campaign: the nothern expedition

[janus]

Hello,
I've uploaded the campaign with the title "The Nothern expedition". It's quite hasty written and I hope it cannot be placed on a specific time in the wesnoth timeline, to avoid interfering with existing stories.
However there may be some inaccuracies with names of places, and with Elensefar. But anyway the scenario consists of about 8 levels and is:

• 1. March to the nothern lands.
  After several attacks by Orc hordes in his land, lord Francis of Wesnoth marshaled an expedition to the north lands to eliminate the threat. Many among other races followed him, including an Elf called Warren. He was the one who adviced him to travel to the North Elves to ask for help. But the way to the north lands was not easy.
  This is quite a placeholder map. I wanted to make an introduction, but currently there is only a siege of a fortress occupied by orcs.
  
  
  2. North Elves
  Here Francis asks the north elves to contribute to his cause. They accept and reinforce his army.
  
  
  3. Reach the nothern mountains
  Reinforced by the nothern Elves, lord Francis, moved from their land to the north mountains. Orcs were caught by surpise.
  
  
  4. Cross_the_north_mountains
  While the army gathered by lord Francis was great in size, it had problems moving through the mountains and snow. As a result the front guard was ambushed.
  During this fight the Francis dies and his general, called Drake, decides to withdraw and cancel the expedition.
  
  5. Retreat
  So the retreat of the great army had started... But some human soldiers try to prevent Warren from retreating.
  
  6. Confrontation
  Having managed to escape the Orcs the great army reached the Nothern river. The new commander of the army, Drake, was the first to cross with his troops.
  Drake, by having no other means of escaping makes a pact with orcs to allow him move south without being attacked. This pact includes preventing the Elves to escape from the Orcs.
  
  7. On friendly territory
  Being surrounded by Orcs and Humans, Warren decides to move his army to the Eastern forest of Elensefar. He was aware that elves lived there long time ago.
  In his stay there he is convinced by Rhiannon to help the elves to attack the city of Elensefar, and overthrow its ruler who has been attacking Elves.
  
  
  9. Defending Elensefar
  Rhiannon decides to hold the city in order to negotiate peace with the King. Warren stays to help her.
  As a result of a fierce defence the King allow Elves to control Elensefar and agrees on a peace treaty.
  
  10. Back to the Elve's land
  Warren withdraws to a quite life.

How do you like it? How many innacuracies?

[bignall]

Playing this campaign on easy, here's a few things I've found so far:

1. The elves suddenly appear at the end of this scenario with no apparent reason. Of course you need them for the rest of the scenarios, but it's rather surprising that they just show up.

2. Your ally is rather overpowered and kills off all the bad guys before you can really get to them with the elves. I did manage to kill off the leader myself, but the others were had by the humans.

3. Strange thing happening in this scenario. I have Warren sitting on the keep, but half the time he can't recruit or recall. After turn 3, I couldn't recruit or recall no matter who was on the keep. (Wesnoth version 1.1.7)

After scenario 1, I can't recall any of the units I had from that scenario. It scenario 2, that seems reasonable since I'm in command of the elves, not the humans, but by scenario 3 it seems that I ought to have them back again.

Multiple translation errors (I assume it's translation errors at least), but I didn't write them down, sorry.

[janus]

Playing this campaign on easy, here's a few things I've found so far:

1. The elves suddenly appear at the end of this scenario with no apparent reason. Of course you need them for the rest of the scenarios, but it's rather surprising that they just show up.

You're right. I've improved that a bit and published 0.1.1.

3. Strange thing happening in this scenario. I have Warren sitting on the keep, but half the time he can't recruit or recall. After turn 3, I couldn't recruit or recall no matter who was on the keep. (Wesnoth version 1.1.7)

Do you remember the version of the campaign you downloaded? Does it occur on the latest one?

After scenario 1, I can't recall any of the units I had from that scenario. It scenario 2, that seems reasonable since I'm in command of the elves, not the humans, but by scenario 3 it seems that I ought to have them back again.

I had some wml problems in earlier releases. I think the latest should be working fine. Thanks for the comments.

regards,
Nikos

[bignall]

Do you remember the version of the campaign you downloaded? Does it occur on the latest one?

I don't remember the number, but I just downloaded it yesterday. I noticed there was a new version 0.1 up this morning, which I downloaded and started playing from scenario 4. I haven't tried the even newer 0.1.1 that's now up there.

BTW, in Cross the north river, Drake gets recalled as the leader, not Warren. So then, Warren's comments are lost. Then, if you recall Warren you can no longer recruit or recall, possibly because both are then marked as leaders.

Also, with everything covered by snow, it does get rather tedious at times just trying to get to where you can actually do something, especially on the bigger maps. I realize that this takes place in the north. You could have more scenarios take place in the summer when there would be less snow, or have units that can travel faster over the snow.

I'll have to go back to the beginning to go through the newest version, but probably not today.

[bignall]

Okay, playing again from the beginning:

Defending the frontier:

Appearance of the elves is a lot more clear now. Here's some text corrections:

"Thank you Elf. Now the Orcs are retreating. After such a failure It would be long before they attempt to attack again.
But we have to end this menace for ever. Join us Elves in our march to the north!"

Thank you, Elf. Now the Orcs are retreating. After such a failure, it will be a long time before they attempt to attack again. But, we need to end this menace forever. Elves, join us in our march to the north!

"Did you lost your mind Warren? We've done enough for those humans. We will not follow you.
"

Have you lost your mind, Warren...

North Elves:

"We are peacefull people, but the Orcs have caused us great damages. We can assist you in your cause. But who is this Elf?"

We are a peaceful people, but the Orcs have caused us great damages. We can assist you in your cause. But, who is this Elf?

"I've heard about you Warren. You are famous against the Elves of the south. I will give you the command of my troops for this campaign."

I've heard about you, Warren. ...

Why is he famous against the Elves in the south? Are the north elves and south elves fighting each other?

Reach the norther mountains:

"Reinforced by the nothern Elves, lord Francis, moved from their land to the north mountains. Orcs were caught by surpise."

Reinforced by the nothern Elves, Lord Francis moved from their land to the north mountains. The orcs were caught by surpise.

Since you are playing the elves, I still think that the human allies are overpowered, at least on easy. I can barely get in a kill or two.

Cross the north mountains:

"We have no option now. The rest of the army is not ready for fight and will be slayed. We have to fight."

... The rest of the army is not ready to fight and will be slain...

"And now what? Without our master we are doomed."

I think you want to say lord or leader, not master. Master would indicate that they are slaves or something. And later on you do say Lord

Retreat:

Your story here needs some work. It's not clear that these are rogue soldiers or why they should suddenly turn on the elves, or what treason they think the elves have committed.

EDIT: Oh, and I stil am never able to recall my units from the first scenario.

[janus]

Okay, playing again from the beginning:

Defending the frontier:

Appearance of the elves is a lot more clear now. Here's some text corrections:

Thanks, I've included them.

Why is he famous against the Elves in the south? Are the north elves and south elves fighting each other?

No there is nothing like war between them. Why is he famous? I want to keep it vague for the moment (maybe shown in another scenario)

Since you are playing the elves, I still think that the human allies are overpowered, at least on easy. I can barely get in a kill or two.

It seems that the Orcs were really without resources on easy. I've changed that and now should be more playable.

Your story here needs some work. It's not clear that these are rogue soldiers or why they should suddenly turn on the elves, or what treason they think the elves have committed.

I think I've clarified it a bit. But I still don't want to give the reason in this level. In the next level everything should be clear.

EDIT: Oh, and I stil am never able to recall my units from the first scenario.

Yes this is deliberate. The first scenario is with Francis, and his troops go to Drake afterwards....

It seems I've changed the plot quite a lot recently. When I find some time I'll update the above description as well..

regards,
Nikos

[Deliverator]

Hey, I just DL'd this campaign and started playing it. I am on a Mac, using the latest release -- 1.10 I believe?

Anyway, I got to the second scenario, and got killed by an annoying thing happening: Drake got poisoned, but kept on fighting, rather than retreating to a village. WTF? It's one of my least favorite things in Wesnoth, actually (and the good mainline campaigns generally don't do it)--protect the suicidal allied leader unit! Since he's not under your control, there's little you can do about it, even if you don't make any mistakes. Unfun.

Also, let me echo the commenter who is annoyed at not being able to recall your units from the first scenario!

But, I do like the concept of the campaign overall and am looking forward to playing more of it.

Matt

[zookeeper]

Hey, nice idea with having the player get some other side than 1. I'm not sure how it plays since I just browsed through most of the scenarios in debug mode instead of playing properly, but it looked like fun (nice to sometimes see your opponent's recruits).

[slafochmed]

Cross the northern river.
AH! I thought this scenario impossible, too few rounds to win for these three win conditions:
-defeat the orc leader
-defeat the human leader
-reach the signpost

I slayed the human, sent a hero to the orc and then I reached the signpost. There I see that I won and that the orc does not need to be defeated!

Please update the win conditions.

[axelotl]

I downloaded the campaign yesterday (0.5.1, I think) and played it through on normal difficulty (with Wesnoth 1.6.2).

(1) Defending the forest: I like this scenario a lot. It's nicely balanced and I get to level some troops. Shame I never see them again.

(2) Reach the northern mountains: also nicely balanced. I wasn't sure I was going to win it until quite late on (sharpshooter assasins ). However, Drake just stands around like a statue, which seems very odd. Presumably this is to fix Deliverator's complaint about Drake's previous suiicidal tendencies?

I have two alternative suggestions for how to fix this: either make Drake (rather than Francis) the human leader (this could also apply for the first scenario) or attach Drake to my troops (as "liason officer") and reduce my gold by 20 or so to compensate.

(3) Cross the northern mountains: rather hard. I couldn't find a good place to make a stand against the Ord/Troll initial charge. I managed to win on the third attempt but suspect that this owed more to luck than good strategy.

(4) Retreat: fairly easy. The Humans are weaker than the Elves but still insist on trying to take on both them and the Orcs. I could probably have beaten the Orcs too and - if I had realized that i would be starting the bext scenario with minimum gold anyway - should probably have tried this.

(5) Cross the Bork river: ouch! 80 gold vs 120+170. I recalled 2 champions, an outrider and a half-advanced archer (I didn't have anything better). Then I misread the map (I thought the river was deep water) and planned to make a stand on the large river island, kill the Orcs and then take on the Humans. Then I noticed a knight in the river, so I changed plans and decided to run for the signpost. In retrospect, sticking to the original plan might have been better. I got through but lost a champion and a newly-promoted ranger.

(6) On friendly territory: is the title a joke? I start with 80 gold and have to take on multiple high-level undead on a map I can't see. After losing twice while trying to play "normally", I recruited nothing but cannon-fodder scouts and sent them to their deaths. This distraction allowed Warren to survive to the end of the scenario. I don't like Rhiannon (is she an elvenlich?) and I'm afraid I didn't like this scenario either.

(7) The siege of Linarig: I won this on turn 10, which is much sooner than I expected. Rhiannon's elves attacked the Orcs on the Southern Plains, in the open, at night. This suicidal behaviour, naturally, got them massacred. However, the Orcish leader was severely injured in the attack (he also showed suicidal tendencies). When the smoke cleared, the Orcish leader retired to a village just south of the city while his troops decided to go village hunting (rather than Rhiannon hunting). So I just had to move my army up to the Orcish leader, and kill him. I don't think this is supposed to happen?

(8) Defending Linarig: starting with 810 gold, this was trivially easy. I just fed L1 elves into the two killing grounds until all the Orcs were dead. Playing without any subtlety, I ignored the unnecessary reinforcements and won on turn 11.

(9) Ambushed on the way home: starting with 399 gold, this was easy. I recalled a large army and leveled a lot of survivors of the previous scenario.

(10) The dwarves: I started with the minimum gold (90) but this was still fairly easy. The outlaws need a bit more gold here. Outlaws are good in the woods, but nothing matches elves, and I have L3s in my recall list.

(11) Back to the north mountains: nicely balanced; I like it. That sylph is dangerous.

(12) In Foster's land: another nicely-balanced scenario. However, starting with the minimum gold, I was able to accumulate enough cash to unbalance the next one.

(13) Reclaim the north: I started with 299 gold (minimum was 130). Without a financial advantage to compensate for its incompetence, the AI collapses quickly. I built a large army, levelled several units and won on turn 12.

(14) Sindri's palace: with 723 starting gold (minumum was 100), this is another non-contest.

Overall, I liked this campaign a lot. However, I get the feeling that the large army scenarios from the Siege of Linarig onwards need to be harder - they feel "easy" than "medium".

[janus]

Hi,
Thank you for the comments. I have updated the campaign a bit based on your comments and I have fixed some other issues as well. I tried to balance the scenarios you mention either by making the AI more clever and/or giving him more resources (gold for now). The current version is 0.5.2.

I downloaded the campaign yesterday (0.5.1, I think) and played it through on normal difficulty (with Wesnoth 1.6.2).

(1) Defending the forest: I like this scenario a lot. It's nicely balanced and I get to level some troops. Shame I never see them again.

(2) Reach the northern mountains: also nicely balanced. I wasn't sure I was going to win it until quite late on (sharpshooter assasins ). However, Drake just stands around like a statue, which seems very odd. Presumably this is to fix Deliverator's complaint about Drake's previous suiicidal tendencies?

I have two alternative suggestions for how to fix this: either make Drake (rather than Francis) the human leader (this could also apply for the first scenario) or attach Drake to my troops (as "liason officer") and reduce my gold by 20 or so to compensate.

Indeed. I have followed your latter suggestion. It also suits the next level.

(3) Cross the northern mountains: rather hard. I couldn't find a good place to make a stand against the Ord/Troll initial charge. I managed to win on the third attempt but suspect that this owed more to luck than good strategy.

I didn't make too many changes here because this level is intentionally hard (ambush). I have balanced a bit by making AI a bit more conservative.

(4) Retreat: fairly easy. The Humans are weaker than the Elves but still insist on trying to take on both them and the Orcs. I could probably have beaten the Orcs too and - if I had realized that i would be starting the bext scenario with minimum gold anyway - should probably have tried this.

This is also quite intentionally easy (a bit harder now but still easy). It is mostly to make the plot smoother.

(5) Cross the Bork river: ouch! 80 gold vs 120+170. I recalled 2 champions, an outrider and a half-advanced archer (I didn't have anything better). Then I misread the map (I thought the river was deep water) and planned to make a stand on the large river island, kill the Orcs and then take on the Humans. Then I noticed a knight in the river, so I changed plans and decided to run for the signpost. In retrospect, sticking to the original plan might have been better. I got through but lost a champion and a newly-promoted ranger.

This is quite the idea on this level. To protect the leader at all cost.

(6) On friendly territory: is the title a joke? I start with 80 gold and have to take on multiple high-level undead on a map I can't see. After losing twice while trying to play "normally", I recruited nothing but cannon-fodder scouts and sent them to their deaths. This distraction allowed Warren to survive to the end of the scenario. I don't like Rhiannon (is she an elvenlich?) and I'm afraid I didn't like this scenario either.

This level is supposed to help to level up units... But indeed it can be hard if you don't know it and you might lose good units quite fast. I have reduced the number of rounds needed until I get a better idea.

(7) The siege of Linarig: I won this on turn 10, which is much sooner than I expected. Rhiannon's elves attacked the Orcs on the Southern Plains, in the open, at night. This suicidal behaviour, naturally, got them massacred. However, the Orcish leader was severely injured in the attack (he also showed suicidal tendencies). When the smoke cleared, the Orcish leader retired to a village just south of the city while his troops decided to go village hunting (rather than Rhiannon hunting). So I just had to move my army up to the Orcish leader, and kill him. I don't think this is supposed to happen?

I have made the AI a bit more clever here by making her more conservative at night and the orcs more agressive then.

(8) Defending Linarig: starting with 810 gold, this was trivially easy. I just fed L1 elves into the two killing grounds until all the Orcs were dead. Playing without any subtlety, I ignored the unnecessary reinforcements and won on turn 11.

I gave a bit more money to Orcs.

(9) Ambushed on the way home: starting with 399 gold, this was easy. I recalled a large army and leveled a lot of survivors of the previous scenario.

(10) The dwarves: I started with the minimum gold (90) but this was still fairly easy. The outlaws need a bit more gold here. Outlaws are good in the woods, but nothing matches elves, and I have L3s in my recall list.

These levels were supposed not be too difficult. However I have made the AI a bit more aggressive now and reduced gold from dwarves to be more challenging.

(11) Back to the north mountains: nicely balanced; I like it. That sylph is dangerous.

(12) In Foster's land: another nicely-balanced scenario. However, starting with the minimum gold, I was able to accumulate enough cash to unbalance the next one.

This wasn't intentional. I have reduced the carryover percentage to 0 since the next level is supposed to be a restart.

(13) Reclaim the north: I started with 299 gold (minimum was 130). Without a financial advantage to compensate for its incompetence, the AI collapses quickly. I built a large army, levelled several units and won on turn 12.

(14) Sindri's palace: with 723 starting gold (minumum was 100), this is another non-contest.

The previous change should balance those levels as well.
I have uploaded the 0.5.2 by now, so if you have other comments or feel that the changes I have done, did not balance the levels, please let me know.

regards,
Nikos

[PeteVine]

Hi,

I've just tried your campaign out by playing through the first scenario on hard. Most probably it needs balancing as you're not supposed to win in 4 turns, are you? It was version 0.5.2 in BfW 1.6.5, replay attached.

Cheers