How does one play Spartans well?

[Reinod]

I have been terrorised by 20 men Spartans Olympic Hoplites in early mid game attacking my entire base and now I have PTSD. Since all the methods I cam e up with to counter them failed miserable, I figured if you can't beat them, join them. But now I struggle with not getting murdered early game. Any tips on playing Spartans well?

[Deicide4u]

Terrorise people with 20 Spartan Olympic Hoplites 

Play on Sandbox difficulty until you can mass enough of them as early as possible. Spartans don't have good siege, so you must not allow your enemy to turtle up too much.

Skiritai Commandos are also a good unit in Town phase, but they compete with Spartiates for metal. 

Edited Tuesday at 07:07 by Deicide4u
More advice added

[Player of 0AD]

10 hours ago, Reinod said:

I have been terrorised by 20 men Spartans Olympic Hoplites in early mid game attacking my entire base and now I have PTSD. Since all the methods I cam e up with to counter them failed miserable, I figured if you can't beat them, join them. But now I struggle with not getting murdered early game. Any tips on playing Spartans well?

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.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Player of 0AD said:

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.

This heavily depends on the number of champions, as they get exponentially more powerful in numbers. Early game CS army without upgrades fares poorly, especially as Spartiates get promoted to Olympic status.

EDIT:
But yeah, if your opponent gets to train 20 Spartiates, you should have enough citizen soldiers to defend by then. Those champions aren't cheap. However, you'd need a lot to hold that many with acceptable losses, so make sure you scout what he's doing.

Edited Tuesday at 17:05 by Deicide4u
Cleared the "confusion"