User Guide

Plague
If overall health conditions are particularly bad in the
city, plague can break out. The only way to prevent
plague is to ensure that your city provides for
all your
citizens’ health needs — especially plentiful diets and
access to physicians.
Plague is an insidious ailment, and there is no way of
predicting where it will first break out. Plague is strict-
ly the result of poor overall city health; it is not relat-
ed to an individual home’s risk of malaria or disease.
Once a home is plagued, one of the poor, sickened res-
idents emerges from the house, fevered and distraught,
and begins wandering the city’s streets. Every house he
passes becomes infected, no matter how good that
house’s access to healthcare is or how wealthy its occu-
pants are. All the residents of the homes the plagued
walker passes perish. To prevent this catastrophe, be
sure to provide the necessary healthcare to everyone in
your city.
Plagued walkers journey around your city because they
know that their situation is dire. Should an herbalist
encounter a plagued citizen, he is under strict orders to
remove that person from the city’s streets in whatever
way he can. A plagued person will die after one month
if he never encounters an herbalist.
Herbalists can help to contain plague once it arises, but
only good city health can prevent outbreaks altogeth-
er.
IInnffeecctteedd HHoouussiinngg
Once a house has become infected by any illness, it
155
Health
strikes individual domiciles and does not spread. If an
entire neighborhood has poor access to physicians,
however, disease can break out in more than one
home. When disease strikes, there is nothing to be
done for the afflicted. Everyone living in the home
dies.
Use the Risks: Disease overlay (page 205) to see which
homes are most likely to become diseased. Build more
Physician’s offices in the area to reduce the risk. You
can also use the Health: Physician overlay (page 207)
to help you plan the placement of Physician’s offices.
The Physician overlay shows you the access each home
has to a physician, as well as the physician himself mak-
ing his rounds.
Malaria
Living among marshes and along the water means liv-
ing with the risk of malaria. Homes on grassland close
to the river and to reed-filled marshes are most at risk.
The denser the grass, the higher the risk of malaria.
Like disease, malaria begins in a single house. Unlike
disease, though, malaria soon spreads through the air
to neighboring homes. The only way to reduce the
chance of a malaria outbreak is by having plenty of
Water Supplies and Apothecaries in the areas of the
city which are most susceptible. Use the Risks: Malaria
overlay (page 205) to see which homes are particular-
ly at risk for malaria.
If one person living in a house has malaria, all the
house’s residents die.
154
Health