Fungus

Pathogen Adaptability

Fungus has the characteristic of being much more effective in wet environments rather than arid ones. Countries such as Indonesia are much easier for this plague to infect, while countries such as South Africa find it difficult to spread in dry climates.

In this particular case, Fungus takes an extra month to reach approximately 6000 cases in an arid country than in a humid one. This video was tested on normal difficulty without the use of genes or cheats.

Fungus is a special pathogen than the other standard plagues, where the DNA costs for some traits are altered such as the Bird transmission, where it is much cheaper than Virus or Bacteria, making these traits much more accessible to the player in order to quickly increase transmission across land borders.

• Fungus: 7 (1st Stage) + 8 (2nd Stage) | Total: 15 Points
• Bacteria: 12 (1st Stage) + 19 (2nd Stage) | Total: 31 Points

Cross-Country Infection Limitations

Fungus has certain limitations when spreading through different countries, so it is important that the player evolves traits such as Water, Air or Bird, which in this plague the DNA price is much lower than other pathogens. In case the player does not evolve good transmissions, the Fungus outbreak will have much difficulty in spreading in nearby areas even if the country has a large number of infected people.

Mega Brutal Observations

Genetic Code

• DNA: Catalytic Switch - This gene is useful in the later parts of the game where you can obtain additional DNA while developing the cure, allowing you to perform more actions such as evolving anti-cure abilities as well as more lethal symptoms.
• Mutation: Genetic Mimic- Helps increase the time we have when the cure begins to develop.
• Travel: Teracyte - Help Fungus to spread rapidly across continents or Suppression - This would be my second choice in case the strategy is a bit more aggressive and would cause the land borders to close quickly.
• Enviroment: Extremophile
• Evolution: Ionised Helix

Early Game

Well during these months, I've been trying to figure out how Fungus works internally when I have to beat the game with it on Mega-Brutal difficulty. As mentioned above, Fungus has remarkable difficulty in spreading out, so we should prioritize Water and Air in addition to Bird.

This is one of the somewhat complicated parts of the strategy as it involves RNG of the game, at the time of testing some strategies, I saw that depending on where the spores fall it can help to facilitate the information process gradually but at the same time it can also be a loss of a lot of DNA, if these spores fall in countries close to where the disease started.

So at this point, I recommend saving/loading when using spores in order to make the most efficient use of the spores. Generally, you would be lucky if one of these spores landed in specific regions where the plague has not yet arrived such as Eastern Europe, the Americas or a country without ports/airports in Africa or Asia.

In case you start in a country with a warm climate such as Saudi Arabia, India or Egypt, it is mandatory to evolve the two Cold resistances, trust me, because infecting Iceland and Greenland will be a headache, causing the infected to die on the island before time.

During the course of my game, I noticed that if I did not evolve both Bird 1 and Bird 2, I couldn't get to infect landblocked countries such as Kazakhstan, Morocco and Bolivia in time.

Making you to spend additional spores in order to infect countries in the center of the continents and the process goes much slower in the case that the world starts to panic with the disease, causing local governments to close the land borders, further limiting the infection. This costs a lot of game time, which is somewhat irritating and the scientific community will make advances while Fungus makes small advances in cross country transmission.

Prioritizing these transmissions will make it possible to avoid these problems but remember that Bird also increases mutation, so remember to return any lethal symptoms that are mutated while infecting the rest of the world. If you do not do this, the governments of the world will become very panicked and begin to close all access routes in the country.

Speaking of which, the symptoms that we should prioritize at the beginning of the game are the branch of traits that affect the skin such as Rash, Sweating and Skin Lesions that will help us to increase the infectivity without having to increase the severity and lethality too much.

After you have evolved Bird's transmissions, it is time to evolve both Air 1 & 2 as well as Water 1 & 2 in order to help Fungus spread to more continents.

Mid Game

An important aspect of Fungus is that you will need to evolve spores but remember not to use all of them, mainly because it makes the other abilites such as Cold/Heat Resistances and more importantly the Anti Cure abilities much more expensive every time you acquire a new spore so try to use only the necessary ones. Additionally, if you start in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt or India in this game, it is mandatory to evolve Cold Resistance 2 because it is essential to fully infect Iceland and Greenland, trust me because I have lost several games because the few infected that reached those islands died quickly.

Additionally, it is important to evolve Drug Resistance 1 and 2 in order to quickly infect rich countries. Something I noticed when testing Fungus in Mega Brutal is that when the second stage of this ability evolves, the world population will become much more concerned about the outbreak, because these countries are the ones with the highest priority in the game. This may lead to some governments agreeing to close the borders.

Late Game

Well, at this point of the game, people will be worried about the Fungus Outbreak, so I will have to evolve some symptoms, I recommend to prioritize first the symptoms that affect the skin from Rash to Necrosis, which last one is important because it increases considerably the transmission through corpses which will help us a lot in countries especially island countries that do not have many infected.

There are two types of symptoms that should be prioritized, one that increases lethality such as Haemorrhagic Shock which is one of the symptoms close to the Necrosis trait branch or alternatively Total Organ Failure to quickly annihilate humanity but make sure you have a good percentage of infected on each island.

Atttempts

Image	Description
	1st Attempt Genetic Code: In this game, I used the Teracyte gene to improve a little bit the speed of Fungus through land. Symptoms: I focused on evolving the symptom branch from Rash to Haemorrhagic Shock, mainly to increase infectivity as well as lethality. Additionally I also evolved some symptoms from Insomnia to Seizures to avoid the development of the cure.
	2nd Attempt Genetic Code: I decided to vary the strategy a bit and instead of using “Teracyte” I used “Suppression” in order to increase the chances of Fungus to spread even if the world starts to close early because of panic. Symptoms: I decided to vary also the evolved symptoms and evolved all the symptoms affecting the skin from Rash to Necrosis, as well as evolved the chain of symptoms from Coughing to Total Organ Failure to be faster the annihilation of the world.