Jofursloft

@Altrine I like your organization and your strategies about the attacks. Anyway, my personal opinion is that you can't develop a strategy before the battle. In fact, in your strategy you don't consider many facts: the comformation of the territory, eventually buildings near, heroes, upgrades and eventual dancing units. I prefer to improvise the tactic everytime, not to develop one before

Question 1 is personally really general. It depends on my opinion a lot for the current situation: I never develop a default strategy about it. If I start losing many, anyway, I prefer retire for a while until I have enough troops to win the fight. Better to lose some in a retreat that all in a suicide attack. Best civilization to defend a ground are surely ibers. I personally think that another good civilization is rome, that can hold well with a lot of different siege weapons. Anyway, another good civilization is Carth, with (as Feldfeld already said) heavy walls and archers units, that are deadly for defense (garrison fast, long range). These are the civs also that I use more in Jebel Barkal

I personally think that it would be really hard to play a 0ad game if you have to pay attention also to the friendly fire of your own units. This shold be supplemented mostly for siege weapons, like catapults or bolt shooters. Maybe a friendly fire idea for ranged unit should be implemented only between the ranged units of the same team (for exampe your ally can fail a shot). Friendly fire between your own units would be a total chaos

After this comment I feel myself a terrible strategist in 0ad xd. I make it easier, mostly looking at the single situation

Pls say to WFG to be less shy: we all know that he would like to partecipate in the fun but he is too loyal to work

On britons for example you can scout with the dog. In team games the thing I usually do is to take a fast unit (like a skirmisher or a runner archer) to explore the territory in circle near me to see if I have extra berries fast (if you do when your cav finishes the chicken is too late to mantain a good food production). Also, I use this unit to see who is next to me

You sure? I mean against a player that attacks you with an army composed by 60-70 units at least: the thing I would do is to focus my attacks on elephants and then on enemy army: if you destroy enemy fort or civic centre is better than kill some units

Sure, but what all clever people do is to come with an army after the rams, and the elephants can be easily killed by a mass of ranged units

The problem is that if we make rams slower catapults become too op: elephants die fast if there are ranged units nearby, like any type of sword unit, while ram can kill alone 2-3 catapults before die. However if we make rams slower 4 catapults can kill it easy before it reaches them.

Yeah, you are right. Anyway, we have to change the graphic of the destruction of the ram. If people inside die, that doesn't mean that the ram is destroyed. In my opinion was maybe more realistic when (I don't remember the alpha) you could capture the rams: just kill people inside and take control of the siege. In my opinion would be good to stimulate the fact of garrisoning the rams. It's not realistic that 100 archers can be killed by 3 rams: discarding the option that is a mass of dumb archers in a real situation they would go next to the ram to kill the people inside and take control of it. In my opinion the solution can be: rams can be destroyed by swords units, other rams, crush units or catapults, while they can be captured from any type of unit. This would incentivate people to garrison them to have more units that can defend with shields the people that are normally moving the ram (the default ones that are already inside: when you have 0 garrisoned units)

But this means that rams can also be vulnerable to arrows: a mass of archers can kill the people inside exactly like spear cavarly. Are we going to set all rams like Xiongnu ones?

Better to keep in mind you can get a rush: make something like 4 men when you reach 20 pop for a good defense This only when you are P3, before you need just 1-2 barracks Maybe exercise to reach 300 pop in 18 minutes: it is a good archievement. Always keep in mind that a full women boom is not so good in 1v1 games

Sorry, you mean that a spear thrust attack can destroy a battle ram? I think the damage can be increased, but that swords must be more effective anyway. Is it possible in real life that a cavarly spear unit can destroy a battle ram easily?

No, the Macedonians completely lack in sword units. They can't build Stoà Yeah, they would be op, cause they would have an advantage respect to other civilizations with heavy pikes units, like ptolemies, for example. Anyway, the main problem of Syntagma formation isn't that it gives no bonuses to the player, but also is never used cause it sets the units in a square formation: really good for ranged units, but terrible for melee units: they would lose time setting into a line to create a shield for the back ranged units. Why not to make syntagma formation more rectangular? Back units in formations are unuseful in fight now. To make an example I propose to set the formation in order to obtain, If I have something like 80 units not a square composed by 9x9 but a rectangular composed by 20x4. Really more effective

The macedoniand lack in sword units: their only ones are 2 of the 3 heroes. Also, they also have no elephants to counter rams, like ptolemies. This makes them really weak against civilizations like celts. I would propose maybe to introduce or P2 cloak swordmen (but maybe they are not historycally accurated) or to add a type of mercenary sword, as Rolf Dew already said

This wouldn't be great: current Al just suicides against garrisoned buildings, has a terrible attack strategy and manages eco really bad. A player can easily destroy the Al with just 20 cavarly men, destroying eco. For me Very difficult Al has is around the same level of a 1200-1300 player

This would mean suicide a lot of infantry men against a mass of ranged units. Are you sure this should work?

When you use a defensive strategy for example building walls or a lot of defensive buildings and units.

Maybe you can't continue playing it, but surely you can save it

I'm sorry, but you can't do it. You can load a single-player saved game, but not a multiplayer one. You can continue playing it only in single player with Al, I guess. (I had the same doubt when I started playing 0ad)

Catas attack buildings for default setting. Anyway, if you order them to hit a group of enemies they will continue shooting them until they are in range/dead

In high level games players are not used to capture catapults because you firstly risk to lose many men under they attack, and secondly they need a lot of time to be captured, so it's better to destroy them. In general catapults are good cause you can deal a great damage to the enemy army, but are difficult to protect, and lose only one causes you a lot of resources wasted. Rams are more dynamic and fast to attack/run away from buildings. They also have a great life (obv not against sword)

How to boom with Britons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWX8tzh2FKM How to boom with Gauls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3ab_Si0UHQ The strenght of celtic civs is absolutely not in the defense. If you are doing a turtle game you will probably lose. Their strenght is in their army: they are aggressive civilizations, not defense one

And you think Alekusu could counter a cav rush? He would have lost his units at wood He has no men to counter a rush at beginning Minute 4: a good player can rush you with 10-15 cavs. Minute 5: they can be 15-20 cavs. Minute 6-7-8-etc the player will do more units (cavs or not), so with deadline for a rush I mean that if you are lucky not to be rushed at minute 4 having no men (as you can see in Alekusu video), you can be killed later with even more units to counter I used 15 cavs to suppose the easiest attack to counter: you prefer 30-40 men minute 6? Already said he can't counter a rush To conclude, I make you notice he makes the first men at minute 5 and we are talking about 2 different civilizations, britons and gauls (with britons is easier to counter a rush). Do you prefer a video with britons and no berries? Here you have, man

What a pity! I really have to point out some things: I was playing in a normal map, like in that video, and there is somethin glike 5% probability a player rushes you in that map size If the player rushed me, anyway, I had 8 men to counter it (enough for 8-10 cavs) "I decide to upload here this video to help noob/low/medium level players to obtain a very good population boom in a short time" As you can clearly read my purpose was to create a video to show how to obtain 300 pop in a really short time, not to give a strat for a 1v1 If you like I have no problems to make a video in which I reach comfortably 300 pop in 15 minutes with britons and 10-20 men at beginning to counter a rush I make you notice that the guy in that video starts obtain the first men at minute five, that is the deadline minute for a rush, while I obtain mine at minute 3 What rush can you counter than with 10 men at minute 5 when a usual 15 cav rush comes at minute 4?