Puppy Love's
Unofficial Bolo Tactics
and Strategy Guide
Puppy Love's
I sat down for a few hours over break and wrote this concise guide to playing Bolo. I know I'm not the best Bolo player, but I feel I know quite a lot about the game, hard-earned knowledge that I'm willing to impart. As well as being able to play Bolo, I can write relatively clearly and in an organized fashion.
Of course, reading this guide is no excuse for not playing Bolo, as in all things. It just might facilitate the process.
This is not a guide for a complete newbie. It's for players who have played many games of Bolo, and know a little about how the game works. I'm going to assume some knowledge and experience here, but really not very much. Perhaps a rough litmus test would be: have you played enough Bolo to pay the Shareware fee? I'm giving various tactics and strategies cheesy names to make things easier. By the way, if you can't figure out what the abbreviations "pill" and "pb" are for, forget Bolo and stick to playing Go Fish.
The guide is divided into two parts: tactics and strategy. Tactics deals with things like how to take out pillboxes and tank-to-tank warfare. Strategy is more about how to fight the game, though it really looks like there's a lot of tactics in my strategy section. I divided the tactics section into Basics and Advanced sections, but didn't bother with the strategy portion.
Sometimes I think about games I just played and see if everything I did is in the is guide. I realize that I don't even come close. I have the large ideas, but there are a hundred thousand little things that simply cannot be written in a guide. Tiny things that I've learned in thousands of games of Bolo that would sound ridiculous if described, and would be harmful to someone's playing if that person attempted to integrate them into their game. These things must be learned for oneself.
A last preface -- I'd appreciate feedback. Criticism is welcome. New ideas to incorporate would also be good. My address: miller@minerva.cis.yale.edu
Pillboxes will shoot at you if you are within 8 map squares, but their shots travel 9 squares. Your shots travel 7 squares.
A refueling base will replenish one unit per player in the game every twenty seconds.
Fifteen shots to kill a pillbox. To see if you have 15 ammo left, compare the top pixel of the ammo bar with the middle pixel of the middle of the bottom row of base circles. If it's at least that high, you have enough ammo to kill a pill.
When hiding behind a lone wall or friendly pill with a hostile pill slowly firing into it, send your builder out as a reaction to the shot hitting the object to avoid it getting killed. Don't predict it, but react as fast as possible. (If the pill's angry, all bets are off)
It goes without saying that your gunsight should be visible at all times. (Left-handed players may wish to adjust these directions, I really don't know.)
The Hardliner Technique or No Wall Willy
People use all sorts of tricks to take pills, usually using a number of walls or friendly pills to block shots. However, the easiest and most important method involves no blocking. The idea is to take out a pill as quickly as possible, wi thout being overly worried about damage taken.
The important thing to remember about this is never to take more than two passes. It's slow and you take more damage. I've seen newbies doing circles for minutes on end like they were chasing the tank's tail.
The Infamous Wall Methods
The idea here is to place walls next to pillboxes such that when the pills fire, the shots hit the walls instead of your precious tank.
Unibrick -- Using One Brick
Place the brick square next to the pill. Easiest if done flat instead of diagonally. To make maximum use of the blocking wall, line up as you did in the Hardliner technique, but in general don't be as picky. How effective is this technique? Not very. Saves about a quarter of full ammo, and you take the pill in the same amount of time. The effectiveness is proportional to the lag. If the lag is extreme, it's possible to take out the pill in one pass. But this is rare. The great thing about the Unibrick is the wide angle you can approach from angles as sharp as about 40 degrees and still have the pill hit the wall.
T........
WP
Multiple Bricks
There are endless ways to do this. Here are some of the traditional ones:
T........
WW P
T........
WWW P
TW
W.W
.W.
.
.
P
TW
W.W
.W.W
..W.
.
P
TW
W.
.W.
..W.
.
P
T
..
..
.W
.W
P
Those are the basics that most Bolo players know. Each makes the pill hit two or three boxes. At first thought, using three walls would seem to be twice as good as using one. However, this is not at all the case. As soon as you hit the pill a few times, it's so angry that it will destroy an entire wall in about a second. So that other wall buys you about a second of time, which is one or two shots. Again, lag can really help. If the lag's bad, a pill can use about twenty shots to kill one wall, as it takes time to register. In a typical amount of lag, using three walls often enables you to take a pill without having to run f rom bullets at all. Using three walls, however, is usually harder than using two.
Advanced Wall Techniques
There are a couple other noteworthy wall patterns that I've seen few, if any, Bolo players use.
T....... ...WWWWP
Yes, it's possible to make a pill take out four walls! It is very hard to line up, however. There is a neat trick that will help. What you do is to build an extra wall, like this:
..T....... W....WWWWP
The idea is that you build a wall in line with the other walls. Then, from above, you run your tank into this wall, and stop motion. Turning towards the pillbox, you're in perfect position. Note that you want to build the wall out of range of the pill, so you have time to adjust your gunsight. This is also tricky. The gunsight must lie just on the line between the pillbox and the square above it. Now you advance. Again, this is tricky. You must stop with the center of the gunsight on the middle of the top of the pillbox square, so it just kisses the edge of it. This takes some practice. So, is using four walls a good idea? Surprisingly, even four walls isn't enough to take out a pill without having g etting hit or without turning, in no lag. But then, who plays in no lag at all? Rarely is there a game when four walls isn't enough to take a pill without flinching, and we'll discuss implications of this later on.
T
W.
.W.
..W.
.
.
P
Theoretically, this is the best three wall technique. Yes, the reason it's mostly theory is that it usually takes more time to line up than to simply build another wall as above. You have to rest just on the side of the nearest wall, giving yourself the edge to shoot out, but making sure the enemy bullets hit all the walls. Tricky stuff. I advise building an extra wall in almost all conditions.
Using Pillboxes Instead of Walls
This can be very effective, but unless used correctly, you can end up giving the enemy more than one pillbox.
This technique is often done using just one of your pillboxes and no walls. Execute in similar fashion to the Unibrick technique above. Though it (as most things) depends on lag, usually you can take out a pillbox in one pass in this fashion, having to run but not getting hit more than once or so. Right then are lying two dead pillboxes, one yours and one neutral. If you do this with heavy veg etation nearby, you may be running a large risk of having an enemy rush out of the forest and take both pills.
Which is why there are safer ways to do it. These too depend on lag. The first is to build walls and a friendly pill. The key here is to make the enemy fire hit the walls first, saving your pill for last. This can be a great device beca use not only will your pill be protecting the dead neutral one, but it will be a ngry, and enemies would have a tough time snatching it away.
The third option is using more than one friendly pill. This is fastest to build, it absorbs the most damage from the neutral (or enemy) pill, and you still have control of the situation because one of your friendly pills will remain standing. The drawback: a relatively large commitment of resources. If intelligent enemies are watching from a close vantage point in the woods, they can possibly t ake the neutral pill and both of your pills if they play their cards right. More on this later. In most circumstances, this is a pretty effective way to safely take neutral pills at the beginning of a game.
Basics
The Legendary Decoy
The easiest idea is decoying, a strategy (I remark sarcastically and pretentiously) much beloved by newbies for its brilliance and it being the only way they can take out a pill without dying or refueling. The idea is to have two allies in range of the pill, one firing at it and the other hiding behind walls/friendly pills. The one hiding should be closer to the enemy/neutral pill than the one firing, so the pill's shots go towards the person hiding. Here're some examples:
T.....PWWWWt
W
T.....PW
W
Wt
(Here, the "t" {your ally's tank} will move upwards as the walls get shot out, a voiding getting hit her/himself.)
T.....PWWt
WW
There are even more ways to do this than with one player strategies for taking out pills, because the hiding player doesn't need to be able to shoot at the pill. Four walls is always enough to absorb all the shots (ya gotta assume some lag with two people). One of the reasons that decoying is so popular is that many maps start out with easy decoys. Let's think about Everard for a second. The two pills in south middle in the swamp can be decoyed behind the walls there.
Advanced
More Decoying
Where decoying gets really sweet is when you take out more than one pill at a time. The basic setup looks like this:
T......P.PWWWt
You fire at the nearest pill. It gets mad and tries to shoot at your ally, who is closer. Instead of hitting her/him, or even a wall, it hits another hostile pill. Ten seconds later, they're both dead, with little ammo expended and nobody hurt. Make sure your ally realizes you're going for two pills. One of the most annoying things in the world is setting one of these up, and having your ally shoot the pill nearest to you, or conversely decoying at the wrong angle to catch both.
Setups, however, often aren't as nice as the picture I drew, but as long as the pills are two or three squares away from each other (four's pushing it) this can be done without much hassle. E.g.:
T... .... .... .... ....P .......PWW ........WWt
Depending upon setups, which can, of course, be manipulated, more than two pills can be taken out without hassle:
.........PWWt T......P..WW .........PWW
Here, you'd shoot the near pill about twelve times, and pause. Your ally would wait where I started him/her until the pill in the way's dead, then move down to let the angry pill kill the other one. Then, you finish the original pill off. It's a cruel, treacherous trick, but ya gotta love it. Anyway, you get the point.
Doubletake
A way to take a pill without walls, dying or running away. Both allies walk in range and blast away until it dies. The fastest way to take out a pill in Bolo with no props. One player will be closer and will be taking all the hits, which get plentiful pretty quickly. If the timing is bad, and there isn't much lag, one player might die. To help stop this, you may consider having the primary target of the enemy pill run away after almost dead, or having the other player mo ve forwards to absorb some shots. Often this will happen anyway as one player g ets knocked backwards.
Timing for this is tricky. An easy way to do it is to have both people get in range, stop, and then start firing as soon as the pill shoots once. Yelling "go" from the message window is pretty clumsy. Having one person follow the other's lead is pretty good, but the optimal strategy is something that allows good coordination.
One of the least skillful aspects of Bolo, unfortunately. There are few techniques, and they are easily learned. Despite them, most battles end in both people dying. Why? It is very easy to hit a tank, and if you run you lose. So you stay there and blast away. Plus, after one tank dies, a couple of its bullets will hit you, so even if you get one or two extra hits, you'll die also. There are a few techniques, though, and they are quite important. Winning one of these battles can be important, though usually it isn't, as the loser has to refuel anyway. There are exceptions, though, especially if you're carrying pills.
The most straightforward way to win one of these is to use a friendly base or a friendly pill. If you sit on a base and shoot at your enemy, you will easily win. If you have a pillbox nearby, hit it a few times and it will kill your enemy for you. Assuming neither of those things is possible, here are some tactics.
Make every shot hit. Do not miss if you and a tank are blasting away at each other.
Use forest. The easiest way to win is to be stationary in a forest, letting enemy shots push you backwards. By doing this, the trees absorb shots for you. About a quarter can be absorbed, depending on, of course, lag.
Use surprise. Attack from the enemy's rear, making him/her turn around. You'll win if you do this. Try to get them while they're driving over slow terrain.
Knock them into deep water. This is not much of a tactic, as usually it just happens, but sometimes it's worth adjusting an attack angle to attempt this. On the other hand, if someone's trying to do this to you, accelerate while shooting.
If you're running away from a tank, drop mines behind you. This is very effective, and most so when you're going through a restrictive passage.
Advanced
One mildly limited strategy is to get behind a wall at an angle and shoot out. It's clumsy to do, and requires the enemy to walk into range. This can be done with one wall or two:
TW W. Bor
TW ... ...B
The former is easier, but you're less maneuverable from that position. These are usually defensive techniques.
Another strategy is to be hiding in the woods with only your turret standing out. By doing this, you can shoot without hitting trees, but the enemy can't see you and will hit a tree before hitting you. This can be very effective, and if someone's never seen it before, scary. You might even get accused of hacking, as from the enemy's point of view they see bullets coming out of a forest and no tank, but don't worry about it. The leeway for this trick is pretty small, so it's good to practice. The way to practice it is to load up two copies of Bolo on the same machine and mess around. Make sure that the tree doesn't get hit when you start to fire and that enemies can't see you at all. You may already be thinking, "Dude, you could WASTE pills this way!" Wrong. Pills will shoot at you if you try this on them. Very clever, Stuart.
The last aspect of tank-to-tank is boat fighting. Try to get hit in shallow water while your opponent is in deep water. Obviously.
Never run, unless you have a big lead. If you're shooting east and your enemy is going west, by the time you turn around s/he'll get you. Might as well kill them.
The idea with mine traps is make the enemy die after hitting only one mine, using to advantage the way that mines hit you when they explode a square away. Often, these traps are laid on roads, as that's how smart players travel. I'll give a few sample traps, but the basic idea is to lay across the road instead of down it. If you lay, say four mines in a row going down the road, someone zooming along will hit two of them. If you're smart, they can hit five (the number required to kill someone.
..*****... rrrr*rrrrr ..*****... ...****... rrrr**rrrr ...****...
Well, it has to be said. These too depend on lag. In bad lag, the player won't die. In really really bad lag, people can hit mines and not get hurt. Go figger.
Another way to kill the builder is to shoot over whatever it's building. If there's a decent amount of lag, though, this won't kill it. If you have to do this, position yourself such that if you miss, the object just built won't be in your way when you go chasing the enemy builder.
Of course, you can shoot the builder on its way back. You already know the squares it traveled on, which makes it easier. The problems with this are that it's already done what it set out to do, and also it's return path can change as the enemy tank moves.
If you miss the builder, run after it. Spray bullets. If the tank it's returning to is near, try to hit it just as the builder is going in.
Briefly, I must talk about maps. There are two types: normal maps, and specialty maps. Everard, for example, is a normal map. Maps with a tiny land mass that contains the maximum pillboxes, or maps that have no bases, or maps with no land, and countless other ideas, are what I consider to be specialty maps. I'm not saying they're not fun; often the novelty and idea that people must learn a new school of strategy on the fly make these maps very enjoyable. However, because the strategy is foreign and I could never hope to cover all of it, I won't even try. I'll cover strategy for traditional maps, the kind that most people play.
Another assumption I'm making is that the games are Tournament or Strict Tournament, games where bases are important. Many of these strategies hold and are relevant in Open games, but many are not. Since most serious games are Tournament, strategy for them is more important. Also, instead of it just being a matter of different strategy, it's closer to being a matter of less strategy in Open games.
Taking Pills and Bases
Basics
Take a lot of stuff quickly. Often, if the map is of any speed, it's a good idea to go for all the bases you can get quickly, preferably concentrating in one area.
Then, dig in and get pills fast. Speed is very important. Go for those pills that are easily accessible and close to a base. Do not build walls. Use the Hardliner technique explained above. Building no walls, taking half damage, and refueling that lost armor is much faster than building three walls and taking minimal damage. You may be saying, "yeah, but what if some enemy pops out of the bushes and kills me because I have no armor?" Well, you're probably going to take some hits no matter what, so s/he'll kill you anyhows. Even without hits, some one ambushing you in nearby forest should easily win a dog fight, or could run up and grab the pill while you're a distance away.
So what should you do? Put a pillbox you've already captured next to the neutral one, preferably on the side of it in the direction you suspect your enemy to be laying. Do not use this pillbox as a block for taking the neutral pill -- the bad guys will snatch both your box and the neutral one when they're both dead. As soon as you kill the neutral pill, shoot your box a few times, at least four. You have to kill it anyway to move it back, so you might as well make it angry as a safety measure.
Alternatively, place two of your boxes down in front of the neutral box and use them for blocks to take the neutral box (don't do it if there's so little lag that both boxes would be killed -- this is rarely the case, though.) This has several advantages. One, more pillboxes on the scene will always give you an advantage in a confrontation. Two, because the boxes were blocking, they'll be angry without you shooting them yourself. Three, one will certainly be dead, and the second is most likely quite injured. Therefore it'll take less ammo to pick th em up again. Don't try this trick unless you're sure you can get away with it. Losing two pills at this early stage is not a good thing.
If you have a partner, consider decoying pills. Decoying can be very, very fast. Also, you can take up to four pills before having to refuel. (Technically, five, but you'd have to split killing one of them.) But by the time you've killed four pb's, you're mostly out of ammo, and any tank that comes along can kill you. So you don't want to take that many unless you feel very safe. Two is usually a good number. One explicit advantage of decoying is protection of the pill box. If a bad guy is waiting for you to kill it, it's hard for him/her to snatch it with two people there, especially as the person shooting is in range already. If someone does run up and grab the pill before you can get to it, the important thing is to chase them and not to panic. They'll probably be running away. Keep firing at them, and try hard to hit with every shot. Usually what happens is that they see they're going to die and try to place the pillbox prematurely . If you keep hitting them, you should end up with a dead enemy tank, a dead enemy builder, and a neutral pillbox. Plus, because you saw exactly where the builder died, it's often easy to attempt a walling-in (see below). Conversely, if you're the one running, try to drop mines to throw pursuit instead of placing the pillbox. And face the fact that sometimes it's better to lose the pillbox than to possibly lose your builder and the pillbox.
Despite the advantages of the decoy, it's often not the optimal strategem. There is hardly any difference in time between taking out two close pills with decoys, walls already in place, and two people using the Hardliner method independently. Decoying, however, takes a lot of time to set up. You have to get two people in the same place, for a start; this is harder at the beginning of a game. Then, you have to tell your partner that you want to decoy some pills, before s/he rides off into the sunset. Then you have to either find a pill with decoying walls already set up, or place walls yourself. Some of this can be avoided if y ou have a regular partner whom you work well with, and if you know the map, but often this isn't the case. I'm not saying that decoying is never a good strateg y in the opening game, just don't assume that it's always the best.
Your little tank can kill two pillboxes without refueling, but often this isn't a safe idea. Unless a base is far away and there's a pill just asking to be taken, try to place the pill you've got first.
A last comment: steal bases at the start when they're near yours. It is very important in the strategic long term, and only takes a second.
Advanced
Try to get a sense of territory right from the start. Instead of only taking pills from your territory, take some easy ones from hers/his. You may well have to do this with a little friendly pillbox protection. This will shorten the Opening Game for your opponent(s) and lengthen it for you, as you will still have pillboxes behind your line to take. If done successfully, this will give you a larger share of the plunder from the neutral board, and thus an advantage for later. A note of caution: because your enemy will enter into the next stage of the game before you do, watch out for early attacks. In fact, it is always a good i dea to check pillbox view often, even early in the game.
Often a great strategy is to attack enemy pills early. This often works due to the fact that many players don't worry about defense during the opening game; they assume everyone will be grabbing neutral stuff. There are two ways to do this. One is to sneak up and use the Hardliner technique on a lone pill. Fifteen seconds later, you're on your way. The other way is to quickly swamp your opponent. This is good if there is an enemy base proximate to your territory, guarded by one or even two pills. Just grab about three of your pills and spike the daylights out of her/him on that base. Most enemies would either be daunted by a display of force so early, or would be reluctant to get into a pill war so early, and they'd let you have the pill. Often, though, they'll fight you for it. But pill wars are covered later. If you do steal a pill near the beginning, it's a good thing, because it usually doesn't take too much time, and it really hurts the opponent.
A rare but occasionally sweet strategy is to fix a neutral pillbox that an enemy is trying to capture. Yes, you can do this. If you happen to be nearby while someone is attacking a neutral pill, and you don't think you can snatch it for yourself, fixing it can be a real nasty trick.
Where to Put Pills You've Captured
Next to bases.
Don't put them one to a base, use at least two. Three is better. You should never use them to guard more than three bases (or sets of bases, where two or more bases are very close). You want three to stop someone spiking all your bases at once, leaving you with no chance to refuel. This is close to impossible to do on three guarded sets of bases. Of course, you should make sure you have other bases nearby, though they be unprotected.
What bases? Good bases that are easy to protect, and border on enemy territory. Try to have a front line. As you travel, try to make roads connecting them underneath if they don't already exist.
Mining
An ugly truth is that it's often a good idea to start mining right from the start. Why ugly? Many people think that random mining reduces the quality and game play. Be that as it may, I'm trying to relate the best strategy. I myself try to avoid excessive random mining, especially at the beginning of a game. So why is it the best strategy? Well, unless the game is flying at a super fast pace , it's very easy, and will be effective in the long term. You only have to wait a few seconds after filling up on ammo to get a bunch of mines. You can poop them out of your tank without effort. But all an enemy has to do is to hit a few , and that can cost them a lot of time or even a pillbox. Mining at this stage isn't very important but you may wish to do it. Though sometimes it pays off in the short term, consider it to be more of an investment.
What To Do While Refueling
Get trees.
Build roads.
Place mines -- good places are where enemies might build walls if they were going to try to take your pillboxes. E.G.:
M . P.M
Etcetera.
If there's a neutral pill near you and you can see it, you might as well build a wall or two while you refuel.
There are several different strategies that you can use at this point: setting up defense, picking off random pills, going for bases, conducting a pill war, letting the enemy attack, or deforesting.
Setting Up Defense
This is the first thing to do for all strategies except a pill war, unless you think you can really catch your enemy with their pants down. You want a setup that's easy to defend if the enemy attacks, and a setup that discourages people pi cking off pills.
As I mentioned earlier, the first thing is to set up a front line. Three or four sets of bases, protected pretty evenly by pills. Everything behind the line should be yours. Make sure there are trees nearby. Make sure that with roads, it is easy to get between the bases. For example, let's look at Everard. Your line might be the NW base, the SW base, and the SW-center base. They already have roads connecting them, except for a little bit in the NW. They're easy to travel between, which is essential. In this case, the SW base might get less pills than the others as it's less exposed.
I've already said this, but you want a road connecting your front line.
Then, you want to shoot out any and all walls that could be used by the enemy to decoy your own pills. If you're playing 1x1, don't bother. They'll probably help you. Unless, of course, they're sitting such that they can be used by one player to absorb fire.
Now it's time to mine. Conventional wisdom is that a checkerboard pattern is most effective. The reasoning for this is that mines explode and then set neighboring mines off, so to maximize the time it takes to clear mines, a checkerboard is best. However, it's rarely a good idea to mine this way. It takes inordinate amounts of time. And while mining in strips may be easier to clear, if a player hits them instead of clears them, it will do them a lot more damage. The real reason is that mining in strips takes comparatively little time. Mine heavily around your bases. Make it so there's no way to approach without clearing mines. This will ensure plenty of time to rush to the defense if the enemy attacks and you are elsewhere.
Another advantage of mining is that you have huge, gaping craters left where the mine went off. Let's say the enemy takes out a pill near a base but there are two other pills there. Then they try to run and pick it up, but because of exploded mines, the best path is half craters. The forward progress will be so slow that even docile pills will kill him/her. Thus, an effective strategy is laying mines in huge groups around your bases, trying to get most squares covered. Of course, it's better if they're not all connected, so you have some hidden protection remaining after some blow up. So an attacking enemy must build a road through the rubble, which takes time and trees. If they do manage to build a road, all it takes is two seconds of dropping mines to cover it back up again.
Having large forests right next to a base or a pill war (more on that later) can be a defensive concern. Enemies can hide in them and do all sorts of nasty things, like ambush you, lay mines next to your bases, build walls in bad places, shoot your builder, etcetera. They can stick their nose out of the woods if they're clever (as I talked about above). So it's sometimes a good idea to either d eforest or lay a large amount of mines.
On the note of defense, you should be checking your pill view every fifteen seconds or so. That's a lot. Don't just check it when you hear fire, because it may well be too late. It's a feature of Bolo that while checking pill view you can use arrow keys to move around when two or more pills are within a small distance of each other. (The distance being the radius of sight from a pill.)
Strategy: Picking Off Pills
This is the strategy which allows you to attack pills without risking any of your own. It is important to build some defenses before you do this because by attacking you're leaving your area undefended. The idea is to go for preferably a lone pill that hasn't been defended by mines and is far enough away from the ene my that they won't get there in time. Because time is an issue, using the Hardliner no-wall technique is very advisable. If you are forced into building walls to make this work, you're giving the enemy a lot of time to respond. If you have a partner or several, try to get them to attack at the same time. Unless the defense is extremely well coordinated, it's pretty hard to get everyone going to the right place.
This strategy tends to be effective only against newer players, though by no means only new players. A lot of Bolo'ers will leave pills alone like that. The good ones won't, however, and that is why this strategy's effectiveness is limited. (And you should never leave pills alone either.)
Going For Bases
A lot of Bolo players ignore bases, probably because they're so easy to take when undefended. And they're mostly right. However, in a Tournament the only place to get ammo from is a base. If you manage to get most of the bases, and it's a pretty fast board, you can do some damage. If you have an advantage in bases, you can sometimes take the rest of the unguarded ones. One way to do this is to make it a matter of who has more ammo. Build walls around the bases you take.
If you have all unprotected bases, and you concentrate, it can be very hard for the enemy to take them back. At this point the game moves into the endgame, which I'll discuss later.
The Pill War (The Infamous Pill War)
Before discussing how to fight a pill war, you need to know where to fight a pill war. The idea is to fight it on territory that's good from your side and bad from theirs. Good means paved, bad means walls and slow stuff. Even more important is the proximity of your bases. You want to be able to refuel quickly and fully, which means at least two close, protected bases. This advice might sound obvious, but the amount of times I've seen people starting a war far away from their own turf, with no bases or transportation . . . On the same note, try not to fight protractedly in two separate places. It's very easy to lose a battle to inferior players if they're in the middle and you're on either side. The basic idea is to grow in territory like one of those horrible slimes in those almost campy fifties horror movies.
Probably the most important thing to learn. This is where most games are fought and won or lost. I'll loosely define a pill war as any area on the map where pills from opposing sides are near each other.
The first and most important rule of a pill war is to bring in as many pills as is safely possible. If the enemy has two, bring in five. The chances of your success are proportional to the ratio of pills.
The second rule is to form a rough line, and not to spike (put a pill) beyond that line. For example, the pill war might look like this:
p P
p P
p x
P
p
P
If your pills were the ones marked with "p", you wouldn't want to put another pill in the spot marked "x". It would be taken very easily for a variety of reasons. It's hard to send your builder out there to fix it, and easy for the enemy to build walls to stop your builder, and you wouldn't be able to shoot down thes e walls. You also might not be able to see the spot "x" without getting in range of the enemy pills, which makes fixing it harder. And, of course, if the enemy kills it, they've got it, as you can't run up and snatch it. The pills should be spaced such that there are two spaces between them, although one is okay.
The third rule, also very very important, is to make sure someone on your team is always there, watching the pills. If you're the only person on your team, you're it. Don't die. Any competent enemy team can grab a pill pretty quickly.
Make sure your builder can reach all of your pills quickly. This means turning your side into tarmac, and making sure you shoot any walls built between you and your pills.
Mine heavily around the edges of your pill war, especially on their side. This is important strategically.
Defending pills is almost an art. Depending on the situation, there are many courses of action. The one usually chosen, unwisely, is heedlessly sending the good ole builder out to fix the pillbox. More often than not, it gets killed very quickly and easily. The defense that should be your standard is shooting your own pill lying closest to the pill just taken out. This will stop the enemy from running up and grabbing it. Don't be afraid to sit there for a little while, though it is best of course to fix the situation quickly. Also, don't be afraid (or embarrassed) to pick up one of your dead pills. Doing this can make things a lot easier if the enemy is sitting there and waiting for you to send your bui lder out, as it takes reaction time for them to change angles and make a pill angry. It's a lot easier for you to put the pill back in the line than to repair it. The reason you shouldn't always do this is that it takes more time and there's a risk in picking pills up.
The bit you've been waiting for: taking the enemy pills. This is a good time to start decoying if you have someone else on your team. Try to build walls in such a position that the enemy couldn't use the same walls against you, to decoy your pills. This is often pretty tricky. Try doing it on the enemy pill that's farthest from one of your pills. Hopefully the sheer distance will be sufficient to stop the walls from being used against you.
Using the Hardliner wall-less technique can be effective, sometimes. The problem is that unless you wait for about twenty seconds or more, you take quite a lot of damage, and then don't have enough armor to go up and swipe the dead pill, as the other enemy pills will kill you even without being angry. Another problem is that you must take two passes before killing the pillbox. Therefore, an enemy can easily send a builder out with little danger, if s/he's prepared and has a decent sense of timing (aim to have it get fixed at the point where the pillbox would be massacring the enemy). So, unless the enemy isn't prepared, this often isn't the best technique. Furthermore, on the second pass, you also have to turn around to avoid large amounts of damage, which gives the enemy yet another chance to fix the pill. The time to do this is when all enemies are away from their pills, but coming back. You want to take a pill quickly, before they get there. A fast trip to pick up the pill is a must, to avoid damage.
Often, if you can't decoy or you're by yourself, building walls is the way to go. Be a rebel and build three or four. You want to be able to kill it without turning around, so the enemy cannot fix it, and if they try, they lose their builder. Try to build the walls in such a place that their rubble won't get in the way.
Let's say you've killed a pill and are stationary in line with it, just out of range of the enemy's pills. The enemy is sitting there, waiting for you to move up so s/he can make a pill angry. What do you do? Well, if there's enough lag, and you have a clear path to the pill, and none of the enemy's pills is angry, then often you can just run up and take it, even if a bad guy tries to make a pill angry at you. Another easy option is to make a suicide run, but making sure that you pick up the pill and change its allegiance before you die. Of course, you need a partner around to make this at all effective. Another idea is to have your partner try to kill or at least distract the enemy guarding the dead pill, assuming there aren't two of them hanging out there. You can try killing another of their pills. Though two dead pills isn't twice as good as one, it improves your situation. Don't be afraid to wait. Keep firing into friendly pills to keep them angry and discouraging the enemy from trying to pick a pill up. If you're concerned about ammo, and not about trees, move such that enemy pills fire a few shots into yours, saving you ammo. If you think it's safe, you can try building walls behind the dead pill for protection. Watch out for your builder, though. Even more ambitiously, you might build a pillbox behind the dead one. Don't do this if it would be far behind enemy lines.
Usually decoying behind one of your own pills is a bad idea because it dies and then you have to worry about it. One way to do it relatively safely in a pill war is to position one of your pills about five squares back from the enemy, in the pocket> of your line. Then, your partner shoots from an angle where s/he won't get hit by the other pills. Your pill will die or almost die. Make sure that the person decoying picks up and places the dead pill before picking up the enemy pill. The person shooting doesn't move, of course.
Another strategy in a pill war, oft considered a little obnoxious, is drive-by mining. Get a compliment of mines and run into the enemy's side of the pills, mining all around. This disrupts the enemy defense, and offense too. It is especially effective if trees are hard to come by.
Building walls on the enemy side is lots of fun. It takes them time to shoot them, then time and trees to fix the rubble. A sneaky thing to do with walls is to build actual structures on the enemy side. Why this is sneaky is that usually enemies will accept the structures and work around them, instead of removing them. A good one is a wall running parallel to the line of pills, about six squares back from yours. Of course, the enemies must be pretty darn lenient to allow you to build such a structure, but if they do, wheeeeeee! Another faster idea: build a blob, separating the pills in half.
I'll touch on deforesting later, but local deforestation around a pill war can be effective. Simply remove all trees near the pill war that the enemy might have access to, and it makes it a lot harder for them. Obviously, this is a moot idea on a forest map. Similarly, protect your own pills.
When moving your pills in to spike, bring them in at least two at a time, and don't be afraid to lay them in the wrong place or retreat if the enemy appears prematurely. It goes completely without saying that when you put a pill or a wall down, you check for mines first.
If carrying pills to an enemy position is dangerous, consider escorting them in. Take about three or four, and have all except one on the ground at all times. When they're all on the ground, kill the one farthest away from the goal location, and rebuild it just a little closer to your enemy than your currently closest pill. This takes time, but is safe.
A last note: if you have a large advantage in number of pills, don't just make an opposing line. Swamp them, overrun them. Put them right next to them, so the enemy can't repair easily without killing your pills. Of course, don't do this unless you can get access to a lot of angles of the pill war, enabling you to fix all of your pills.
To be frank, winning a pill war is a skill that requires a lot of practice, no matter how well you know the material. And also, even if your opponents are better than you, don't be afraid to commit lots of pills. If you lose them, you learn. If you don't commit them, you can't learn.
Letting the Enemy Attack
Pretty self-explanatory. I'm assuming, of course, that by "attacking" the enemy is spiking, or bringing in their own pills. Otherwise, the only thing you have to gain is time in which you can improve your defense and infrastructure.
There are reasons why this can be very effective. Hopefully you've had time to mine your area. You're fighting on familiar territory. You should have more bases nearby, and it's easier to bring in more pills. Also, the enemy is unlikely to be willing to commit as many pills, which means you'll have an extremely important advantage.
A pretty good rule of thumb is to attack when you're stronger, and defend when you're weaker.
Deforesting AKA The Resource War
This is not something to try in a quick game, or on a map with mostly forest. It takes time, and can leave you as helpless as your enemy in some circumstances. In the right game, however, it can really make a large difference.
The basic idea is to remove all the trees from the enemy's territory. Try to keep some for yourself. As wasteful as it seems, shooting them is the way to clear them. Slowly harvesting them is not.
Make sure you have good defense while deforesting. It often takes you far from your territory.
If trees are becoming scarce, protect your own. Okay, obvious advice. If you are scarce on trees, don't farm them all. Remember that trees grow back next to other trees, for the most part.
Once a team is out of trees, the game changes nature a bit. If you get some trees, you don't want to die at all. Disruptive mining in a pill war can be hard to deal with; if their side is full of craters it's hard for them to defend pills.
Remember that the builder parachutes in to the place where the tank was when the builder died, not to where the builder died. If you see where the tank is when the builder dies, then it's often pretty easy to wall the place in. If you can, be generous with the walls you build -- if the builder lands on the side of the square that it died in, the enemy can get it back. Build lots of walls. Another good time to attempt a walling-in is when an enemy builder lands, and as it's trying to get to the tank, it gets stuck against a wall or a shore.
Often, when an enemy frees their builder by killing it, they were standing right next to it at the time. You can usually even tell where, as there'll be rubble on one side of the wall it was trapped in (because you built lots of walls). So even if you aren't there when the builder gets killed, but you get there before it parachutes in again, it's worth building the walls back, around the place the enemy probably killed it from.
On the other side of the fence, there are two ways to avoid a series of having your builder walled in. One is to stand five or so squares back when you kill it. This isn't especially reliable, but it'll stop what I described above. The other is to get an ally to kill it for you.
Don't be afraid to take on more numerous teams if you're better than them. With small modifications to your strategy, it's not so hard to win these.
Forget about taking a lot of bases. There's no way that you can hold your own in terms of purely taking bases when outnumbered, for obvious reasons (unless your enemies are brain-dead).
Take three or so close bases and work with those. You should spread your pills about over three bases unless attacked, when you may have to bring more in.
Infrastructure is even more important.
Never ever die or lose your builder. These games take much more concentration.
Avoid dogfights.
Usually the enemy will grab more pills than you in the opening game. Let them come to you.
Never wander far from your pills. If you are going to attack, bring pills. Consider moving them in slowly, by escorting (as outlined above). Never go on a long foray, trying to pick off a single pill. Bad idea, bad idea.
Mines are even more important here for defense, as you need to slow down their attacks, to make it time consuming to take one of your pills.
When You Outnumber Them
First thing after the opening game is to secure all unprotected bases, which should be easy with superior numbers. Also, every single one of your pills should be around the same area, unless you want to put a couple on a base near the front line. It's unnecessary to spread them out, because you never should have to worry about bases being taken. Therefore, if you get in a pill war, bring in every one of your pills. The enemy can't do this, because you could take all their bases. So automatically you have an advantage in terms of pills.
General infrastructure helps you more than the enemy, so avoid mining random roads in general.
Deforesting can be especially effective, because you can afford to send someone into their territory to remove trees, but they can't because they'd lose all their pills. Make sure someone defends if someone is deforesting, of course.
Decoying is the way to take pills from the enemy here.
Engage in dogfights whenever possible, or anything else that basically ties up an enemy player. For example, you might get into a situation where you're facing an enemy that doesn't want to move with you where you are. Don't move. You're buying time for the rest of your team.
Try to destroy the enemy's infrastructure. Make them or her/him spread out.
One way to attack strongly without committing pills is to have each player on your team attacking in a different place at the same time. And do it with a four-wall block. Build a road to the pill that you're about to kill, so you can get there quickly. Build the walls, then have someone give a signal when everyone's ready. Hopefully, there's nothing the enemy can do to avoid losing a pill. If it's a two (or more) on one, the one player will save one of the pills, but will be unable to save them all. If you're the person that ends up with the enemy waiting right next to you, after you kill the pill, try to shoot the enemy up a bit, as there's probably no way for you to actually take the pill.
Follow these suggestions to help a team of a good person and a not so good person play almost as well as two good people. Good people really can get extremely frustrated when paired with someone worse than them, especially when that person isn't productive. However, there are things that bad people can do almost as well as good people with no training. (And when someone does this, it can really piss the opponents off. Fun.)
Take bases. They don't shoot back. And they're important in the game.
Mine, first massively for defense around your pills, and then into enemy territory to destroy infrastructure.
Build roads.
In a pill war, don't do any attacking yourself. Build walls to decoy. If your teammate dies, and you're alone at the pill war, certainly don't attack. If someone friendly is around, consider doing drive-by mining.
Take orders.
Do suicide attacks on pills: get well in range, then keep firing until the pill dies. You die too, but if an ally is there, s/he can pick it up.
A very smart thing to do in a pill war is to go around the other side sneakily and blow the hell out of your opponent. This can be very easy to do because of the way autoscrolling works -- if they are next to a pill war and you sneak up from straight behind them, chances are they won't see you until too late. This can really really mess up their effectiveness. For added effect, carry a compliment of mines with you and mine as you go.
Don't forget to pay your Shareware fee to Stuart!