Rebellion in the North:SP Campaign feedback and reviews

[Evander]

Ok, so this was one I finished quite a time ago on medium difficulty.

Some feedback on this campaign:

Dislikes:
1.) portraits. it's a mess and most of them does not fit the others. main hero portrait, which is a picture could use some reworking: using filters to make it look more unrealistic, cutting it in half so the legs would not be shown etc.
the other portraits like that of an orc leader and wesnoth princess are of a poor quality and really stand apart. This is basically a major flaw of this campaign and ruins it's feeling of integrity
2.) some maps are poorly designed, and appeared as if made by another person. too featureless, too simple, like that of an orc stronghold for example.
3.) dialogues sometime are a mess and contain some strange lines. I personally disliked in some of the last scenario a sentence "in the name of God" as it was ruining any connection to mythology (or lack of thereof) of Main Story Line. Perhaps "in the name of Lady of Light" would sound better and more neutral here
4.) orcs and the way they speak. Sentences too long and too complex (for Eloh, these are orcs!) and orc leader appeared as being smarter than all humans starring in campaign
5.) balance. I can't give you details on map names, but on some occasions when the dialogue stated that this battle will be hard it wasn't and sometimes it was the other way around. don't get me wrong, balance is not bad, but sometimes battles feel uneven and actually they get easier towards the end.
6.) parts of the story line. the only daughter of king of wesnoth marries some rag-tag and unwashed "lort protectur" from far north and no nobles of both lands express their discontent? besides she lacked any charm when compared to princess of westfolk from "Rise of Wesnoth"
7.) most of the missions is very similar to each other. could use some more "narrative" only scenarios for a change

Likes:
1.) campaign is long. this allows you to make some very tough veteran units and use them later on.
2.) battles and balance. apart from some minor problems, campaign is pretty easy and enjoyable. maybe too easy for some, but there is always hardest difficulty
3.) most of the story line. It is good to be back in the lands of Northern Alliance
4.) can't remember any bugs that would otherwise interfered with my gameplay

to sum it up, it's like 6.5/10 for these reasons:
-1.5 for portraits
-1.5 for dialogues
-0.5 for maps

BUT if someone is here only to fight battles and does not care for storyline etc. it's like 8/10


It is still good campaign, one that somewhat fills some holes left by Main Story Line and definitely worth playing.

[chak_abhi]

Thank you Evander for playing "Rebellion in the North" and providing your opinions about this campaign.

1.) portraits. it's a mess and most of them does not fit the others. main hero portrait, which is a picture could use some reworking: using filters to make it look more unrealistic, cutting it in half so the legs would not be shown etc.The other portraits like that of an orc leader and wesnoth princess are of a poor quality and really stand apart. This is basically a major flaw of this campaign and ruins it's feeling of integrity

Yes, I know that the portraits are not up to the mark. But I am helpless here as I am no artist and hence cannot draw good portraits. Unless an artist gets interest in this campaign and provides me some portraits the present portraits will stay, whether I like it myself or not!

2.) some maps are poorly designed, and appeared as if made by another person. too featureless, too simple, like that of an orc stronghold for example.

The maps, like everything in the campaign excluding the portraits have been made by me. I tried to make them as good as I could. Can you please help me to make them better? You are free to send the modified maps in a private message to me.

3.) dialogues sometime are a mess and contain some strange lines. I personally disliked in some of the last scenario a sentence "in the name of God" as it was ruining any connection to mythology (or lack of thereof) of Main Story Line. Perhaps "in the name of Lady of Light" would sound better and more neutral here

I too agree with you on this point. Some modifications will be made soon. However it will be better if you can provide your suggestions to me directly in a private message.

4.) orcs and the way they speak. Sentences too long and too complex (for Eloh, these are orcs!) and orc leader appeared as being smarter than all humans starring in campaign

The only orc who addresses others in a decent manner and shows wisdom in his thoughts is Krag Kumbha. I thought it will be good to show him in good light, different from other orcs. This after all, is the grandson of Karun the Black Eye with whom we are dealing with!

5.) balance. I can't give you details on map names, but on some occasions when the dialogue stated that this battle will be hard it wasn't and sometimes it was the other way around. don't get me wrong, balance is not bad, but sometimes battles feel uneven and actually they get easier towards the end.

The most difficult parts are supposed to be in the middle, not at the end. This is like the mainline campaigns LoW, TRoW & NR. The battles at Borstep & Dwarven Doors in the consequetive scenarios are designed to be the toughest. As the campaign draws to an end you build up more veteran units and the going gets smoother. The last battle scenario may take time to finish but it is not at all difficult.

6.) parts of the story line. the only daughter of king of wesnoth marries some rag-tag and unwashed "lort protectur" from far north and no nobles of both lands express their discontent? besides she lacked any charm when compared to princess of westfolk from "Rise of Wesnoth"

The Lord Protector of the Northern Alliance is similar to a king. When the Alliance was founded Tallin didn't want to declare himself as king, so he took the title of Lord Protector. This campaign takes place more than 400 years after the foundation of the Alliance, and by this time they control a significant area north of the Great River, extending from the coast in the west to the boundaries of the Lintanir Forest in the east and some lands even north of the Arkan Thoria. So how is it surprising that the Princess of Wesnoth marries the Lord Protector of the Alliance?
The portrait of the Princess is far from good, but it was the best I could manage. Unless a good portrait is available how will the charm come?

7.) most of the missions is very similar to each other. could use some more "narrative" only scenarios for a change

Please suggest specifically what changes could be made in this regard.

Thank you again for giving your valuable time towards improving the campaign.

[Evander]

Yes, I know that the portraits are not up to the mark. But I am helpless here as I am no artist and hence cannot draw good portraits. Unless an artist gets interest in this campaign and provides me some portraits the present portraits will stay, whether I like it myself or not!

You do not necessarily have to draw them. perhaps taking a pictures and processing them through some filters would give you a cartoon like effect that would be sufficient?
or modifying portraits from the Main Story Line?

The maps, like everything in the campaign excluding the portraits have been made by me. I tried to make them as good as I could. Can you please help me to make them better? You are free to send the modified maps in a private message to me.

The Wesnoth Map Editor is still a stranger to me. When I first fired it up I expected something like editor from Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
It is nothing like, with map looking like it has just a single layer and following a proud tradition of an open source software in being difficult to use effectively without a lot of experience

Still, the maps could use some ornamental only elements

The only orc who addresses others in a decent manner and shows wisdom in his thoughts is Krag Kumbha. I thought it will be good to show him in good light, different from other orcs. This after all, is the grandson of Karun the Black Eye with whom we are dealing with!

as one wise man once said, a very smart orc will equal to a rather common elf.
keeping that in mind, making Krag Kumbha speaking in a way of a revered and eloquent human elder noble is not necessarily the way to go. He could use more teeths you know
take a look:

speaker=Krag Kumbha
message= _ "The leader of the rebels is Bakkhil,who was once one of my most trusted generals.He has accused me of dishonouring the orcish traditions by allying myself with humans,dwarves and elves.He has proclaimed himself as the new sovereign,and by now probably all the tribes have gone over to him.I knew there was no hope from the day Borstep fell to the rebels,and now even the eastern road is blocked.That was my supply line for the four months I am fighting off their forces.Now there is shortage of forces and supplies.Even if they don't attack me outright in this harsh winter there isn't a problem for them as we will surely starve to death.However I am surprised that you have managed to come directly from Dwarven Doors to Barag Gor in this time of the year.Lord Vikash must be really concerned about me."

now try to put that in a smart orcish:

"Their leader is Bakkhil, once one of my most trusted warlords. Treacherous worm accused me of dishonouring our orcish ways by allying myself with humans, dwarves and elves! He then called himself a new Chieftain of all True Orcs and by now most of the tribes have rushed to his banner like the flies to a rotting carcass! I knew that it would be bad from the day Borstep fell to these stinking rebels and now even the eastern road is blocked! That was where I got my supplies from during last four months of heavy fighting... but now no food or new warriors are coming. Even if those maggots don't attack me during harsh winter months, we are likely to starve here to death anyway. You shown a great skill and courage in coming here directly from Dwarven Doors in this time of the year.. perhaps Lord Vikash does have a concern for me...

That's just a quick pinch of an aggressiveness but I hope you understand what I mean?

The most difficult parts are supposed to be in the middle, not at the end. This is like the mainline campaigns LoW, TRoW & NR. The battles at Borstep & Dwarven Doors in the consequetive scenarios are designed to be the toughest. As the campaign draws to an end you build up more veteran units and the going gets smoother. The last battle scenario may take time to finish but it is not at all difficult.

Actually, Defending Dwarven Doors was not difficult

6.) parts of the story line. the only daughter of king of wesnoth marries some rag-tag and unwashed "lort protectur" from far north and no nobles of both lands express their discontent? besides she lacked any charm when compared to princess of westfolk from "Rise of Wesnoth"

The Lord Protector of the Northern Alliance is similar to a king. When the Alliance was founded Tallin didn't want to declare himself as king, so he took the title of Lord Protector. This campaign takes place more than 400 years after the foundation of the Alliance, and by this time they control a significant area north of the Great River, extending from the coast in the west to the boundaries of the Lintanir Forest in the east and some lands even north of the Arkan Thoria. So how is it surprising that the Princess of Wesnoth marries the Lord Protector of the Alliance?

In a fable, maybe it is not. But Wesnoth was wonderfully corrupt at a times and full of politics. Considering that it was NA who begged for help from Wesnoth, it puts them in somewhat vassal-like position.
Perhaps having a king of Wesnoth saying that "maybe.. let's think about it" and then making a campaign about Lord Protector (still a youngster) proving his worth to the great King of Wesnoth.

or perhaps adding some brothers of this princess as to not make this marriage look so dramatic and terribly one sided (seriously if she is the only child of the royal family, a marriage with a foreign Lord would leave a Wesnoth without a heir to the throne a be a cause for a bloody succession wars).

However, this is Your choice of a story line and I am not going to argue with that. It is just my opinion that such an ending, while proper in a fairy tales, would be highly unlikely otherwise

The portrait of the Princess is far from good, but it was the best I could manage. Unless a good portrait is available how will the charm come?

as mentioned above. You can have a picture of some nice girl and add it to complement with picture of main hero

Please suggest specifically what changes could be made in this regard.

like after main hero meets the orc leader, they could have a camp somewhere in the wild discussing strategy and providing more background to the story line.

Thank you again for giving your valuable time towards improving the campaign.

Thanks for making it

[Chep]

I'm currently playing your campaign and I must say that I love it.

There are however a few flaws:

Upon learning that I could only recruit mages (my favourite units!) for a few levels, I went back and recruited about 2 keeps full of them. Since this is a very long campaign they get more useful by the level and make it really easy in the end.

Maybe instead of taking the recruitment option away (or additionally to it) you could limit the number of mages one can recruit.
Also: WHY can I suddenly recruit them? Where do they come from? Maybe you could insert a level here, where the heroes visit some sort of monastery/wizard school and help defend them.

In the battle of prestim I managed to win by turn 14 by killing the orcish leader (I guess assassination with griffons might go even faster, but I wanted the exp for my mages) - and the Orc-Leader who supposedly helped me win never showed up, making the conversation a bit awkward. Maybe you should trigger him to appear once I set a unit on the orcish side of the map? Or if thats a problem because of the griffins maybe have him appear when I kill the orc leader?

And I really dislike the "Saurian Ambush". I mean, Saurians living in a snowcovered forest? WTF? They can't move, neither can half of my units (which is okay) and are easily slaughtered by griffons and mages.

You could have some rebell elves ("you're trespassing, we kill everyone who touches our forest") or wild trolls plus wild ogres, wolves and maybe another yeti to make another interesting level between the two big battles.

This criticism aside: I love this campaign since I get to use my mages for A LONG TIME leveling quite a few impressive cannons

Chep

[Chep]

Sorry for the doubleposting but I seem to have encountered a bug:

The final boss is invincible. All units sent to attack him fail in their attacks.
No one can hit him.

Is that intentionally? Do I have to wait for something/kill every other unit?... It's now turn 11 and my great mages sourround him + the 4 other leaders are dead...

[chak_abhi]

The mages, whom you can recruit from the 3rd scenario onwards have been provided by the Lord Protector. It has been mentioned in the conversation at the end of the 2nd scenario (probably you skipped it). About limiting the total number of mages to be recruited, I had thought about it, but couldn't frame the appropriate WML necessary to make it work throughout the campaign(after all I am a newbie when it comes to matters regarding WML).

As about the "Battle of Prestim", I failed to realise that the enemy leader can be killed before the ally orc turns up. I will have to modify the code slightly so that he cannot be killed before the turn on which the ally reaches. Thank you for pointing it out.

The scenario "A Saurian Ambush" is meant to be a breather between 2 difficult scenarios. It gives you some easy XP and more higher level units which may be needed to face the next scenario. As for the storyline, the saurians did not live in the forest as such, but were resting there, somewhat protected from the bitter cold of the far-north. I can add some wild trolls or ogres as well.

The enemy leader in the final scenario cannot be killed before turn 13. This is a part of the story. (I don't know why you are in such a hurry either to complete the scenario!)

I will definitely take your suggestions seriously. Thank you for playing "Rebellion in the North".

[marecki]

I recently played through the whole campaign (normal, no reloading) and I must say I'm impressed. There's a lot to like here:
- it's long, which means you get to play around with the recall list extensively,
- balance: most scenarios seem well balanced, which is quite an accomplishment in a campaign this long. Some missions near the end seem a bit on the easy side (like the one with the undead), but I guess that's unavoidable considering how powerful Krshan's army eventually becomes,
- it feels like a military campaign, which is awesome, I liked descriptions of the places you get to assault/defend. It was refreshing not to have any mystical stuff, artifacts and such. Also, (almost) no elves, which is always a plus in my book:D,
- alternating between Krshan and Aric threads is a great idea and helps break the monotony. And those cavalry-only levels were extremely fun!
- I really liked how the recruit list changes dynamically: as long as you travel with the dwarves you can recruit them, no more griffons when Sandrom leaves, etc.
That said, there are some things that could be improved. I'm not going to mention portraits (everybody else did!), because it's not really a big deal for me:
- dialogues could use a spellcheck; no spacing after punctuation marks doesn't make reading dialogues any easier,
- map layout is a bit uneven. It's evident you can create some interesting maps (Dwarvish Alliance, Way North), which is why it was surprising to see some rather uninspired stuff as well. For example, frozen terrain in general and frozen mountains in particular seem overused. Yes, I know that most scenarios take place during winter season and winter's harsh up north, but still, gameplay considerations should take priority. As it stands, in missions like Saurian Ambush, enemies can barely move, I just annihilated everything with a couple of quick mages. The map of Borstep is just frozen mountains... everywhere, so again, most units cannot move more than 2-3 hexes. This makes for a very boring "stationary" level, which consists of recycling dwarven lords ad nauseam. This map could certainly use some valleys or roads, or something (which begs the question, how does Borstep actually function without any roads leading to it?),
- I love long campaigns, but still, some missions (again, Saurian Ambush) in RitN seem a bit redundant. With a campaign this long, it's unnecessary to stuff in "encounter" scenarios just to level up more units.
Anyway, thanks for creating this campaign, I enjoyed it immensely. I guess I will be picking up Legend of the North soon.

[chak_abhi]

Thank you, marecki, for playing this campaign and posting your suggestions for improvement.
The dialogue needs to be overhauled, and this will be definitely done. And as quite a few people are wanting changes to the scenario maps of "Saurian Ambush" and "Attack of Borstep", I will take up this too. However at present I am not working on Wesnoth for a while. I will return within a fortnight, and this time I will make tracking maps as well.
Thank you, once more for devoting yourself to "Rebellion in the North".

[SigillumMilitum]

Scenario "Troll Tunnel" is too hard. It's very difficult to bust through FIVE trolls when you have to face them one at a time and they get constant reinforcements.

EDIT: I let the trolls face me on a broader front at the beginning of the scenario and broke through ... I still feel it's excessively difficult, even on "Easy".

[chak_abhi]

Scenario "Troll Tunnel" is too hard. It's very difficult to bust through FIVE trolls when you have to face them one at a time and they get constant reinforcements.

EDIT: I let the trolls face me on a broader front at the beginning of the scenario and broke through ... I still feel it's excessively difficult, even on "Easy".

Is it too hard like the way it is? I prefer to take on the trolls on the area adjacent to the tunnel containing the spider guarding a gold chest, you can take on 2 at a time with 3 dwarves, backed by healers (if you have one). Please try this out. Most of the people who have commented so far have persistently maintained that this campaign is on the easy side (which was my intention).

Thank you for playing "Rebellion in the North". I hope you will enjoy the future scenarios.

[akopciuch]

I've played this campaign before on various versions of wesnoth. I really enjoy it, which is probably why I keep playing it. I'm just giving it another turn using wesnoth 1.10.3, and stumbled upon a problem during the "Old Friends" scenario. Whenever I land on the closest cage or mermen, the trident in the ocean, and all of the other mermen cages disappear from the screen.

I didn't see anything in the text to make me think this was intentional. I briefly scanned the WML file, but I am not familiar with it. I didn't see anything that would make me think this was anything other than a bug? Has this happened to anyone else?

[chak_abhi]

I haven't played "Rebellion in the North" for a long time since now, but when I had played for the last time nothing was wrong with "Old Friends" (or any other scenario). Will you please post a save-game or a replay? If the error is intractable I must seek the help of WML experts. The merman units are not particularly useful in this scenario, but are a must for the next one.
It sounds good when you say that you play this campaign repeatedly. It makes me feel that my hard work is really paying off. Thank you for playing "Rebellion in the North".

[akopciuch]

I did a little more messing around. Running wesnoth with a higher log level (to no avail). Once I actually attempted to play on, after freeing the first mermen, I landed on the position of the trident {1,24}, and behold the object is still there! It seems to me like this is just a drawing bug ? in the current version? Something weird that I'm just going to write off as a one time thing. I've never seen it before, anywhere else, and all that happens is the images disappear, the object and events still occur when you place a unit on those positions though.

Fun campaign ... I like a lengthy campaign. Allows you to build up an army of veteran troops. With a need for a variety of them. Some loyal units, and vaious maps / enemies.

Nice Job!

[chak_abhi]

Well then, the problem hasn't given people a lot of trouble. At least I can breathe freely!
If anyone has any suggestions about how to make this campaign better he/she can post them in this forum or send a private message to me (please don't start nagging me about the portraits again, I have no other options). If anyone wants to help me with the artwork please send a private message to me.
Enjoy playing "Rebellion in the North"!

[chak_abhi]

Well then, the problem hasn't given people a lot of trouble. At least I can breathe freely!
If anyone has any suggestions about how to make this campaign better he/she can post them in this forum or send a private message to me (please don't start nagging me about the portraits again, I have no other options). If anyone wants to help me with the artwork please send a private message to me.
Enjoy playing "Rebellion in the North"!