Fall of Silvium

[UnwiseOwl]

Thanks for playing FoS and taking the time to give feedback. It means a lot!

If you could answer the following questions, that would be great, but please feel free to give any feedback that you like about the campaign.

(1) What difficulty levels and game (& campaign) versions have you played the scenario/campaign on? (If reviewing a specific scenario, please specify. Give detailed reviews of as many scenarios as you feel like.)

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario/campaign? Which, if any, parts posed problems that felt like they should not, and which, if any, seemed unintentionally easy? Were the scenario objectives ever unclear?

(3) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline? If you have suggestions for rephrasing of certain parts of the dialog that seemed awkward or were grammatically incorrect, post them.

(4) How fun do you think the campaign is? What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

Thanks, wOl

[Stven]

I have liked the Campaign, so far. I especially liked the boats, interesting and enjoyable.

I have been playing on the middle level. I do have an issue with the "To Arendia" scenerio, when I go an recall characters I have 4 of each character over level 2, It made the scenerio really easy, but I didn't think having 4 Carius was such a good idea. I have included the save.

Thanks,

Steve

[Mist]

(1) What difficulty levels and game (& campaign) versions have you played the scenario/campaign on? (If reviewing a specific scenario, please specify. Give detailed reviews of as many scenarios as you feel like.)

Normal, 1.6.1 release

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario/campaign? Which, if any, parts posed problems that felt like they should not, and which, if any, seemed unintentionally easy? Were the scenario objectives ever unclear?

Man, where do I start. Scenario by scenario should probably work best.

Return from Lavinium
Hardly any issues here. It might be good to state in a more explicit way that Marauders will withdraw once you kill everything but the leader. I'd also remove his starting castle and place it only when he shows up. Kind of spoils the suprise as it is.

The Raid
I do not like the way objectives suggest there is a different solution than killing the enemy leader. It makes you needlessly waste time and gold. Still didn't matter much in the end, I broke marauders by turn 15 and had everything moped up by turn 20.

Down the Silvia River
No issues here. That would be the only scenario I have nothing against in this campaign

The Port City
It starts going downhill from here on.
Firstly, remove the marauders castle and place it when they show up, not only because it spoils the suprise, but because player can rush a bunch of cavalry and auxilaries and make it there before the Marauder spawns, causing him to be placed outside the castle, unable to recruit and generaly easy to kill.
Secondly, the bug with killing blue when none of his units remain. It has been raised in the campaign thread, so you should be aware of it. Still, it's not really that rare situation to let it slip this long.
Thirdly, place at least a tent down the road to let player know nobles will spawn down there. If I havent left a bunch of horsies in the villas to heal, it'd be a gamebreaker.
Fourthly, the ship images are not displayed. You renamed the files in imperial era and forgot to change the paths here.

Iceswept bay
To paraphrase this comment from Epic of Vaniyera

# originally, you had to keep Cardrew alive to win this level,
# but that made the scenario too much about "let's hope that Cardrew doesn't suicide before
# we can get to him and protect him... damnit! OK, let's restart and hope that..." situation.

Let's hope that the bad guys won't hit twice and my allies will have a good round... Crap. Let's hope...
Well, it didn't happen for me. Five times. I had to debug my way out of this scenario. Generaly for me this particular piece is an awfuly tought out time filler, the escaping ships could be done with in one [story] passage, especialy that after fourth turn There Is Absolutely Nothing Going On. If you really need a 'meanwhile' scenario, do one about the fall of Silvia city allowing the player to do some heroic if doomed stand (and make it count later with more/less gold avaible to Marauder leaders)

The Border
I'd have nothing against this scenario if not for the tomato suprise of marauder showing up behind you in two turn range to your keep. First time I tried play through I recalled mostly low exp units to level them up on the bandits. My tribune was still in the villas, my army on the outskirts of the forest and to far to make it back. Needles to say I had to restart pretty quick. And there's the small detail of the two noble units - if they are irrelevant to the campaign don't keep them on the map. I had them on the recal list of the next scenario.

To Arendia
Aand that's where it stopped.
Turn 1 - I recall a castlefull
Turn 2 - I recall some more
Turn 3 - The duel takes place, I start to move the tribune
Turn 4 - I allmost reach the flat
Turn 5 - Vaniyera has almost no army at this points, but suicides what's left of it on my auxilaries and throws himself at the main bulk of marauders.
Turn 6 - Marauders kill him.
Knowing the plot of the scenario it might be possible to make it through (though I still can't think of how exactly), but I don't think that's the point. This scenario is not beatable on the first approach without saveloading, and that makes it seriously flawed. It needs an overhaul (things coming to mind are amongst others - making the sidhe and marauders fight primarily each other, making them roughly equal in strength, making Vanieyra passive, giving the player more time or better terrain to get out of the forest)

(3) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline? If you have suggestions for rephrasing of certain parts of the dialog that seemed awkward or were grammatically incorrect, post them.

Storyline would be a nice one, if I managed to convince myself it's totaly plausible. At the moment I can't with the biggest problem being the whole "it's terrible, I provoked a war with marauders" thing. From what is described everyone knew Silvia would fall when attacked. Local tribunes knew it, local nobles knew it, lavinian emperor must have known it and marauders most likely knew that as well. Eevryone were aware of the issue, they must have expected that sooner or later marauders will go on a full scale assault. Well they did. They even bothered to arrange a provocation (hell let's assume it was needed for their own internal politics) for some reason, despite being generaly treacherous, bloodthirsty and plain bad bunch (who shouldn't really bother much with treaties in the first place).

So yeah. It happened, we're evacuating. The other tribune is a moron living in selfdenial of his own little world so you have to go past him in force. Sidhe don't want to get involved and Vaniyera is paranoid enough to blame it all on you. Emperor blames you for being in the wrong place at the most awful time. I could buy that, but this whole guilt stuff and "if it wasn't me killing the marauder everything would be nice and shiny" crap? It just doesn't hold, the tribune you're presenting is inteligent enough not to belive in that himself.

Dialogues are again in need of work. They are better at the begining and slide down as the campaign progresses.

(4) How fun do you think the campaign is? What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

It starts fun, it even gets better by the port siege. But after that it just falls apart.

[Roland de Ronceveaux]

(1) What difficulty levels and game (& campaign) versions have you played the scenario/campaign on? (If reviewing a specific scenario, please specify. Give detailed reviews of as many scenarios as you feel like.)

Hard, 1.6.4 release

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario/campaign? Which, if any, parts posed problems that felt like they should not, and which, if any, seemed unintentionally easy? Were the scenario objectives ever unclear?

I found the campaign difficult, but I was playing on Hard, so that was only to be expected. It was the first time I was trying an Imperial era campaign, and the Roman outlook plus the subject matter (the fall of a far-flung province to barbarian hordes), really got me going. The fun was only marred by what I thought were serious plausibility issues.

Return from Lavinium
I like the ambush-style scenario. The fact that you must not kill the leader is also a nice twist. I found the Lavinian's dialog a tad naive - being so afraid of breaking the treaty when they are clearly under attack.

The Raid
I have a problem with the name of the scenario. It is not a 'raid', It's a full-flung assault on the capital of the province! I also thought that for a Tribune, Caius Regulus gave up a little easily on his duties ("It's an attack! - oh well, let's evacuate the province"). Maybe an additional scenario after the successful defense, where the Lavinians are faced with impossible odds and have to retreat from Silvium, would add credibility to the story line.

Down the Silvia River
I liked the 'protect the civilians' angle.

The Port City
Again, some serious credibility problems here. The 13th legion tribune accusing them of betrayal - I don't buy it. It would IMHO be better to make the tribune a traitor in the employ of the marauders. There is also still a bug with the objectives not changing once the tribune is dead.

Iceswept bay
It would be good to arm the refugee ships to give them a better chance against the longboats. Also maybe add one or two more events to spice up the escape and offer tactical choices to the players. As it is, this scenario is much too linear. It's a nice diversion though, and I enjoyed it; I just think it could be better.

The Border
Another interesting scenario, where unfortunately the demultiplying bug appeared on turn 5/6, and prevented me from finishing the campaign.

(3) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline? If you have suggestions for rephrasing of certain parts of the dialog that seemed awkward or were grammatically incorrect, post them.

I like the storyline. The tragedy of an empire on the begiinning of its decline and the tactical challenge of the evacuation. However, I thought it was verbalised naively in the dialogues. Caius Regulus is a competent commander in the wrong place at a wrong time. He's doing the best he can under difficult circumstances and maybe will get no thanks for it (though I think succesfully saving the civilians should give you an alternative ending, maybe a little less harsh). However Caius doesn't sound like a general - he sounds like a whiny boy throughout the campaign.

(4) How fun do you think the campaign is? What, if any, are changes you would have made to the campaign to make it more fun?

I had a lot of fun, spoiled only by plausiblity issues and a game-killing bug in the 'border' scenario.

Roland

[Roland de Ronceveaux]

In addition, could someone let me know where is the thread for the Lavinian Imperial faction? I'd like to submit some suggestions.

Thanks

[Chefu]

Campaign ported over to Wesnoth 1.8 - Please leave your feedback below or over at the Orbivm forums: http://www.exong.net/orbivm/forum/index.php

Thanks,
Chefu

[UnwiseOwl]

Fall of Silvium is now up on the 1.9 add-ons server, and is compatible with Imperial_Era_Fixed which is also found on the server (not vanilla Imperial_Era, which doesn't work) . Unless you have a desperate need to buy TRAMADOL, it is suggested that you post feedback here, rather than the orbivm forums, which are now inhabited exclusively by spambots.
FoS is currently undergoing a complete re-write (for 1.9 lines and eventually 1.10, but I won't be supporting 1.8 anymore) to fill a bunch of plot holes and improve the quality of dialogue, as well as balance a few of the more glaring problems and deal with some outstanding issues. This is pretty much a solo effort on my behalf since the writer and maintainer are both lost to Wesnoth and uncontactable, so any input that you have at the moment is likely to be implemented if it seems like good advice.
If you guys enjoy the IE half as much as I do then you're in for an enjoyable ride, particularly if you haven't played this classic (circa ~2005!) campaign before.

[Njord]

I've been playing FOS and have been enjoying it but got stuck on scenario 12. Playing with 1.9 on a Mac OS X. Here's a screenshot of the error message. Thanks for any help.

[UnwiseOwl]

Njord. You are not supposed to be able to beat that scenario.
You're supposed to lose it to end the campaign, so you've seen the whole thing.
A re-work of FoS is currently on my list of things to do that will re-work how this final scenario works too.

[Baltese_Windragon]

1. I am playing on Wesnoth 1.10 on Ubuntu, on the hard difficulty.

2. I am posting to report two problems that have made the campaign virtually unplayable, although I liked the campaign up until these problems.

First, When I killed the traitor in the Port City (and I agree with the previous poster that his reasoning for betraying us was unbelievable, and he should've been bribed, or the city could be held by native rebels, or whatever), the mission did not end. Thus, the only way to end the scenario was to use the debugging cheat. This made me lose all of my gold (which wouldve been probably 3 times the defined minimum for the next scenario.

Second, the boats scenario is absurd. I have 3 boats with 4 movement, 0 attacks, and 30 health. I am being chased by 7-8 boats with 7 movement, and each one with the ability to kill one of my boats in one turn. If 2 of my 3 boats die (OR my boss boat dies) I lose. No strategey or fun here unless I'm missing something huge. Only the opportunity to load 100 times hoping to get incredibly lucky (which I did, but it seemed very strange).