Campaign challenges

[HomerJ]

So if anyone still notices this thread... I'm almost done with the Thieves Challenge (recruit Thieves only from SoE on, recall of loyal troops allowed) on HttT - Hard. Last two scenarios are still open but they should be doable with my gold and recall list.

Edit: And so it was. The Battle for Wesnoth scenario shows that the AI is not capable of dealing with poison. Poisoned enemy units on low health ran away, but did not use villages. Looks strange in the late turns.

Replays will follow the end of this week, the most interesting/difficult scenarios so far where Siege of Elensefar (would you have guessed?) Crossroads (to my surprise) and Dwarven Doors, Scepter of Fire to some extend.

Edit: Replays are here.

Is that HODOR to any extend?

Oh yeah and Backstabbing a skelly at night DOES bring you far!


Greetz
HomerJ

[shadowmaster]

I just finished HttT on Hard + No Recalls + playing as fast as reasonably possible. (I did give myself time to plan at the beginning of each scenario.)

Total time: Whole campaign in about 7 hours. (It was broken up over several days.) I did save-load for some stupid moves, but it was pretty minimal.

I could post replays if anyone's interested.

[The Great Rings]

Congratulations.

I've beaten it only on easy. But I'm a better player now, so when I get around to playing it again, I'll try it on a harder difficulty. Got to finally finish Northern Rebirth though, then play HttT to relax afterward.

[HomerJ]

ElvishPillager, would you mind to have a mod merge this thread in to the campaign challenges thread, because I would like to keep that one alive.
Also this:

Rodnh!


Btw: Next on my list: NR, human recruits only.


Greetz
HomerJ

[shadowmaster]

Rodnh!

RIDH!

(Although I guess they contain no evidence on how long it took me to decide moves.)

The "The Battle for Wesnoth" one is pretty hilarious - I'm sure I could have done a better strategy, but winning on the first try is acceptable

(Merging the threads sounds like a good idea.)

[shadowmaster]

(Merging the threads sounds like a good idea.)

Done.

[noob123]

I could post replays if anyone's interested.

Please, do. I have just finished the campaign without any additional challenges on normal and can't imagine how it's even possible.

Edit: Sorry, missed the link.

[Aethaeryn]

I could post replays if anyone's interested.

Please, do. I have just finished the campaign without any additional challenges on normal and can't imagine how it's even possible.

Read a few posts above:

RIDH (the link is located here)!

[HomerJ]

Oh man, "Showdown" does take forever as usual. But stay tuned, one of these days I will proudly present:

Northern Rebirth on Nightmare with only human recruits allowed (recall everything).


Ok, here we go!
This challenge was about my (by now) favourite campaign Northern Rebirth on 1.6.0 (on a technical note: had to download cfg-file of showdown from trunk to have southern lich able to recruit).

As many of you know, the campaign features mostly dwarves and drakes in later stages. However, I found it interesting to play the campaign restricted to only recruit human units, though recalling is alright for race (usual Challenge related restrictions apply too -> no saveloading except beginning of scenario saves, highest possible difficulty, no debug commands). That way you have the following non human units at your service: Stalrag and the three loyal dwarves from Pursuit, Spectre, Elvish Druid, Elvish Sorceress, Krash and the two loyal drakes. This of course only changes gameplay from To the Mines on, but then in a drastic way as your usual endless amounts of leveled dwarves are absent.

The scenario I would have imagined to be the toughest one was Clearing the Mines which surprisingly wasn't the case and I got it on the first try.
The Pursuit of course is tough and one faces a huge amount of casualties but it works out.
Old friend is not too different only that you have to cycle units around faster.
Settling Disputes or as I like to call it RunRunRunRun is not a breather scenario because you have no margin of error to even get to the Lich in the turn limit and even then the (almost) only way to win is abusing the fact that your white mages not only do not die, but that they respawn in a predictable manner with refreshed movement.
No major differences in the way Elvish Princess or Introductions is played.
Stolen Gold for me worked only if I defended the mountains were later Krash reappears and sneaking behind the dumb trolls and killing their leaders with a group of the two liches, the two elves and the spectre.
Eastern Fortress is hard because you have no units that move quickly through the mountains, I found success by an assassination strategy where I recalled what I had and sent most men to hold a defensive line and let the orcs come, while a group of the elves, the ancient lich and some other very tough units together with some footpads sneaked around to the far south, crossed the river and got into the castle when most Orcs had left for the battle in the mountains. Remaining gold for Tallin is vital here because you have to ZOC your way to the leaders and eventually kill them before they can call in reinforcements (in my game usually the troll and the black orc had loads of money but didn't get a chance to recruit till to late).
Get the Gold, nothing special, but no way to save Sisal without lots of drakes or griffons to fly to her rescue. Note that Krash himself and the elvish princess must be sacrificed here to have the liches take over North and South in Showdown. Interestingly, the two loyal Drakes show up in the ancient liches recall list afterwards, which enabled me to recall them for Showdown.
Showdown is only so much different as you can only recruit mages with the liches, which is hard for defending but non the less very interesting. Was lucky though that Hamel didn't die when he exposed himself to 3 lvl 3 Orcs in the plains at night.

Thats it, if anybody is interested in start of scenario saves to try it out pm will do.

Edit: Typos

Greetz
HomerJ

[Kristjan]

Insane replay, HomerJ. How about you try finishing Northern Rebirth in as few turns as possible for next? I could finish To the Mines scenario in 5 turns not even seriously planning it (version 1.7.7).

[MRDNRA]

wait, people try to beat all the leaders on DD? O_O

I've never even bothered to try.

Piece of cake on easy, at least if you can live with losses.


Greetz
HomerJ

I always take down the leaders in DD on easy, and with no losses, but that's only because I restart a turn if I lose even one unit lol! I absolutely detest losing units.

[Jozrael]

Hey all, been awhile. Been playing a bunch of League of Legends, but found I missed Wesnoth as of late. Came back and was wondering what campaign to play. I've always like An Orcish Incursion, it's nice and fast, but I've done it so many times. So I thought "Hey, why not try to complete it in as few turns as possible, and compete against others on the forums?"

So here I am. No save/loading and on hard, of course. Though I did have to restart the swamp once after I left Erlornas in a poorly chosen hex at night .

Turn Counts by Scenario: 11, 11, 7, 16, 6, 8, 5. The Valley pwned me hard; I should've saved up more gold for a speedrun on it. Total turncount: 64. You can shred this cuz of my lousy 4th scenario.

Just for completeness, I had 8 casualties. 2 Fighters, 1 Shaman, None, 2 Fighters, 1 Fighter, Fighter/Shaman, None.
Finished with an elven high lord, 2 sharps, 2 shydes, silver mage (not lineara), captain, 6 rangers (2 mine), 2 riders (1 mine), and a sorceress.

I so badly wanted an enchantress too .



So post up your speedruns .

(Btw, I'm assuming this is the proper forum, I suppose it could be off-topic).

EDIT: <_< cricket cricket. It has been awhile .

[HomerJ]

I appreciate the uniqueness of this idea, but this could also be part of the campaign challenges thread. However, challenge taken, I see what I can do. We are talking 1.6.5 I assume?

Greetz
HomerJ

[Turuk]

I appreciate the uniqueness of this idea, but this could also be part of the campaign challenges thread.

A fair point, up to Jozrael, but it can be moved on request. It may see more interest there, if not soon then in the near future.

[Jozrael]

Yea that's fine to move this; being gone for a long time I'm not exactly current on recent threads .

I was using the dev version . I suppose I can run it on stable as well. I'll add to my OP when I finish it on stable as well.