It should be noted that in addition to relying heavily on one strategy, it's also possible to mix strategies is various different ways, relying on different strategies to back each other up. For example in Fore(Kainantu-Goroka(TNG), PNG), there is a hierarchy like this, where if each strategy fails, the one lower in the list can be relied on. I'm putting "case" in quotation marks, because the "ergative" case marker in Fore is not really a case-marker as much as it is an often optional and occasionally prohibited derivational marker:

1. Verbal agreement
2. Animacy
3. "Case"-marking
4. Word order

Point 2, "animacy" means that referents higher on the animacy hierarchy are interpreted as being more likely to be agents, as such the NPs in a sentence like aebá nanita: yaga: amiye he pig food 3sg:gave_to:3sg "he have the pig food" can be freely reordered without a change in truth value, despite the fact that the verbal agreement is wholly inadequate to disambiguate the roles of the participants. Only in the few instances where the other strategies fail is word order a primary disambiguative device.

There are some languages where a primary disambiguation strategy is marking on the verb whether such a hierarchy a broken or not, called direct/inverse marking (this can disambiguate situations with two 3rd persons of equal animacy as well by considering e.g. topicality or obviation).

It should be noted that in addition to relying heavily on one strategy, it's also possible to mix strategies is various different ways, relying on different strategies to back each other up. For example in Fore(Kainantu-Goroka(TNG), PNG), there is a hierarchy like this, where if each strategy fails, the one lower in the list can be relied on. I'm putting "case" in quotation marks, because the "ergative" case marker in Fore is not really a case-marker as much as it is an often optional and occasionally prohibited derivational marker:

1. Verbal agreement
2. Animacy
3. "Case"-marking
4. Word order

Point 2, "animacy" means that referents higher on the animacy hierarchy are interpreted as being more likely to be agents, as such the NPs in a sentence like aebá nanita: yaga: amiye he pig food 3sg:gave_to:3sg "he gave the pig food" can be freely reordered without a change in truth value, despite the fact that the verbal agreement is wholly inadequate to disambiguate the roles of the participants. Only in the few instances where the other strategies fail is word order a primary disambiguative device.

There are some languages where a primary disambiguation strategy is marking on the verb whether such a hierarchy a broken or not, called direct/inverse marking (this can disambiguate situations with two 3rd persons of equal animacy as well by considering e.g. topicality or obviation).