Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

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GL_Network
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by GL_Network »

Aldarisvet wrote:Skeletons at becalmed are far better because they have much higher blade resistance and also damage.
Skeletons do not have better damage, at least not in this scenario. Remember that poison deals 8 damage per round, the sailors side cannot heal itself, and the skeleton has a damage penalty in plain day while the ghoul does not. Furthermore, the turn limit allows you some flexibility, and you don't have to worry at all about your units' hit points since you have readily available "villages". And your enemies have no ranged attack, so they are forced to attack you in melee (which means they will get poisoned often). If there is one scenario where ghouls are better than skeletons, it's Becalmed.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Aldarisvet »

GL_Network wrote:
Aldarisvet wrote:Skeletons at becalmed are far better because they have much higher blade resistance and also damage.
Skeletons do not have better damage, at least not in this scenario. Remember that poison deals 8 damage per round, the sailors side cannot heal itself, and the skeleton has a damage penalty in plain day while the ghoul does not. Furthermore, the turn limit allows you some flexibility, and you don't have to worry at all about your units' hit points since you have readily available "villages". And your enemies have no ranged attack, so they are forced to attack you in melee (which means they will get poisoned often). If there is one scenario where ghouls are better than skeletons, it's Becalmed.
Ok, lets count. Skeletons have 4-3=12 plus 8 poison per turn = 20. Skeletons have 7-3=21. Thats more than 20.
But given that skeleton costs 15 gold against 19 of ghoul and given that skeleton have 40% blade resistance against 10% ghoul's all is absolutely clear here (also skeleton have 1 more hp lol). Even despite ghouls are fearless.
Moreover, in most cases you have to kill frontline enemies at that turn you attacked them so you in fact you often do not even benefit from poisoning that you made while defending previous turn or attacking this turn, because you finish enemy unit before his next turn comes and he will not lose hp from poisning.

What I suddenly understood, is that scenario with Goblin Pillagers in fact is that where Ghouls can be very useful with their resistance versus fire. I used only zombies that scenario, but have to use mix of recalled ghouls and recruited zombies there. I got no advancements for my units in that scenario, because zombies advancement for zombies are useless, but I could get xp to ghouls or necrophages at that scenario.
And Becalmed in fact is not a scenario were Ghouls are good, but it is an easy scenario which easiness you should use to upgrade ghouls. It is a XP harvesting scenario for ghouls (to use them later in goblin's scenario). That means that you do not use ghouls to poison units in Becalmed, that means that you try to kill almost dead units with ghouls for letting ghouls get experience.

In fact this is my first undead campaign (except some scenarios I helped to finish for my son in DiD), I play undead in multiplayer, but ghouls are not very useful there except versus drakes. Mages have fire attacks but its much easier to kill them asap with skeletons than to wait when poison will do some work. No time to wait when mage will die of poison, he is too dangerous. Probably in Crelanu scenario you have use mix of recruited level1 skeletons and recalled Ghasts to kill mages asap.

For now I see that these periodical fire challenges was indeed made by beetlenaut for ghouls. But in later scenario fire shamans of trolls were already too weak to resist draining strategy. Final scenarios are too concentrated on draining strategy. As I wrote, instead problably would be good to create some arcane challenges. Some undeground scenario with mass water where Diviners would tear apart Spectres and even Liches, and later Mages of Light and Paladins would be challenging too.
...
If I right about ghouls, I want to make myself clear again. It is not good if you play through 10 scenarios relatively easy using some types of units and at 11'th suddenly you find that you badly need high level units of other types you do not have at all (because you are not an author of the campaign to forsee). I was complaining about adepts-liches before, but same about ghouls. As in Crelanu's scenario high level skeletons and spectres are too vulnerable to waste them against mages. Possilby if really high level ghouls were assumed as necessary you should distinct it more clear, for example, making scenario with drakes between Becalmed and Blackwater. There was a storm or watever so ship had to be landed on drake's isle. Burners would make it absolutely clear that skeletons have their weaknesses. Also it would be pleasant to see that great graphics with ship just a bit more.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

Aldarisvet wrote:I totally disagree that I largely used reloads to have advantage.
I looked at the statistics of a few scenarios on a turn when the enemy seemed basically under control, and I wrote down the total damage inflicted and taken up to that point:

Code: Select all

scenario       turn  inflicted   taken
Dark Business:  6      +16%      -15%
Carcyn:         7      +14%      -10%
Merfolk:        10     +10%      -10%
Walking Trees:  7      +10%      -91%
Northlands:     12     +10%      -23%
Mountain Pass:  23     +15%      -10%
I didn't look at the statistics for any other scenarios, so I'm sure there are exceptions. However, it seems like you normally play with a 20% to 30% advantage over the AI at the beginning of scenarios. (And the 101% advantage is not a typo!) You can play that way if you want, but then you shouldn't complain that the campaign is too hard, because you are playing above your skill level. If you weren't, you wouldn't need to do this. I'm not trying to put you down because I used to play like this too, but it's frustrating. And you seem a little frustrated.
Aldarisvet wrote:It is not good if some scenario is easier than others just for level upping some specific type of unit.
It's not the author's fault if you don't use some of the units they give you! If you see a unit on the recruit list, you should assume that a few of them will be useful in some situations. You chose to use almost all ghosts, and others didn't. Actually, I only leveled up one ghoul myself, but I can't imagine trying to get through without lots of magic users, which you also barely used.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Aldarisvet »

beetlenaut wrote:
Aldarisvet wrote:I totally disagree that I largely used reloads to have advantage.
I looked at the statistics of a few scenarios on a turn when the enemy seemed basically under control, and I wrote down the total damage inflicted and taken up to that point:

Code: Select all

scenario       turn  inflicted   taken
Dark Business:  6      +16%      -15%
Carcyn:         7      +14%      -10%
Merfolk:        10     +10%      -10%
Walking Trees:  7      +10%      -91%
Northlands:     12     +10%      -23%
Mountain Pass:  23     +15%      -10%
I didn't look at the statistics for any other scenarios, so I'm sure there are exceptions. However, it seems like you normally play with a 20% to 30% advantage over the AI at the beginning of scenarios. (And the 101% advantage is not a typo!) You can play that way if you want, but then you shouldn't complain that the campaign is too hard, because you are playing above your skill level. If you weren't, you wouldn't need to do this. I'm not trying to put you down because I used to play like this too, but it's frustrating. And you seem a little frustrated.
Well, it is out of the topic, but you cannot be serious with these as arguments.
Of course if you would pull out from the curve of probability from some scenarios some moments when I had, by chance, some advantage, it would look like something.
But in fact probability will say nothing about fair/unfair play except very outstanding cases. That 91% in Walking trees looks quite suspicious and is obviously out of standart deviation but still can be just a result of randomness. Yea, of course it was. I got immense luck at start but to the end, to the turn 17, it was inflicted +1%, taken -30%. I lost then 60% of advance, just because of averaging . Look at second turn. I attacked first Wose with 4 ghosts ranged and one spectre with melee attacks. And that wose missed 2 retaliations. But more the fun is that all 3 attacking woses also missed at thier turn! Ok, 8 misses in a row, happens. I got taken -100%. Then at third turn I attacked a wose with Wraith and while retaliating he was able to hit me first time for 8 HP. But after that fight he shows still -100%! Obviously there is a mistake in the forumla! He counts not an actual damage, but final condition of the unit. Hence a wraith drained from wose and was full HP at the end of his attacks the game somehow count that he was not damaged, but in fact he was damaged for 8 hp. So that is not me fault, look into formula, I shoudnt have -100% after my third turn. At his third turn he still somehow again missed his all 6 attacks with 3 woses again. But if you look into situation you would see clearly that I had no reasons to reload at all. Why should I, they were not able to kill any ghost (or saurian) at all in any of turns? (hmm possibly they could kill one ghost, but with quite a low probability, given a fact of draining ability, but it would be not a reason to reload for me still). Anycase, reloading for having AI to miss 6 times in a row while attaking for two consecutive turns would demand really a LOT of attempts. Probability for one turn is 0.5 in 6 degree = 0.015625, 1.5% (well, even less, because one of woses was attacking a saurian). Or you think I am a cheater?

I even remember how I played this scenario. At first time I attacked that first wose with melee attacks not only with wraith but with ghosts too, but some of them were wounded. Than 2 mores woses appeared and it was the day already so they had maximum damage and they probably killed one of my wounded ghost at third turn. After that I returned back to beginning of second turn and decided not to use melee attacks on a first wose with ghosts but to use a ranged wail instead even despite woses have resistance to the cold and are vulnerable to arcane touches. I changed a strategy, it have nothing with using reloads for getting better chances.

The main reason why people go upset and do reloads is not because of the fact of overall high damage/high miss in statistics, but the fact of either losing unit by huge unluck or, conversely, losing opportunity to kill unit. For example, if adept misses 2 times successively and was not able to kill unit which have to be killed after 1 successful strike with his magical 70%, someone can get angry and reload turn.
The honesty of the game cannot be measured by statistics because statictics do not separate a critical damage for the player which leads to losing units from non-critical damage that just wounds units.
For example, your defending unit stands in some critical point (which is under rotate for healing with other units of same type) and can be killed with 4 successfull strikes from 2 adjacent enemy units. The probability is 0.5 in degree of 4 = 0.0625. Could happen, especially if you have that unit under threat every turn. But well, you can all the time reload cases of losing that unit, and hence lose 0 units at all, but damage statistics could be neutral or even against you thank for other, not important directions, where you actually not risking losing units, but can afford more damage. And also this is true not about different situation in space, but also in time. One can save his units by reloading in some rare critical moments during scenario but in other situations could have even unluck with take damage/hits, so his statistics could be even negative for him in average. So you always should look into the context of situation, if some important high level unit have 10-20% probability being killed many times during the game and still he is not killed, than a player probably uses save&loads (as I did in spiders scenario). But I had no stimulus at all for reload-for-saving-units at scenario with woses and all earlier scenarios.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

Aldarisvet wrote:if you would pull out from the curve of probability from some scenarios some moments when I had, by chance, some advantage, it would look like something.
But I didn't do that! I watched some scenarios, and checked the statistics when the worst part was over. Those are combined statistics for all the turns up to that point, not just single moments. And these are all the scenarios I checked the statistics for! I wasn't going through the campaign and looking for unusual statistics. (That would be really boring.) I wondered if you save/loaded enough for it to show up in the statistics, and in my quick check, I saw that you totally did.
Aldarisvet wrote:Obviously there is a mistake in the forumla!
No there isn't. It only checks after each fight because it's "damage taken" not "damage dealt". Your ghost was expected to be damaged, and it had full HP instead.
Aldarisvet wrote:if you look into situation you would see clearly that I had no reasons to reload at all.
The replay will only show the version of the turn you accepted, so obviously I will never see the reason you reloaded! In fact, I can't absolutely prove you reloaded at all. What I can see are your statistics, which should be about average--some slightly favoring you, and some slightly favoring the AI. However, every scenario I checked favored you a lot.
Aldarisvet wrote:if adept misses 2 times successively...with his magical 70%, someone can get angry and reload turn.
But this is expected to happen two or three times in most scenarios!* You need to plan for it. And what about when your ghost hits four out of four on a unit in a village? Do you reload for that unlikely event? Of course you don't, and that is why the cumulative statistics favor you so heavily. You accept unusually good luck, and reload for unusually bad luck.
Aldarisvet wrote:if some important high level unit have 10-20% probability being killed many times during the game and still he is not killed...than a player probably uses save&loads
Like the saurian healer. You put him in danger all the time, and in the replays the enemy units always fail to kill him. How many times did you have to reload to save him in this campaign? And what about your leaders? A better player would never put these units in danger at all (unless the player is losing of course).
Aldarisvet wrote:One can save his units by reloading in some rare critical moments...so his statistics could be even negative for him in average.
Yes, that's true! But you save/load so much that your statistics are not close to average. You said you don't do it to gain an advantage, but I am showing that you have an advantage anyway.

I do appreciate your feedback, but you claimed that some scenarios are too difficult to beat honestly. I am saying that you shouldn't claim that when you play at too high a difficulty level. I know that you play at too high a difficulty level because you save/load a lot. I know that you save/load a lot because of your statistics.

* There's a 9% chance of missing both times, so it should happen about every ten attacks with an adept or your leaders.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by Aldarisvet »

beetlenaut wrote: ... but you claimed that some scenarios are too difficult to beat honestly
I took back this statement. I wrote this in my first post, but soon I understood that should I play the other way, I would have no problems at all.
Most important thing is to raise adepts in scenario with mermaids.
Less important - to raise ghouls in Becalmed, to use&raise them versus goblin raiders and later versus Crelanu.
And to the scenario with Gryphons I just need to have more money.
beetlenaut wrote: No there isn't. It only checks after each fight because it's "damage taken" not "damage dealt". Your ghost was expected to be damaged, and it had full HP instead.
Hmm. But it should be damage dealt! Thats obviously distort statisitcs as if I got luck but I did not, I got legitimate HP back. Not that it have something with immense luck I got in that scenario, but it can explain other distortions.
beetlenaut wrote: The replay will only show the version of the turn you accepted, so obviously I will never see the reason you reloaded! In fact, I can't absolutely prove you reloaded at all. What I can see are your statistics, which should be about average--some slightly favoring you, and some slightly favoring the AI. However, every scenario I checked favored you a lot.
10-15-20% is not so much, especially at earier turns when the law of large numbers is just not working. Well, I told you that I played some scenarios without any reloads, and named it.
If you even have 25% scenarios with bad chances at start and 75% with good chances, thats means nothing, it could be just randomness. Look at the very first scenario of the campaign, where I got +54% taken at the beginning of turn 4. And I did not started it over. I lost 0 bats, why should I? I did not even know about statistics that moment. Just how do you think it is possible, I play a turn, than I see statistics, then I think - oh, I inflicted too low amount of the damage compared to the average, I should reload it to get better chances? I did not even notice that I got that huge unluck same as I did not notice that immense luck in scenario with woses. That just does not matter for me. What is really important is a risk of losing valuable units or heroes. I admit that I was not playing perfect, sometimes I put them into theoretical risk to be killed, but that could be sometimes a result of just simple inattention. I remember playing wesnoth on android with a feature that showed how many of enemy units can reach that or that point. Was it 'Show enemy moves'? This function does not work for me same way it was on android. It does not printing 1 number, and also digits tends to disappear spontaneously.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by RatArmy »

This is Japanese translation.
Could you attach this file to SotA?
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Japanese Translator: Mainline components, and some Add-on campaigns...
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

RatArmy wrote:This is Japanese translation.
Oh! That was a nice surprise. Thanks. I didn't change the version number of the campaign (since nothing will change for most players), but I uploaded the translation.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by taptap »

Coming back to the campaign after a year. I have quite some trouble in "Follow the Shadow". Would appreciate a replay (necromancer difficulty) - I realise I have plenty of time, but pillagers are all over the place and I have not really much gold.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

taptap wrote:I have quite some trouble in "Follow the Shadow". Would appreciate a replay (necromancer difficulty)
I have found that the easiest strategy for this scenario is to use zombies. Recruit five or six, and plague every wolf you can in the first wave. (The captain's leadership is helpful for this of course.) The only problem with this strategy is that the experience mostly goes to waste. So, you see something different in this replay: I did plague a few wolves, but I used a lot of ghouls and poisoned the rest. It made them a lot easier to kill, and one of the ghouls survived and leveled, which will be useful later in the campaign. I did have 108 extra gold, so I would go with the zombies if you have a lot less than that.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by taptap »

beetlenaut wrote:
taptap wrote:I have quite some trouble in "Follow the Shadow". Would appreciate a replay (necromancer difficulty)
I have found that the easiest strategy for this scenario is to use zombies. Recruit five or six, and plague every wolf you can in the first wave. (The captain's leadership is helpful for this of course.) The only problem with this strategy is that the experience mostly goes to waste. So, you see something different in this replay: I did plague a few wolves, but I used a lot of ghouls and poisoned the rest. It made them a lot easier to kill, and one of the ghouls survived and leveled, which will be useful later in the campaign. I did have 108 extra gold, so I would go with the zombies if you have a lot less than that.
Thank you. Added my own replay. After I gathered some inspiration from this thread.
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Minimal gold, plenty of corpses + leadership.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

:shock: I certainly didn't mean to recruit only zombies! You probably could have used a couple level-2 archers and not had to sacrifice pretty much every unit. But OK, I guess it worked.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by taptap »

beetlenaut wrote::shock: I certainly didn't mean to recruit only zombies! You probably could have used a couple level-2 archers and not had to sacrifice pretty much every unit. But OK, I guess it worked.
Don't really like skeleton archers against the massive amount of pillagers and I already have a recall list with 2 banebows, 3 boneshooters. L3 leadership would have been a blast here, but my potential deathknights kept re-dying in earlier scenarios. And ghouls are not really cost-effective (on my budget) as much as I want to keep a levelled one around as tank.
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by taptap »

Ras Tabahn starting with a small recall list of his own is a great detail in Carcyn.

Merfolk revenge is a bit of a letdown. I took time to manoeuvre and only cut them down at night on land. (With ghosts, bones, adepts. Maybe it looked too easy, because I had some positive luck here and I did not bother much with carryover / speed - only 37 instead of 50 mentioned in dialog.) Either way, killing merfolk willingly suiciding on land is a sad sight to behold. And they can't even catch you during the day as you leisurely outrun them on land with undead.

Company: After the dialog I made Carcyn Fisher junior into an adept as well. (A tanky highwayman would have been unique and useful as well, but alas. I did not hesitate with Shynal.) This btw messes up the statistics as it lists both advances there. (Not that it matters.)
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Re: Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

Post by beetlenaut »

taptap wrote:killing merfolk willingly suiciding on land is a sad sight to behold.
That's true, but I don't know how to fix it without writing a different AI. I could tell the AI to completely avoid the land, but that's not much better, because they would never chase a wounded unit onto land even if they had a sure kill. Maybe it would be possible to have an AI modification that pays more attention to terrain, but I don't know how to write it.
taptap wrote:This btw messes up the statistics as it lists both advances there.(Not that it matters.)
I didn't think of that. But I can't think of any way to avoid it either. The stats are automatic.
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