Vantha

I think we should refrain from using foreign words since we can't expect players to know them and they could be hard to translate into languages with other alphabets. I'll replace "soul" with "shade".

This would work in English (and German). But in many other languages, the verbs need to be conjugated differently depending whether the subject is feminine or masculine. For the translation we'll therefore always need two different strings, no matter the exact wording.

Fair points. I added an entry referencing Isis to the list above (for the Ptolemies). Sounds reasonable, but I can't really speak on that since I'm not a native English speaker. What do others think about this? @ShadowOfHassen

I'd like to keep the Ptolemies focused on the cult of Serapis, and Graeco-Egyptian syncretism in general. Original Egyptian mythology is (more or less) present through the Kushites already. I'll add a sentence about Hermanubis (combining Hermes and Anubis) to the list above.

I took up the idea of including references to the mythologies again. The idea is to have a basic message ("<PlayerName>'s hero <HeroName> has fallen in battle.") and optionally add a second sentence to it for some historical flavor. And, of course, also offer the possibility to disabled the notifications entirely. This is the list I put together: At first, I thought about adding some descriptive terms to the names since we can't expect all players to understand the references on their own. However, I ended up deciding against it to keep the messages shorter. Instead, I made all sentences start with "His soul" (or similar) to signal that they aren't related to the gameplay. And I think the names alone can also spark interest. Also, I'm aware that some heroes in the game are female -> we need two variants of each sentence, one feminine and one masculine. (I only included the masculine ones above for simplicity) Thoughts? Suggestions? By the way, @Samulis, if you could make another sound effect for the notification, that'd be awesome.

I don't exactly agree with this point but, nonetheless, I think we should follow through with Carthago Nova.

Honestly, I thought we had already settled on Carthago Nova / Cartagena. The long continuous marching doesn't really match the typical gameplay, right? On the other hand it would offer a logical explanation for why you need to build a new city from the ground up in each scenario -> constructing fortifications along the route to defend against ambushes. And launching a grand attack against the city of Rome would make for a great climax.

You can just share the tricks (title, text & image) in here and I'll take care of the rest, sounds good? Most files affected by the patches are either newly created or haven't been changed for some years (which makes it possible to port the changes to older versions). I could put together a mod for A26 if that helps. Probably the easier solution...

Alright, here it is: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7189 I decided to place the buttons and text outside of the image to keep a constant brightness difference to the background. Quick showcase:

Well, there's a difference between tutorial campaigns and ordinary campaigns, no? The purpose of the first is to present the game's most characterising content while the purpose of the second one is to offer something new and outlandish. That being said, I believe your proposal has good potential and would indeed bring improvements in some ways. However, it would require a revamp of the game's design and vision - something that should only be done with great caution. Not to mention the huge amounts of effort required to implement it. And the concept should be discussed in a separate thread.

I mean - after more than 20 years of development - no matter the idea, there's a pretty good chance someone has already thought of it in the past By the way, I recall someone suggesting the feature of buildable streets that boost unit movement speeds over them a while ago. I don't remember in which exact thread, but it's an interesting concept.

Alright, here is what I envision for scenario 0: Scenario 0 will neither to last the length of a full game nor feel like it. Instead, it is only supposed to introduce players to the basic controls and UI. The map more or less covers the following area: The player starts in the southwestern/bottom-left corner with a couple of soldiers, women, and the hero, but no structures, and is told to scout the land for a suitable place to build the colony. Because there are no ships yet, the player is indirectly forced to make their way counter-clockwise around the map. On the way, two things happen: Firstly, the player finds a treasure and collects it. He is then told to collect enough treasures more from around the map to afford a civic center. Secondly, a few wild animals attack some of his units, and the player learns the basics of combat. Eventually, he will find his way onto the target peninsula and is ordered to construct a civic center here. The player "wins" the game as soon as the construction of this civic center is finished. What do you think?

Some references for the terrain and topography around Carthago Nova:

Sounds a good job for @Vantha Well, I can't do everything at once, but I like the idea. Will keep it in mind for the future. Is there a ticket/issue for it yet? I can only agree. It shows that you don't have to stuff in twenty different buttons and labels to create an appealing page. Would be cool have something similiar for our campaigns.

If no one objects, let's move forward with this idea. First thing we need is maps. @Lion.Kanzen@wowgetoffyourcellphone You said you could create some?

Animals need this tag too, but won't be affected by this change. What we do is edit the tag in template_unit_ship, the new value will automatically be inherited by all its children templates, their children templates, and so on (i.e. exclusively all ships). And then we only need to disable the tag for some specific types of ships.

Yeah, that's pretty much everything there is to say. Full wysiwyg editing is not possible. But adding and modifying basic GUI elements becomes a quick process once you get the hang of it. Let me know when you need anything in this regard.

I researched for more ideas, but didn't find anything promising. My pick remains Carthago Nova. It's as good of an option as we're gonna find in my opinion. What do you all think? @ShadowOfHassen My problem with Athenian colonies in Thrace is that we lack the Thracians as a civilization in the vanilla game. And, in the grand scope, most of those colonies were rather insignificant.

Sorry for the late answer, but, yes, that is possible. Look for the "typeCountsByClass" in the playerstates (part of the simulation state). It stores how many units of each template a player currently controls.

I removed the World Population checkbox in the game setup and replaced it with a dropdown for selecting the Population Cap Type ("Player Population", "Team Population", or "World Population"). Here is what that looks like: Nothing spectacular, but it works. Generally, you simply need to transfer the changes you see in the PR to your own mod (i.e. going through the affected files and making the same changes to the corresponding files in your repo, by using a diff file for example). Unfortunately, however, this specific patch here builds on changes made after the release of A26 and not applied in the community mod (which your mod is based on, correct?). This means, if you try to do the above you will find that some files in your mod differ from the original files in the PR and you won't be able to transfer the changes. You would have to backtrack more and more commits affecting a larger and larger number of files and eventually you very nasty conflicts. All in all, unfortunately, it's not feasible to pack these changes into an A26 mod. I guess you'll have to wait until A27 for it.

This idea has a lot of potential in my opinion. While not comparable to Alexandria or Syracuse, Carthago Nova (modern-day Cartagena) still offers considerable historical significance. The required civs are the Carthaginians (the founders) and the Iberians (enemies) both of which are already fully playable in the vanilla version. The hero of the story would be Hasdrubal the Fair - whom we don't have yet, but besides him no new game content would need to be created at all. Additionally, many people, even if not particularly into history, have heard of Hannibal, Carthage, and the Punic Wars before. Mostly from the Roman side, though, so this campaign could open a new, interesting perspective on the conflict.

I still believe this would be useful and I made a patch for it: https://gitea.wildfiregames.com/0ad/0ad/pulls/7161 As always, any ideas and suggestions are welcomed.

Sure. This would definitely be worth it (assuming we can collect a reasonable number of secondary images). I'll see what I can do.

What about Alexandria Eschate ? It was the most remote colony founded by Alexander, in the very northeastern corner of the empire. Some conflicts with the Scythians are recorded in its early days. Most interestingly, though, they also fought (and lost) a large war against the Han Chinese - yes, the War of the Heavenly Horses. An incredibly fascinating piece of history. I mean, ancient Greeks meeting and fighting the ancient Chinese, how cool is that? There are some issues with this idea too, though, as said war took place more than a century after the foundation, when Alexandria Eschate was already part of the (also really interesting) Greco-Bactrian kingdom. So, it would require a significant time jump; I'm already breaking my own principles...

New idea: What about colonies established by Alexander the Great? They were founded in the correct time frame. Plus, we have the Macedonians as a civ, and several they fought against. Of course, Alexandria (in Egypt) would be the obvious pick, but there are some other interesting ones as well.