Struggling to get the hang of this game

[Tyrannosaurus]

I've returned to playing 0 AD over the past week, and while I see a lot of potential in the game, right now I'm struggling to get the hang of it. The problem is the whole "citizen soldier" mechanic in which your military units gather most of the resources and build everything as well as the fighting. It sounds like a unique mechanic setting it apart from other RTS games on paper, but in practice, it means that my soldiers are often too preoccupied with gathering to readily defend the base whenever the enemy shows up. This wouldn't be so bad if they automatically stopped gathering to attack the enemy on sight, but they don't seem to do that, so I have to manually order them to stop gathering in order to defend my settlement. It's a pain in the ass for me, as is having put almost my whole economy on hold whenever I want to attack the enemy settlement in turn.

I know there are specialized female gathering units for each civilization, but they're most proficient at harvesting fruit and grain and less so with the other resources, so it doesn't seem that the game wants you to delegate all your gathering to the female citizens while letting the soldiers stick to guarding and fighting.

What are some strategies that will help me better balance the economic and military aspects of the game using these citizen soldiers?

[Gurken Khan]

To get into it you can decrease the game speed and lower the difficulty of AI enemies.

I use women not only for food, but also for wood; their gathering speed is not worse by much and they don't cost wood to produce.

You can try to collect so many resources that eco down time doesn't hurt you. You can leave some soldiers to collect while others fight; note that with each rank their collection rate significantly worsens.

To improve eco research storehouse tecs, to improve fighting research forge tecs.

There is no way around manually telling your soldiers to fight.

There are videos on youtube for build orders, and somewhere is a guide from @Yekaterina.

hth

[BreakfastBurrito_007]

@Tyrannosaurus also I recommend trying multiplayer when you feel ready (unless you already are). It might be hard to find a lobby or 1v1 for your proper skill level, and if you get stomped on don't get flustered. At the end of the day, playing versus real players is way less frustrating than playing vs AI. Ask around for tips, because nice people will give them to you.