NEW: Elvish Dynasty RPG

[Kelben]

Nice man, no problem.

I ended in the swamp after the coronation shooting like a freak at everything moving around. Hehehe

Actually it happened not after the coronation but at the coronation (and onward). Even at the coronation I could not recall any elvish fighter.

Thanks again for the good work and fun

[Kelben]

Scenario Misty Swamp,

Spoiler:

When the castle appears, it is added as an objective to kill the ennemy leader but his castle is not accessible by any unit...

[SpenceLack]

I uploaded 0.9.5 to the dev server which includes a major overhaul of the difficulty levels.

In general the Tourist difficulty got easier, Easy difficulty stayed the same, and Normal and Hard difficulty levels got harder.

I also added a short introduction to Aurelia's training in the Year 1 briefing. In the 7a Coastal Defense scenario the initial briefing now includes a brief description of the two ships you can recruit.

These are the additional difficulty changes made for 0.9.5:

"The Settlers": Monster spawn rate is now based on difficulty level.

"Escorting Jystaev": Bandit spawn rate is now based on difficulty level.

"Well Enough Alone": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Brigands on the Border": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Gem Cave": Slightly adjusted Dugard's starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Bryony's Big Adventure": The lake monster now has traits on higher difficulty levels. But this is still pretty much supposed to be a "gimme" level regardless of difficulty level.

"Coastal Defense": Normal and Hard difficulty levels have additional enemy ships.

"Book Retrieval": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Swamp Defense": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Castle Assault": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Assassination": No changes.

"Last Man Standing": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"The Misty Swamp": No changes currently.

Scenario Misty Swamp,
When the castle appears, it is added as an objective to kill the ennemy leader but his castle is not accessible by any unit...

That is correct. Unless you have a flying unit or Shevash the water serpent you won't be able to reach the enemy leader. Basically I wanted a way for the center part of the map to gradually become unsafe for the player in the last few turns. Hmm...maybe on the easy difficulty levels I could make his keep more accessible with shallow water...

"Holding Back": Adjusted enemy starting gold based on difficulty level.

"Four Vs Forty": The bandits now use unity magic on the Hard difficulty level.

"Vaan Kingdom Civil War": Enemy income is now based on difficulty levels.

"Armageddon": No changes.

"Jungle Lairs": I had a hard time thinking of a way to make this harder if someone used the strategy Blarumyrran used (hitting all the lairs at once at the beginning). Eventually I gave the monsters a high village value on the Hard difficulty level, meaning that the AI should place a high priority on capturing your supply station. This should hopefully reduce but not eliminate monster infighting.

"Crossroads Rebels": No changes.

"Flooded Forest": No changes.

"Coronation": Reduced enemy gold for all difficulty levels.

"Finale": No changes. Currently, sometimes when Aurelia recruits a unit the screen will scroll to her position...I'm not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but it can be irritating. I'm thinking that splitting the player-controlled forces into 3 separate armies would fix this issue and maybe make the scenario better at the same time?

[Mabuse]

"Coronation": Reduced enemy gold for all difficulty levels.

really ?

i played it on MEDIUM and after getting overrun the first time, i adjusted my strategy and killed 3 of the 4 leaders (the one in the water remained kinda - simply ran out of time, but surely he wont be able to do anything and my north army was already at hhis feet) until i decided to kill the dragon (aurelia was in range - and also the time limit was also at the end).

I THINK IT IS OK.
after all its 4 ai with 120 gold each (ok later the dragon also enters the scene) against you with also about 100-120 gold + another ai. (ok, i also had losses, so my happniness was at 0 when i finished the scenario , but with the bunch of gold i gained from owning the map i buyed some happness the following turn)

btw, i like your campaign.

also its the first time i saw the new drake-graphics in action, i think they look delicious.

[Kelben]

Yes, for Misty Swamp, either you need Aurelia lvl 4 or the serpent (sweet, I could not figure how to get it though, I have to add that I went to the Misty Swamp on year 6). Then I would suggest to do not change anything in the easiest version.

[TheHouseJackBuilt]

Hey first of all really nice work. Scenarios are original and interesting. Four vs Forty and Coronation were my favourites

Anyway i 've found a small bug on the Finale scenario. When Kirielle showed up i had Aurelia on that hex. Aurelia then dissapeared and got replaced by Kirielle. I didnt lose even though i had no leader (wasnt in the unit list either). This was on 0.9.2 version

[SpenceLack]

Thank you very much for the feedback!

I've uploaded 0.9.6 to the dev server.

Changelog:

*The problem with Kirielle displacing units in the Finale should now be fixed.
*Fixed a problem with Elvish Fighters in the player's recall roster inadvertently getting purged in 6a (Bryony's Adventure).
*Fixed a typo while speaking to Kirielle about Floria (changed "non-humans" to "non-elves").
*Increased gold in the Coronation a little for the dragon on all difficulty levels.
*Reduced initial Bryony and Aurelia happiness to 30.
*Misty Swamp...when the enemy leader appears with his keep the player will now have access to it via shallow water.
*Jungle Lairs has been majorly overhauled in terms of difficulty level. Now the monsters will get angry and unite against the player after enough lairs have been destroyed (Bryony will inform the player of this when it happens). The harder the difficulty level the fewer destroyed lairs are required for the monsters to cooperate. So the player will no longer be able to smash all the lairs in the beginning unless they think they can handle a massive monster horde.

[joshudson]

I played through this once at the hardest level.

I had 480 gold going into the scenario about the meteor and due to the carryover percentage I only had 280 coming out. Ouch. I would have been better off shopping for artifacts and buying none (I'm convinced not one of them is worth the cost).

The last scenario was insanely hard, but I guess I got what I asked for.

Although I would have rather told that General:

"Though you triumph upon the field for a day, you cannot hold this land, for I am Master Ooze and if once you set foot into this land the very air you breathe will become a poisonous fume."

Recall of course, that Master Ooze had infected the water supply before.

It would be an easy matter to lure them in for about a day, infect them all via the local water, and kill them a few days later from inside their own bodies.

[Huston]

i played it through. very fun it was although i may just be out of practice but it seemed that no matter how well i saved my money, i never had enough gold to sustain my army after factoring in losses even though i was playing on the easiest difficulty level. maybe you should boost the gold income for it. i was also surprised that it was almost a continuation of your Ooze Mini Campaign, maybe make a mention of it in the description?

[SpenceLack]

Thanks for the feedback!

As for the gold amounts, I'm torn about how to balance it. Currently the gold carryover is 40%, which is the same as the mainline campaigns. The player is also earning annual revenue, so actually the gold carryover is slightly higher than in mainline. And of course the diplomacy levels have 100% gold carryover.

Initially I wanted to have 100% gold carryover for the combat levels too, but playtesting showed that this allowed the player to quickly amass a huge fortune (well over 1,000 gold by Year 6). So I guess there are a few options...

1. Have two gold stores for the player. Combat levels would have a pre-set initial gold amount for the player, based on difficulty level. This would guarantee that the amount of gold the player started with would always be balanced. However it would also completely change the way that Wesnoth played, since gold carryover and finishing early would no longer have any meaning, and players would simply milk maps for XP. Diplomacy levels and the Sacred Glade would have a different store of gold for the player, and the player would get this gold solely through annual income and the diplomacy levels themselves.

2. Same as #1, except the diplomacy/Sacred Glade gold would instead be an integer variable called "Resource Points," tracked by a [label] in the Sacred Glade and diplomacy levels. This might negate the possible confusion over having two gold amounts, though maybe it would confuse players even more, or seem kind of hokey.

3. Increase the gold carryover % slightly. Since it would no longer be equal to mainline it would be kind of anti-KISS though.

4. Increase annual income. I'd probably have to majorly rebalance buying happiness in the Sacred Glade and buying stuff in the diplomacy levels though, to account for the player's greater purchasing power.

5. Keep it as is? Maybe tweak something else besides gold to make it balanced?

6. Other???

I do think I will add a more ooze-centric dialogue choice for the Finale.

It would be an easy matter to lure them in for about a day, infect them all via the local water, and kill them a few days later from inside their own bodies.

I was actually planning a level that would deal specifically with infecting the Imperial's water supply, but I never got around to making it. I had originally planned for there to be 3 tiers:

Tier 1 (Year 0-5): Coronation

Tier 2 (Year 6-10): Marriage

Tier 3 (Year 11-15): Good/Evil

As it turned out though, I seriously underestimated how long it would take to make this campaign. Thus, Tiers 2 and 3 kind of got meshed together and some stuff got cut out.

I originally thought, "Well, it only takes 15 minutes to make a decent small map. And for a simple 'kill-all-enemy leaders' objective, well that's like 15 minutes worth of WML coding, tops!'

Then I thought, 'So at 30 minutes per level, and 20 possible levels per tier, and 3 tiers...that's only 30 hours worth of work! I could do that in a single weekend!'

But once I started working...feature creep began to set in big time. I should've learned my lesson from Ooze-Mini Campaign. That was only initially supposed to be one level, but then one level turned in to two, which turned in to three which turned in to four, and I was about ready to start making level five when real-life events called me away from the project.

As it turned out almost none of the scenarios in Elvish Dynasty ended up being the simple 'kill-all-enemy leaders' variety...the whole campaign has some pretty complicated WML and needless to say it took a lot longer than a single weekend to even complete two Tiers. I do at least want to finish up the Evil branch though...but I'm very busy in real-life at the moment so all I can do is tech support for now.

i was also surprised that it was almost a continuation of your Ooze Mini Campaign, maybe make a mention of it in the description?

Maybe in the campaign description I'll add: "A sort-of sequel to the Ooze Mini-Campaign."

Thanks again for the feedback!

[Ken_Oh]

i was also surprised that it was almost a continuation of your Ooze Mini Campaign, maybe make a mention of it in the description?

Maybe in the campaign description I'll add: "A sort-of sequel to the Ooze Mini-Campaign."

I wasn't too surprised by this. I saw it a mile away, but it was a pleasant/funny discovery.

I don't know if I would be outright and say it's a sequel. Maybe you can hint that it takes place after those events, if for no other reason to get those who missed the Ooze campaign a nudge to play it.

As for the feedback, I really understand how difficult all this must be. I kind of toyed around with suggesting something like you posted with two separate gold systems, but I confused myself while thinking of it. Anyway, good luck!

[zookeeper]

Just for the record, I had played the Ooze Mini-Campaign before, but it was quite a long time ago and I think I never finished the final scenario (not sure). So while I was familiar with it...

Spoiler:

...I didn't see the connection to ED at all before the part in which the connection is revealed, which made it rather satisfying.

[Iris]

Spoiler:

I did notice the protagonists' names, but I spent the whole campaign wondering whether it was a prequel of sorts or an "alternate universe" with similar characters. I wasn't expecting that shocking reveal near the end, since I didn't even get to play the Misty Swamp scenario in which the oozes are mentioned in dialogue; the only foreshadowing I got was Kirielle's last speech before leaving Floria just before the final battle.

In other words, the lack of a stated connection in the description was a nice touch to it.

[SpenceLack]

I've uploaded v0.9.7.

Changelog:
In the "Armageddon" scenario the drakes' unity magic has been re-implemented. Drakes no longer spawn in the western mountains...instead there is a small keep for a yeti faction which is hostile to both the player and the drakes.
The ending now calculates a score for the player based on final happiness and difficulty level.
Fixed a bug in the Finale that prevented a death event from firing correctly for General Brosan and Lieutenant Halter.
Fixed some spelling errors.

Thanks again for the comments!

[Gwynnedrion]

I can't beat the "finale" scenario where you have to fight the Empire. I keep getting overrun (playing on Easy). I'm mostly using fencers and elven archers with occasionaly a shaman. Got any tips or strategy for this one?