Boudica

That name does ring a bell indeed! Looking at the solved crossword, it seems it should have been easier than it was. It was a fun one, thanks! So... what is the secret message we were working so hard to find here?

That's the meaning I was looking for to put there. Maybe I was looking at the wrong spot, not sure.

Now I am really questioning why I didn't get this one earlier. You remember how on the wolf map you didn't really have to actually fight the wolves (like when hunting deer), but you'd just somehow kill them instantly? It's been years since I last played that map, but that was when I learned about this type of sorcery. Who'd have thought back than that that piece of knowledge would become critical years later? We've been doing it figuratively by champion cavalry, yet I forgot that you can quite literally just do it.

I thought it would be about something represented as a damage type internally that wasn't really damage in the original sense. Maybe something about capture defense when garrisoned. Or something with auras, healing, building or farming rate, gathering (but that one is separate I think). There also was poisoning and setting something on fire, which would seem like good candidates to possibly cause a lot of damage, but I don't see them fit. Then there used to be this damage dealt by fire ships when they were destroyed, but I don't see it used now. And the only word that I can think of as fitting the letters would be "clustered".

That one seems too short. What a random answer! Look at my spoiler-hint.

That's because we haven't 1vs1 today.

[20] There use to be a charge attack (doesn't fit). I guess they really are good and not letting me know. [19] Useless? There would need to be a comma in the legend. I thought it could be something about either blocking the way or preventing capture, but nothing that would fit. [12] Is that a new name? Diagonalo suggested it could be someone's full name. A high performing dev won't have much time playing or talking. [16] Already three letters filled. Someone please help!

Shame on them! I thought it's metaphorical though. Well, sometimes going to the destination is your destiny. Alright, I'll take one more guess on [4]. But first please gimme a minute while I...

I see, so it was more like a destination for the trader! That got me confused. I actually had a nice idea for "a trader's other destiny", which would be a spy. You know, using the never ever researched tech. That would be a nice answer, but it didn't match. Yoddhas, of course! It starts showing I haven't been playing much recently. Only clubmen came to mind, but I knew I was missing one other infantry type. Also the question wording made me feel it would be a unit that is easy to underestimate, so I wouldn't guess champion infantry (even champion swordsmen are a threat to buildings after all). I would guess the fire cav because they can possibly be confused with regular javelins. I see the question only spoke about their dimensional size though, not their greatness. Enough talk though, I think can do [4] now:

Oh, I get it now. It's gonna be the "siege tower" written with the space for the [17]. But it really used to be that they did nothing on their own, so it seemed to fit with the [9].

Oh, did I?

Who'd have thought that @diagonalo would do well here when the words are all just vertical-o and horizontal-o. Anyway, I think the missing words are still the main part of the challenge.

I like the cryptic style of the captions for something well-known, rather than using words people don't know. That makes it challenging, but (hopefully) doable. I was curious to try ChatGPT, but oh boy, it failed so miserably. So I thought it would at least help me put the words back into the picture, but it had problems matching the numbers and a whole forest was burnt down in the process to power all the GPUs. So here is my WIP. Can anyone add more? Teamwork makes the... "3v1 gg" messages come sooner.

Good point for the game resign at pause. That really happens quite a lot. It must be so disappointing for the player who rage resigned not to see other people's reaction before he leaves. I know we don't re-download the full replay on rejoins, but I only mentioned the game reload because it would be required to have that feature to allow rewinding the game in the cases when you do have the full replay. I was only talking about allowing you to replay what you have already watched while spectating.

Actually, building onto that first idea, if the game can now get delayed, it might also be cool to be able to pause the replay just for yourself when spectating. And when there is now a multiplayer game reload, couldn't the game just make an auto-save every minute (or less) and then let you rewind to those points? And then perhaps there could also be the feature to skip your delay a reload to the most recent state. So a lot like a YouTube live-stream. If these features aren't planned, they sound to me like something fun to vibe code into a mod. What do you think?