Are there any strategy guides?

[vmos]

I've been really enjoying this game even though I've been fairly crap so far. On the basic scenario acropolis map (on easy mode) I can advance to city status, get some good efences on the go and hold off any attack with little loss of life, but any time I try to expand much beyond the starting hill or attack the enemy, I just get totally slaughtered.

I have a feeling there's something vital I'm missing but it's not apparent from just looking at the manuals. Are there any strategy guides or a basic tutorial? Rape and pillage for dummies? How to vanquish the barbarian hordes in 6 easy steps? Conquering infidels for fun and profit?

[Lion.Kanzen]

In youtube we have a tutorial ( in the channel of course). And you can see in this forum some videos.

Edited December 28, 2013 by Lion.Kanzen

[sanderd17]

You can't wait until the AI attacks. You need to make a small army, as fast as possible, and disturb the economy of the AI. You need to micromanage this as good as you can. The AI is rather stupid, if you come to the base, and run away again, it will only send a few soldiers after you, so you can kill those easily.

Meanwhile, you also need to work on your own economy, so you can produce more units faster, and send reinforcements to your small army harassing the AI.

Also, don't let anything idle around. The less resources you have left, the better. Every unit producing building should produce units as fast as it can. Any worker should either be gathering or building, don't let them run too far either, build more dropsites.

[LordGood]

Or build a super huge Carthaginian fortification on top of your hill and grind them down to their last man!

Pewpew pew pew!

aaaah!

peshcew!

fight the athenians their AI is no good with ranged seige equipment yet

(use outposts to spot for your towers and fortresses, they have a longer LOS range when upgraded, and buildings can't shoot into the fog of war)

(AI likes to buy food with metal and stone, driving up prices so use the market to your advantage)

ah, but seriously though. that probably won't work.

could be fun though

[Prodigal Son]

Hey vmos did we play yesterday:)?

I was thinking of making a basic multiplayer guide (since I'm no expert myself), with tips on efficiency, speed, generic build orders etc, also including issues like hosting problems. Thing is, where would it be linked to be obvious/visible to people? I find myself facing new players all they time and giving them tips instead of having a real fight. And pretty often, people who can't really host create a game, wait, none joins and none can explain to them what's the issue, cause the chats aren't linked in same way, and then log off, probably never to return for some of them.

[niektb]

We could perhaps create a wiki page and link to it on play0ad.com?

I volunteer to help creating one!

Also a game manual is being worked. (By Mythos_Ruler?)

Last, but not least: you can find a video tutorial on YouTube.

Edited December 28, 2013 by niektb

[Prodigal Son]

Yeah that's a good idea:) It could have bits about everything game-related, while guides should be linked to the frontpage of the wiki. Then the wiki could be linked to the frontpage of 0 AD or the main page of the forums. Or perhaps a guides subforum of this is too much trouble.

[niektb]

Shouldn't be too much trouble to create a subforum, but I fear that it would be a chaos. I prefer a wiki page with a few persons taking care of the content and layout.

[Lion.Kanzen]

Some users is trying with platform wikia. Included me but in Spanish of course.

[feneur]

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual

[Prodigal Son]

http://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0adManual

I think most new players would prefer something more basic, like "mind your dropside distances", "build an early barracks", "check what unit is stronger against the units you face" etc. Like a short-ish compilation of begginer tips.

[feneur]

I think most new players would prefer something more basic, like "mind your dropside distances", "build an early barracks", "check what unit is stronger against the units you face" etc. Like a short-ish compilation of begginer tips.

My point was not that everything is there already, but rather that there is a beginning - a place to keep these kind of things So feel free to edit one of the existing pages or create a new one

[Mythos_Ruler]

If I had time I would write a real Strategy Guide in classic book form (PDF of course).

[sanderd17]

If someone wants to update the economy tutorial (determining by what time which feature should be made/which action performed), that's very welcome too. If it's updated, we could make it more prominent again.

[Prodigal Son]

The econ tutorial is that "challenge" at which you have to build things in time before the next are suggested? Having it at a more obvious position might be a nice start, it's kinda hidden where it is.

Edit: Feuner, this part actuall looks pretty good for a general direction, if only it was at a more obvious place as well.

I'd say placing a guide link directly on the frontpage, or a bot comment at upon lobby entrance saying "new players go there and check that for help".

Edited December 28, 2013 by Prodigal Son

[feneur]

The econ tutorial is that "challenge" at which you have to build things in time before the next are suggested? Having it at a more obvious position might be a nice start, it's kinda hidden where it is.

Edit: Feuner, this part actuall looks pretty good for a general direction, if only it was at a more obvious place as well.

I'd say placing a guide link directly on the frontpage, or a bot comment at upon lobby entrance saying "new players go there and check that for help".

The wiki manual is linked from the learn to play page in-game, and there is this: http://play0ad.com/category/game-manual/ on the web site.

[Prodigal Son]

I'm not saying it's that hard to find:) But the vast majority of people keep playing cluelessly or ask for advice in game. It's their choice being lazy but makes it hard to find a proper match.

That's why I would like to have it somewhere directly in front of their eyes to make them remember to check for tips:p.

Edited December 29, 2013 by Prodigal Son

[Romulus]

In the near future ill make a guide with some strategies I use. My style of playing.

The new AI attacks in approx 15-20 minutes with a relatively small army. In the beginning build towers. Don't bother about walls... Walls are for when things get really hectic and bad for your city.

Remember that walling yourself particularly against a human player is in actual fact disadvantageous because you can easily be starved. Your resources will eventually deplete spending it on troops and defenses when the enemy besieging you has the entire map to plunder and invest in the assault.

Expansion over territory with wood and iron is wise. And farms are essential because if the enemy ceases your lands occupied where your iron mines and forestry is, you can assign many villagers to farm and barter food for other resources.

Guard your farms with many soldiers during an attack.

So most of this applies against a human but in time the AI will improve and probably other scripters might introduce several of their own so be patient.

[Santa]

Hello vmos,

I won several team matches online not because I'm an specially talented player, but because the

multiplayer lobby is full of newbies, and, in my opinion, the way the game is designed, it's very easy

to win a 2v1, 3v1 or even 4v1 against 1st timers. Take my advices with caution, since as I said I'm not

actually a "pro". Anyway I'll leave here some tips in hope that you or someone finds them useful:

Economy:

- Your first movements in the game in many maps should be: send your women to food,

man to wood, horse for chickens and batch train 5 females or citizen soldiers.

- If I'm not mistaken, women are bonused for forraging and farming, man for taking wood,

mining and constructing.

- You can build barracks since the beginning: this means when you have enough

resources you can start training units in parallel, which will gather more resources,

allowing you to build more barracks and also more units increasing your population

exponentially since the beginning. In Age Of Empires II, this only happens in castle

age, you can't recruit units to gather resources earlier.

- Check your population at various points: in order to improve your technique it

would a good idea to check how many people do you have at minute 5, 10, 15, for example

and see how are you doing compared with your previous games. You can see the game time

pressing F12.

- Batch train in batches of 5: Allways train your units in batches of 5 as long as you can

afford it.

Military:

- Watch out civ center build attempts: Don't allow other players to build civ centers near your

first one, specially if they are good players.

- Garrison units in your castles: In this game castles doesn't woork like in Age Of Empires II;

in that game castles are strong without people garrisoned in them, also you can take them down

with trebuchets or with enough melee units. In 0ad, they are too weak without people garrisones in

them so as long as they are ungarrisoned they can be destroyed easiliy with melee units. However,

when you have people garrisoned in them they shoot too many arrows. They are so strong that - in my

experience - it's very difficult to take them down with pikemen. It also takes effort to take

them down with siege catapults. So remember to garrison units in your castle if it's under attack,

most newbies doesn't and they would have saved themselves a lot of trouble if they did.

- Garrison units in you civ centers: sometimes when you are expanding and you have built a civ center

and you have some units around it, your enemy comes to attack it to prevent your expansion, and

you both have like 10, 15 or 20 units. In this cases, some newbies fight back the attacker with his

units, however it would be much more effective if you garrison the units in the civ center and you

wait for the enemy soldiers to be killed or retreat, then you can repair your civ center.

- Buildings doesn't fight, people does: it's important that you have a fair amount of population,

because otherwise you won't be able to defend yourself, you cannot rely only on buildings to defend

yourself, ungarrisoned castles and civ centers are too weak, as explained above.

- Military units diversity: usually it's a good idea to have soldiers of different types, thus you

can handle better enemy attacks. The more diverse is your army, the more chances you will have

to get the appropiate units to counte enemie's units.

- With melee soldiers, attack the unfinished building, not the builders: when you are stuggling to

not get an enemy building built usually it's better to attack the unfinished buildings

- Attack the buildings, not the repairers: sometimes it's better to attack directly a damaged building

rathern than the people who is repairing it.

- Blacksmith: this one is obvious, you should have a blacksmith and research technologies of your

convenience. Beware, because unlike in Age Of Empires II researching some technologies prevents you

from research others; choose wisely which ones you want to research.

- Be careful with elite units: they are very, very strong compared with other units. In many cases, a

small number of champions can kill a fair large amount of citizen soldiers.

- Don't make "early walls": building walls too early in hope they will stop the enemy to break into your city and also

giving up on expand yourself over the map is usually a bad idea, Romulous explained it very well in the

post above:

Remember that walling yourself particularly against a human player is in actual fact disadvantageous because you can easily be starved. Your resources will eventually deplete spending it on troops and defenses when the enemy besieging you has the entire map to plunder and invest in the assault.

Map specific advices:

- Gold Oasis and Team Oasis: in team oasis there are treasures, you should pick them with your horse.

In both maps - believe it or not - there is a fair amount of wood, but you have to take it. One thing

you can do to reach the wood of the center of the map is building a row of barracks (which will expand

slighly your frontiers) instead of waiting to evolve to the phase II.

- In maps with water, for instance "Lake", usually the water is useful mainly to send troops to other place

of the map, and sometimes it's not worth it to fight for the control of the sea because unlike in Age of Empires II

it's not possible to destroy a city in maps like "Lake" just using boats (at least so far, I couldn't figure it out, if

I'm wrong and any of you guys know how to destroy a city with ships, please tell me).

Newbie killer techniques (this wouldn't work if your enemy is a reasonably good player):

- Pikemen flood with Spartans: this is just making a myriad of pikemen early (before the enemies reach

the phase III) and send them to destroy the enemies civ centers.

- Civ center sandwiching: this is surrounding the first civ center of your enemy with various of your civ

centers, thus your enemy won't be able to expand and will starve economically.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Santa

[Lion.Kanzen]

Newbie killer techniques (this wouldn't work if your enemy is a reasonably good player):

- Pikemen flood with Spartans: this is just making a myriad of pikemen early (before the enemies reach

the phase III) and send them to destroy the enemies civ centers.

- Civ center sandwiching: this is surrounding the first civ center of your enemy with various of your civ

centers, thus your enemy won't be able to expand and will starve economically.

some too hard to do. XD.

[Romulus]

Like I mentioned in my previous post.

Walls serve no purpose early on.

Instead of wasting time in which the enemy attacks you, concentrate on building a home guard of soldiers.

Walls should be the last thing on the list. They take time to build and costs to much early on in the game. If you going to build something, build towers and sentry posts and station a soldier in each sentry post which will make it attack enemy units.

Woman should be at home. Don't send the ladies out in the wilderness they will get attacked by everything under the sun. Instead get the woman to farm and gather at home.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Romulous

[Lion.Kanzen]

Like I mentioned in my previous post.

Walls serve no purpose early on.

Instead of wasting time in which the enemy attacks you, concentrate on building a home guard of soldiers.

Walls should be the last thing on the list. They take time to build and costs to much early on in the game. If you going to build something, build towers and sentry posts and station a soldier in each sentry post which will make it attack enemy units.

Woman should be at home. Don't send the ladies out in the wilderness they will get attacked by everything under the sun. Instead get the woman to farm and gather at home.

The new Town bell works fines to handle with that. i try to surround the CC with houses and with palisade to get time. even Town Watch can shoot arrows.

[Romulus]

Is there a new town bell in alpha 15 becuase I don't see one

I don't build palisades in my own city... they look shabby for a town lol

Palisades are castra

[sanderd17]

When you select your CC, there's a little bell icon (in the bottom of your screen).

[Lion.Kanzen]

Is there a new town bell in alpha 15 becuase I don't see one

I don't build palisades in my own city... they look shabby for a town lol

Palisades are castra

Town Bell. for Alpha 16 in SVN version of game. I like be Updated XD.

Edited January 3, 2014 by Lion.Kanzen