Monkey Intelligence Bureau (BTD6)

"The Bureau grants special Bloon popping knowledge, allowing nearby Monkeys to pop all Bloon types."

- In-game description

Monkey Intelligence Bureau (sometimes abbreviated as MIB for short) is the third upgrade of Path 2 for the Monkey Village in Bloons TD 6. It grants all the towers in its radius the Normal (, i.e. affects any bloon type) damage type. All towers within its radius can pop Lead Bloons, Thermal Bloons, Frozen Bloons, and Purple Bloons, on top of camo detection via its previous Radar Scanner upgrade. This includes bloons that contain any mix of these aforementioned bloon properties.

Note that the Monkey Intelligence Bureau buff does not necessarily grant towers the ability to target or affect any bloon type including MOAB-class bloons, but it allows them to damage any bloon type. Most attacks with status effects exclusively dependent on a direct attack rather than dependent on affecting specific tiers of bloon (e.g. Counter-Espionage shurikens removing camo from Camo Leads is independent from tier of bloon, but Pin's pinning effect on a Lead or Ceramic is not) are also affected by MIB. In some very special cases, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau can help grant certain towers with the ability to allow specific attacks or status effects to affect and target specific bloon tiers, but only up to Rainbow.

It costs $6,375 on Easy, $7,500 on Medium, $8,100 on Hard and $9,000 on Impoppable.

Appearance
Monkey Intelligence Bureau turns the entire Village into a high-tech pentagonal-shaped steel building. It retains its pair of rotating radar speakers on top of a radio tower stand. Across the building, it has three orange windows per side. The door and entrance appear to be made of concrete.

The upgrade icon for Monkey Intelligence Bureau is not the same as it does in BTD5. It now appears to slightly resemble the COBRA but with sunglasses. It is a monkey in a black three-piece businesswear wearing black sunglasses.

Mechanics
Just like in BTD5, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau upgrade allows nearby towers to damage any bloon property. More specifically, the Monkey Intelligence Bureau awards the normal damage type to all nearby towers, allowing them to deal damage to any type of bloon property. Most of the non-MOAB status effects can additionally affect any type of bloon up to Rainbow.
 * Black and Zebra Bloons can be popped by all forms of explosive damage.
 * White and Zebra Bloons can be frozen by freezing damage (i.e. from Ice Monkey, Ball Lightning with "Cold Front" MK, and Sentry Expert's Cold Sentry).
 * Frozen and Lead Bloons can be popped by sharp projectiles (e.g. darts, tacks, blades) without special upgrades.
 * Purple Bloons can be popped by attacks that involve energy, plasma, or fire.
 * Lead Bloons can be frozen and popped by freezing damage (i.e. from Ice Monkey without Cold Snap, Ball Lightning with "Cold Front" MK, and Sentry Expert's Cold Sentry).
 * DDTs can be popped by sharp projectiles (e.g. darts, tacks, blades), explosive damage (e.g. bombs, missiles), or freezing damage (e.g. Snowstorm ability, Icicle Impale) without special upgrades.

However, this will not grant power to attack or affect MOAB-class, such as BADs, if the tower cannot attack them, like BTD5. It also does not grant a small number of non MOAB-class status effects with the power to affect specific bloon immunities:
 * Pin effects will never halt progress of Leads or Ceramics
 * Super Monkey's Knockback always has a weaker effect on Leads and Ceramics
 * Downdraft blowback never blows back Frozen or Lead.
 * Ice Monkeys cannot re-freeze frozen bloons without the Re-Freeze upgrade. (Possibly a bug)
 * Buckshot always has a weaker knockback effect against Leads and Ceramics.

There is one exception to these rules, Psi. Psi normally cannot target Leads or Purples, but giving Psi with Monkey Intelligence Bureau allows them to target those bloon types. This doesn't allow Psi to target Ceramics, however, and requires Level 7+ to do so.

Summary
This upgrade is very expensive in concept, but it proves very effective at countering DDTs. Strong DPS towers whose weaknesses are only specific bloon types would strongly benefit from this upgrade. The majority of popular strategies often rely on MIB to reduce weaknesses against DDTs. Sometimes a MIB is used to allow energy-based Magic Monkeys to damage Purples, most specifically to survive the pre-blimp stage of Round 95. Another viable use is for allowing towers to damage Frozen Bloons in order to fix the negative synergy between sharp-based attacks and Ice Monkeys, specifically 0-1-2 Re-Freeze Ice Monkeys or Icicle Impale. On certain scenarios, an MIB is used to allow high-pierce explosives such as Bloon Impact to pop Blacks and Zebras versus high-density rounds.

Tips

 * The "better" crosspath depends on the situation, but 2-3-0 MIB is generally better overall, as it provides more coverage and provides Jungle Drums effects.
 * Do be sure to provide some discounts via Monkey Commerce before upgrading to this upgrade, to save a good chunk of money.
 * In CHIMPS, it is important to try discount an MIB village by Monkey Commerce, although it is quite expensive to do so. The cost for buying the two separate Villages is $12,365 (a 0-0-2 village and a discounted 0-3-0 village in range of each other) rather than $11,800 (just a 0-3-0 village). The difference is $565. If the player is planning to put other monkeys in range of the towers then this difference is negligible.
 * Monkey Intelligence Bureau is very effective at countering the weaknesses of attacking DDTs, especially good for high-attack powerful towers with Lead or Black weaknesses.
 * Good candidates to pair with Monkey Intelligence Bureau include:
 * Any high-DPS towers with only sharp projectiles, with the best examples including: Grandmaster Ninja, Avatar of Wrath, Perma Charge without Red Hot Rangs, Sub Commander armies (which may contain lots of Triple Darts/Armor Piercing Darts Subs)
 * Any high-DPS towers with a mix of sharp projectiles and explosion projectiles, with the best examples including: Spectre, Aircraft Carriers, and Comanche Commander.
 * Any high-DPS towers with a mix of various damage types where one or more alternate attacks are insufficient for damaging DDTs. Apache Prime will benefit from MIB at late-game damage, to allow the powerful plasma machine gun to pop Purple, the rockets to damage DDTs, and laser shots to affect both DDTs and Purples.
 * Icicle Impale, so the favorable 0-2-5 crosspath can be used instead of 2-0-5.
 * Despite how overpriced the MIB upgrade is, especially in BTD6, MIB will provide a drastic improvement for certain upgrades by eliminating a wide variety of attack weaknesses.

Bugs

 * Current
 * [~25.0] Possibly intentional, but fails to make sense when considering damage types, Ice Monkeys nearby MIB cannot refreeze bloons without the Re-Freeze upgrade. It can be seen as a bug due to the lack of logic when considering that Frozen Bloons are a property, as towers other than Ice Monkeys can pop Frozen when given MIB but the Cold and Metal Freeze  damage types do not appear to fully embrace the Normal  damage type.

TBA
 * Patched

Trivia

 * The Monkey Intelligence Bureau upgrade icon is a monkey in black three-piece businesswear wearing black sunglasses.
 * The same upgrade icon looks similar to the COBRA's Misdirection tower avatar in BTD Battles.
 * The building could also be based off of the pentagon being shaped similarly.
 * It might be a reference to the movie Men in Black, considering the name, and the monkey with sunglasses in a suit.
 * The reason why the MIB may seem overpriced is because more often then not, the Monkey's the player is buffing already have some aspects that counter DDTs (Ninja Monkey, for example, can already counter the camo and black aspects of DDTs but not the lead and vice versa for the Bomb shooter). This means the player is not getting the full value of the MIB. Monkey's that already can detect camo in particular are at a big disadvantage because they don't get any real buffs from the middle path until the 3rd Tier. That means the player have to spend $10,950, (if the player does not get the other crosspaths, in medium difficulty) just so the player's camo Monkey's can pop leads.