23 - End of War

Feedback for the mainline single-player campaign Legend of Wesmere.

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roerd
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23 - End of War

Post by roerd »

This scenario was completely broken for me in 1.9.9 (difficulty level was medium).

I got to control Landar's side too besides Kalenz', so there was no challenge at all: I could walk Landar to his voluntary execution.
glandis
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by glandis »

This scenario was broken for me as well - in a different way on 1.9.14. After some obvious problems in the previous scenario, I did manage to get close to Landar and advance to this fight. However, the game immediately reported "no objectives available" and I was unable to play the scenario.
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taptap
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by taptap »

Both Northern Battle and End of War turned out to be very easy (on High Lord(difficult)). I lost a single elder wose in Northern Battle and a single ancient wose in End of War through my recklessness, but Landar was despite plenty of L3 units no match at all - he can't field anything efficient against woses and all those sharpshooters I levelled earlier die fast. Finished Northern Battle on turn 13 with some of my loyal veterans in AI custody still alive (!) and got a huge bonus despite being deep in negative gold. The campaign had a bunch of hard scenarios, but the last chapter was too easy.
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Ninjuri
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Ninjuri »

(There's no northern battle thread so i'll just post that here along with end of war)

Northern battle: Easy 1.10.2

When it first started, i got scared to death due to my proximity to the two enemies and the fact that my ally was so far away. I actually thought i would surely be crushed, especially when all those high ranking units spawned all over landars castle. I spawed 3 lv.2 scouts (i forgot the name of the unit), and set them on each of the nearby villages. Using Kelens high movement speed, i made a break for the mountains to the east, with a plan to run up and bunk with my ally. The two enemies sent half of their armies to follow me on a goose-chase. The purple guy tried to take the villages i left, he managed to kill 2 of my scouts before the last one got to lv 3. Realizing he was losing too many units by attacking me on a village, he just left. I left my newly leveled unit on the village as a ward to anyone who would try to take one of the three. Since landor was chasing me with a bunch of leveled units, his upkeep was going through the roof while I was gaining income. While half of the enemies were distracted chasing me around, white had little resistance in taking and holding most of the villages on the map, and slowly made his way south. I finally reached his keep, where he let me buy some units with the gold i still had from turn 1. I was using cleo so i spammed a bunch of scouts because the battle was already way south and i wanted to get there in time to help push. At the same time, i also suddenly turned kelenz around and slaughtered his pursuers now that i had some allied units to cover my flank. Charging down towards purple with a bunch of freshly recruited scouts, and sandwitching him with the lv.3 that was still on the south-east corner of the map sent him packing on a trip to hell. Then i turned everyone loose on landar, who just copped out like a [censored].

End of War: Easy 1.10.2

Seeing how my strategy of attrition crippled landar last time due to his high lv. troops, i decided to do it again. I would beat him financially, THEN beat him militarily. This would be no easy task, because his base income was 6 compared to my 2. I made sure to never let my income drop into negetive, and rush for all the villages i could. I used cleo to get ones that would be out of the way for the main force. I then held defensive spots in villages and forests west of the river, and let him crash into me with his leveled army like water on rock. At first it seemed like he was winning, but my financial strategy worked. While he amassed a force at the beginning, i made a smaller one, but gave it a constant stream of reinforcements. While his force dwindled, mine was continually refreshed. Like the persian immortals, whenever one of my units died, another would step in to take it's place, a luxury that landar could not afford. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, and he did fall... hard.

On a side note, i did find battling landar a lot easier than battling the orcs or saurians. It wasn't too easy though, the other levels were just too hard.
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Curtis
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Curtis »

I apologize for posting here, but for some reason I can't see how to start my own thread. I just finished the campaign playing on the hardest level v1.11 (started on 1.11.1/ended on 1.11.6).

Since this thread IS about "End of War", I'll start by noting that I found it reasonably balanced. I had to cheat to get past one scenario (Human Alliance) and cheated to keep loyal units alive in two others, but this one required no cheating to win on turn 16. The last of his men fell on turn 12. I had 1156 dollars to play with, which is about one-third more than the most money I've ever had in any scenario of any campaign. I dropped four keeps of archers, followed by three of half woses/half shamans, and three of recalls ranging from 1st to 4th level. I lost 39 units, which was more than a quarter of the 150 lost during the campaign.

The one thing that tainted my victory was that for some reason Landar's marksmen were shooting at 30% at my archers in the forest, rather than at their supposed minimum of 60%. Since he built a ton of them, it felt like I was cheating, even though the AI was doing it to itself.

The real reason I'm writing is because after I won, I received no wreath. When I look at the campaign list, it looks like I never finished.
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Maiklas3000
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Maiklas3000 »

22 - Northern Battle (doesn't have its own thread)
(1) Level, version, and gold? Hard, 1.11.15, 252 starting gold.
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 3, if you run your loyal scout to Landar.
(3) Objectives? Clear, touch Landar. Well, actually, the objectives don't say that.
(4) Dialog? Okay.
(5) Challenges? Reading the walkthrough.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 3.
(7) Changes? This one has an easy fix. Increase the size of Landar's keep, adding two hexes so you can't just run up and touch him on turn 3 (because he will be surrounded by recruits.) Of course, then you need to change Breaking the Siege's keep too.
(8) Restarts? None, and no save-reloads here or at any time in the campaign.
LoW-Northern_Battle_replay.gz
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23 - End of War
(1) Level, version, and gold? Hard, 1.11.15, 891 starting gold.
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 6. It is a bloody battle, but not really hard.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Landar has an introspective epiphany in his dying breath, admitting all his mistakes. I don't buy it.
(5) Challenges? Lander's forces are so powerful that they are able to wipe out my front line and take position in forest hexes, where they are much harder to kill. However, the tide quickly turns the other way.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 8, pretty good, but end game is anti-climatic as 50 units converge on a very lonely Landar.
(7) Changes? Landar doesn't have gold at the end, so can't summon a couple of bodyguards when attacked. I think it would be cool to give Landar nearly infinite gold (4000ish) but a small stronghold with ~3 recruiting hexes. That might keep the battle going.
(8) Restarts? None, and no save-reloads here or at any time in the campaign.
LoW-End_of_War_replay.gz
(137.04 KiB) Downloaded 859 times
General comments on the campaign... This campaign is in pretty good shape, in that it is beatable on hard with no save-reloads, and there are no major bugs. (Good job fixing the bugs that crippled this campaign back around 1.8.) There are two very difficult scenarios, Human Alliance and Costly Revenge, but every campaign needs a couple of tough scenarios. I think Human Alliance needs a little softening, by adjusting gold. I really like Costly Revenge, as is. [Edit: Oh yeah, and also Elves' Last Stand is very difficult, because currently Olurf does not show up until after it's over. Remember to change the dialog, which no longer matches his arrival time. And there was the bug where I lost my whole roster after Ka'lian Under Attack, but I don't know if that was a general Wesnoth bug or campaign specific bug.] On the other hand, several of the scenarios are trivial or super easy to beat and are begging to be redesigned. Thanks for a fine campaign and the significant improvements that have been made to it.
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Inky
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Inky »

Original Post (version 1.10.4)
Spoiler:
S22 Northern Battle
(1) Level and version? Hard, 1.12.4, 246 starting gold
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 4
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Fine.
(5) Challenges? Not much challenge here.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 5
(7) Changes? Maybe make it more difficult.
(8) Restarts? None.
Finished turn 10/32
LoW-Northern_Battle_replay.gz
Wesnoth 1.12.4 / hard
(97.85 KiB) Downloaded 769 times
S23 End of War
(1) Level and version? Hard, 1.12.4, 679 starting gold
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 1- You cannot possibly lose this.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Fine.
(5) Challenges? None at all.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 2, needs more difficulty otherwise it is just mindless clicking.
(7) Changes? More gold for Landar, less forest on Kalenz's side, less starting gold for Kalenz.
(8) Restarts? None.

I kind of play like the Wesnoth AI here, randomly clicking everywhere and attacking everything. Woses are so good vs. elves it almost feels like cheating.
Attachments
LoW-End_of_War_replay.gz
Wesnoth 1.12.4 / hard
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Last edited by Inky on September 19th, 2015, 9:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mattsc
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by mattsc »

Hey Inky,

Thanks for posting all this feedback. Personally, I agree that Human Alliance needs to be rebalanced or redone. However, I'm not the maintainer of the campaign and, more importantly, I just rebalanced an entire mainline campaign and am in the process of balancing a UMC campaign. In other words, I really don't want to do any more balancing of scenarios (at least for the time being), so I'm not going to do it myself, but I'll poke around to see if we can find somebody who has time and interest to do so.

As for this:
Inky wrote:Also: While this isn't technically a bug, I think it should be fixed that in survival scenarios e.g. Human Alliance, the AI won't attack units which are close to leveling. (A scenario in The South Guard has the exact same issue.) This is far too easy to exploit and it will happen even if you don't set it up intentionally, and messes up the difficulty.
You might want to check out this thread and possibly leave some feedback there if you have additional suggestions.
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Violet-n-red »

after struggling with that snake peopel mission, all i can say now is...

FEEL THE WRATH OF THE FOREST!!!

the trees were awakened once more and now they are as angry as never before!! stomped through last and second to last missions. trees finally got their revenge.

on a serious note, i was compelting the whole campaign on normal difficulty and was satisfied with the ending, even tho some missions were not very pleasant.

i've beaten mission 22 by luring purple commander out and filling his camp with VERY BIG AND ANGRY WOSES. thankfully, an ally was doing great, so the forest did not have to sprint to resque.

one weird thing in mission 22: there's a lake covered in ice in mid-southern part of the map. not sure if intended.

mission 23 went similarily. on first few turns enemy could see some trees swinging back and forth behind the river. half a dozen turns after the start, enemy forces were very surprised to see themselves ambushed BY A WHOLE FOREST. that, ofcourse, was not good for them, because you can't make trees fall by shooting them with that little arrows. sure, enemies with other kinds of harmful tools were present, but it was hard for them to use those while they were lying flattened under woses' roots.

no bugs were seen, can't propose any changes, mono/dialogues were good, can't complain.
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Inky
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Inky »

I played through this campaign again on Wesnoth 1.12.4 / hard difficulty.
(With all the changes, shouldn't new feedback threads be created for the 1.12 version?)

I have gone back and edited all of my previous feedback posts (except the "cutscene" scenarios The Chief must die / Elvish Assassins) to add feedback for the 1.12.4 version of this campaign on hard. Although the feedback is mostly similar, I have also added all my replays which may be helpful since it seems like no one has posted replays for the 1.12 version yet.

Wonderful campaign, and still one of my favorites. I like how you can control Galtrid's side now for several of the scenarios, and some of the gameplay changes are interesting.

General notes (more details are in the feedback for the individual scenario):
  • In several scenarios (Elves' Last Stand, Cliffs of Thoria), the alternate objectives are still confusing and many people have posted saying they thought they had to do both.
  • In several scenarios the dialogue does not fit. E.g. The dwarves showing up at the end of Elves' Last Stand talking about the battle ahead; Kalenz telling the Council how they fought side by side with the dwarves in Coucil of Hard Choices; the orc in human alliance talking about the reinforcements which have been removed, etc.
  • I feel that the new Human Alliance could use some more playtesting. I defeated every single enemy on the map by turn 21, which is clearly not intended. This was on my second attempt on hard, with no saveloads.
  • The last few scenarios of this campaign have always been extremely easy, even with Human Alliance the way it was before where you would lose almost every single veteran on that scenario. Now with the new Human Alliance, the scenarios following it have become easier still, and not at all the kind of difficulty you would expect from the Hard difficulty level.
  • The way the shared enemy sides recruit (e.g. in Elves' Last Stand, Human Alliance), where each leader takes turns recruiting one unit and the screen scrolls to each in turn, makes the enemy turns literally unwatchable unless Skip AI moves is checked in preferences / skip animations is used for replays.
  • I would love seeing some dialogue and personalities for the loyal units, as they are unusually important in this campaign. Just small things for flavor, as they currently have no dialogue (besides one conversation with Anduilas in costly revenge) and they are the only troops who stick with you throughout the campaign.
----

Many thanks to all the awesome people who worked on this campaign!

(edit: added a couple more comments to the list. And in reply to Turuk below: thanks for the kind comment!)
Last edited by Inky on September 20th, 2015, 4:59 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Turuk
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Turuk »

Thanks for your feedback Inky!

Not to just echo mattsc, but your detailed feedback and replays will be very helpful in making fixes and balancing changes to the campaign. I am currently working on HttT, but we will get to them all eventually and I just wanted you to know that your work is appreciated and will not be forgotten or go unused!
Mainline Maintainer: AOI, DM, NR, TB and THoT.
UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Caladbolg »

(1) Level and version? 1.12.5, medium.
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 2. I had a lot of gold and a lot of high level units so it wasn't any trouble but I guess you could lose if the previous scenarios went really badly.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? It was alright. It cleared up my confusion about Landar "forgeting" his potion.
(5) Challenges? None.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 7. One-sided slaughter always gets a good grade.
(7) Changes? I think it should be made more difficult, befitting the finale. Maiklas made a good suggestion (ramp up the gold but reduce the number of castle tiles for Landar). I'd also suggest giving him rangers/avengers as it'd fit his character and they'd be able to take advantage of the forest-dominated terrain on this map.

Strategy: Recall all higher level units and crush the opposition. Battle is roughly divided in 3 blocks- north, middle and south. Not much else to say here.
Stats: 798 start gold, 11/21 turns, -99 end gold, 26/26 villages, 35 units, -8 income, 0 recruits, 35 recalls, 1 advancement, 8 losses, 25 kills, +0% dmg dealt, +6% dmg received

Epilogue is all fine.
Whole campaign:
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devavrata
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by devavrata »

No form for this scenario, so I copied the one for scenario 16 and changed the name and number:
Content Feedback wrote:The Legend of Wesmere, scenario 23 - End of War:

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Battle for Wesnoth 1.8.3, Easy/Medium, Battle for Wesnoth 1.10.7 Hard.
Content Feedback wrote:(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3 - I ended it on turn 8
Content Feedback wrote:(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear
Content Feedback wrote:(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear, interesting the conversation at the end.
Content Feedback wrote:(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Landar starts with 700 gold, but he only manages to recruit 12 elves (all level 3) - at the same time, I started with "only" 500 gold, but that sufficed to get 25 recalls (all level 3 too), so Landar was overwhelmed. If felt as if the "hard" difficulty level as on for Landar, not for me.
Content Feedback wrote:(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5 - Too easy
Content Feedback wrote:(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
More gold to Landar, or less to the player.
Content Feedback wrote:(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No

About the campaign in general : There are some good big battles there (Human Alliance, Elves' Last Stand, Breaking the Siege), and scenarios that are interestingly different (The Chief must die). But there's not a feeling of increasing difficulty. it comes to a point of "more of the same thing" which makes it feel too long. It feels as if was originally conceived as a short campaign ending with a big battle, and then being enlarged... and then again... Nevertheless, it was a good campaign that was a pleasure to play. Always fun to play with elves because of healers (always unnerving to play against saurians as well, because of skirmish).
SanDonk
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by SanDonk »

Difficulty: 2
Fun: 3 - I don´t know, too trivial scenarios are not really fun.

There is a need to rebuild the last two scenarios to make them at least a little challenge. In northern war you are basically 2vs2 and enemies are weak. Landar has a little gold and recruits low level units. Few woses completely broke them in company of few archers.
Next scenario I started wih 929 and Landar with 959 gold. He was able to recall no one, because i killed all his units in the previous scenario. He recruited only 2 types of units (heroes and archers, so completely boring and stereotype just crushing them). I recruited few scout, bunch of archers and woses. The sad thing is woses didn´t even took part in the battle, because archers killed everybody before they arrived into the battle. I was recruiting lvl1, so I overnumbered him about 50vs30 from the very begin.

My thoughts:
- Make Landar able to recruit more units: few riders who can move quickly and kill injured unit would be a little deal, also snipers who can kill my units in a single turn, also rangers with their hiding abilities
- Give him much more gold and probably some great stable income, so he could recruit 1 unit per turn if he is under let´s say 15 cca
- Make some fortresses around his castle, where stand 3lvl loyal units who don´t move until you get there
- Maybe give him larger castle to make him recruit more quickly than player

We want the last scenario to be a challenge and it definitely is not.
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Poison
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 23 - End of War

Post by Poison »

(1) Level and version? High Lord (Hard) 1.12.5 Starting gold: 509
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 1, the easiest battle of the game if you know what to do (and probably even if you dont).
(3) Objectives? Pretty straightforward.
(4) Dialog? Landar regretted it? Come on! :P
(5) Challenges? Not go all out attack and lose half of the units because even though I hate losing units this campaign made me to not care really.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 8, it was a relief to actually be dominant for once. Landar should have two or three beasty units protecting him in the end. Epilogue is fine.
(7) Changes? None, I like it.

This campaign was really difficult with lots of tricky spots and so sad. Also I didn't manage
Spoiler:
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