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0ad (0.0.26-1~xtradeb1) jammy; urgency=medium
* Upstream new version
* Top new features
- A new civilization: The Han
- New campaign maps: Tarim basin and Yangtze.
- Now units have acceleration.
- Twenty-six new music tracks.
- New and updated art.
* New civilization: The Han
After the 0 A.D. civilization roster has been constant for some years now,
we are excited to announce the inclusion of a new civilization into the
game: the Han.
This development has been in the making for a while. Work on the Han
originally began as part of the mod “Rise of the East,” and the civilization
was later included in the mod “Delenda Est” and was continuously improved by
many volunteers until it ultimately reached a level where it matches the
other civilizations in quality.
The Han have beautiful new art, unique technologies, buildings, and
(hopefully) also new gameplay strategies to explore. As usual, we tried our
best to create a civilization that is extremely fun to play with and that
also pays respect to the actual history.
Therefore, now for a bit more of the historic background of the
civilization:
The Han dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) was the second imperial dynasty of China,
preceded by the Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and succeeded by the Three
Kingdoms period (AD 220–280). It is considered a golden age in Chinese
history, and China made significant progress in arts and sciences during
the Han period.
The core of the Han empire was around the Wei River, and the Han capital
was Chang’an, very close to the Qin capital Xianyang (both are now part of
Xi’an, Shaanxi).
* New maps
Two new maps accompany the addition of the Han civilization to the game:
- Tarim basin: This is an endorheic basin in Northwest China, Xinjiang
region. It is also called “The Western Regions” by the Han Chinese and
represents the furthest extent of their power. The Han Chinese wrested
control of the Tarim Basin from the Xiongnu at the end of the 1st century
under the leadership of General Ban Chao (32–102 CE), during the
Han-Xiongnu War and kept it until the Kushan Empire expanded back into the
Tarim Basin in the 1st–2nd centuries CE.
The map itself is bereft of life and offers little in the way of
defensibility. The rugged mountain valleys harbor the only life, in the
form of hearty shrub and tree species and some goats.
- Yangtze: The Yangtze, also known under the name Yangzi, or officially under
the name Chang Jiang, is the longest river in Asia, the third-longest in
the world, and the longest in the world to flow entirely within one
country, from the Tibetan Plateau to the East China Sea. During the Han
dynasty, the region of the Yangtze River grew more important to China’s
economy essentially by the establishment of irrigation systems (like
Dujiangyan) which made agriculture very stable and productive.
These maps were also added to the “Demo campaign – new maps”.
* Improvements
There are various improvements in this alpha, affecting all parts of the
game. But the changes that will be most noticeable to the end-users are:
- Better formation movement, especially turning and navigating through and
around objects for more fluidity
- Game interface usability improvements:
- Most importantly: a slider to adjust the size of GUI elements.
- Easier drag & drop mod installation
- Interface and performance improvements for the Atlas Editor
- AI improvements.
* GUI
A player search field is now available in the lobby if you’re looking for
someone to play specifically.
An extra button for seeing the summary page when quitting a session is now
available. You can skip the summary if not needed and the game will return
directly to the main menu.
Some tooltips were added to the mod manager screen to help to understand
that the mod order matters on settings and possibly to help to solve
conflicts between mods.
Improved tooltips and visibility across the game.
The scale of the GUI is now resizable, using a dropdown menu. There is also
a confirmation box with a countdown to revert scale changes.
* Art
A lot of production and improvement for this release, here is a resume (you
can find all the details in this list):
- Lots of texture improvements, better portraits, color adjustments, and
fixes
- Lots of 3D model improvements and better animations, new portraits
- Complete restructuring and improvements on the Han before their integration
into the release
- 26 new music tracks including two themed for the Han
* Gameplay
There is now a checkbox in the game setup to allow players to have
Cartography auto-researched from the start of the match: it means that
allies can share the parts of the map each of them discovered if the option
is selected.
Formations can now be selected as a whole with one click, making them more
of a “battalion” than before. Note that this behavior can be adjusted in the
options. Use (civ-specific) standards.
It is now also possible to push items to the front of the Production Queue.
This means you can now task a unit to do one task immediately and then
return to the tasks they had before, without repeating the orders. This can
be done by using the hotkeys, so be sure to check out the hotkey editor.
There is now also a “Call to arms” button, which allows players with one
click to order their soldiers to drop resources at the nearest drop site and
then move to the destination (and attack everything on the way there) with a
single button.
The number of idle workers is now displayed on the respective button.
The olive tree is now a source of wood (as it was hard to see that it was a
food supply).
With this release, we are introducing the Official community mod for Alpha
26 found here, where balancing and gameplay changes if introduced will be
ported over to the next release of 0ad.
* Balancing adjustments
- With the help of several of the top-ranked players in the A25b lobby and
the balancing team, many balance tweaks have been made in the past year.
These tweaks mostly address concerns from the community, for example:
- Decreased attack of Iberian fire cavalry.
- The increased cost of mercenary cavalry.
- Ships are less effective against humans.
- Spear cavalry is now more effective against other cavalry.
- Pikemen have lower armor.
- Rework of the Ipicratean Reform (Athenians).
- Catapults are stronger.
The end result is a sleeker and hopefully more balanced gameplay experience
in A26 compared to A25b. On top of the changes that were made to address
concerns, there are also other balance changes, the biggest one being the
addition of the Han, but also:
- Units now have a slight acceleration (some more, some less).
- Fruit and fish now have a small regeneration as long as they are not
exhausted.
- The Mauryan worker elephant is able to build (again).
- Standardized animal loot experience.
- Increased arsenal garrison limit.
- Macedonian bonus: Instant storehouse technology research time.
- Adjust Kushite Pyramids to be more used.
- Removed tower and fortress limits.
- Many other small tweaks and corrections.
* Engine Improvements
This release introduces Texture quality and Anisotropic filtering in the
renderer: you can choose between Texture quality Low, Medium, and High and
Anisotropic filtering from 1x to 16x.
The engine got support for FreeType fonts but, unfortunately, Asian, Arabic,
Hebrew, and other languages still have to be bundled separately.
- Added config settings for borderless fullscreen and window modes.
- Use the high-performance GPU on Windows by default.
- Many performance improvements and ongoing refactorings.
-- Jhonny Oliveira <email address hidden> Fri, 30 Sep 2022 08:20:56 +0200
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