The Traitor: Resurrection-finished, but has balancing issues

[artisticdude]

Recently I spent nearly three weeks resurrecting my very first campaign, which is now available on the add-ons server. I made it long before I joined the community, using only the default campaigns for reference. There are 18 scenarios (plus the epilogue), all of which are fully playable. The major problem throughout the entire campaign is balance. Giant maps, over--powered units, 9 sides all recruiting lvl 3's and 4's... you get the picture. Typical noob mistakes (and I was very much a noob when I made this). What I'm looking for feedback on is principally whether or not you think this campaign would be worth trying to balance, or does it lack potential completely? Please give me your honest opinions, as I really only want to invest as much time as this project will need if the campaign is worthy of it.

[Hulavuta]

Good story, good dialogue. You might want to rename the son, whose current name is Haldric. I think it's worth fixing up, although it's quite good already. But I haven't played very far in yet.

[artisticdude]

Good story, good dialogue.

Thanks. There are some areas I'd want to redo if I decide to revamp this, but overall I'm satisfied with it.

You might want to rename the son, whose current name is Haldric.

I'm not quite sure why I named him that, but thanks for pointing that out.That's the kind of observation I like: short, sweet, and to the point.

I'll have to look up one of my name lists...

[monochromatic]

I love how everyone in the 3rd scenario (Mountain Journey) has 70% defense on mountains with horsemen and cavalrymen speeding though it.

[artisticdude]

Yet another example of super-powered units. The idea was for these troops to have come from a mountainous region, and so be more comfortable on rugged terrain than the standard loyalist units, but I carried that idea way too far.

[Hulavuta]

In the level Cave In, maybe you should replace the castles that the vampire bats are recruited in with maybe cave tiles that have castle and keep overlay to them.

[monochromatic]

I don't know about this, but I've never seen the AI so stupid. I mean, really stupid. Like a thunderer with 5hp walking up to a 4hp troll and attacking it with its dagger from flat terrain and dying. Or a 10hp berserker going out of its way onto flat terrain to attack a full heath bat. Do you know what's up?

Btw, Valgard is a really interesting scenario. Add shroud, and I think it would be a masterpiece.

Edit: Major Bug. I reloaded the scenario on turn 7. And magically, all the bats disappeared! Except for two, but yeah. I remember seeing a similar problem on the changelog, but it was fixed back in 1.7.12. Hmm....I've attached a save.

TT-Valgard-Auto-Save7.gz

No bats!

(67.83 KiB) Downloaded 217 times

Edit2: Another bug. Everytime I kill Machkov in the Wooded Pass, the game crashes.

[artisticdude]

About the stupid ai: I'm posting from my laptop right now, so I can't look it up, but perhaps I have their agression set really high. I'll look into it.

About the crashing: I think I know what's causing it. My text editor automatically conversts asterisk points to a single symbol that is unreadable by the wesnoth engine, and causes the game to crash with no warning. I probably missed one when I converted the symbols back into asterisk points.

About the bats: Never seen that before, will look into it.

Thanks for the reports, I'll fix them as soon as possible.

I'm going to give all the maps a complete overhaul in one of the upcoming versions, because there are honestly only a few maps that are small enough or balanced enough to stay as they are.

[Hulavuta]

Okaaaayy...in the last "final boss" level, I think you should eliminate the part with the choice. For one, it doesn't really have any effect on gameplay, because the player just gets irritated for losing and then just reloads their last save. I also find it kind of silly that Taraent would just offer a surrender like that. I mean, nothing in the story foreshadows that, unless I'm missing something.

[artisticdude]

Oh shoot, is that still in there? I could have sworn I removed it. I was learning how to create options when I created that scenario. But I agree, it has a hugely negative impact on gameplay. Perhaps there should be some other consequence, rather than the player being defeated, but for now I'll just remove it entirely.

Here's the basic goals I've set for each version of the resurrected campaign:

Spoiler:

*Planned for 1.1*

-Changed Teraent's son's name from Haldric to Erlan
-Grammar corrections
-Story enhancement
-WML cleanup
-Removed some unnecessary remnants of SotBE
-Selected music for each scenario based on the scenario's mood and setting ,rather than the random music that formerly accompanied each scenario with little or no relation to the scenario's mood or setting
-Corrected map and scenario names to correspond, also numbered the maps and scenarios for easier reference


*Planned for 1.2*

-Complete revision of maps, which includes new unit placements, starting positions, number of leaders, etc. Because this is such a monumental task, this one enhancement will comprise nearly all the updates in 1.2.
-More WML cleanup as the maps are revised
-Possibly change the type of recruits available to the sides in each scenario depending on how overpowered the scenario is
-Possibly cut down on the overpowered units such as the glyph guards and mountain loyalist units


*Planned for 1.3*

-Revise all units
-Revise all recruits available to leaders throughout the campaign
-Balance the carryovers throughout the campaign
-Another piece of story art showing the northern mountains


*Planned for 1.4*

-Better custom art for Teraent as a dark sergeant
-Possibly custom art for King Konrad and Teraent as a lich
-Add randomness throughout the campaign (random events, unit spawns, time of day when you start the scenario (in scenarios in which a random start time wouldn't conflict with the objectives or too much with the strategy), names for a few less important characters


*Planned for 1.5*

-Balance the campaign across the three levels of difficulty, or possibly get rid of one or two levels of difficulty
-Make any final changes, declare project finished (except for version porting if necessary)

[zengya]

hi,
I played the campaign and enjoyed it.

I had the same problem with the bats (where they disapear when reload), and the game crashed when a soldier levelled up.

BUT now I'm on "Lifting the Siege", I killed everyone but Teraent; an I can't find any kind of hint for where to look for his "hiden life".

Can you give me one ?

Thanks

[David_GG]

Have the same bug with bats and soldier level one evolution, over v1.8. And the bats issue also happens just if you go to "back to turn X ", its seems like a one shot scenerario XD....

About balance in difficult (?) level , i feel the firsts scenarios until Vangard extremely easy. Vangard so but is really a master piece idea.Also to achive gold is too much easy 1090 getting into the report scenario, and the report scenario gives you money, I appear into The Wooded Pass with 2342 of gold¡¡¡, cause it counts turns it seems....

Still playing keep repoting.

[markm]

I suspect that units vanishing when you try to load a savegame might be due to their all having the same ID. Sometime recently giving multiple units the same ID became a no-no.

-MarkM-

[Elvish_Hunter]

I suspect that units vanishing when you try to load a savegame might be due to their all having the same ID.

Yes. I checked the code and found that there is id=Blood Bat in every bat's [unit] tag. Remove this line from each [unit] tag and the problem should be solved. Or better, to have a more clean code, replace all bats' unit tags with

Code: Select all

{GENERIC UNIT 3 "Vampire Bat" X Y}

and the game crashed when a soldier levelled up.

This is due to having, in the cfg of Soldier unit, advances_to=swordsman. It should be changed to

Code: Select all

advances_to=Swordsman

[SFault]

Just played the lifting the siege scenario. The orc hero died, but nothing happened. The reason is that the unit id is Exzarth, but in defeat condition it's called Exzarth Vambrin. Nevertheless, after this I killed all the enemy units, but nothing happened. It seems that there is no victory condition

In general, I liked it so far very much. I don't remember which difficulty level I use (I recall using the hardest on), but it's extremely easy, when you can recruit units and have like 2000 gold. The Valgard's gate level was very nice.