I actually never said it benefits the gameplay. My argument was that it is in the benefit of players for popular mods to be implemented as options, since dealing with game options is a smoother and more reliable experience than dealing with mods. Just as adding grid overlay changed nothing about its in game effect, but made it more pleasant and convenient for players to adjust to their liking.
This falsely assumes that Mandala mods have been banned, which as my post argued, there would be little precedent for. So, “can’t beat em join em” makes no sense as there was never an attempt to “beat em”.
Next you bring up a number of false comparisons. Map hax: this is clearly modifying the game state or gaining unobtainable information (depending on what you mean by map hax). Go to relic: That is straight up botting. The only one of these that is even remotely comparable would be mango targeting, which is gaining unobtainable information too as trajectory cannot be computed only from the location of the mangonel.
These are demonstrations of the precedent of allowing similar mods and therefore the inconsistency that would be banning Mandala. Furthermore, your statement that they other things are “beneficial” is only your opinion and experience. I have seen people who don’t see small trees as beneficial and utilizing an unfair advantage.
Misleading is false. Gaining unobtainable information is a clear and universal hallmark of cheating, which would be grounds for banning Mandala, so my argument stands.
Grid mod absolutely provides information. It converts the “remember and estimate anymore in realtime” to count-the-squares.
This argument works against you as you refer to Mandala as a "widely popular range mod.
This is either ignorant or misleading. The range addition is the same color and opacity of the grid overlay. So to the degree the grid blends in, the range indicator blends in.
"Unnecessary QOL feature? Every QOL feature is unnecessary. QOL is the greatest thing about AOEII DE. Select all barracks, stable… Reseed farms. Improved waypoints, More informative UI. All of these are “Unnecessary QOL features” that reduce some supposedly meaningful skill.
Not all agreed upon as I mentioned above. Multiple players on this thread along oppose small trees on the same grounds that you oppose Mandala: My mods keep getting disabled, ruining games - #24 by Arpheus2
In two sentences you call small trees “vital for competitive play” and “mainly a universal convenience thing”. Also, it absolutely does help with attacking and defending. Stopping holes in walls: defending. Identifying units behind trees to kill them: attacking. Selecting villagers to run from raids: defending.
Using what poll or metric? You would need to do that with every visual mod. Are we going to do this for every mod that could be beneficial: idle pointers, age of cubes, the conversion UI mod (an official mod which I actually consider questionable as it gives the unobtainable information of your conversion target). Are we going to have a weekly mod acceptability poll that is as underused as the map poll? Furthermore, I think you are overestimating range indicator’s effect. It really has less effect than you would thing, and is more of a small thing that occasionally allows you to play the game instead of playing guess-the-tower-range.
Tell that to TheMax https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoESYyGajmM
and ZeroEmpires https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5VusA9beuw
Arguing for its gameplay benefit is actually besides the point. There is no consistent grounds for banning it. Many players like to use it. It is a convenient QOL feature for those players that use it to have it as an option rather than a mod. THAT is its benefit.
But, to humor you, as an appendix, I will lay out some of the gameplay benefits to having a range indicator.
AOEII is a real-time strategy game, meaning that it’s essence is in implementing economic and military strategies and tactics in real time. The less attention required in busy work (reseeding farms in late game, pre-multiqueue queueing, pre-DE tech researching, counting squares from a known-range tower, counting villagers working each resource), the more attention can be devoted to performing more interesting strategies and tactics. Every one of these QOL improvements (auto-reseed, multiqueue, tech queueing, villager count) removed some skill from the game. But ultimately, the controversy came and went as it became evident that rather than taking away from the essence of AOEII, they allowed it to shine more as players got to do more of what they loved about AOEII.