Player of 0AD

Where does this come from?

Maybe we just need to lower the initial rating from 1200 to something like 800. Many new players aren't 1200, they are much weaker.

- it's okay that the system just takes the result into account, it's irrelevant how close it was. In many other games it's like this too. - it's ok that people can play rated matches against players who are much lower rated. if they lose, they lose a lot of points... - we need a rating system for team games too. Shouldn't be that hard....

You can't capture buildings? Try to build bigger armies then

The power of the Spartans is their infantry. Besides using Champions or Skiritai you can also mass up skirmishers and combine them with the Brasidas hero and some melee units, or you can go for a large number of hoplites which you boost with the hoplite tradition technology and the Leonidas hero. As infantry is slow think about using some ranged cavalry as well. Actually, rushing with the champions shouldnt work so well. They are so expensive, the enemy could easily create a big citizen soldier army which should be able to overwhelm them. At least thats what I estimate.

The quetion was what's the counter to spear champ cav, not the counter to a mix of spear champ cav and inf ;-)

They are all weak ;-)

An alternative would be to compile the game by yourself, more informations (but maybe not all) are here: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/BuildInstructions#DebianUbuntu

Don't know if an AppImage works here, but you could give it a try: https://github.com/0ad-matters/0ad-appimage/releases

Elephants are rarely seen in top matches. They were OP in Alpha 24, but now they are much weaker against buildings - so if you want to take down buildings, build siege weapons instead. There is no big point in training elephants (other than worker elephants).

What does "Score 920" mean? I was curious and checked the record replay out. Neither was it a really outstanding boom nor did Stockfish spend 92,000 resources at minute 12, he rather spend 30,000.

Some units taking a relaxed bloodbath:

Don't drink and ride! Or you might ram a tree.

The advantage is that it makes the army very dense. Soldiers dont need to walk that far to help each other, the army can go more easily through narrow passages and your enemy will have difficulties to estimate the numbers correctly. Do Romans really need a buff currently? They look pretty strong to me.

You seem to lack expertise of the game. For example, women are more expensive than half of the prize of a soldier: Food is more expensive than wood, and both units cost 1 population space...