Any way to slow the cure?

[Ill Queen Hydra]

No matter the severity, lethality, or infectivity of my plague, it gets cured the year that it's found. Drug resistance and genetic hardening not making a difference. Really starting to annoy me especially when you start getting a new mutation every month and it takes 40+ DNA to devolve them all before you get discovered and instacured. Playing on Normal btw

[MysticalPotato]

Ummm it's not THAT hard. I just played the game for the first time today and was successful on my 2nd try on normal, with bacteria. My 2nd attempt with virus is also successful. It's pretty basic logic: make your virus more infectious in the beginning, BEFORE you make it more lethal, otherwise the cure will begin developing sooner. The game explains it all....

[Ill Queen Hydra]

Originally posted by TheDyingScotsman:

Ummm it's not THAT hard. I just played the game for the first time today and was successful on my 2nd try on normal, with bacteria. My 2nd attempt with virus is also successful. It's pretty basic logic: make your virus more infectious in the beginning, BEFORE you make it more lethal, otherwise the cure will begin developing sooner. The game explains it all....

That's what I do. I have no lethality until the entire world is infected. I rush aerosol and hematophagy asap.

[MysticalPotato]

I take back what I said, it would seem I was lucky. I am now struggling, especially with the damn fungus, to kill everyone in time before the cure is completed. I even had one time I ahad everyone infected, 100% of the world, not detected at all...then I went full lethal but the cure just beat me by about 3 billion people (that's how many were left infected/alive). It seems It's harder than i thought!

I watched a vid earlier with the guy saying it might actually make the cure go faster, if you pass under the radar for too long. So perhaps before 100% infection it might help to start upping symptoms first, which also increases infectivity at the same time? It's a delicate balance I'm starting to find. About 10 tries in a row now have failed so obviously I need to change something about the way I play

Again I apologise for sounding so full of myself, It just seems that beginner's luck got the better of me, luring me into a false sense of security :D

[Ill Queen Hydra]

Originally posted by TheDyingScotsman:

I take back what I said, it would seem I was lucky. I am now struggling, especially with the damn fungus, to kill everyone in time before the cure is completed. I even had one time I ahad everyone infected, 100% of the world, not detected at all...then I went full lethal but the cure just beat me by about 3 billion people (that's how many were left infected/alive). It seems It's harder than i thought!

I watched a vid earlier with the guy saying it might actually make the cure go faster, if you pass under the radar for too long. So perhaps before 100% infection it might help to start upping symptoms first, which also increases infectivity at the same time? It's a delicate balance I'm starting to find. About 10 tries in a row now have failed so obviously I need to change something about the way I play

Again I apologise for sounding so full of myself, It just seems that beginner's luck got the better of me, luring me into a false sense of security :D

No problem dude, everything seemed easier for me at the start too. It seems the way to success is totally to get symptoms quick, as it seems to significantly slow the cure. I've also noticed that when you infect the entire world cures will be super fast no matter what unless you can make your disease lethal enough to impede research that way

[Storm0267]

don't foreget there are symptoms that slow and reduce the cure too! use them!

[Ill Queen Hydra]

Originally posted by Storm0267:

don't foreget there are symptoms that slow and reduce the cure too! use them!

yep

[Zetnus]

The genetic hardening line will *actually* slow down the cure, although if the whole world is focused on curing you, that will hardly be enough.

Then there is the genetic reshuffle as well as the line of symptoms leading to coma or insanity – all of those don’t actually slow the cure, instead they make it so that more work is required for the cure. The net effect is that the cure percentage will go down when you evolve any of these. So you can keep piling them on right before the cure completes (provided you have enough DNA). Also, as far as I know, any gene that adds to the severity of your disease effectively makes it so that (slightly) more work is needed for a cure (however, severity also makes people notice your disease in the first place so you have to be careful about when you this).

The only other thing that will slow the cure is having research facilities destroyed in a country. And that is achieved by being sufficiently lethal.

[LUnacy45]

What I tend to do is if i'm using any kind of disease that gets refund from devolving symptoms, I just keep it asymptomatic until it spreads to all landmasses, then I evolve coughing and sneezing, then when everyone in the world is infected, I evolve down to total organ failure and then focus solely on symptoms and abilities that set back the cure. Id say if you have total organ failure, everyone is infected, and the cure is less than 20%, you'll probably win. Virus was hard for me, you just have to spread it as fast as possible and occasionally just take the hit for devolving a lethal or overly severe symptom, then when it gets global just evolve its mutations and let it go hogwild. I just unlocked neurax worm though so lets see how the nonstandard viruses go...

[LUnacy45]

Originally posted by TheDyingScotsman:

I take back what I said, it would seem I was lucky. I am now struggling, especially with the damn fungus, to kill everyone in time before the cure is completed. I even had one time I ahad everyone infected, 100% of the world, not detected at all...then I went full lethal but the cure just beat me by about 3 billion people (that's how many were left infected/alive). It seems It's harder than i thought!

I watched a vid earlier with the guy saying it might actually make the cure go faster, if you pass under the radar for too long. So perhaps before 100% infection it might help to start upping symptoms first, which also increases infectivity at the same time? It's a delicate balance I'm starting to find. About 10 tries in a row now have failed so obviously I need to change something about the way I play

Again I apologise for sounding so full of myself, It just seems that beginner's luck got the better of me, luring me into a false sense of security :D

Yeah I just beat it with fungus (named ExtremeJockItch, kek) using basically the same strategy I used with bacteria, as I said above. Cure was scaring me but I had 100+ evolutionary points so I spammed spore bursts for the last 5 countries or so then evolved organ failure. It was definitely tough though what with how slow it spreads.

[LUnacy45]

Originally posted by Zetnus:

The genetic hardening line will *actually* slow down the cure, although if the whole world is focused on curing you, that will hardly be enough.

Then there is the genetic reshuffle as well as the line of symptoms leading to coma or insanity – all of those don’t actually slow the cure, instead they make it so that more work is required for the cure. The net effect is that the cure percentage will go down when you evolve any of these. So you can keep piling them on right before the cure completes (provided you have enough DNA). Also, as far as I know, any gene that adds to the severity of your disease effectively makes it so that (slightly) more work is needed for a cure (however, severity also makes people notice your disease in the first place so you have to be careful about when you this).

The only other thing that will slow the cure is having research facilities destroyed in a country. And that is achieved by being sufficiently lethal.

Yeah those are near essential for virus plagues.