Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

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Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Content Feedback »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
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psvensson
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by psvensson »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?

The easiest, "Challenging"

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

6. A nice challenge that took some retries, but not overwhelming.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Unclear. It says "Raise the siege." I wondered if that meant that I had to simply clear the castle and its environs from the elves, but it turns out you have to slay all the elf leaders. The instructions should have said so.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

It was pretty clear. I liked the prisoner box.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Balancing my forces between reinforcements to the castle and taking out the elf bases. Also, protecting the shamans, until I figured out that it's safest to evacuate them from the castle.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

8. I'm half-way through the campaign, and this is my favorite so far. The combination of a desperate defense in the center of the map, plus offense at the edges, makes this fun.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

The objectives should be clearer. I'm not sure elves are the most appropriate opponents for this scenario - they're not to their advantage when they march out and attack a castle.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

No.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?

Not familiar with WML.
Jozrael
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Jozrael »

I would like to file a formal complaint with this level. While it is certainly possible, it is annoying as hell. And this is in the 'aggravate the player' style of difficult. Its the time limit. There is no feasible reason that there should be such a restrictive time limit on this level except for -that's the only thing making this level difficult-. If you look at scenario two of TSG, you will notice that the time limit is quite ample, but Deoran needs to rescue the city by x time. Fine. That would work well here. What's aggravating as hell is defending the city (let's assume that takes 10 turns...roughly average). This is on hard btw, I can't comment on other difficulty levels. That leaves you 10 turns remaining. Each of the four leaders is almost on its own separate corner of the map. You do not have time to even split your force in TWO and hit two leaders, then the other two. You must split your force into FOUR to effectively deal with this level. Since the beginning two levels of this campaign are rather challenging to get adequate gold for this level (I'm happy with anything over 200 starting this level, but often have to make do with closer to 150) its not really feasible to ask the player to do this. Now, even this in and of itself is not that bad.

But keep in mind when you have a relatively small force advancing on the enemy castle (1/4 your army, only a few truly levelled units will be there) with an enemy L3 constantly recruiting a level 1 every 2nd or 3rd turn, it can take a bit to wear him down. Now let's assume that for even ONE of the four enemies, you have subpar luck. That could easily cost you a turn or two...and that's one you don't have with the tightass requirement for this level.

In summary: great concept for this level. Breaking the siege is great. But perhaps merely defending the city is adequate, and eliminating all the elves is not required. If not, then extend the time limit.



Disclaimer: It may very well be possible to do this by many 'hard' level players out there. I'd like to kvetch that the first runthroughs I had a subpar strategy (I tried to send minimal troops to the centre and split my army to hit the two nearest leaders. This failed utterly). The next runthrough I ran an honest -40% on my damage output over the entire scenario. sdflkjdf. The final runthrough I left one fairly alone (just his leader) while I killed the other three, but on the way back he had recaptured a fair number of villages and had a good 8 level 1s just impeding the way to his leader. If I hadn't been in a race to kill him I wouldn't have even lost a unit of my crack force, but with the time limit I just had to keep running by, til of course he recruits in my face.
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zookeeper
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by zookeeper »

Ok, upped the turn limit from 28,24,20 to 30,28,26 and the starting gold to 200.
Jozrael
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Jozrael »

Thank ye kindly.

EDIT: Just so you know, the difficulty in this level isn't so much defending against the siege but just running all the way around the map. So with these additions, the level may be too easy. I'll playtest it with these settings and come back in a bit.

EDIT2: After playtesting just once I'm unsure if this is beneficial. It was -much- more comfortable than before. Again, the only real difficulty in the last level was just getting it all done in the turn limit. There was no particular stage of the mission that was overly difficult. Same as now, so the difficulty is lesser than the surrounding scenarios. This wouldn't be a problem except:

I'm starting the next scenario with almost 500 gold. I'll see how this affects subsequent scenarios in the campaign, but this is far more gold than I was used to getting previously. The only way I really see how to solve it is remove 2-3 villages that the player would likely own in the previous map. Probably one of the southwestern ones, one of the surrounding city ones, and maybe one on the river.
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Turuk
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Turuk »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Warlord (Nightmare) 1.5.7

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6. Breaking the siege was easy, but just as I managed to do that I had to deal with the swarms of elves from all 4 leaders. This led to some heavy recruiting and it just became a matter of waiting it out and taking out the archers. Killing the leaders was not hard as I killed purple as I broke the siege with my leveled units, and then wiped out the other three by splitting my force of 11 units.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Crystal.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Great until the point where Kapou'e and Gruu act like 8-year-olds. And I quote:

K-"No problem! It was fun, wasn't it, Gruu?"
G-"Hahaha! Yeah!"

:annoyed:

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None really, just making sure to take out the archers so they did not pick off my orcs.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7. The end of running around killing the leaders is not that thrilling, but the initial rush to break the siege and holding the fortress against the elves is enjoyable.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Perhaps quit with the part of having to kill the leaders, but I do understand how it fits into the storyline.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Couple of lucky shots by some elvish archers that killed Kapou'e.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Looks good to me.
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Egosnemesis
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Egosnemesis »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
The easiest, "Challenging". 1.6

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3. I ended up surrounding the enemy marshals with orcs and milking them for experience during the last 10 turns.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Very good, always nice to lift a siege and have an AI ally to root for, which doesn't happen that often in most of the campaigns.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None. I can see some difficulty if you don't use enough trolls, as they are great against elvish bows/blades and usually regen as much damage as they took per turn.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8. Good story and level design.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Maybe have the AI leader sit close to the keep in the center of the castle and not move. When I played, he ended up hanging out in the water and was one hit away from dying and still had gold to recruit with. I think scenario difficulty would vary greatly on whether or not he gets himself killed early on.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
None

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
N/A
Arnaudus
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Arnaudus »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Challenging (the easiest one), 1.7.1

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

7, quite challenging.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Errr, I don't know. When a unit of yours arrive in the castle, a new list of objective appears, and I could not figure out what changed. This is a bit confusing.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Nothing striking. The repetition of the troll stupid sentences about crushing everything is a bit boring, probably.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Anticipating the stupid moves of the ally AI. And killing the leaders, once again, they are a bit too strong, and they are too many of them. Two missed "slow" attacks and the consequences are terrible, I've lost a couple of lvl 2 units. It's kind of frustrating, because the output of the battle relies partly on luck in such situations, given that the time is a limiting factor.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

6, I would give 7 or 8 if there was a way to have a bit more control on the ally camp.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

The AI orcs defend the castle fairly OK, but when all surrounding elves are killed, they rush randomly into the plain and commit ridiculous suicide attacks. It would be great if the orcs were programmed to stay in the castle, because by moving randomly, they expose the shamans in a way that cannot be controlled.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

I tried a "kill the elvish leaders" strategy first, and it worked OK, but I did not have enough high-level range attack units to attack the lvl3 leaders in a comfortable way. It seems that it's better first to level up some archers in the central battle. Even slowed down, those leaders are very tough.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?

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cph
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by cph »

(1) Warrior. 1.8.1.
(2) 7 - several attempts needed.
(3) Clear.
(4) Okay.
(5) Having 5 must-not-die units, several of them fragile ones, was tricky. And extracting them from the siege even trickier, since they have to flee over open ground. And I was generally playing a very loose formation, since my units were scattered over half of the map chasing down elves, so I slipped up a couple of times exposing must-not-die units.

Killing the elven bosses themselves is also tricky, since they are steadily recruiting and at L3 are pretty tough to kill early on when you may have only a couple of L2s available.

(6) 7 - it is an interesting battle.
(7) -
(8) Twice losing Kapou'e, twice losing one of the shamen.
shadowblack
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by shadowblack »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.8.3, Warrior (Difficult), i.e. (what I consider) Normal difficulty

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6 – it’s actually more difficult than it seems at first thanks to the large number of level 1s

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Taking out the enemy leaders, since they are level 3s (again). I did a poor job in dividing my forces and took a bit too much damage from the NE and SE ones, which slowed down my attacks on the other two.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I think it is fine as it is (on this difficulty, anyway)

Maybe just add some dialog when your ally is killed.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
My own stupidity almost got Gruu killed


I failed to level any trolls, though, and that might cost me in the next scenario. Hopefully the units I did level will be enough.
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santosis
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by santosis »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Difficult, 1.8.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
10 - I thought this one was very difficult. It took me two tries (first try out to round 18), and more reloads than I could count.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Fine.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

First play I moved my whole army south (except for 3 trolls to the center). I got caught in the south base and couldn't get out, the enemy controlled virtually every base and recruited 4-5 units per round.

Second play I split my army into three groups. I sent 2 lvl 2 riders and a lvl 1 rider/meatshield to assassinate the southern leader. I sent my heros and a few lvl 2 archers to attack the NW leader. I sent a pile of trolls and a few archers to the middle to hold the base.

I won on all three fronts, although I did need some reloads on the assassination. I swear the elves were using loaded dice--they just didn't miss, and were impossible to hit regardless of terrain.

I finished in round 23/28 with 490 gold and will bring 280 into the next scenario. Now that I look at that, I probably should have recruited more units during the scenario...

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7 - Intense.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Could the shamans have a heal +4?

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
About a zillion times.
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Maiklas3000
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Nightmare; 1.9.2; 284 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9.5. I didn't think I'd get past it.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Very good.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
I tried various strategies, basically everything that anyone has mentioned. All failed. What finally worked for me was this:

I assassinated the southern leader, while doing a "Hail Mary" to the northeastern fortress. That is, while a squad of mostly Troll Welps moved south, my heroes and a light escort moved north, and I had my leader steal the northeast keep when that leader went for wolf bait. Then I did my main recruitment there. I also tried to ignore that leader as much as possible, while reducing the number of enemy units at my doorstep. That battle took a long time to win, due to the enemy receiving reinforcements from the rest of the board. Then I moved simultaneously to collect villages in the center and attack the northwestern leader. Then all forces converged on the southwestern leader, whom I killed on the last turn.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Make it a bit easier.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Lost many times, restarting from start. I did not save-reload at any time in the campaign.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
There are no comments.

* * *

Replay comes up corrupt, so I didn't attach it.
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Reepurr »

I did this yesterday, then thought of posting the details, so I might have forgotten a few bits.
(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
1. Easy, 1.9.4
2. 7. Though in previous times winning has (annoyingly) eluded me, it turns out that after the first rush it was a walk in the park.
3. Exceedingly. No problems there.
4. Very. Vrag teasing the elves by running in circles just out of range was quite funny.
5. Fending off the original elf rush - after that, winning was fairly easy.
6. 8.
7.
8. Continual tactical blunders with Vrag and a certain loyal assassin I didn't want to die, mostly. A few other miscellaneous kills as well.
9. Er...
SotBE-The_Siege_of_Barag..._replay.gz
(54.45 KiB) Downloaded 915 times
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Faello
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by Faello »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Nightmare (Warlord), 1.8.5, no saves/reloads, 291 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)


8.

16 losses, 55 kills in this one.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

They're clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?


It's good, getting Jetto-the-wannabe-assasin out of the prison & scout making fun of the elves were the entertaining moments in this scenario.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?


It's a difficult scenario, a lot depends on the Rugh's (commander of Barag Gor defence) performance. Realizing that reinforcing Barag Gor immediately after entering the battlefield is a bad idea took me some time.

After I decided to blitz the Hida'tul castle (purple rebels) and destroy his army first, sending only limited support to Barag Gor, rest somehow automatically fell on the right spots - after purple was done, until turn 13, rest of the combined elvish units were destroyed in the pitched battle south from the Barag Gor and shamans were saved. After that, couple turns later almost simultaneusly, Ammon (commander of black rebels) and Sammual (commander of the brown rebels) were slayed and Horde went south to cut down Etheliel (commander of the blue rebels). Since turn 13 rebs were harassed by my forces and I finished the game 3 turns before the turn limit (could do it faster but Kapou'e had to defeat him in the melee personally :mrgreen: )

All in all, difficult yet entertaining scenario.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)


I give it 8.

It's entertaining, player can level a lot of units and feel well after slaying so many treehuggerz, getting another loyal unit (Jetto) and saving the city.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

I don't think this scenario needs any changes, it's good as it is.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

Restarted scenario several times due to the wrong strategic choices.

Replay attached.
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SotBE-The_Siege_Of_Barag_..._replay.gz
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ayearhasgone
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 4 - The Siege of Barag Gor

Post by ayearhasgone »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Medium, 1.8

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

8

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

All good. The troll's "subtle" plan was funny.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Evacuating the shamans and splitting my forces as necessary. It's a big board with lots of enemy leaders to nail, plus a city that needs saving, PLUS shamans that need to be evacuated across open ground. So really there are a number of situations that need to be dealt with in order to acheive victory, which I immensely enjoyed, as difficult as it was.

My first try, I detached a mix of riders/whelps to distract the northern leader while the main army moved south. I had expected the city's defenses to hold up long enough for me to nail the leaders, but the city's leader made some pretty dumb tactical decisions that lead to the ramparts being overrun in short order. At that point I realized that the shamans were hosed if I didn't make it out, but with no friendly units around to act as escorts, all I could do was make a run for it. They, of course, didn't make it.

Next try, same strategy, except I was more keen on finding an opening to evacuate the shamans. I had hoped that they could make it across without escorts, but found this to be untrue in short order.

Finally, I got the message and sent a detachment of riders to escort the shamans out. Small force feinted north to distract the northern leader, main force moved south to begin clearing the board clockwise. Shamans with escorts rushed to the southeastern mountains, where they were placed under guard by whelps. My main force slowly moved around the board securing keeps, constantly sending out detachments into the middle to distract the enemy and prevent myself from getting pinned.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

I give it 8, I love breaking sieges!

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

None

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

Restarted several times. Mostly because of shamans getting killed during the evacuation process, they certainly don't have a lot of HP.

Leveled several units in this one, very fun all around.
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