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I think they just want a standard layout for the icons as they currently exist.

Icons get smaller or you increase the bottom panel size, which would decrease field vision You could probably change this with a mod if you really cared about it

I think the tone was that it was a deliberate choice or design decision. It was not. Or, rather, the decision was "good enough for now" several years ago.

@Thalatta, some players, and I'm part of them, think some aspect of the game-play like formations should have a greater role in this game. And I'm fairly dedicated to make it happen, as much as the development process allows it. My thoughts are really to try getting the game a bit away from this cheap filling of clicky gameplay toward funnier and mentally rewarding mechanics. But it is the hard path from what I've experienced. Much more work for sure. As you can see, there is also a lot of controversy when it comes to vision on the gameplay, which add up to make the triple combo : more work, slow development, resistance to change. But there are a lot of awesome people in the staff, and in this community so there is no reason to give up on making the game better, whatever the path might be. Now about ModernGUI, the mod itself is bundling the work of plenty of awesome modders, and I did a lot of work too to get it where it is, I don't think it's no longer a small project as the incremental enhancement added to the UI are starting to make it something reasonably cool imho. There are so many things you can explore through the various overlays, hundreds of added stylized tooltips, and added pages. Generally the mod is named only for the "autotrain" who, even if I do like a lot for playing, is a bit clumsy in the way it is currently. I'm currently undertaking a total rethinking of it, that will resemble more to a feature that fit more naturally into the game.

I'm not sure what you mean by "the tone", it was an honest question :P, I was thinking maybe the way it's coded made harder to position and order that, and maybe there was a reason to be coded like that, like if it was easier if things were constantly changing, and not worth any arrangement right now. Or if an alternative panel was being worked on already.

@guerringuerrin Thanks for the ModernGUI explanation, I didn’t know all those details. I think its capabilities are very interesting, but maybe for a game that has a lot of complexity in other parts, and as we all know, it’s still work in progress, maybe much of that will be implemented eventually if the actual clicking has be done somewhere else (unit’s formations, abilities, more city-building, who knows). I agree that in MP everyone should play under similar conditions (unless something else is agreed), I use the vanilla auto-queue in SP because all that clicking seems mechanical to me, not because it gives me an advantage, even when at the end I think it does, and although I don’t find the AI challenging anymore, I’d rather fight a much harder AI than deactivate auto-queue. So, it’s not that I want things to be easier, I just don’t want them to be boring, but I guess what is fun or not depends on each one. What really surprises me (and this from ignorance) is why the game in MP mode has not been made to detect which mods are being used by the players (maybe for some reason this is an impossibility?). It’s not that I want to minimise the MP aspect of a game, it's that I feel the opposite happens too often, and I stated what problems I see with that. In fact, as I hinted, I don’t even see it as a MP vs SP issue, but more as a mechanicality vs creativity issue, which is different since both could occur in MP and SP, although in competitive MP there’s a clear tendency for mechanicality, which I find unfortunate since for example a MP battle in Total War can be fun, tactical, and not just a clicking race, but it is what it is.

I don’t agree with this. There are different cases of this. Calculating the exact batch size for your available resources isn’t instantaneous to begin with and it changes over time. (besides 3–5 seconds in the heat of a battle is a long time). Also, we know the vanilla system is buggy so you end up with some barracks having long queues while others sit idle, and figuring out which one is idle takes time. Even when using auto-queue. All of that adds up. ModernGUI does this instantly everytime. No -or almost no- mistakes. Finally, there’s the issue of awareness: the human mind forgets things, and the more elements it has to keep track of, the more likely it is to make mistakes or forget to perform certain tasks and that all adds up over time.

The tone here is incorrect. Sometimes things don't get designed efficiently because people focus on other things. I do like the idea of 'standard' positions for things though.

That's often what is brought up but it might be overstated, as you can already have very low clicks per minutes assigned to managing production if you use vanilla autoqueue. From 0 to 5 apm? 5 being if it reset every 10 sec.

Sure, I understand you. I also don’t think that arguing “learn to play” contributes much. For me, the key point of the discussion is how to reach a consensus—how to bring both “playstyles” closer together without pushing everything to extremes. And I’d like to elaborate a bit on this so you understand what I mean. There’s a big difference between allowing the queue to resume once resources are available and a mod that assigns batches of units sized exactly to fit each building automatically and at instant speed. Moreover, the mod in question (ModernGUI) doesn’t simply leave a preassigned production queue; as a player, you can choose the composition of your army—for example: 40% javelineers, 40% pikemen, and 20% cavalry—and the mod will produce units in batches, assigning them to the queue just 1–2 seconds before the currently produced unit finishes. This also optimizes resource usage, since you keep them available until that exact moment. Then, if you run out of resources because you used them elsewhere, as soon as you have resources again, the mod automatically resumes production. Of course, there are caveats—you can’t say it’s perfect. Additionally, the mod includes some very interesting GUI improvements that, in my opinion, would be very positive to incorporate into vanilla. In other words, for me this isn’t a black-and-white issue. It’s true that the vanilla 0 A.D. system has some fairly clear functional bugs, and there is ongoing work to improve them. If you haven’t tried the mod already, I invite you to try it yourself so you can compare it with what I’m saying. Sure—against the AI, use whatever mod you like. Personally, I find it frustrating to lose a match to someone and then realize they were using this mod. There’s also been a lot of discussion about transparency—whether people should disclose when they’re using it. And in my experience, until you watch a replay and notice it yourself, players usually don’t tell you. It’s true that many people aren’t deliberately hiding it. In my experience, most players who use the mod don’t feel like they’re cheating; they just enjoy the game more that way. Some at least acknowledge that it helps them play better; others argue they would play just as well and that they simply find it boring otherwise—something I personally find very hard to believe, since the advantages of this training system seem quite obvious to me. That said, it’s natural that someone who doesn’t use that mod and plays against someone who does might feel it’s unfair. It’s humanly impossible for a player not using the mod to perform all the tasks that someone using it can, especially in battle scenarios where, while one player has to manage unit production, the other can keep clicking in combat while the barracks are practically producing on their own—as long as you have houses and resources, it will keep going. In other words, one player can focus on microing units in battle, while the other also has to deal with barracks micromanagement. And you might say these are just different schools of play, different preferences. Fair enough—but in multiplayer, when you’re facing another human who has these advantages, it’s natural that someone might feel frustrated or that it isn’t fair. This thread mixes many different issues. That’s why I asked whether you really knew what kind of automation was being discussed, and to what extent that automation goes. It’s not a minor debate. And even if the multiplayer community is a minority, let me say that it’s a very active one, and many people who actively contribute to the game’s development are part of it. Moreover, I think the multiplayer aspect should not be minimized at all—considering that this is an RTS, it’s only natural that it carries a certain weight. Sorry for the length of my response. I’m terrible at summarizing my ideas. At the same time, it felt more practical to just dump this whole rant at once rather than go little by little, haha.

Well, this started with "I think stopping the birth of new units due to lack of resources is a big mistake", and "unit production queue should be restored automatically when resources become available", and "This is incorrect. This can be considered a bug" (I just copy-pasted that last one because it's funny :D). Then I said "I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from". I guess I'm aware of what's being discussed, unless I missed something in between all the mayhem. I totally agree with "the sense of fair play matters", in fact I take it to such an extreme that that's why focusing on thinking and not clickiness seems fairer to me. The first criteria is fair only between players that have memorised not only at which time what building orders must be executed, but also have a click rate only achievable by playing often, while the second criteria puts a broader audience at a similar level, by allowing more creativity and less mechanicality. This is not a problem just with this game, this is a known problem for many games, even chess has this problem, and that’s why variants like Chess960 have been created. That doesn’t mean that variant is not competitive, and having people answering “learn the game mechanics” to people that question the status quo is misleading. I completely understand that for many here the second criteria might not look as fun or challenging, although I think this is a preconception rooted on habit, but I would instead ask myself which criteria would make the game grow more (if that's even intended).

Well unless this is linked to the individual experience of each citizen soldier: advances in fighting capability/ranking up would then coupled to an individual gathering capability decrease. Newly trained uniots would have full capability (for a CS) decreasing with each fight. In the end you woudl have an army of fighter pros that are not good for any gathering anymore while the newbies can very well help in the economy but are less powerful in battle. Sound interesting to me.

If it was for SP only, I would recommend this as an optional setting to chose from. For MP games I am not so sure.

I geniunely recommend you to learn how to play. Top players in the game don't use any automated training system. If you think that recommendations of doing your own mod is "humilliating," then will be faster for you learn the game mechanics than make a mod. GG.

Another idea somewhat related to this. Farm upgrades, instead of giving you +x% faster gather rate, allows you to put one more farmer per Field. E.g. Fields start with a maximum of 2 Farmers, and each Farm upgrade increases the maximum by 1.

That's an interesting idea. It would mean that you can still train Citizen Soldiers to kick-start your economy, but the further the game advances the less economically viable Citizen Soldiers become. So advancing to the next Phase does not also mean spending resources now to gain a long-term advantage, it also means that you potentially sacrifice economic power for military power. It also has the downside that after advancing to the next Phase you are practically forced to attack; you cannot advance to further increase an economic lead.

They can be though, since there is that flood map where the water rises, so maybe it’s possible to change the sky colors in the future? You are right. I was looking through extinct volcano, and saw this: const cmpWaterManager = Engine.QueryInterface(SYSTEM_ENTITY, IID_WaterManager); const newLevel = cmpWaterManager.GetWaterLevel() + waterLevelIncreaseHeight; cmpWaterManager.SetWaterLevel(newLevel); this.DebugLog("Raising water level to " + Math.round(newLevel) + " took " + (cmpTimer.GetTime() - time)); maybe we can change it to light manager or something

I’m not sure whether you’re aware of what kind of automation is actually being discussed. I agree that you can’t really say one thing is better than another, or that one approach is “how it should be” and the other isn’t. In the end, it comes down to consensus about what a community wants or accepts as valid and what it doesn’t. The case of AoE2 is quite illustrative: a feature like 0 A.D.’s vanilla auto-queue is considered cheating in the multiplayer scene. Is that right or wrong? That’s not really the point. The real question is whether there is a broad consensus around one gameplay mechanic or another. The issue is that, when playing against a human opponent, the sense of fair play matters. Whether certain features are accepted or not is part of an ongoing discussion and a necessary consensus in any community. This debate has been going on for years and has been approached in different ways. Some have led to a good, inclusive understanding despite disagreements. In other cases, things like this happen, where someone shows up out of nowhere and starts treating everyone like id**ts, and nothing productive can come out of that.

These rants were hilarious to read. I never used auto-queue in other games, but once I started using in 0 AD, I liked it, and now I get annoyed when I have to set it up again because I run out of resources for a few seconds, so I get where the proposal comes from. But this attitude of “this is the only right way, look at this picture and implement it” is going to go nowhere. I disagree that these automation things are letting “the game play for you”, it would be a poor game if clicking on portraits is such a big part of it, I think better if it concentrates its complexity in other aspects, but maybe since tactics is not a big thing yet that’s how players find the fun. I think AoE2’s auto-scout resembles more letting the game play for you. I guess I used it back then, but I haven’t missed it in 0 AD. So, it’s all a matter of balance, it’s not about what’s better or worse, just different kinds of games are being proposed, and as someone said, “if you remove mechanical requirements, you need to add complexity elsewhere”. Many arguments are being made on the basis of competitive clickiness, but it’s wrong to think that’s the only right way to play a game, and even an online game could be challenging and fun with less clickiness and more thinking. It’s just a choice, but I think many more people prefer the latter, the impression here of course will be the opposite because of a biased selection: online-players are actually a minority, they just seem overrepresented online for obvious reasons.

That's definitely interesting and the first time somebody reported this problem. Can you please send me a private message with the lobby username of your friend so I can have a look if we got something in the logs for these connection attempts?

Yes, @Stan` said he'll try to sign it this week.

Do you intend to make the mod available on mod.io? Congratulations on the hard work; I’ve been following the team's updates, and it’s looking very interesting!

I see that there is something cooking for R28, but I'll not speculate until we hear something from the developers. Looking forward to trying this out.

Hello everyone, and Happy Easter! First of all, I am happy to announce that Hyrule Conquest: Revival has been updated to 0 A.D. version R28. In addition to the update, there is a whole ton of new stuff, including factions, features, maps, and more... First off, Gohma are a swarm faction, meaning they specialize in training hundreds of weak and squishy units and overwhelming the enemy with sheer numbers. As you can tell from the pictures, the Gohma are a mix of the old and new designs, using the original organic structures and the redesigned Gohma units. The Lizalfos function very different from the other factions. When you start a match as them, you pick between one of four gods, each of whom gives you different units, structures, and technologies. They range from stealth focused (Farosh), to poison and disease focused (Okra), to war and battle focused (Dinrall), to ranged and hunting focused (Dodalagon), so they have lots of variety. The Moblins are an extemely mobile faction. All of their buildings (except their wonder) can pack up and be moved somewhere else, allowing them to move to a completely different area. They also have access to all of their units and techs to start, making them a strong early game faction. The Sheikah Cadre are back! They are extremely stealthy, with the majority of their units having Stealth or Camouflage. They are also very Creature heavy, and have a lot of Dodge. While they have less units compared to most of the other civs, they are very heavy damage dealers. The Zora Dominion are finally done! Though they are lacking Aqueducts, they otherwise function and are completely playable. They are very magic heavy, with lots of mage units. They are also (just like Lanayru Province and the Wild Zora) completely aquatic, allowing them to swim across lakes and oceans. In addition, there are also major changes to Labrynna. I have redone them again, removing their structure upgrades. They now only have their steampunk buildings, which was done mainly so that they function with the AI without making extensive changes to Hyrule Bot. I have also added two new features to the Deku Kingdom: Mad Scrub is back! When a Deku Scrub is slain, it has a chance to spawn a Mad Scrub, who will go on a rampage killing everything in sight. For the first time in the histoy of Hyrule Conquest, the Deku have a navy! They have three boats, which use turreting to transport units, as well as a dock to build them from. You can expect more navies in the future... I have added Dodge into the game. When a unit with Dodge is attacked with a melee attack, they have a chance to dodge it (this will be added to the GUI in the future). Stealth and Camouflage are finally fixed! Now enemy units that are stealthed or camouflaged are invisible to the naked eye. Note that cheats that reveal the map and that ticking the Revealed Map option in the Game Setup page break this feature. Automatic Resource Draining is now in. This is a pretty minor feature, which is at the moment only used by the Gohma Recycler structure. Spawning on Interval is in! This is another smaller feature, but will be used mainly by the Gohma (who now auto spawn some units) and by Gaia for map enemies. Garrison Spawning is also in! Most buildings no longer have an automatic attack. Instead, at the start of the game a group of basic archers are turreted in every civil center. These units cannot be removed from the turret, though they can be killed as normal. These same buildings no longer spawn nits when destroyed, which fixes some gameplay problems. Now, thanks to some code from Toby Dustin, when a faction is defeated, any surviving units defect to an ally, making team games of Regicide much more interesting. Finally, and perhaps the most anticipated feature by most, Knockback is finally in! Many large units and siege weapons can now knoc units back when they attack, causing absolute chaos. Many of these units are also immune or resistant to Knockback, due to their size. This has been wanted for a long time, so I hope y'all are happy now! We have reached the point where it's time to split from vanilla 0 A.D. map-wise. The vanilla maps are no longer playable. I know some people probably are dissapointed by this, but it's for the best, as many vanilla maps have vanilla units that mess up gamelay, appearence, and lore. To help counter the sudden lack of maps, 4 new maps are in (all of them 4 player maps): Gerudo Desert: Day, Gerudo Desert: Night, Tarm Ruins, and Zora River. There have been several GUI changes, including adding a Manual (currently incomplete) and new music. Finally, there have been lots of balancing changes not already listed, including: - Stalfos units are no longer immune to Pierce damage. - Minor Factions are now researched at the Market before they can be built. - Ordona has a new hero: The Resistance, who is trained by Ashei. - Markets now provide a trickle of Rupees. - Labrynna's cannons and guns are slightly more balanced, at least among themselves. And now for some news: After almost 8 months working on this project, I have almost updated every faction and feature from the original Hyrule Conquest. All that is left is to update the Plot system, which will open the way for redesigns of the Kokiri, Lanayru, and Gorons, as well as the promotion of the Darknut Legion to a Major Faction. Because of how much has been updated, as well as some personal projects, production will slow from now on. You can expect monthly releases, in which I will be adding navies, maps, campaigns, and of course lots of balancing. During this time, I also hope to add the Plots and Darknuts mentioned above. I also hope to, as time goes on add new factions, including the Guardians, Ikana, and Twili, as well as add new features, including Burrowing, Unit Abilities, and a Campaign Map. I also hope to improve the AI, so that it fully functions with all of the civilizations. Don't take all of this the wrong way, I am not retiring from the mod, nor am I taking a break or stepping down as project leader. I will still work on it, albiet at a slower pace as I add brand new features and art into the game. Y'all can download the mod here: https://www.moddb.com/mods/hyrule-conquest-revival/downloads/hyrule-conquest-revival-0121 Until next month, enjoy!