Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Feedback for the mainline campaign Son of the Black Eye.

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podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by podbelski »

1.11.15, medium difficulty, minimum starting gold (was not aware I had to accumulate gold in prev map)

For me it was impossible to win w/o reloads!
When I understood this fact, it was too annoying to replay "Clash of armies" for gold and then restart this map from scratch. I hate lancers, unbelievably frustrating to fight against. So I save/loaded like crazy to win and move on.

Suggested changes, not necessary all at once:
- less lancers (probably restrict recruitment to one of the enemies)
- more gold to player
- increase turn limit by 2-4 turns
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Turuk
Sithslayer
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by Turuk »

podbelski wrote:For me it was impossible to win w/o reloads!
podbelski wrote:Suggested changes, not necessary all at once:
- less lancers (probably restrict recruitment to one of the enemies)
- more gold to player
- increase turn limit by 2-4 turns
Thanks for the feeback podbelski. Could you attach your replay for this scenario so we can see how it went and analyze ourselves on other changes that might be made to bring it into balance? If you have your S11 replay, that would help too.
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UMC Maintainer: Forward They Cried, A Few Logs, A Few More Logs, Start of the War, and Battle Against Time
podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by podbelski »

replay attached, two things:

1) I increased turn limit to 24 turns, too much IMO. As I said above 20-22 turns looks optimal for me (say 20 for nightmare, 21 for medium and 22 for easy). I watched Maiklas' replay and despite he was lucky it was pretty close to a loss b/c of time limit.
2) my installation is not English, not sure if it will cause problems for you... but I renamed the .gz file

and btw I noticed that the Green ally is obviously recruiting more often than the Blue one, is it the desired behaviour?

... I'll provide S11 replay a bit later (in S11 thread)

... I'm not posting replays/impressions for other scenarios either b/c Maiklas already covered everything or I'm really happy with the map. But if you are interested just ask, I'll give them out. Except for S12, I'm playing almost w/o save/loads, using them mostly to avoid scenario restart due to a mistake b/c I don't have much time to play)
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SotBE-Giving_Some_Back_replay.gz
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sine_nomine
Posts: 39
Joined: April 30th, 2016, 11:34 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by sine_nomine »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Nightmare 1.12.4

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9
403 starting gold (very high due to previous scenario issues)

(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?
Clear

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Allies tend to get killed during the day. Telling them to be defensive might help a little.
Lancers are deadly.
You need to kill things fast since the enemies continue to pump out enemies while your forces only get smaller.
Try to set up your battle lines in a concave shape and try to let your units attack right after being recruited/recalled; you need to deal lots of damage fast.
Essentially, you want to attack ASAP and keep on attacking until you win. Don't even bother flagging villages that are out of your way.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5. The allies are annoying, the terrain is uninteresting, and the tactics are rather simple. I guess a straightforward scenario like this is okay once in a while but I personally don't like them.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
If the intent of the scenario is for you to overwhelm with brute force, I suppose it accomplishes that well. If you want the player to consider defending during the day, you would need to increase player income and/or decrease enemy income. It would be nice to have the option of reinforcing from the first enemy's keep, but as is you need to go negative from the start (and I had tons of gold going in).

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I restarted a bunch of times in my playthrough because I wasn't really interested and kind of haphazardly threw my units at the enemy. Eventually I got lucky and won. But after seeing the positive comments on this scenario here I went back and replayed it more seriously and was successful.
Attachments
SotBE-Giving_Some_Back_replay_v2.gz
better version
(77.35 KiB) Downloaded 783 times
SotBE-Giving_Some_Back_replay.gz
not so good
(75.13 KiB) Downloaded 714 times
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revolting_peasant
Posts: 229
Joined: May 29th, 2012, 5:45 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by revolting_peasant »

I'm posting a link here to a bug report regarding this scenario:

Loyal assassin not auto-recalled in SotBE "Giving Some Back"

and actually, the same thing happens in some later scenarios: Plonk is not recalled while Jetto probably would be recalled.
LordWolfDan
Posts: 216
Joined: September 30th, 2018, 7:31 am

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by LordWolfDan »

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

- 1.14.5, Challenging

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

- 6

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

- Crystal clear

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

- Pretty good, knowing that we're after Earl Lanbec'h (who turns out is not in this scenario), not to mention the allies I receive are actually pretty helpful!

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

- Staying away from lancers, those are some really deadly units!

(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?

- Give the reinforcements to the enemy general when you kill the lieutenant

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

- No
Konrad2
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Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by Konrad2 »

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

1.15.2, Warlord (Nightmare), 250g

(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?

Clear.

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

Fighting mostly at night, switching between advancing and retreating.

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

8, it's a nice break from just standing around and breaking the enemy charge where you stand.

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

-

Scenario stats:
Spoiler:
Attachments
SotBE-Giving Some Back replay.gz
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max_torch
Inactive Developer
Posts: 414
Joined: July 31st, 2011, 5:54 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by max_torch »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Warlord (Nightmare), version 1.14.17, 250 + 76 = 326 starting gold, no reloading turns.

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9. Because I had to get more gold from the previous scenario.

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

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
When your fellow Orc Warlord says taking the city is "easier said than done", he's right about it. It's nice to finally strike an offensive blow for the first time in the entire story.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
There's just no way to avoid losing units if you do a direct assault because of all the cavalry so don't be too attached. Gruu and Kapou'e can die if you put them in the front line even if you put them in a defensive position. The cavalry does so much damage but at the same time, you dont have the luxury of staying out of their range because you are chasing after the turn limit. So you have to form your defensive line, pack it tightly without spaces and take the assault. Its tricky positioning units with respect to the position of the allies' units because you cant rely on their units ZoC for cover, if you hide units in their ZoC the ally will just move and you can say goodbye to your units. Another challenge is that if you recruit units which are too weak, it's not enough to break the enemy defense and deal with all the high level enemy units. Thats why I had to put use my precious lvl3 units as frontliners and use them as sacrifice.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7. The most bloody and vicious open field battle in the whole campaign where I sacrificed the most veterans to reach the goal. Actually this is probably one of the largest if not the largest single open field nonstop clash of high level units in the entire campaign - if you do the continuous assault strategy. Yes there's more battles and fighting in other scenarios but this is it for the biggest bloodiest clash.

(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?
I first entered this scenario with low bonus gold. A straight up nonstop attack wasn't working well. Tried a Time of Day based attack and retreat but had a hard time chasing the 18 turns limit - its doable with minimum gold based on other players replays, but it is tricky to execute, and doing this reduces the effectiveness of having allies helping you in the scenario, since they never retreat. I also tried assassination with wolves but just couldn't pull it off. So I went back to the previous scenario to get more gold. The continuous assault South is the strategy I went with and won at turn 12.
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SotBE-Giving Some Back replay.gz
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mal_shubertal
Posts: 93
Joined: December 1st, 2018, 6:58 pm

Re: Scenario Review: SotBE 12 - Giving Some Back

Post by mal_shubertal »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Nightmare 1.16.6
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5. The Duelists were a pain in the butt and the Lancers were terrifying, but I came into this scenario with a big gold carryover from the last one so I was able to archer swarm to victory without too much difficulty. From the comments, it looks like this is one of those scenarios that are basically impossible with default starting gold.
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
very
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I really like the contrast between how Kapoue, Gruu, and the human general talk. It's a lot like in Liberty, where the Loyalist leaders all talk in this sort of comically fancy way, like british fops.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Dealing with Lancers. I initially tried to just crush the enemy with all my lvl 3 trolls, but seeing some of them get one-shotted by lucky lancer charges forced me to reconsider.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7. I like it. The terrain is super simple, the objectives are straightforward, but the variety of enemy units forces you to approach it in a new way. I really like how the combination of super deadly lancers and the Great Horde bonus encourage you to use a big swarm of expendable lvl 1 units rather than your precious lvl 3's. Troll Warriors can be so dominant in this campaign, so it's nice to see scenarios that encourage you to not rely on them so much. I also love that your allies are Team 2 and Team 3, so they can be perfectly coordinated meat shields between you and the enemy. This is MUCH better than the way it's set up in Siege of Barag Gor, where your ally and enemy turn orders are all mixed up and it makes coordination a headache.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I like it as is. Honestly, more lancers and fencers would be even better. They're a pain in the butt, but that's also what makes this scenario unique and interesting, and it gets boring just chewing up waves of swordsmen/pikemen/bowmen forever.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
My first playthrough where I tried to rely on my lvl 3 troll army and restarted after I lost too many of them to lucky lancer attacks.
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