SkyMind

My battering ram strategy: The Alpha 17 version has greatly strengthened units and battering rams. In previous alpha versions of 0AD I used to build walls and use catapults to clobber the attacking waves till the AI exhausted its resources, repairing the walls in between waves of attack. Now the walls are weaker and the soldiers and battering rams are stronger and the battering rams can also attack soldiers now. This strategy doesn't work any more. After the AI sends out a few token attacks of 20 to 30 infantry that you can weather by building one tower and putting your infantry in the civ center till the AI infantry is done in by arrows, it builds up an army of about 50 infantry and 50 cavalry. This huge wave overwhelms any defense. 2 or 3 fortresses and several defense towers and walls offer almost no defense against the strengthened cavalry and batering rams. My new strategy is to build a civ center near the center of the map, fairly close to the AI. On the hard setting, you need to build it at about the 7 to 8 minute mark so that your builders won't be attacked before they can complete the civ center. Occupying the center of the map is important, like in chess. You can radiate power in all directions and the AI will cross your territory to respond to attacks you launch on the other side of the map, and will get clobbered by your fortresses and towers. Be the first to attack with battering rams and keep attacking. Don't let it organize a wave attack. Keep the AI under pressure. To start, put about 5 women on berries if available and everyone else on wood. Build the storehouse close to the wood stone and metal so that less time is wasted going back and forth. Build a barracks so that when you transition to the town phase you can keep producing soldiers. Produce mostly women in the early minutes since they take less time to create. Once you get about 25 women and 7 or so infantry, and you've transitioned to the town phase, put most on stone and some on metal. Also activate the technology to increase stone mining. Once you have 500 metal, 800 stone, and 500 wood, send about 20, a mix of female and infantry, to build the civ center near the center of the map, not far from the AI border but no too close either so that you won't trigger an AI attack. This should be around the 7 to 8 minute mark. Keep churning out women and soldiers in your original civ center and barracks. Keep a mix of wood, metal, and stone, but more on stone so that you can can build 4 towers to transition to the city phase. Two farms should be enough to supply food. Build 3 towers in a line in front of your new civ center and one near the original civ center. While you're building your 2nd civ center, the AI will launch an attack on your original civ center. Pull everyone inside the civ center and wait till the AI attackers are killed by arrows from your defense tower and civ center. You'll have to rebuild a storehouse or two but that should be all. In the meantime, you should keep churning out personnel in the new civ center and concentrating on metal and stone. You'll need to get to 1000 metal and 1000 stone to transition to the city stage. It's critical to build your first fortress before the AI does. This will take about 800 stone just for one fortress. So at this point you'll concentrate on stone, metal, and wood in that order of priority till you get enough to transition to the city stage and build your fortress. You might be attacked again while you're building your fortress but fortresses build faster than civ centers so with 20 builders you should be able to complete it. Build it in between the defense towers and in front of the civ center for defense. From this point, use your original civ center as your main supply base. Put most of your workers back on wood and metal after your first fortress is complete so that you can start creating battering rams. Create 2 or 3 and put your soldiers in your fortress to increase the firing rate of the fortress. 3 battering rams will take a lot of resources but is important. Activate armor for siege engines after you create a few as soon as you have enough metal. Also activate the metal saving technology for siege engines. You need to trigger a response by the AI so that it can't send an organized wave against you. Attack the nearest defense towers, store houses, etc so that you can retreat back into your fortress. When the AI counterattacks pull the battering rams back into the fortress after inflicting a bit of damage. While the AI attacks your fortress, send out your battering rams to attack the AI attackers. The AI will ignore the battering rams for the most part while it attacks the fortress. Kill the attackers with the battering rams to prevent too much damage to the fortress. Combined with the arrows it should kill off the AI attackers. In the mean time, your workers in your original civ center should be gathering wood and metal and there should be enough to create 3 or 4 more battering rams. Send them out quickly. Keep up the pressure and don't let the AI rebuild. Make sure the AI doesn't build a fortress. The AI is significantly weaker without fortresses. It is of the highest priority to attack the AI fortresses before they are completed. When the AI respond to your battering rams, pull them back in to the fortress again. After the AI attempt to destroy your fortress fails, build another fortress close to the first one for mutual protection. Your original civ center will probably not be attacked because the AI is responding to your battering ram attacks. Repair some damage to your fortresses between responses to your battering ram attacks. Keep churning out battering rams, concentrating on barracks and fortresses. Pull back into the fortresses when the AI counterattack is too great. Build another fortress near your original civ center when you get enough stone. Start churning out battering rams there too. Activate the technology to strengthen the attack of siege engines after you have 6 or 7 battering rams going. After several attacks, the AI should be significantly weakened. Attacks launched from your new fortress near your original civ center should cause the AI to send soldiers heedlessly through your territory in response, right past your other fortresses and towers. This is where your central location breaks the back of the AI. Most will not survive, and those that do will be weakened. Keep attacking with and producing battering rams. At the 45 minute mark or so you should be destroying AI civ centers. Build more fortresses to keep close to the receding boundary of the AI. Keep launching attacks on houses, civ centers, and barracks. At the 1 hour mark, the AI should be near death. The great strength of the battering rams, now at 500 health instead of the previous 200, makes all the other units redundant. Now that they can defend themselves they're even more powerful. Projectile throwers have almost no effect on them, especially with the armor technology activated. Only when huge numbers of ranged units are ammassed can they damage battering rams significantly. Attack spearmen and swordsmen with the battering rams. Don't worry about the ranged units. Keep churning out battering rams and relentlessly attack. At the end of the game you should have about 10 remaining battering rams. Perhaps this is not the best strategy, but with a bit of practice it works agains the AI.