I’ll probably test my ideas out in a small mod before merging them with something else. I feel that they should be further exaggerated, not to the point of cartoonishness, but so that the differences are noticeable to someone who has maybe not played every race extensively. For example, using the cavalry example you mentioned above, the Carthaginian cavalry is only barely faster, and so it has to be directly compared against a standard cavalry unit to notice the difference.   Cosmetic uniqueness is important in many ways, it makes each civ feel like a unique race, it allows players of varying play styles to pick the race that most fits them, and it allows players of lesser skill to beat more advanced players simply through choosing the right race for the right situation (though again, over exaggeration must be avoided here). As part of this uniqueness, the ‘baseline roster’ should be changed for each race, so that the game is interesting long before champions are unlocked in city phase (champions are atm the one real unique units in the game). Again, not over exaggerated, but for example the changes I have above should be generally applied to the majority of units for each civ. You all can expect my mod sometime soon, most likely after I get the next release of Hyrule Conquest: Revival out.

You are good enough for TGs and I know how to balance you. That's all that matters.

There is no bubble. It is what it is. Get used to LLMs

Using a VPN could also solve it for you.   The two possible solutions would be - dedicated servers: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/3556 - support for IPv6: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/issues/4301 both of which, yeah, aren't trivial to implement.

after the ai bubble bursts,hopefully the prices come down enough for crowdfunded people like WFG to get smth like it