Victory is mine!
Realistic Bacteria - with the Harmless trait, to boot - infected the whole world, now I’m just waiting for everyone to die. 41 million alive, as of right now.
Finally I won in realistic mode.
I kept the symptoms low and infection to only insects and air until every country was infected.
I wiped out the world’s population in about half a year. When Greenland was ‘devoid of life’, there were no more active hospitals in the world and the vaccine completion ETA was set to infinity 
. Then I played the waiting game. With less than 100 people still alive worldwide, I decided to use my last eight evolution points to make them sweat and vomit. 
I’m a mean bastard.
So … does anyone know what the three dials or symbols in the right upper hand corner are for? There’s a sun, an arrow and the trapezoids (I guess). They change, but what doe they mean?
Trapezoids - When it flashes, it means a natural disaster has occurred:
Earthquake ~ Hospitals in the region are reduced in effectiveness.
Floods ~ If your disease can spread through water, your disease spreads more effectively while flooding is in effect.
Hurricane ~ Airports close temporarily, as well as schools and mass transit.
Drought ~ If your disease spreads through insects, it spreads more easily due to increased insect populations during the drought.
Riot ~ (Never seen this myself…) Negates effects of curfews while in effect.
Arrow - When this flashes, a new region has been infected by your disease. If the region was Madagascar, pop the champagne bottle.
Sun - When this flashes, your disease has been awarded a new trait. Let’s hope it’s a good one.
I can’t remember which is which, but one flashes when a new region is infected and one flashes when you get more evolution points. Forgot what the third does at the moment.
I’m hoping this doesn’t count as a zombie thread, but if it does, at least it would be somewhat fitting… 
So, does anybody have any more tips on infecting Madagascar? All my symptomless, yet highly infective diseases have so far failed… I’ve eradicated the rest of the world’s populace with my Sneezing Zombie Plague, but Madagascar still holds strong.
(By the way, there’s a German folk song about a vessel being caught off the coast of Madagascar due to a persistent calm that has the plague on board; I wonder if maybe the game’s author(s) were familiar with it…)
Heh. Apparently the game wasn’t just popular here. This headline is currently over on Fark.
That’s where I got it from, actually.
So, I finally managed to start out in Madagascar, bred me a nice, highly infectious parasite (which after one and a half months finally managed to infect the US; seems that almost noone ever leaves Madagascar), only to have Japan close its borders and shipyards on me. :mad:
Oh my god. I’ve killed them… I’ve killed them all. 
…Finally!
A nice little parasite originating from Cuba killed the last man (or woman) on earth in India after ~130 days. Madagascar was, strangely, among the first to go, being infected after closing their shipyard by the last ship landing.
I’ve had games where I didn’t have anything clicked on symptoms and transmission. My visibility was zero, and yet countries started shutting down their borders and such.
So, you have a virus that doesn’t have any symptoms and really, you can’t even tell it’s there, why are you going to shut down schools and such?
Yeah, that’s not entirely logical, but then it’s also not very plausible for a virus to suddenly evolve new traits within all infected simultaneously; I’d say that sorta evens out.
Touche.
…on the other hand, ‘realistic’ mode appears to be a bit of a misnomer – having infected a couple of million people in South America with a virus that doesn’t do anything, Japan just closed up shop.
If that were realistic, the common cold would cripple world economy every year.
I’ve done it in 77 days on Realistic.
Basically, you want to go Virus and start on a low population region with as many Airports and Seaports as possible. Greenland, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and Cuba will work.
Japan and Indonesia have too many people, and Madgascar has too few Airports. Restart if you don’t get one of the five regions above.
The reason you need a low population is that you start spreading after your region hits a certain % of infection. However, the world seems to start reacting after a certain % of world population becomes infected.
As a Virus, you must have Sneezing only and 1 1 1 0 resistances. You must not have any transmissions and therefore cannot have the “Catching” keyword. You should never have any transmission if you want to get under 100 days on Realistic. Sell your initial symptom if it is not Sneezing and buy Sneezing.
Once you buy this initial setup, set the speed to fastest and wait until you spread to another country.
At this point, sell Sneezing. (It’s okay to infect 2-7 countries)
Now, wait. Wait some more. You need to wait for all regions to be infected before you can act again. Wait yet more. If Madagascar shuts down or it takes longer than 30 days, you might as well restart. About 1 in 10 games progress successfully past this point.
Once all countries are infected, immediately buy Sneezing, Coughing and Vomiting to increase infection rate. Wait a few days for at least 50% world infection. Then buy Nausea, Fever, Fatigue, Unlock tiers 2 and 3, then buy Diarrhea, Pulmonary Edema, Hypersensitivity, and Hemorrhaging. Also, pump your drug resistance to max. You should have enough points to do this all at once.
Drug resistance multiples lethality. This set of symptoms is the most lethal. You goal now is not to infect, but to kill as rapidly as possible, so spend your remaining points as soon as you get them. Watch the world go bye bye!
236 days to wipe humanity off the planet with a superbad parasite. And the score I got? 60972. Bah. I thought wiping out all of humanity would be worth a little more than that. I thought I could quit playing the game after I killed everyone, but NOOOO, I have to kill them faster!
Ah bugger madagascar with a barbed bunsen burner.
One sad little ship is bouncing around the North Atlantic without a single open port left in the world.
Oh, look at that- the vaccine resulted in a mutation, and now science will be unable to vaccinate again!
Day four and I’ve already infected China, India, Russia and the Middle East. Exterminatus (virus) is doing much better than the Xenomorphs (parasite) did.
ETA: Damn it, China. It’s just a little fever, and you’re already doing everything but burning bodies on day 5!
I swear the tutorials sound like they were narrated by either this bubblehead or this one.