Seahorses, I Love 'Em (& other Links of Interest)

[Toko]

lol, my pandemic had zero symptoms, but all the regions closed their airports/boat ports/borders. How did they even detect it that fast?

[-]

Stealth does seem to be the key. About six regions caught on to me early in the game and it looks like nothing plucky little Parataxosis does will crack them. OTOH it has already killed 5.8 billion people in 84 days, so take that, Black Death.

Nice find, ketske. Very addictive.

[krinnen]

It's all about invisibility, and luck. After playing for five hours I won what was my third try through. I might try again for a faster takedown as it took me over 250 days to destroy humanity, I'm sure I can do it faster.

Would you give me some details? Which traits did you choose and in which order?

I started in Greenland, I had a bacteria. I sold the initial symptom and started buying the heat, moisture, and drug resistances, then I bought the cold resistances and the transmission methods. I stayed small in the original place but managed to get a small foothold in other regions (I had infected persons in 18 of the 21 regions with fewer than 1000 people infected worldwide). The last region to become infected was madagascar. Once all regions were infected I bought a few symptoms that increase the rate of infection. Because I had the drug resistance iv the vaccine had a long time before completion, and then the hospitals started closing. Eventually I had infected the entire planet (every last individual, hoorah!) and so then I bought symptoms that increase fatality (I had infected the entire planet without even a single death). I bought Necrosis and in a day half a billion people had died.
I have yet to duplicate it though.

@tarasoriku: bajillion? how are you reading that number? I read the total world population as being 6.3 billion people.

Damn you! Now I'll have to try again!!!

[krinnen]

Stealth does seem to be the key. About six regions caught on to me early in the game and it looks like nothing plucky little Parataxosis does will crack them. OTOH it has already killed 5.8 billion people in 84 days, so take that, Black Death.

Nice find, ketske. Very addictive.

Is there a way to unlock Stealth? Or is it aleatory?

[-]

Stealth does seem to be the key. About six regions caught on to me early in the game and it looks like nothing plucky little Parataxosis does will crack them. OTOH it has already killed 5.8 billion people in 84 days, so take that, Black Death.

Nice find, ketske. Very addictive.

Is there a way to unlock Stealth? Or is it aleatory?

Ummm, stealth as in "keeping your disease under the radar." AFAIK there is no specific Stealth trait.

[krinnen]

Stealth does seem to be the key. About six regions caught on to me early in the game and it looks like nothing plucky little Parataxosis does will crack them. OTOH it has already killed 5.8 billion people in 84 days, so take that, Black Death.

Nice find, ketske. Very addictive.

Is there a way to unlock Stealth? Or is it aleatory?

Ummm, stealth as in "keeping your disease under the radar." AFAIK there is no specific Stealth trait.

The guide says there's a 'stealthy' trait; I thought you were talking about that. I haven't stumbled upon it yet.

[jlyne]

A 16 year old girl in Argentina just has baby number 5 ... and ... and 7, after welcoming her second set of triplets (having had a boy at age 14, triplet girls at 15, and a second set of triplet girls at 16). Brutal.

This one is not really shocking at all, but I just have to point out to someone that this family is creepy looking. The mother looks exactly like the old pedo Herbert on Family Guy.

On a related note, the Duggars are popping out number 18!

[Jashan]

Re: pandemic

I beat it so:

Start with a virus. Seems to help if you get to start in the southern hemisphere (broadly speaking -- South America, India, Indonesia, for example).

Sell off all your starting traits. No sneezing, no fever, etc. Just go completely stealth.

Wait until you've got a fair amount of evolution points, then buy Moisture Resistance 1 and 2 and Heat Resistance 1 or 2. I think I also bought Rodent Transmission at this point.

Wait. Yes, keep waiting. Don't do anything. Sooner or later, the disease will start spreading all by itself. Governments WILL notice and start to shut things down. Don't do anything. (Exception: If they start developing a vaccine, buy Drug Resistances 1, 2, and 3.)

Sooner or later, with a little bit of luck, Madagascar will get infected. For me, Madagascar was the ABSOLUTE LAST, and they'd already started handing out masks and shut down the airpots (wtf? they have no airports!) but the shipping port was still open. They still got infected.

Once every country is infected by at least one person, you're in the clear. Use all your saved up evolution points to buy lots of infectious, deadly symptoms (my favorites: hemmoraging, vomiting, and diarrhea). Kick up the air and insect and water transmission. Sit back and watch as everyone dies.

[krinnen]

A 16 year old girl in Argentina just has baby number 5 ... and ... and 7, after welcoming her second set of triplets (having had a boy at age 14, triplet girls at 15, and a second set of triplet girls at 16). Brutal.

Unfortunately that's old news to me.

My girlfriend is finishing an internship(is that the word? residence?) at a community center focused on domestic violence(she's a psychologist) in a villa miseria populated by Toba immigrants. You wouldn't believe the kind of things she's seen there. Her first day there, she came back crying, out of impotence.

13, 14, 15 year old mothers; kids whose father is also their grandfather; mothers of 14 kids.... It's terrible. It's another world, 45 minutes away from home.

[Tarasoriku]

re: re: Well Madagascar doesn't want to want to cooperate. This time North Africa also didn't get infected, and it's single open hospital managed to make the vaccine before even half a billion had died. They had encephalitus and renal failure - and yet 25 more days went by before the first one of those died. Ridiculous.

There's too much randomness in this. And I was quite upset about North Africa, since I'd named the virus Khartoum A-86 (it started me there so often).

[LinguistCat]

re: re: Well Madagascar doesn't want to want to cooperate. This time North Africa also didn't get infected, and it's single open hospital managed to make the vaccine before even half a billion had died. They had encephalitus and renal failure - and yet 25 more days went by before the first one of those died. Ridiculous.

There's too much randomness in this. And I was quite upset about North Africa, since I'd named the virus Khartoum A-86 (it started me there so often).

I had a dream I was playing the thing... And I've only played a few times. XD

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

A 16 year old girl in Argentina just has baby number 5 ... and ... and 7, after welcoming her second set of triplets (having had a boy at age 14, triplet girls at 15, and a second set of triplet girls at 16). Brutal.

Unfortunately that's old news to me.

My girlfriend is finishing an internship(is that the word? residence?) at a community center focused on domestic violence(she's a psychologist) in a villa miseria populated by Toba immigrants. You wouldn't believe the kind of things she's seen there. Her first day there, she came back crying, out of impotence.

13, 14, 15 year old mothers; kids whose father is also their grandfather; mothers of 14 kids.... It's terrible. It's another world, 45 minutes away from home.

I am not suprised, as well. In Canada, it may not be that hard, but it's close.

[-]

There's too much randomness in this.

Well, it is freeware after all.

I've yet to win but my closest brush with victory was Catallarchosis-E, which was just thirty million shy of the mark and put all but one of the world's hospitals out of commission two days after they started on a vaccine. If Cuba and Madagascar hadn't quarantined themselves...

Speaking of time management/wasting, 365 Days of Free Games. Some might be familiar already, but there's plenty I at least have never heard of.

[jlyne]

A 16 year old girl in Argentina just has baby number 5 ... and ... and 7, after welcoming her second set of triplets (having had a boy at age 14, triplet girls at 15, and a second set of triplet girls at 16). Brutal.

Unfortunately that's old news to me.

I am not suprised, as well. In Canada, it may not be that hard, but it's close.

Oh, no, I'm not at all surprised at a 16 year old with a bunch of kids. I'm suprised at 2 sets of triplets to the same woman/girl within a couple years that are all female. Though it would be more insane if it were two sets of identical triplets.

[-]

Elegant, yet rapey. Probably the funniest thing I've seen all day.

[Pie Man]

Iceweasel segfaults whenever I go to the page, so I can't play.

[krinnen]

Come see me eat nipples, eat nipples!!

[Seth]

Let's start Pooping this thread!

WARNING THIS IS PG-13!

[Tarasoriku]

WARNING THIS IS PG-13!

You mean: Warning, this is mad immature?

[ketske]

He's an Iseléaku. What do you expect?

[Seth]

Well, I warned because that video was immature.

[Ketumak]

How do you make a Sumerian laugh? You tell the "world's oldest joke" of course ...

http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKL044518220080730

[Toko]

"Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband's lap."

I did not lol

[Radius Solis]

Re: Madagascar, it took me bloody forever when I played this game last week. (I didn't see it'd even been posted again in here, but it was all over #isharia a week ago.) I found that the key to stealth was a low infectivity rate. Fast-spreading infections or high proportions of infected population will set off alarms even with zero symptoms, so by the time your first country has enough infected people to start spreading it, countries are already starting to close things down.

So I picked a parasite and gave it only just enough resistance to stick around, with the number of infected taking freaking eons to build up, so that random chance had a greater length of time to operate in spreading the disease before anybody noticed it was there. A disease can start spreading after around 50,000 infected are reached, but it starts getting noticed somewhere around the 500k or 1 million mark, so maximizing the length of time your first region spends between these levels is important. My second try with this, my parasite spread to all regions before any of them reacted in any way.

Also, buy symptom tiers 2 and 3 as soon as you can. Sometimes there'll be a pre-given symptom already activated there that you won't even know is breaking your stealth!

[Tarasoriku]

I've also just won the other day, with the bacteria type. All my previous attempts had been with a virus, but it seems there are different routes to victory. The strategy was no different, either - the game is really very luck dependent and this time I began in Madagascar. I won it twice more, still with the bacteria.

What Radius said about fast infection setting off alarms is true, but this can happen even without any symptons present - it is inevitable that vaccine research begins. I find the different color shades the continents turn are a good measure of when that will happen (2 or more red zones, unless you've boosted your infection level really high, or around the 1.5 billion infected mark).

I've been wondering about the game's smaller details, and have a few conclusions:

1) Drug resistance of some kind is a must, for the reason that the game does not allow all hospitals to close, unless the last hospital(s) are located in a country that goes Forsaken, and they'll close when that population hits 0. This has been Greenland every time, for me. Luckily, Greenland has also been the first to lose its entire population, every time (3 times).
2a) The icons of ships and planes moving all over the world screen do not correlate with appearance of the disease in a new zone, nor are they cues that ports are still open (for that see the individual regions' info or see if a certain port is not dark) - they were still flying etc until the game end - if you see them decrease, it's part of the randomness. Since for most of the game you are basically sitting and waiting, I spent all my time hoping a ship would enter a particular port etc. and it was time wasted. In fact when I began in Madagascar, not one ship had left the port before the disease was spotted elsewhere, in Cuba.
2b) Madagascar is the only region on the globe that it may be advantageous to start with, becuase it is the only one without an airport. All that matters is that it has a port, not how frequently the graphics come out of it. For the same reason, though, it will take longer to spread to a second region. Canada or Russia or areas with multiple airports are not, however, disadvantageous at all. The fastest time will almost necessarily come from a region that is not Madagascar but which has luckily infected Madagascar early - and there is no way to initiate this.
3) The population numbers (which somewhere earlier I'd said something incorrect about - I was reading them wrong) will actually increase and decrease by small percentages at random. This applies to numbers of infected, too, of course. There was one occasion when the world pop was about to reduce to 0 (which would end the game) but in China there was one of these blips in the single digits and it ended up taking another few days. So use every fatal symptom you can as soon as you have the points to get it, if you are going for minimizing the total # days it takes.
4) The evolutionary points themselves, which I'd originally thought represented infected population doubling (it seemed to correlate well, you'd get a bunch in the beginning and it would slowly taper off) do not seem to be actually related to anything, or at least nothing that I can tell. They are probably on a timer of some kind and they run down as the game progresses, but they certainly have nothing to do with infection rates or numbers, and they continue once everyone has been infected.
5a) As for the disease class, the speed of acquiring evolutionary points does differ between them as it says in their profiles, but this difference is completely negligible. You'll simply be spending too much time waiting around doing nothing that you'll get the same points no matter which class you've chosen. And because they all taper off to ridiculously long periods of time between point gains, they all end up giving you basically the same number of points.
5b) The disease classes may have hidden stats, because if they don't, it doesn't really matter which you pick because of (5a) and also the luck of starting with particular resistances or traits. All of them can start with the same traits.
6) Useless things: a) the fourth tier of symptoms does not kill any quicker than the first-and-second tiers, it merely gives you more fatal symptoms to choose from and costs more. b) the last level of all resistances is unncessary, perhaps even the last two levels. c) selling symptoms is of course unnecessary after the very first minute of the game when you sell ones you've been stuck starting with. If you wait to unlock higher symptom tiers, you've also waited long enough that the vaccine will be started and you'll be noticed. Visibility is meaningless once that happens. This is why waiting is better than unlocking them early, you won't need to spend the early points on reducing your visibility.