The Black Cross of Aleron (formerly Besieged Druids)

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I'm aware of this, and would probably do it if no-one (including me) can think of a name without such help. :)
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by taptap »

Scenario 8 is an obvious balancing candidate. If you change 40 turn limit to say 28/24/20 (for the different difficulties) you already remove a big part of the surplus gold for the final (I start with 1000, but only after some blatant overrecruiting to get some new interesting initiates). If you touch the turn limits for a number of other fast-to-finish scenarios (e.g. along the coast) you already went a long way towards balancing the campaign - the spamming of sacrificial L0 units isn't such a great strategy anymore as soon as gold gets more restricted.

The staff is definitely not overpowered, in fact it is close to redundant given how often you face cold-resistent undead and the condition to give it to a sorcerer unit. (I gave it to my loyal wisp, who has no magical attack otherwise. The melee is good for retaliation though.) For sorceress-line units (esp. w/ agile, frenzy or faerie fire supertraits) it is almost useless. The ankh necklace somehow didn't work - i didn't get the halo when I picked it up and couldn't see any effect either. Apart from the chest I got all extras, though many of them have no impact whatsoever. The dwarves and merfolk are important, the ghost, the archer had an impact only in the final underground scenario and the drakes only in the swamp.
Last edited by taptap on August 14th, 2012, 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by taptap »

Final: I made 15,16 or so recalls - most experienced elves + the nightgaunt (leaving 740 gold untouched) and finished on turn 12 without losses (no surprise as the enemy has only 300 gold and most of the time is needed to walk towards the enemy). No enemy was alive and I wondered how to fulfil the aim of killing all units (bug if you kill enemy leader last). So I had to create some more enemy units in the debug mode to kill, then I won. As is this is very well winnable with 100 gold as well (L3 elvish recalls are officially worth 50-60 gold per unit!).
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

taptap wrote:The staff is definitely not overpowered, in fact it is close to redundant given how often you face cold-resistent undead and the condition to give it to a sorcerer unit. (I gave it to my loyal wisp, who has no magical attack otherwise. The melee is good for retaliation though.) For sorceress-line units (esp. w/ agile, frenzy or faerie fire supertraits) it is almost useless.
My personal preference is to give it to a runesmith/runemaster, which doesn't normally have a ranged attack. Anyway, you do have a point about it being less useful considering that a lot of your enemies are undead; however, I also have to consider that Sir Malcorn also has the staff and its attacks, and he's chaotic, so it may be a little overpowered on him.
taptap wrote:The ankh necklace somehow didn't work - i didn't get the halo when I picked it up and couldn't see any effect either.
It was broken at one point due to an error in specifying coordinates; if you got it near the river rather than over near the storm trident, then that's why. It's fixed in the latest version... I can't remember if I uploaded it yet, but I'll be doing that within an hour or two.
taptap wrote:Apart from the chest I got all extras, though many of them have no impact whatsoever. The dwarves and merfolk are important, the ghost, the archer had an impact only in the final underground scenario and the drakes only in the swamp.
It's probably best for most of the extras to have little impact; it means I don't need to account for them much when balancing. :)
taptap wrote:Final: I used 340 or so in recalls - all experienced elves + the nightgaunt (leaving 740 gold untouched) and finished on turn 12 without losses (no surprise as the enemy has only 300 gold and most of the time is needed to walk towards the enemy). No enemy was alive and I wondered how to fulfil the aim of killing all units (bug if you kill enemy leader last). So I had to create some more enemy units in the debug mode to kill, then I won. As is this is very well winnable with 100 gold as well (L3 elvish recalls are officially worth 50-60 gold per unit!).
Ah, that's a simple bug to fix. Thanks! Should the goblins be a little stronger, or is the problem just with how much gold you had? (I'll increase their gold, though.)
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by taptap »

Ehm, I could have handled up to 1000 gold enemies easily with the recalls I had, still not using most of my gold. (So in the end giving the AI 600/800/1000 gold might be a good idea for the final, but of course you can't really decide this before balancing the rest of the campaign.)

I used in the final: 4 enchantresses, 2 shydes (+ earendil), 1 druid, 1 champion, 1 hero, 1 about to level fighter, 1 sharpshooter, 1 avenger, 1 about to level ranger, 1 archer, 1 outrider, 2 marshalls (one aged), 1 aged high lord, 1 wisp with staff, 1 nightgaunt - but I didn't have many more levelled elvish units in the recall list (some shamans, a fighter etc.) so even with a lot of gold left if I need more units the rest would have been mainly L0 units.

P.S. It didn't occur to me that a runemaster is a sorcerer unit. I always saw them as skilled craftsmen doubling as fighters. I tried first to give it to the scout drake and then settled for a unit that definitly qualified as sorceress.

P.P.S. I approached Sir Malcorn in scenario 4, but was hard pressed on that front so I finished the scenario the easy way before I lost too many units to him.
Last edited by taptap on August 14th, 2012, 11:13 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Yeah, balancing the later scenarios does get a bit harder. I should probably try to arrange it so that some scenarios are good for building up gold, while others are good for cutting it back... but first I need to determine which scenarios best fit each of those roles.
taptap wrote:P.S. It didn't occur to me that a runemaster is a sorcerer unit. I always saw them as skilled craftsmen doubling as fighters. I tried first to give it to the scout drake and then settled for a unit that definitly qualified as sorceress.
I think my criteria were, roughly speaking, "has a magical attack or levels to a unit with a magical attack", though in actual fact I just listed all the types satisfying those criteria that are available in the scenario. I suppose it'd make sense to change this, since Sir Malcorn can use it without being a "sorcerer" type. :P
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Adamant14 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:
taptap wrote:The ankh necklace somehow didn't work - i didn't get the halo when I picked it up and couldn't see any effect either.
It was broken at one point due to an error in specifying coordinates; if you got it near the river rather than over near the storm trident, then that's why. It's fixed in the latest version... I can't remember if I uploaded it yet, but I'll be doing that within an hour or two.
@Celtic_Minstrel:
No, you didn't update after I told you that the code is broken (version 1.2.2). :)
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Well, it was more than an hour or two, but version 0.3 is now on the add-on server.
Changelog:
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Faerie_Storm »

Here's an idea:
Spoiler:
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Adamant14 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:
taptap wrote:Please don't limit the number of initiates and civilians you can recruit.
I wasn't planning to. In the unlikely event I did, it'd be as a last resort and would be a large limit (at least 100, probably), and probably only apply to the last two scenarios.
Why not limit the number of units.
The initiates are on an island, no help from elsewhere.
It would make sense ...
You can see it as a part of the goal, that the available units are limited.
You have to keep most of them alive to win the campaign. :mrgreen:

It is just a possibility ...
Just a thought, worth to think about :)
taptap wrote:Otherwise you might end up without any possible recruits and have to recall even L0 units! (All other recruits are already limited!)
This will happen if the player plays not good enough. :eng:
And when a player plays not good enough, then he loose the game.
Just fair. :wink:


P.S. The campaign is great as it is.
Its just a thought of mine.
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I've already said that I don't really want to limit initiate recruits. If I did decide to it would probably only be on hard difficulty, and only as a last resort after discovering that balancing based on gold, turn limits, and enemy recruits is not enough.

Also, I quite agree that it'd be realistic to limit them due to being on an island and so forth; however, I don't want realism in my campaign. I want fun. Realism is, in general, not fun.
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Adamant14 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:I want fun. Realism is, in general, not fun.
Adamant14 wrote: P.S. The campaign is great as it is.
Its just a thought of mine.
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Adamant14 »

Is this intended?
If yes, then the next scenario is to heavy with only 120 start gold.
So maybe it is not.

Code: Select all

	id=watery-tunnels


		[if]
			[have_unit]
				id=malcorn
			[/have_unit]
			[then]
				[endlevel]
					result=victory
					bonus=yes
					carryover_report=yes
					carryover_percentage=30                ### what sense makes this, when carryover_add is set to no?
					carryover_add=no
				[/endlevel]
			[/then]
			[else]
				[endlevel]
					result=victory
					bonus=yes
					carryover_report=yes
					carryover_percentage=50
					carryover_add=yes
				[/endlevel]
			[/else]
		[/if]
	[/event]
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

I can't remember my logic in doing that. It may have been accidental, or maybe not. It'll probably be changed once I go through each scenario to try to balance gold and stuff. That said, I'm not quite sure what you're saying is the problem with it... are you saying scenario 5 becomes too difficult if you don't kill Malcorn?
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Re: Besieged Druids campaign

Post by Adamant14 »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:... are you saying scenario 5 becomes too difficult if you don't kill Malcorn?
Yes.

Please set

Code: Select all

carryover_add=yes
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