A New Order (ANO) campaign - version 1.1.6

[embair]

Hi, here's a little feedback from a satisfied player from Czech republic!

I just finished the campaign and it was with no doubt one of the most amazing campaigns i played. It felt like a "next-gen" Wesnoth at times, with the unmatched level of interaction with NPCs, large-scale maps, training levels, etc. So thanks a LOT for all the effort you must have put into this, it was really fun to play through.

I played the campaign version 1.1.98 on wesnoth version 1.3.8, english language, normal difficulty

A few suggestions/observations:

- I ran into missing side-quest scenario on Okladia large-scale map. There is a village in the south where you can get a "save a kidnapped girl" quest. However, if you leave through the southern signpost, the campaign crashes with "Unknown scenario: ano_21bride" message.

- I really liked the story and the whole setting, only the whole pregnancy plot felt way too predictable. I mean you dont normaly run into remarks like "she vommited" or "shes gaining weight" in fantasy saga . And after these still come quite a bunch of missions before the offical revelation. In the last mission i was like how the hell should be Gawen capable of ruling a friggin country, if he still cant figure THIS out . So i would personally leave out most of the hints concerning Lorin, especially early on (and/or add some misleading ones!), so that theres a chance the player will be as shocked with the final revelation as Gawen was.

- balance-wise i have no complaints about any map, which is quite awesome, given the huge size of the campaign. The only frustrating moments i ran into were in the few maps where you have to protect allied leader. Although at the same time i was kinda entertained by watching how useless can an AI ally get . But thats hardly a campaing related issue, we all know how Wesnoth AI performs when it comes to defensive strategy.

Well, thanks again for this briliant campaign!

[tapik]

Hi, here's a little feedback from a satisfied player from Czech republic!

Nice to meet you

- balance-wise i have no complaints about any map, which is quite awesome, given the huge size of the campaign. The only frustrating moments i ran into were in the few maps where you have to protect allied leader. Although at the same time i was kinda entertained by watching how useless can an AI ally get . But thats hardly a campaing related issue, we all know how Wesnoth AI performs when it comes to defensive strategy.

I think that you wanted to write 1.8.3. instead of 1.3.8
Yes, you are right. The campaign was balanced for Wesnoth 1.0 and this is the point. Please wait for 1.2 and you will see.

[tapik]

Hi, I'm back!

Thanks:

To Tapik and Szopen (and Typhon!) for the best campaign till date. I mean it.

Thanks

Bug reports (ANO 1.1.98):

- Rob Roe is missing right after the 'Outlaw Place' scenario. I beated him with Gawen -so I can recruit outlaws and the such- but Rob is not in the recall list. (who needs such a looser, anyway? )
...

Thanks very much for your patch-ready bug reports. Except of Rob Roe issue I implement all your reports.
For the unit id issuet I've implemented a per_unit_type counter. I'me thinking about generic macro solution, currently
it is only "variablized".

To szopen and Tet:
According to portraits and images - I cannot understand the current state of your art work. Please, send me private messages about it. Thanks.

And, of course, 1.1.99 is out!

[Twenty-four]

Hi everyone

Here a little feedback from a swiss player. A long time ago, I've played A new order, on Wesnoth 1.4 or something like that. I was really thrilled to see that it's also available for 1.8.3 now! I've played through it on easy level in the last few days and it was again a stunning experience, the best campaign I've ever played on Wesnoth!

Why it's the best campaign? There are a lot of reasons, a few right here:

- The story is brilliant, it's something totally new, with new units I really liked, the whole story is well-thought-out, I couldn't stop play because I wanted the story to continue.

- Every scenario is balanced (at least in easy level)

- The gameplay is funny and varied, there are funny little quests and big battles, there are large-scale maps, there is just everything.

One little idea, one thing I saw in some other campaigns, that perhaps would be interesting to think about:
The problem with the stupid ally could perhaps be solved if you had the command of the ally for yourself (first it's your turn, after that, it's your ally's turn but you can decide which units he deploys and what those units are doing). I don't know if you want this here or if it would be good for the campaign, but it would be a solution for the weak ally.

Just one little question at the end: Might there be a sequel to this campaign? *hope*

And once again: Thank you very much for this campaign!!

[Grandson_of_Sam]

Hello, first post in the forums... :) I had to register just to say how great campaign this one is. :)

After playing through HttT twice, and trying to play South Guard and stopped because it was lacking in story, I gave a try to ANO. I was pleasantly surprised of the quality of the storyline and of the new units/races. At first the graphical style seemed a bit weird, but after getting used to it, it actually feels very nice. The best thing about the graphic style is, that it leaves room for imagination, which is always a good thing. :)

A few things I need to note about the campaign ( SPOILER WARNING):

- There is a naming error on the Okladia (ano-20.cfg) that is pointing to the "resquing of the bride" map. Either the map is named wrong, or the file has a wrong map name for it. In any case, it's an easy edit to fix.

- Some scenario's would need a bit balancing, as for someone like me who tries to level units in about every possible scenario, there isn't enough gold to recall troops. Which makes me assume they need balancing is, that I got heroic victory from the siege scenario, and managed to live till the end of rounds when Gaven was supposed to die, but getting through few of the later maps was very hard, as I finished atleast 6 or 7 of them with my money over 100 gold on minus. So maybe add different gold rewards for the three different skill levels, as I don't think a player on "impossible" should get as much as one on "easy", or the other way around either. The problem is not getting exp for the units, the problem is not having money to get enough babysitters to survive the scenario. I ended with over 10 troops which had atleast 3+ AMLA:s (some had 5) because of that.

- Some scenario's have a bit too low round limits, while most of the others have over double (some even triple or more) of what is needed, even if I take it very slow, or try to level troops by waiting enemies getting new units out. While that sounds like they would be good for making money from early finish, I usually ended atleast 200 gold on the minus, so I got the minimum to the next scenario anyway...

- There are at a few points too many "hard" scenario's in a row, without a "farming" scenario in between, which raises the difficulty quite a lot because of low gold or too few experienced units.

- Even though the campaign is "intermediate" on difficulty, it doesn't mean easy should be as hard as hard on the easy campaigns... :)

- Edit: The Akladian Clansmen feel a bit too tough for level 0 units, as they have the same resistances then all the other level 1-2 Akladian units do. Coupled with three attacks with good damage, they really add up on damage compared to any other level 0 units. This is even more obvious when used against other races which do not have the advantage of resistance to damage. In my opinion a level 2 (or, at the very least, a level 3) should have no trouble to kill a level 0 unit of the same faction, or from another either, but Akladian Clansmen usually take 2-3 units to kill them.


I really like the campaign even with it's flaws, and save for the one bug I mentioned, I didn't notice any others. Ofcourse there are many miss-spellings, but it's not that big a deal, as the storyline is otherwise very good.

Also there just isn't any scenarios that would feel to be there just because the campaign needed one more scenario to exp your units (like the underground levels in HttT). Even when there are scenarios purely to exp, they are tied in very cleverly storywise, which is very nice. :)

All in all, great work, kudo's to everybody involved, and thank you for keeping the campaign alive! :)

[tapik]

- There is a naming error on the Okladia (ano-20.cfg) that is pointing to the "resquing of the bride" map. Either the map is named wrong, or the file has a wrong map name for it. In any case, it's an easy edit to fix.

Allready reported and fixed in 1.1.99

- Some scenario's would need a bit balancing, as for someone like me who tries to level units in about every possible scenario, there isn't enough gold to recall troops. Which makes me assume they need balancing is, that I got heroic victory from the siege scenario, and managed to live till the end of rounds when Gaven was supposed to die, but getting through few of the later maps was very hard, as I finished atleast 6 or 7 of them with my money over 100 gold on minus. So maybe add different gold rewards for the three different skill levels, as I don't think a player on "impossible" should get as much as one on "easy", or the other way around either. The problem is not getting exp for the units, the problem is not having money to get enough babysitters to survive the scenario. I ended with over 10 troops which had atleast 3+ AMLA:s (some had 5) because of that.
- Some scenario's have a bit too low round limits, while most of the others have over double (some even triple or more) of what is needed, even if I take it very slow, or try to level troops by waiting enemies getting new units out. While that sounds like they would be good for making money from early finish, I usually ended atleast 200 gold on the minus, so I got the minimum to the next scenario anyway...

- There are at a few points too many "hard" scenario's in a row, without a "farming" scenario in between, which raises the difficulty quite a lot because of low gold or too few experienced units.

- Even though the campaign is "intermediate" on difficulty, it doesn't mean easy should be as hard as hard on the easy campaigns...

So please send me your records. I know about money problems, but I have never played the ANO in the easy (or normal ) level and this seems to me to be a part of HARD level. I have to try. Some scenarios are design according the idea "win quickly or you will have a trouble". Karen and Lorin are very helpful in this task.

- Edit: The Akladian Clansmen feel a bit too tough for level 0 units, as they have the same resistances then all the other level 1-2 Akladian units do. Coupled with three attacks with good damage, they really add up on damage compared to any other level 0 units. This is even more obvious when used against other races which do not have the advantage of resistance to damage. In my opinion a level 2 (or, at the very least, a level 3) should have no trouble to kill a level 0 unit of the same faction, or from another either, but Akladian Clansmen usually take 2-3 units to kill them.

You have to understand. Akladians are better than all races (may be except trolls, I couldn't decide) in a melee combat. So one Clansman, the lowest unit of Akladians, has to be in relation with two peasants. The reason why the Clansman is level 0 is the Akladian mentality. They will fight only for fun, whithout any payment
Thier power in melee attacks is the reason why they have no archers or slingers.
And remember - they hate mages. Why? They could kill them so easily.

[Grandson_of_Sam]

So please send me your records. I know about money problems, but I have never played the ANO in the easy (or normal :-D ) level and this seems to me to be a part of HARD level. I have to try. Some scenarios are design according the idea "win quickly or you will have a trouble". Karen and Lorin are very helpful in this task. ;-)

You have to understand. Akladians are better than all races (may be except trolls, I couldn't decide) in a melee combat. So one Clansman, the lowest unit of Akladians, has to be in relation with two peasants. The reason why the Clansman is level 0 is the Akladian mentality. They will fight only for fun, whithout any payment ;-)
Thier power in melee attacks is the reason why they have no archers or slingers.
:eng: And remember - they hate mages. Why? They could kill them so easily.

The biggest problem with the money was because I leveled other than Loyal units to use. The reason was very simple: The loyal ones don't have even that single trait, so they are in a serious disadvantage compared to quick or resilient units. Especially resilient really matters, as the Akladians have so high resistances, that they get double effect from it. Quick ofcourse makes possible for the tanks to actually move anywhere in some scenarios. On my second playthrough I am using Loyal units as much as possible though, so money shouldn't be that big a problem now.

The Clansmen I wasn't referring to as opponents against other races, but against their own kin. It really does take more than one Akladian unit to kill a Clansman, and the computer knows that too, as it floods them after round one if it can recruit them. I did a small test, and lowered their damage by 2, hitpoints to 12, and required exp to 18, and now they feel very balanced. They can still gang up and cause serious trouble, but don't feel overpowered. If they are considered as Akladian Warriors who fight for fun, they should atleast cost more then, maybe 12 or 13 would make the computer choose level 1 units once in a while too... :)

About the Mages: First time I saw the enemy leader to hire a healer I laughed... When the "healers" reached my front line, I lost two level 3 units, and after that, they became my primary targets... While Akladians kill mages with ease, they are also very vulnerable against magic, which is a good thing. :)


But as I said, I have a lot of fun playing the campaign, and the changes to the clansmen I did only because it annoyed me to loose level 3 units for them. ;) They don't really need a change, other than maybe a few less HP or a finetuning of their price.

One big advice for future players of the campaign: Keep your loyal units alive, level them, and use them, they are the best thing for you in this campaign. :)

[Malin Keshar]

Thanks very much for your patch-ready bug reports.

I'm glad you liked it... because here comes a new brand set of patched files for ANO 1.1.99:

fixpack.zip

(12.05 KiB) Downloaded 320 times

A brief comment follows:

- units/orcs/*Orcish_Shaman.cfg : fixed image paths.

- scenarios/08_Outlaw_Base.cfg : it adresses the issue of Rob Roe missing in action after Gawen has agreed him to join the good guys' ranks. To be fair, I've just borrowed a piece of code from TRoW 02_The_Fall.cfg

- ano-19c.cfg: so the id's for Oracle's guards have been fixed since 1.1.98? That's very nice from you. But then, I failed to state that the bad guys' armies also have duplicate unit id's, sorry. This file exposes it in excruciating detail.

I've tested this stuff at home and it works ok for me. Feel free to use it however you feel like.

[hermes23]

Hi! I usually don't post much, but I just want to say that this is a marvelous campaign!!! I haven't enjoyed an add-on as much as this since IftU - story, dialogue etc. Is this campaign still being maintained? Just asking because this thread hasn't been active for a while, nor has there been an update... In case it is, there are a few tiny bugs you may or may not know of (playing on Easy, version 1.1.99, OSX):

1) In "Ally from the Past", Gawen's XP reset to zero (level 2 Hargarthen). This was a little irritating seeing that I had him a third of the way to level 3 previous scenario - nothing big though.
2) In "Siege of Haeltin", there is no image for the Orcish Shaman.
3) In "Orannon", the game did not end when I got Lady Lorin killed (this was after she had to return to the keep within 6 turns).

Other than that, there are slight misspellings, and some grammatical issues (I realize that you are trying to emulate Akladian, Wesnothian, Aragwaithian speech/thought patterns etc., but they somehow seem 'fused' and at times inconsistent. Sorry I cannot be more specific as I wasn't noting them down as I was playing... At times, it just seems more like a direct translation from whatever your native language is - I know since I'm doing exactly the same thing being an English native speaker trying to speak/write in Greek and French now... one somehow reverts to their natural speech/thought/grammatical patterns when they aren't fully comfortable with the target language.

Overall, I enjoyed the Akladians as a faction despite their practically non-existent ranged attacks. I think they are quite balanced actually - they are soooooo hard to kill and can do crazy melee damage; they would be nearly invincible if they did have a proper ranged attack (thank goodness they don't). This being the case, it was huge fun when you finally get the mages to incinerate them (no wonder they hated mages so much - haha!); they are such a pain to kill otherwise, even when you gang up on them or soften them with arrows. The only possible thing I might suggest is to perhaps give the level 2 Holyman a single weak ranged-attack (ex. 6-1 arcane); it just seems too much of a leap from the Holyman to Wonderman. That being said, it could make the Akladians 'too' powerful and unbalance the faction...

As usual, the ally AI is rather suicidal and I actually found the scenarios with allies a pain - having to keep the ally leader alive was problematic in "Orannon", "The Awakening", and "The Oracle" (ex. loyalist ally attacking orcs etc. at night IN the river). Presumably that can be fixed? Btw, getting the loyal Sergeant was a god-send, especially when he became a Field-Marshall for the final scenarios.

Gold-management/balance: not too many issues on Easy. The only scenario I had a real problem was "Trapped", where I had to go into negative gold just to keep alive for the first onslaught - but that was easily made up for in the following scenario. That could perhaps have been my bad strategy (holing up in the centre islands; my loyal units being severely wounded, having taken stupid risks to kill the Aragwaithe quickly to gain control of the island before the northern enemies did. So, I had to recall other high-level units as peasants weren't even fit as cannon-fodder against hordes of Sturm/Darknites at night, as well as enough red mages to kill them. Recalling my quick elvish sylph was expensive, but indispensable, in that scenario. It was a case of 'overkill' in the end, which probably meant that it was the wrong strategy on my part - I rarely end in negative gold even in "gold-stingy" campaigns such as Flight to Freedom and UtBS). Other than that scenario, it was very comfortable gold-wise throughout the campaign (not too much, not too little); and the minimum gold for the scenario after, "The Awakening", was just right for Easy - is a loyal peasant/clansmen meant to spawn from every village in this scenario? I had about 4 peasants called Vajta (another bug?). Overall, I found the scenarios and entire campaign nicely balanced for this level throughout for an intermediate level campaign - not too much enemy gold, nor too little. If anything, I would comment that the enemy only seems to recruit neutral and chaotic units, which is somewhat strange considering that Akladians are also lawful... (but that is probably because I played mostly with lawful/neutral units).

Now that I know what to expect, I'm looking forward to replaying it on difficult whenever you decide to put the music on (for the full gaming experience, so to speak). Thanks for an entirely enjoyable campaign

[macherb]

Hi,

I played ANO on intermediate level until scenario 14. After finishing 14a (Scouting Near Barnon) at the end I got the error message ano-13 not fond (or similar). I reloaded the latest vrsion (again - 1.1.99) and line 396 in ano-a4a.cfg says "ano-13" instead of "ano_13". I changed my save file accordingly and could go on (= go back to scenario 13).

[Maju]

Has anyone else encountered this problem on the 'Scouting' map?

Yes. It happened to me today: I have gone to all scenarios and I don't seem to be able to continue. I remember playing a previous version and reaching farther (at least to some story scenario when

Spoiler:

Gawen and Lorin have an affair

, maybe even up to the end - can't recall).

Btw, another bug in this scouting scenario is that Ruvio remains being allowed to be asked: "Where can Reme Carrenemoe possibly be?" even if Reme has been rescued long ago. At least he replies "you are joking, right?" But when asked for where to go now, he replies that to Bonom for Reme, what looks like an obvious bug. If you try going to Bonom however he correctly protests we have been there already and that he has no idea what to do now.

Latest version (AFAIK): 1.1.99 - for the record.

[szopen]

Please wait a week. I will try to contact with campaign maintainer.

[WhiteElk]

I've encountered the Scouting problem as well. But I was able to get past it.

My first time playing I couldn't complete the map despite having been victorious at all the scenario locations. The second time I got an error message during the Scouting Near Barnon scenario (ano-13 not found) and couldn't play on. I was however successful on my third attempt. I was able to advance past the Scouting map and make it to the campaign ending.

I think the Scouting map problem may be a result of not interrogating the orc leader during the Scouting Near Barnon scenario. The player is given a victory choice to either defeat all leaders OR interrogate the orc leader and withdraw to the northern signpost. But it seems you MUST interrogate the orc leader, and then you can either retreat to the northern signpost or kill all the leaders. In my first two attempts I didn't interrogate the orc leader. In my third attempt I interrogated the orc leader and then went on to kill the other leaders. I could get past the Scouting scenarios only when I interrogated the orc leader.


Btw: This is a great campaign! Thanks to the creators and the maintainers!!

[Maju]

Thanks, WhiteElk, makes total sense, because I decided to kill all leaders (because of the early finish bonus, which you are threatened not to get if you retire). I would think it is a bug and not a feature, at least not as intended by the designer. It surely relates to the strange replies Ruvio gives re. Reme: it's as if coming back from Barnon without interrogating the Orcish leader is not properly managed by the game's design (yet is a central option you get).

[WhiteElk]

Your welcome Maju

Perhaps the mission objectives could be changed to make it clear that the Orc Leader MUST be interrogated regardless of which victory path the player chooses. And as in an earlier scenario, the player could get a defeat notice if killing the Orc Leader with anything other than the designated interrogation units. ?