Can't beat princess of wesnoth

[yasar11732]

Hi,

I can't beat princess of wesnoth scnerio. It doesn't matter what kind of strategy I try, because she keeps getting more soldiers, as she got like endless income. I am attaching a replay file here. This is the last time I tried, which is one of many...

[shadowblack]

First of all, tell us which version of Wesnoth you're using: 1.9.5, an older 1.9.x, 1.8.5, or some older version. It's also a good idea to tell us which difficulty you're playing on.

Second, if you provide your start-of-scenario save someone might give the scenario a try and provide a replay of it being successfully completed. Or at least give you some useful advice.

[Velensk]

There are two replays for this scenario in a very recent thread, you might want to take a look at them.

EDIT: Your problem is that you're trying to beat her entirely with horsemen. Horsemen are incredibly unreliable and very vulnerable to certain kinds of counter attack. If you start losing your momentum it is very hard to recover it with horsemen. Your luck was very poor that playthrough but relying that much on that many of them it would be very hard to maintain the good luck you would need. You don't want to fight the enemy on equal terms, humans in the open against humans in the open is roughly equal, humans vs elves in the wood with healing and leadership may not be so equal. Humans in the water vs mermen in the water is generally not equal.

As a side note: It's a bit of a waste to give the inintiate the storm trident as it already has a ranged magical attack and if you give the storm trident to a normal merman it'll be on a tougher unit that retaliates better in melee.

[yasar11732]

Hi again.

After watching the replay on very recent thread, I win this scenario (finally I learnt how to spell scenario lol). However, I suffered great loss. I am posting

TV-Wesnoth_Prensesi.gz

My scenario save file

(15.2 KiB) Downloaded 207 times

and

TV-Wesnoth_Prensesi_tekrar2.gz

me playing the scenario

(39.01 KiB) Downloaded 216 times

. Tell me if my losses are acceptable, or should I replay this one before moving on to the next one.

Edit: My game version is 1.8.5

Edit 2: I am playing at hero (normal) difficulty.

[Velensk]

I would consider the losses you suffered to be unacceptable. I will also point out that your could really use to work on your experiance management. So many points were lost to units that can hardly benefit from them.

You came into this scenario a bit low on resources, despite that I was able to get through it on your save with what I'd consider to be acceptable loses. I did have to load a save to correct a rather careless tactical mistake on turn 12. If your computer reads the replay like mine it will give an OOS error earlly on, this is a non-fatal error and you shoudl be fine ignoreing it.

If you continue to have trouble, consider going back a scenario or two and coming in with more resources.

[Groggy_Dice]

I've just started your game, to see what I can do with it. I haven't looked at your replays (or Velensk's), but here's what I've noted based on your recall list and statistics.

• You're inexperienced, but you have aptitude. You've made it this far, and you have Moremirmu, which means you cleared the Isle of the Damned. You need a certain amount of skill to do that. However, while new players can win scenarios, it takes experience to understand how gold, upkeep, and experience work together over a campaign. There's an interesting post on common newbie errors you might want to read: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 90#p376715
• You're not protecting your loyals. The only non-mermen loyals in your recall list are Moremirmu, and Niodil, who you only got in the last scenario. Loyal units are invaluable in a long campaign, you need to sacrifice other units to save them, if you have to.
• Horsemen and mages are too expensive for cannon fodder. Since Velensk mentioned you overused horsemen in your first replay, I expected to see knights in your recall list, but there were none. I see from statistics that you've lost all the horsemen and mages you recruited.

Gotta go, I'll try to wrap this up later. I'll take a look at your replays (not Velensk's, I want to try my own strategies).

[yasar11732]

Hi,

I tried going back to beginning and bringing back more experinced troops. I won this one again, apart from some obvious studipities, I guess I pulled this one off. I am sending my new save and replay so that you can give critics if you want

TV-Wesnoth_Prensesi.gz

My save file

(14.06 KiB) Downloaded 218 times

TV-Wesnoth_Prensesi_tekrar.gz

My replay of princess of wesnoth

(35.89 KiB) Downloaded 198 times

[Groggy_Dice]

I finished the scenario before the weekend, but didn't post it earlier; the replay is attached. I did make a couple of bad or risky moves that could have cost me if I'd had bad luck - like a calculated risk in positioning an elvish captain that left it with 1HP, or leaving loyal Niodien in the open because I forgot to factor in time of day - but I didn't need any restarts or reloads. I did lose a horseman, but overall I regard the result as "good enough." 8 advancements, 239 finishing gold for a bonus of 107.

Normally, I would still consider these forces insufficient for the next scenario, but then I realized that that's based on going for wiping out the liches. I don't know what might be adequate to just survive, which is all that scenario requires.

TV-Wesnoth_Prensesi_grog_replay.gz

(43.31 KiB) Downloaded 206 times

I also took a look at your earlier replays. Note that I just saw your new message, so I haven't looked at your latest replay. A couple of things I noted:

• I didn't really see any difference in how you played based on the time of day. In the first game, of course, your strategy was based on horsemen who were themselves lawful. But even in the second game, you seemed to me to adopt an aggressive, head-to-head posture at all times, day and night.
• I noticed in the second game you recalled even low-XP units, rather than recruiting new ones. If an elvish fighter only has 3 XP, you're better off recruiting a new one for 14 gold, and spending the 6 gold you save on something else. Some players even like to dismiss such low-XP units from their recall list, to keep it from getting "cluttered."
• I never saw you use the shyde's slow attack. It could just be that you didn't see any circumstances in these particular games to use it. But if you haven't been using it, there are times when it's better to use a druid or sorceress' slow attack than the magical one. If there's a powerful enemy unit that you won't be able to kill on this turn, for example, or if you want to slow a unit so it deals less return damage to follow-on attackers.
• In your first game, you didn't recall your healers until after you had to run back to the keep. I guess your thinking was to use your horsemen to strike so fast that they'd outrun your healers anyway. However, it's generally not a good idea to forgo healing. (And with double damage, horsemen are going to need it!)
• Earlier, I noted that you didn't seem to be careful enough with your loyals. Or your leveled-up units. Or your mages and horsemen. In these replays, you didn't seem to be careful enough with any of your units, even your main characters. You seem to focus on what you're going to do to the enemy, and not thinking enough about what the enemy is going to do to you when it's his turn.

I'd second all of Velensk's points. About horsemen, for example: depending on the scenario, recalling lots of knights may be a viable strategy, since they can attack with the sword, as well as charge. In fact, in the next scenario, you probably want lots of paladins (a type of level 3 horseman). However, because horsemen take double damage, charges can go horribly wrong. So you want other units around in order to: a) take on enemy melee units (in general, you do NOT want to charge ogres or swordsmen), b) soften up target units so they can be killed in a charge by one blow, and c) cover horsemen that have been left badly wounded by their charges. The need for all these other units means that you probably only want to recruit or recall a few horsemen in any one scenario. If you're looking to build up an army of knights, recruit more horsemen as you level them up.

[Groggy_Dice]

I've looked at your new game, and I have to say, wow! Your gameplay is much improved! Not just in this scenario, but in the campaign as a whole, judging by your statistics. Until this scenario, you hadn't lost any level 2 units, and this is considered the second-hardest scenario of the campaign. I may offer a critique later, but you're clearly on the right track, and some of the advice I just gave you above, you'd already figured out.

I've also taken a look at Velensk's replay, and I see now the model you've been emulating! As you can see, I have a very different style of play than he does, favoring minimizing my casualties over quick and decisive showdowns.

If you look at the results, you see the pluses and minuses of these two approaches. The obvious big plus of his way: much more gold. He finished much earlier than I did, and delivered exactly twice as much bonus gold for the next scenario. (I also suspect that his approach would work better in multiplayer, and that my approach is dependent on exploiting the computer AI.)

My strategy does have its advantages. Lower losses: one unit lost compared to six. All his losses were level 1, but included the loyal archer; the scout also entered the game with some experience. Of course, these results partly reflect the roll of the dice - I mentioned that there was a point where I could have lost the archer, too - but there were also points where he could have lost more units. Another plus, more experience. 8 advances to 6, but that's not the whole story. I ended the game with 4 units in the white zone and 3 in light blue; he ended with just one of each.

I'll also add that the strategy I used in that replay is quite different from the strategy I used to use, which resembled elements in Velensk's game and your first game. The first time I played this scenario, I spotted the mine, but decided to ignore it. I figured that all the open terrain would be a good place to use my knights. And I also figured that I could roll over the princess with one keep of recalls, since she started with just 190 gold, while I started with four high-level characters already on the board, and my recalls were worth more than the 20 gold I paid for them. I would avoid going for villages in hard-to-reach places in favor of heading straight for the princess and winning a quick victory. Even when the princess got reinforcements, I wasn't fazed, confident that I could handle them, and when the fencers popped up, I decided to simply continue driving on the princess rather than diverting any units back to the rear. I won!

I followed the same general pattern when playing the scenario subsequently. Recruit one keep of high-level, largely mounted units, and get Konrad moving immediately towards the front. The main battle would develop around the bridge, with some enemy units foolishly wading into the river. Wounded units might get sent back, but my advance was generally inexorable, with Delfador blasting ogres and swordsmen, and my level 2 and 3 knights cutting down the level 1 enemies. The fencers would be ignored, unless they wandered near my forces. I would win a blitzkrieg victory, and a couple of knights would level to paladins. I still had minimal losses, since I was using high-level units against weaker enemies.

More recently, I played this scenario again, and used a strategy similar to the one in the replay, aimed at leveling up my army. Instead of level 2/3 knights, recruit/recall a larger number of elvish and chaotic level 1/2 units. To avoid losses with these lower-level units, pull back. Send someone to the mine, and recall a merman to grab those remote villages in the south. I also found that once I had captured all the villages, I preferred to keep the princess alive, so I could continue milking her recruits for XP.

I liked the results, and also found this approach more suited to your situation. You had no high-level mounted units, and even if I could have emulated the results of my former strategy with your level 2/3 units, you really needed to build out your army's recall strength.

Right now, it looks to me like you've been trying to model Velensk's gameplay in your last two games. It is up to you whether you want to try out one of my strategies, or perhaps develop your own solution to this scenario. In any case, you've obviously improved your Wesnoth skills tremendously.

[Velensk]

Easier to keep units alive if you have more gold to spend on cannon fodder.

Loses generally don't matter all that much unless they're level 3 (or it's early and their level 2) as the entire game is practically made out of armies from shadow though losing loyals hurts.

[MRDNRA]

Easier to keep units alive if you have more gold to spend on cannon fodder.

Loses generally don't matter all that much unless they're level 3 (or it's early and their level 2) as the entire game is practically made out of armies from shadow though losing loyals hurts.

I have just finished playing through the whole of HttT campaign on Medium difficulty, only using saveloads when a key character (as in Delfador, Kalenz etc) died, and I too agree that losses aren't really overly significant. Indeed, in the process of winning the scenario after this one, I lost a white mage, and another mission around this area, lost a shyde. Despite losing yet another shyde on one of the last missions, on the last mission I was still able to recall Elrain (loyal MoL), a shyde, a druid, and a white mage! This also was the first ever time I've completed this campaign on Medium (and all the times on Easy was when I saveloaded each time I lost a unit!). Basically, in this campaign at least you have enough time to level up replacement units to replace even high level losses (I even managed to get away with losing Haldiel when he was a Paladin in one of the last levels also)! Of course, while it is natural to want to avoid losses, if you do have to incur losses then it is preferable to lose level 1 units as they are generally more easily replaced than higher level losses.