Evil Genius Week – Friday

Samantha Mumba is…sorry, I mean Mariana Mamba.  I don’t know what it is, but every time I think of her I think, Samantha Mumba.  In every game of Evil Genius I’ve played I’ve never got it right.  I know her name is Mariana Mamba but it always comes out wrong.
Samantha Mumba is a Super Agent.  The World map is split up by security agency.  S.A.B.R.E. is in charge of the ex-colonial countries (Australia, India, South Africa), the UK and Europe.  H.A.M.M.E.R. controls the ex-Soviet countries, three parts of Russia and Cuba.  P.A.T.R.I.O.T.  is three parts of North America and also Japan.  A.N.V.I.L. is responsible for the three parts of China and Polynesia.   S.M.A.S.H. controls the rest, North Africa, South America, the Middle East and Antarctica.  Being more active in a particular area will increase the amount and intensity of agents trying to infiltrate your “lair” from that agency.  Once you get to around the middle of the game, the agencies relalise they’re going to have start taking more drastic action.  They start sending in their best people, the super agents, one for each agency, each one being some sort of spy film stereo type.  The first one is Samantha Mumba, from S.M.A.S.H.

Super agents are unkillable, you can capture them and confuse them, but never get rid of them.  Well, at least not yet…  Super Agents are also the only ones who can kill your henchmen.  Each Henchman has three lives, if they are killed by a super agent they lose a life, lose all thre and you lose them and their slot forever.  You could just keep them on the world map, and yet you can’t easily afford to do without them, as the super agents are very difficult to take down.

Except for providing a boost to your minions Loyalty (blue) and Attention (violet) there isn’t much your avatar can do, one of the best things s\he can do is go and torment the prisoners.  Selecting your avatar and then a cell containing a prisoner sends them to go and laugh at the door.  This gives you a small notoriety boost and it’s funny.  You can only do it to standard prisoners once, however you can do it to super agents every time they’re put in a cell.  This really boosts the feeling of James Bond films, where the mastermind taunts Bond.

As there isn’t really anything you can do to super agents, it’s just a matter of keeping them busy, plus you can get a lot of satisfaction from testing out your various equipment on them.  Mwuhuhahaha.  ‘Do you expect me to talk?  No Mr. Bond I expect you to put up with the new and innovative ways I find for torturing you.’ 

Whilst you can only capture super agents, you can still issue the kill tag, this is actually quite a good tactic as just capturing them means your minions have to get up close.  The kill tag allows them you use their weapons at a safe(ish) distance.  Then all you need to do is change the tag to capture while they’re unconcious.

Today I discovered the location of the Cloning Chamber.  This device is being developed by a secret research group in Antarctica.  If you steal it, you gain the ability to create clones of yourself.  Not as a replacement you understand, but as a decoy.  Once you have cloned yourself, a special assassin comes to your island to kill you, if they kill the clone instead it will significantly lower your heat rating since the agencies think you’re dead.  You step into the left chamber, and freeze over.  You then have to wait for a basic minion to come along and use the other, he will then be transformed into a copy by your DNA.  This clone is obviously going to be inferior, so he wears different coloured clothes to your handsome self.  If anyone but the special assassin kills your clone, it will not affect your heat rating and you will suffer a small notoriety deduction.  So you can’t just send your clone out into the open, you have to allow your assassin into your “lair”.  Making a point of not placing any tags, she eventually makes her way in, once she gets far enough I send the clone to her.  She finishes him off rather slowly.

My steadily increasing notoriety allowed me to hire another henchmen.  Once again Dr. Neurocide and The Matron were on offer, they were joined by:

Montezuma, an evil voodoo magician (if only QI were around when they were developing this game) from Cuba.

Moko, an Ancient Aztec Warrior from South America.

And The Butcher, a psychotic surgeon from Indonesia.

I don’t remember hiring any of these before, it may have been around the time I last stopped playing, so I just went for Montezuma.

Overall, progress was a little slow today, the last idea I had to obtain was still just out of my grasp, as well as the last totem pole section.  I had spent some time with my technicians and scientists scouring the world, they had discovered the last piece of the puzzle in Australia quite a while ago, the problem was it required four mercenaries to carry out the mission.  I had increased the mercenaries cap on the minion management screen but what with losing marksmen and martial artists, there weren’t enough available at the same time.

The Martial Artist is the second, fourth tier security minion.  Unlike the marksman who is never without his gun, the martial artist never uses guns, and is instead a master of one-on-one combat.  They use the dojo for training.

When enough mercenaries did become available I immediately sent them out, I would reinforce with minions already out there rather than waiting for others in my “lair” to become available.  Soon I had all the information I would require to start my master plan, but there were still several more conditions that needed to be met.  The attacks on my “lair” were still intense, my guard room was partly destroyed twice and I almost lost my control room again.  They even managed to steal back the Eiffel tower.    That gave me the idea of focusing on the second set of objectives.  Financing a world destroying project is not cheap, I would have to steal at least four of the six “Uber Loot” to be able to pay for it all.  Traditional loot is often some new device, such as this crowd controller:and this dish:  Most of the Uber loot is fairly old.  The Effiel Tower, Ark of the Covenant, Ancient Samurai Armour, King Arthur’s Excalibur, a Sarcophagus and a Million Dollar bill.  Obtaining these would not be easy, the attacks were lowering the number of minions I had and retraining takes time.  I slowly clawed my way through the list and finally obtained four of the six, afterwards I also took another for good measure.

This opened up another sub-objective, generate an income of at least $10,000 and sustain it for five consecutive minutes.  This would also be difficult, an income of $10,000 needs a lot of minions on the world map, and several high level minions at least.  It was going to be difficult to spare them from my “lair”, but I had to do it.  Not only for the objective, but also because I was running out of funds due to the destruction of my rooms.  I boosted the number of minions on the world map and managed to get an income of $10,000, that’s when I noticed I only had one Martial Artist left.

Once you lose all of a certain minion type, you can no longer train any more, unless you lose a second or third tier minion but still have one of the higher level ones.  This means you have to carry out a kidnap mission again, so much was happening at the moment that I wouldn’t have been able to kidnap another civilian martial artist.  I immediately pulled him out, this tipped my income to back below $10,000, *sigh*.  I sent for another two basic guards and waited.  Pretty soon my income was back up and it was time to start counting down the minutes.  Around the third minute, agents appeared on the world map.  Whenever there is an agent in the same country as your minions, they start getting picked off unless you put them in hiding.  But if I did that then I would have to start all over again, I decided to wait it out…

Research was still going strong at the beginning of today, however by the end it had almost completely dried up, despite some objects still having possible tests available.  I discovered that what I thought was the brainwasher is actually the Brainiac Machine, it still does a similar job, although it’s not as funny.  Among today’s results were; a disguised rifle rack and a disguised cell.  Since an agent getting that far into my “lair” has already seen to much anyway, I’ll leave these.  Plus disguised objects are still detectable by the more clever agents.  The Infirmary had only had pharmacist stalls before, now it also had an X-ray Scanner: and Medibed: 

The latter I remember having a very useful purpose later on in the game…

While I’m on the subject of research, I was eager to discover what ‘Freaks’ might be, after researching them yesterday.  I tried dunking a prisoner in the Bio-tanks, Results:  Negative.  I incarcerated one of my own minions and sent them for a dunk, Results:  Negative.  Hmmm, this will require more thought.  It might only be possible on the second island, or it may have some other special requirements.  There is a page about it on the wiki I linked to yesterday, must…resist…spoilers…

Finally the five minutes were over, my funds were flush again and all I had to do was increase my notoriety to two hundred.  That was an easy task compared with the others, stealing the uber-loot had pushed my rating up a lot, so I just had to carry out some of the easier Acts of Infamy.

Objective complete!

Now it’s time to get out of here, on the World Map a new button has appeared:  I can now move to another island at any time I want.  First, I think it would be a good idea to calm the various agencies down, I recall all my minions from the world map.  I think another use of the cloning machine might be in order.  You don’t get the machine for very long, you can only keep it so long as you’re on the first island.  Best to make the most of it.

Now I am ready to move onto the next island…or am I?

Are my funds going to be enough to build a “lair” from scratch?

Am I really giving up on reuniting the pieces of the totem pole?

Will I be able to complete my master plan in the two days I have left?

Tune in next time to PIIIGGGSSSS INNN SPAAAACCCE.

Oh wait…

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