Haha, I beat it at 1.30 AM.
I already got over the breaking point at midnight, but yeah I spent many hours on it yesterday.
It's a combination of luck and getting a better feel of things.
Luck:
- starting position: enough food, preferably an apartment building, and a hospital (minimize random deaths). A lab nearby is also helpful.
- just general luck on a few 30% situations when there's a horde. Losing a square isn't that awful, unless it's an important one like the lab you're researching at, or an apartment building.
- early game scouting: losing a crucial player on a 5% chance fucks things up. Losing your first and only leader in particular is game over.
Getting the hang of things:
- non-stop scouting and recruitment whenever possible. The idea is to outgrow the zombie threat until your food production and research is at max efficiency.
- fast expansion towards the side of a map. The outwards squares don't have zombies next to them, so once a part of your base borders on the map's edge you lose a pretty big amount of zombie threat.
- research: I have a guy working constantly and immediately towards the antivenom. That goes zombie vitals -> stealth -> antivenom. The antivenom makes a huge difference, especially when fighting outside your base.
- keep 2-3 builders on hand if possible. Their skills are singular, but useful. They can reclaim an area in 2 turns (others in 4) and transform and reinforce buildings in 3 (others in 6). You can see how having soldiers tied up for 6 turns could be harmful.
- Once you reach a certain point, you basically won the game. The zombie threat grows linearly but tends to reach its max after a while. The hordes, however, keep growing and remain dangerous (if manageable if you keep growing yourself).
- also, morale is a killer. Do anything possible to keep morale above 25%, never let it at 10-15 or below for long periods of time.