Pandemic II: What the heck is with Greenland?

The Game Room
1

When I have a few free minutes at work, I like to play Pandemic II. It’s fun – you try to create a disease that wipes out the human population.

There are some frustrations with the game, such as Madagascar shutting down their shipyard (the only way of getting a disease onto the island) the instant somebody sneezes in Canada, or the way every disease I create stops evolving when I really need it to earn evolution points.

But I’ve noticed something lately that bugs the heck out of me: people in Greenland must be the hardiest people on earth.

Many times during the course of the game, Greenland (which only has a population of around 55,000) will become almost decimated, when suddenly, miraculously, the number of healthy people increases by a factor of 10 or more. There might be 1,000 healthy people in Greenland, 40,000 sick, and the rest dead, and then all of a sudden the healthy population is back up to 6,000. Or, even worse, there might be 50 healthy people there, and then suddenly there are 800. And it takes forever to get them sick again.

This is especially frustrating, because Greenland, unlike other countries, doesn’t shut down its hospital facilities for ANYTHING. And open hospitals mean that the humans still stand a chance of coming up with a cure for my disease.

I also don’t understand how people get scores of 500,000 or more on this game – the best I’ve been able to do, when I wiped out Earth’s population, has been about 150,000.

So, what’s up with Greenland? And how do I get a higher score? And somebody needs to do SOMETHING about those Madagascar shipyards.

2

You need to up your diseases cold immunity. I don’t know whos working over at their Health department, but 70% of them are usually dead from Sitnam’s Rectal Leach even before they put on masks.

3

Hmm. That’s worth a try. If that’s the case, though, why doesn’t Russia go through the same thing?

4

In one game I played, Greenland still had all airports, ports, and schools open, even though there were only 57 people left alive.

Those are some hard workers.

5

The key to high scores is killing lots of people really quickly. Getting everyone isn’t as important as a quick start to finish time. I don’t remember the details, but I did best with a virus cranking up the transmission modes early and not worrying overly if New Zealand or Cuba end up unscathed. You also need to invest heavily in lethality towards the end so that the last sick people don’t take too long to die.

6

Exactly, you have to start the little bastards out insidious like, then bring on the vomiting blood and insanity when every country is already infected.

7

Because in Russia, they’ve engineered a special breed sheep, the female of which combats the pandemic, so the effect is that the virus falls prey to them, rather than having the subject and object inverted, as is usual in other countries.

8

So you’re saying in Russia, ewe infect virus!

9

This was very very good. Kudos.

10

Well, I don’t think I can really take the credit; that’s obviously what Ludovic was saying. I just spelled it out.

11

Check out my post in this previous thread?

12

Excellent suggestions! Thank you!

13

Nice strat ! Thanks to you, the world was wiped out by Necrotizing Crotch Rot in less than a hundred days.

In other news, next joker sneezes on me gets shot. I’m not taking any chances.

14

6 infected.
Madagascar cuts off all contact with outside world.

15

12 infected with mild cough.

Madagascar douses new arrivals in gasoline, torches them and throw their bodies into food compactors.

16

The first thing my (geeky) friend said to me after the H1N1 flu hit the news was “I think we should move to Madagascar”.

17

I noticed China also had a bit of a hair trigger.
Not that it really matters, since they’ve got such a high pop, they only notice they’re hit after a seizable portion of them are infected anyway… but China don’t fuck around. Everything gets shut down, all at once. None of that “We close the borders. Planes and boats ? Come in, come in, have a good puke, don’t be a stranger !” business.