Evil Genius Week – Saturday

Time for a fresh start.

After you have collected all the information and funds you need, it’s time to find somewhere more suitable, and where is more suitable than the heart of a volcano?

A last quick look around and I was ready to go, I headed to the world map and pressed ‘New Island’.  A warning comes up making sure you wish to move, how dare it think that me, an evil mastermind, am not 100% certain about everything I do…  Time for packing.  My minions kindly box up all of my loot and then head off for the depot, all I have to do is join them when I’m ready.  But this island did not want to let me go…

Agents might be pretty dim, spotting something that’s obviously illegal and not paying it any attention, but when they spot a chance to finish you off they take it instantly.  All my minions and henchmen were now waiting at the depot, I was alone in the base, except for my bodyguard, when several agents come in through the only entrance.  I knew I should have created an emergency exit.  All I could do was hide and wait for my chance.  Things soon got worse however as who should enter my “lair” but Samantha Mumba.  The agents were hanging around the entrance to my control room, this gave me an idea.  I unlocked the door and they headed in, I then relocked it trapping them inside.  These particular agents being saboteurs enjoy setting explosives, I remember many games where they made it to my power room and set about crippling my “lair”.  Seeing the consoles they set their explosives, and ended up repeatedly blowing themselves up.  Samantha Mumba meanwhile, was making her way further into my base.  The saboteurs now, understandably, wanted to get out of the control room, so I unlocked the door again and they ran off out of the base.  Samantha Mumba went in to the now almost completely empty control room, just a few very damaged memory banks.  She proceeded to start attacking them with her knife, this was my opportunity, I locked her in and made a run for it.  Well, a quick walk at least.  I was free.

Whereas the first island is a traditional desert island, the second is a jungle, complete with monkeys and strange head carvings:  This time I started of with two outdoor shacks, to hold my many items of loot.  Unfortunately this is not enough and they were spread out in the surrounding area.  I needed to start building my new “lair” quickly before agents came along to steal them.  Fortunately no-one came along for quite a while.

On a side note, moving islands has meant I had to give up on reassembling the totem pole, the optional objective has now disappeared, what’s worse is I have to hang on to the pieces.  Oh well, I can just put them somewhere out of the way.

As you have limited access to room blueprints at the start of the game, your first “lair” develops organically, spreading out slowly.  When you start on the second island though you already have access to all the different rooms and a large number of objects.  Yet due to the fact that your lovely Effiel Tower miniature is collecting rust from being out in the elements, and the fact that agents could be along at any moment, you have to come up with a plan quickly.  The various rooms can be demolished at a later time, corridors however cannot.  It would have been nice to plan out a series of fiendish traps at the entrances of my new “lair” but you just have to make do.  It turns out I didn’t really have enough funds to get started.  (~$300,000)  It’s partly down to psychology, you’re used to filling a room up with the best equipment, whereas what you should do is only add the bare essentials for each room and build up later, but this makes deciding the size and shape of a room difficult.  I had a lovely barracks and guard room, but I was already running low on cash.  I had most of the rooms already planned out but could afford to start construction, I needed to send out some minions to steal some more money.

Things were ticking over, one by one I was building the various rooms I had planned out and things were going okay.  Now I should check the objective screen:  It was finally time to decide on my master plan, as soon as my laboratory was up and running I could steal the Codex of Knowledge.  This contains all the information I would need to work out the finer points of my plan.  It wasn’t difficult to steal it.

Trouble was on it’s way however. Another super agent, Jet Chan, from A.N.V.I.L.  He is the second super agent you run into, a better fighter than Samantha Mumba, he will take down a lot of your minions unless you can coordinate an attack.  Fortunately the first time he appeared I had plenty of social minions running about, he was soon standing around outside with a not so bright look on his face.

Around this time the attacks were becoming more frequent.  The second island is difficult to build for because the two depots are at either end, this meant I had to build two entrances.  I put a camouflaged shack on the one, but there was so much activity that it wasn’t hidden well.  Some more difficult agents managed to slip in and get a clear attack on me!  I ran, minions one-by-one joining the fight, my bodyguard gave her life to protect me.  As you become more notorious you gain bodyguards, however once one is killed, you don’t get a replacement.  Finally the agents were taken down, they would pay.  Mwuhuhahaha.

A quick look at the optional objectives, shows something quite interesting:

I mentioned very vaguely yesterday that super agents might not be totally indestructible.  All of them have a special weakness, if you can exploit this weakness in some way the path towards success becomes so much easier.  Super agents regularly break out of their cells and every time they do you can lose a lot of minions.  Even the best standard agents can be taken down easily by several minions, only the super agents can bring a “lair” to it’s knees.  (Unless you aren’t paying attention.)  I remember in previous games not getting this information until I had most of the super agents on my back, I’m going to make the most of this head start I’ve got.  Especially since Samantha Mumba’s last attack almost killed one of my henchmen, and although it wouldn’t be much bother losing a life, it’s the principle of the thing.  Time for Samantha Mumba to have an appointment with the doctor.  A few minutes later and she will no longer be a problem.  I won’t put the final picture on here directly, I don’t want to spoil it for you (yes, I know I’ve already spoilt most of the game  ), so click here if you want to see the results.

I suffered another loss today in the form of my Ancient Samurai Armour.  It was my own fault for placing it in the guard room so close to the entrance, I didn’t have any henchmen on the island at the time so I lost it forever.  I lost quite a lot of guards at the same time, it will take me a while to build my forces back up.

Having obtained the Codex I now needed a scientist from the outside to interpret it.  My science minions are smart but it takes someone really intelligent to use the Codex properly.  Each agency has a scientist up to the job, I went for the one in South Africa.  All I had to do now was protect him while he worked, none of the agents managed to get into my base.

Now I have the information I require to choose my master plan, but first the scientist I had hired was getting cold feet and wanted to go back to the security agencies, I couldn’t allow this of course.  He was swiftly dispatched.  Now to decide which plan I wish to carry out, each is attached to a special research device.  Due to my lack of funds I hadn’t bought any of these devices, now I did have enough money for one of them, but which one to choose.  After much deliberating I finally decided to go with the Gravity distrupter, I can just imagine civilians floating helplessly in the air.  I place the AI SuperComputer and head for the research screen to start drawing up the plans.  Now a scientist takes the information for the AI SuperComputer to analyse and soon I’m ready to make preparations.  The centre of the volcano is hard rock that cannot be built in normally, there is a large space right in the middle, and it’s here that I need to build the launching pad for my rocket.  A short while later and the rocket complex is complete.  I’m so close to the end now I can taste it, however there is still a lot to do and, with only one day to go, I might not make it before the end of the week…

To finish off here is a picture of a monkey.  Take care. 

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