Sanguivorant

Yeah. It is much easier to grow your economy in the early game if you just invest in female villagers. Soldiers and other types of units often take twice as many resources as women to train, why can slow the time it takes for you to get to the town phase. It is important to get to the town phase, because it will allow you to make more civic centers or military colonies, which will allow you to gain map control. The more map control you have, the more resources you have and the more time you can save on not having to build trade carts.

I can give you some tips regarding the early game play, which is the most important part. Try to make at least five ranged cavalry as quick as possible. The reason why is: -You have chicken, which is a huntable animal, that spawns right away near your town center. -Cavalry have a large bonus when hunting -Cavalry can scout land the fastest. -Cavalry can also defend you in case of an attack. On most maps, there will be animals which you can hunt. If you can get at least 500 food from hunting alone, that could save you the wood you need for farming and allow you to either advance to the town phase quicker or build more cavalry to raid your opponent. Tips when hunting: -Most animals run opposite the direction they are being attacked. So when hunting an animal, hunt it so that the animal is between your civic center and your cavalry. This will force the animal to run towards your civic center, and that will decrease drop off time. -If hunting an elephant, attack it once so that it follows your cavalry. Then, flee to your civic center to finish it off. Try to scout and lure as many elephants as you can. Each elephant has 800 food, and three should keep you away from having to build farms for quite a while. -You might want to build your farmstead close to where your hunt as died to decrease drop off time. But you can be the judge of that. Tips when raiding: -Make sure you keep your cavalry in a group. I believe around 7 should be more that enough to kill a female villager. -Always aim for the weakest unit, in this case the female villager. -Do not engage for too long. If your opponent starts to move all their military units to you, then flee and attack a different part of their economy. The point of raiding is to keep your opponent on their toes, and prevent them from raiding you. Tips when defending: -Make sure you try to finish all the resources near your civic center before moving out to the edges of your territory. -A building an outpost at the boundary, close to your wood line will give you enough time to move your units out of the way before they arrive. -Divide your wood gatherers in two different camps. That way, if one of your wood lines are being attacked, then you are still getting wood elsewhere. -Build your buildings on the boundaries, and try to create some kind of wall with them (Unless your Ptolemies, because that could hurt you). Use tree lines or cliffs to your advantage if you can. If you take all of these together, you should be set for a good village phase. There are more specific build orders, but it depends on the civ.

You spent 900 resources in total. In 3 trips, you should gain back 900 resources, and after that it becomes profit. How long it takes until you generate profit is unknown to me. What was the distance between the two markets?

Making trees fully passable would decrease the amount of natural defence you get. Also, this could be exploited. If I wanted to, I could plot buildings all over my enemy's forest line and get rid of his access to wood. I think the best thing to do is to make trees harder to pass (Increase the radius size), so that they can form natural blockades, which would allow you to wall without worrying about the enemy getting through trees. For example, in Age of Empires II, it is virtually impossible to pass a group of trees. This allows me to build walls where necessary.

I have finished my finals, so I think I can try to upload a video demonstrating this fertility festival boom.

To me, it depends on which strategy I am using and what I know about my enemy. If I know that my enemy is going to play aggressively, I might stay longer in the village phase, and even get out some cavalry to harass their economy. If I feel it is safe enough to boom, I can usually get to the town phase in six minutes. Of course, in order to do that, I have to sacrifice villager and military production in the short run. But this allows me to use that fertility festival tech much faster, which would allow me to exceed my opponent in economy.

I guess the best moment to change is once you have stabilized your food income, and manage to gather at least 250 food every 35 seconds or so.

I could probably try doing the Carthage voice list. Sounds similar to Arabic, which is my native language.

How about walls. Do any of you use walls? I play as Iberians a lot, so I always have a layer of my economy protected by walls. I find that walls are the best on maps with choke points, but other than that I don't think I use them. I do like to structure my base in a way that creates a natural wall that protects segments of my economy. So I build houses to surround my civic centre so that my farming is somewhat protected. With the threat of melee cavalry, I like to palisade/wall my towers and surround them in houses so that it is harder for cavalry to take them down.

Are you guys looking for a volunteer to do voice recordings?

Assuming no walk times for the sake of simplicity: Assume gathering 1 food/second. A female villager takes 10 seconds to be built individually and 38 seconds to be built in a batch. You start training: In the first 10 seconds, nothing happens, because female villager is being built. In 20 seconds, the female villager gathers 10 food. In 30 seconds, the female villagers gather 20 food. In 40 seconds, the female villagers gather 30 food. In 50 seconds, the female villagers gather 40 food. So in a total of 50 seconds, a total of 100 food is gathered. Though, only four villagers are created. In batches: In 10 seconds, nothing happens. In 20 seconds, nothing happens. In 30 seconds, nothing happens. In 38 seconds, five villagers are trained and start gathering in total 5 food per second. There are 12 seconds left. So in 50 seconds, the batch gathers a total of 60 food. So this leads me to believe that at least in the beginning parts of the game, it is more beneficial to train economic units individually instead of in batches.

Seeing how a lot of threads on this forum are about the different strategies you can perform in 0ad, I believe it would be okay to have one thread where we can talk strategy. Feel free to post all your tips/tricks/build orders here. To start this off, I do have one thing we can talk about: Batch training. Is it useful in the early game? In the late game, it obviously has a benefit of allowing you to create more units in a short amount of time. However, in the early game, having resources is essential. So comparing batch training to individual training of female villagers for example, I think you end up with much more resources if you train the female villagers individually. What do you guys think?

No, that is not a problem at all. That is what I do as well.

Apologies for the miscalculations. I don't actually know the exact gather rates of all the units. I just made rough tests. Anyhow, I did try this today, and I realized that 3 citizen cavalry cannot deal with 6 corrals at the same time. I had to make an extra two more to clear the excess sheep that I was training. But I can confirm that one upgraded farm can handle production from 6 corrals. It was slow at first, but after the first twelve sheep, I began to accumulate food at a very rapid pace. I haven't experimented with batch training the sheep yet. I remember back in Alpha 15, I was playing as the Persians and I set up my economy similar to this way, with one farm supporting around 2/3 corrals, and three citizen cavalry gathering food from them. I managed to have an excess of food throughout most of the game. I did lose against my superior opponent (Tango) though, but not because of a lack of resources, more a lack of good strategy and micro. The other benefit to this set up is that cavalry are harder to kill than female villagers, and they can easily run away from harm. Any excess sheep you train can also flee a dangerous location. Corrals allow your economy to be a bit more portable, and makes it harder to destroy.

You would need to micro, like, have a soldier put down the foundation, and then task females to build it.

The only melee unit that can actually harm ranged cavalry is the Spartan Skiritai, but even then you need to force the cavalry to run into some obstruction like trees.

On the corral topic: Both corrals and farms cost 100 wood to build. a female villager in the beginning gathers around 0.5 food/second from gathering from a farm, so a fully saturated farm can bring up 2.5 food/second. Female villagers cost 50 food each, so to fully saturate a farm, you need to invest 250 food. In order to improve the speed of food collection, you need to research plow, which costs the granary, which is 100 wood, plus the upgrade, which is 200 wood and 100 metal. I believe this tech improves farming rate by making a fully saturated farm bring 5 food/second. A corral costs 100 wood to build. A sheep costs 50 food, and takes 35 seconds to make, however there is an upgrade for 50 food that decreases that train time to 27 seconds. Citizen cavalry can gather food from sheep. Citizen cavalry can gather around 7.5 food/second. A sheep has 100 food. So, it takes roughly 15 seconds for a citizen cavalry to complete one sheep, so in order to have the citizen cavalry constantly working, you need a second corral, which costs another 100 wood. As expected, you pay 50 food per sheep, so you do need a good food supply in order to maintain sheep production. If we tally it up, two corrals being working by one citizen cavalry gathers around 100 food every 30 seconds. Getting this up and running costed in total: 200 wood 40 wood (For citizen cavalry) 100 food (Citizen cavalry) 50 food (upgrade) A constant 100 food per 27 seconds. 1 population point. One farm in the village phase that is being worked by five female villagers earns 75 food every 30 seconds. With the upgrade, the farm can earn 150 food every 30 seconds. However, getting the farm to be more efficient than the corral costed: 300 wood 100 metal 250 food (For villagers) 5 population points. In the long run, two farms upgraded once can earn 300 food per 30 seconds. This is enough to sustain production from 6 corrals that can be worked by 3 citizen cavalry. This set up can provide 600 food every 30 seconds, for a total cost of: 1250 wood 800 food 100 metal 13 population +extra wood cost to support the population. In theory, this set up appears to be superior. I might test it out and see how it goes.

I totally agree with more hotkeys and the ability to customize them. Especially hotkeys that allow me to cycle between various civic centers and barracks. I also would prefer to have two different idle keys; one for military units and one for female villagers. The AI has a major problem in that it tends to idiotically rush a heavily fortified position. If you quickly get to the city phase, build two fortresses and fully garrison them, then the AI will waste all of its resources and units trying to take them down, even if they are unlikely to do so. Are you playing on Hard or Very Hard? Hard is beatable as long as you are patient and retreat when it is best. Very Hard is a bit of a challenge, and it takes really good resource management/counter units/upgraded units to beat.

Would it be a problem if spearmen units were granted an extra range for their attack? What I mean is that instead of having to get up and close to fight, they can still jab their spears once until the enemy closes their distance. It just makes more sense for them to have this bonus.

I could make a video, sure. Though the quality might not be so good, because my computer is not the best. There are pros and cons to having an economy that's supported by citizen soldiers: -Your economy gets to be protected; soldiers are harder to kill than female villagers. - You can use the soldiers to build towers and defensive positions quickly when needed. -Soldiers get a bonus in wood/stone/iron gathering, which tend to be outside the protection of the civic center. However, the only problem is that in order to use your citizen soldiers for fighting, you have to take them away from your economy, whereas female villagers are only used for gathering resources.

So I went and retried a boom strategy again, and I don't really have anything set in stone, but here is what I usually do. I attempt this strategy with the Iberians because of their fortifications at the beginning of the game. I want to get to Town phase as quick as possible to get that fertility tech, so in order to do that, it requires me to neglect my economy a little bit in the short run. So I end up creating female villagers and several skirmishers until around 30-35 population, then I wait until I can tech up. Normally, it is difficult to continue unit production and at the same time advance until you have a very huge economy (50+ population), so this is necessary in order to research town phase in 4:00. At this point, the only thing I have upgraded is the first woodcutting upgrade. I did not build a barracks, just a storage pit and a farming building, and several farms. While going to the town phase, I reorganize my economy so that I have an extra 100 iron before the town phase. This allows me to simultaneously research the first farming upgrade and the fertility tech once the town phase is complete. As soon as the town phase is complete, I use my citizen soldiers to build a tower in a very important part of my economy, usually the woodline which is outside of my defences. As the fertility tech is being researched, I am still training female villagers at the CC, and I'm trying to have at least 6 farms being worked before the tech is complete. At this point, the boom begins with about 9-15 houses. For the first set of female villagers coming out of the houses, I make 5 build an extra farm, and the rest go gather wood. This allows me to train the occasional skirmisher from my CC. The second and third set of female villagers, I divide them between stone and metal. If the opponent is being aggressive, I might gather stone first so that I could build another carefully placed tower. I always make sure to build houses so that I don't get population blocked, this is important. I keep building female villagers out of the houses and skirmishers from the CC until I have ~150 population, then I stop building female villagers. At around 15 minutes, I start building a barracks, another CC and a blacksmith, and then I just keep piling my stone and metal resources from there, making sure to keep training skirmishers and spearmen, since they do not cost metal. As soon as I research city phase at around 16:00-17:00, I build a second barracks, and start training swordsmen. Before I get to the city phase, I make sure that I get the wheelbarrow (Or is it basket?) tech and stone mining tech. This will allow me to drop fortresses in the city phase once I advance. I was fighting against a hard AI, and they started to attack at 19:00. So actually I did not max out my population, but I did get 250 population at 19:00 before the AI began to attack me.

Yeah, so that's what I do and it gets rid of most threats, except for maybe a good cavalry raid. Anyhow, this sort of boom is not a dominant strategy, because: -You severely restrict your military for a bit, so in the short run, you have a weak military. -You give your opponent room to expand around the map, and place civic centers where they please. But if you can pull it off, you will ultimately be in a better position. I feel that there should be a thread or forum dedicated to strategy discussion.

Just a question. How exactly do I access the triggers in the scenario editor?

Yeah. I confirmed. It was only because the unit was carrying resources, so the helmet disappears. Regardless, the patch does fix that. Thank-you.

Could it be because they are carrying some resources? I might have accidentally clicked a tree or something which is what caused this. Let me go test in scenario editor.