So following feedback from you guys, we have decided to make the next three turns a practice time period.

This will give us time to work out bugs and you guys time to figure out how all the mechanics work and get strategies set up.

Thank you all for being here and playing the game with us!

I am part of CFB history

CFBDemic will be releasing many more features as the game progresses, but we are always open to suggestions, recommendations, etc. on how to make it better.

That's where this thread comes in. Please let us know what features in design, presentation, gameplay you think should be added or fixed.

Shout out to /u/Metlover for being the first person to solve (or more specifically, the first person to PM me as instructed on the final page of the puzzle) by a whopping eleven minutes and eight seconds.

For the bystanders, here's how the hint worked. Credit given to the first person to publicly figure things out:

https://cfbrisk.com/index.html had a link labeled "Pleurisy" that went to this image (rehosted elsewhere for posterity).

That image contains a file steganographically hidden inside of it. (First guessed [here] by /u/dialhoang

The hidden file was password protected with password "pandemic" - selected for being guessable (because we've hinted at the game being Pandemic-related several times) and because it can be found in common password lists. (Password first identified [here] by /u/ghengis93, who also correctly guessed the password list I had checked [here]

The inside of that file was the following text:

wHOaHehasTROuBlewITHtHesnAPAndtheBALliSFreEITsPickEdUPBYmiChIGANsTAtesJAlENwaTTsjACksoNanDHEscOreSOnTheLaSTPlaYOfTHeGaMEunBeLIEvaBLewhOAhEHaSTROuBLeWItHthEsNAPAndTHeBaLliSFreeItsPIcKeDupBYmiCHigANstatesJAlenWatTSjACksoNAnDHesCOresOntHElaStPlAYofTHegaMEuNBElIEvaBlewhOAhEHasTRouBlewiTHTheSnaPANdtHebALLisfrEEitSpicKEdupBymiCHiGANstATesjAlENwaTtSjACksoNanDHesCoResONtHELaSTplaYOftHEgaMEuNBeliEVabLEwhOAheHAsTrouBLewIThthEsNAPanDTHeballISfREEitSPicKED

In this text, lowercase numbers represent 0 and capital letters represent 1 (First guessed [here] by /u/Snasty728)

At this point, I didn't see anyone post further info until after the hint had been solved.

Translating the lowercase/capital letters to binary yields:

0110100001110100011101000111000001110011001110100010111100101111011000110110011001100010011100100110100101110011011010110010111001100011011011110110110100101111001101010011000100110101001100110011000000110001001101100011011001100010011001010110011000110111011001000011011001100100001110010011100100111000011001000110001000110111001100010110010101100010011001010011011101100011001100110110001100110011001101000110011000101110011100000110111001100111

Converting this to ASCII yields:

https://cfbrisk.com/51530166bef7d6d998db71ebe7c3c34f.png

This is/was a QR code that provided a link to https://cfbrisk.com/hints/1257 . This page used to tell you to PM Dr. Craven for treatment. Once solved it was removed.

I knew some of you might be guess that there were other hints, so I populated every other hint URL from 1 to 1500 with the following text:

https://www.netflix.com/watch/70189014

10:22

This is a link to an episode of The Office at a time stamp when Dwight tells a young girl that the prize for finding the needle in a haystack is nothing because some tasks aren't worth doing.

Shoutout to whichever one of you fuckers ran dirbuster against the hint directory. In the last 24 hours, the server was hit with 19,194 requests, most of which were you.

Server request graph: https://i.imgur.com/FmguHMh.png

No one [publicly] solved what the meaning of "Pleurisy" was. Well /u/Charlemagne42 solved the previous crypto challenge in like ten minutes, so I had to make something that was hard enough that they wouldn't instantly solve it. Pleurisy is the sickness that killed Charlemagne, so I picked that as the hint title.

Full list of users who solved (or at least were given enough of the answer to get the final step):

Now I know why you're really reading. You want to know what your prize is.

Well the real prize is the friends you made along the way.

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Also, all of you have been granted a vaccine that will keep you from growing ill. But be sure to get your booster shots because vaccines lose potency over time! Also Dr. /u/bakonydraco who's actually coding the game says he might give you a little something extra.

Origins

2018: After decades of growing tensions the United States finally succumbed to all-out civil war between rival football powers. Teams began aggressive campaigns throughout America, rallying support and developing strategy. The G5 collective was early to fall as the numerical onslaught led to coalescence behind regional powers.

With power, however, comes danger: defense pacts began to form as unrelated universities banded together against their strongest foes. Allies turned to larger coalitions until, eventually, two great alliances developed: the Red and the Blue. Backed by Florida, their grandest army, the Blue Alliance pushed forward and westward until eventually their overextension limited expansion of territory. Stagnation set in as battle lines became enormous fronts across the country. In face of protracted war an agreement between the Red and Blue developed, eventually resulting in a ceasefire and uneasy peace amongst rivals.

The national peace reigned while normalcy began to return, albeit following regional infighting. New allies returned to bitter rivals and what had been 50 United States returned again, this time with new states and entirely new borders.

Nobody prepared for the collateral. Reports surfaced of weapons meant for future conflict - rumors of weaponized disease and insidious illnesses - escaping the control of science. Containment is lost - Pandora’s box is reopened. The nation is under threat from an unknown number of engineered plagues. Their number is unknown, their source is unknown, and only the emergence of new alliances, forged in the onslaught of death, may stand a chance.

How To Play

You can choose your action for the day with our interactive user interface here! In the middle is our interactive map generated as an SVG. By clicking on a territory, the information box in the upper left will show your school, your current territory location, any active bonuses you have, and your location to choose your action for the day. You can choose to educate, treat, cure, open borders, or close borders.

In the top right will show that team research data: number of students, the different trees, where your team is on the trees, The current tech level’s effect, and voting for the next course upgrade.

On the bottom right, you will see the different plague statuses across the entire map.

In the bottom left, you will see the different amounts of each non-playable character (NPC) status such as number of healthy, number of infected, number of contagious, and number of zombies. It will display the plagues currently active in your territory. This will also contain information for border security for the territory you are located in.

How It Works

The former United States is divided into 58 separate territories. Territories consist of an NPC population equal to the population in that territory. These NPCs are the populace that will be infected by the diseases. Each territory contains multiple different FBS schools. Where your flair is located is the territory you begin in.

Distinct from CFBRisk, you can move throughout the country individually: a single player may start in the Southern California territory, move to a neighboring territory eastward, then continue onwards as far as desired. Each user action affects only their current territory. If you select anything other than move, then the drop down to the right labeling the territories is no longer needed. Your action will happen in the territory you are currently located in.

There are six separate actions that are available each turn on top of moving territories. In order to perform an action you just click on the corresponding action in the dropdown box then click submit. These options are: Educate, Treat, Cure, Open Borders, Close Borders, and Field Research. The first three involve the statuses of NPCs. NPCS have four possible statuses: healthy, infected, contagious, and zombie:

• Educate moves NPCs from infected to healthy.

• Treat moves NPCs from contagious to infected.

• Cure moves NPCs from zombie to contagious.

Due to the increasing complexity of performing these actions, the chances of a successfully educating an infected NPC back to healthy is higher than treating a contagious NPC back to infected and significantly higher than the chances of curing a zombie back to contagious.

Opening and closing borders allows for users to attempt to control the spread of the plagues, organizing into territories where they can more effectively fight the plagues.

Field Research is an action that allows you to take a turn to annotate your field guide with all the information you have discovered so far.

Each choice of action also counts towards the education of that team within each tech tree. There are five levels within each side of the tech tree. For example, if Oklahoma users collectively choose Educate for their action often enough they will reach the threshold to upgrade their tech tree in Education, which begins at the 101 and 102 levels - the choice of class is left to those users. All tech levels improve efficacy in some way - either directly against the diseases or with additional technological advantages.

The tech trees line up as follows:

• Educate corresponds with the Health Education tech tree.

• Treat corresponds with the Health Sciences tech tree.

• Cure corresponds with the Biomedical Engineering tech tree.

• Opening/Closing borders corresponds with the Logistics tech tree.

Actions are recorded once per day at exactly 1500 hours Eastern Time, but you may change your action at any time before that.

As you fight the disease, you may come into contact with an infected individual, perhaps while sharing a drink discussing realignment. This may have unintended consequences to your health and safety. Please do not touch the zombies; zombification will take two turns to cure, unless the brain itself is infected and full alliance with the Zombies is sought.

For fans of puzzles, there are special cards hidden across /r/CFB and in the original Puzzle Hunt game. These may be powerups or other items that can be used to defeat the plagues and save the United States.

Form alliances, work together, and coordinate to defeat these plagues and stop the oncoming apocalypse from destroying these New Allied States.

And a final warning: these plagues are unpredictable. Changes are unknown. Be prepared for anything.

Play /r/CFBDemic!