One Way To Madagascar, Please...

September 4, 2009 8:37 AM

Pandemic: American Swine! New flash game from the makers of Pandemic II Send in the military! Control the media! Play as an open-government do-gooder or a city nuking despot and try to control the infection.
posted by The Whelk (22 comments total)

SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on September 4, 2009

MUCH easier than Pandemic II (No Madagascar, after all):

Deport non-citizens.
Impose curfews in infected states in order of decreasing infected population.
Wait for a vaccine.
Administer the vaccine to states in order of decreasing healthy population.
Win.
posted by pla at 8:48 AM on September 4, 2009

first thought: "Why is Colorado represented by Colorado Springs instead of Denver"
second thought: "Wait, I can nuke the Springs?"
posted by boo_radley at 8:48 AM on September 4, 2009 [5 favorites]

Pro-tip: if things are going pretty well, don't nuke Jacksonville and Houston "just to see".
posted by cortex at 9:16 AM on September 4, 2009 [4 favorites]

cortex: "Pro-tip: if things are going pretty well, don't nuke Jacksonville and Houston "just to see"."

I went neutron, and apparently people got all pissy :\
posted by boo_radley at 9:19 AM on September 4, 2009

General strategy: Just throw masks at all infected states until the vaccine is done. Ban interstate flight travel in infected states. When the vaccine is done, spread it in the states with the highest amount of healthy individuals. Win.
posted by bjrn at 9:21 AM on September 4, 2009

What, no nerve-stapling?
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 9:21 AM on September 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

Hunh, apparently all of New Jersey died when I wasn't looking.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:58 AM on September 4, 2009 [6 favorites]

This was not nearly as fun as Pandemic II. I lost most of NJ and GA too, Alvy.
posted by tozturk at 10:09 AM on September 4, 2009

Fun - though I did almost lose Jacksonville. It kinda snuck up on me. I saw that NJ was a hotspot, so slapped a quarantine on them ASAP! Ha!
posted by garnetgirl at 10:35 AM on September 4, 2009

You know what, lets just forget we ever had a "New" Mexico.
posted by The Whelk at 10:36 AM on September 4, 2009 [3 favorites]

Days: 55, Dead: 43 Million, Alive: 253 Million, Trophy: Under-Achiever

Now I sort of wish I had gotten the military involved, blown something up, or deported all the sick immagints.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 10:37 AM on September 4, 2009

Days: 55, Dead: 43 Million, Alive: 253 Million, Trophy: Under-Achiever
Now I sort of wish I had gotten the military involved, blown something up, or deported all the sick immagints.

Flooding everything with masks and vaccinations got me 14 million dead by the end. The south was hit the worst by far. Sheesh guys, isn't the CDC HQ'd down there? Get it together and stop dying off.
posted by Avelwood at 10:54 AM on September 4, 2009

Damn you Whelk! *shakes pus-filled stump*
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 11:59 AM on September 4, 2009

So I'm trying to figure out how best to push the 50% pop limit to the edge.

The ten most populous states (going by 2008 estimates) are, in order: CA, TX, NY, FL IL, PA, OH, MI, GA, NC. They account for about 53% of the US population. With early and aggressive masking in those states (not all of which will need such right out the gate if not infected) and then aggressive vaccination for those states and only those states once it's available (possibly bringing NJ, VA and WA along initially as alternates/additionals if there's a lot of pre-vaccine attrition in the top ten), you could reasonably keep 50%+ of the pop alive while ignoring the remainder of the nation.

That presumes you can keep the panic level down, though, which seems like it could be a problem. How effective is military presence at maintaining calm in the face of gross negligence?
posted by cortex at 12:41 PM on September 4, 2009

Well, I managed to win with 79M dead, but that's a lot less than 49% of the population. Lessons learned:

1. This pandemic is not great at propogating itself into the midwest. Reaching a high infection rate across the country may be more difficult than expected.
2. Hospitals auto-immunizing local population can raise immunization levels higher than expected.
3. The urban population of the US is underrepresented in the game due to relatively few cities on the map, which means corrective nuking is not a reliable way to significantly alter the kill count.

So, if I was gonna try this again I would:

- Annoint fewer states, possibly excluding Michigan, Ohio and Illinois as potential barrier states to effect inland dissemination in this last playthrough.
- Shut down non-favored-state hospitals immediately once the vaccine is developed, and shut down all hospitals once immunity level is approaching 50% nationwide.
posted by cortex at 1:59 PM on September 4, 2009

How effective is military presence at maintaining calm in the face of gross negligence?

Ask the mayor of Baghdad.
posted by vibrotronica at 2:13 PM on September 4, 2009

Take two, managed to push it up to 148 million, but even to do that I had to nuke most of the cities on the map. Immunization managed to creep up to about 55% of the pre-nuclear population despite me cutting all hospital and immuno work off around the 45% mark.

Proliferation was much better this time out, though. Only a few states avoided infection entirely (including Massachusetts and Connecticut?), and a lot of the country turned bright orange at one point or another.

Panic management playing on normal/normal is maybe too easy; the standard recipe for population reduction is

1. Nuke city.
2. Set up troops and curfews in 2-4 states.
3. Twiddle thumbs for a day.
4. Undo step 2.
posted by cortex at 3:20 PM on September 4, 2009

I played two rounds and the lesson I learned is that I should not pursue a career with the CDC. My basic logic for getting a state "cleared" of the virus was to let it run rampant and rack up huge death tolls, but eventually leaving the survivors immune.
posted by Shesthefastest at 4:06 PM on September 4, 2009

I actually didn't finish, but it seemed like everything was tailing off. I'd lost a good number of people in the south, but the immunizations were taking hold, and states that had serious outbreaks were being declared free of the flu. Panic never reached past the A, and I'd immunized most of the larger populated midwestern states (biased, I'd guess), and things seemed to be going okay. One thing I did was essentially close all ports right away. They really only seemed to bleed money, anyway.

I guess I liked pandemic II better. It seemed like they went overboard on the variables here (some of which didn't seem to affect the game much), and for some reason, trying to save everyone just isn't as much fun as trying to kill everyone.
posted by Ghidorah at 7:36 PM on September 4, 2009

Well if you like that you'll also dig The Great Flu, developed by disease control scientists at the Erasmus Medical Centre.

It's far more complicated, but if you've nothing else to do on a Saturday, why not save the world?
posted by SciencePunk at 5:31 AM on September 5, 2009

Also, failed after 33 days even though I had reduced infection to zero, because everyone started panicking for no reason I could see (media blackout was in operation). Weird.
posted by SciencePunk at 5:45 AM on September 5, 2009