Dicewars is a pretty old game, but I've never learned to play it and the website doesn't have any instruction.
On the umpteenth time it's suggested to Neatorama, I've finally played it for the first time ... and I'm hooked!
Here's how you should start playing it: select the 2 Players mode (you'll be purple). When it's your turn, click on a purple area, and then click a neighboring green area that has fewer dice. The computer will "roll" the dice for you and if yours come up higher, then the area attacked will turn purple. You can end your turn at any time, but it makes sense to attack until you can't win anymore.
If this is too easy, then you can move to the 3, 4, 5 players and so on mode.
Link [Flash] - Thanks (and darn you for introducing such an addictive game) Jerse!
The trick, at least for me, is to make sure that you have a lot of dice in the areas that border your enemies. Once you do this, then attack the areas that have a lot of dice, but less than yours (don't bother attacking the onesies and twosies, those can't possibly beat your dice-maxed areas).
Once you have a lot of dice-maxed areas, then attack with abandon, but only do so knowing that the reinforcements will always "refill" the areas to maximum levels. Works for all player modes.
Yeah, I started playing with 5, and had a great game, lasted almost two hours.
I won. :)