Why Evil Genius kicks ass six ways to Sunday

[Big Gulp]

Okay, I spent a little while thinking about this trap, and even broke out paper and pen for a chicken scratch blueprint.  It works this way:

I built this as an entirely self contained area of my volcano lair.  I wanted to make sure that there was no pain in the ass second entrance I needed to keep an eye on, so this is in no way connected to my main base.  Second problem, traps tend to kill your minions as much as they do enemy agents.  Solution, I built the entire thing as a freezer so there's no need for my minions to clean up the bodies and accidentally trip the traps themselves.  Wherever the poor unfortunate bastard ends up is where he stays, in the area that bodies are intended to go in the first place.

The trap works like this, the agent walks into the room to investigate the heavy door in the middle of the room, and sets off the motion sensor right by the door, which he can't see until he enters the hallway.  This sets off two wind trap units on the left side that blow him into the laser trip wires to the right which then set off the other wind traps.  Those blow him into another laser sensor which activates two Prometheus traps (basically giant blow torches).  He makes it through those and he hits another laser sensor which activates another set of wind traps, etc, etc.  If he makes it all the way to the beginning he trips that same motion sensor again and sets the whole thing off from the beginning.  This thing is one huge loop that doesn't end until the bastard dies.

Oh, and the door in the middle of the room, there?  Just a teaser.  If he makes it through that he crosses another laser sensor which activates the wind traps in that small room and blows him back into the hallway.

Goddamn, this is the most overlooked game of last year.

[geldonyetich]

Nice.  Now that's some evil genius at work.

Maybe I should fire up the game again.   I still haven't gotten off the first island.

[Samwise]

Have any super agents gotten in there yet?  That's the one downfall of traps - no matter how fiendish a trap system I devise, a super agent will always wander in there, take the punishment it dishes out while laughing (or nimbly dodge aside), and then set my base on fire.

[Big Gulp]

Have any super agents gotten in there yet?  That's the one downfall of traps - no matter how fiendish a trap system I devise, a super agent will always wander in there, take the punishment it dishes out while laughing (or nimbly dodge aside), and then set my base on fire.

Yep, and it is indeed a pain in the ass.  Thing is, though, they can't get into my base from there.  That's an entirely different, self-contained area.

It took me a good goddamned while to figure out that super agents were immune to ordinary damage and that you have to slap a capture tag on their asses.  My main entrance has around 10 disguised sentry guns set up which, as long as I get the capture tag on the SA, still take them down pretty quickly.  For the regular non-military (saboteurs, soldiers, etc) I keep around 30 spin doctors to weaken them and make 'em go away.  Less heat that way.

[schild]

Might I suggest putting a shitty artifact/treasure/stolen thing in the room in that trap? It will result in a lot more bad guys going directly there.

[Big Gulp]

Might I suggest putting a shitty artifact/treasure/stolen thing in the room in that trap? It will result in a lot more bad guys going directly there.

Whoop!  Yeah, that sounds like a good use for the astronaut suit.  Good thinkin', sir.

[schild]

The astronaut suit is used in a mission. I suggest NOT putting it in there, in the case you get the mission and you have to remove it.

Obviously, the point of that room is what goes in, doesn't come out.

Try putting the holographic fabric in there. It's expensive (as in people like stealing it) and it's useless.

Yes, I've played the game a bit.

Also, the cloning device can be used as bait after you run out of clones.

[Samwise]

Yep, and it is indeed a pain in the ass.  Thing is, though, they can't get into my base from there.  That's an entirely different, self-contained area.

It took me a good goddamned while to figure out that super agents were immune to ordinary damage and that you have to slap a capture tag on their asses.

Fuckers.  Yeah, I already decided that my next time through the game, I'm going to cheat the super agents out of existence (assuming it's possible) so I can play with traps more.  It's not that I'm worried about the SAs blowing up my main base (I too have been doing the isolated trap complexes, mainly because minions are stupid), it's that when a SA blows the whole thing up, it takes forever to get the SA out of there and rebuild all the traps.

As for ordinary damage, maybe it's because I was playing on Easy, but I've definitely brought SAs down with ordinary damage (if you want to use marksmen, it's the only way to do it).  When their red bar hits zero, they go incapacitated instead of dead, but that's the only difference.  Of course, they're still two distinct bars, so you still have to focus on one or the other (ah, fond memories of that stupid HAM system).

[Big Gulp]

Also, the cloning device can be used as bait after you run out of clones.

I went with the cocky move; the chameleon cloth and the Grecian urn.  Body bags a'plenty have resulted.

[schild]

Oh nice, the Grecian Urn. I wish I'd thought of that. That thing is fucking money AND useless. Well played.

[grebo]

super agents

HATE HATE HATE

Was about the time that I had 3 of them active at once that I got real tired of sticking them in the mixer, or if there was one in there, stick them in the bookshelves, then the mixer... I'd set them outside the base, they'd say they were leaving.   They'd wander the wrong way, see a suspicious pebble or something and decide they weren't leaving after all and it was time to kill everybody and explode everything.

Waiting around for my minions to respawn and retrain only to die and die again got old

Then I turned on the explosive cursor, and everything was fun again.

Edit to add:  Once had Jet Chan tunnel into my Strongroom behind the stacks of money.  He was trapped since money is invincible.  There he sat, kicking my money, until I got rid of him.  Heh.

[eldaec]

As many others have pointed out, the reason the game fails to kick even a tenth of the ass that it should are that the American and espeicially the British superagents are overpowered unfun pieces of ass.

Manually resetting 150 doors != fun.

Which is a shame because other than that EG works so much better than Dungeon Keeper as a base building game.

[grebo]

The mission to get rid of Rambo Boy almost makes up for the agony he puts you thru.... almost.

[Righ]

I built a very similar trap, complete with junk artifact. Making the whole room a freezer is evil genius however.

[Samwise]

The mission to get rid of Rambo Boy almost makes up for the agony he puts you thru.... almost.

Yeah, I really liked that bit (even if it did crash on me a couple of times).  What's annoying is that you can't get rid of Steele until you've finished the game, at which point it's kinda satisfying but moot.