New Randomness !!!

[Fiach Dubh]

The very high experience requirements for units also makes it very hard to gain veterans, compared to most multiplayer encounters.

Um, I would have thought this was blatantly obvious, but it's far easier to level-up units in campaigns, because you fight many more enemies and have more chances to rest and heal. In MP, it's rare for a unit to gain even one level, and if it does it must be involved in very heavy fighting so there's much more chance of it getting killed instead.

I have to ask, what the f*** are you doing with your units, if you find it harder to level up in campaigns?

For single player, you're messing with a weird AI that is more interested in hurting you long term than winning single matches, which is annoying and unfair

This is just plain wrong. The AI in campaigns, by default, is much the same as the one used in human vs AI MP matches. If it acts any differently, it's because it's been programmed to do so for storyline reasons. The AI has no interest whatsoever in "hurting you long term", because it only considers one scenario at a time.

Campaigns designers may have scripted their AI to "hurt you long term" (by which I assume you mean, "capture villages which your apparent lack of any sense of tactics will not allow you to reclaim"), if that is in keeping with the theme of the campaign. If you really object that much to a challenging opponent, play Solitaire instead [/quote]

[zookeeper]

For single player, you're messing with a weird AI that is more interested in hurting you long term than winning single matches, which is annoying and unfair

This is just plain wrong. The AI in campaigns, by default, is much the same as the one used in human vs AI MP matches. If it acts any differently, it's because it's been programmed to do so for storyline reasons. The AI has no interest whatsoever in "hurting you long term", because it only considers one scenario at a time.

I think he meant something like this: the AI in campaigns, by default, doesn't semi-intelligently try to win, by for example stalling you to the end of turns (since that's when the AI wins and the player loses). The "interested in hurting you long term" probably refers to the AI's tendency to overvalue (?) killing experienced units, which obviously makes things harder for the player, since he not only needs to win the current scenario, but also win it while preserving units and gold. If you gave control over the campaign opponents to a human player that would simply try to prevent you from winning (since that's usually the condition for the AI "to win", storyline-wise), probably no one could beat the campaigns.

Personally, I wouldn't say that the AI in campaigns does more of either of these (try to win current scenario vs try to hurt you long term), it's simply quite stupid. Good for finding holes to attack weak units, but a bit poor in strategy. But that's something we all know. The claim that it's easier to level units in campaigns than in MP sounds rather odd to me though, especially considering that you usually play MP against human opponents who are much more able to prevent you from leveling, and campaigns against the AI, which is dumb (ok, maybe he has played MP against the AI, in which case this wouldn't hold true, but it's more than fair to assume that MP doesn't mean that).

And when saying that the Wesnoth AI is stupid, I'm not saying that it isn't rather good for a game like this. It is rather good, and IMHO easily "good enough" for campaign purposes, as you can affect how the AI behaves (and even script quite a lot of behaviour, like recruiting patterns, in detail) quite well with WML.

[Yogibear]

The claim that it's easier to level units in campaigns than in MP sounds rather odd to me though, especially considering that you usually play MP against human opponents who are much more able to prevent you from leveling, and campaigns against the AI, which is dumb.

Either i didn't get what you were trying to say or you just backed up the statement you find so odd .

[Fiach Dubh]

It makes sense if you assume that 'easier' actually means 'harder'

[turin]

We're talking to Higher Game here. Everyone just remember that.

[Sangel]

I used to save-load a bunch, but I'm weaning myself off the habit, as it kills your skills in multiplayer. These days if I find myself in a really dire situation in SP, I'll go back to an autosave earlier in the game and make sure not to overcommit myself.

[Gus]

Well, Higher Game is right when he says that campaigns are strange in the way they deal with advanced units. The thing with campaigns is that they're not "balanced". The AI gets massive amounts of units, for example, that it doesn't care losing. Which means it sometimes spends time killing one of your "important" advanced units while the good thing to win that particular scenario would be to retreat, for example. So you might win that scenario a bit more easily (but only a bit more, because usually campaign designers account for the AI's stupidity in their balancing), but you could be badly hurt if the AI happened to kill a couple of really important units.

I used to save-load a bunch, but I'm weaning myself off the habit, as it kills your skills in multiplayer. These days if I find myself in a really dire situation in SP, I'll go back to an autosave earlier in the game and make sure not to overcommit myself.

The problem with that is the time limit. In some scenarios, the RNG _is_ a factor. When you have a tight time limit, if you happen to miss most of your hits, no matter how correctly you play, and even if you can manage to not die, you won't win.