I got major problems in that mission. Regardless what I do my starting village is soon attacked by 4 Pimmon Wizards who crush anything I have built until their arrival.

Strangely all walkthroughs simply mention the normal buildup game for that mission, to build an army of crossbowamazons, find the cocoabush and bring the fruit home. But I have no chance even coming that far as the first attack happens while I still have to research even the first military building...

Any hints?

I started playing Alien Nations recently and I have the same problem. Mission 8 and some way to do it were mentioned in one thread before:
g o g . c o m /forum/alien_nations/alien_nations_problems_with_amazons_missions
You might give it a try. Not sure if I would be able to do the trick mentioned in that thread, though. I'm not good at multitasking. :D

Another thing - there exists some mission pack to the game, but GOG version doesn't have it. If the walkthroughs did not mention this problem, *maybe* (and that's just my big speculation) the mission pack had some bug fixes and/or mission changes, and *maybe* the walkthroughs were written according to the version with mission pack? To verify that it would require to have played both the GOG version and some earlier retail version (with mission pack), unfortunately I only played the GOG version so I can only guess