Plague Inc. mini-review

Started by Barthheart, June 17, 2012, 03:19:09 PM

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Barthheart

This is a cool little game. You play the part of plague that is bent on wiping out all human life on earth. The AI plays the humans and tries to counter you with medical research and other methods.

It's a bit dark as a subject and when you are finally successful you get a message someht to the effect "You have destroyed all life on earth, the few remaining people know they are watching the end of history." it is quite a sobering thought... Even though you will the game in a few months.....

But it is very difficult to actually get that far. The humans are crafty and if you don't "evolve" correctly they will find a cure before they all die or you will kill all the carriers before you infect everyone and your plague just dies out.

For $0.99 you star with only the ability to act as a bacterial plague. As you win, or pay, you open more options like viral, fungus, prion, nano-bots, and bio weapon.

You get to pick the country you start in. This has effects on your growth and spreading. Start in a tropical country and you'll have to develop cold resistance to get a foot hold in the northern climes. Start isolated on an island, well the you need to learn how to survive on ships and planes to spread around the world.

Through DNA point you are able to evolve your plague in 3 areas: transmission, symptom, and ability.
Transmission is what it sounds like. You choose different methods to spread your plague and counter the human efforts to isolate you. For example if you choose to spread via birds eventually the different countries will start exterminating all bird life in an effort to stop the spread.

Symptoms are where you affect your hosts. Some are small like coughing, sneezing, etc. Some are worse like bursting skin lesions or pluminary edemas. These help you control how deadly you are. Too deadly and you kill too fast to spread everywhere. Too benign and they find a cure for you and you lose.

Different abilities let you have cold or hot resistance, resistance to drugs, mutation ability etc. these are your counter-measures to the research by the humans.

The company claims to have a very realistic and scientific AI for the humans and it plays that way. On the normal level it took me 4 plays to beat the bacteria level and open the virus level.

Like I said it's a very dark theme and when I finally won..... I wasn't completely sure I was happy having to wiped out all human life on the planet. But it is an interesting game in that it shows how easy and hard it is for a plague to get started and keep itself sustained.

Highly recommend for any one with an iPad.

www.ndemiccreations.com

P.S. Wrote this on my iPad in the backyard in the sun and have no idea how to post pictures from an iPad app or link to the app store.. anyone?

GJK

Sounds like Pandemic boardgame but with reversed roles-interesting.
Clip your freaking corners!
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Barthheart

Yeah, lots of people compare the two. I have never played Pandemic so can't say.

Jarhead0331

I've found this little game to be extremely addictive.
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Jarhead0331

#4
Barthheart...

What strategy did you use to win as a bacteria?  I can't seem to get there.  At first my strategy was to balance transmission traits with lethality.  I wanted to spread as quickly as possible while killing as many people as possible at the same time.  This typically led to high casualties spread across the globe, but humanity always developed the cure before it was too close to extermination.

Then I developed a brilliant idea.  Focus solely upon transmission and abilities that will strengthen the bacterial strain (ie. making it resistant to drugs and environmental conditions), all while avoiding mutating symptoms.  My logic was keep the disease under the radar.  If its not killing people and not doing much more than causing a minor rash or cough, then governments will not begin researching.  This worked extremely well.  It permitted me to spread the disease widely before anyone began taking it as a threat.  by the time the governments began working on a cure, I was spread across multiple continents.  Once work on the cure began, I then focused my DNA points almost exclusively on symptoms, rapidly increasing the lethality.  This caused massive devastation and just when I was almost positive I was going to win and humanity was on the brink of extinction, I observed a strange phenomenon.  I noticed the numbers of infected declining until eventually there were none.  when the defeat message popped up, I learned I had killed all of my host leaving a very small percentage of healthy uninfected people.

This was really annoying.  The world never even came close to developing a cure, but the bacterial strain I developed was so lethal, that it killed off all of its hosts in the end game.  Since then, I've been unable to rebalance the strategy to win.  I always come very close to victory, but I am unable to infect that tiny percentage of remaining population before all the hosts die.  I've tried devolving symptoms, and I've tried starting in different countries, but it never seems to make a difference.

What is the one final key element I'm missing. Is it a matter of timing? Should I ease up on the symptoms? How did you do it?   
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Barthheart

The key is to make sure everyone on the planet is carrying your disease before anyone at all dies.

The only symptom that will let you fly under the radar is coughing. Immediately devolve any others that turn up.

Do what you were doing by evolving the transmission and strengths against cures, but don't over do those either or you won't have enough DNA points to get you bug very deadly in a quick time.

I used air x2 and water X 2 and bird X 2 transmissions. This will make sure it will get to remote places like Greenland.

Once you have ever last person infected, get the most deadly as fast as you can. Don't worry about symptoms that spread as you don't need to anymore. The blood symptom line and the insomnia/crazy line work well as they slow done cures.

Also once you have everyone infected, you can devolve the transmission stuff to get more DNA points.

Took me about 8 tries to get it.

Trying now to get by the parasite ..... need a new method yet again....  8)

Jarhead0331

Interesting...thanks for the feedback Barthheart.  Getting every soul infected prior to stepping on the lethality pedal seems hard, but I'll give it a shot.  Devolving symptoms early on never occurred to me!  I have a hunch that is the missing link for me. 
Grogheads Uber Alles
Semper Grog
"No beast is more alpha than JH." Gusington, 10/23/18


Barthheart

No problem. Have fun... err ... if killing all life on the planet can be called fun.....  8)