Evil Genius 2 Gameplay Basics

Gameplay Basics

• Use your Evil Genius and Henchmen and their respective abilities to help your minions out in a battle to minimize casualties, they aren’t fragile flowers. After a battle is over replenish your Evil Geniuses and Henchmen’s stats at the Impressive Desk and the Conference Table in the Inner Sanctum. Repeat.
• Use your Evil Genius abilities to do things like speeding up Research, Training or concentrating on Work tasks
• Lockers increase your Maximum Minion cap up to 300, so expect to build lots of those in the Barracks
• Research seems to be one of the most important things to do early game, especially useful are “Improved Mining Techniques” to be able to dig the slightly darker dirt, “Brainwasher 2000” to turn captured Agents into Workers/Guards/Valets and “Stun Club Rack/Stun Gun Rack” or “Club Rack/Pistol Rack” for your minions depending on whether you want to Capture or Kill agents, so they are able to get through tougher battles. Also “Safe Rack” and “Nuclear Reactor” for the Lair to save lots of space for your Vault and Power Station rooms.
• Other important Research Trees are the three Top ones under “Lair”, they will turn your 50/50/50 Minions into 100/100/100 one near the end of the game and make them Stronger and more durable
• After you’re done Researching the current Tier, you can use your Scientists to gather Intel for you instead of having them run around the Lair uselessly, by setting the “Computer Consoles” in the Control Room to “Scientist”
• Have a large Central Mess Hall and/or several smaller Minion-based ones.
  Deception Minions like the Valet or Socialite prefer the “Refreshment Bar” that unlocks with the Socialite, Muscle Minions like the Guard or Mercenaries prefer the “Dinner Bar” that unlocks with the Mercenary and Science types like the Scientist, Technician and Biologist prefer the “Sushi Bar” that unlocks with the Biologist. You can set those to only allow serving food for those specific Minion types too by clicking on them if you want to Railroad them into a specific Mess Hall.
  You don’t want your Scientists to queue up for the Mess Hall instead of doing what they’re supposed to. Also consider that you can partition a single room into Mess Hall/Barracks/Staff Room or similar and don’t need a separate room for each in certain parts of your Lair.

• A well-staffed and equipped Casino drains Agents “Skill” that they use to disable Traps you have set for them and their “Resolve”, which has to drain before they leave your island every time they take part in an activity or talk to your Deception Minions. They only visit gambling tables that aren’t set to “Scam Tourists” to make you money though. The longer you keep Agents busy in your Casino, the longer it’ll take for the next group of Agents to arrive and the less you’ll have to deal with them in general.
• Consider making a sort of “Gauntlet” for Agents from the Casino Entrance to the Lair Entrance they have to pass through to get there, this is best done after you Unlock the “Spin Doctor” that comes with “Slot Machines” and “Casino Divider”, but you can do it early on with plants or similar too, the longer they have to walk to get there and the more staffed Cover Operation items they have to pass, the lower their “Skill” and “Resolve” are going to be at the end:

• If you’re having problems with Agents attacking your Minions on Distraction attempts, they don’t do this in the Casino area, only once they got to the “Evil Lair” part of your base sometimes. Consider making the Gauntlet for them longer
• The placement of the Armory is important. For instance it’s good to have a staffed Armory ready near a Chokepoint Agents enter your Evil Lair through (with a camera right outside so they are alerted to the presence of tagged enemies immediately). Also Research Batons/Weapons to increase their combat effectiveness, making them ready for most threats. I have one at the end of a long corridor filled with traps coming from the Casino and the Helipad:

• Try to build out Criminal Networks evenly within the different Factions instead of going all-in on one early in the game (Scouting out 2 regions for each is good at the beginning). Heat is added up together from all regions of a Faction and the competence and amount of Agents they send to your island and you have to deal with is based on the total Heat you have built up with said Faction (keep an eye on the Heat Tracker at the top right)
• You can make a lot more money if you Upgrade your Criminal Network at the expense of more Heat and danger to your base, keep an eye out for “green $ symbols” on the map for long-term Schemes to extract money from. Some of the Schemes on Lvl2 can already give $60k on the lower side and $305k on the higher side (mostly South America and Africa) and Lvl3 takes you up to $700k, although they attract a lot of Heat and can take 70-105 minutes to complete
• Bodies lying on the ground around Minions gradually lowers their Morale, which will lead to Desertions. When minions pick them up and are carrying them around with the gravity cannon to an Incinerator it has the same effect on every Minion they pass as if they see it on the ground. Be sure to place your Incinerators somewhere where not a lot of Minions congregate to lower this happening. Be aware that the amount of bodies that can be cleared at one time depends on the amount of Incinerators you’ve built and how long the way between where the bodies are picked up to the Incinerators is. Minions will only pick up, carry and queue up two body bags to be incinerated if an Incinerator is free. So with 5 Incinerators you can dispose of up to 10 bodies at once.
• After you’ve unlocked “Intruder Protocol: Distract/Capture/Kill” via Research you can open up the Tagging Menu from the “Systems Menu” at the bottom left > “Security Zones” and Designate specific Zones of your base (separated by doors – you can designate one part of a corridor one thing and the other another as long as there’s a door between) as “Tier 1”, “Tier 2” or “Tier 3” by choosing the Tier and clicking on an area of your base:

• What this does is take the work of you having to Autotag Agents every time they appear on your island. You can set your Casino area to “Distract” and if they get to a certain point in your base past your traps to “Capture”. Don’t forget to disable the Tiers if there are story missions that require you to Capture someone in the Casino, let them get away with loot or similar or they will overwrite your orders.
• There is a “HIRE NOW!” button hidden within the UI of the Minion screen. For some reason you have to click on the Helmet that says “Worker” and shows the number to the right, not the button above it like all the other classes would indicate. This gets you 5 additional Workers immediately for $10k. Don’t use at the beginning of the game and use sparingly otherwise, since they replenish by themselves (Auto-hire will give you 2 new Workers every minute of game time), but good to have as an Option in case of emergency: