Random Date Black Death & Pandemic Explosion Mechanic

No longer boring and predicable, Black Death will explode with terror and fury across the world at a random date within a range of your choosing, from sandbox to historical.

Customise what year Black Death arrives, and have the pandemic outbreak explode region by region across the world.

Randomised triggering mechanism has been rewritten, should prove much more reliable.

Select which year Black Death arrives via a decision that can be taken at any time on any save game:

• Random date, will fire prior to 1390.
• Random date prior to 1066. For 867 starts who would like an early campaign pandemic.
• Random date after 1066. For 867 starts who would like a late campaign pandemic. Will fire prior to 1390.
• Historic date of the Siege of Caffa in 1346. Same as vanilla, but allows the new pandemic explosion mechanic to be applied.
• Random date within a historical window of 1316 to 1376; 30 years either side of the historic date. Close to history but with variety and surprise.
• Apocalypse now! Spawns the Black Death immediately. Great for loading on to save games or to test the pandemic explosion mechanic.
• Disable Black Death and the bubonic plague.

Once you have made a selection the different choices will vanish from your decisions menu for the rest of your save’s campaign.

The mod will check what the current year of your save is, and then calculate a random year based on your selection to fire the pandemic outbreak explosion events region by region across the gameworld. Plague spreads in mass waves across the map.

Once the pandemic series of waves have passed, bubonic plague will become endemic with smaller waves contained to regions occurring around twice per century, and characters will also be able to contract bubonic plague via normal vanilla events and mechanisms.

Trigger a Black Death outbreak whenever you like by typing in the console:
event black_death_explosion.9999

Use as often as you like. Note triggering the event will also activate bubonic plague on your save to be able to be contracted and spread through ordinary vanilla mechanisms.

Guide on console and debug mode:
https://ck3.paradoxwikis.com/Console_commands

Once the Black Death outbreak begins your Court Chaplin will be able to map infected counties under council tasks. You do not need to place the chaplin in a province, simply selecting the task will bring up a county map displaying the progress of plague across the globe. Note the map will not refresh in real time, to update the plague map cancel out and reselect the task.

Should be compatible with any mod that does not change "eventshealth_events.txt". Let me know if there are any incompatibilities.

Note: If you decide to disable the mod from your save make sure your Court Chaplin is not assigned to the Map Black Death task otherwise it will bug the Court Chaplin position. There’s no need to ever actually assign the Court Chaplin to Map Black Death, it’s a dummy-task to get the game to display the custom Black Death map mode on the dummy-task’s county selection map. If you do decide to disable the mod double check that you haven’t misclicked or forgotten and make sure that the Court Chaplin is not assigned to the Map Black Death task when you save with the intention to perform a reload without Random Date Black Death active. Thanks to Smack for discovering the issue.

Highly Recommended

The AI will now take the Hire Court Physician decision and hire court physicians; they will need it when Black Death strikes. Doctorless no more every AI court will survive, thrive, and be maimed in surgery, by court physicians in a plague doomed world. The player will also receive a new alert if their court physician position is vacant, never be caught doctorless again.

See Also

My Collection of CK3 Fixes, Features, & Reworks