Acquiring the extra loyal knight in HttT::Blackwater Port

[Anonymissimus]

On hard, when defeating the enemy leader, the player is rewarded with an extra loyal knight. I'd like to see a replay that accomplishes this in 1.8 without more than normal luck - that is, at best without risky charging assaults featuring horsemen.
I have a druid, a captain, a half-leveled alvish archer and 113 gold. Should I go more for money in the first scenario ?
On 1.6 my strategy was to lure most of the enemy forces a long way towards Sir Kaylan, making the way free for an assault on the enemy leader from southeast during the last turn, although it took me quite a number of trials. Orcish Archers are fond of attacking horsemen, and after that the rest of the army tends to follow to protect the archer(s). It doesn't seem possible to kill the complete pack in only 9 turns there are simply too many - my summed up damage is too low to kill enough enemies per turn.
In 1.8, the luring does no longer seem to work, the new ai distributes his units better...

[monochromatic]

I'd post my replay, but I was abnormally lucky at the end, getting my hits on the Orcish Warrior. True I replayed the last couple of turns a couple of times to time it correctly, and I happened to be really lucky.

Oh, and this was scouts only as well. It uses the tactic you described above: lure the enemies to Sir Kaylan's castle.

EDIT: I've attached them both, just because. You can view them if you want.

[Anonymissimus]

True I replayed the last couple of turns a couple of times to time it correctly

Ok, so isn't this cheating ? I consider all save-loads other than at scenario start cheating.

[monochromatic]

I consider reloading just to get better rolls cheating, but I don't think reloading certain parts to adjust your manuvering is cheating.

[Joram]

I have a replay where I got the knight. If I remember correctly, I got this on my third try, restarting from the beginning each time (it might have taken me more).

I did get lucky at the end, taking few hits to Delfador and Konrad, so this might not be what you're looking for. On the other hand, Delfador missed most of his shots on the crucial turn, so it wasn't all my way.

EDIT: My final statistics were -3% dealt, -14% taken; so luck was overall in my favor.

EDIT2: Overall, I would describe my play as "bold", trusting to the allied troops to cover my advance and take most of the heat during the night. I left units in vulnerable positions several times, trusting that the knight wandering around would cover them (and leading to losses my first 2 tries). In a sense, this is playing to luck, as the allied AI is rather random at times. However, if you get a feel for what the AI does, you can usually make a general prediction of how the next turn will go as far as the enemies targets.

[Anonymissimus]

That's a straightforward attack without a specific strategy. You got lucky 2 times with Delfador surviving, and 1 times with Konrad where there was 50% chance to be killed or so each time.
A secure way of luring the orc out of his keep is to take and leave that village within his reach (although I think I didn't do it on hard yet.)
Could you post the replay from Elves Besieged too plz ?

[Joram]

That's a straightforward attack without a specific strategy. You got lucky 2 times with Delfador surviving, and 1 times with Konrad where there was 50% chance to be killed or so each time.

Absolutely. It is better to be lucky than good, and I have the great fortune to be the former.

(although, the one for Konrad doesn't count quite as much because if the odds had played off, he would have killed the archer on my turn, thus advancing and being secure from danger; that he survived the counter strike was merely a good break canceling out a bad one).

Here's from Elves Besieged. I was less "lucky" in this scenario, in that my statistics were poorer (-16% taken, -32% dealt). However, I again got lucky with Delfador (Konrad really wants to get rid of him, and keeps sending him into the middle of the battle), and there are times when it is actually better to deal less damage (no use having Delfador hog the XP), which is why I put quote marks around the word lucky. Overall, I think I was rather fortunate on this one too.

That doesn't make it a very good example for illuminating and bringing to light the secrets of Wesnoth success, but such as it is, here you are.

[Anonymissimus]

After lots of trials I made it. The statistics say I dealt +0% damage and took +17% so even some bad luck, but my subjective feeling is that I was incredibly lucky since there was 1 situation when an elvish ranger should've been dead for sure and 3 other critical situations. None of them with Delfador nor Konrad - I would have sacrificed the other units to get the knight though. On turn 8 I moved the druid besides the village to lure the leader out of his keep and kept Delfador and at least one other ranged damage dealer in reach.
It is not so important how much overall luck you have, but in which situation and that you distribute the damage you take as equally as possible among your units.

Getting 3,5 level 2 units from Elves Besieged is probably the best I ever got from that scenario. Average luck.

EDIT
Sometimes there's a strange adventurous move I make with a shaman that needs 1 experience point to level...that is something to trick the ai which doesn't think beyond the point of leveling up and thus doesn't attack at all.

[stegyre]

Clearly, I do not spend enough time in these forums: I was just thinking today how useful a thread on how to gain Simyr would be, with people posting different successful saves, and here it is, already. I'm just about a month late to the party.

Attached is my latest. I feel like I got lucky, both with the number of early kills and with the survival of the allied knight. He did some good damage before he went down.

I'm looking forward to downloading the other saves, to see how others managed it. I would like a lot more consistency in my successes.

EDIT: Oh, my goodness! I think you're all insane.