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Ancient DNA reveals the multiethnic structure of Mongolia’s first nomadic empire https://www.mpg.de/20098860/0403-evan-mongolia-s-first-nomadic-empire-150495-x The Xiongnu built a multiethnic empire on the Mongolian steppe that was connected by trade to Rome, Egypt, and Imperial China. © Artwork by Galmandakh Amarsanaa, courtesy of Christina Warinner and the DairyCultures Project

Sure, but the great thing about adding a few statistics to the post-game charts and tables is that you wouldn't have to watch a replay. Suggestions: start efficiency commands per second (chart) peak commands per second intensity time - #of seconds in which there were more than, say, 3, commands per seconds barracks idle time in first 12 minutes. I think showing this would be great. Thoughts?

So if we're in agtement, a PR?

All signed legitimate mods will be overwritten with hacked malware edited mods instantly. Fixed it for you. Automatically sending mods from hosters to other users is a recipe for disaster. Instead, I advise comparing SHA512 or similar hashes of the mod content between users.

I'm going to go through some fan-generated ideas here about gameplay mechanics worth exploring. These ideas are sometimes lost, I want to give them a chance in this topic.

Currently treasures from shipwrecks can only be collected by merchantmen. Do you think we should keep that restriction or get rid of it? It could be changed to make all ships able to do this or even all units that can reach it; after all there's been plenty of incidents where ships that ran ashore were plundered by people on foot.

... if available.

Yeah, that's pretty much everything there is to say. Full wysiwyg editing is not possible. But adding and modifying basic GUI elements becomes a quick process once you get the hang of it. Let me know when you need anything in this regard.

teutobod

The best way is to try mods sometimes.

Progui is already very easy to detect from an observer's point of view and also from replays, even without these statistics. The main value is in determining the impact the cheats have on the gameplay, which is very important for increasing awareness. In the case of a more subtle cheat like a macro that could arise in the future, an actions per minute statistic could help detect those cheats early on. I think the same statistics that could help reveal cheats would also be very helpful for players to try to improve their skills. They could look through the cumulative idle time plots to see where their first big increases happen.

That is a great idea! During recent discussions it became obvious that some ideas have already been discussed several times in the past. Those discussion were valuable and shall not be lost!

Also on the topic of idle time of barracks (or any building). I was just watching the video shared by @real_tabasco_sauce on proGUI, the day after (which indeed is very much on point of this topic). There is a overlay that has a nice counter that runs when buildings are idle.

Ah sorry I confused it with the first one that was made by @Sebastián Gómez that one doesn't have a compatible license. @wowgetoffyourcellphone found another one but it was without a clear license which made it unusable. He found a third one recently you could probably use

Fire mechanics.

Starvation.

Morale system

Water resource.

Soil mechanic.

Most of the cheats that you discuss exist in the form of a mod. Here is a potential solution: the clients synchronize all mod files from the host during the gamesetup process, regardless of whether the client has the same mods or not. All clients and the host will expose their mods folder to each other for synchronization over network, while players are chatting or waiting for the game to start. The advantages of my solution are: 1. All cheat edits of signed legitimate mods will be overwritten instantly. 2. Players don't need to restart the game or go through the hassle to download mods in order to join a particular host. 3. Less likely for OOS errors.

All parties in the know = not cheating Using it secretly = cheating Is it that complicated? The current state of the multiplayer lobby just shows that this is not the case. Players just download proGui through mod.io and just use it. Even Atrik just assumes everyone knows by now that he is using it. One day Chrstgtr tells him he should not do it in his games, next game he does it again. When I or RangerK return to this game after a break and join a 4vs4 game no ProGUI user tell them that he automates unit commands and unit production beyond human capabilities. Instead some even tell it is just a GUI. Please report players cheating by using mods or other means. Without reports there is little we can do. If some official sign were there, like a mod ban Atrik for a day or at least say that -proGUI's autotrainer -proGUI's quickstart is considered officially as a cheat in regular use (not announced). But we have this situation where the proGUI users just use it like great mods like autociv and feldmap. And then users tell in lengthy discussions about how it is ok and not a cheat. Can we have a adult jumping in saying: -The autotrainer of vanilla is intended to work that way (turning of if there's no res., don't automate adjusted batches), for this alpha -Don't give units commands via makros / mods etc. If you like the vertical panel or what that's ok for me. Maybe split it up in 3 mods and have one of them signed or accepted by the community. One can automate everything away, but then it is a different game. Afaik DotA focused their game to play just playing the hero of Warcraft 3. That's ok. But you can't automate things away and play with the others that still do another part of the game in a way they never can reach you. People will still cheat, but we can end this "is considered by some" discussion. Even if the advantage were small or however it is downplayed. Or start a poll before or something.

maybe the most popular autociv items can just be merged to 0ad: the building placement and selection hotkeys, in-game mute, /link, and gamesetup functions.

The option to allow or disallow unsigned mods on the host side seems like a good idea. It can allow more casual hosts that don't feel strongly about the use of this mod to let players use it, and allows hosts that want a level playing field to disallow this mod. Secondly, the argument that "there are other cheats, therefore a cheat mod isn't bad" is not valid. From what I've seen from the gaming industry as a whole, anti-cheat is as much about making it harder to cheat vs. actually stopping cheating. Lastly, just because this cheat mod improves the experience for a select few players, doesn't mean it's features should be added to the game as a means to level the playing field. We shouldn't completely rework the GUI and gameplay style of 0ad just because a select few players want high-level automation.

How would you ensure the names of the mods shown would be legit? It wouldn't prevent cheats, but would make them less trivial if you need to recompile the game to make them work, instead of dropping a bit of JavaScript in a directory. Please report players cheating by using mods or other means. Without reports there is little we can do.

If I understand it correctly there's a signed version and an unsigned; so it would disallow the secret use of one variant and not disallow the mod in general. It's hard for me to believe you don't see the difference, and that you don't understand that people don't want to play against players who are secretly using scripts and whatnot.

No matter how many times you say this doesn’t make it right. Players should be allowed to chose who they play with and what advantages (mods) their opponents have access to. If you are cheating I (and others) don’t want to play with you. The end. If you openly cheat, I don’t want to play with you. If you secretly cheat, I don’t want to play with you. @Dunedan’s proposal is aimed at letting players decide what mods their opponents have access to. Your insistence on weakening that just further suggests that you somehow believe your wants are more important than the desires of anyone you play with. It doesn’t work that way. Multiplayer games are meant for everyone’s enjoyment—not only yours.

@RangerK The idea that the proGUI smart train offers no advantage over the original vanilla autoqueue is false. The vanilla production system stops when there are no resources available. The proGUI system automatically adjusts production based on available resources and houses. And it does this instantly while you can be busy in battle or whatever else. You don't even have to think about batch size based on barracks. The system does everything on its own. You set the ratio you want in your army (ranged/melee, etc.) and the mod produces on its own. You can even set an amount of resources you don't want to be spend. It's fantastic. You only have to worry about houses. If you run out of available houses, as soon as you build a new one the system automatically starts producing units. And calculate the batch size to produce per barrack. Instantly. It gives you freedom to do other tasks without worrying about production in a much more efficient way than the original system. It is not, by any means, a simple aesthetic/GUI improvement. We can argue whether this is cheating or not, whether vanilla gameplay should be like this, whether it is more or less fun, or fair. I consider many of the mod's contributions very valuable but to say that it offers no advantages is ridiculous. Just try it by yourself and you will see.

Don't be confused because some consider it not cheating. It is very clear cheating. It disables game penalties: In game auto-batching gets disabled when the player don't have the resources. It's not on pause (like proGUI) because the programmers lack the capability to program it otherwise, it is a draw back to use this automated way. Do that in the dedicated place, hand in the patches and wait for the next alpha. The topic here is cheating. You can discuss new features for future versions else where. You disable penalties for yourself while playing with players that have these enabled in their game. I had games recently, after the game I get mocked "lol, ffm only 60 kills". I check the replay and see the opponent was a proGUI user. Other games I get a clear win with a ally over decent players, check the replay and see my ally uses proGUI. Also I happen to play in rounds with known cheaters, because the host tolerates it and the better players are already there. The motivation for the cheaters I assume is because they can join rounds of better players and compete with them. The easiest way to identify cheating with proGUI is the quickstart part. It sends 7 commands in one turn, at about turn 12. cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":200.843017578125,"z":647.5227661132812,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"food","specific":"fruit"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/fruit/berry_01","target":419},"queued":false} cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"template_unit_support_female_citizen","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]} cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":208.0706787109375,"z":558.1127319335938,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"wood","specific":"tree"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/tree/oak_hungarian","target":411},"queued":false} cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/infantry_swordsman_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]} cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/infantry_javelineer_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]} cmd 6 {"type":"set-rallypoint","entities":[400],"x":168.57574462890625,"z":588.1920776367188,"data":{"command":"gather","resourceType":{"generic":"food","specific":"meat"},"resourceTemplate":"gaia/fauna_chicken","target":425},"queued":false} cmd 6 {"type":"unload-template","all":true,"template":"units/rome/cavalry_spearman_b","owner":6,"garrisonHolders":[400]} A mod that warn users in game about a amount of commands that is beyond the best player (plus a threshold) could be a idea. But I don't know where to start with it at the moment. Hardening the game against abuse is one front to fight. But this is absolutely ridiculous to defend and pretend "is it really a cheat if a 1200 player don't win 10 out of 10 vs a 1800 elo player", "it's just a few commands at the start". It's another thing that the cheats are so easy available, widely used and pretended it wouldn't be a cheat.

This idea is clearly not to make cheating harder as it has been seems so many times that real cheats are just undisplayed mods (hidden in other mods, or are direct modifications of the game...). As well, you can cheat in 100% freshly downloaded vanilla just using the command prompt to reveal the map for example. Some other ideas were also: get rid of compatibility check all together, forced on by default. If we want to prevent cheating, atomizing user experience with mods to 'make progui usage a little harder' is top priority and obviously worth it in my opinion. We should go ahead and do this. Let's not make something that actually improve usability like tooltips/lists of mods for all players in a room, let's just ban instead. Too scary to rely on individuals opinions, so we need to enforce things globally like commies.

Yeah, like decency and basic courtesy. Call me old and conservative.

Isn't sportsmanship a old-fashioned thing?

I'm for enabling all economic and military ships (maybe except fire ships) to collect the treasures. Champions and even heroes can do so too on land. By the way, whether a unit can or cannot collect treasures is determined by the XML tag "<TreasureCollector>" (therefore really easy to change.

The current treasure gathering restriction for boats limiting it to only Merchant Ships is a legacy from time before the inclusion of the trading feature. It basically gave them a function in-game while trading was being developed. There's no "logical" reason other ships can't gather treasures other than this.

According to my experience, shipwrecks ashore can already be gathered plundered by pedestrians/cavalry. Difference is only if the wreck is placed off the coastline and it cannot be reached by land forces. I do like the proposal to extend the wreck collection capability to other ships, but not to all ships: I would propose limiting it to merchant vessels and fishing boats, possibly scout ships just to make thinks a bit more interesting: Fishing boats are available in the first phase so this is an option. Scout ships might not always be built as they have comparatively low value in battle hence treasure hunt capability could increase their use.

I absolutely agree. There are some maps with very small bodies of water and I have to train a stinking merchant vessel just to get a shipwreck on the shore, after that the boat is useless. The merchant boat only mechanic is not realistic and it does not make gameplay any better so I vote we kick it.

It's now a few months proGUI has been around and we have had the time to form an opinion and evaluate the consequences on the gameplay and the game experience. Although I have never used the mod myself, I played in several games and watched replays with players using it and here is my evaluation on the matter. Most of what I am writing here is personal opinion, so please take it with a grain of salt. 1. Non-negligible advantage proGUI gives a non-negligible advantage to players. We can observe (in the sense of measure, more that just notice) that players using proGUI have a significantly better economy compared to other players of the same level, and even of higher levels. We regularly observe less experienced players having an economy aligned to that of experienced players. We also observe good players making the difference in games against players far beyond their reach. I don't want to dive into discussions on levels and skills, which can easily go out of track, I'm just appealing to the reader's experience, which might match mine. See this post for an actual experiment supporting this claim. 2. Unfair advantage This is 100% personal opinion, as the definition of what is fair and what is not depends on each individual's sensibility. From my point of view, the use of proGUI oversteps the threshold of what is fair. In a game like 0 A.D. the combination of economic growth and military strategy are skills that players value and seek. One of the two aspects is not fully, but greatly automatized by proGUI, making the whole game assuming a different flavor. Sure, there are configurations (f.e. deathmatch) and mods focusing exclusively on the military side, and I am not against all-proGUI-games. But I think it's unfair to mix proGUI players and non-proGUI players in the same game, due of the artificial advantage introduced by proGUI. It's a bit like mixing bikes and electric bikes in a race. 3. Against the game spirit Again, personal opinion. The concept of 0 A.D. (and games alike) revolves around dominating the opponent on two main levels, intrinsically combined: economy and military. proGUI artificially forges one of the two. proGUI is not an eco-bot that plays for you, but it's not even far from that. The game vision expresses clear positions on certain pitfalls that should be avoided, and I don't see proGUI giving a contribute in that direction; rather the opposite, I would say. So, what? Well, I don't know! Personally, I would kindly invite those who use proGUI (or similar) to refrain from using it in regular games, but of course it's up to their sensibility to keep the game "fair". Far from me pushing towards enforcement of rules or other robocop solutions that, in my opinion, don't help making this community more cohesive. It would be nice to behave in accordance to common sense, but I can see that common sense varies a lot depending on who you ask. That being said, I know the developer of proGUI is a good guy, with a genuine curiosity and the best intentions. As an open project as 0 A.D. is, it is desirable that satellite projects (such as mods) are likewise open. It's on us -as a community- to find the solution to this problem, if we evaluate it as such.

Death Canyon, a random map included in the community-maps-2 mod. It's generated from the heightmap of the skirmish map of the same name.

I don't have insights into this dispute, so I really don't want to judge anyone or anything here and I obviously can't provide a solution. @Norse_Harold I know that it has already been said, but I believe your work is very valuable and underappreciated. I would likely have never gotten into programming to contribute to this project if it wasn't for you - that's not an overstatement. 0 A.D. needs more people like you. Thank you. Let's all not loose sight of the essential. 0 A.D. is a great project, a great game, and deserves a great community. And I mean that without ambiguity. I genuinely hope this gets sorted out.

I never noticed these guys before on Lion's Den.

This is a good watch for those familiar with the automation debate. Ok so maybe its a different game from 0ad, but many points on automation are valid across RTS games. Maybe the most important is the division of attention between fighting and economy. The controversy of this farm auto-placement puts into start contrast the motion to automize unit and technology production like in proGUI. In 0ad, we already have some things heavily automated like autoqueue. Admittedly, autoqueue is more justified in 0ad given the citizen soldier mechanics, but I heavily advocate against further automation. Some say 0ad is too hard, but I say let it be hard. Learning how to do hard things and winning for your efforts is rewarding and exciting. To improve the experience of new players, focus should instead be placed on improving the ui, ranked games, and matchmaking/finding. Obviously, we don't have any kind of matchmaking, but it is important that new players get a few games with players of roughly equal skill so they can experience more than just village phase. Excessive automation makes RTS games easier sure, but also shallow, and shallow games are not fun for long. One of the main issues with aoe4 is that where aoe2 is deep, aoe4 is shallow (homing bullets, 1-click strategies). We can make 0ad more deep by increasing the amount of player-controlled features, adding more technologies (unique and/or unit-specific), and diversifying unit stats.

I feel that nomadic factions can add a common advantage of getting more loot after killing enemies and destroying buildings.