@Vantha I think your idea around Carthago Nova as a tutorial is really good, but I wonder if this could be put in the framework of a larger campaign. Stories are interesting when they are character driven, and one of the most interesting characters around that time is Hannibal Barca, and as I see it there are 3 options: to have just Carthago Nova and miss Hannibal's story, to have both separate and risk being thematically repetitive, or what I like most, for the tutorial to be a prelude of a Hannibal campaign. The whole campaign wouldn't need to be ready for just the tutorial to be released first, it could later on be incorporated into the campaign when it's finished. Regarding how to narrate it, I was thinking about how the Mongol campaign in AoE II is done, the author of The Secret History of the Mongols (as revealed at the beginning) narrates it in cutscenes for each scenario. No cinematics, just drawings, which is how things could be done at first. I think movies like The Last Samurai are nicely told (historical accuracy apart), with the narrator appearing just at the beginning and the end, as an epilogue and prologue. The middle of the campaign would be like a movie, or Starcraft campaigns, for more immersion. Hannibal’s campaign would be the only one with a prelude (tutorial). In it, hints would be given to the player (checkboxes is a great idea, like StarCraft II), but not by the narrator since I feel that cheapens the experience (having some ancient author telling you to click here and there). So, I’d structure them like a book, also with a foreword and afterword (explained in a bit). Combining all these ideas for a Hannibal campaign, a foreword would briefly explain the contents of it, then as prologue a narrator with drawings could tell about Carthage’s defeat in the First Punic War, and the prelude would be the tutorial, starting with Hamilcar (Hannibal’s father) and Hasdrubal the Fair (his son-in-law) taking Hannibal as a child to Europe, founding Carthago Nova, etc. Then the main campaign would start with Hannibal in command, and end with his defeat in the Second Punic War, with many battles being interesting to have (I hope camouflage will be a thing in the future, for Lake Trasimene, and an ability of Numidian cavalry for Cannae). An epilogue would mention his exile and the later destruction of Carthage in the Third Punic War, that the narrator, revealed around this time to be The Histories author, Polybius, witnessed. An afterword would then mention that he’s remembered as one of the most brilliant tacticians of all time, that Rome would end having his monuments because they considered him their most worthy foe, and that later on the Roman emperor Septimius Severus would be born in those lands, being himself a native Punic speaker, to end on a not so grim note. I hope all this is somewhat relevant and doesn't deviate too much from the present plans.

To players who haven't beaten Petra and don't want to learn how they work I've spoiler some bits of info. So I've checked and noted the AI's limitation and I'll be using pop per minute[PPM] as the term: VE will have max pop(300) at min 60[5PPM], E - 45[6.7PPM], M - 35[8.5], H - 30[10]. VH - 25[12]. New players will be ending the game around 1 hour mark, so [5PPM] is quite simple albeit if they can survive, tbh let it stay limited. - The AI on Medium and above will dedicate so there is quite a lot of idle time when they could use it to gather more resources, I understand its use for harrassing, I will still beat them, they will have to rebuild it = stunted economy. If they could transition from gatherer to non gatherer in late game(min 25-35) then it will be beneficial. - In terms of Very Hard from what I observe when they solo, its possible they could reach 15PPM which is my current level(Max pop at min 18-23), 15PPM for VH will be an actual pain to fight but its what I recommend because its meant to be difficult but possible to win. So players who intend to fight 2 VH[26PPM], will have to unfortunately fight the improved [30PPM] lol.

Making "goodness" quantifiable is a good input. This way AI devs know what to strife for. As I understand the hard AI should produce 10 pop per minute (or ppm to introduce a unit ) What ppm should the very easy and very hard AIs have? Is pop per minute a good measurement? Maybe points per minute is better.

"However, artillery being captured, turned around in the heat of battle, and starting firing on the troops of its previous owners? Unlikely." That's probably right (can't remember any counterexample), but the same argument could be applied to ships, and that's going to be in the game now. It’s like proposing removing the building of towers because that didn’t happen while a battle was taking place meters away. It's all a representation of things, numbers and time are shrunk with respect to what in reality would have been, it seems to me that completely removing something that happened just because it didn’t happen in the same battle is the wrong call. Capture times would have kind of prevented turning things around in the heat of battle, and if not, a “use cooldown” could be implemented, one being able just to move the piece in the meantime. Edit: I think something like that was proposed for towers and fortresses, to avoid turning them around fast, although more from a gameplay perspective than a realistic one. For ships it would also make sense to have a use cooldown.

Here the opinion of Nescio: