need help with LoW Costly Revenge

[TheBladeRoden]

Revenge is costly indeed, at least for my elves. I first got to this level with 260 gold. But it seemed impossible to overcome the spam, so I went to the last level and tried to beat it with great swiftness. Now I have 500 gold, but they still overwhelm me! Any advice?

Here's 1.8.2 save if you want it

[monochromatic]

I'll look at the replay later, but

Spoiler:

don't worry about losing leveled units. In fact, do lose all of them (except for the loyals) because they will go to Landar's side. However, as since I haven't played LoW in a while, I do remember some talks about modifying that to only half the recall list. But I'm not sure; as long you have level sylphs and sheds, you should have problem the last couple of scenarios.

[TheBladeRoden]

I do lose all of my non-loyal units, but at that point there are still 20-25 Saurians left, so then I start losing my loyal units. :p

[TheBladeRoden]

Well i redid the previous scenario and got 611 gold now, but it only serves to delay the inevitable.

[Maiklas3000]

After an initial attempt where I got slaughtered, I then beat Costly Revenge on hard 1.8.2 with 510 gold. I lost a level 1 fighter [edit: correction... a captain and a ranger] early on, and then I lost nothing else until about turn 19, when I decided to, uh, change strategy. [Edit: correction... I lost a nonloyal unit on turn 16.] Here are my tips...

• Your basic game plan should be to let the saurians come to you; you should hold a defensible position in good terrain until almost all the saurians are dead (turn 13-14 for me.) Use your backfield to let wounded troops heal. Then you just need to spread out, destroy all the villages, kill the leaders, and mop up any leftovers.
• Recall level 2 troops, then level 3. If you still have money, maybe fighters.
• Be careful with level 1 troops (and wounded level 2/3.) Two saurians can take them out, and then skirmishers might be able to get behind your lines and prey on your wounded. Position level 1 troops where they can take at most one attack. (Use control-v to check.) Once wounded, retreat them to heal. Think of them as simply damage absorbers. They don't need to attack, even if they have an opportunity.
• Form a trapezoidal line in the fortress area and forest, with the board edge at your back. Try to give the saurians bad terrain (for them.) Saurians are slow on ice, so note that the northwest side of your line may be safe for any wounded that won't fit in the middle. (Again, use control-v.)
• At the corners of your lines, you need healthy champions or marshalls, if 3 units can attack. Put high HP units next to them too, to avoid subjecting them to 4 attacks.
• Any time any unit is wounded, retreat it behind your line. Retreat it as far as possible, except for marshalls, which you can try to position in a good spot to assist. Then let the wounded sit. Don't shuffle them around. Get your 2 points of healing per turn times a dozen units. That's 24 points of healing. On turn 11, I had 16 wounded units plus a healthy outrider behind the lines.
• Use the ol' level-up-to-heal unit trick.
• If you have any healthy level 2/3 troops wasting away in a quiet part of the line, move them towards the more dangerous part of the line. You don't want to shuffle wounded behind your line, so you need to move healthy forces along your line.
• Hold a healthy outrider in reserve, in case you need to fill a hole or pounce on an enemy that no other healthy unit can attack. Try not to lose all your riders in the first phase, since you need to destroy all the villages later on.
• Concentrate on killing the saurian mage types (oracles, soothsayers, etc.)
• When attacking Saurian flankers, the computer usually suggests a melee attack, but the computer's suggestions are rubbish and I usually use a ranged attack. Normally, not only will you cause more points of damage per point of damage you take with ranged attacks vs flankers, but also you leave your unit in better shape to survive the enemy's turn.
• Remember that you don't need to attack any time you have the opportunity, especially flankers, especially at night. However, my game went so well that I rarely thought this way or worried about the time of day.

Whereas you might think the initial assault wave is the tough part, and that's what I gave you the advice on, actually the last phase of the game can trip you up if you're not careful. A saurian took me by surprise by running over to sit on the last village, which my outrider had planned to take on the last turn. Only one other unit could reach the saurian, and only the outrider could reach the village, so it could not attack. I had like a 93% chance of a kill there, but otherwise, game over man. And I had to also make a 85% kill to finish off another unit elsewhere. That's more risk than I'd like in what was until then a picture perfect game.

For anyone who watches the replay and thinks I lost my mind in the last few turns, well, I had my reasons...

[TheBladeRoden]

Sadly all of my leveled units either died in Human Alliance, or deserted me.

[Thrash]

For anyone who watches the replay and thinks I lost my mind in the last few turns, well, I had my reasons...

Trying to replay your replay, I get increasing "corrupted/out of sync" errors. Eventually saurians are attacking saurians and it collapses under dialog boxes.

[Maiklas3000]

Sadly all of my leveled units either died in Human Alliance, or deserted me.

Well then, you know what you have to do. You have to go back and redo that hellish scenario, Human Alliance. I watched your replay. You didn't play on hard. Watch my replay of that scenario. On hard, there are vast hordes. Vast. I lost only a couple of level three units and some level twos (but a lot of those were created during the scenario.) You can do better.

On the other hand, you don't really need level 3's after Costly Revenge. If you want to try to beat it with what you've got plus recruits, then I would suggest trying to stretch your money by delaying purchases and keeping a leader parked on the recruiting spot. You can try either a larger defensive trapezoid (see my replay) or a smaller one - or you can start with a larger one and contract it as necessary. If recruiting level 1's only seems to get you into trouble, then try recuiting mostly level 2's.

Trying to replay your replay, I get increasing "corrupted/out of sync" errors. Eventually saurians are attacking saurians and it collapses under dialog boxes.

This happens to me for all my replays, and started when I upgraded to 1.8.2, but I also can always get my replays to work. Start Wesnoth 1.8.2 fresh, load the replay, (slowly and carefully) click to clear the dialogs and press play. I downloaded this particular file to check, and it plays fine for me all the way through, although I have also seen this "out of sync" error occur with this file. Probably the key is to restart the program.

[Maiklas3000]

TheBladeRoden, out of curiosity, I just now tried to beat Costly Revenge with no recalls and 510 gold. I did have a loyal champion, marshall and sharpshooter, though. I did well enough on hard to make me believe that you can succeed on medium, since you have more gold and will have more time. It was the time limit of 25 turns that stopped me, not the saurians. As I tried to quickly move out and start with the endgame (genocide and pillaging), my wounded forces were quickly cut down, but with more turns, you can be more cautious. In any case, my forces broke the saurians' initial assault, though not without heavy casualties. Once a hero was cut down right in his recruitment box, before he had a chance to do anything, ouch.

My strategy was to recruit a mix of fighters, archers, heroes, and captains, plus a scout and a marksman. I think it was a mistake to recruit only one marksman, because two flankers got into the woods at my southern flank and I often could not attack them, since their counterattacks were too fierce and my marksman and loyal sharpshooter were too wounded. Another mistake was to let high XP wounded fighters sit far behind the front, where they couldn't be maneuvered for a killing blow to level up and heal themselves, but I fixed that mistake and quickly leveled two wounded fighters after relocating them. One raw recruit fighter made it to champion(!) Advancing units is key, and possibly I should have recruited fewer heroes.

Again, the following replay is for no recalls, and it's a loss due to time. I stopped it on the last turn, since I didn't want it to overwrite my win.

[TheBladeRoden]

Praise be to [Wesnoth deity]! I finally beat it by the skin of my teeth. I think what turned the corner is when I started trying to assassinate the enemy leaders with my horsey units.

[Maiklas3000]

Praise be to [Wesnoth deity]! I finally beat it by the skin of my teeth. I think what turned the corner is when I started trying to assassinate the enemy leaders with my horsey units.

Ah, good idea. Congrats.

I hope you don't mind a critique. Below are our formations on turn 4. The enemy is going to make contact on his move... Top is TheBladeRoden's, bottom is mine:

(Click image to enlarge.)


On top, the poor marksman ordered to take point can be attacked by 5 enemy units on the next turn(!) Furthermore, the captain behind him can be attacked by 3... or 4 if the marksman should fall. Both died on the enemy's turn. The subsequent battle turned into a disorganized melee, favoring the strengths of the infiltrating saurians.

On bottom, I haven't quite put all my units into order, but you can see that I present a straight line to the enemy, and eventually the bottom line of the trapezoid will be straight. I don't ever straighten the northwest side, because I don't want to defend on ice, but the saurians don't often try to hit that flank since they would have to go on ice themselves. Also note that I have stronger units at the points where my line bends. My sharpshooters are not on the points or even in the front line. Delicate but powerful marksmen/sharpshooters are best used from behind the front line to repair the line when one of the front line men dies and the enemy takes his spot.

Think of the spartans and their phalanx formation. Each unit benefits by relying on its neighbor to protect it from being attacked by more than 2 (or worst case 3) of the enemy. This disciplined formation gives up maneuverability. It gives up being able to deny the enemy from having any good terrain next to your units. However, against a highly mobile hard-hitting enemy, the benefits of a tight formation outweight the costs.

Another thing you could have done to improve your chances would be to have your loyal guys burn the 2 or 3 closest villages rather than immediately running off to hide at the board edge. This would deny the saurians of close, convenient medical facilities. Normally you aren't able to destroy villages, so this only applies to this scenario.

[Thrash]

...

• Your basic game plan should be to let the saurians come to you; you should hold a defensible position in good terrain until almost all the saurians are dead (turn 13-14 for me.) Use your backfield to let wounded troops heal. Then you just need to spread out, destroy all the villages, kill the leaders, and mop up any leftovers.

...

I built my nice little trapezoid and then watched saurians dance for 6 or so turns before they engaged me, so it ended up being around turn 20 by the time I finished them off and broke formation to mop up.

I ended up losing on the last turn when I couldn't quite kill the last leader. I'm guessing I could have found a way to squeeze an extra turn in the end game, but was there some trick to getting the saurians to attack instead of burning turns inching closer?

[Maiklas3000]

I've never seen Saurians dance, though they did massively pull back from ice during the daytime and then permanently abandoned that flank of their attack. Did you torch a couple villages? Maybe you need to piss them off by destroying eggs (i.e., torching a second village.) Or maybe the Saurians are more aggressive on hard. That's probably it... on hard, they have more units and so feel more confident.

One trick I use sometimes is placing two or three rangers/avengers in my line at the point I want the Saurians to attack, with either nothing behind or a juicy-looking target. The Saurians think they see a hole in the line and/or an easy kill and they go for it. However, I only use this to direct their attack. The Saurians are quite happy to attack my forces without any encouragement.

Another idea I have is that you could postpone buying level 2/3 troops and/or buy less than your max units each turn. A similar idea is to keep your rangers/avengers hidden in forest, i.e., not on the fort hexes and not necessarily in contact with the enemy. Then the Saurians should be less timid in approaching your forces.

[kukn]

Must say I'm in a bummer situation with this mission, as the majority of my leveled units were either sylph/shyde or dwarves... plus only 260-odd gold left from last mission. I'll try to finish that better for the 500g, I think that could be enough, as even with my level 1's and pretty bad luck I managed to cut the hordes down to about 12 saurians+leaders.

And yeah, I went for exactly the same defensive line

edit: Re-did Breaking the Siege to end up with 516g. Bought a load of level 1 and 2, getting harrassed rather nastily, but it looks manageable...

[monochromatic]

Off-topic, well only slightly:

Legend of Wesmere really needs to be put farther down the campaign list. I even find DiD more manageable than LoW. Dunno, just a thought.