The key difference between the Javelin Cavalry rushing in this game and rushing in other RTS games is that while in other games, the rush is trading off your economic development for an early attack that weakens the opponent or knocks them out, the fact that citizen cavalry in 0ad can gather food means that with practice a Carthaginian/Iberian/Mauryan player can have the best of both worlds. The technique I've found is to start by creating villagers to harvest fruit bushes and wood (the 4 starters + 6 or so more) in order to start creating the Javelin Cavalry. The Javelin Cavalry harvest sheep/chickens and then deer/boar which drastically increases the food reserves. The food reserves are spent on more cavalry (up to 10), then more villagers and age advancement while the Cavalry move off in the direction of the enemy base. The Cavalry (initially set to stand ground) start by attacking the units in the first location they come across- they gain experience which makes them much more effective. Of the initial 'defence units' the opponent has in the first phase the only effective ones are massed Javelin units and light melee cavalry (which only Romans and Hellenic factions seem to have). Archers and Cavalry Archers are quickly killed by the javelins (but Mauryan archers need special attention), while melee infantry cannot keep up with the Cavalry (they can rapidly move/split up to attack a new location). An 8-10 strong team can rapidly destroy farms around the opponent's town centre without getting in range of its arrows. While the raiding requires a good deal of micromanagement (especially against the Mauryans), the initial food boost combined with disrupting the opponent's resource extraction is enough to catapult your economy over theirs. The Cavalry by themselves do not end the game - it often carries on with the opponent doing very little while (in the case of Carthage) enough basic spearmen are created to destroy their town centre. My concern is that once this technique gets refined, it will be the only tactic that Carthaginian/Iberian players use. (The Mauryans may develop a 'lets park a worker elephant outside his hunting grounds for a double food boost' variant). Any risks incurred from losing the Cavalry units in the rush are balanced out by the amount of food they've gathered early on in the game. Any Non Roman/Greek facing Carthage/Iberia will have to spam Javelin Infantry/Javelin Cavalry by default and as for the Ptolemies... What I'm suggesting is that since this strategy is likely to dominate the first phase, (unless we want to rebalance the unit attributes) there should be the option of a viable defense strategy (at a cost) for the first phase. A wide enough palisade wall would prevent the Javelin Cavalry sabotaging the farms, but what prevents it being seriously considered as an alternative to Javelin spamming is the amount of time and resources to build it (it takes up a lot of wood, and needs close attention to be efficient, otherwise you wind up with units standing around). If it requires too much time to lay it out before the enemy Javelin cavalry arrive at your base, would it be possible to adapt the script that lays out the Iberian wall at the start of the game to create a pre-set palisade wall pattern that a couple of units can beaver away at? If a player is then faced with a javelin cavalry enemy, he can then face a choice of walling up to protect his farms, or spending more wood on building javelin units/cavalry to protect the resource gatherers on the edge of his base/prevent his meat supplies being poached. (And I am aware that making the cost of a pre-set wall pattern cheaper would need to be balanced to avoid becoming the 'default defense')
