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Thank you brother, I completely understand your fatigue and thank you for your efforts in this cause. Although I have only known you for two years, you made me feel very friendly and helped me a lot. Despite all the chaos, you strive to make the community a place where friendly exchanges can occur. Otherwise, Chinese people like me might not stay here any longer or invest more energy. I hope you will feel more relaxed and healthy after offloading the burden of being in charge. I hope you can happily play games with us as a player again in the future. thanks again.

@wowgetoffyourcellphone@implodedok I found discussion from other Invision Community forum system administrators about how they're fighting spam. I like the idea of enabling content moderation for the first 1 or first 3 posts for all new users. Some admins said that it stopped nearly all of the spam posts. Also, check out the paid cleartalk module. And, there are additional tips, even how to try to prevent spam in profiles. https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/473832-spam/#comment-2941687 https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/474133-spam-attack-suggestions-to-slow-them-down/#comment-2943826 https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/474157-site-being-overun-by-spammers/#comment-2956370 https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/471215-spam-prevention-question/?do=findComment&comment=2952673 Let's do more than what we have done so far, please. wowgetoffyourcellphone said in IRC today that we are getting 20 spam posts per day. He's getting frustrated and asking about changing our forum software. I said that changing the forum software would be a big task, and we should carry out the measures available to us with the existing Invision Community forum software and compatible modules.

Hello everyone, It is with great sadness and a little relief that I am announcing my retirement as project leader of both 0 A.D.: Empires Ascendant and Wildfire Games. It has been an awesome 12 years and 8 months, with its ups and downs. Making it to the team will remain one of my greatest achievements ever. After 6 years of 3D art struggles, getting the chance to join the team was unexpected (and, to this day one of my proudest moments), and two years later to be offered the leader job came even more as a surprise. It has been an incredible opportunity to be the leader of such a project. I would not have met half of the awesome people I met if it were not for it, and I would certainly have not have had the opportunities to go to the places I went if it were not for it. I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve. Being able to spread the word about the game around the world has been an honor, and I hope the game will continue to shine at events. Recently, I had less and less energy and motivation to give to 0 A.D. The delay followed by the cancelling of A27 was no exception; I simply could not give the same energy I gave for the previous ones. The lobby became a source of permanent mental load and anxiety, first because of it is lack of moderation, then because of it started becoming moderated, and now because mods splat the community even more and the cheating is rampant. And it went downhill from there, as I started the longest break I ever took from 0 A.D. Those of you that know me know I was not really far, but I was simply not there. On the development side, I cannot seem to find any fun anymore. Everything feels more like duty than an actual desire, which can only work for so long until it breaks. The learning curve is just simply not worth the burnouts anymore. There are so many things I wanted to add to 0 A.D to showcase the true potential of the engine, as it is just immense, look at all the mods have done, look at all the thing people learnt about history, programming, art, bugs.. But I don't feel I can carry that vision anymore. I believe it is time for a change. I am therefore, effective immediately, quitting my functions as programmer, artist, video editor, documentation manager, translator, human resources, moderator, social media manager, public relations, system administrator, mod signer and modder, (all my mods can be considered archived until further notice). It is the only way for me to ever move on. I cannot just keep doing one thing for 0 A.D., unless I get a clean break I will continue feeling everything not covered by someone is on my shoulders, and it is a weight too big for a single person. I would like to thank everyone that made some or the whole journey with me, I will miss you all very much. I hope we shall meet again. I would also like to thank all the players that took action in the balancing department it has not been an easy task. I do not have ideas for the person who can or will replace me, nor do I know whether I should be replaced by a single person. I will leave it for the remaining people to decide what kind of leadership model they want to go for from now on. As for what I'll do next I do not know yet, but I've been working on Godot tools to import 0 A.D. assets and it's been fun, so I might continue that. I'm still working with Activ' Design this year as well. tldr; So long and thank you for the fish. May Wildfire Games and 0 A.D: Empires Ascendant live a long and healthy life after I am gone. Best regards, Stan

That sounds interesting, I'll try to reach implodedok directly. The only downside I see that we'll need to dig through those spams to find a valid account of newcommers.

Hi and welcome to the forum! We had our stand before, just haven't submitted our application this year. We had no problem to get a stand in previous years (according to Stan we had no rejections at all). We haven't considered to have a stand yet. Personally I plan to give a lightning talk (like I did in 2019-2021) and I'd like to have a stand. But I need to have my visa approved first.

I disagree. I don't think a game about different cultures should require all those cultures being depicted to conform to one view or opinion on nudity. Why should your RL cultural norms get to dictate the RL cultural norms of every other culture?

I imagine it could be done similar to stretching out Walls.

Hi all I'm a c++ programmer, coming from Ogre3d and then unreal I discovered this project by searching a RTS open source, hopely to help here to program and building in blender buildings

Hey Stan, Please don't feel bad for quitting your 0 A.D. posts. Health and a fulfilling life go first, and I'm sure that everyone here knows that you have thoroughly thought about it before making your decision. Your work, care, and constructive attitude have had without doubt a huge impact on the development of the game and its community, and have made 0. A.D what it is today: Objectively one of the greatest open source games in the world. It can even compete with the best commercial games in the market which is - given the fact that this is all made by volunteers - not a matter of course at all. Thinking about the huge part that you had in it, what you did is outstanding and you can be more than proud of it! It is only natural that the colossal effort you put into 0 A.D. would at some point wear you down. So don't think about your retirement as a weakness but instead be amazed at how long you kept up. It's also a wise decision to make a clean cut as it's easy to get sucked back into old habits and wrongfully getting the feeling that one was supposed to deliver. Once you have established a healthy mental distance, feel free to drop in for some games or good company without any pressure! I wish you all the best and am sure that you'll find your energy again to have an amazing future :)

I'd say that Han administration is particular enough (both historically and in the game) that it's better to avoid making false copycats of them... Basically, leave the Archon units to the Protoss...

Stan, thank you for the outstanding job you did. Besides the remarkable commitment and contribution to the project development, I have admired your patience, tolerance, responsiveness and involvement demonstrated to every member of this community, from the newest forum user, to the ones claiming they know better. Even more so, considering the responsibility and high pressure that the role demands. 2023 has been a tough year for 0AD and the project is more fragile today than it was one year ago. My wish for the future is that the new leadership will successfully tackle the "few can ruin the experience of many" problem, that so deeply harmed the game and the community. Fair winds Stan. Whatever you'll do from now on, it'll be a success.

I think the dual-gender mod avaliable in the install-mods page implements its own pictures for citizens, which you might like.

Mod note: This game is focused on simulated ancient warfare. Please refrain from going way off topic with current politics. That just ruins any discussion.

Technically, these are the (draft) rules of the forum and other WFG communication systems besides the lobby. 2022-10-19 code of conduct revision 2.pdf See section 9 for some rules that are relevant, such as no personal attacks and not purposefully demeaning the worth of others. Meanwhile, section 10 has restrictions on pornography or other sexually offensive materials. So, imagery of genitalia or sexual intercourse are forbidden, but I don't see rules preventing showing skin on other parts of the body. I think that social media have similar standards. There are even uncensored and non-age restricted videos on Youtube of African tribes with topless women. The reason it's allowed on Youtube is because it's nudity without sexual context. It's a similar situation with 0 A.D. It's bare skin without sexual context. But, I agree with ChronA's statement about rules if it's interpreted as an attempt at describing part of a common moral code that doesn't have bias toward a certain culture or religion, or the volunteerism and nonpartisan culture of WFG developers. Consistent with volunteerism, if you are highly motivated to see a change to the artwork in the game then you can make a mod yourself, or pay a developer to make one, that changes the artwork. You can distribute it, and like-minded people will use it. But, don't expect it to become the new default artwork, unless there is a sea change in the culture of the player base.

Why not take some advice from history about the role of skirmishers and ranged units vs the role of spearmen? Historically, Hellenistic city-states would go into battle with a large force of hoplites in phalanx, which would meet in melee with the enemy phalanx of hoplites. There would also be thousands of less-equipped skirmishers and infantry around with slings and throwing weapons. The role of the skirmishers would be to harass the enemy skirmishers, protect the flanks, and generally be an irritation before the hoplite vs hoplite battle begins. Once the hoplites start fighting, the skirmishers have little to do, because they can't shoot at the hoplites once they meet, or they would hit the backs of their own hoplites. Also, hoplite shields and armor were really good protection against missile weapons aimed at the front. So, hoplites can tank a lot of ranged fire especially when shot from the front, and friendly fire was an important consideration in who the slingers and javelineers could hit. The norm of 0ad where the skirmishers fire right into the melee and miraculously only hit enemy units is unrealistic and ahistorical. And from a gameplay perspective it devalues hoplites. Once the melee starts, the shooting should stop. Perhaps there could be a friendly-fire rule where slingers, skirmishers, and archers will do friendly fire damage, and won't automatically target an enemy if a friend is adjacent to it, unless the enemy is a higher value target.

@BreakfastBurrito_007 the current meta is such that unless we lower the damage of everything, your melee units die before they can even reach the enemy. I am totally for raising the damage of melee, but we also must slow down the rate of killing. Battles are just way too fast for any type of units or mixture. Pikeman is the only one which can live for a reasonable length. The solution is: after we get a good melee damage value relative to ranged, we multiply the damage of everything by a factor 0.5. This will slow down the killing. You might think that requiring 20 shots to kill a spearman is ridiculous, but be reminded that most players enter battles with 50-100 ranged units at a time, which means at least 3 to 4 spearman will perish in the first second.

Squishy is kind of Persia's signature flavor in military matters, at least as the Greeks liked to tell it. Although arguably the Persian soldiers were actually just as well or slightly better armored than was the norm at the time, it's just that the Greeks were extreme outliers by wearing insanely protective kit. Regardless, if you want to represent that idea in game I think the trick is to make Persian units tanky per cost but squishy per individual. For instance suppose you dropped the shield bearer's cost from 50 Food 50 wood to 50 food 10 wood. The trick is then to balance that against the economic windfall they would get from cheap CS.