Flags and special areas

Flags and special areas introduction

Think of the globulation world as a fragile ecosystem. Flags and special areas are two important ways of managing that ecosystem. You can tell your globs how to treat parts of the map using flags and special areas - for example, instructing your workers to keep a path from becoming overgrown with wheat, or sending a party of warriors to attack everything within 5 squares of an enemy base. The best strategy is to use special areas as a way of controlling the way your globs normally behave, and flags to temporarily override that behaviour.

Managing flags and areas

Flags and special areas are controlled using the second menu in the right sidebar of Globulation 2's game screen.

• The first row of icons in that menu are the three types of flag you can set: exploration flags, war flags, and clearing flags.
• The second row of icons are the three types of area you can define: forbidden areas, guard areas, and clearing areas.
• The third row of icons specify whether you want to lay down or erase special areas.
• The fourth and fifth rows of icons specify patterns you can draw special areas with.

To lay down an area: click on the type of area you want to define. You may also want to specify whether you are laying down or clearing an area, and what sort of pattern to draw. Hold down the left mouse button and drag your mouse over the area of screen you want to lay down.

To create a flag: click on the flag you want, then click on the area of the screen you want to apply it to. Click again to lay down another flag, or right click to stop creating flags. You can adjust a flag's diameter and specify the number of globs it should attract by clicking on the flag and adjusting the sliders in the right sidebar. You can move a flag around the screen by holding down the left mouse button and dragging it.

To remove a flag: click on the flag you want to delete, then press the key 'd' or push the button 'delete' in the right panel (near the lower right corner)

Flags

There are three types of flag, each type attracts a different type of glob. A flag can attract up to 20 globs, who will try to stay within the area of the flag until they get hungry. Globs will generally give flags a high priority - preferring to attend a flag than to train, for example.

Exploration Flags

These attract explorers, who will circle around the edge of the flag's range. Exploration flags with large range are more useful when you want to explore an area of terrain, while smaller ranges allow you to get a better idea of what the globs in an area are doing.

War flags

These attract warriors, who tend to hover on the edge of a flag's range. Setting quite a small range encourages them to attack things near the point the flag is at itself.

You can specify not to attract warriors below a certain minimum skill level - a warrior's skill level is whichever is the least of its attack strength and attack speed. When you click on a war flag, its menu in the right sidebar includes a set of "minimum required level" radio buttons.

Clearing flags

These attract workers, who will clear resources from within the flag's range. They destroy the resources they harvest rather than picking them up, which causes them 10 points of damage for each resource they destroy.

You can specify only to clear certain resources with a clearing flag. Clicking on the flag will show a list of resources in the right sidebar, and clicking the button next to each resource type specifies whether that resource should be cleared.

Special areas

There are three types of area, although they aren't direct equivalents of the three types of flag. Unlike flags, special areas don't all work the same way and don't have a menu associated with them.

Forbidden areas

Warriors and workers will never enter a forbidden area, and will generally try to leave as quickly as possible if the area they are in becomes forbidden. Workers won't harvest resources in a forbidden area even if the space they stand on beside it isn't forbidden. Explorers pay no attention to forbidden areas.

Guard areas

When they have nothing else to do, warriors will go to the nearest guard area and remain there until they find something to do.

Clearing areas

Workers will clear any resource in a clearing area they pass next to, unless they are hungry or critically injured. Like with clearing flags, they destroy the resource rather than picking it up, so they lose 10 points of health for every resource they destroy. Unlike clearing flags, they make no attempt to go to a clearing area, even if they have nothing else to do.

Flag and special area strategy

Flags and special areas are a key element in globulation 2, so you will need to get comfortable using them.

General tricks

• Try not to leave war or clearing flags set for too long, as your globs won't train themselves while they're attending to the flag.
• Don't put flags too far away from your inns until your globs can walk quite fast, as they won't be there long enough to do anything before getting hungry - and perhaps starving on the way back.
• Alternatively, make sure to put plenty of well staffed inns along the route to any flags.

War flags and guard areas

• Warriors tend to clog up busy town centres. Creating guard areas away from important routes will ease this problem.
• Since warriors will always go to the nearest guard area, you can entice a group of warriors to a spot with a war flag, then take the flag away and leave them in the guard area. Make sure to create plenty of inns nearby though, or they might not return to their post after they next have lunch.
• Warriors tend to hover at the boundary of a war flag's area unless they can see an enemy. If you want them to attack a particular spot, reduce the size of the flag or drag it so your warriors walk past it. Alternatively, use exploration flags to mark out areas to attack.
• If you're often attacked in the same place, you can set a war flag there and leave it set to request no warriors until there's an attack.
• Alternatively, set a war flag in a central location, then when there's an attack, click on the flag, hit the space bar, and drag the mouse slightly. Because hitting the space bar centres the screen on the last action, your war flag will now be pointing exactly where the action occurred.
• If your globs can generally walk faster than they swim, putting a guard area at sea can be useful. Since globs get hungrier the more work they do, they will get hungry more slowly swimming around than walking around.

Clearing flags and clearing areas

• Clearing flags are best used to remove resources, clearing areas are best used to keep resources from growing back over a frequently used part of town, such as a path to an inn.
• Clearing areas tend to get neglected at busy times. If it's important that an area remains clear, make sure to create at least one or two cleared areas around it as a buffer. When it's really important, always use flags.
• A small team in the middle of a large forest can quickly find their town getting overgrown. When playing on a map for the first time, it's always a good idea to lay down a clearing area around where you want your town to go.
• Computer opponents sometimes let their town become overgrown, and won't surrender while enemy units remained trapped inside. You will need both clearing and war flags to clear these buildings out.
• If you have a small wheat field being overwhelmed by a large forest, you can set a clearing flag for wood only, to give the wheat space to grow.

Forbidden flags

• When globs start getting caught up in tiny alleyways between buildings, forbid them from that area. They'll quickly find a better route.
• It's always a good idea to forbid your workers from harvesting a small part of any forest or field, so that it can regrow later.
• Forbidding globs from entering the area near a resource will make it easier for the resource to grow into that area.