Hi everyone, long-time fan of 0 A.D. here. I’ve been playing for years, but recently I’ve been trying to organize larger, more competitive multiplayer matches with a group of friends. We’ve been running into some frustrating connection stability issues that seem to worsen as the game progresses and unit counts increase. It got me thinking about how much of our multiplayer experience relies on the network backbone. I noticed that most of my friends are playing over Wi-Fi, and when I looked into our setup, I realized some of them are using standard ISP-provided hardware that struggles with the constant synchronization required by a complex RTS like this. I’m currently experimenting with adding a dedicated external wireless access point in our "gaming room" to see if a more robust signal with better traffic prioritization helps reduce those sudden desyncs during intense combat moments. I’ve had a personal breakthrough recently where moving to a high-gain external access point significantly reduced the "jitter" I was seeing in the game lobby, but I’m still curious about the engine's tolerance for latency spikes. Has anyone else experimented with specific network hardware configurations to help keep 0 A.D. multiplayer stable? I know RTS games are notorious for being sensitive to packet loss, but is it the engine struggling to keep up with the game state, or is it almost always an issue with our local wireless hardware failing to keep the data stream consistent? I’d love to hear if any of you have found a "gold standard" for network gear that keeps these matches running smoothly until the very end.

@Asher Thanks for your feedback and suggestions! please have a look at mercator 0.11.1 in the initial post of this thread. It provides with these fixes and features: Every kind of Gaia object now has its own colour on the map, the same as in the 3D view: trees green, ore gold, stone grey, animals brown. Round map: for a circular map the Entity Placer cuts the picture to its circle and draws the edge, instead of showing a black square. A map with no terrain is a round field. Select many to delete or change player: Selecting: in any tool, Ctrl+drag selects a rectangle and Ctrl+click adds or removes one thing. A selected thing gets a blue ring. Acting on it: Del, or the new Selection box (Delete, Owner..., Clear), acts on all of it as one Undo step. A right-click on the selection offers the same choices, and Esc clears it. Delete: the map's own objects go into the bin. Planned ones are simply dropped. Owner: a planned wall changes owner as a whole, and Gaia's trees, mines and animals stay Gaia's. The status bar says how many were skipped. Houses snapping to each other: A building you click near another building moves flush against it, beside it or in front or behind. Its edges line up with the other's, and it turns to the other's angle. The ghost shows where it will land. It works against buildings (including fields and fences) on the map and ones you've planned. Trees, mines and units never snap. It leaves a 0.1 m gap between buildings, because the game's overlap check wants a hair of air. Straight Lines of trees, fences, or anything: Tick "In a line, every ... m" (default 8 m). Press where the line starts and drag to where it ends. The chosen entity goes down at the start and then every distance along, as a wall is drawn, and the ghosts show each place while you drag. Places the game would refuse are left out, and so are places where the same thing already stands. The status bar says how many were placed. It is one step to Undo, a plain click still places one, and Esc drops a line you're drawing. The distance is fixed from the start, so where the last tree lands depends on where you let go. I did it this way rather than stretching the spacing to hit the end exactly; say if you'd prefer that. Houses placed in a line don't snap to each other, because you choose the spacing yourself. Atlas error on MacOS: this is the same assertion as in 0.9.1 (wxArrayString::Index, from CinemaSidebar::ReloadPathList). It comes from Atlas with wxWidgets 3.2 on MacOS and appears on every map, please continue past it. Nothing in Mercator causes it. The walls loaded this time, so the 0.9.1 player fix held. Upstream's fix would be a case-sensitive search in that one call; I can draft a report for 0 A.D. if you want one.  

see #8906

Haven't you read the Release announcement for Release 28 on the website? There it is explained clearly: May I ask you why you haven't asked this question in the corresponding thread? It doesn't fit here.  

Would it be possible that you copy the title into your post and change the title to sth. like 'Change default formation'? Then it may be found better by other searchers... --- See also the corresponding FAQ chapter: How can I get units to move as individuals and not in formation?