Scenario 23: Test of the Clans

[josteph]

Thanks. I think the hint shouldn't just repeat what Lord Bayar said but explain it in different words (and perhaps in out-of-world terms, which are inappropriate for dialog), so I changed "defeat" to "reduce to 0HP". And I made the second part of the sentence more generic since I intend it to teach players that dialogs may contain hints. (The help says that explicitly as of a month or two ago, actually, but still.) See https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/pull/4329, what do you think?

[Poison]

For 1.16, heh? It's great. Just have it there as a note. The knights are a big help in the final battle so a hint can't hurt. Something entirely unrelated, why didn't i have dwarvish guardsmen in my recruit list after i met the dwarves? Was this a bug or were they intentionally removed?

[josteph]

New PRs are created against master, but I'll backport it to 1.14 too after merging to master. To get Guardsmen you need to save the ally leader in The Lost General (that's documented in the walkthrough, and in the HttT secrets).

[Poison]

New PRs are created against master, but I'll backport it to 1.14 too after merging to master. To get Guardsmen you need to save the ally leader in The Lost General (that's documented in the walkthrough, and in the HttT secrets).

Oh, I see, yes he perished before i managed to reach him, the orcs got really lucky and killed him.

[octalot]

Maybe we should add a hint on easy, either a narrator's message at the end or by listing it as a bonus in the objectives.

[Zrevnur]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?

1.14.9 Challenging (in Ironman mode), played once.

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

Winning 5, only got one leader. Played very bad - one of my worst plays in this campaign. In part I underestimated (didnt use gold early on etc) it and in part it was just bad play. At first I thought I could get more/all leaders then I abandoned it as it was clear I would have 50 kills long before I could potentially manage that. There was also the problem with (3).
With better play simply winning would be easy. How hard getting all the leaders would be I am not sure. Probably depends on available recalls. Silver mage assault + Merfolk assault would probably make it easy. Otherwise not sure how the AI would play. It seemed to behave a bit weirdly in this scenario.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

I didnt know if I had to kill the enemy leader/s with my leader or if it was enough to use any unit.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Clear except for point 3.
Delfador the bully: "We come in peace. Submit or you will be removed."

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

The major challenge is not losing important units to charges. That also makes map control harder. Horsemen derivates are probably also better than other recruits for the open scenario and the enemies start with map control and extra income. So its all weighted against the player. Normally the AI is much easier to outplay. But the oneshot capable longrange Lancers partially equalize that.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

7. It would be more fun (maybe 9) if it wouldnt end at 50 kills as it would then be necessary to actually "win properly".

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

Having to avoid kills to get the bonus is a bit weird. Dont know.

[lifaen]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?

Version 1.12.6, medium

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

About 5, probably more difficult if your goal is to defeat all 4 enemy leaders.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Very clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Pretty clear in general, though it would probably be helpful for new players to state more directly that every leader you defeat will be available to you in the next scenario.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

• Winning without losing a unit above level 1: It takes careful planning to keep your high level mages and elvish rangers/avengers/sharpshooters out of the range of enemy knights and lancers during the day, moving them into range behind a line of dwarvish guardsmen at dusk, letting the dwarves take the heat of the initial attack and then killing the knights and lancers with your mages and archers during the night. This strategy also requires that you start the scenario with quite a bit of bonus gold from the last one, because while dwarvish guardsmen are the only lvl-1 unit that can reasonably be expected to survive an attack from a single lancer, quite a few of them will still die.
• Defeating any of the leaders but the south-eastern one: Li'sar (with the sceptre), Delfador, an elvish sharpshooter and a handful of guardsmen as bodyguards will take care of that guy within the first few turns. But after that, it seems to be nearly impossible to even get near one of the other leaders before you exceed the 35-kill limit and without losses on your side that would outweigh the benefits of getting a few extra grand knights (at least on the direct way – I suppose you could take out the north-west leader with an army of mermen and the other two with a combination of gryphons and silver mages).

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

8, because for a change, my favorite strategies for the HttT campaign do not work here:

• Simply out-recruit and overwhelm the enemy: Due to the abundance of easy-to-hold villages and the many loyal units available to the player, you can play most scenarios with a slightly too large army (making it easier to avoid casualties among your important units) and still have a positive income. Here, you will need quite a few non-loyal troops to keep your important units safe. Also, this is the only scenario in the campaign where the enemy uses village grabbers with lots of MP (knights and lancers) that are superior to yours (gryphon riders) in one-on-one combat.
• Hold the edge of a high-defense terrain and let the enemy come to you: You can try holding the two forest-patches in the middle of the map with a bunch of elves, but while they will avoid most of the hits there, the ones that do hit will still kill them faster than they can heal because of the huge damage that even a single charging hit does, so this won't work for more than a few turns.
  So while I normally prefer to avoid open-field battles with expendable units on the front-line, that seems to be the only reasonable option here, making for an interesting change.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

The AI could be a bit less suicidal – after playing Wesnoth for a while, you get used to the AI not protecting its mounted units against high-level archers, but here enemy lancers will actually charge at fully healthy grand knights if you let them. Of course you can adjust your strategy to this behavior once you know it, but I still found that kind of weird.