What Should New Players Know When Starting This Game?

[onghyr]

I’m completely new to this game and still trying to understand the basic mechanics and strategies. Are there any tips, beginner guides, or common mistakes that I should know about before progressing further? I’d really appreciate advice from more experienced players to help me get started and enjoy the game more.

[Tapothei]

@onghyr If you've done the tutorial and economy playthrough from Singleplayer you can continue to Skirmish maps and do Scenarios.
Its basically like half baked campaign, during that time you can increase AI difficulty once your comfortable and being able to beat easy ones.
Just disable Treasure and if you want to improve your gameplay setting 200 pop can help to understand your limit. 

Single Player > Matches > Scenario > Default/Naval Maps > Arcadia(The first map). Once you complete then go to the next.
After completing that, experiment and choose a Civ you want to play.

Afterwords you can transition to Map Type > Skirmish.
At this point can watch general replay how people boom by being efficient and using batch training.
Watch on Youtube, Replay Pallas, Multiplayer then compare it to your replay against AI.

If you get bored then Go to Map Type > Random.
Once comfortable you can try play with others in Team Game, you'll probably lose.
But before that install Feldmap mod to prevent missing dependency and if you want install Community Maps mod, for more... maps. Got'em!

Being able to reach 100 pop in around 7 minutes is a good indicator your a good player assuming you don't get attacked also depends on map.
My limit for citizen on fields is 40(200Pop)-60(300Pop), economy is important to be able to do any playstyle.

Hotkeys, especially Control Key, Call To Arms. Order One Unit, Select Idle Unit, Select Military/Non Military, Patrol, Select Wounded Units, Garrison, Capture, Attack Units Only, and such is useful so place them, where your hand can reach.

Thats all I can think of... I like editing my comments so ideas are on the go here.

Edited 15 hours ago by Tapothei

[Arup]

it really helps if you have played another RTS before joining 0AD. personally, I came from RIse of Nations (only played singleplayer) and jumped into multiplayer here

anyway, you should complete the tutorials if you are new to RTS, I have heard it helps a lot

after that you can just join the multiplayer lobby, watch player play (like me) or just host a game saying "i am new pls someone teach me" the 0ad fairies will help you xD

or you can watch @ValihrAnt tutorials in youtube. again, never tried but i have heard its great for newbies

and, I do not support @Tapothei limit of citizens on field. it should be 40 at phase 1, sure, but when you are scaling up you must have 50 citizens on farms. there is no hard stop for making citizens though, sometimes you should make less women due to availability of other sources of food or for doing an early attack and needing to use CC for making men.. I usually hover around 60 women each game

[Arup]

@Seleucids made a nice document for new players in A25, it was really good when i first saw it in A26, I think it should still be relevant for new ones; I dont think i can find it tho

@Seleucids if you still have it, could you upload here?

[DesertRose]

Something that's very badly explained in the tutorial:

• Civilians, or formerly Women, or the unit that costs 50 Food, gathers Food twice as fast as Citizen or Citizen soldiers, or the unit that costs 50 Food + 50 other resources (often 50 Wood). They gather animals at the same speed.
• Said Citizen gather Metal and Stone twice as fast as Civilians. edit: Not twice as fast but 43% faster. Still much faster, though.
• Civilians and Citizen gather Wood almost at the same speed.
• Cavalry can gather Food from animals. And they do it 5 times faster than Civilians and Citizen.

So, different from many other RTS games, in 0AD more military = more economy. A Barracks does not mean you are gearing up for war, it's to build up your economy. That's a shift in mindset that took me a few games.

Another important gameplay aspect that is iirc only briefly mentioned in the tutorial, if at all:

• Producing units in batches increases production speed.

Because of that you should always produce units in the biggest batches possible regarding resources and free pop space. Set the value for batch sizes increases from 5 to 1 to make sure you can maximize that.

Once you have multiple buildings try to train units from all buildings in roughly the same batch sizes to maximize productivity.

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by DesertRose

[Seleucids]

Jagsus here you go

 

 

 

[Seleucids]

@DesertRose you are right, the tutorial needs to be improved. 

We need to make the tutorial informative enough while not carrying too much information so that the new players can be onboarded without getting stressed out. The best way to achieve this is by making 3 consecutive chapters that allow them to take a break in between. 

The only comment I have is the batch size. There are many mathematical studies in this topic somewhere on the forum and I remember reaching a conclusion of 2 by 2 on auto train being the best. 

[Deicide4u]

7 hours ago, DesertRose said:

Once you have multiple buildings try to train units from all buildings in roughly the same batch sizes to maximize productivity.

0 A.D. also has auto-train feature. It's marked by an infinity sign in the status panel when you select a production building. Clicking on that after you set your queue will automatically produce the queued units, as long as you have enough resources.

It can help you in the mid game if you struggle with keeping up with macro.

[DesertRose]

1 hour ago, Seleucids said:

The only comment I have is the batch size. There are many mathematical studies in this topic somewhere on the forum and I remember reaching a conclusion of 2 by 2 on auto train being the best. 

Oh, it's also linked in the thread you linked to.

Most relevant quote is this:

On 24/08/2021 at 7:53 AM, Micfild said:

So, considering what @Jofursloft and @Freagarach have said in the their posts, i redid the calculations for batching and 1by1 considering more productions cycles and the ProgressTimeout delay that autoqueue gives. To avoid making this post bigger than it already is, i placed the the calculations and the result tables in the attached pdf.

In general, smaller batches (2 to 3 units) break even with 1by1 by the 3rd production cycle, while bigger batches (5 and upwards) break even by the second production cycle. Things are a bit less efficient if you use autoqueue, but not by much.

So, as long as you can batch units constantly, batching will always be better than 1by1.  Also, the bigger the batch size, the better.