Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus/TricksOfTheMacGameProgrammingGurus.iso/Games/Bolo 0.99.6/More information/rec.games.bolo FAQ Part 2

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rec.games.bolo Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - Part 2
Version 1.9.4 - February 7, 1995
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Compiled and maintained by Cory L. Scott (aka Kimboho)
([e-mail])
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This file is meant to be displayed in good ol' Monaco 9 point.
You are strongly encouraged to read this FAQ before posting to r.g.b.
If you have any questions or comments about this FAQ, please email
[e-mail].

The FAQ is divided into two sections for space reasons. The first part
is dedicated to the basics of Bolo and the USENET group devoted to it,
and the second part deals with maps, brains, and strategy.

The FAQ is also available by FTP to cybercow.rh.uchicago.edu.

The FAQ is available in HTML form at:
http://vasthi.rh.uchicago.edu/People/Woodward/BoloFAQ.html


PART II  -   BOLO NET RESOURCES, FACTS, AND STRATEGY

BOLO NET RESOURCES

I. Where are some good FTP sites?
II. How about Web Sites?

BOLO FACTS

I. Vital statistics
II. Interesting Things
III. Lag fun
IV. Maps
   A. Where can I find other maps or create my own?
   B. What are some of the guidelines I should follow for making maps?
   C. How do I post and download maps from r.g.b from or to my machine?
V. Brains
   A. Now what's this about Brains?
   B. Where can I get Brains?
   C. How do you write Brains?

BOLO STRATEGY

I. Finally, how about some strategy tips?

------------------
BOLO NET RESOURCES
------------------
I. Where are some good FTP sites?

    For everything under the Bolo sun: noproblem.uchicago.edu
    For the FAQ & Guides: cybercow.rh.uchicago.edu
    For misc. Bolo resources: saloon.intercon.com
                              aurora.alaska.edu

II. How about Web sites?

    The primary Bolo WWW page: http://bolo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/
    For the FAQ: http://vasthi.rh.uchicago.edu/People/Woodward/BoloFAQ.html
    For info on the tracker: http://kinko.engin.umich.edu/~fprefect/bolo.html
    For Swarthmore's Bolo page: http://sccs.swarthmore.edu/~bigearl/
    For a newbie's guide: http://kevdog.abo.fi/bolo/newbie_internet_guide.html
    For a good primer: http://bolo.ncsa.uiuc.edu/info/puppylove.html
    For Williams page: http://137.165.30.55/bolo.html

----------
BOLO FACTS
----------

I. Vital statistics

Common questions/misconceptions/facts about Bolo
------------------------------------------------
* When a builder is killed, the man comes back to where his tank was
when he died, not to where the man died.
* It takes 9 shots to kill a tank with full shields.
* It takes 15 shots to kill a pillbox with full armor.
* It takes 5 shots to destroy one section of wall.
* It takes 1 bundle of trees to build a pillbox.
* It takes 1/2 of a bundle of trees to build a road or wall.
* A tank can hold 40 mines.
* It takes 20 seconds to completely refuel a tank with no armor, shells
or mines.
* It takes 4 mines to kill a tank.
* It takes 5 bundles of trees to build a boat.
* A tank can hold 40 shells.
* A mine exploding next to a tank will damage the tank.
* Shooting from a boat, you can only hit land one square from the shore.
* Shooting from a boat: 1 hit sets off a mine, 1 hit destroys a piece of
bridge, 4 hits turns grass into swamp, 4 hits turns swamp into shallow
water, 4 hits turns gravel (dead bldg.) into shallow water.
* Here's how alliances work: (From Stuart's FAQ)
1. Select a person whose alliance you would like to join on the
"Players" menu and select "Request Alliance" on the "Bolo" menu.
2. If agreeable, that person should then select your name on their
"Players" menu and then select "Request Alliance" or "Invite New
Allies". If you are in an alliance, the menu choices are "Invite New
Allies" and "Leave Alliance". If you are not, then the menu choices are
"Request Alliance" and "Cancel Request". Take care that you have the
correct players selected on the "Players" menu when requesting/inviting.
If you are already in an alliance, you must select "Leave Alliance"
first before you can join a new one.

II. Interesting Things
* If you leave an alliance while sitting on a base, that base will
become "neutral" with no shields left, and it will be (at least
temporarily) yours. Any pillboxes you're carrying will be yours.
* When you shoot an enemy base and run over it, it will not completely
be in your possession until it gathers enough strength to defend itself.
* Pillboxes shoot at the nearest enemy.
* Pillboxes shoot from their center to your center, but you can hit them
on the corners.
* Also a base holds (apparently) 90 shots, 90 mines, and 18 armor units
(enough to rearmor two tanks with no spare armor units, plus 2 left to
defend itself). Hence, it takes 18 shots to destroy a fully-armored
base. Although, you can often run over a base when you only pluck 17
shots into it, before it shows an "X" in the status window.
* Maximum speed across (shallow) water without a boat is same as across
swamp or rubble (call it, "base speed"); across trees is twice faster,
across grass is a bit over four times faster, and across road is over
five times faster (~5.4) than base speed.
* You lose 5 mines and 5 shells, but no trees, per cell of water
traversed without a boat (at base speed), except for the first cell so
traversed if entered at road speed (no such reprieve if entered at base
speed; at grass speed you can make it across a single cell, but for more
you lose 2 more mines/shells than entering at road speed). A fully
loaded tank entering water from a road can traverse eight water cells
and still have 5 shells and 5 mines at the end (40 - 7*5 = 5).
* Trees grow first next to existing trees, then in decreasing order, on
grass, rubble, crater, swamp, road.
* Roughly the number of continuous squares of water you can cross
without sinking, if you have a full load of trees and a cyborg (like
Nexus) building roads under you automatically: 22
* From Stuart's FAQ: Bolo is the Hindi word for communication. Bolo is
about computers communicating on the network, and more importantly about
humans communicating with each other, as they argue, negotiate, form
alliances, agree [on] strategies, etc.
* Different versions of Bolo cannot communicate with each other.
* The more weapons you have, the bigger the explosion when you die.

III. Lag fun
Lag can screw things up. For example:
* You can run over boats without getting on them and sink in deep sea.
* Walls (and land) don't register being shot, so you must shoot more
slowly or use a lot of extra ammo during heavy lag.
* There are two messages that are displayed when someone quits a game:
So-and-so is quitting. So-and-so left game. When they get dropped by
netsplit, you only see one: So-and-so left game.
* If you're on a boat, and enter a twilight zone of nasty lag, you can
fly through walls, pillboxes, bases, everything else. Of course,
sometimes the lag abruptly ends, leaving you somewhere really strange.
This is often referred to as the "enchanted canoe" effect, from a Ren &
Stimpy cartoon.

IV. Maps

A. Where can I find other maps or create my own?
There's absolutely TONS of maps you can play on. You can get them at
sumex-aim.stanford.edu, noproblem.uchicago.edu, mac.archive.umich.edu,
aurora.alaska.edu, or saloon.intercon.com for starters. Try different
ones out for the different types of play you may use. Some are small and
some are gigantic. Sometimes maps are posted on r.g.b. So, you want to
create your own map, eh? Glad you asked. . .

========================================
           Bolo Map Editors
 section contributed by Pete Gontier
  (complaints to: [e-mail])
========================================

A map editor is an application which supports the creation of Bolo
maps. There are two sorts: interactive and random.

Interactive editors are similar to the painting and drawing
applications with which the reader is undoubtedly familiar. There
is most often a variety of tools with which to manipulate the map,
adding and changing the various terrain types and objects. When
running a random map generator, however, the user might merely be
prompted to enter several parameter ranges within which the program
generates a map in an automated fashion.

Interactive editors have the advantage of giving the user great
control over the map, but they also has the disadvantage of giving
one possible player (the map creator) too much familiarity with the
map's geography. Random map generators, of course, solve this
problem, but the maps they generate lack the sophistication of a
hand-built map. Some people prefer to start with a map generated by
a random program and then fine-tune the map with an interactive
program.

There is actually a third sort of map editor, but there is only one
example of it: Bolotomy.

Interactive Bolo Map Editors
----------------------------

BoloMapEditor
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       1.0 of March 13, 1993
author:                 Thomas Barrett ([e-mail]-
state.edu)
distribution:           unknown
system requirements:    600K
documentation:          none found in archive

This is a no-frills map editor with few tools. Its advantages
include a tiny disk space footprint (64K). However, its
disadvantages include no Undo command, no control over player
starting positions (they are always the same) and no selection tool
(which would allow clipboard operations and other transformations).

BoloStar (tm)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       1.5 of April 26, 1993
author:                 Keith Fry ([e-mail])
                        Dan Rudman ([e-mail])
distribution:           shareware, $10
system requirements:    900K/1024K, System 7
documentation:          extensive (for shareware)

BMAPEdit
~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       2.01 of October 20, 1994
                        (this review is of a previous version)
author:                 Carl R. Osterwald ([e-mail])
distribution:           shareware, $10
system requirements:    800K/1024K, System 6.0.4
documentation:          average (for shareware); includes Balloon Help

Both BoloStar and BMAPEdit are impressive applications. They each
have a feature list as long as you would expect from a 1.X-level
release of any commercial software. They each are designed and
executed extremely well. A few things, of course, set them apart.

BoloStar has as much well-written documentation as you might expect
from a shareware product, complete with a few recommendations on
map editing technique in addition to nuts-and-bolts operational
details. BMAPEdit, on the other hand, valiantly attempts to make up
for what it lacks in documentation with Balloon Help.

BoloStar supports plug-in external command files which can perform
operations on the current map selection. BoloStar also supports
"scraps", like Bolo map clip art, in a special menu.

BMAPEdit has a generally more intuitive interface and has a few
more useful built-in features.

(Both programs are now distributed with well-integrated random
map generators.)

Random Map Generators
---------------------

CookMapper
~~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       1.5c (no vers resource!) of December 16, 1993
author:                 John McLaughlin ([e-mail])
distribution:           freeware, apparently
system requirements:    384K (this is probably arbitrary, as it is
                        the THINK C default)
documentation:          sparse

The only random map generator which gives you the option of watching
the action in progress -- interesting fractal animation as this
generator builds terrain. Parameters: fragmentation, area, number of
islands, number of bases, number of pillboxes, island spacing, level
of protection for each pillbox, percentage of forest, and check-boxes
for roads and boats. This generator seems to be taking the correct
approach in that it talks to the user in more intuitive terms than
rows and columns, etc., but its maps lack the sophisticated features
of maps generated by other programs.

MapGenerator
~~~~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       0.97 of April 27*, 1993
author:                 Markus Julen ([e-mail])
                        Ambros Marzetta ([e-mail])
distribution:           shareware, $10
system requirements:    450K
documentation:          none found in archive

*The program's version data claims this is the release date, but the
modification date of the file is the 28th.

This generator is truly random. The user has no control over the
randomness. It tends to generate maps of roughly the same size
each, but within each map there are widely varying degrees of land,
water, forest, etc. This generator also is happy to generate the
"man-made" aspects of a Bolo map, including walls, bases,
pillboxes, roads, rubble. It even generates some rather complex
man-made areas, like ports, mazes, and super-bases, near which are
several bases and several pillboxes.

Unfortunately, this program crashed fairly often in testing, which
is not suprising since its version number would seem to indicate it
is a pre-release version. However, crashing does not result in much
lost work, because the program works quickly and it is easy to
reboot and run it again.

RandomMap
~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       1.1.0 of July 1, 1993
author:                 Peter N. Lewis ([e-mail])
distribution:           freeware
system requirements:    293K, System 6
documentation:          sufficient

This random map editor allows a fair amount of control over the
parameter ranges of generated maps. Parameters: rows, columns,
percentage of land, percentage of forest (on the land), number of
bases, number of pillboxes, and base maximum supplies.
Unfortunately, while allowing more control, RandomMap does not
generate such things as roads or mazes.

Miscellaneous Map Editing Tools
-------------------------------

Bolotomy (tm)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
version rewiewed:       April 29, 1993
author:                 Alan Witmer (fostex!alan_witmer@dartvax*)
                        Jerry Halstead (fostex!jerry_halstead@dartvax*)
distribution:           shareware, $8
system requirements:    color, possibly System 7, possibly a Quadra**
documentation:          sufficient

*It's possible your mailer will know where dartvax is (dartmouth.edu?),
but it's not likely. The authors should mail the FAQ maintainer with
better addresses.

**This is informal software, folks; the authors haven't had a chance
to test on much else. It may run fine on everything.

This is a tool to convert any PICT into a Bolo map. It uses
sophisticated image analysis algorithms to pick terrain types,
sizes, and placements. It doesn't have a huge feature list; it gets
its job done and gets out of the way; but there are some
adjustments for the user to make so that the transfer goes as
desired.

B. What are some of the guidelines I should follow for making maps?
(From Matt Slot, [e-mail])

Note: This is simply advice on how to make a good map, but different
people feel differently about map making, so try different styles if you
like.
------
Some maps are neat, others play well, and some just suck. Maps that have
a particular shortage of trees, a poor layout of the islands, or most
annoyingly start positions beyond the edge of the explored universe.
Maps should be well thought out so that:
* There is a well distributed selection of bases. No clumps of more than
3 within a 30 square diameter.
* Trees are in abundance, and more can grow back easily everywhere.
(Note: Some maps have "resource strategies", where trees are precious.
Maps like these can also be fun to play. - cls)
* Land should not have Deep Water embedded into it or without a suitable
shallow water buffer.
* Start positions should be within sight of land, but still in deep sea.
* If you need to make a big map, make it easy to traverse it. If you
make one with lots of islands, make them close enough to be visible to
each other.
* Remember realism is as important as playability -- but both can make a
map very enjoyable.
* Large Maps, Small Teams - When playing a 2 on 2 or a 3 on 3, the map
should definitely be no bigger than 100 by 100. For 4-6 players, maps
between 50 by 50 and 75 by 75 are optimal. For 6-8 players, maps from 70
by 70 to 90 by 90 are optimal. For more players, maps should still be
less than 120 by 120. A large map slows the game down to a crawl, where
a player must make a long foray into heavily mined territory to find a
single base/pillbox, kill it and return home without refueling. To
defend more than a small area involves a large network of roads which
are easily mined. In general, In either case the game is not one of
skill, but who has the most patience (and time!).

C. How do I post and download maps from r.g.b from or to my machine?

How to get maps that are posted: The files should be posted in BinHex
4.0 format. All you need to do is save the article containing the map as
text, and run it through a BinHex decoder (such as BinHex 4.0 or Stuffit
Expander) on your Macintosh, and a map file will come out. If you're
using UNIX's trn, just type s [mapname] (the mapname doesn't matter) and
ftp the file to your machine from your UNIX account. You could also cut
and paste it into a normal text file and run that text file through the
decoder.

How to post maps: Just run your map through BinHex 4.0, changing it from
an application to an upload. The resultant file will be a simple text
file. Just attach that file to your USENET message.

V. Brains

A. Now what's this about Brains?
Brains are small bits of code that allow the computer to control your
tank for you. The first brain was Stuart's autopilot. You can use brains
for various uses. You can set a slew of brains to fight it out on a new
map to determine its playability. You can use them as allies. You can
fight against them for practice. Remember, though, for each brain, you
have to use a separate copy of Bolo. For example, I sometimes run 3
brains on my Centris 610, and run a 4th copy of Bolo to play myself.
That's how you can play by yourself. Just choose Appletalk (even if the
machine is isolated), and run three or more copies of the application,
with one Brains folder (which hold the different Brain codes), and join
in yourself. Ally them to make it more interesting. There are now brains
called cyborgs (or borgs, for short). They allow you to control certain
parts of the game, while it controls another. For example, a borg might
control your builder, so you don't have to mess with getting trees and
building roads. Others might be used for navigation. If you don't want
people to play with borgs in your game, make sure you turn off computer
tanks in the game setup dialog.

B. Where can I get Brains?
You can get brains at sumex-aim.stanford.edu, mac.archive.umich.edu,
saloon.intercon.com, aurora.alaska.edu, or noproblem.uchicago.edu, via
FTP. Each site has different versions and varieties. They are often posted
to r.g.b directly.

The following list contains the known and publicly available brains.

Full Bots:
----------
Indy 2.02
Dumbot 0.5
Standard Autopilot (comes with the Bolo package)
Helper Autopilot .02
Tonto 1.0 (Formerly Milo's Autopilot)
Rover .01
Maxwell 1.4
RicklesBot (Just randomly insults players - nothing else)
Ladmo 0.60

Cyborgs:
--------
Nexus 1.2.1
Navbot
Brainwave 1.0

Note about Indy from its author:
Q: "I can't get Indy to work, when I select it from the menu nothing
happens."
A: You haven't increased the memory size. Indy takes memory form the
bolo application heap. If there is not enough memory then Bolo will not
load the brain. Bolo requires from 450-1200k depending on the map used,
if sound is installed, and if a memory hungry brain like Indy is on. I
haven't had any problems with Indy 1.4 running average size maps on a
1200k partition.

C. How do you write Brains?
Stuart included some sample code and directions for writing brains in
the Bolo package. Also, there is a mailing list which discusses brain
programming. To subscribe, send mail to [e-mail],
with any subject, and body subscribe brain Your Name.
You can mail to the list by sending to [e-mail].

IV. Finally, how about some strategy tips?

There are several strategy guides available at noproblem.uchicago.edu.
Here's a few from r.g.b:
----------
From Steve Kives ([e-mail])

I think most anyone can take a lone pb within a half-minute if they are
not worried about: 1) running their armor down to zero, and 2) lurkers
in the woods nearby. My standard strategy is this: Shoot two spaces near
the pb for buildings. These spaces are usually spaces #2 and #3 in a
straight line away from the pb. But don't build yet. Rush in and pile on
the shots. Plan on receiving one hit, and circle away with no more
damage. The pb is 1/3 damaged and angry. Build your buildings and line
yourself up, not on the same straight axis with pb/buildings, but just
one lane over. This allows careful placement of the crosshairs on the
pb, while the pb must shoot through the buildings before any shots hit
you. If you have a pb, use a pb in space #3. Keep the cursor on the pb
after building. Saddle up the lane after a few seconds, when the pb is
only slightly mad, and pour in the glancing blows. If you just built
buildings, some shots still get through, and you must tirade after about
2 seconds. If you built a pb, then don't move! When enemy pb is dead,
charge forward, simultaneously clicking the mouse button. Man fixes your
pb, which is irate. If a vulture comes out of the woods, he is meat.
This is a good and realistic strategy in a game crowded with cunning
players and many tricks-up-the-sleeves. The whole move takes 30 seconds.
Shoot for mines, and shoot the pb in one quick movement. Build
obstructions and clear defending mines when waiting for pb to cool a
little. Then move in for coup-de-grace and fix your pb in a deft stroke
(when shots are not hitting you -- don't get your man killed). This
strategy generally deals with problems 1 and 2 mentioned previously.
Also, lay a minefield several spaces behind you, and right outside the
margins of nearby forests. This helps punish the vultures. As far as
base-defenses go, I think the most successful strategy is to lay
scattered mines (not chain-reactable) throughout the entire firing rage
of your pbs, and a little beyond. Especially lay mines right next to pbs
and your bases, though it can make refueling a little delicate. There is
nothing more satisfying than seeing an enemy spiker blow his man up.
Time to bum-rush his pillboxes! A very important element of pb-defenses
is adverse terrain. A swamp is great, otherwise use lots of craters.
This severely inhibits enemy builders doing bad things to you, and road-
building into your base shows up like a beacon on the pillbox-view
function. For the devious, a proven strategy is to sneak up directly
behind the enemy attacking your base/pbs. This means, of course, a very
wide circle flanking movement, because you cannot let him see you. When
sneaking up behind, just charge right in and shoot! Why does this work?
Because auto-scroll has a number of failings, and this is one of them.
His autoscroll will continue to view your pbs at 10 spaces away, while
you sneak up to within a couple of spaces on the other side. This tactic
is lethal every time. Of course, nothing beats the pb-gathering tactics
of a couple of old- pros who can decoy-kill at light speed. One game, I
hooked up with "Stranger" and we did this without any verbal(typing)
communication of any kind. Wasn't necessary. Took a pb every 20 seconds
for a few minutes (refueling when we had to) and the game was a joke.
The other team evaporated to other games when they saw the pbs
disappearing that quickly from the status window. If the other team
doesn't have similar tacticians, they haven't a chance. A wonderful
example of this tactic occurs when you find an enemy(uninhabited) base
with two pbs flanking. Draw an imaginary line from one pb, through the
other pb, and extended on out several spaces. Shoot for mines first! Put
a building on this line (space #1 away from enemy pb). Put a pb on this
line next (space #2). Your friend gets behind friendly pb just as you
shoot (from furthest possible distance) the farthest pb from your
friendly pb. If you do this right, this pb will start blowing away the
other enemy pb, which consequently starts to blow away the building,
then the friendly pb. But both enemy pbs are dead before anyone is
scratched! And your friend should instantly repair friendly pb to help
ward off well-armed vultures. This tactic fails when the enemies return
too soon and start bickering. But this tactic works WAY too often when
the maps are huge. If you like to lurk, find a well-traveled road
through the woods. Check for mines in the ambush site, then lay 3-4
mines in a row right next to the road(in the trees). Wait precisely on
the opposite side, in the trees. When sucker comes through (even if
going slowly for mine-caution) you start shooting first, damaging him
and pushing him into opposite row of mines. A few more shots and it's
over. AS far as safe-guarding your man goes (dead man is several times
worse than dead tank) many players on the Internet need some serious
help! I see the same mistakes made time and time again, by players that
should have seen the light much sooner. Lesson #1: mines abound!
Especially around enemy bases. Doing something with the man? Shoot the
prospective location(s) first. It's worth the ammo. By far. Lesson #2:
people love to shoot little defenseless enemy builders. I know I do!
When sending the man out, and there are enemy tanks around, the man
should NEVER cross anything but pavement and grass (or trees, but only
if you're being sneaky). Some players are so anxious to repair a pb, that
they spuriously send the man over 6 craters and 4 swamp spaces. Gun
fodder.
----------
From Tobin C. Anthony, [e-mail]

My pb strategy is somewhat different on UDP than AppleTalk. On
AppleTalk, I just sidled up to a box, move my crosshairs to full range
and rest them on the opposite edge of the pb and blast away. The pb
depletes a lot of your armor but it pushes you away with each shot.
Finally, you are out of range but with little armor. You just wait a
minute and gather wood and wait for the pb to chill. Then you can blast
it straight on again providing you waited long enough. This method all
but depletes your armor but even with the chill-out time it is the
fastest way to get a pb. I found that there are no prizes for getting
pb's retaining most amount of armor. The thing you want to minimize is
the time spent grabbing the pb before your enemy does a pb check and
comes blasting away. If one of my bases is close enough, I will even
take that cool-down time to replenish my armor. I am not proud. On UDP,
I find that netlag usually works against you. You might end up killing
the pb but you will get blown to bits as well. It's frustrating to blast
a pb and wait there anxiously as the net grinds to a halt. You only see
a few shots changing hands but you end up materializing somewhere else
far away from the pb with a tantalizing but short- lived 'x' on the
statusboard. You can use a lot of the other methods mentioned previously
to attack a pb under UDP but there is no substitute for having an ally
to act as a decoy(Bolo raison d'tre??). Two allies can start out near a
friendly base and end up mowing down a swath of enemy pbs in no time.---
---------------
From Eric Hiris ([e-mail])

Using Pillboxes (offensively): 1) spiking the enemy base(s) - that is,
placing a pillbox next to the enemies base (for you novices out there,
this works best if you place your pb right next to the enemy base -
watch out for mines though). 2) attacking enemy pbs. That is using your
pb as a superwall to shoot around when attacking a pb. Just be
forewarned: there are vultures out there waiting to capture both your pb
and the one you are attacking. 3)shooting your own pb when other are
near - kablooie! (or is this defense?)Bases: Despite what you might
think from discussions in this newsgroup, bases are how the game is won
or lost. If one team has all the bases, then everyone else has lost.
Period. Therefore, take as many as you can early in the game and defend
them to the best of your ability. If you are satisfied with two early in
the game, well, uh, good luck. If you take 10 bases right away, you will
lose some of them, but so what? You got 8 more. :) Base placement during
map making: Personal Opinion: If you are making a map, please please,
please do not put bases adjacent to each other. Forests: The importance
obviously depends on the map. If there is forest everywhere, trees are
almost a non-issue. If there are few forests, by all means, go hide in
the enemies for a bit and when no one is around take the forest or
destroy it. In some sense, it is like killing all your enemies' men if
the remaining forests are guarded well. Another thing to be aware of is
that water, walls, roads, and swamp adjacent to forest will eliminate or
greatly reduce the regrowth of forest. Use this to your benefit or
against your enemies to the best you can. As stated recently in this
newsgroup, forest grows back most rapidly on grass when it is surrounded
by other trees. Harvesting trees in a checkerboard pattern will result
in the fastest regrowth of trees if you are concerned about ecology :)
Walls: Some people like them, some people don't. They are mostly used
offensively - to hide behind when attacking a pb. Others try to use them
defensively, but my experience suggests that except for special
situations, walls are generally not effective in defense. The best use
for the walltool is to make boats. Roads: Nice, but if you make them,
people have a tendency to mine them right away. Roads are best used to
cover up gravel and mine blasts in your 'home' area, a place where
people will get pb'd to death if they try a mining run. Also two roads
will block a waterway that the enemy has been using (or a road and a
wall)Mines: I don't know if I want to start this again, but: 1) the most
effective use of a mine (I think) is to one mine on squares that share a
border with your pb. Therefore, when people try decoy tricks, the man
will die trying to build wall if they are not careful. If they do manage
to kill the pb, your enemy will hit the mine(s) before and or after the
pb and be weakened and slowed down, allowing you time to return for easy
revenge. Another note is that placing a pb on or within an area of slow
terrain(swamp, mine blasts, rubble) makes it a real pain for a pb to be
retrieved after it has been killed - again allowing you time to return
for revenge. 2)making water ways. This keeps enemy men with devious
plans away from your bases. Also, in regards to the 'big mine
controversy' that raged in this group recently: make waterways with
mines. As of yet there are no sea mines, so you are perfectly safe going
through mined enemy territory on a boat. Let them spend all their time
mining! 3) Mine randomly. Yes, this counts as a strategy, I hate it,
others love it, but until further notice this is a strategy, like it or
not. This strategy allows you to slow the pace of the game down to
almost 0. Be warned that your enemy will do the same and the enemy may
just circumvent all your mines by making a waterway. Personal Opinion:
use in desperation only.

-----------------
From Robert Fullmer ([e-mail])

If you can't take a pillbox without dying, 9 times out of 10, or don't
know how to run a two man, or are generally not quite an expert at the
game yet, spike only after careful consideration and approval from
teammates. Clearly, there are cases where this rule doesn't apply (when
you're not an expert but your allies are even greener, for example), but
I've had problems in the past with allies that pick up two or three
pills from one of my heavily fortified bases and spike them deeper than
we're ready to take. We lose the pills, and if they repeat the exercise
for long enough, the game. Spiking is an art. It can make the difference
when used properly, but can lose the game when misapplied. So this is a
call to newbies: If you're thinking about spiking with a pillbox you
didn't just capture yourself, check it out with your allies first.
-------------
End of rec.games.bolo FAQ - Part 2
-------------
Maintained by Cory L. Scott, [e-mail]

This FAQ is published by Cory L. Scott, and may not be distributed for profit
in any form other than a USENET feed. It may not be altered or changed without
the author's permission.


--
Cory L. Scott            | "They're inhabitants of alt.tasteless. . .] where
[e-mail] |  they march to a decidedly different drummer, and,
University of Chicago    |  when they're done marching, usually shoot him."
-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-|-| - Dave Ratcliffe -|-|-|-|