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You can now share your replays on http://replay-pallas.wildfiregames.ovh

I just tested the mod and I must say i really like the change to the melee. I was caught of guard by the immediate loss of survivability against ranged units, but after getting over the initial shock and switching mindset a little I found it much more enjoyable having my sword units do meaningful things instead of just taking damage like before. Blacksmith armour and such is much more important now and certain hero bonuses have greater value now. I also liked the nudge towards a diverse army to cover different things as apposed to a single unit spam. Overall a great change Now about the catapult splash damage, what is the radius size? I tested that too and it seemed to be non existent, in fact there seemed to be little impact at all from what I could tell, uncertain if I tested it wrong or what exactly the trouble is, so was a little disappointed by that.

It is true that it was a bold move, and I realize the mod is dividing the multiplayer lobby to some extent. It has been a year and a half since the last release, and with the meta being so static and dependent on 'sniping', I knew a bold move was needed to thoroughly test these changes if they are to be committed. If I had not added it to the community mod, the changes would either have been abandoned out of fear of imbalance or minimally tested and committed with imbalances. With this bold move, we now have the opportunity to extensively playtest changes and make improvements or remove stuff. I could have instead made a separate mod for smaller scale testing, but I know exactly how that goes, and I know it doesn't work: 5 to 15 players would download and install, barely manage to organize a handful of matches. In that case you either get no idea of the balance and how things are effected, or you get an under sampled set of results, which is often worse. I get that some ppl are unhappy, but I know that this will be an improvement in the long run.

I haven't gotten a reply here or to my private message to Karlosefl. I think it's just a clever tactic used by a spambot. Karlosefl appears to be a duplicate account of a known spammer, Karlosmnt. I'm locking this thread and banning the duplicates of Karlosmnt.

This re-balance seems to changes a lot how you have to plan for army composition. Since melees are now a source of dps rather then meatshields for ranged units, the counters are significantly more pronounced. The paper-rock-scissor is much more pronounced, and it does put less importance on numbers (army size... techs..). Inf Swords slaughter Spears, Spears decimate Cavs, Cavs beat inf Swords... For inf, 60% ranged 40% melee seems to not be the cookie cutter composition that will be good in all cases now, with this mod I saw more games where players tried successfully both full ranged or full melee. It really depends on what you plan to fight against and how. For cav, melee surely die a bit faster under defense buildings (less resistance) but also inflict damage faster so rush with melee cav are still possible. It feels more balanced then when hans sword cav for example could stay under cc for very long. Massive cavalry are easier to counter with spears, as they move a bit faster in this mod and deal greater damage (as a % of total army dps). The changes can feel frustrating because cavalry is harder to play with now, and aren't always the best unit. You can lose cavalry units much faster, but it's also rewarded by greater dps (For ranged cav too, as they kill melee inf faster, but die faster too if they get caught). This mod did address a lot of players feedback about balance, and did it better then ideas like increasing the resources or population cost of cavs etc... It was a bit of a bold move to push theses significant changes (even if I personally think they did great to make balances more interesting) onto the community mod without much polling and teasing. Because of this the community suffer new divides. It was well known that the community mod is a default for a lot of players and therefore isn't the "experimentation mod" for any member of the balancing team.

@real_tabasco_sauceI did not target the tower im pretty sure, but CC automatically targeted it after enemy troops were out of range and tower was the only target in range. No special mods: just autociv, community mod and balanced maps. maybe feldmap is on as well.

The WOW campaign needs a lot of programming and I'm also excited to do it. But it needs serious planning. I don't want a light version of Grand Strategy or something boring due to repetition.

These videos are priceless and I like these comparison videos between units, they help me understand how the mechanics work and how the units feel when fighting. I like them, specially in AoE 2 and AoE 4. It is worth noting the sound effects and the sound ambience (all atmosphere of sounds).

At the start of the community mod changes were limited to bugfixes and small unit/hero/civ tweaks. The main vision of the mod was to act as a testing environment for future changes. Through 2022, 2023 and until now the community mod has served as the base game for quite a few 0ad players. This is the first release of the community mod to feature significant experimentation, and it has been both successful and unsuccessful. Every player has felt some level of discomfort as their established understanding of the game is challenged, some people reject such discomfort and some people tolerate it. People who have considered the changes and adapted to them by and large are contributing to the mod (and 0ad) with constructive criticism. That is really good to see. Another group of people who do not wish for the game to change, who are unable to adapt and learn, yearn to execute the same strategies that they have always preferred. When they encounter the discomfort of looking outside of their box, they become enraged. For this group it feels like the end of the world, or the end of 0ad. Its obviously no use to include people of the second category in playtesting as it is in the community mod, because they can't or don't explain what it is they don't like (what is imbalanced?, what is broken?, what plays poorly? ect.). In previous alphas where there were balance issues there was nearly unanimous understanding, think of merc cav, firecav of a25, slingers of a23, or archers of a24. In the case of comm mod 6, there is almost no agreement between the most vocal disparagers of the mod. The lack of constructive feedback from this most vocal group is an indication that its best to protect these people from new things by making sure that the base game is in a bug free and balanced state upon alpha releases. This way, players interested in contributing to balancing/game development can test things, provide feedback and then go back to the base game if there are issues with the community mod version.

According to what I read, you all have deep knowledge compared to me. Maybe do two mods ? Im afraid of big changes, I like this game and I don't want it to be broken

Hey, that was quick. Thanks!

Thanks for the report, and @Norse_Harold for the investigation! I've patched SVN with https://trac.wildfiregames.com/changeset/28025.

NOt perfect but still.