General tips on the game

[Πτολεμαῖοι]

I have started playing 0 ad a few weeks ago, and am still struggling to beat very easy in acropolis bay. If there are any helpful tips an tricks you know that would help, post them here. I am also playing Ptolemies, is there a better faction?

[clavz]

An old guide on basics:

A new guide by @alre on Persians, that are among the best civs in the current alpha:

 

[Old Roman]

You can increase your survivability chances with 2 basic choices. (even at medium and harder levels)

First decrease the population limit in game setup to either 100 or 150 as you progress.  At this population limit its much harder for the enemy to overwhelm you with a massive army early in the game.

Second choose a random map where you can change the size of the map to tiny or small. (I don't believe the standard skirmish maps give you this option)

This allows you to build (and fully garrison) some towers near the enemy border to immediately harass their economy.   If building more than 1 tower pay attention to its circular firing range aura while choosing where to put it and make sure the second tower you build's aura overlaps the first tower.  (I think this is called 'turtling' which apparently annoys competitive players in multiplayer matches--but petra doesn't mind)

If it happens to be built near his wood line, his barracks, or his food source it can easily deplete his population enough to delay or eliminate the massive raids that overwhelm you.  It also gives you enough time to get used to following the tips in the guide mentioned above.

 

[Yekaterina]

2 hours ago, Πτολεμαῖοι said:

I have started playing 0 ad a few weeks ago, and am still struggling to beat very easy in acropolis bay. If there are any helpful tips an tricks you know that would help, post them here. I am also playing Ptolemies, is there a better faction?

I also had this problem when I first started playing 0ad as it was the second strategy game that I have played (after plants vs zombies)

Here are some tips to become a pro:

1. Make as many units as quickly as possible. Set the AI on very easy and defensive so that it will not harass you. You can speed up production by training in large batches and building many barracks if you have enough resources. Train a mixture of men and women. 

2. Once your units are trained, don't let them stand there. Send them to gather food, wood, stone and metal and build more houses to increase the population further. You can set the enrollment point on farms or trees so that units work automatically when they come out of barracks or civil centre.

3. When collecting food, gather berries first, then farm. Only use female units for food collection. Build farms before your berries run out. 

4. Use male units to chop wood and mine. Never use female units to mine. 

5. Send your starting cavalry to collect chickens then hunt deers or sheep. You may use the cavalry to harass your enemy if you have enough food. 

6. If you have excess of something, build a market and barter away. 

Most importantly, don't let your units stand idle, don't allow your buildings to stop training. 

If you are rich then research techs at storehouse and blacksmith. They will  help in late game. 

Watch pro player videos on youtube. Valihrant and Tom 0AD are good for tutorial. 

[Yekaterina]

Once you can easily defeat the AI, these are some things you want to aim for before joining the multiplayer lobby:

1. Phase 2 between minute 8-10, after you have set up at least 2 barracks and at least 100 pop.

2. Phase 3 before minute 14

3. Stay poor. Don't float any resources, spend them or barter them or give to your teammates. (I am bad at this)

4. Research pierce shield and ranged attack first. These are the most important. 

5. Siege and hero out at minute 15. Reach max population (often 200) before this. Get a good mixture of melee troops and ranged troops.

6. Build barracks, fortress and towers (if you have the chance) near the frontline so you can spam units into the battle

7. Scout the map before launching an attack. 

8. Practice cavalry rushing your opponent, then other forms of rush. 

9. Don't forget techs (me again). 

 

When you are booming, you need 8 fields around cc if you are planning to use infantry and siege as main military output (must research farm techs though), 10-11 if you don't research techs. If you want spam cavalry then 10-12 farms with techs, or 14 without techs. 

If you are playing as the Ptolemies you need 11 fields initially, then once you reach max population you can delete some if you only use slingers and pikeman. However, if you want camels then you need 13-14 fields. 

Mauryans need around 11-12 fields for elephant spam. 

Expand towards metal. Metal is vital!

In late game delete your wood chopping women and only allow the farming women to live. Replace them with men, and commit almost all of your soldiers when you are attacking. This means you want to have spare wood before lauching an attack. Keep barracks training to supply your front line. 

Use formations. Recommended ones: box and close order. 

Don't let your ranged units get close to enemy  melee units. Retreat them promptly. 

[Gurken Khan]

A few very basic tips:

- lower the game speed

- keep your workers' walking distances short: build farms next to CC/farmstead, build storehouses near wood/minerals

- to avoid idle times frequently look at the symbol next to the minimap

[Ceres]

Would you recommend training 5 units (workers, military, whatever) in a batch or rather click 5 times to get them one after the other? Maybe it depends on what and where you need them for. I.e., when training them batch-wise, you have to wait longer to get them altogether, but then they are harder to defeat, but on the other hand, if you need just 1-2 (though I wonder when that could be the case?), you might be better off to train them with single clicks, so one appears as soon as s/he is available. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this.

[Yekaterina]

15 minutes ago, Ceres said:

Would you recommend training 5 units (workers, military, whatever) in a batch or rather click 5 times to get them one after the other? Maybe it depends on what and where you need them for. I.e., when training them batch-wise, you have to wait longer to get them altogether, but then they are harder to defeat, but on the other hand, if you need just 1-2 (though I wonder when that could be the case?), you might be better off to train them with single clicks, so one appears as soon as s/he is available. Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this.

I would choose to click 5 times. This is more flexible than setting the batch size to 5, so if you are rich then you train more than 5 in a batch and if you are poor you train smaller batches, but either way your barracks would not be idle. When you are booming, always train as much as you can actually afford. Never stockpile on food and wood, unless your strategy needs it. 

When you are fighting, spam barracks and train units one by one from them, so that you are always reinforcing your front line and never outnumbered. Don't train in batches when you are fighting! Therefore I recommand spamming around 3-5 barracks near the front line, if it is attritional battle then you need more. 

If your whole base is under attack and you can't fight back, garrison all units first, then train the largest batch. Once your big batch is out, release all of the garrisoned soldiers as well and fight the enemy with all you got. Enable loom tech and use women as anti-ram. Set women on violent mode; they are also decent anti-archer meatshield. 

 

 

[alre]

batches of men during booming, single men spam from barracks during battles. In this second case I sometimes use autoqueue (from autociv), but you need to deactivate it as soon as the battle ends, to return training in batches.

Edited July 29, 2021 by alre

[LetswaveaBook]

On 28/07/2021 at 3:14 PM, Πτολεμαῖοι said:

I have started playing 0 ad a few weeks ago, and am still struggling to beat very easy in acropolis bay. If there are any helpful tips an tricks you know that would help, post them here. I am also playing Ptolemies

I will give you some hints on how to start the first minute and what you should aim for. The idea is to pump out units initially as fast as possible. You will outproduce the very easy AI. I would suggest doing these moves at the start, which work on most maps.

1. Click on your Civic Center. Then press ctrl+z to train a batch of women. We train batches of units if possible, since training in batches speeds up the production and allows to produce more  units per minute.

2. Order your women to gather berries and your camel rider to hunt chicken

3. Order 2 of your men to build a farmstead near your berries such that your women gather more efficiently. The other 2 soldiers can build a house and a storehouse.

4. Click on your Civic Center again. Press ctrl+1 to put the CC on a control group. When the CC is selected click on a tree to place a gather point. Once the women are created, they will now directly go and chop wood..

5. Wait until the women are nearly ready. When they are, press the shift button and use the mouse wheel to change the batch size. You should set the batch size such that it is the maximum batch size you can afford.

6. As soon as the farmstead is build, you should do the berry gather upgrade and move the infantry that build it and order them to gather wood.

The idea is to train the maximum batch size you can afford. Also make enough houses to be able to support the population. In order to do so, you need to press 1 (assuming you set the civic center on control group 1) and see how long it takes before you need to order a new batch. At some point, your berries run out and you need to think of a new source of food income. To keep your Civic center producing constantly, you need around 10 farmers or 4 berry gathers

After some time, you can afford a barracks. Again it is the idea to put the barracks on a control group and constantly produce. You need to remember that once you get the barracks, you will need more food income to keep it running, so you probably need to add 10 farmers. The more units you produce, the more resources you gather and thus the more you can spent and the more barracks you will need in the end. Strategies can vary, but you will most often need at least 2 barracks before going to p2. Once you are thinking about going to p2, you have more freedom to decide what  your priorities will be.

The key is to adapt to your resources. If you are floating wood, you can spend extra wood by building pikemen from your CC, construct buildings and do the upgrades. If you are short on wood you probably make mainly women from your CC.

 

Also if you can move camel archers and do economy at the same time, you can do a camel rush. However as a new player that might be too taxing on your skills.