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It's getting out of control. Is it possible to do something about it?

Sadly, right now a "DawsonKiboult" posted his first message, full of nonsensical spam. A solution I'm thinking of is if posts that are flagged as spam by a certain number of people (3?) could become hidden, for the mods (the only ones able to see them) then to decide what to do with them (as a way to keep things clean faster, help mods, but not give definitive power to non-mods, and of course any abuse of the actual purpose of this should be penalised).

The best way imo is to make new accounts require being approved by moderators (that will catch a lot of the spam bots, since you can just deny ones that have names like "Starz_CO_1", "Starz_CO_2","Starz_CO_3", without even reading anything past their names The other way is to make a poster's first post require approval by a moderator, but this wouldn't really help with the amount of effort placed on the mod's shoulders.

Lately this forum has a bigger problem with spam. Maybe a solution would be to forbid new accounts to post links? Like you can't post a link in your first 5 posts, and neither if your account is still quite young.

agree sorry I don't think I understand this part. I thought I remembered their attack got nerfed but I'm unsure. The war horses tech only gives them more health. The HP nerf makes sense and I like it. That's why currently players with a not-so-perfect spam of less than 40 champ cav actually loose fights. But this applies to all champ cav equally. I tested it some time ago and cataphracts quite reliable win with a large numbers of survivors against other champ cav and the +2 resistances help against infantry too.

Whether it's Athenians or Spartans, some players have already realized that this units are broken and keep abusing it. Every match is the same strategy: pressing a single button out of everything the game has to offer (Just press one button and win most games??) I know there are ways to counter it, but honestly this style of gameplay becomes super boring for me. I was even reading a document about the vision for 0 A.D. here in forum, where is mentioned spamming as something that should be addressed. They talk about automate repetitive actions, which honestly does not sound like a good idea to me. Automatic spam of broken units? Hmm, probably not. Could these units maybe be nerfed a bit? Maybe increase their cost the more you train, or simply limit how many can exist at once, similar to Ministers or Centurions? I found the link: https://trac.wildfiregames.com/wiki/0AD_The_Vision. Snares section.

In this analysis I will list out the strengths and weaknesses of each civilisation (based on my opinion). Each strength and weakness will be weighed and given a score. Each civ will have a total score for both Mainland and navy. However, this is only theoretical and things will vary in actual battles; with an appropriate strategy and adequate skills the lowest scoring civ has a significant chance of defeating the highest scoring civ. Skill and strategy matter more than which civ you play as! The weightings are based on my personal preference and I am open to suggestions. I am not taking team bonus into account yet. Civilisation Total score (Mainland) Naval strength Athens 1.5 3 Britons 2.5 1 Carthage 5.5 4 Gaul 2.5 1 Iberia (Lusitano) 3.5 2.5 Kush 5.5 1 Maurya 6 1 Macedon 2 1 Persia (Achaemenids) 4 2.5 Ptolemies (Egypt) 4 4 Romans (Generic) 2 3 Seleucid 4.5 3 Spartan 1 1 Mauryans: Strengths: Worker elephant helps with boom (+2) Archer civ - spam infantry archers and spearmen to protect the archers. There is also a champion archer (maiden guard). By the way ‘Visha Kanya’ means poison girl, they were not soldiers but more assassins or espionage agents. (+2) Asian elephants and archer elephant - new strategy. (+2) Sword cav + champion sword-woman = good defence against siege (+2) Weaknesses: Poor quality houses - need designated house builders and worker elephants can no longer build. (-0.5) Difficult to manage for new players - need to manoeuvre worker elephant. (-1) Rubbish heroes (-0.5) Kushites Strengths: Free Priest - can be used for scouting and healing wounded units in a rush - makes them better at rushing and better at defending against rushes. (+1.5) Quite fast boom (+0.5) Mercenary camps can be built in neutral territory - allows for sneaky strategies and diversification of army composition (+2) Temple guards (champ swordmen) can be trained from temples - allows for spamming (+1) Assyrian rams (does more damage than other rams) (+0.5) Diverse infantry (+1) Weaknesses: African war elephant (+0.5) Require a lot of metal if going for mercenaries or champ spam. (-1.5) Not sure why there is a mercenary javelin camel that has the exact same combat stats as a regular javelin cav (0) Achaemenid Persians: Strengths Kurush is a very good hero who can train immortals - use immortals as front line attack (+1) Asian elephants (+1) Diverse cavalry: Parthian archer cavalry combined with sword cav is strong. Also has 2 champion cavs. (+2.5) Assyrian rams - more damage (+0.5) Triremes can train marine cavalry (+1.5 navy) Weaknesses: Slow boom, vulnerable in early game (-1) Carthage: Strengths: Still a very good naval force (+3 naval) Good variety of siege: lithobolos, oxybeles, rams, elephant (+2) Diverse army from embassies (now you can build 3 of them!). (+1.5) Sacred band is very powerful (+1) Strong wall (+0.5) Spam archers and spears then outflank with melee cav. (+1) Weaknesses: African elephant (+0.5) Needs metal for mercenaries (-2) Slow boom (-1) Ptolemies: Strengths: Cheap buildings - saves wood - faster boom. Compared to A23 they are more durable and can be built faster. (+3) Extremely fast boom with slings and house spam (+1) Archer camels + pikes in syntagma formation is strong once in substantial numbers. This does not require any metal! (+1) Pikemen boosted by hero. Pikemen also rush resistant. (+1) Diverse mercenary available (+1) Diverse siege (+1) Overpowered in naval maps: lighthouse, Tessarakonteres, quinqueremes (+3 naval) Weakness: African elephants (+0.5) Pikemen and mass camels are slow to manoeuvre. (-1) Need designated house builders - slightly reduces workforce in early stage (-1) Anti-ram depends on elephant and mercenaries (-1.5) Dependency on mining (-1) Seleucids: Strengths: Asian heavily armoured war elephants with Seleucus Nikator (elephant champ) (+2) Decent siege (+0.5) Strong melee spam (+1) Mercenary swordsman runs faster than average (+0.5) Navy is still above average (+1.5 naval) Rapid expansion (+1) Strong cavalry: cataphract, Dahae horse archer, archer chariot (+1.5) Weaknesses: Mercenary archer + swords can only be trained from colony (-2) Note that Seleucids need a lot of food. Iberians: Strengths: Very strong defence, needless to say (+3) Strong melee infantry (+1) Fire javelin cav is strong against siege and buildings (+1.5) Fire ship is extremely irritating to opponents (+1.5 naval) Weakness: Slow boom (-1) No long range units - weak against archers protected by fort or pikes in field combat (-1) Athens: Strengths: Decent siege (+1) Sword cav brutality (+0.5) Scythian archers = 2 regular archers combined. Also gym allows champion spam (+1) Significant naval bonuses (+2 naval) Weakness: Requires a lot of mining - soldiers are working on mines instead of fighting (-1) Britons: Strengths: Celtic brutality. Sword cav + spam slings/spears (+1.5) Buildings cost only wood - saves stone (+1) Free war dog (+1) Weaknesses: Lack of diversity (-0.5) Removed bonus - slower boom Poor quality buildings (-0.5) Gauls: Same as Britons except no free war dog Naked fanatics not very useful because requires phase 2 Macedon: Full range of siege (+1) Champion crossbowmen are cheap, mobile options waiting to be developed Now has sword champ - has anti siege Companion cavalry and champion spears are decent (+1) Weaknesses: Mercenary Siege workshop does not stand out Romans: Still good siege options (+1) Hit and run cav (consular bodyguards effectively counter archers) (+1) Nerfed entrenched camp but can still sneak attack (+0.5) Good at defending Superior rams (+0.5) Navy is still strong (+2 navy) Weakness: No long range units (-1) Spartan: Strength: Strong infantry, especially hoplites and Skiritai (+3) Weakness: Weak cavalry (-0.5) Extreme reliance on metal (-1) No long range unit, but can counter with spearmen meat shield and champion hoplite (-0.5)

erictommy01, please read the title of the thread again. You are doing exactly what we don't want. Now, I don't fully understand the context behind all this, but please stop this spam or this thread will get locked. I don't want it to be locked. Please go vent somewhere else. Start a separate topic

Besides the Fanatics, Spartiates are by far the most broken units in the game. Seriously, these units are insanely overpowered and hard to counter. Can anyone name a unit that can reliably stop Spartiates? I bet you can’t. They hit hard, have massive armor, can promote to Olympic status and even have technologies that make them stronger and faster. The only thing the developers could have done to stop the spamming of this unit was to add a population cost of 2. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that. There are players abusing this by spamming Spartiates in P1, and it’s ruining the game for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ecobot or clever Sparta player designed this unit to exploit the game by spamming them relentlessly for an unfair advantage. What do you guys think? Any ideas on how to properly nerf or counter these broken units? I believe adding a population cost of 2 to build them would be an effective way to balance this unit. Moreover all Athenian Marines should be nerfed for sure. We’ve already banned Fanatics from our games, and Spartiates definitely need to be banned as well. If the developers don’t nerf these units in the next alpha update and keep introducing unfair, broken units, we’ll have no choice but to keep banning them from our matches to maintain fair gameplay.

I'm not going to say you shouldn't report spam posts, but I will say that generally it's not difficult to see which threads are spam threads, so it's not a big deal if they aren't reported. We are grateful for all posts in other topics though, they are harder to find when e.g. looking through the new posts page.

New bot spam

LocalRatings Team Balancer A mod that extends LocalRatings by Mentula with two new buttons on the game-setup screen. One balances teams automatically by rating, the other evaluates the current setup and adds two outcome-based rating systems, Glicko-2 and OpenSkill, alongside the original LocalRatings score. Why outcome-based ratings? The LocalRatings ranking list already shows the problem: even with plenty of replay data, some known-strong players end up rated poorly and some known-weak ones look stronger than they are. Raw in-game statistics don't track skill cleanly. In a 4v4, if three players focus-harass one strong opponent, that player's stats look weak, though they're being targeted because they're strong. A useful comparison: modern chess engines evaluate positions with neural networks far beyond human understanding, yet FIDE still uses Elo, chess.com uses Glicko-1, and lichess uses Glicko-2. Even with perfect game analysis available, the established outcome-based systems remain the standard for tracking player skill over time. Win/loss results across many games carry a signal that in-game metrics miss. 0 A.D. has no chess-engine equivalent, so the case for outcome-based rating is even stronger here. Rating systems Three systems are available, selectable in the LocalRatings settings: Local Ratings (original) - rates players by in-game statistics relative to others in the same match. Works for all game types but inherits the limitations above. Glicko-2 - tracks each player with a rating, a rating deviation (confidence), and a volatility. New players start at 1500 ± 350. The conservative rating used for balancing is rating − 2·deviation, so a fresh player is treated as significantly weaker than someone who has won even one game. OpenSkill - an open-source Bayesian system based on the Bradley-Terry full model. Each player has a mean skill mu and an uncertainty sigma. New players start at mu 1500, sigma 500. The conservative rating is mu - 3·sigma. Glicko-2 and OpenSkill only count locked-teams games with exactly two teams; free-for-all and unlocked-team games are excluded. All other LocalRatings filters (minimum duration, population cap, cheat games, etc.) still apply and can be configured in the LocalRatings settings. Win/loss counts are tracked separately and shown alongside ratings. Balance button When the host presses balance, the mod reads all currently assigned players, looks up their ratings, and finds the partition into two teams that minimizes the difference in conservative rating sums. It then reorders the player slots. The result is posted in chat with rating sums, the rating difference, and a predicted win probability. Note the win probability it calculated with the raw rating and the pairing done with the conservative rating. Non-host players with the mod see a suggest button instead. Pressing it posts the same proposal to chat without changing any settings, so the host can decide whether to apply it. Both buttons have spam protection: pressing them again with the same player constellation does nothing. Slot shuffles or team swaps don't count as a new constellation. Evaluate button Reports on the current team assignment without changing anything: rating sum and conservative sum per team, the rating difference, which team is stronger, predicted win probability, and a full player ranking by rating with win/loss counts. Observers in the lobby appear in the ranking as well. End-of-game rating updates When a game finishes, the rating database updates on every mod user's machine. To avoid multiple mod users posting the same numbers to chat, only one client announces the changes; the others update silently. There's a known chat-line spacing bug that pushes this announcement far below the regular chat area. It can be fixed with this patch Including older replays The engine only exposes replays from the currently installed version, so by default ratings are built from 0.28.0 replays only. To include 0.27.1 replays, copy them into the 0.28.0 folder. They count toward all three rating systems. Linux: copy or move everything from ~/.local/share/0ad/replays/0.27.1/ into ~/.local/share/0ad/replays/0.28.0/ Windows: copy everything from %APPDATA%\0ad\replays\0.27.1\ into %APPDATA%\0ad\replays\0.28.0\ macOS: copy everything from ~/Library/Application Support/0ad/replays/0.27.1/ into ~/Library/Application Support/0ad/replays/0.28.0/ After copying, open the LocalRatings page and press Rebuild list to re-process all replays in date order. This step is needed even when rebuild isn't normally required, because the imported replays are older than your existing ones and the ratings have to be recalculated from the beginning. The imported replays won't be playable as visual replays in 0.28.0, but their metadata is read correctly for rating purposes. Limitations Team rating is inherently harder than 1v1. Individual contribution isn't fully separable from team performance, and the rating systems see each game as a single team win or loss. This is a fundamental constraint of every team rating system, not something specific to this mod. Cold-start: ratings come from the host's local replays only. Since the database is built from whatever the host has played or observed, players who appear in the lobby with no recorded games start unrated, and their conservative rating sits well below average until they accumulate results. A genuinely strong player with only a few recorded losses will likewise look weaker than they are. The automatic team pairing works as a correcting instance: A strong player with low rating will be paired with players with a high rating, resulting in a very strong team and a high likely win. This strong player will then accumulate wins. These unbalanced games might be frustrating. Three things you can do meanwhile: Accept the balance and play. The fastest fix is more games with the automatic pairing. Adjust manually. Use /rate username 1600 to set a player's rating before the match starts. Useful when a rating is obviously off. Seed the database. Download games with known outcomes from replay-pallas and drop them in your replays folder, then rebuild. Pick a balanced selection - similar wins and losses for each player - so you don't accidentally bias the rating in either direction. A player can help to fix their rating by uploading a few decisive games to replay-palas for the hosts to download. Non-decisive games. Most 0 A.D. team games don't end with the entire losing side eliminated, and Glicko-2 / OpenSkill can only update on games where a winner can be determined. The LocalRatings Team Balancer ships with an Auto-Classifier that infers a winner from in-game data (surviving populations, final scores and defeated-count difference) for games that ended without a clean engine verdict. The quality of your ratings therefore depends partly on how well the Auto-Classifier performs on your replay set. Per-game rating changes under your current settings are visible in the replay section. Locked teams. The most sensible option usually would be only evaluate games with locked teams. The problem is when one switches the map e.g. from mainland to balanced-mainland the settings defaults to unlocked teams. In most cases this is harmless as the players just don't change their diplomacy states. Therefore the option Rate unlocked-team games exists. LocalRatings_Team_Balancer.zip

@guerringuerrin, no worries, there's zero frustration from my side, just wanted to make sure I was doing what one is supposed to do. Regarding PRs, as I’ve said before, since there’s a lot of work, I didn’t want to overload, similarly as to a thread per point, I wouldn’t want to spam (I’m already posting too much lately anyway). My intention with a poll was not to force the developers to do anything, but to gauge support and increase visibility of simple things that I think could be helpful for many or polish some details (and that have nothing to do with gameplay), which otherwise just get lost in this thread.

That's me deleting about a 100 spam posts. Definitively the most obnoxious bot I came across so far.

Heh, just got home from work, start up computer... and 372 email notifications (from across a 6hr 21min time-span) about posts from various users with usernames starting "888starz". Hope they're at least being paid well if they're that persistent. Anyhow, keep up the good work; and thanks to everyone who reports spam! (Everyone who posts it can <redacted>.)

I delete a hundred spam posts per month probably.

You can be glad you don't see the amount of spam they're trying to post.

I do not want to repeat the same points because I see my previous replies were not fully read. For me personally it is not a major issue, I know which players rely on spam tactics, I know the counters against hoplites, and I have literally seen those players press essentially the same single button for over three months in 100% of matches I watch them, even more than 3 players in the same match doing the same spam. At that point it become less like a preference and more like an exploit (like market exploit.) That said, I also know I can simply choose not to play with those players (and others also can.) And that's the main point, that situations like this can make it harder that more people play 0 A.D. If there is no intention of that, then it is not really a problem, but if the goal is to encourage more interaction and long-term engagement with the game, then I think it is something that need to be solved. I proposed the solutions in previous messages and I do not really have anything else to add beyond that.

For me is not "frustration," for me is "this takes out the fun of the game," I don't care to lose when the game was good and fun and probably I am not the only one that sees that way. A spammer of Hoplites force you to make spam and play monotonous like him to counter or lose. (And "automate repetitive tasks" won't change this, chances are it make it worse.)

Yeah, Swordsman Champs from Gauls and Britos also can beat them, but that means I also will have to make spam to counter a spammer....

Elephants are far more expensive than Hoplites, that is what I meant to increase the cost every time they click that button or is autoqueued. This is a real way to avoid spam. Or as I said limit them as Centurions.

Nope, I mean players that pressed the same button all the game and win just because that units are broken, and the rest didn't made spam of melees.

The problem doesn't seem to be the automatic spam then, but the spamming of a (possibly) broken unit. I have no clue about actual balancing, but if they are unfairly hard to counter (also considering it would/should be almost the only viable strategy for the Spartans), limiting the number of Spartiates has been proposed many times, has historical basis, and it should be trivial to implement, besides ideally forcing the use of units like the Neodamodeis. If the problem is hoplites in general, well, I think it’s ok for at least one civ, the Spartans, to be quite limited in their flexibility. I can’t talk much about the Athenians yet because for now I’ve played mostly with the Spartans after drinking way too much coffee mixed with Red Bull while screaming “this is Sparta".

Besides the champion cavaliers, Fanatics are by far the most broken units in the game. Seriously, these units are insanely overpowered and hard to counter. Can anyone name a unit that can reliably stop Fanatics? I bet you can’t. They run fast, deal massive damage, and don’t even require metal to produce, which makes spamming them nonstop super easy. The only thing the developers could have done to stop the spamming of this unit was to add metal as a required resource. Unfortunately, they didn’t do that There are players abusing this by spamming Fanatics in P2, and it’s ruining the game for everyone. I wouldn’t be surprised if some ecobot or clever Celt player designed this unit to exploit the game by spamming them relentlessly for an unfair advantage. What do you guys think? Any ideas on how to properly nerf or counter these broken units? I believe adding metal as a required resource to build them would be an effective way to balance this unit. Moreover all cav champs should be nerfed for sure. We’ve already banned Champion Cavaliers from our games, and Fanatics definitely need to be banned as well. If the developers don’t nerf these units in the next alpha update and keep introducing unfair, broken units, we’ll have no choice but to keep banning them from our matches to maintain fair gameplay.

I'm proud to present to you a new mod for 0 A.D. called Imperia Vetera. As the mod is based on an alpha that introduced the final original civilization, Romans, it makes sense to name the mod in honor of their ancient language. Imperia Vetera is "Old Empires" in Latin, and the name itself reflects the vision and the source for the mod. Be aware that this is a so-called "retro" mod. It doesn't and it will not, represent the full features of the original game. Changes when compared to Alpha 9 vanilla. Siege Weapons overhaul: Siege weapons are much better at destroying buildings, but much worse at killing organic units. At the same time, all economic and civic buildings are more vulnerable to hack damage. Building costs overhaul: Overall, higher tier buildings (Fortresses, Army Camps, Gymnasiums, etc.) are now much more expensive to build. This is in part to compensate for the lack of phases. Houses and other civic structures are cheaper, except for Carthaginian apartments (Bets). Champion units: They now cost more population space. Champion infantry costs 2 population, champion cavalry costs 3. So, there is no more champion unit spam. Heroes: All Heroes are now just very powerful units, identical to Greek heroes from Age of Mythology. I'm still working on implementing a training limit. They also cost more population space. Celts and Hellenes can now train only 3 Heroes, the same as other civilizations. Hellenic heroes are Leonidas, Alexander and Themistocles. Celtic heroes are Boudicca, Brennus and Vercingetorix. Mercenaries: They all now train at an Advanced rank. Ranged units: Removed minimum range. Archers were heavily nerfed. Technical changes: All features that weren't implemented, or were implemented partially, were either removed or tweaked. Charge attacks are removed because they didn't work and they were cluttering the UI. Priests are removed, but the Temples now heal faster and can garrison up to 30 troops. GUI buttons that did not work are removed. Civilization pages that showed technologies and bonuses are also removed, as almost nothing was implemented at the time. Population cap is now at 150. In Age of Empires 2 campaigns, you had only 75 population space. I think 150 should be more than enough, considering the lag at higher unit counts. The AI (legacy qBot as base) is now harder, and attacks with more units. Hellenic AI can now train Siege Towers. Towers and Fortresses: Towers are now weaker, but you can build more of them. You can now only construct 5 Fortresses, so turtling is not really an option. Changes not considered: Technologies and phases are not in the game. This is a feature, not a bug. Install instructions: - Install 0 A.D. Alpha 9 from here: https://releases.wildfiregames.com/0ad-r11339-alpha-win32.exe - Replace "public.zip" from the binaries/data/mods/public directory with the one from the download below. EDIT September 4th, 2025: - AI bugfixes, mostly Carthage. - Reduced the range of melee Cavalry. - Nerfed Persian Chariot Archers and reduced their cost. Previously, they were comparable to Brythonic Champion Chariots. EDIT September 23rd, 2025: - Added back Jubot AI, modified to be compatible with the mod. It should be a bit more unpredictable than Qbot. - Population costs changed. Now it's 1 population for infantry CS, cavalry CS and Champion Infantry, 2 population for Champion cavalry and Siege weapons (Siege Tower is 3). - Some cost changes for Carthaginian mercenaries. They now cost a mixture of food, wood (for cavalry spearmen) and metal. - Population cap is now 200. - Qbot AI will now properly defend its Fortresses and Barracks. EDIT December 7th, 2025: - Cavalry can no longer hunt. Use infantry javelineers to hunt animals. Infantry meat gather rate increased slightly to compensate. - Cavalry javelin throwers are no longer trainable by any civilization, except by the Iberians. They keep their cavalry javelineer champion, but he is not very effective against units. - Civic centers can no longer train cavalry. Build a Barracks or Stable if you're Persian. - You can no longer build bolt shooters. This was done because their model is ugly and looks ridiculous when moving. I'd done the same with the Catapults, but you need some ranged siege options in order to break fortified positions. - Jubot AI removed, as it's very buggy and has poor performance. - Roman Army Camps can't build Rams anymore. - In addition to cavalry javelineers, Hellenes can no longer train Slingers. EDIT March 28th, 2026: - Champions are now stronger and worth the cost. - Two new trainable heroes. Demetrius for the Hellenes and Caratacos for the Celts. - Population cap is back to 300. - The AI is now stronger, with more massive attack waves. EDIT April 19th, 2026: - All melee units now deal only hack damage. - Fixed a major balance issue with ranged infantry CS units having too many hit points, often inconsistent with their rank. Now, all ranged infantry CS have 55/65/75 HP, depending on rank. - Elite spear cavalry and cavalry spear champions now have very high pierce armor, being heavily armored ranged unit counter. Likewise, infantry spear champions, infantry champion pikemen and elite spearmen also have greater pierce armor, due to them having heavy armor and large shields. Spear champions now also deal less damage. - Defense towers, ranged units and Fortresses now deal less pierce damage. - Siege Rams now have more hack armor, to compensate for the fact that spear-wielding units now deal more hack damage. - Traders now generate less profit and are more expensive. Screenshots: Imperia_Vetera_19_04_2026.zip