I suspect things would have been A LOT different for the Anis, had Visser 1 stayed in command of the Earth invasion.
Visser Three and his followers had some quite ingeneous plans to speed up the invasion (infesting important human figures, investing on portable-Kandronas, etc... friggin, even eliminating human will the Yeerk experimented with). The unstable bearing was really 'the bandits'. He could devise plans, but somehow the Anis (being secretly rooted in human culture) would eventually come across it and foil it.
Ignorant as he was in the human ways, and biased on Andalites', Visser Three should have indeed focused more on capturing the bandits. AS HE DID for maybe 1/2 of his missions. There was always some attempt to capture or kill the bandits, but he seriously underestimated the Anis, to his own demise.
...Infiltration would be best, but I would use multiple fronts. I would have underground pools in every developed country in the world. Once I control the developed countries, the others would fall quickly. Or I could just annihalate them because most people there are probably generally less healthy.
I liked this idea. This concept was only hinted at back in the
David Trilogy, where one of the NATO heads was said to be a Controller. This opened it up to the strong possibility that this was Visser 3-loyal Yeerk, most likely of Sub-Visser rank, who was already expanding the invasion on a different place in the globe.
The more Yeerk pools the more the Yeerks could have spread their resources.
...I think the biggest problem with the infiltration method was the whole idea of The Sharing. They tried too hard to get voluntary hosts. They could have infiltrated, gotten involuntaries, and moved MUCH faster...
We all know why the Yeerks were opting for an infiltration type of invasion on Earth. I liked the whole idea of accomplishing their task without firing a single weapon. So I advocate for
The Sharing. However, I think, they never got to the point where the voluntaries could overwhelm the involuntaries, because of the Anis. That may be why it feels like they wasted a bit of their time, but picture it without the Anis' involvement, don't you think they would have ultimately been successful?
As
Chad28 was saying, and it sounds like he understands network design, you know that the most popular nodes get the most frequency, and those are the ones hackers and VIRUSES (ref. Yeerks) attack. Much like the case with the Yeerks, who tried to get a hold of popular and important humans, such as the NATO leaders, the governor, friggin, they eve had that Jeremy Jason McCole douche...
I would have put more effort into eliminating the growing threat of the Andalite bandits throughout the invasion.