Balance Issues & Exploits in 0 A.D. (A27+) – Suggestions for Fixes

[king reza the great]

Hi everyone,

I’ve been playing 0 A.D. for years, and I’ve noticed that some bugs, exploits, and design weaknesses are still present. Many players use these in competitive games, which makes matches unfair and less enjoyable. I want to highlight the most important issues I’ve seen, along with possible solutions.

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1. Champion Cavalry (A27) – Overpowered

• Problem: Champ cavs are extremely strong in A27. In most serious games we even ban them.

• Solution: Nerf them significantly.

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2. Fanatic Units (Fanas) 

• Problem: Fanatics are overpowered and often spammed (for example, by Aslan). Watch attached replays as a example.

• Solutions:

  • Add a metal cost (e.g., 50).

  • Or restrict them to Phase 3 instead of Phase 2.

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3. Formation Bug – Pathfinding Exploit

• Problem: If a player switches to formation during a battle, the enemy army runs into the center of the formation and suicides.

• Players Abusing: Atric, Sniper (SaiDrz used to but stopped after explanation).

• Solution: Needs dev fix so that units don’t get forced into the middle of enemy formations.

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4. Hero Dance – Unrealistic Exploit

• Problem: “Hero dancing” makes heroes very hard to kill by abusing flee/micro tricks.

• Players Abusing: jc, 0ad_Boss (i_am_groot), Sniper, Atric (sometimes myself too when facing them).

• Solution: Disable flee mode for heroes. Heroes shouldn’t act cowardly.

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5. Walls Outside Territory – Abusive Tactic

• Problem: Players suddenly build walls behind or around enemy soldiers in battle. Soldiers auto-attack walls and die easily.

• Players Abusing: Dakara (rarely).

• Solution: Restrict wall construction to player territory only.

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6. ProGUI (Cheat Mod)

• Problem: Provides unfair advantages beyond simple UI changes.

• Players Using: Atric, Stockfish, Noobdude, Duck, IjavadDev, Mark (sometimes), Carthage (others stopped after being informed).

• Solution:

  • Don’t allow ProGUI to be published on the official forum.

  • Remove it from the in-game mod selection list.

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7. Auto-Snipe Script

• Problem: Automates targeting (like instantly killing heroes), which is unfair.

• Players Using: Atric.

• Solution: Same as ProGUI – ban and prevent distribution of auto-snipe scripts.

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Conclusion

These issues damage competitive balance in 0 A.D. Fixing them would make the game much more fair and enjoyable for everyone. I hope the devs and community can take these points into account for future patches.

BROKEN FANAS.rar

Edited yesterday at 12:19 by king reza the great

[TheCJ]

Well...

1. True, not much to say to that

2. Even if fanatics were op, your solutions are both bad. Adding 50 metal to their cost means they are more expensive than regular champions. Considering that they are vastly more vulnurable, that would make them entirely useless. Restricting them to p3 would just reduce the amount of possible tactics, as going for champs p3 mostly just means ecobotting. Do you want more ecobotting?

3. 4. and 5. are skill issues. If your enemy micros his units better than you, you lose. No "solution" will change that. If they use formations to great effect, why dont you? If they put their hero on flee, why dont you? If they utilise palisades to great effect, why dont you? Saying its a "balance issue" or an "exploit" just because you arent able to use it the way they do is not very honest.

6. and 7. dont have a solution. Using them as cheats is already forbidden by the WFG "Terms of Use" (which you should have read?). But you shouldnt ban any mod from mod.io just because some people edit them to use them as cheats. If I want to play with proGUI and autosnipe in singleplayer, I should be able to download the respective mods from mod.io. They are, after all, marked as incompatible, so you wont be able to join a normal game after just downloading them from there. And if someone is ready to edit files to play in a vanilla lobby with those mods enabled, not putting them on mod.io wont have any effect on them, as you can always download them from github.

Edited 22 hours ago by TheCJ

[Classic-Burger]

4

 Ctrl + Q

[king reza the great]

13 hours ago, TheCJ said:

Well...

1. True, not much to say to that

2. Even if fanatics were op, your solutions are both bad. Adding 50 metal to their cost means they are more expensive than regular champions. Considering that they are vastly more vulnurable, that would make them entirely useless. Restricting them to p3 would just reduce the amount of possible tactics, as going for champs p3 mostly just means ecobotting. Do you want more ecobotting?

3. 4. and 5. are skill issues. If your enemy micros his units better than you, you lose. No "solution" will change that. If they use formations to great effect, why dont you? If they put their hero on flee, why dont you? If they utilise palisades to great effect, why dont you? Saying its a "balance issue" or an "exploit" just because you arent able to use it the way they do is not very honest.

6. and 7. dont have a solution. Using them as cheats is already forbidden by the WFG "Terms of Use" (which you should have read?). But you shouldnt ban any mod from mod.io just because some people edit them to use them as cheats. If I want to play with proGUI and autosnipe in singleplayer, I should be able to download the respective mods from mod.io. They are, after all, marked as incompatible, so you wont be able to join a normal game after just downloading them from there. And if someone is ready to edit files to play in a vanilla lobby with those mods enabled, not putting them on mod.io wont have any effect on them, as you can always download them from github.

About 3 and 4, i dont consider abusing of weakness in design of a game as micro. Its unfair and should be fixed. Its not even related to skills. 

About 6 and 7 u defend cheats because ur friends use it.

Edited 9 hours ago by king reza the great

[Obelix]

I.

No need for a new thread. Already discussed in other threads.

II.
I like how you structured and formatted your original post, @king reza the great! What I don't like is the absence of hyperlinks (it's the internet!) to the corresponding topics.

Understanding that you may not want to link to topics that you consider ‘abusive’ or ‘exploitative’; nevertheless I find it unfriendly that users first have to research for themselves. We are in a open source software forum (sub forum 'Bug reports') here!

For the sake of peace (and my own time) only the topics on 'overpowert units':

22 hours ago, king reza the great said:

1. Champion Cavalry (A27) – Overpowered

22 hours ago, king reza the great said:

2. Fanatic Units (Fanas) 

[TheCJ]

4 hours ago, king reza the great said:

About 3 and 4, i dont consider abusing of weakness in design of a game as micro.

Yknow, thats something you could say about the "send your cavalry hero alone into the enemy food economy"-"tactic"... Thats a weakness in gamedesign. But using formations to trap enemy units? skill.

And while hero dancing doesnt take much skill, it also doesnt take much skill to just not follow the hero and have an eye on what your units are doing. If you blindly send your units to attack the enemy hero and then stop looking at them, thats your problem.

 

4 hours ago, king reza the great said:

About 6 and 7 u defend cheats because ur friends use it.

1. I didnt defend cheats, I just pointed out how nonsensical your "solutions" are. Come up with a solution that actually helps and you wont get any comment from me.

2. None of my friends cheat. While I dont have any problem with @Atrik (who you're probably referring to?), I dont know him enough to call him "friend".

[Seleucids]

Regarding the hero abuse, we can change its preferred attack categories to prevent it from attacking women. We can also remove the passive stance from the unit. Reasons:

1. Attacking defenseless women is a war criminal (coward) move and is contrary to heroic. Therefore the heroes shouldn't be doing this. The gameplay justification is that some civs have sword cav heroes which can sneak into enemy base and kill women, while other civs don't. This is an imbalance. 

2. If a hero is fleeing from the fight then it is no longer a hero but a coward. Heroes die in battle. Therefore they should not have the passive stance. 

 

However, it's a perfectly valid strategy for a player to withdraw or move around a defensive mode / aggressive mode hero manually. It's acceptable to try to save your hero from dying in battle. 

[Dakara]

You're free to move your hero, it's micro. However, there's no reason why a fleeing unit should run faster.

and of course a heroe can kill woman and run!

[Deicide4u]

22 minutes ago, Seleucids said:

Attacking defenseless women is a war criminal (coward) move and is contrary to heroic. Therefore the heroes shouldn't be doing this.

Let's not include virtue signaling in a historical war strategy game.

Heroes and generals of the past were usually far from noble. 

[TheCJ]

Sure, but then we need actual viable defenses, otherwise this "tactic" does not have counter play.

And ita in no way engaging or interesting.