M*U*L*E* Tip by Juha P.
I don't think that the following logic has been clearly explained anywhere, the manual or the M.U.L.E. tips pages on the net. As crystite is a luxury item that doesn't fulfill a need, its price is based on the existing shortages of need-based products (food, energy, smithore) in the colony. If a shortage of a need-based product exists, the crystite price will be down in the dumpster. And, vice versa: If all players have their basic needs met, the luxury of crystite will be valued high. This is basically a simple example of the Maslow hierachy of needs. This knowledge can be used as a weapon against a player who is going for a win with crystite. Keep the price down and he/she will have to sell cheap or let it spoil!
M*U*L*E* Tips by Rorke
1. If you're a Crystite baron, choose your plots on the left half of the board. It's easier to re-condition your MULEs for mining if they are on the left half of the board.
2. On the Atari800Win emulator version, you can cheat by pressing the left and right movement buttons at the same time. This has the effect of leaping you about two plots to the right.
3. I haven't decided which is best: getting your plots on the edges of the map first because you have plenty of time to outfit them correctly in the early months, or getting more central plots so you can start claiming adjacent territory in many different directions depending on assays. I definitely tend to outfit the outlier plots once only, choosing what I want them to be in the endgame right away.
4. Immediately after or even during the land grant stage, hold your joystick in the up position. It doesn't hurt anything and will give you the jump on land auctions. (Other auctions have a bell and a delay where you can get ready, pushing the joystick the way you want to go before anyone is allowed to move. The land auctions, however, frequently get awarded to computers because they get a half second jump on the bidding.
M.U.L.E. HINTS by Jack
Mule is a fascinating game, for many reasons. There is actually more than one way to win the game. You can be the most prosperous colonist, and end the game as first founder...or you can achieve a colony total of over one hundred thousand dollars, and retire in elegant estates...or you can be first founder of a colony with over one hundred thousand dollars at the end of the game! I personally don't consider a game won unless I finish as first founder, and can retire in elegant estates. There are even higher levels. At 120 thousand gross, there is an ending message that says, "your retirement will be luxurious". Now that I have achieved that level, I consider that my goal for winning a game. There are many tips, tricks, and strategies that can help achieve a high total score. Selecting Plots of Land In month one, select a river valley plot. If you can hold back your greed for mining plots, try to get a second river valley plot before they are all gone. That way, you can control the market on food, and move an energy mule to one of the plots in month 11 or 12, freeing up a plot for a final crystite push. Buy land when you can! Even in month one. You can effectively spend 700 on a plot in month one, and still put out a food mule and an energy mule that month, thus getting on the road to self sufficiency early. Thereafter, buy as much land as you can afford to, spend as much as you can afford to as long as you can outfit the land. One exception--don't spend outrageously for a plot in month 12 if someone lost it for not filing the deed---There just isn't enough time left for a high priced plot to pay off in the last month.
CRYSTITE STRATEGY
Crystite plots come in three densities: high, medium, and low, and are arranged thusly on the map: It is important to get as many of these plots in a crystite producing area, and to have as many of them adjoining as possible, because a player with adjoining plots producing the same product receives extra production in the adjoining plots. I have used this strategy to produce a fair amount of crystite in several adjoining plots that did not assay as containing crystite at all!
Selecting Crystite Plots
Here is where some people tell me I cheat! I keep a dry erase marker handy when I play MULE. I watch closely while the computer takes its turns, and I mark the assayed high and medium crystite plots with an H or an M. When there is a meteor strike, I mark the spot with an X. Then, when I select my plot next time, I try to get a high crystite plot, or the meteor strike plot, if I am quick enough to get it. Once the plot is taken, hopefully by me, the dry erase marker wipes right off my monitor or TV screen. It surprises me that many of the experienced players I play with for the first time just rapidly hit their fire button to speed through the computer turns, not knowing that we human players get to see the results of the assays the computer makes.

M*U*L*E* Tips by Phil
*Always* get at least one river plot, so you're never totally without food, unless there's a shortage of energy. Or a pest attack. If you're playing 1-2 player, don't worry about Smithore. Just make sure you leave with 50 bars the computer will have to dump later in the game. In Nintendo M.U.L.E., you can catch the Wampus more than once each round. My record is 6 times, but I average 3 per turn.

M*U*L*E* Tips from Matthias K.
My usual MULE strategy is to create a food and/or energy shortage in the first half of the game. Usually two food fields and/or four energy fields are enough to make a good profit. To create the shortage one can either wait for the pirates and/or buy once all food and/or energy. In the second half of the game I switch over to crystite.

M*U*L*E* Tip from Alex L.
This is not a tip but a bug in the Atari MULE version...
Try it and see...
If you are playing to have fun and not in competition wait until the Crystite price is very low the computer players will not move... You and your friend split one stays to buy and the other goes up to sell. If the price is low enough the computer players will automatically move up to buy your Crystite at the minimum store price. Your friend the one that stayed at the bottom to sell then runs up to push the price up and the store off the bottom of the screen. If the price was low enough, (I think around 58) the computer opponents will hang at the bottom but always at the minimum buy line. Your friend has then run all the way to the top of the screen causing the price to rise... Watch your time limit. At the last minute run down as your friend backs off to the bottom once again.. Speed to the bottom and sell all of you Crystite to the computers... On occasion I could get almost 300 per unit.
NOTE: Alex notes that he was using all Flapper characters at the time.

M*U*L*E* Tip from Jeff
Someone really needs a dry-erase marker to map out where the assays were?
OK, here are my few tips for the best game in history, MULE.

First, some quick tips.

Play on as big of a screen as possible. A 46" projection makes finding the wampus a lot easier.
Always play with as many humans as possible. I actually will only play with three others at this point. With a computer in the game, an entire market, Smithore, pretty much goes by the boards. And as you'll see, I can't let Smithore go by the boards in order to win and have a ton of fun at the same time.
I should preface this by saying I've been playing MULE on a regular basis for 14 years, all on the same Atari 800, which during my college years was filled up with beer(by accident) at a party, drained out, and came back for more. I'm just glad MULE doesn't require a keyboard. I'm on my third MULE disk, having worn out two others.

OK, now my main tip on playing the Tournament game with three other people: the Smithore Gambit. Actually, my Smithore Gambit is a derivative of a friend's, who created it after getting pummeled by Crystite one too many games. At base, the SG is similar to most other market-based strategies: try and control a single market and wring every last dime out of it you can. It differs because of the sheer power you can wield with Smithore. The people I play with are totally convinced that the end-all and be-all of the game is to capitalize on an early Smithore run, and then flood the market and produce Crystite until the game ends. So they go after high-density Crystite plots early, which are usually on crappy Smithore plots. Instead I try and grab two or more mountain plots that connect to each other, and then start slowly producing Smithore. When everyone is producing Smithore on the plains and selling their 21 units at 250 around round 5, sell right along with them. The next round they might put in even more Smithore to capitalize on high prices, but the guys I play with start reoutfitting for Crystite immediately. So the next round, you start to have the only Smithore on the board, but the price is dropping and the store is filling up. Some may pray for a fire to renew the market, but I say screw that, you can buy Smithore like crazy using the money you made last round. Sometimes you can buy it all back for half of what you sold it for. Most players will balk at spending $130 a unit on Smithore, but if you can buy the only 30 the store has, it's going to hit 250 the next round once again. And at that point, you can sit back, relax, let the Smithore trickle out of your mines, and don't sell a single unit. The price of Smithore stays at 250, you ride the game to victory.

But wait, what about your buds? They're not going to be stupid enough to let you get away with it, right? Well, keep in mind that I'm describing the Crystite-centric people I play with. They've been assembling their Crystite empires since round 4 or even before, and want nothing more than to sit there with 9 plots, avoid the Pirate, and wait for the price to hit 148 before they have to dump over 50. Chances are they've focused on Crystite exclusively while I've been snapping up all the mountains, so if one of them tried to make a move to Smithore, they'd have to produce it on the plains. Wahoo. One average unit. So they have to find their one- and two-mountain plots(one and two holers, the one-holer is always referred to as "a gorgeous one-holer", especially if it has no Crystite on it), often disjointed, and employ a couple of those in an effort to derail the Gambit. In the meantime, it's getting to be crunchtime on Food, so it's harder to reoutfit three MULEs a round, and I might have enough cash in reserve to buy them out anyway. And if one of them breaks down and tries to ruin the ore market, they run the risk of not being able to maintain momentum in the Crystite market. It often becomes a staring contest between the three other guys, of who's going to take one for the team to try and stop me, as they all know that whoever tries will end up in last place, me in third, and the other two in first and second. If I can ever reach a point where they're playing for second place, the game is over. Usually around round 9. Winning isn't everything with the guys I play with, as we have season scoring where first is worth 2 points, second 1 point, third zero and dead last minus one point. So everyone is looking to get the point and avoid going in the hole at the same time.

The Smithore Gambit develops through a shrewd use of your MULEs to produce just the right amount of Smithore. Crystite is a make-as-much-as-you-can-all-the-time market, but if you do that with Smithore, you'll soon find yourself with too much on your hands. With all the mountains you're collecting, you can surely produce a ton of Smithore by just introducing three more ore mules into the mix. There's no point in producing over 50 in the middle-to-late portion of the game, as it'll just spoil. So focus on shoring up the rest of your empire, such as putting in a second Food, making sure you have two Energy plots next to each other or three apart, and maybe even dabbling in some Crystite if you have some. If you're running the Gambit correctly you'll be holding steady with a ton of points by round 8 or so, the Smithore price will be at 250 every round, and your enormous lead over the person in second place will start to wither as Crystite comes into its own. Here's where being in ore rather than Crystite is better news: the Pirate doesn't care about you, planetquakes won't affect you as much because you're not dependent upon production as much as volume, and because you don't have to focus every one of your MULEs on Smithore, you can devote them to other pursuits. Late in the game I'll start to ramp up Food and Energy production only so I'll have an extra couple units of each. This makes me pretty much impervious to pest attacks or acid rain, and if some other poor sap is short on either or both, I can sell to them at prices over 200. By round 10 I'll have three Smithore plots working and 50 in storage, let it spoil, put in three more the next round, sell one, let the rest spoil, and then in round 12 unleash the pure fury of nine Smithore MULEs cranking out that precious ore. If everything goes to plan, you buy the one unit you sold to the store in round 11, and the value of every unit of Smithore you own(often at this point over 110 units) goes up accordingly(we agreed that buying from the Store in the last round was valid, but buying from a buddy at 450 a unit wasn't). Then the Crystite price stays in the dumper, the Food price shoots up because some bonehead bought one unit from you so he could employ one last Crystite plot to try and salvage third place, and the few Energy plots I have left on the board are worth big bucks when that price is over 200 a unit as well.

Note that the Gambit sometimes needs help from others before it can get rolling. Since there are no computers playing, you have to rely on humans to do assays. Often people will prefer to just clump plots together, often around mountains, and hope and pray that late in the game they'll find some Crystite on their plots that they just happened to be there. As we all now know, the SG relies on all other players focusing on getting rich through the Crystite market. If they start collecting mountains, you're through. I know that there are a limited amount of boards in the MULE universe, at least on the Atari, and if I know the pattern of Crystite to mountain plots, I'll ask to start over. But once we find one that I don't know, I'll play the role of Wild Assay Man(another Craigism) and assay all over the place in an effort to find as many highs as possible, preferably on the plains, so as to make everyone gun for Crystite in the second round. That leaves me to mop up the mountains and eventually run away with the game. Another thing that's important is to bust up any attempt that another player is making to get mountain plots connected. If you see someone grab a 3-holer right next to another 3-holer early in the game, you better either get that second plot before they do, or you run the risk of getting run over by your own Gambit. Late in the game the price of Smithore might start to sag; at that point, you have to focus on the 50 units you have in storage and ensure that they retain value. We assume that the CPU calculates demand for MULEs by looking at how many are in the corral and then how many plots are empty. Well, if there's no plots empty, it doesn't matter that there's none in the corral. I rarely run into this problem, as usually the corral empties out by round 10 or so, and demand stays up. If I have to, though, I'll let some/all of _my_ MULEs loose towards the end of the game to get the price back up. And not just my Food or Energy MULEs, either. I've noticed that if I reoutfit or dump my Smithore MULEs, the price of Smithore will bump up a bit. Use discretion.

Let me tell you, I've absolutely crushed people with this strategy. We used to treat Smithore like a redhead stepchild until the CFG Posse stepped up and showed us how it was really done. With a little tweaking and personal touch, you too can have a Smithore Gambit to call your own. Even if you don't run it correctly for a win, no other strategy I've tried elicits the soul of the game better. I actually started to get a little jaded by MULE at one point in time, as all I did was grab all the Crystite I could, sit back, and produce. Now you have to be crafty the whole time, and knowing the game and markets really starts to pay off. The game becomes completely fresh again-- and isn't that what the timelessness of MULE is all about? Other time-savers we utilize are going into the top and bottom of the Store to get to the Pub, of course, and hitting the Land office as time is running out in order to stop the clock at one or no clicks and get into the Pub. Definitely handy if you're pulling the left-side thing and can't quite get back to the Pub after that third Crystite is swapped out. I just assumed that people did that all the time, but I can't imagine having to use a dry-erase marker to mark the Crystite locations, either. Another trick we used to try on each other, especially in the early Smithore auctions, is the OK Corral Big Screw Shootout. Two or more players can't decide if they want to trust their fellow colonists not to sell, so as to keep the price going up, and so they all stand as close to the Store Sell line as possible. It's a staring contest until the very last second, when the fastest stick to the line gets to sell whatever they have left, and everyone else is Screwed. Doesn't happen that often anymore because I don't sell my Smithore all that often, and people generally realize that getting Screwed early means you don't get any land, if any's for sale, next round.

M*U*L*E* Tips from Peter
Seems like no-one has assayed the mechtron stomp.
Scenario: One colonist (eg orange mechtron) wants to buy (usually energy) and two or more don't want him to buy.
Tip: All stoppers move to the top (sell) position. When the orange mechtron moves up, y'all move down. Then, by moving onto the mechtron and back again repeatedly, two or more players can actually drive him down (backwards). In our game, we have banned such despicable tactics against human players.
Other tips: All the other people are right. River plot. Energy plot. Then Crystite. I've never seen anybody win with smithore.

M*U*L*E* Tips from Steve & Dana
The Smithore Gambit is a good one, but you have to have some things fall right for you, as Jeff said. I normally play with at least one computer player, with 2 friends, so you can't do the Smithore gambit with my friends.
The computer will always ruin you since they always do Smithore, unless you don't let him get any energy, which is a good strategy.
Using an erasable marker IS cheating ;)
I don't agree that the food plot is that important. I like to get a flat plains plots first because of their versatility. The first round I can make energy or Crystite, depending on the Assay results. If I am desperate, I can put food on it and get 2 units, then move back to energy. I always try to grab a blank plot next to the Town, so I don't have to go far to change the plot, and it leaves me time to Assay, and for Wampus hunting. If you don't get good Crystite plots right away, then you need to go for Smithore, or try to create your own supply and demand problems, which is hard. Look to see what the other players are light in, and sneak up on them and produce that. Let's say it is energy. Don't energy sell this round, go up and buy with them and get rid of all the store's supply (this works best if you are in last place so you win all ties). Now, when they change their M.U.L.E.s over, they have to forgo something, like maybe food. Produce food this round. Now you may have them on both fronts: the original shortage item (energy) and now food. You can sell your units for $250.00 and clean up, as well as clean out your friends (unlike Smithore or Crystite, where you sell to the store). Making them pay high prices is a double-advantage!
M*U*L*E* Tips from Steve W.
I have found that hoarding smith-ore can be very effective. Try to do this with one other player, preferably someone not quite as skilled as you, so you can overtake them at the end for first place. You and your accomplice can let MULEs go to quickly drive up the price and cause the other players to not be able to capitalize on the smith-ore shortage. Once I have enough smith-ore I can sell it all and start switching all my plots over to crystite. I also like to buy all the food and energy that the other players sell, if I can stockpile enough I can outfit all my plots for mining for a while. As soon as I can afford it I buy out all the stock in the store. Ideally, I am nearly out of money every turn for the first few turns, trying to maximize my potential for profit. It is OK to spend all your money at a land auction early, and hunt the wumpus for enough cash to outfit your plots. When my friends and I play MULE we play for blood, causing MULE, food and energy shortages that usually make us end up living in tents at the end.

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