With latest updates 0ad cannot start. Initially fail is

~  0ad 
/usr/bin/pyrogenesis: error while loading shared libraries: libboost_filesystem.so.1.83.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Tests using ln to link that specific version to the later version (1.85 is current) result in a similar version specific library fail:

/usr/bin/pyrogenesis: error while loading shared libraries: libicui18n.so.74: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Current is .75

And one more workaround attempt before giving up:

/usr/bin/pyrogenesis: error while loading shared libraries: libicuuc.so.74: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Current is .75.1

A case of sit tight and wait for 0ad update? I'll probably get more done without it to be fair 😉

This was a known issue, and basically a test if the game was actually in use by anyone.
It needed a rebuild on the huge ICU/Boost update/rebuild, but again failed to build. It will need a ton more patches, and since it really is badly maintained, I wanted to see if it is worth the effort to keep trying to build it (would have been removed, if no-one had complained it was broken).
Since it IS in use, I will try to find all the needed patches.

PS:
Not a pacman issue, package manager did it's work fine.

I keep looking for alternative real-time strategy games but nothing is quite as involving. I may be the only person who use KaOS and feels that though!

In my experience, less than 5% of users report issues, so when it is reported, there are probably many more effected.

It does build, if I use a checkout from the latest commit (patching released version is near impossible, not ready for newer python, boost, icu, fmt, lipupbp and on and on).
Running it though only shows a black screen here (background music plays). Maybe it is not just black for you, but test it by running from cli, otherwise you need tty 2 to kill the app (open yakuake > run 0ad > once in the black-screen, F12 to open yakuake again > Ctrl-c).

sudo pacman -U http://kaosx.tk/repo/build/0ad-alpha26-8-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst