I’ve been playing on normal to unlock the next levels. Bacteria wasn’t hard per se, but it was the first level I tried, so it took me awhile to figure out a strategy. But once I figure it out it was pretty easy, and fungus and parasite didn’t seem to alter the basic strategy much.
I found that keeping the disease unnoticed until it infects 100% of the population pretty much guarantees a win. OTOH, I found that it’s hard to win at 99% infection because then you’d need to ramp up infection methods so much that you have no DNA for anything else. Since you get points for devolving, there’s no downside to erasing any symptoms that appear.
I start out in Mexico or South Africa to maximize ports and poor land spread. First I max out air and water infection. I don’t bother with all the other infection methods. If there’s trouble in a rich country I add some resistance to medicine, and if the North is an issue I add cold resistance. Then I wait and save up DNA. After 100% infection I select maybe 3 anti-cure abilities, and then max out on symptoms, usually necrosis, but also select insomnia to get the walking dead anti-cure factor. Then I add more anti-cure as I get points for dead people.
This seems to work for everything I’ve tried so far except virus. Fungus I just had to throw it a spore release every once in a awhile and extra cold resistance. Parasite I maxed out the hiding ability. But otherwise the strategy didn’t feel different.
Virus is a bitch because it costs so much DNA to devolve. But the strategy still works if I don’t get too many random mutations, and if right before I get ready to pile on the symptoms I add maximum mutations to help it give me extra random symptoms. It helps to spend any DNA I have as soon as a new symptom appears as you’re allowed to go into debt to devolve.
Even though I’ve worked out a strategy, I’m still getting a sense for how the DNA points appear. It seems like there’s an initial rush, then a slow down, then it amps up as infections spread exponentially, then basically stops near 100% infection rate. Then nothing (except bubbles) until people start dying.
I like that since it knows it’s a memory hog, it warns you about saving and quitting rather than just crashing out randomly like other apps. I don’t like that the controls at the top and the occasional pop up block bubbles. And every once in awhile it will fail for there still being someone healthy left even though they are at zero, or fail to unlock the next level even though there was a win. Also, occasionally if I zoom, it will stop letting me unzoom or select any other countries.