Carthage Preview 2 Release - Is the Time Right Now?

[QuintillusCFC]

I think the time is about right to release Preview 2. It's been almost 3 months and that is a long time. Moreover, we had 25 items in Done, versus 14 in Released, giving us 39/89 or 44% done for Carthage, versus 14/70 or 20% for Preview 1. So math-wise, it looks like we're ready.

It's also becoming hard to remember off the top of our heads what is done but not released. And I think that while there's more than average in that category that's behind-the-scenes, there's still enough user-facing items to warrant a release.

What's done but not released:

User-Facing
Retreat probability in combat
Defensive bombardment
Healing while resting
Unit fortification bonus
River defensive bonus
Terrain defensive bonus
Experience levels/promotions
AI decides what to build dynamically
City production/growth is based on actual tile yield

User-Impacting But Less Visible
Unit prototypes being used
Smoke effect added
Improved unit pathing, AI can navigate around bays
Strategic AI priorities (will eventually be user visible but it's almost always "expansion" right now so mostly behind-the-scenes)
AI exploration improvements
AI city location selection improvements (rivers, resources)

Behind-the-Scenes
Setting a random seed
Performance fixes for late-game
Logging framework
Log files
Refactoring C7RulesFormat
Unit test compilation fixes
Project file updates
Automatic code formatting plugins
Turn handling refactor

What's in progress and has had progress recently:

Component-Event framework (which includes years for the turn, not just turn numbers)
Settler AI - Use CxxC instead of CxC
AI sending settlers only to tiles it has explored
Serilog propagation to more projects

What's been sitting in PR draft status/changes requested for a long time

Regression tests for opening the main types of files
Allow saving a C7 game

Summary

I think we should release Preview 2, and make the combat improvements the marquee feature, with a secondary feature of the improvements to city production. The stuff that's in-progress is nice to have but not critical. The major user-visible parts of Carthage that remain, such as tile visibility, are not yet started so it will likely be a while before they're ready; we shouldn't wait for them to release the next preview.

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