0.7.5e - (bug?) using garrison causes pandemic with mass deaths

Hello,

twice now when I ungarrisoned my settlers after a raid I got hit with a literal pandemic. First it was smallpox then the plague. Almost all of my villagers got infected. Smallpox infected about 400 (i think i had around 500 pop) and the plague about 550 - 600 (~670 pop). Both times the pandemic hit almost instantly, meaning most settlers got sick at the same time. I lost over 300 people to this, more than the raiders could ever kill.

I’m playing with sickness difficulty set to “Trailblazer”. I also played on 0.7.4 where I reached 900+ pop and this never happened there (plague and smallpox hit, but never exceeded 50 people). My soap production should be more than sufficient and I don’t have any issues with rodents (when the plague pandemic hit I think none of my buildings had rats). I also have 3 healers houses but as all settlers got sick almost at the same time they did not do much.

Is this an intended game mechanic? I hope not. Atleast for now I will refrain from using garrison…

If it isn’t, I suppose the issue lies in how the game handles the spread of diseases:
I guess it does this by checking who the sick person interacted with and then transmits the disease with a certain chance. This check probably includes the buildings they were inside of recently. Lets say I garrison my settlers and one of them gets sick. The game checks where this guy was in the last few minutes and infects some other people who were in the same locations (mainly the townhall). Now the game checks where this newly infected settleres were (again - the townhall) and speards the disease accordingly. So these newly infected people infect other garrisoned settleres, who themselves infect more garrisoned settlers and so on (kind of like a chainreaction).

I hope the game realistically makes the survivors immune for life from smallpox. The other diseases you can catch again, but smallpox is almost always lifelong immunity

I would guess some sort of immunity is implemented as both pandemics disappeared after a while. Without immunity I think every recovered person would be instantly reinfected. But that did not happen.

Highly infectious disease…tight spaces…yeah, haha.

Does this mean if you spread out it lessens the infection rates? Playing through again and spreading out a bit further to get a better feel for movements specifically the carts

Hi, thanks for replying!
I understand that point. But to me it seems a bit odd that basically a single person is enough to infect the entire population at once - hence the question if this is intended or not. Maybe i should add that both times no person was infected while in the garrison (I think they stay in the hospital/home if they are sick?), the first infection started immediatly after ending the garrison and then the enitre village got it at once. This never happened to me in 0.7.4 even though I had a bigger town and played longer. Was I just lucky then/ unlucky now?

Don’t forget there is an incubation period. Not sure how long but could be up to 2 weeks.