The Nano-Virus has 7 unique abilities namely, Code Fragment Interception, Radical Element Stabilised, Code Segment Interception, Replication Factory Overload, Encryption Breached, Broadcast Interception Overload, and Drug Immunity. I won't go into much detail about these abilities, but their main purpose is to slow down and lessen the cure progression.
Knowing the Nano-Virus' abilities do gives us some ideas of how this plague type works. Basically, once you start your plague in a particular country, the cure progression starts immediately. This is because, as the description says, the Nano-Virus has a kill switch. This can be a real pain to deal with especially in brutal difficulty. Don't fret though, I got just the guide to help you through it.
I only have one strategy for Nano-Virus and it's not a 100% win rate strategy. There are times where countries close their harbors or borders before my plague could infect them. You can't really count on the random country infection since it happens very rarely so when this happens you have no choice but to start over.
Before we start, let me just warn you about a few things:
- This strategy requires you to evolve certain symptoms, abilities, and transmissions as soon as you have the DNA to evolve them.
- The cure progression starts once you select the first country to infect.
- Sometimes you'll fail because you can't infect a particular country. Don't worry just start over.
- You need ATP Boost. Why? Because we'll evolve some abilities and symptoms before we select a country to start in.
- ATP Boost - see no. 4 above
- Genetic Mimic - It slows the cure progression
- Aquacyte - makes it easier to infect countries like Greenland and Iceland which are only accessible by ship
- Extremophile - plague boost in every environment
- Sympto-Stasis - Symptom costs will not increase, some will even cost 0 DNA to evolve
Without further ado, the strategy:
Before selecting a country to start in evolve the following:
- Code Fragment Interception
- Coughing
- Cysts
- Abscesses
- Insomnia
- Paranoia
Now, Start your plague in India.
As soon as you have the DNA, evolve the following in this order:
- Code Segment Interception
- Nausea
- Vomiting
- Drug Resistance 1
- Genetic Hardening 1
Important: If a pop-up appears saying that an airplane or ship are sterilized, prioritize evolving either Air or Water 1 right away. If by some chance you don't know which one to evolve
Airplanes = Air 1
Ship = Water 1
Once again, Evolve the following in this order:
- Genetic Hardening 2
- Hyper-Sensitivity
- Paralysis
- Coma
- Water and Air 1
- Water and Air 2
- Extreme Bioaerosol
- Seizures
- Insanity
- Radical Elements Stabilised
- Drug Resistance 2
- Cold Resistance 1 and 2
- Pneumonia
- Sneezing
- Rash
- Sweating
- Skin Lesions
- Diarrhoea
- Encryption Breached
- Drug Immunity
Note: Once every country is infected(You can check by clicking World-Data-Infection Spread Summary), it would be a good idea to also evolve Replication Factory Overload to increase infectivity for a short time.
Note: At random times a symptom might mutate, when this happens I suggest that you devolve it right away. Why? Because some mutated symptoms might be too lethal and cause your Nano-Virus to kill people faster than infecting them. You can stop devolving mutated symptoms once every country is infected.
As soon as you get a pop-up saying something like "there are no more healthy people left...", Go evolve every symptom you possibly can. Doing so will make your Nano-Virus so deadly that it would only take weeks to kill everyone.
After evolving every symptom, you'll get a huge stream of DNA. I recommend allocating these to Genetic Re-Shuffles since it lowers the cure progression. This becomes especially useful if you find yourself having a high cure progression at this point.
Note: This isn't necessary but you could evolve Broadcast Interceptor Overload shortly after getting a pop-up stating that your plague is about to eradicate humanity. It lowers the cure progression just for stats sake. Again, this is optional.
These were my stats at the end of my game.
397 days
47% Cure Completion
4/5 Biohazards
Alternate Strategies
So there you go, I hope this guide helped you conquer Nano-Virus at brutal difficulty. If you guys have any tips and/or suggested strategies which are much better than this one please post them at the comment below. I'll include the good ones along with this guide.
