My preferred civilization when playing 0 A.D. is the Mauryan civilization. The main reason is the access to elephants. The worker elephants can be set to protect citizen soldiers, and when the citizen soldiers are directed to collect wood, the elephant follows them. This eliminates the need to build a storehouse for wood. Citizen soldiers with a worker elephant can also be used to mine resources outside the civ center’s territory. This reduces the travel time between resource collection and storage, which is great for quickly gathering resources. The Mauryan civ also has access to armored war elephants, which are great for defense against siege weapons and attacking enemy AI territory.

The strategy I use to consistently beat AI on very hard difficulty is based on the above two points: using worker elephants in the early game to quickly collect resources and rushing the tech tree towards armored war elephants. The number of units and build order given below should be adjusted according to map size, resource availability, and AI aggressiveness.

Village Phase 🔗

The first few moves are crucial to get right, and the actions here will snowball throughout the game. We need to concentrate on food, wood, and houses for population in the early game. Most maps start with 4 soldiers, 4 female workers, 1 light cavalry, and 1 worker elephant.

In the early game, wood is better used in constructing houses than in constructing farmlands. So the first sources of food should be berries and animals. Farmlands should be constructed only when all berry bushes and fruit trees close to the civ center are exhausted. Use female workers for foraging food from bushes or trees and light cavalry for collecting food from animals close to the civ center. When there are no more animals close to the civ center, use the light cavalry to explore and find treasures. Also, keep an eye out for stone and metal mines that can be expanded to.

The exact steps I take immediately after starting the game are:

• Queue 5 female workers in the city center.
• Send existing female workers to forage from berry bushes and fruit trees close to the civ center.
• Send existing soldiers to collect wood close to the civ center.
• Set the light cavalry unit to collect food from animals close to the civ center.

Initially, set the worker elephant to follow female workers. When all the berry bushes and fruit trees close to the civ center are exhausted, set the worker elephant to follow the soldiers collecting wood.

The goal for the early game is to have around 25 soldiers collecting wood and around 3 farm plots with a total of 14-15 female workers collecting food from farms. This can be reduced to around 20 units collecting wood if the AI is too aggressive, using the extra units in defending.

Make sure to build extra houses before reaching the population limit. It is ideal to always have extra housing space for 5-10 units.

We should also construct at least 1 storehouse before we upgrade to the town phase, so that we can upgrade the wood collection rate. There should also be a stone mine and metal mine close to the civ center. Build a storehouse near the resource mine that is further away from the civ center. If there are enough resources, we can go for the woodcutting upgrade in the storehouse and then the wicker basket upgrade.

Town Phase 🔗

Once we have enough resources, we can upgrade the civ center to the town phase. This gives us access to defense towers and elephant stables. We will also start getting attacked by AI around this phase.

Start the town phase upgrade in the civ center. Have a batch of at least 5 soldiers always in construction in this phase. The soldiers can continue constructing houses for population growth when not constructing the buildings required for the civ center upgrade. Build a stone tower at the furthest edge from the civ center, towards the anticipated enemy AI civ location. If the AI attacks, the defense tower will be the first structure it encounters. The enemy units could engage with the tower or at least be slowed down, giving us enough time to raise a warning at the civ center to protect the workers.

Build a barracks and elephant stable within the range of the defense tower so that they are protected, and the units trained in these buildings will be ready for defense or quicker to attack the enemy territory. The next building to construct is the blacksmith. Build it in a location where we don’t expect enemy unit attacks. We need one more town phase structure to upgrade to city phase. If the map has few natural resources, build a market so that it can be used for trading and gaining resources. Otherwise, build a temple; this allows us to research battlefield medicine, which will increase a unit’s healing rate when they are idle.

The training queue for the civ center and barracks should never be empty. Always keep training soldiers or workers in batches of 5. Use these workers to build a farmstead and increase farm plots to 5-6, with a total of 25-30 workers gathering food. Keep researching farming upgrades at the farmstead. The soldiers can start collecting stone and metal. Aim for having around 20 soldiers collecting each.

By the end of the town phase, we should have the following buildings:

• Civ center & houses
• 1 farmstead
• 1 storehouse
• 1 elephant stable
• 2 barracks
• 1 blacksmith
• 1 temple
• 1-2 defense towers

The units allocated to resource collection should be around:

• 25-30 workers collecting food
• 25 soldiers collecting wood
• 20 soldiers collecting metal
• 20 soldiers collecting stone

City Phase 🔗

Start the city phase upgrade in the civ center. The focus in this phase is armored war elephants. Add additional units towards collecting food and metal, as war elephants require a lot of these. Train a batch of 5 war elephants, or train individually if there are enemy units attacking. Construct 1-2 additional barracks. Use soldiers (spearmen) as support for the war elephants. Use the elephants to attack buildings and the soldiers to defend against any units that are attacking the elephants. Upgrade the weapons and armor of soldiers in the blacksmith building.

Keep queueing batches of 5 war elephants and batches of 5 soldiers in each barracks. Send 5 war elephants along with ~20 soldiers to attack enemy territory. As soon as new war elephants are created, keep sending them to attack. If the AI has a lot of units attacking the elephants, use more soldiers (40-60) along with the elephants. Target castles, civ centers, markets, barracks, and towers. This should pretty much defeat the AI.

Playthrough 🔗

The game below is a 20x fast-forwarded recording of a game against AI on very hard settings. I’ve stuck to the above strategy pretty closely and was able to win in ~35 minutes.