[SP] [Wesnoth 1.12] The Goblin Rebellion

[MiddleTwin]

I've been making a single player goblin campaign for a while now, and it's finally at the point where I mostly need a lot of playtesting to help polish it, so I'm posting a thread here. I haven't uploaded this to the add-on server yet have uploaded it to the 1.12 server, but 1.13 players can find the repo on github at https://github.com/JGelfand/The_Goblin_Rebellion/, or download a .zip directly from here.

The following is a somewhat unnecessarily lengthy monologue about various things I was trying to achieve, and how I tried to achieve them. TL;DR is that a typical goblin's life is nasty, brutish, and short, and I wanted to make the campaign reflect that.

TGR’s basic philosophy:

Spoiler:

This is a goblin campaign. Ideally, it will give the player a feel for how goblins operate, and serve as a contrast to the more traditional races.

Most campaigns in Wesnoth are centered around a slowly expanding pool of heroes and veterans. As the campaign progresses, these units are used to tear through enemies with minimal casualties. This tends to give the game’s campaigns something of a traditional rpg feeling, which a lot umc tends to empahasize even more (to the point of adding rpg-style equipment, massive amla trees, etc). Goblins, as a race, are a different story. Even their best fighters struggle in one-on-one duels with novice opponents of other races, and so the standard style of Frankensteining together a group of high-powered heroes seems...wrong. Goblins are the runts of their litters; they’ve always gotten the shortest end of every stick. While their orcish cousins can get away with fighting strength to strength, a goblin hero needs to be a lot more clever and a lot less direct.

My main guiding principle when designing scenarios for TGR was to try to avoid ever having a player feel like they won a fair fight through strength of arms. Goblins do not win fair fights, and goblin leaders who try don’t tend to last very long. Goblins attempt to leverage as many unfair advantages as they can, and to then combine that with a desperate, vicious, and extraordinarily deadly set of tactics that drives casualties on both sides to sky-high levels. You will hold your lines with cannon fodder. You will send 14-health skirmishers with no ranged attack far behind enemy lines to land a killing blow, even as you seal their own swift and inevitable demise. You will find yourself not even bothering to recall your veterans, as new ones are easy to make and the old ones are somewhat expensive.

In order to emphasize the contrast with traditional factions, your opponents will consist of groups of high-level mixed-race allies, and will consistently recall veteran commanders and even soldiers from previous battles. In other words, you are fighting with a freshly-recruited army against armies of experienced veterans- exactly as it should be.

Some other gameplay specifics and the reasoning behind them includes:

Spoiler:

• The stabber line. This is a custom unit line, whose most distinctive feature is being level 0 skirmishers. I feel like this is a very ‘goblin’ style unit- weak if caught off guard, but extremely vicious and with most of the stats front-loaded onto offensive abilities. Their ideal tactics are also very goblinesque: wait for something else to weaken an enemy and then run and stab it repeatedly. The level 1 version gains ambush, with the intended tactic being to lurk in a village and then stab injured enemies that are attempting to heal. This also feels like a very goblin thing to do. Also, this means the player has more than 1 recruitment option, which is really necessary.
• An extremely short campaign. I have playtested this campaign a bit. I know that it can get somewhat exhausting to give a huge amount of orders to a massive blob of goblins, only to see most of them dissolve on contact with the enemy anyway. Four scenarios allows us to stay true to the goblin experience, while (hopefully) also ensuring that most players can complete the campaign without getting burned out.
• Minimal gold variation between difficulties. Life finds more creative ways to [censored] with goblins, and this encourages me to do the same.
• Goblins speak in modern English. This is meant to try and help the player feel a connection to the goblins.
• Tomato surprises on Hard mode. I’m aware that these are super cheap and blatantly unfair. Unfortunately, that makes them absolutely perfect for a goblin campaign. I have, however, left them off of easy in order to better accommodate new players.

While it’s possible that I’ve forgotten to mention something here, I think I’ve covered most of the important bits. Since I’m going for a contrast to traditional mainline content, I generally want any deviations from mainline style to intentionally and carefully done (White and black are clearly opposites, while white and banana are not). Therefore, if there’s something in the campaign that I didn’t list above as an intentional deviation from mainline style that jumps out at you as not being very traditional Wesnoth, please tell me. Special things that I’d appreciate any playtesters looking out for in this regard include:

Spoiler:

• The dialogue. I’m not a great writer, so this probably feels stilted in several places. If you could point those places out and maybe offer suggestions on better phrasing I would be fairly grateful.
• The structure of the scenario intro map cutscene things. These just don’t feel quite right to me. If someone else could say what seems to be wrong with them it would be much appreciated
• Unit balance. Not so much the trebuchets, but if you feel that the stabbers are over- or under- powered, please explain why and/or offer a suggestion for a fix.
• Places where you would expect dialogue in a mainline campaign where dialogue doesn’t happen in TGR. I feel like I don’t have enough, but I’m not really sure where to add more.
• Scenario difficulty. Is easy too easy? Is hard too easy? Is hard too hard? I have literally no idea. Please, please, please, tell me and post replays. If you’re feeling really helpful, I would also love to hear your thoughts on the difference between easy and hard.
• Special 1.13 stuff. I’m running this on 1.12, but it seems like there are a lot of things that could theoretically be done via 1.13. For instance, I added [difficulty] tags under an #ifver, but I’m not sure if they work properly.
• Unit descriptions. Are they formatted how you expect? Do they read well? Do they answer any questions you had about the unit and its abilities?
• The music. It feels a little wonky to me, but I'm not really sure. If it also feels wonky to you, can you articulate why?
• I’m also open to suggestions on extra ways to mess with the player on Hard difficulty. Do you think a different starting time somewhere would really mess up a strategy? How about slightly adjusting a village placement? Something less subtle?

Other notes:

• The custom unit illustrations were made by a friend. They (understandably) didn't want to do animations, and I'm not skilled enough to do animations on my own. (The placeholder art for the trebuchet that I made before they replaced it is below, if you're curious)
  

[Poison]

I get this:

Code: Select all

The following add-on had errors and could not be loaded:
    /home/myname/.local/share/wesnoth/1.12/data/add-ons/The_Goblin_Rebellion/_main.cfg

Please report this to the author or maintainer of this add-on.

Details:

    Macro/file '~add-ons/The_Goblin_Rebellion/maps/BloodBath.map' is missing
    at ~add-ons/The_Goblin_Rebellion/scenarios/bloodbath.cfg:6
        included from ~add-ons/The_Goblin_Rebellion/_main.cfg:57

The campaign doesn't load.
BfW 1.12.5 and Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

[MiddleTwin]

Thanks. It looks like Windows doesn't care about case-sensitive path names, but linux does. Should be fixed now.

[Inky]

That's an interesting campaign idea- attack of the massive level 0 goblin hordes! I liked the stabber units, they really fit the goblin playstyle of sending them to almost certain death to do a bit of extra damage.

I played a few scenarios (Wesnoth 1.12.6, hard), some really quick notes:

Spoiler:

• A couple of scenarios' objectives are missing "Death of Tink" from the defeat conditions.
• The objectives say the carryover is 40%, but it's actually using the old 80% system. I think you have to write something like this to get it to work:

  Code: Select all

  [endlevel]
  	result=victory
  	bonus=yes
  	{NEW_GOLD_CARRYOVER 40}
  [/endlevel]

• typo in Last Straw line 316: ... And a warlord can't let an insult like one his warriors being taken out by goblins go uncontested -> one of his warriors
  
  Scenario 1: Whew, that was a challenge. Good thing that knight isn't so bright.
  Maybe add some dialogue with Tink at the beginning to introduce him. Currently though, there is no point to ever let Tink get near a battle because he'd die so easily, and it's not like he's any better than a regular 9 gold spearman.
  
  Scenario 2: This one is relatively easy if you leveled / almost leveled the two wolf riders from scenario 1. The leader likes to come out so you could probably surround him early on with your wolves before he spends all his gold. I had sent my goblin knight south pillaging, but I think if I'd just sent it straight northeast instead the scenario would have ended a lot quicker. (Finished turn 8/20 anyway, so the southern orc never got to do anything).
  
  Scenario 3: I think this scenario is too easy; those puny elves are just no match against the might of physics and applied math Especially on the later turns where there are almost no elves left. Maybe the trebuchets shouldn't regenerate? Or maybe add some higher level elves.

[MiddleTwin]

Thanks for the bug reports and HUGE thanks for the balance comments. I'm a pretty terrible player, so my strategy for balancing these things on hard mode is to make the scenario too hard for me to beat, and then hope that it's also hard for decent players. Having an actually good player give me some replays is therefore really really important.

[Inky]

Just finished the last scenario, which was much easier than I expected.

Spoiler:

Are you supposed to be able to recall those trebuchets? I recalled them and didn't end up using them because the battle was over before they could get there, but I imagine they would have been very useful especially against the trolls if the battle had gone on longer. The trolls ended up doing most of the work for me, killing both the human and elven leader, so all I had to do was send my gigantic goblin horde to the orcish leaders, which were easy enough to take down with the help of my slowing goblin pillager.

I finished on turn 17; also the defeat conditions say "turns run out" even though there's no turn limit. Maybe there should be a turn limit, or less villages, because it is guaranteed that you'll eventually win just by continually spamming level 0s since you'll have high income and no upkeep, unlike the enemies which will quickly go negative on gold.

Cool campaign, thanks for making it! Moral of the story is, don't mess with goblins

[MiddleTwin]

Yeah, the last scenario currently has no difference between Easy and Hard. My current plan for changes is making you start right in the middle with a small batch of units that includes your trebuchets, and forcing you to hold the enemies off as your aged leader makes their slow and stately escape.

Thanks for playing! Maybe some day, far in the distant future, I will actually manage to make the campaign challenging for you .

[Poison]

My feedback in spoiler:

Spoiler:

Played a little bit of the first scenario, if your leader dies, then nothing happens, you don't lose you just keep on playing. You should name the leader. I'd like the stabbers to be faster ( 6mp - for no particular reason it won't make much difference tactically) and have worse defenses (or way less hp), the way they are now since you play with goblins you use them more like damage sinks than the spearmen which is not what you intended from the things you've written I presume. For the description it would probably be better if you kept the traditional "special note" for the abilities imho and write the same description for concealment as it is for mainline, especially the losing the remaining movement points part (for saboteurs I mean). The slayer is kinda poetic he should say sth more trivial and brutal. That's all I have so far.

[MiddleTwin]

Wow. I never even considered the possibility that the leader dying wouldn't immediately cause a loss. How did I never consider that?
Also thanks for the nitpick on the description formatting. I'll try to put out a quick patch for this stuff along with the hard mode change for the last scenario tonight.

[Poison]

Wow. I never even considered the possibility that the leader dying wouldn't immediately cause a loss. How did I never consider that?
Also thanks for the nitpick on the description formatting. I'll try to put out a quick patch for this stuff along with the hard mode change for the last scenario tonight.

I'm thinking that new players will find it more useful, I actually personally like your description more but I think that the "ambush" thing (the loss of movement) should be mentioned. Also for the stabbers:

Spoiler:

Since they are skirmishers agile etc they should have more hits than spearmen, make them 4-4 instead of 8-2. Although that will make them "easier" to play, maybe do them even weaker like 3-4 to balance, 8-2 looks again like a strong defensive unit.

[MiddleTwin]

As far as the stabbers go, my in depth reasoning on move speed, defenses, and attack values is as follows:

Spoiler:

• Move speed: Skirmishers scale really well with move speed. I left them a little slower than average because it kept them consistent with other goblins (which isn't super important, especially since they're lightly armored), but mostly because I felt that giving them 6 movement would be too strong. Any move speed increase would have to be coupled with a nerf elsewhere.
• Defenses: Skirmishers (Edit: fixed typo) Stabbers are almost exactly as hard to kill as spearmen on flat terrain. You need 15*(1/.5)=30 points of damage on average to kill a stabber, and 18*(1/.6) = 30 points of damage on average to kill a spearman. Stabbers are currently slightly more difficult to kill on better defensive terrain, but the difference is generally pretty small- spearmen have 36 EHP in forests and hills, and stabbers have 37.5. I believe that you probably have a decent point here in that stabbers should feel a little more fragile, so a nerf to 14 HP might be in order. This will make stabbers easier to kill than spearmen in flat and light defensive terrain.
• Attacks: Spearmen have a 6-3 (max 18) melee attack normally, a 7-3 (max 21) melee attack at night, and a 5-3 (max 15) melee attack in the day. Stabbers currently have an 8-2 (max 16) attack normally, a 10-2 (max 20) melee attack at night, and a 6-2 (max 12) melee attack during the day. Stabbers are basically useless during the day, but at night their attacks do almost as much as a spearman's, and they always have more damage during the first two attack cycles. This makes them a poor choice for doing damage to high health targets, or to targets that a spearman can kill in one hit, but they have a tactical niche when a spearman is unable to in finish a target in one to two blows. For example, the health ranges of 8-10 and (to a lesser degree)15-20 at night. This makes them interesting to play. These are health ranges that show up reasonably frequently, but there are still times when you would be better off killing a target with just spearmen.
• If I change the attack to 4-4, the only real tactical niche would be with targets that a stabber can finish in one hit- a range that would go down so far that it ends up conflicting almost completely with spearmen's existing interesting range where they have a choice between trying to finish someone off with a thrown spear or using a melee attack to ensure the kill. In addition, this change would interact extremely poorly with the 'weak' trait.

I'll probably end up doing the health nerf, since they should be easier to kill than spearmen on average, but I think that the current movement value is fine and that the current 8-2 attack values are fun to play with in a way they wouldn't be even if a 4-4 attack wasn't a stealth nerf thanks to weak.

[Poison]

Point 1 (move speed): You are right, not that important, so fine by me.
Point 2: (defenses): Now for the following lines I have no proof, you would need to keep track of idk 80.000 encounters or sth to do so, unfortunately BfW doesn't keep track of hits taken or sth similar, but my feeling is that 50% defense is wayyy better than 40%, they are not close at all. Against enemies with 3 hits the feeling (whatever that means) and my expectation from all the BfW battles that I remember is that with 40% most of the times you'll be hit twice, quite often 3 times, very rarely once and almost never 0 times. With 50% however all I remember is that 1 hit go way up and 0 hits are quite frequent too (with 3 hits being rarer), so gameplay wise unless my memory is very selective 50% looks much stronger too me. I don't think the way you've used the math reveals this, it's somewhat deceptive, hits are more important of a stat that damage, maybe some other player can comment on this or some dev has collected data but personally when I saw the def I was like "whoa how will these guys die". Also 70% in my book is very evasive, you just don't get hit often so it kinda screams "village holder" instead of doing more frontline battle.
Point 3 (attacks) and 4 (ohko): You forget retaliation, 8-2 reminds me of HI, stabbers will give serious damage back before they die, even more than spearmen maybe (suppose we know for sure that both units will die after being hit 3 times in a row from opponent; they will both give 1 or 2 hits in retaliation so the spearman wil never get his 3rd strike resulting to him dealing 6 or 12 damage in contrast to 8 or 16 of stabber !!! - if he (the stabber) was a 4-4 /3-5, he would give a meager 4 or 8 / 3 or 6 ), if you also consider the fact that they are also cheaper it could actually lead to not use spearmen at all (or use fewer to do the hunting job instead of the actual skirmishers !!! ) and go for "fair(er)" battle, when you are attacking you can choose your target, so why do you need to ohko someone, you'll give him many strikes (or die trying) and take some back the goblin way. Imho stabbers look like the ultimate fighting frontline defensive supertank unit that has an irrelevant skirmisher atm. My suggested changes would be to either keep 8-2 (or 7-2 maybe - and use imprecise) and somehow reduce retaliation, maybe add a weapon special called "untrained" or "reckless" or similar (can't think of a good name) that reduces the damage you deal only when defending to 6-2/5-2/8-1 or sth (and put a hint in unit description, something along the lines "the stabbers prefer to choose their battles, but inevitably they can't always do so and many times get stuck in unusual situations which they can't handle all too well" or whatever. Or to lower attack and make it weak (like 5-3 / 4-3 / 3-3 /2-4) but add some special, for example anarchy / anger (2nd attack) / lesser backstab / backstab / charging backstab (2nd attack)/ push / poison? [nah poison would be op - you could perhaps aim for 5-1 / 2-2 poison to have a low chance to hit and add something to description too] (and possibly remove skirmisher), they have knives and it's petty and attack only and it's nothing you could do on a fair fight (if you remove skirmisher because the enemy will line up), also you would need to use team work to expose a second unit for backstab to work so all of the above sound really like goblin things to do (and closer to your own philosophy). Another thing you could use is frenzy somewhat as described here , make the attack like 7-1 but if it hits it gives another round and opponent gains an extra attack too etc. Or use swarm with berserk together maybe, the stabber with full health will give strong attack like 3-7/2-8/4-6 but as the battle progresses he will become tired and injured resulting in him giving way worse attacks. That way it will look more like an agile, frail, offensive unit. Or ignore all of the above and just leave them as is, these are just silly suggestions / ideas, so don't take anything too seriously

Edit: Also, just checked saboteurs... who are the best melee lv1 unit in the whole game by far!!! You should weaken them significantly (and maybe give them a secondary really weak one hit poison attack) (seriously why would one even use spearmen atm).

[MiddleTwin]

I would like to start off by answering your worries about the defensive and retaliatory capabilities of the stabber.

Spoiler:

With regards to your claim about hits being more important than damage: this is true to some degree, but also false to some degree. The EHP model I'm using is correct on average. In cases where the number of hits needed are the same, stabbers are slightly better, but in cases where the number of hits needed is lower for the stabber than for the spearman, the stabbers are a lot worse. On average, this should end up with stabbers taking ~7% less time to die on flat terrain, without considering weapon specials like marksman and magic that push the the ratio between spearmen and stabbers more in the spearmen's favor. For example, consider an orcish grunt attacking a goblin spearman vs a goblin stabber with the current max hp of 14. During the night and twilight, the orcish grunt needs two hits to kill each, and an average of 4 attacks (over two turns on flat terrain) to kill the stabber, compared to an average of 3 + 1/3 attacks (still over two turns) to kill the spearman. However, during the day, the orcish grunt needs 3 hits to kill the spearman (5 attacks over three turns), but still only needs two hits (over two turns) to kill the spearman. Here we can see that on average, a grunt needs less total turns to kill a stabber than a spearman, and indeed the average if you do this to a lot of characters the result should be spearmen taking slightly longer to die than the stabbers. This result is actually probably a bit more in favor of the spearmen than the typical one, as their EHP is so close, but it's still a reasonable example because you actually end up fighting grunts in the second scenario.

As far as your worries about retaliation damage go, I feel the need to highlight the above result that most of the time it will take multiple turns of attacks to kill a stabber or a spearman. As spearmen have better average melee damage, they will do more damage during turns where they don't die. In addition, spearmen have a ranged attack, where stabbers do not. Imagine a situation in which there is a fight with a grunt, followed by an attack by an archer, at dusk. The spearman will do 2 EHP more worth of damage (2 * (1- the grunt's defensive rating) more 'real' damage) during the initial fight, and 3 EHP more worth of damage in the follow-up, for a net difference of 21 (spearman) to 16 (stabber). This is a pretty significant difference. Of course, the situation gets slightly more complicated if the archer attacks first, because the stabber does more damage in the first few rounds, and things also change during the day and the night (stabbers lose more during the day and gain more during the night), and based on defensive terrains, and whether one of the enemies has a magic or marksman or poison attack, etc, but in the end again the expected result is that spearmen will have a small but solid edge when the opponent has archers of some kind- a HUGE edge if those archers are mages, a relatively smaller edge if those archers are orc archers, etc. Note that every opponent in this campaign excluding a bonus mini-boss on hard has archers. Fighting archers is a fairly common occurrence, and goblin spearmen are generally going to be less useless than their stab-happy counterparts.

Your concern about saboteurs makes some sense, given the way that I statted them. I have two major points to make here, the first being a comment on how goblin's stats will in general make them seem stronger than average, and the second a brief comparison of saboteurs with goblin impalers, and an explanation for why I made each change relative to impalers. This will be followed by a brief discussion of balancing methods that I've considered. TL;DR saboteurs are too strong atm, but since the player can't recruit them directly and they're still not really worth recalling I posted TGR to the add-ons server before deciding exactly how I wanted to nerf them.

Spoiler:

Most races get two positive traits, but goblins get a single negative trait. The difference here is pretty significant. For example, the average goblin's move speed is only 4.66, vs the average human spearman's move speed of 5.5. Even though both look like they have the same movespeed, the typical human spearman is significantly faster than the typical goblin. One half of human spearmen are faster than every goblin, and one-and-a-half times (!) as fast as the slowest third of goblins. The lower half of human spearmen have an equal speed to upper two thirds of goblins, and are still significantly faster than the slowest third. Goblin impalers have an 8-3 melee attack, but their average is only 7.66. Conversely, human spearmen have a 7-3 melee attack, but their average is 7.5. This means that despite the stats indicating that a goblin impaler should do three more EHP per melee attack, the EHP difference between the average impaler and the average human spearman's entire melee attack is less than 1 EHP in favor of the impaler (23 EHP to 22.5 EHP). In addition, other races can generally advance beyond level 1, whereas goblins cannot.

Now: I made the saboteurs by modifying the stats of the goblin impalers. I made the melee attack a 9-3 instead of an 8-3 because I wanted weak saboteurs to still have the +2 damage during the night. I gave them skirmisher to keep them consistent with stabbers. I gave them conceal because it was fun thematically, but has seemed practically useless on fugitives whenever I got them. I removed the ranged attack because it was the most obvious thing to remove and the saboteurs were kinda overpowered. I removed first strike for the same reasons. I added the defensive buffs to keep saboteurs in line with the stabbers. I gave them a gold cost of 1 higher because an equal cost didn't seem fair, then shrugged and said 'op, but good enough- we'll call this a temporary solution'. Unfortunately, temporary solutions aren't, and so here we are today.

Looking at it right now, there are three obvious axes where I can try to nerf saboteurs while keeping the feel of the unit the same.

The first is by simply increasing the cost of the unit in gold, and increasing the xp cost to get it. A gold price of 17 (on par with elven archer) seems like a reasonable estimate for the saboteur as-is. Mages have a gold price increase of 20 from level 1 to level 2, and need 60 xp to level, so each xp point is worth .33 gold to them. Spearmen have a price increase of 11 from level 1 to level 2, and need 42 xp to level. Each point of xp is worth about .25 gold to them. This is a pretty big difference, so there's clearly not a single easy ratio that I can use here. I think my best bet is to compare with other skirmishers. Saurian skirmishers gain 15 gold worth of value over 32 xp, for an average of ~.5 gold per xp. Fencers gain 16 gold worth of value over 42 exp, for an average of ~.4 gold per xp. This suggests that skirmishers in general are on the high end of gold:xp, and that a reasonable xp to level for stabbers would be in the range of 20-25. (Stabber's current total is assuming a gain of 7 gold worth of value over 14 xp, at a .5:1 ratio).

The second is by decreasing the health. Stabbers are currently not that healthy as level ones go, with an EHP of 52 on flat terrain, vs spearman's EHP of 60 on similar terrain. However, they are doing quite a bit better than impalers (EHP 43 on flat terrain), which they probably shouldn't (on flat terrain; being a lot better in villages is a pretty solid idea for something with this lore). A 20% (down 5-6, to 21-20) hp nerf would take a lot of excess defensive power out of the unit. I'd estimate this nerf at around -1 to -2 worth of price.

The third way is by nerfing the melee attack. 27 EHP total is a lot of damage, and it's worth considering something else, like in the range 10-2 to 12-2. If we want to preserve the the interaction between spearmen and stabbers in the impalers and saboteurs, a 10-2 attack does 83.3% of the EHP of impaler's 8-3; and an 11-2 does 91.6%. In comparison, the stabber's 8-2 does 88.8 % of the spearman's 6-3, so an 11-2 attack would probably be the ideal nerf here. This is a nerf from 27 EHP to 22, or about 20%. I would also estimate this as being worth -1 to -2 in price.

Currently, I'm leaning towards leaving the gold cost and xp as-is, and instead applying both the health nerf and the damage nerf. The end result would be a stabber that costs more than an impaler, but does less melee damage and has no ranged attack or first strike (both of which are good defensive tools), has otherwise nearly identical defensive stats on flat terrain, can be used as a low-powered dodge tank on more defensive terrains (or a good dodge tank in villages), and has skirmisher.

I'm also thinking of lowering the stabber's defense in villages to 60% to help give the saboteur a stronger village-hugging identity. As stabber is probably on the higher end of 7 gold, this seems like a good idea.

Edit: I just realized I miscounted the number of positive human traits. There are only 4. I went in and adjusted the numbers accordingly, but my error wasn't in my favor originally and so the argument is actually a little better now.

[Inky]

Just finished the new version of the finale where you start in the middle. I just sent the trebuchets on a suicide mission north to go kill some orcs (the strongest side). Their heroic sacrifice will always be remembered. The goblin leaders just ran east to the nearby keep, and from then the scenario played much the same as before, except it took a lot longer to grab villages. This time I had to send a group south to finish off the elves, but on the bright side the elves were nice enough to get the orc leader near the verge of death. Finished turn 15.

Maybe it would make the scenario more difficult if the player didn't start with the trebuchets, though I don't know how much of a difference that would make. Right now the scenario is pretty easy but I'm not sure how to make it hard without making it annoying. Less starting gold/villages maybe?

[MiddleTwin]

FYI: I just posted a change that turns Bark and Bite into wolves instead of wolf riders. This shouldn't break your saves or the game, but dialogue will now be somewhat off if you started the campaign before the patch and then updated.

Edit to avoid double post:
I wrote a wall of text on this initially, but I ended up getting logged out while I wrote it and when i tried to submit it redirected me to the login page and when it brought me back here it had deleted the stuff I wrote. Therefore, I'm going to make this brief:

I think I missed the forest for the trees when responding to Poison. While I stand by my assertion that stabbers aren't actually more durable than spearmen, and certainly aren't super-tanks, the bigger picture is still this:

• Stabbers are about as durable as goblin spearmen
• Stabbers do about 80-90% of the damage that spearmen do
• Stabbers also have skirmisher
• Stabbers cost 2 gold less than spearmen

This is op. Stabbers aren't super-tanks, but they don't have to be super-tanks to be op. They just have to be worth more than they cost, which is clearly the case here, and is probably what Poison was trying to drive at. I decided on a nerf, and initially I wrote a massive wall of text on this and I can edit one in later if anyone cares, but I don't think anyone does so I'm just going to say the nerf and hit submit

Stabbers now have a 5-2 charge instead of an 8-2 melee attack.

There, done.