The War of the Dragon

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Velensk
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by Velensk »

I could not understand your last post very well.

I am for the moment content with the state of the first 5 scenarios and not looking for feedback on them. I am not especially looking for feedback on the later ones either as I am unlikely to be able to work on this project anytime soon however it may become useful when I get back to it unlike feedback on the first 5 which are the ones I've already had to play through over half a dozen times during testing and know well enough to know that I am content with their current state.

My last post was simply commenting on your report; I don't know what there is to think about it.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
GangrN
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by GangrN »

Nevermind, my English is not very fluent so I may have been misunderstanding something. Reporting next scenarios later.

Regards
Matherton
Posts: 62
Joined: August 2nd, 2010, 6:01 am

Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by Matherton »

[This post duplicates a post that I believe I have posted in the wrong place... so, if it seems familiar... it probably is. Sorry!]

I have played War of the Dragon up to and including Valimoi Ruins (on easy- I am going to try again on normal). This is one of the best and most challenging campaigns I've played (and, though I've never posted on the forum before, I've played through a lot of campaigns). In fact, I started playing WotD a couple of months ago, gave up in despair in The Way Under, and only recently re-started. I especially like the way the recruitment is limited, especially since you do get to replenish your recall list at intervals, but not with the same troop types. That is probably a painfully obvious thing to comment on, but it deserves mention because of the way it structures the campaign.
You have said that you are primarily interested in the later scenarios, so I'll stick to those.
Fleeing the Dragon is frustrating, but no more than it ought to be- it is a mad scramble, and that is exactly right. Lisaundra died in turn 13 for me, which meant that I did get sandwiched between undead and drakes in the bottom half of the map, but where is the fun in being chased without the part where you almost get caught? It seems like a dramatic necessity. And the player has the choice of protecting Will until the fairy circle or of hurrying on, which is good (I am assuming here that you can abandon him and still win the scenario).
Battle with the Unseen was challenging but not maddening. I had to restart the scenario a couple of times (and I also went back to that scenario several times to try and finish with more money and more leveled-up Celestials), but that was fine.
Taking to Sea was very interesting; I tried to sweat it out until the end of the turns, ended up losing too many troops that I had painstakingly leveled up and was fond of, then did something desperate involving fast troops (trying to avoid spoilers :whistle: ), which worked.
Pirates was awesome. I like how some of the boats are in more immediate peril than others (for example, they are sandwiched between two enemies with lvl 2 troops and plenty of them). I like the fact that you do not know which boat will be where until after recruitment. Cool.
Temple of the Deep initially worried me a lot. I thought, oh no, it is The Way Under again, only this time it is sinking!!!! But it wasn't nearly as hard as The Way Under, especially since the runes present you with options: you can fight with a lot of fliers, or you can scramble to the runes and sort of pick what terrain you'd like to fight on. AND, you can cut off enemy attacks with chasms! One thing that I thought was strange was that near top of the map, a chasm appeared and the mermen and crab that were now floating in air... floated in air. One of my favorite troops was also caught in the chasm, but I think I'd prefer it (maybe) if non-fliers who are standing over a chasm fell to their deaths.
Return to the Mainland seemed like it was going to be really, really hard. I started with 300 gold (the minimum, I'm guessing... though Temple of the Deep seems to be constructed such that you will probably start with the minimum no matter what, or at least for players such as myself). It wasn't actually really hard. I set up my battle line at the river, claimed as many villages as was reasonably possible every turn (especially red villages to cut off enemy income) and sent some fliers around and it was all over and done with on turn 14.
Valemoi Ruins was, I think, a bit too easy... then again, I was playing on easy, so perhaps that is only to be expected.
Thank you for a wonderful campaign... I can't wait to play the rest of it.
By the way, I was playing on 1.6.5.... I have no idea whether that information is valuable to you or not, but...
GangrN
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by GangrN »

WARNING: SPOILERS ABOUND HERE

The Way Under:
Biig map, biiig fun. It took me two restarts to achieve survival, though. Got blocked in the sand area on northeast, midway to Saurian lair. Could not get ride of the waves of Devilings. So I restarted with flying units and killed the devling king outright. Then I retreated in the haunted castle, waiting for my units to heal and level up, and having my flying / teleporting units explore the map.
I finally equipped a runecaster with the spear and a Herald with Berserk. Has been a good choice so far. Maybe a stalker would be better for Berserk?
The Guardian Spear is not so interesting, imo.
Edge: the terrain is well shaped, offers several "natural" keeps.
Difficulty: don't get blocked in your fortress!
Overall view: Based on initial recruitement and strategies. If not proper, no way back.

Last Stand
3 or 4 restarts before I saw a way to stand 40 turns: focus on drakans to make bloodfiresprites, take defenders with you (because of their healing and slowing abilities) and march toward the cavern.
A challenge, very hard. Fortunately it is not very important to stand very long as I see it.

Fleeing the Dragon
I tried it once with 3 angels and 2 shards, having resisted 13 turns on "last stand". The invisible did not join me. they were waaay from me when I ended my first try, because of the undead, the wargs and the devlings that first had ignored me.
Pretty easy on the first part. I marched so fast I did not see Will. I acknowledged him when an invisible reached him, that is why I had to restart. Maybe a hint should lead to Will since he is so an important character.
On the second try, I decided to recruit at least 5 flyings and no shards. But it was harder: the wargs did not war as much with the undead. These turned against me so i had to chop their chief, and it was pretty hard: even if I had much more units than first time I had to save/load many times. The devlings did not hurl themselves on the wargs so i had to clear them, and the invisible was close to me at the end.
The more units you take, the more dangerous it is? Odd. I found it rather relaxing on first try, but harsh on second try.

Battle with the Unssen
...was a nightmare. Not so because of the unseen, but because of the pal. He does not stop attacking groups of unseen, and the more you help him, the more he gets in danger. And it's hard keeping the enemy away from his sight. Are sure he does not see them?
I had so much trouble dealing with its lunacy that I chose to have the first leader assassinated to begin with. Maybe a stalker assassin would have been better, in fact; but he could not have retreated quick once done... And stalkers don't have freeze touch, either.

Taking to sea
Found it rather difficult. I finally used my Berserk herald to win and kept my low level units behind the walls, letting the allies dealing with most of the charge. so I recruited 4 of each type for further recalls. I had to restart once or twice, though: I first thought that assassination would be easier from the sea, but it was a mistake. Better try the mountains and avoid elementals. Always prefer difficult terrains with flying units...

Pirates
I found this one much easier. I wonder why. Maybe because I made an alliance between flying units and "tower" units (i.e. gatekeepers). The ships are easily defended against AI (units are easily lured into invading a ship, inviting backfire). The strategy is easy to plan and it's good to make things happen as they ought to. This rythm, alterning 2 difficult scenarios / 1 rather relaxing, is good.

Temple of the deep
...was awesome. The idea of raising and lowering the sea is very, very good. I first did not understand the warnings, so I did not recruit enough flying units... I have been very concerned with some units' survival... particularly the paladin, that was injured, could not move in raising waters any more and was 2 steps away from an equally injured healer. Fortunately, units in a deep water hex don't die even if they can't swim.
Once you master half of the crystals, you have technically won.
The units kept in the chasm do not fall and for a good reason: the chasm did not appear in seconds; it is just that the water has been lowering. In fact, maybe they should not be allowed to escape when they are in the chasm if they cannot fly.

Return to the Mainland
I finished on turn 14 too, with only newbies on moderate difficulty (recruited 5 each). By the way, I had to restart once, but as soon as you know how to allocate your units according to opponent's weaknesses, it is ok. Provided you sustain your newbies with Commanders, for sure. And make use of assassination.
I wondered why the early end bonus was of only 14, though I had a +28 bonus gold each turn? So I had to wait until last turn to rip the chief's head off (and finished with about 1000 gold).

Valimoi ruins
The bats are no threat if your own flying units are strong enough (I leveled up a squadron of seraphs before, to lead lesser units). So I set the battle over the seas (luring bats and even hulks with a lantern - yes, IA is very, very dumb). Then, when no bats stand on the field, nothing prevents you to assassinate the general: the troops are too engaged. But I read it is what you wanted. Ended on turn 14 or something.
I am not sure a vampire army can really be a threat if the air route is open: during the previous scenarios one has built aerial squadrons that rip off the bat swarms easily. The pedestrians are weaker than the vampires, but the bats (contrary to elementals) are no match for angels and therian hawks.

Maybe it's me, but I believe that many of your scenarios lie on airborne mastery: quick assassination, crystal town conquest, ... I think it's due partly to the fact that all factions have flying units (contrary to Wesnoth default), but mainly to the fact that you work your terrain. It would not be necessary the case if the terrains were vast plains; but the way you design them makes pedstrians move very slowly. Even routes are often cut by a river that halts the progression or disbands unit formation. Units are often isolated, and so on. Flying units are somewhat advantaged

In fact, I tend to have a few rather high-level flying units (and I often wish I had recruited more), and a little army of level-1 fighters, banding around their captains, holding the line until the chief gets assassinated.
Equally, one has to be careful about melee-only or range-only units, since so many opponents have both.

Great campaign, great story. I hope I will play the rest soon.
Regards,

GangrN
theDream
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Joined: October 30th, 2010, 9:08 pm

Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by theDream »

I played Count Khromire and enjoyed it and since this is the follow-up to the campaign, I'm looking forward to playing it. The only problem is I can't find this addon on the 1.8.4 server. Do I have to connect to a different server? If anybody could help me, it would be greatly appreciated.
Velensk
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by Velensk »

It has not been updated to 1.8 yet, you should be able to find it on 1.6 or 1.4 I think.

As an update, I have not been working on this and I have been very busy with other things. It is unlikely that I will be continuing this project anytime soon.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
theDream
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by theDream »

Thx. Downloaded it on 1.6 and playing it right now.
mithrandil
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by mithrandil »

Very nice campaign so far!
I enjoyed
  • many different types of warriors to chose from
  • many different opponents
  • lots of cool ideas, e.g. the invisibility, the pirate ships, the sinking island
Please continue this great work! I just finished the 14th scenario and received a "unknown scenario" message for the fifteenth. And there is so much left to do, the dragon is still roaming the country, I can feel him coming, his breath threatens to burn the innards of my computer, if only I could find the 3rd champion, help me, aarrgh!
lion9
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by lion9 »

Hell!!!
Great campain!!!
I'm glad that we may use the windsongs and celestials. both of them are great.

But a hint for the scenario Lisaundra's Stand. It's to easy to survive for long. Just killing the drakes in the deep water and send the fireelementals against the dragons minions. The undeads can (later) produce only 2 units per turn, but you can kill at least 3 with the light spirits. Without the saurians this would take forever.
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nickanc
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by nickanc »

The campaign seems not to work on 1.10, not even it opens. I would like to help, but i dont know how to work on campaigns. But, indeed, if anyone is interested in porting it on 1.10 or later, i can do some alpha testing in spare time.
Groggy_Dice
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by Groggy_Dice »

nickanc wrote:The campaign seems not to work on 1.10, not even it opens. I would like to help, but i dont know how to work on campaigns. But, indeed, if anyone is interested in porting it on 1.10 or later, i can do some alpha testing in spare time.
There was a port of War of the Dragon to 1.9 begun at UMC-Dev, have you looked at it? I don't know how far along it got, whether it is actually playable on 1.10.

In my experience, porting is not that hard, with wmllint doing most of the work. It does depend on the complexity of the code, and since Velensk was an experienced designer, he may have some trickier code than your typical add-on. But in my experience, most problems post-wmllint are caused by existing bugs, rather than changes between Wesnoth versions.
Ports:
Prudence (Josh Roby) | By the Sword (monochromatic) | The Eight of Cembulad (Lintana~ & WYRMY)
Resources:
UMC Timeline (Dec) | List of Unported UMC (Dec) | wmllint++ (Feb)
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nickanc
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by nickanc »

Groggy_Dice wrote:
There was a port of War of the Dragon to 1.9 begun at UMC-Dev, have you looked at it?
I didnt know of it but I havent been able to find it.... Could you help me?
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tr0ll
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by tr0ll »

War of the Dragon svn on UMC-Dev
I am having no technical problems so far playing it on 1.10 up to scenario Broken_Bridge, though it is rather difficult.
To play, check it out from svn into your add-ons folder. On Ubuntu Linux the command looks like this:

Code: Select all

cd .local/share/wesnoth/1.10/data/add-ons/
svn co https://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/War_of_the_Dragon
:hmm: i should add that the above is just for seeing that it works and providing feedback, though without a maintainer even that could be an exercise in frustration. martinschneider is listed as author on umc-dev but i dont know if he is a maintainer. espreon has been updating the Era of Myths on which the campaign depends.
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nickanc
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by nickanc »

tr0ll wrote:War of the Dragon svn on UMC-Dev
I am having no technical problems so far playing it on 1.10 up to scenario Broken_Bridge, though it is rather difficult.
To play, check it out from svn into your add-ons folder. On Ubuntu Linux the command looks like this:

Code: Select all

cd .local/share/wesnoth/1.10/data/add-ons/
svn co https://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/wesnoth-umc-dev/trunk/War_of_the_Dragon
:hmm: i should add that the above is just for seeing that it works and providing feedback, though without a maintainer even that could be an exercise in frustration. martinschneider is listed as author on umc-dev but i dont know if he is a maintainer. espreon has been updating the Era of Myths on which the campaign depends.
Thank you for this link. I tried this UMC-dev campaign with 1.10.4 up to "Battle with the unseen" scenario. There are some things to say on this UMC version:
*Till "Broken Bridge" , everything works perfectly.
*In "The Way Under":
**When the goal of the scenario (or how is it called in english) changes, the conditions of defeat aren't displayed. It remains also unwritten that gold will not be transferred in next scenario (or so it seems) and that the player may also kill all enemy leaders in order to finish,
**Grammar check: In the first dialog there is in Alloria's words "It is to late...", it should be "It is too late..."
**It is a very difficult scenario, I managed to finish it only when I knew where Devling leader was, in order to kill him at the beginning (otherwise it would be impossible IMHO). Has the Era of Myths been updated, so that the scenario is now less balanced than before?
*In "Lisaundra's Stand": actually the main protagonist is called Lisuandra, not Lisaundra.
*"Fleeing the Dragon": at Turn 3 I got an error message (but the game continued) that is "<Invalid WML found> [then] not supported". I attached a replay of this.
*"Battle with the Unseen": the scenario seems to work, but it is the unseen levelling up which doesnt work! I got an error while playing the game: game_error: Could not find the unit being advanced to: Drake Gladiator. Then the game got closed, and I wasnt able to progress further in the campaign. I think it is an unseen that cannot level up properly. Since unseens have the same stats of Drakes and Ogres, I would suggest to make unseen, rather than a new unit type, a feature of the single unit (like when common units get changed because of the stuff they collect). I hope this suggestion is clear and understandable...

I wish someone will take care of this campaign! :)
Attachments
Fleeing_the_Dragon_replay_debug.gz
Replay of Fleeing the Dragon up to the error.
(30.58 KiB) Downloaded 380 times
Groggy_Dice
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Re: The War of the Dragon

Post by Groggy_Dice »

nickanc wrote:**It is a very difficult scenario, I managed to finish it only when I knew where Devling leader was, in order to kill him at the beginning (otherwise it would be impossible IMHO). Has the Era of Myths been updated, so that the scenario is now less balanced than before?
Velensk's statement, when he was handing off his projects to maintainers: (http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 94#p509169)
Velensk wrote:War of the Dragon: I have the remaining scenarios plotted out but this campaign was exhausting both to make and especially to test and although I enjoyed it a ton at the start I got very sick of it over the two years I was attempting to make it. When JW came back and reverted much of the work I had done on EoM and completely redid the devlings I lost my motivation to work on it (I didn't want to retest everything, again). I think that it still has potential but someone other than me will have to bring it out if it is there.
Later in that thread, Theron (martinschneider) takes the baton for War of the Dragon and talks about his plans.
Ports:
Prudence (Josh Roby) | By the Sword (monochromatic) | The Eight of Cembulad (Lintana~ & WYRMY)
Resources:
UMC Timeline (Dec) | List of Unported UMC (Dec) | wmllint++ (Feb)
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