Death Calculator

A haven’t been very happy with the results of the death calculator over the past few weeks so I’ve spent pretty much the whole weekend re-working it. It was always pretty random.. it’s still pretty random but I think there’s alittle more of a method to the mayhem now. The people who should be dying are dying now.. while keeping no-one safe.

 I’ve linked the new version of it on –  http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/royal_kingdom_challenge/files/

Please feel free to input J  Some Info – 

I’ve added sort tabs to the top row so if you are looking for just a peasant death or just a child , or a member of a certain family you can filter the searches … just click on the button and pick the categories you want to look at.. you can also pick multiple categories.. for example peasant children.

 I’ve tried to use as much fact as possible without going insanely over board.. quite frankly id be here all day if I was to try and use statistic available.. there are 1000’s of factors I’ve not taken into account. However ive tried to base my figures as close as possible .. while keeping it sane. 

 It is however a just game and as much as true stats say – 20% of  babies didn’t make it to 1 year old about only 40% of babys born, where expected to make it to 10 years old… personally that’s abit more depressing than im after.. this is after all a game so I’ve tried to bare that in mind also. 

The different Classifications –

 These have 2 figures the min and max numbers that can be randomly generated. Because the target number needed to survive is only 15. A person can survive even rolling very badly. I don’t want to kill off too many Sims after all. The min score has a greater effect on the Sim wide % than the max percentage. so don’t be fooled into thinking 1-40 , 2-40 are very similar… really that change in min score effects the figures quite a lot.   

AGE

• Elder –  ( range 1-15) These are our frailest category .. People rarely lived beyond 50 in medieval times. It was insanely rare for someone to die from what today we would call old age.

• Adult (range 3 – 52)  These are potentially our strongest category as they have the highest max. However these have a slightly lower min score to teenager’s. The reason for this is because these have a slightly higher chance of what I call random death than teens . Peasant/ Merchants – worked for a living often in unsafe environments. Where as nobles/ royals had duels / hunting accidents etc to deal with.

• Teens – (Range 4 – 48) although not quite as potentially strong as full adults, teens give a higher average for the reasons given above. It’s also worth noting that in my kingdom I use inteen.. as soon as kids stop going to school I make them adults on my spreadsheet as they start living “adult” lives.

• Babys ( Range 1-20) – These should technically be lower than elders but personally I find it rather depressing when half my baby’s keep dying. They still have one of the strongest chances for dying however it’s not quite as depressing as real medieval life would have been. (unless your a peasant baby at which point its still pretty harsh )

• Toddlers ( Range 3 – 27) – Baby’s making it past there first couple of years leap up in there possible survivability. The idea being if you made it this far your doing well.

• Child ( range 2-31) – Potentially getting stronger. You’ll notice however the lower end takes a dive from toddler. The reason for this is that many medieval children where unsupervised for much of their day and kids being kids they often got themselves into dangerous situations, falling in ponds etc…

 A lot of kids died in medieval times from accidental death… meaning as much as you take a leap forward after passing baby, and potentially you are stronger your more likely to die from an accident than a toddler.   

Class

• Royal ( 4 – 53) – Our strongest category .. royals lived the best lifestyle, had the best doctors and most of all didn’t work in hazardous workplaces.

• Noble ( Range 3 – 47) Very similar to noble, you will notice there is not much difference in the top end range this is because nobles often lives almost as well as royals, and often had more money.

• Merchant ( Range 2 – 26) – Huge dive from nobles, the first of our working class’s, they lived a lot better than peasants however they still where effected by what today we would consider unfit living conditions.

• Peasant ( Range 1- 10) – Living in squalor life as a peasant was hard, they worked hard to earn very little and didn’t have a high survivability.

•  Peasant bonus – ( Range 1-10)  Peasants making it though baby / toddler life stages get a bonus to there score. Only the hardiest peasants would survive though those difficult life stages.

 Sex  

• Males ( Range 1-40 )
• Females (Range 4 – 33)
• Other ( 2 – 32)

 Ok I know some of you are looking at the and thinking ???? what on earth!!!!  Statistically speaking woman actually did live longer than there male counterparts. They often worked in much safer environments or stayed in the safety of there home to take care of children. 

As I’ve said before old age didn’t kill in medieval times .. both sex’s where susceptible to disease / illness. Physically woman where not quite as resilient as men represented by the lower max figure however they where a lot less likely to die from a random accident often caused by the males more strenuous / active and down right more dangerous lifestyle.  

Sex only applies to Adults .. the “other” value is assigned to all elders/ children babies etc .. as this point in their lives there is very little difference between the sex’s. again I would recommend classing teens as adults as soon as they start living as adults for those of you using inteen.. ie having babies / working etc.  

The only thing that ive been able to find that effects this ratio is the risks of childbirth, people tend to think of women living shorter lives because of the sheer quantity of women who died in childbirth as I have a section to deal with this it doesn’t need representing here.  

Pregancy – ( 0 – -29) Childbirth was the biggest killer in medieval times for women, so although men look like they got a tough deal on the sex stats it ain’t nothing in comparison to this. Pregancy doesn’t give bonus’s rather it applies a minus to your sims current score.

It’s not a truly accurate representation to real medieval scores but as 20% of women died during childbirth, I thought that was a bit morbid. However Pregnant women of any class are the most at threat from the evil spreadsheet. 

 Baby Survive – there is also a second box next to the results at the end , which tells you if the baby dies.. if a woman dies while pregnant there is a small chance the baby will survive.. this represents her dying during the birthing process but midwifes being able to save the child. 

 Illness’s – In this box enter the number of cold / flues etc your sim has had .. the more he’s had the biggest the negative it applies to his current total. For particularly bad illness’s you may if you wish assign them a value of greater than 1.. generally I assign each illness a value of 1-4. 1 for a small cough or cold. 4 for a serious illness injury etc. the illness’s are accumulative so you add a new one to the current total rather than replace the value.  

• example from my kingdom Alistair Silverhand   – 
  •  2x cold  – 2                                               
  •  Food poisoning  – 2                                                
  •  Risa’s Poison  – 4           

Total entered in illness box atm – 7.  If he got another cold it would add +1 and become 8. 

Ok dokie I think that’s everything !!! … it’s abit less random than the old sheet calculations and its not quite as harsh during testing it’s killing off about 0-3 people per year in Grimstead which is what I was looking for. Grimstead has 93 people on the spreadsheet atm .. so its killing 0%-5% each time… I will be using it once per year but you can use it more or less depending on how many people you want to kill.