Yekaterina

Community mod automatically filters out cosmic nubs from joining your games, which is helpful xD There will be less hurt feelings of newcomers being kicked from TG. Also it makes smurfs obvious - helpful for balance. Anyone with community mod on, you can safely let them play as there won't be any cosmic performance

Yes

I find myself quite dependent on the community mod because it fixes the bugs with the original version and allows tier 2 military technologies to be researched early. However, if the original version can fix all of the existing bugs and balance the civs like community mod does, that would be great and there would be no division in the community. There was a player who complained about "ego" users using community mod to maintain their superiority, resulting in divisions within the player base. I am not certain whether I can agree with him; I only wanted to escape from the bugs and get some early technology.

Thanks , defcon has explained to me why what he did doesn't comply with the rules and now I understand And precisely what is that? I cannot see a corresponding punishment specified in the rules. Muting doesn't help because he didn't say anything. If you mute him then he will feel confused and possibly angry, instead of remorse. Kicking doesn't help neither because he doesn't know why. You have to explain it in Spanish to him. So the best way is to remove the points he farmed, if that pleases you and your rules.

@rossenburg I understand and agree with your argument of it being a violation of defined rules. Now, the issue seems to be with whether the rules were set appropriately, as the activity of players are retrained so tightly. Some rules about the lobby seem to be outdated. Regarding ratings, it had been very reasonable for A23 or earlier as the players with higher ratings were generally better. Nowadays, ratings means nothing because: 1. Anyone can come back with a second account, tell the community who they were and we immediately know they are around 1800 even though the rating number says 1200 2. There are many players who play only team games and not rated 1v1s. Examples include reza-math, Ginnungagap, NoobDude, SaidRdz. Their ratings numbers are misleading and they have done nothing wrong in not playing rated 1v1s. On the other hand, there are players who play many 1v1s only against weaker players and they have stacked up a huge number despite still being weak as they learnt absolutely nothing in the process. 3. Even if players play rated 1v1s, their win/loss often fail to register. This could be caused by one player leaving without resign, or, simply a bug in the ratings bot. It happened to me on more than 1 occasions. Not everyone bothers with reporting 4. @Mentula has made the amazing localratings mod which generates a much more reliable rating than what the lobby bot can give, based on TGs and not just 1v1s. Many thanks to Mentula. 5. Since everyone knows the lobby rating is useless, they don't care about it and the system gets worse. I am surprised that an OP player cronelius would acutally waste his time on that. I am also providing you with an easy solution which I had proposed many many times in the past 2 years, and it is simple: COUNT ALL GAMES INTO A PLAYER'S PROFILE!!! so we know who is an experienced TG player and who is truly new @rossenburg I believe this should be a trivial task for your programming skills.

@Norse_Harold what exactly do you plan to do to cronelius? In addition, I would like to request @Stan`to voice his opinions on the matter: 1. Is Cornelius actually "flagrantly violating the rules" as accused 2. Should the rules be changed? The current statements are quite ambiguous in English and some are inappropriate as of now. Maybe you should write some revised editions in a superior language, Français, then we try to translate it. 3. What should happen to cronelius and others who farm ratings.

@Norse_Harold First of all, I think the purpose of 0ad as a computer game is to entertain it's players who are willing to spend their precious time on it. As long as he is enjoying it and is not harming anyone else, he deserves his freedom. I argue that he is not affecting anyone else in doing that, because no one else lost or gained any ratings at all. So you should just play your own game and enjoy yourself instead of wasting your own time on him. I have some questions about your post: Wouldn't your rule 7 suggest that any ranked match can be an artificial adjustment of the rating system? Any rating change can be argued to be artificial. For example, if I play with someone whom I know to be weaker than me just to farm ratings from him, is that a violation? What would you say about custom rating mod? What is the issue with changing their rating? I can cover up my rating with that mod, but most OPs know me so it's not a problem at all. Similarly we all know about Cornelius, he is a valuable player of rating 1800, capable of fast boom and crossbow push with the Hans. Whatever he does with the ratings will not affect our knowledge of him, and hence will not give him an advantage. You talk about rigging the matches. He is playing with himself, so the settings are very much whatever he wants, just like playing against AI. He is not cheating in a game against anyone else. If you want some ratings, just go do the same yourself! But we all know you are approximately 1300 and I would never stop you or treat you differenly if I see you change your number to 1500 or 900 or just some stars. Neither you nor him cannot gain an unfair advantage by having higher or lower ratings if we all know how you play. The players who can think of this idea and execute it are no noobs, so it's obvious that they are a smurf and we will take it into consideration when balancing TG. Finally, it's just a game. Give it a rest and let people have the freedom to enjoy themselves. Don't turn the lobby into an exam hall or a Fascist country.

You can disagree but this is my observation so far, during my ~2 weeks of playing in the public lobby. Perhaps, in most high level games, there will be no such noob players when an abundant amount of pro players are online. This mostly happens when we have 2 very weak (<1100? 1200?) players joining a game full of medium (1400? 1500?) to pro (>1600?) players. I'm not sure how the rating system works so the numbers are just a relativistic illustration of skill level. Also a teammate who doesn't speak your language is difficult to deal with... If the blue pro ignores their noob completely, then the red team does stand a chance if the red pro piles up some champion units while using the population space freed up in fighting with the blue noob. However, if the blue pro comes at any point before the complete destruction of the blue noob, then the red pro will be in a dangerous 2v1 situation, under fire from enemy CC or towers. The foundation of my theory is that "noobs" will not actively involve themselves in battles (nor make any significant contributions) unless they are directly provoked. In one of the games I played, I had a Spartan noob as my pocket, when I called for help, he did promptly commit his entire military of ~130 infantry to battle. In the end, he heroically sacrificed all of them for 9 kills... This is the type of situation I am talking about.

What is the name of this map / mod?

no. it only depends on conquer attack, not damage He means the damaged buildings have less loyalty regeneration rates I honestly can't understand why 0ad employs unnecessarily complicated maths... Just make everything linear and it will be easy for everyone and less lag

@Norse_Harold I recommend you ignore him, because he just likes earning rating points, perhaps just to convince hosts to let him play, which is sad as many new players are prevented from playing in TGs. Now he is obviously a smurf and just getting some approval, so just let him be. He will stop when his rating reaches his estimated. If you don't like him just don't let him join your games but I've played with this dude before and he was a nice person and a strong teammate, only slight imperfection was he couldn't understand English well.

@BeTe regeneration rates and capture rates are given in the templates files. Simulation/templates

Yes I remember such a map, I think we can download it from mod.io

I think he probably means hosts excluding him from games because they don't know who Facts is and cannot predict his playstyle

You are so funny lol Skirmishers, spearman and swordsman have completely different stats and are used for different purposes. Sword throwing unit ... You make it

You can make your own map that suits your needs. Then you need to turn it into a mod and convince others to use it. Another easier solution is only allow known players or players with decent profiles to play.

Furthermore, another minor issue with Mainland is the random non-traversable hills. They can protect a random player very well or give them a huge disadvantage by trapping them where they need to fight. It can be frustrating and in my opinion, the hills are completely unnecessary. Latium and Ratumacos have the best spawn layout as the position of noobs and pros does not affect a team greatly, however, these maps have too many hilled terrains, scarce forests and river bottlenecks which are frustrating for pathfinding and favour archer civs / turtling too much. If we can have a map which have spawns like Ratumacos, has the flat, open terrain of Anatolian Plains and the abundant resources of Mainland, that would be the perfect map!

In order to circumvent this, we can: Fix the positions of each colour, very much like the scenario maps and skirmish maps, then let the players choose their position through colours. Create a new 4v4 skirmish map which has all of the advantages of Mainland, in temperate biome.

Dear players and developers: Mainland is one of the most popular maps in the game lobby for its balanced resources and non-obtrusive terrain. However, I have found a few imperfections that perhaps we can improve on. The first and foremost issue is the random placement of players within a team. Before the start of a game, we can only decide the player's colours and the team, then we just know that all team members are placed together, but we don't have the freedom to choose who spawns bordering an enemy and who spawns as the centre. This is a source of imbalance: the positioning of the stronger players (pro) and weaker players (noob) can hinder the team's performance as a whole. Please allow me to explain with the example scenario of placing 1 noob and 1 pro: In this setup, the blue team has an advantage over the red team. This is because the blue noob is immediately next to an enemy, so they will be pressured into taking actions, be it passive (being invaded by the red pro) or aggressive (trying to attack the red pro). Even though the blue noob may be defeated by the red pro, they gave time to the blue pro to further upgrade their army and reach an advantageous position. This is assuming the 2 pros are of comparable skill levels and the 2 noobs are quite weak or just not responsive, meanwhile the other side of the map isn't exerting any influence here (which is often the case). Let's consider some strategies here: 1. The red pro takes offensive position and attack the blue noob Any invasion comes at a cost: the red pro will certainly loose a few units and injure a dozen, so now the blue pro can come with their prime specimen army and defeat the weary red pro easily. Even though weak in comparison, the blue noob would have committed their whole army including towers and civic centres to defend them and wear out the red pro. In the mean time, the red pro cannot expect any significant contributions from the red noob, who would still be slowly doing their economy in a false sense of security or wasting time on some lost cause. Hence the red team will lose this side after a joint counterattack from the blue pro and blue noob. 2. The red team plays defensively Now, if the red team decides to play it safe and turtle, unless the red noob can actually coordinate with the red pro in late game, they will be smashed by the blue team as well: Suppose the blue pro launches a direct attack on the red pro and we see a huge battle, the location of this battlefield would be on the doorsteps of the blue noob, who will most likely be startled by the huge enemy force near their base and join the fight. Immediately, the situation is 2v1. Given the rate at which units die, the red pro would have lost before the their noob teammate comes to help. The red noob is still under no pressure to help out. Even if the blue noob can remain calm, the worst case scenario for the blue team is being pushed back into regeneration and stalemate, and this is the best scenario for the red team at this point. 3. The red pro attacks the blue pro It's hard to predict the outcome of the first battle, but the red pro will have to reinforce their front line over a greater distance and possibly fight under towers and fortresses of the blue pro. It's unlikely that either noob can join at the appropriate time, therefore the chances of red succeeding is extremely low. In conclusion, the red team is predictably lost if the map generated like this. Therefore I believe that it is necessary to let the players decide where they would like to spawn before the game starts, which would add an extra layer of strategy and teamwork consideration into the game, meanwhile avoiding this.

This is a good idea! Yesterday, that player had some skirmishers standing very close to their elephants. I tried to aim at the skirmishers, but sadly, my champion swordsman decided to stab the elephant after they have killed just one infantry. Is there a hotkey to force them to attack infantry only and not elephants? In terms of infantry, I definitely outnumbered him and outgunned him with those 30 Iberian champion swordsman and full upgrades, including the steelwork tech. The difficulty arises when the elephants get close to my units and they just kill my infantry in 1 or 2 humps...

Hi all, I would like some tips on how to defend against a large wave of elephants in late game. In a game, I committed my entire army of ~140 fully upgraded infantry including 30 champion swordsman to fight against a wave of around a dozen elephants accompanied by some enemy skirmishers, as the result, I lost everything but killed very few units, that's even after I tried to snipe their ground troops with champion swordsman. I have never seen anything like this, so any suggestion on how to survive against elephant attack would be very helpful. I tried to shoot at the elephants using infantry skirmishers and slingers, to no effect at all. In addition, if you can give me some advice on how to use elephants myself, that's even better!

I would like to suggest an amelioration: only fetch the very basic information on selection, just health and position. The more fancy tooltips will only be displayed if the player clicks on a button "show details".

I can't remember whether those Kardakes were champions or mercenaries, but they were fun units that strengthened the weak persian infantry. Same goes for Stoa and P2 champions that Athen and Sparta had. We should get those things back as we lost many fun P2 strategies like champion rush. New civs can include these as well. Or, add new unit types: slinger cav and slinger champions (I know this makes no historical sense but let's suppose one noble guy wanted to use slings instead of spears, and one slinger learnt to ride a horse) , axe inf, mace cav, axe champions, more fire arrow units (Chinese / Sinitic civs), more poison units (American civs), intimidation units (scares enemies and weaken them), minister-like units... Just find a random historical civ and cram some of these stuff in and it will be fun!

Can we only allow the ram to push allied units, not the enemy units? I assume the allied soldiers would very happily allow their rams to pass through their formations but the enemies can stubbornly stand there and block the ram with their bodies.