Why you shouldn't raze hill?

[Tortortor]

Do you know - sometimes you should not raze enemy hill?

If you can raze enemy hill and enemy have more then one hill - just left two ants near the hill.
1/2 (if enemy have two hills) of new enemy's ants will born at this hill and die. So at another hill only 1/2 new ants will be born, so you will have some advantage from this.

[nhaehnle]

That's a very cool strategic idea. I'm not going to implement it any more, but I wonder if there's anybody who has implemented this? The big question is: when should you go ahead and raze the hill anyway? Of course when an enemy approaches and there's a danger of your ants dying. Perhaps also when no ant has come out of the hill for N turns?

[Tortortor]

hill should be razed if
1) enemy's ants coming
or
2) we don't see enemy's ants anywhere on the map for several turns (probably all them died)
or
3) turn number near turnlimit

[itzkow]

that's genius man, I love the idea

[GreenTea]

I will include this cheesy strategy in my final version But this is just for fun - I don't belive it can really be very helpfull.. Because on my local tests I don't see any game which was winning only because of this cheese. But, who knows..

[BenJackson]

[Parasprites]

I think the benefits would be very rare at best. You would have to have almost complete map awareness to prevent accidentally getting an unfavorable cutoff, like Ants Not Razing Hills.

[Tortortor]

[Hippo]

Wow, I have not imagined this reason ... you are absolutely right.
The only problem could be if the enemy could take a lot of food at once to gain time for rescue mission, but it really would be costy mission. For multihills against small number of opponents this could gain a lot.

Another reason could be when you lose your last hill with small number of alive opponent's. Razing the hill could finish the game while you don't have enough points. If there is good chance to raze another hill, simultaneous capture is better.
For a 3 player game with single hill per player. If you lost hill to player A, razing hill of player B left you on 2nd place with score 3/2/0. Razing both hills at the same time lefts you on first place with 4/2/0. And razing A's hill first lefts you on shared first place with 2/2/1. ... but when you lost your hill, you rarely have enough information about the whole map to be sure opponents will not eat enough food to kill all your inviders before the hills will be razed.

[Tortortor]

Good post from ChrisH:
viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2202&view=unread#p13735

Looks like the same strategy from another point of view - control the hill where new ant will be born.