The Cost Of Living v1.0 (for BfW 1.8)

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Hello everyone. I just wanted to announce and present my first UMC campaign, The Cost Of Living.

Please use this thread to give your overall impression on the campaign, particularly on design, story and prose, possible bugs, and whatever else you want to comment or criticize on. For helping balancing the campaign and for feedback on specific scenarios from a gameplay point of view, please find the usual questionnaire in the matching feedback thread. Everything not suited for the question-answer style over there, please post it here.

Story teaser

Not refraining from killing those who stand in his way, nor from stealing from those whose possessions would enrich his own, a young outlaw by the name of Cavil seeks only one thing: to secure his living once and for all by making the perfect heist. Follow Cavil and his companion Briel in their lifes outside of the law, and find out what this life is going to cost them...

Additional information

The campaign features 7 scenarios targeting intermediate difficulty, although at the time of writing, it might be a little easier than that. I designed the campaign to run on Wesnoth 1.8, although it works on Wesnoth 1.9, too.

Like in the Liberty campaign, you are playing the outlaw faction in The Cost Of Living, although contrary to Liberty, which is ultimately about suppressed people fighting for their freedom, in this campaign, you are witnessing the lives of true criminals.

I tried to implement a personal way of story-telling. There are only three main characters and a supporting one, and the first half of the campaign, in which you are deliberately left in the dark about what is going on, focuses on introducing the characters so that you can more easily bond with them. The second half of the campaign then unleashes the true nature of the campaign, and at that point, you will hopefully get the point of earlier scenarios to make an overall picture and sense out of the campaign.

All scenarios use small to medium-sized maps with comparatively short battles. You are facing a variety of opponents, including Loyalists, Elves, Goblins, Orcs, Ogres and Nagas. I tried to break the chain of the way too common Defeat the enemy leader objective (although there are some scenarios using it) and the My wolves are hungry kind of battles by integrating the opponents and battles in way that makes sense to the story and fits the nature of the player's faction.

Changelog

v1.0.1

Fixed a show-stopper bug in scenario 3. I'm truly sorry for those whose first impression might have been ruined. You can load your last autosave from scenario 2 and continue playing from there. The rest of the campaign should be bug-free.

v1.0.2

Loosed up the turn limits and adjusted player and enemy gold slightly. The campaign should be a ted easier on Easy but about as difficult on Hard as before.

[Glowing Fish]

I tried playing the campaign on Easy.

The good news: it looks like you put effort into the dialog, maps, and scenarios.

The bad news: it is way too hard on Easy. Specifically, in the 2nd scenario, I ran out of time, only having gotten an Orcish Assassin close enough to poison the leader.

The biggest problem is that since there is only one village in the south-central part of the map where the fighting is going on, I ended up with a bunch of useless injured units, and couldn't continue moving forward.

I am often confused about what campaign designers think of as "Easy". "Easy" should mean that an experienced Wesnoth player should take the challenge as somewhat trivial.

[Feufochmar]

The bad news: it is way too hard on Easy.

I tested it on easy. I haven't found the second scenario too hard.

In the third scenario (The Smoking Musket), the last wave of ennemies did not move to attack me and the Deep Tentacles neither. Also the dialog text at the beggining of the scenario contradicts the objectives on how to beat the scenario. The dialog let the player think he has to survive for 4 days and nights (thus when the 24 turns are over, the player win) while in fact he must beat the four waves before the end of the turns (so when the turns are over, the player loose). You should either modify the objectives to let win the player at the end of the turns, even if he does not beat all the ennemes, or the dialog text to explicitely say that the player have to beat all the four waves in order to avoid this misunderstanding.

In "A Clean Escape", is it possible to free the other prisonners than Briel ?

[Glowing Fish]

Well then, I am going to play it again!

But this time, I had several glasses of wine to FORTIFY myself.

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Thanks for some initial comments.

@Glowing Fish:
When I first started playing Wesnoth, I always found that I couldn't beat certain scenarios in the turn limit given, and that really was the most annoying thing in the world to me. I definately don't want to do this to players, so I will take loosening the turn limits into consideration after I got more feedback. However, easy and hard is always very relative. For me, the campaign is trivial even on hard, but then again, I know what works and what doesn't. It's really a matter of finding the right tactical approach. Consider what your own units are good at, what the enemy units are good at, then analyze the map for its terrain and come to a conclusion. Unless you make a serious mistake the map effectively invites you to do, the scenario should be beatable.

@Feufochmar:
Thanks for spotting that contradition in scenario 4. Makes me think about how to change it, though. Survive, or defeat them all? As for scenario 5, you can only free Briel. If you could free the others, too, then the last third of the scenario would probably need to be more challenging, and I think that it's challenging enough given that it's already on the edge of being a landmine or tomato surprise. On the other hand, if it was conceived as being too hard, then freeing the other prisoners could help making it easier...

[Feufochmar]

About the tomato surprise in scenario 5, with a little more dialog, you can introduce it as a return of patrols for exemple. I hesitate to criticize it in my first post.

[Glowing Fish]

I guess one of the problems I have with the difficulty level is that I am used to playing a certain way, that is fairly conservative.
Perhaps in going with the emotional tone of this campaign, I am supposed to play in a more "cannon-fodder" manner.
One suggestion: if that is what you are going for, it would make it easier, in a way, but also keep the theme, if the player was allowed to recruit the Level 0 criminal unit, the Ruffian. They could be great as cannon fodder.