[glob2-devel] A Guide to Beating Nicowar

[Joe Wells]

Here is a list of good practices to follow to beat Nicowar.  Most of
these points represent flaws in Nicowar (i.e., you can consider this a
weird kind of bug report), although some of them can be considered
general good advice also useful against humans.

1. Do extensive barrier farming around your perimeter.  Try to grow a
resource wall around the entire perimeter of your base.

2. Make sure there is a hole in your resource perimeter that Nicowar's
globules can reach.  As long as there is a hole, Nicowar will not try
to clear a hole.  You are in horrible danger if Nicowar starts to try
to clear a hole, so avoid that at all costs.

3. Watch out for resources disappearing along a path between Nicowar's
base and you.  This means that Nicowar has started to clear a path and
you must instantly prepare your defense.  You can instantly see the
path being cleared (provided you look at the right portion of the map)
even if you can't see the workers doing the clearing.  Be suspicious
any time resources disappear in a strange location.

4. Put a defense tower surrounded by walls on 3 sides in any very
large gaps that won't overgrow in time.  Use two defense towers if the
gap is ridiculously big.  This is not necessary for small fertile gaps
(less than 3 or 4 cells wide) because they can still overgrow after
Nicowar attacks.  Make sure there is space (at least 2 cells) around
the walls so your warriors can reach the other side.  The walls
prevent enemy warriors from killing your defense tower, and your
warriors prevent enemy warriors from killing the walls and also make
the enemy warriors stand still long enough to be hit by the defense
tower.

5. Until you are sure you can easily beat off an attack, keep the hole
in your perimeter narrow.  Unless you are launching an attack
yourself, you probably want to keep the hole only 2 cells wide.  It
helps if the hole is narrower at a point, but you must make sure the
hole never closes due to growth of wheat or wood.  A good option is to
find a small gap between stone, because then you can clear away the
resources on your side so that the hole doesn't accidentally become
closed.

6. When you are under attack, you can allow resource growth to
temporarily make the hole smaller to slow down the flow of enemy
warriors (but don't let the hole close!).

7. Try to make all perimeter holes into long “tunnels”.  This will
allow you to easily guard a hole with only 3 or 4 warriors.  If you
have a defense tower nearby it can damage them severely while they are
stuck in the tunnel.

8. Position any perimeter hole near stone, so that a defense tower
built on one side or the other can easily be resupplied.

9. Try to choose a location for your hole that is as far from
Nicowar's base as possible while still guaranteed to remain reachable.
This way Nicowar's warriors will arrive hungry and won't stay long.
Plus, if you damage them, they are more likely to starve to death on
the way back.

10. Try to choose a location for your hole so that Nicowar's warriors
must march past suitable spots for defense towers.  Build these towers
as needed.  Nicowar's warriors will get hit both on the way to the
attack and when they retreat for food and healing, and you are likely
to kill many of them this way.

11. Be extremely careful any time you open a hole in your perimeter,
because Nicowar's warriors will find any hole almost instantly!  Try
to keep the number of holes to a minimum (1 until the middle of the
game, 1 or 2 only later).  Put one guard area cell near any hole.
Don't use war flags to guard a hole unless you can do that with level
2 or better warriors, because war flags prevent training.

12. Make sure your resource barriers are thicker if Nicowar has
buildings anywhere nearby.  If Nicowar has a swarm or inns nearby, you
need a much thicker wheat barrier.  Wood barriers should be thicker
near anywhere Nicowar might make a new building or upgrade an existing
one.  Watch carefully to see if Nicowar might be about to make a hole
in your resource barrier and react quickly if a hole forms, because
Nicowar's warriors will find the gap almost instantly.

13. Once you have surveyed Nicowar's base with explorers, you have to
choose whether to attack immediately with warriors or wait until you
have ground-attack explorers.  You may want to attack immediately if
you are close enough to Nicowar's base and/or Nicowar is undeveloped.
If Nicowar doesn't have any barracks yet and you do (so Nicowar's
level 1 warriors will be defenseless against your level 2 warriors),
this is a good time to attack.  Another good motivation for a quick
attack is if you have (or can make) a clear path of attack that can
directly strike Nicowar's barracks (and also inns and hospitals)
without getting bogged down in farmed wheat fields and hives, which
are Nicowar's strongest defenses.

14. If you do attack early with warriors, you may want to build extra
barracks (3 or even 4 total) to ensure a good supply of level 2
warriors.  Monitor your number of level 1 warriors and consider
building another barracks if the number of level 1 warriors is going
up.  (Level 1 warriors are pretty much useless on the attack if the
enemy has any level 2 warriors.  They are mainly useful on the defense
to slow down enemy warriors long enough for them to be hit by defense
towers or for your level 2 warriors to arrive.)

15. If you do attack early with warriors, quickly make lots and lots
of inns and hospitals off to the side, somewhere close to Nicowar's
base but not on a path that any of Nicowar's warriors might take in
attacking your bigger buildings.  Your inns and hospitals will be safe
as long as they are off to the side far enough because Nicowar will
choose to put war flags on your more significant buildings.  The speed
with which you can feed and heal your warriors will govern how strong
your attack is.

16. Only attack with level 2 warriors or greater.  You need to leave
your level 1 warriors at home so that they will train.  They won't
train if they are called to a war flag.

17. If you don't think a direct strike with warriors can beat Nicowar,
then you have to get ground-attack explorers by making level 4
schools.  For this, your main priority will be to defend your
perimeter while also ensuring there is a clear, uncongested path
between your 2 schools and algae (also stone is sometimes difficult to
get).  You may need to open an extra hole in your perimeter for this.
Once you have ground-attack explorers you can easily win as long as
you can hold your perimeter against any active attack by Nicowar's
warriors.  Fortunately, Nicowar won't attack you with ground-attack
explorers (except when they randomly fly nearby), so you don't need to
worry so much about Nicowar's schools.

-- 
Joe