The Dark Hordes replays

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ott
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Post by ott »

Another 0.8.5 replay for Confrontation on Hard, starting gold 1171, ending gold after 80% reduction is 948. This one replays fine on my system.

Mostly Walking Corpses are recruited, as well as a few bats and a force of Dark Adepts for firepower. Again, Gwiti barely makes it out alive while sacrificing his force to slow down Lord Aretu's army, but in this game the player doesn't spend that much and makes it all back through controlling villages. Maybe there are too many scattered villages?
ott
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Post by ott »

Finally, an 0.8.5 Hard replay for Crelanu's Book that I can actually replay. This one starts with 1059 gold, and ends with 1203 after the 80% adjustment.

I think with the new 18hp Walking Corpses, this scenario needs to be made tougher in Hard. Notice how the 72 zombies (2 castles full) easily take care of the elves, and also most of the orcs; while Gwiti waltzes over, kills the orcish leader, and then strolls on to the book -- all in 12 turns. Perhaps the orc should be given more gold and not be allowed to recruit assassins, which are useless against undead. Instead some grunts and warriors would better support the archers and crossbows. Alternately, some orcs and elves could be placed "in battle" in the east-central part of the map, as a way to boost the enemy forces right at the start.
Circon
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Location: Right behind Gwiti, coding

Post by Circon »

OK. I'll cut villages, reduce turns and tell the Orc to recruit more trolls... maybe I'll even put in Woses! Mwahaha!

The scattered villages of Confrontation... yeah. They were there for two things: a) realism b) so the landscape don't look useless and c) a plot hook I never implemented. All these can be sacrificed for gameplay.
Jahannan
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Joined: January 5th, 2005, 4:00 am

Post by Jahannan »

Uhmm. Why is it that I can't see the replays? I'm a total newbie and thus am completely stuck on Brother against Brother. The AI seems to constantly recruit exactly the same units as mine, and they're better at strategising at the moment because I haven't had much experience with the game. At least I've got a level 2 leader and 2 ghosts near to levelling though...
ott
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Post by ott »

Jahannan wrote:Uhmm. Why is it that I can't see the replays?
The forum crash a while back wiped out attachments.

Here are the saves. Remember these are for 0.8.5, not sure these will work in 0.8.8 or later with all the unit changes.
Attachments
tdh.zip
(148.92 KiB) Downloaded 255 times
Jahannan
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Post by Jahannan »

A new start works fine on 0.8.8, though I'd like to note the rather extreme luck you had in attempting that. If the distribution of damage was any closer to the EVs, you would have had a pretty horrid loss. Trust me, I know - having tried to emulate as closely as possible the tactic you employed, I had to restart 5 times just to avoid losing a skeleton archer in the second turn. I assume you repeated the scenario many times to achieve such a close finish (or skeletons are much more powerful in 0.8.5), and I congratulate you on doing so well in hard mode, but if these are supposed to be for a walkthrough for the campaign then I think a replay featuring a strategy that relies less on sheer force of luck would be more useful.

Oh, and like you predicted, brother against brother doesn't work.
ott
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Post by ott »

Jahannan wrote:If the distribution of damage was any closer to the EVs, you would have had a pretty horrid loss.
I did replay each scenario a fairly large number of times (Confrontation comes to mind, as does Mages and Elves) so this does probably reflect some luck. Note also the damage bug which distorted the displayed damage values.

This wasn't really a walkthrough for instructional purposes, more an existence proof, but it did help Circon for balancing.
ott
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Post by ott »

Here is an archive of 0.8.8 replays. I had to attempt the first scenario several times to finish with a decent bonus, but the
others were all fairly straightforward. I have replayed all of these on my 0.8.8 installation without problems.

If nothing else, this series of replays demonstrates that undead are overpowered as of 0.8.8. It will be interesting to see how the recent changes to Walking Corpses and Wraiths affect this campaign when 0.8.9 is released.

Also updated the walkthrough with more details and descriptions that tie in with this archive.
Attachments
TDH088.zip
(141.17 KiB) Downloaded 286 times
freggledeng
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Joined: January 22nd, 2005, 3:03 pm

Post by freggledeng »

hi

my problem is the 13th level of the undead hordes.
I only have 200Gold and the enemies are so strong.
do have any idea?

thx freggle
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Elvish_Pillager
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

freggledeng wrote:hi

my problem is the 13th level of the undead hordes.
I only have 200Gold and the enemies are so strong.
do have any idea?

thx freggle
What? I thought there were only 9 scenarios so far!

Also, 200 is a pretty low amount of gold... you should probably have more at this point. And what levelled units have you?
It's all fun and games until someone loses a lawsuit. Oh, and by the way, sending me private messages won't work. :/ If you must contact me, there's an e-mail address listed on the website in my profile.
mproper
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Joined: October 18th, 2005, 9:45 pm

Mages and Elves replay

Post by mproper »

Hi Ott,
The Replay for Mages and Elves didn't seem to be attached ... Could you repost? Thanks!
Thanks
Michael
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