By the Sword (1.10 Port)

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Groggy_Dice
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By the Sword (1.10 Port)

Post by Groggy_Dice »

I'm about to upload this campaign port to the server. I'm starting a new thread, because the title (and contents) of the old thread don't fit anymore. The old thread is here: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35221. There is also an old bug report: http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=35931.

I've played the first scenario, and the code seems to be working. However, I've suspended further playtesting to solicit feedback on whether the first scenario should be rebalanced.

Has anyone beaten the first scenario on hard? When I first loaded this campaign on hard, long ago, I was aghast at the forces I was supposed to beat, all while keeping my AI ally alive. Now that I've actually played it, my impression was confirmed. My ally leader would jump out into the open, and get cut down by level 2 enemy units. I don't think it's doable.

I played it again on medium, and won. However, my allied leader came within one blow of being killed, so it was no sure thing.

Of the four main methods of increasing the difficulty - enemy gold, friendly gold, number of turns, enemy recruits - the first scenario dials up the difficulty on all four. For comparison, I looked at the initial scenario of several mainline campaigns, and none of them did that for all four.

Considering how close I came to losing my ally, I don't see how I could do with less gold, more enemy gold, or more enemy level 2s. If I'd pushed harder, and been willing to risk losing units to the enemy leaders (particularly that orcish sovereign - nasty), I might have won by turn 20, the turn limit on hard. Overall, however, I think the current medium difficulty is as hard as it should get.

So, has someone come up with a winning strategy for hard? (You don't have to "spoil" the scenario by revealing it, just let me know that it can be done.) If not, I'll replace the current hard difficulty with the medium settings.

This raises the question of whether I should also rebalance medium, to make it easier, or just leave it as-is. Opine here!

Or perhaps you think I should pursue other methods to keep the ally leader alive, like making him a passive leader, or allowing the player to give orders to the AI, or making the AI side fully playable.

Once the issue of the first scenario is resolved, I'll try to resume my own playtesting, and also look into updating the maps with some of the new terrain that has been introduced since 1.6.
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)
monochromatic
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Joined: June 18th, 2009, 1:45 am

Re: By the Sword (1.10 Port)

Post by monochromatic »

:shock: OMG—this again.
Go ahead and rebalance it. It was not balanced when I first wrote it—I was not a very a good player then. Thus, there might be some unplayable bits.
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taptap
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Re: By the Sword (1.10 Port)

Post by taptap »

I definitely have not beaten the first scenario on hard. And I don't even have an idea how this might work. The only chance would be to slow down the enemies so that they cannot bring their full forces to bear but the bridge surely isn't suitable terrain for that. I wonder if it might be possible if you control the AI ally, but as is... not. If you remove one of the enemies it will be still hard enough. Especially the combination of reducing friendly gold and increasing enemy gold often changes the odds much more than people expect.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
vicente
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Joined: November 21st, 2011, 9:40 pm
Location: Washington DC, USA

Re: By the Sword (1.10 Port)

Post by vicente »

The first scenario definitely needs rebalancing. I had managed to beat it once on hard with version 1.8 (attached below). I had to take control of the ally, and save/load several times (and I was extremely lucky). Still I could only finish at the last turn with negative gold (I have to leave the villages to my ally).
Then in the next scenario, I found myself been overwhelmed by the AI again. I had to assassinated the orc leader in turn one to survive.

My suggestion:
The gold ratio for elf and orc is now 1:4.25. It is way too hard.
You may consider a ratio of 1:1.5 for easy, !:2.0 for normal and 1:2.5 for hard.
You may want to assign all the villages to the players if you decide to leave the poor ally to ai.
Make to scenario begins at night, so the first fight takes place at day time.
Give your hero resilient trait, otherwise he is going to die fairly easily.
Attachments
BTS-Orcish_Invasion_replay.gz
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