blessed this bastion of Christ!

The plague keeps spreading. Almost all of Iberia and Italia have been affected. It also keeps ominously creeping towards/excitingly approaching Paris and Brittany...

It's getting closer and closer...



Thessalonike has been spared from the disease as it failed to spread to Voden! Or has it?

I'm disgusted, horrified and aroused at the same time. Look at all those skulls. So much death. Unf.

oh shit waddup



it's dat boi



(picture the grim reaper riding on a unicycle)



Bas-Poetou's population dropped from 250,000 to 200,000. Often densely populated farmland can spread disease even more effectively than tightly packed cities.



The court of Charles is leaving Nantes when news of terror arrive with refugees that are flooding into the Duchy. But Charles stays and refuses to abandon his people. Before Mathidle leaves, they share a kiss in the privacy of their own chambers. This might be the last time they see each other. And the kiss was not a formal one shared by a ruler and his official wife, but a kiss shared by lovers.

In March the first signs of the black death appear and bodies of the infected begin to be buried. First in individual graves, then in mass graves. Charles initially stays in his castle, but when the first Sunday since the beginning of the outbreak arrives, he leaves and attends mass at the largest church of Nantes. Many commoners are surprised yet delighted to see him and he says they have nothing to fear for God is with them.

Provinces surrounding Paris have disease outbreaks, but the city itself has been spared so far.



News soon come to Nantes that Rennes has suffered from the plague as well, but to a lesser extent.



Phew/Crap. The plague did not reach Cairo.

Crap/Yay! It did reach Thessalonike, though. Voden got hit as well. Remember what I said about terrain not protecting your coastal cities?



Let's take a closer look at how many people the plague kills. Here's Bro Wened before the plague arrives. Note the saturation being over 100%. Plague and famine mechanics are supposed to reduce overpopulation and thus are more effective in oversaturated provinces.



The province was not far from getting an urban pop. Or so it seems. In fact the growth is glacial because of 126% saturation. Because of the Urban Gravity the province can only support 7560 urban inhabitants.

Paris got hit and thousands perish. Oh yes/no.

Waiter, there is a rat in my baguette!



Paris lost 50,000 citizens and 10,000 farmers. Among the dead citizens are some of the famed artists of International Gothic. Paris has been downgraded to a local center of art.

Here is Bro Wened after a plague outbreak. It was second-lowest tier so not too bad. Saturation has been reduced and growth will be quicker next year. In a way, the plague was a good thing for the survivors. More job opportunities and less mouths to feed.



I think the Black Death could solve many problems the world faces today.

Germany and Scandinavia seem to be mostly unaffected with a few exceptions because of their lower population and tiny cities. England should soon get the plague as well.

In 1378 the grim reaper visits every province of Brittany, but none of them are hit too hard. It seems Nantes took the biggest hit, and even it only lost a little over 10,000 people. Seems like Charles was right, God is with them.

But God punished Decapolis for their sinful border gore.

The bishop of Saint-Malo was also the bishop of Treger and preferred to stay in the latter diocese. The replacement had been doing a decent job so far, but had recently died of the plague. The replacement of the replacement was a hack fraud. A formal complaint reached Charles despite the disease and he decided to act by hiring a priest from France to replace the replacement of the replacement.



The upper option would've given an "absentee bishop" modifier giving -1 unrest and -2% missionary strength.



If you lose more than 5% of your population you get this event. If you lose more you'll get harsher and harsher penalties. So you can get raped by the grim raper, starve from famine and face a revolt from lost stability. The fun can be tripled!

The event log is exhilarating/mortifying to read during a major epidemic.

Marocco's fun has indeed been doubled! They've lost enough manpower to get peasants' war. However, the disaster is bugged in M&T and I've seen it end almost immediately after it began countless times.

The plague has reached England and killed half of London's urban populace. Eat shit, eternal anglo.



Hundreds of corpses of the infected flow down the Nile and ominously approach Cairo.

Oh, and here's some oasis provinces connected to regular provinces via straits. Most large deserts in M&T have these dotted around the place, allowing armies to cross. They're pretty cool but economically useless most of the time.

Oh dear.



Ding dong the Duke is dead. Charles de Blois caught the plague and perished after a short struggle with the grim reaper. From now on he will be known as Charles the Blessed, a saint of the catholic church, the patron saint of soldiers and farmers. Mathilde will be shocked by the news of his death and spend the rest of her days in melancholy, never marrying again. All of Brittany (except some nobles who still held a grudge against him) mourns his passing with her. Some claim he died a martyr so God would spare many of his less faithful subjects from the plague.



His son John (for fuck's sake i thought the scourge of johns was over), whose mother was Joanna instead of Mathilde, inherited the title of Duke of Brittany. He immediately began to prepare a massive and expensive celebration in Nantes to not only celebrate the beginning of his reign but the passing of the plague, as the amount of burials had begun to decrease to normal levels.

John had inherited the county of Penthievre after his mother's sudden death ages ago. He had proved to be a skilled administrator in almost every regard... except he was terrible with money. You give him a coin and he probably drops and loses it immediately or gives it to some beggar who will waste it on alcohol.



He was already 38 years old when his father died and hadn't married anyone yet. He hadn't even made any maids pregnant and thus didn't even have illegitimate children. He was content with just fapping in his office after work.

John is the polar opposite to his father when it comes to religion. Charles' fanaticism had always seemed excessive and weird to him, and all the rumours of the corruption of the Church had made him disillusioned. He barely cares about worshiping God and praying for salvation. When his servants told him angels weep when he faps he didn't care. Of course, being such a fedora-wearer publicly would've gotten you lynched in the Middle Ages (and later) so he pretends to care and still goes to church every Sunday.

Pressured by his court John decides to get married so he can finally lose his virginity and have an heir to the throne. John sends a letter to John (here we go again) of France and asks for some hot waifu. But he didn't ask for a waifu for himself and instead arranges a marriage between his brother and the well-endowed niece of King John. There, good enough, that will give him some sort of heir. Too bad the courtiers continue to pressure him to get married, for they don't want another war of succession.

Most of Germany (except Rhineland) has avoided the worse effects of the plague. However, the grim reaper is having more than enough fun in England so it doesn't care.

John's refusal to get married raises concern and doubt in Brittany and his legitimacy begins to be questioned.



You get this modifier when you don't have an heir.

Nevertheless the plague has passed, the last harvest was good and the tensions between the Duke and the nobility dissipated with the death of Charles. Brittany is now more stable.

Despite not losing too much population in Nantes we still get mild province trauma.

John sends another letter to get a wife and gets one... for his cousin.



Now a proper war of succession between two allies can happen if John dies heirless.

I T ' S G E T T I N G C L O S E R

It's so dense every single screenshot has so many things going on.



I think they might've gone too far in a few places.



Charles isn't the only blue-blooded victim of the plague. Emperor Karl has died and Ferdinand has been elected in his place.

John decides to do some administrative reforms to relax and locks himself inside his office so no one can disturb him and whine about his lack of a wife. First of all he decides to tie Saint-Malo closer to the crown and revokes some privileges that grant the town legislative and judicial rights.



I decide to use the stability to revoke an autonomy-increasing privilege of the lesser nobles. It won't have much of an effect now but once we demote greater nobles it will.

Considering how the locals call themselves Malouin instead of Breton, this didn't exactly make the nobles and burghers there happy.

Some nobles elsewhere in Brittany spit out the wine they were drinking when they hear of John's reforms. Seems like he will continue his father's policy of centralizing the state. This along with the loud whining of the Malouin increases tensions in the duchy once again.



We're off to a good start in John's reign. It's only gonna get better. /s

Austria-Hungary is already a thing, by the way. Damn Habsburgs. Not sure what caused this. Last game Hungary blobbed like crazy thanks to having several rulers with the "conqueror" trait and retained its independence.



Anyways, the Emperor decides to support Hungary's independence to show middle finger to Austria. Man, why can't rulers just directly give the finger to others instead of using such indirect means?

Boom, Cairo got hit, millions dead! Well, not quite. The plague had weakened along the way so "only" 60,000 people die. Now I'm sad. I mean happy.

The new "ducal receivers" created by Charles have proven to be rather corrupt. He gave the titles to older lesser nobles who now want to retire. John doesn't care much about the money lost so he just lets the nobles have their scheme and retire early. They did do a good job while Charles was alive, after all.

Envoys from various towns of Bro Dreger arrive in Nantes. They request aid because piracy has sharply increased lately and blame the English for it. John, of course, grants them aid. And spends way too much on it. Dammit, we're not trying to prevent the armies of the Allies from landing in France, John, we're just hiring some dudes to guard shipping!

hey look the pope is dead and we got a new pope. maybe if you elected younger popes you wouldn't need to replace them all the time.



Pius II is a former cardinal from Provence, which is ruled by the King of Naples. Not only that but the Pope soon says he wants to move his court back to Rome. King John gets suspicious and thinks the King of Naples asked him to do that.



Pope's authority is moderate, expect some shit to go down

Paris is getting banking slower but still fairly fast.

The institution is spreading to Iberia, especially to Portugal and Granada. They have enough trade power to speed up institution gain by a lot.

This time the Peasants' War seems to have worked fine, and by that I mean the peasants caused as much chaos and discord as they should instead of saying "lol jk"





I FUCKING TOLD YOU



IT'S SCHISM TIME BABY



Pius II carried out his threat, packed up his things and moved the Papal court to Rome. But many cardinals, mostly those from France or its allies, elected a Frenchman who took the name Paulus II and stayed in Avignon. This, of course, was a power struggle between the Kings of France and Naples. Meanwhile everyone else scratched their heads in confusion and wondered what the fuck was going on. Two Popes? Had the plague made the survivors go mad?



This cool event chain happens early in the game to represent the Western Schism. To get a crash course on that read this wiki page: TOLD YOU SOI FUCKING TOLD YOUIT'S SCHISM TIME BABYPius II carried out his threat, packed up his things and moved the Papal court to Rome. But many cardinals, mostly those from France or its allies, elected a Frenchman who took the name Paulus II and stayed in Avignon. This, of course, was a power struggle between the Kings of France and Naples. Meanwhile everyone else scratched their heads in confusion and wondered what the fuck was going on. Two Popes? Had the plague made the survivors go mad?This cool event chain happens early in the game to represent the Western Schism. To get a crash course on that read this wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Schism.

The event created an Anti-pope nation in Avignon and moved the Papal States back to Rome. The Anti-Pope is a vassal of France. Things will return back to normal eventually.

Here's Pius II, reigning in Rome. He still has Roman territories as his vassal, and his vassal has plenty of OPMs and minors as their vassal.

Provence is in a personal union under Naples, as it was historically.

The Schism gives this nasty modifier, motivating the player to do something about it. Not that there's much you can do.

Incessant bitching is a surprisingly effective persuasion tactic as long as you don't give up. John (the Duke, not the King) has finally married. His wife is from the old house of Leon, from the north-western tip of the penis-shaped duchy. I didn't make that up, coincidentally there was a noble family of Leon there. Too bad the coincidences end there and the modifier showing the consort's home province ends up in Rennes aka Bro Roazhon instead.



Anne turns out to be a really hot, persuasive and charismatic young woman and not long after the marriage she is pregnant. John finally shaves his neckbeard and spends less time in his office. His fedora is nowhere to be seen.



Nine months later a girl is born. Because Brittany has agnatic-cognatic succession she becomes the heir to the throne. John decides to name her after his mother Joanna. Not after himself, mind you. Really don't know why the game gave him a feminine name "Jeanne" instead of masculine "Jean".

You obviously lose this modifier once you get an heir.



why did I even bother writing that and taking this screenshot



god so much pointless writing my fingers are dying help

The plague modifiers finally disappear from Granada. The pandemic is over. Hundreds of thousands if not millions perished, reminding everyone of their mortality. And the plague would return, again and again. The Black Death had come here to stay.



Man, that carnage was really damn enjoyable to watch. Good job, grim reaper. Can't wait to see you again!



Coming in the next part: more boring mechanic explanations, the schism continues and i dunno let's hope we get a famine or something