n Plague Inc. for the Android & iOS (iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, etc.), winning your first game using Bacteria can be a little frustrating.
You don’t know the best country to start out in, you don’t really understand all of the concepts and what to buy yet, and you haven’t unlocked any gene modifiers yet.
This article should help you win your first game using Bacteria, and give you some concepts that will help you win future games as well.
A lot of this game has to do with patience and timing. You don’t want to kill people too fast, or countries will be on alert and shut down their borders. You don’t want to go to slowly either, because the cure can wipe out your plague. There’s nothing worse than being close to world domination only to lose in the last few moments by the cure.
Starting With Bacteria
In the beginning, it’s all about infection. Infect as many people as possible without causing too much alarm.
The primary thing to remember here though is that if your plague has multiple symptoms, the country you start in will begin to notice and become alarmed when around 90% of the population becomes infected. That means that starting in a larger country makes the alarm rate a lot slower, giving you more time to infect people before they notice. This is why I start every game in China.
China has 1.4 billion people, which is the largest populated country in the world. Even with multiple symptoms, they won’t even know about your plague until about 1.2 billion people are infected, and multiple other countries as well, and by then your plague will be well on its way to domination.
For transmissions, get Air 1 and Water 1 as soon as you have the points for them. This will allow your plague to spread via airplanes and boats primarily, but also via human contact and water supplies, which is great for China since it’s labeled as urban.
For symptoms, keep them minimal at first. Start with just Rash and Sweating at first. These have high infection rates for the points required, and you’ll get bonus points when countries get infected. Next you’ll focus on coughing and sneezing.
As far as abilities go, start putting points into Bacterial Resilience first, and then Drug Resistance 1.
Devolve any symptoms that mutate that say they are lethal.
The Next Phase
Your infected rate should be climbing pretty quickly, and begin to spread as well. You still have some time before the world is alarmed about your plague though, so it’s time to amp it up a bit.
You want to purchase Air 2 and Water 2, and then Extreme Bioaerosol as soon as possible. You’ll also want to make sure you have Bacterial Resilience 3 on Abilities as well. This combination provides a very infectious plague.
For symptoms, focus on getting Sneezing, Immune Supression, Skin Lesions, Cysts, and Hyper Sensitivity. These will give you a great deal of infection, a little bit of lethality, and give you more bonus points for infecting other countries as well.
The world most likely already knows about your “minor disease”, and they’ve started working on a cure, but that’s ok. Hopefully we’ll wipe them out before they finish the cure. Purchase Genetic Hardening 1 and 2 on Abilities if you can afford them, because they will slow down the rate of the cure.
Try to bank about 30 to 40 points at this point for emergency purchases. You may need to get Paralysis and Coma to slow down the cure. Genetic Reshuffles on the Abilities screen help also because they make more cure points needed before completion, but these are expensive.
Only devolve mutated symptoms that are extremely lethal, like Total Organ Failure. You don’t want to kill off everyone before the world is infected. If Necrosis mutates at this point, you can probably keep it, because the dead from necrosis raise infectivity by a large amount.
The Home Stretch
Now for the home stretch, you need to get those last few countries infected before you start going crazy with the deaths.
Purchase Genetic Hardening 1 and 2 on the Abilities screen if you haven’t already to slow down the cure development.
The last countries to get infected when you start off in China are usually Finland, Morocco, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Caribbean, East Africa, and that big pain in the ass, Greenland. Greenland and Morocco are the last two to get infected for me most of the time, but your high infection rate should get you in.
You can start pumping your lethality up a bit, but be careful. You don’t want to have more people dying than getting infected. You’ll want to save up some points at this point as well for your big killers once everyone is infected. I usually try to have about 40 points banked up if possible.
Once everyone is infected, you’re going to need to purchase the ultimate killers. Total Organ Failure, Necrosis, Hemorrhagic Shock, Internal Hemorrhaging. Spend all of the points you’re getting from deaths into more lethal symptoms, or into Reshuffles if the cure is getting too high. The more you kill people off though, the less scientists there are for the cure, which slows it down to a near stop once the death toll gets high enough.
Now you should be able to sit back and watch the world plummet into chaos.
Congrats on your first win! Now you’ve unlocked a gene modifier to help you win your future games.
