Once ports shut, no winning?

[Eleazaros]

I'm trying the ancient plague scenario and Madagascar shuts their ports before it gets infected - *EVERY TIME* I've tried it. Ok, so only 7 times so far but let's see you spend hours going back through a scenario just to lose because of 1 place.

I've tried everything I can think of - birds at 2 ASAP, Water at 2... It makes no difference. Once they shut that port - I haven't been able to infect the place at all.

[Sadpan]

Try to stay completely hidden until every person is infected. Then begin the death and torture.

[Eleazaros]

Can't stay hidden with that plague scenario. You start with non-removable symptoms and the game calls it within minutes of your starting - "nothing to worry about". No lethality until after that port shut down.

I just hit it again on Black Death - brutal. Start saude Arabia - everywhere was nailed except Madagascar with the last few minutes watching greenland fade but that port wouldn't fail - all transport abilities maxed.

It sucks when this happens.

[brothercake]

Once a port is shut you have very little chance of infecting it, so yeah, you've basically lost.

Try starting somewhere else; try some unusual strategies. If Madagascar is always the problem, then why not start there? Clearly you get the basic approach, it just takes time to get a good sense of what everything does.

But Black Death is really hard, it took me many attempts before I beat it.

[Chronoreaper]

this costs alot but some plagues have access to it where you need three different animal gene sets to get a final merged one it allows birds through migration to infect other countries by chance and this is how i caught both greenland and the carribean when they were locked once

[Kotli]

Your problem is your playing scenarios on Brutal, butral hard in normal game.
BTW I believe Madagascar is more paranoid asbout disease than the other countries a nod to Pandemic and the common lockdown in that game.

[Eleazaros]

Originally posted by Kotli:

Your problem is your playing scenarios on Brutal, butral hard in normal game.
BTW I believe Madagascar is more paranoid asbout disease than the other countries a nod to Pandemic and the common lockdown in that game.

As for Madagascar - it's close enough to the coast that maxed birds *SHOULD* be able to get the infection over there but it doesn't. (and yes, I did bother to look it up. There are a few species of birds that regularly cross that channel between Madagascar and Africa).

On difficulty: I started normal and I've beat all the types and scenarios that way so I'm stepping up to brutal but it makes no difference with respect to how this operates.

I was starting in Saudi Arabia - the "win" for that first one? It hit madagascar early on, like 3rd red bubble was there vs never infecting it across the game -- *NO* tactical shifts on my part.

That game, Greenland shut down without being infected but I watched it "to the bitter end" and it had a "lab accident" in the last month of life - so I did like I do and devoloved the top killers so that they fully infected and died out.

No planning nor skill use - just a lucky accident that I finally got an infection at the end.

Oh and yes, that's a tactic I came up with towards end game. Set the disease to high kill potential to stop cure progression quickly then devolove the kill aspects down to trivial levels once the cure efforts slow to a crawl.

It's not a "speed run" technique but it does gut the population quickly enough to get curing under control while giving you enough time to finish infecting the lands.

It can take game years of sitting and waiting, with a small death rate, once you devolve like that and I've done it and failed, just waiting "incase" and I'll get one occasionally this way.

Note that this technique does take skill but it's all based upon the chance of getting the islandes opened up in the first place.

--------

With plagues that cannot be "toned down" to unnoticable - I commonly fail for no reason beyond the luck of a ship or plane infecting them. Even devolving to keep effects as trivial as possible - immediately... They still shut down on normal as well as brutal.

It's just a bit frustrating that I can't crack this or that port based upon luck unless using the worm virus. That's easy with the ability to target any nation, anywhere for a plane visit.

So I do like challenges but when luck comes into play so heavily... That does get annoying.

[Str8_Newb]

you can't always count on birds, however if you focus on severity and remove as much lethality as possible you should get those islands, basically don't be afraid of non-lethal symptoms such as: cough, rash, sweating, sneezing (possibly in that order) use the dna that prevents devolving to increase in cost to remove lethal effects mutated too early and I highly recommend going to the community hub, going to guides and reviewing the guide for what you are specifcally having trouble with.

[Eleazaros]

Originally posted by QuadX:

you can't always count on birds, however if you focus on severity and remove as much lethality as possible you should get those islands, basically don't be afraid of non-lethal symptoms such as: cough, rash, sweating, sneezing (possibly in that order) use the dna that prevents devolving to increase in cost to remove lethal effects mutated too early and I highly recommend going to the community hub, going to guides and reviewing the guide for what you are specifcally having trouble with.

I usually go water and air vs animals but with some diseases... I took the thing to the max.

As far as some of those settings go, the devolve cost is excellet -- with the points option, I tend to do it for 'blue bubbles' so when curing starts up, I can get points quickly to fight back and slow it. Also using the water enhancment.. That helps a bit but its still a lot of luck with some diseases.

I really like the game - its excellent just extremely frustrating when there is so much luck involved in getting those port locations and sitting hoping luck kicks in for an hour to *NOT* see it do that....

Avoiding some diseases means the luck goes down tremendously as you can "hide" but others... That's not so easy.

[✫Lost1✌]

game is cool, but this port closed on island stuff should be fixed. Its just lucky if a island gets infected before ports are closed.

[Optimus Princeps]

Try starting off in Madagascar so that it begins infected.

[Metal Izanagi]

Originally posted by ✫DEEN✌:

game is cool, but this port closed on island stuff should be fixed. Its just lucky if a island gets infected before ports are closed.

Pretty much this. Island nations are /way/ too powerful, because if any one of them closes off access, there's just no way to infect them, in most scenarios.

[Eleazaros]

I just filed a bug report on this after hitting a perfect test bed game to see how things work.

The perfect test bed was piracy scenario (very low transport for shipping) and almost immediately got hit with ships using improved filtration -- no infection via ships possible until you upgrade water.

Water is *NOT* optional for most plague types. You cannot win without it unless not using any plagues but fungal, necro, worm style with another deploy methond.

All other transports *ARE* optional - you can win a game with only water being used.

I maxed all but the air and water transports across that 55 *YEAR* test game.

At max levels they each grant a single, one time only event where they will infect 1 country -- just that 1 time. That will only get you 2 of the 5 islands - 3 if you start on one meaning 2 others will not be infected.

With 5 "water only" countries, no airports, water is absolutely mandatory to infect the world. So once those ports are closed it *IS* game over.

[brothercake]

Yes -- closed ports is usually game over if they haven't already been infected.

But that's not a bug, it's a factor of the gameplay -- you have to get there before they close their port.

The test case you're describing is simply a strategy which repeatedly fails, and all that proves is that you understand the importance of water transmission -- yes, it's very hard to win without water transmission; it might be impossible.

So what exactly is your point?

Are you thinking that it should be possible to win by doing nothing at all, if you only sit there and wait long enough? You believe that, the fact that you can win that way if you evolve nothing but water, proves that everything except water is irrelevant? But the aim of the game is to win QUICKLY and get a good score. If you don't care about that, then what's the point of playing?

Or maybe you think the exact opposite, that sitting there doing nothing should mean nobody ever gets infected? But a disease has to have some infectivity by default, so left to its own devices, it will EVENTUALLY infect lots of people. It has to be that way -- if the game started out by having all factors set to zero, then you'd never score any points, and you'd never be able to evolve any traits.

It has to start somewhere, and it's a very fine balance. I suggest you take a look at the scenario creator -- that might give you a new appreciation for just how complicate the mechanics of this game really are, and how having so many interplaying factors means that the game essentially takes on a life of its own.

I don't know what else to say. What you're talking about is not a bug, it's just how the game works.

[Eleazaros]

Originally posted by brothercake:

Yes -- closed ports is usually game over if they haven't already been infected.

But that's not a bug, it's a factor of the gameplay -- you have to get there before they close their port.

...

That is one way to look at it except birds, rodents, insects, etc. They don't stay isolated from the population.

If you have infected multi-species carriers, even without ports it should still be able to infect if those carriers are still up and running.

It does appear to be a game design but I don't know if how they put it in was meant to remain that way or not -- it is a one-time event when you camp off a transmission chain that it can infect other places.

That is where I see a bug. It should not cap them at 1 incident.

No different than real life where containment is not contained simply because something infected got out.

It is a fairly accurate modeling type system but no airports in nations I can book air-flights to, no carriers of importance beyond water (and yes I just ran the same test gamewhere I won using *NOTHING* but water).

That isn't as accurate as it could be.

[brothercake]

Mm, yeah I see what you're saying. It must have been a hard balance to strike, between realism and the needs of gameplay. Like -- in reality, if a pathogen evolves, that evolution only affects its own host and the people they infect, it doesn't instantly propagate around every instance of the pathogen throughout the world. But imagine trying to play a game where every instance of the pathogen has a different evolutionary chain! A game like this can never be entirely realistic.

Other carriers do matter -- maybe you can win without them, but you can't get a good score, and that's ultimately the point.

As for cross-country animal infection -- I've never seen that happen with standard disease types, though I don't doubt it's possible. So essentially, you think that cross-country animal infection should happen more, reflecting the migratory patterns of birds, wildebeest and so on?

In those terms, I think it's a good idea, but you can't call it a bug -- lack of feature is not a bug.

There is a feature suggestions thread, so it'd be worth your suggesting this enhancement in those terms.