[UMC] Campaign idea focusing on asymmetrical warfare

[gooby]

I have an idea in embryo for a user-maintained campaign. Wesnoth has a lot of opportunities for unconventional warfare, especially as regards human scofflaws like the Poacher line who fight well in swamps, etc. Nonetheless, there's an element of asymmetrical warfare that's generally missing from mechanics, if not plots, from what I can tell. That is the element of the side that is superior in training and equipment alienating civilians with their heavy-handed tactics and turning them into supporters or even fighters for the underdog. This has been in some campaign plots, like that of Liberty, but it hasn't been mechanically integrated into the campaign. So, to be clear, what I am proposing is a campaign where you are fighting a very superior opponent, with mostly Lvl 2 and higher units, in large numbers, too. But they are handicapped by the fact that the actions they take lead to a lot of alienation in the people. As the player of the campaign, you can take actions to aid this process of alienation that is useful for your purposes, maybe even dirty ones, like using civilians as a shield in the way that the Vietcong did. Add to this the other elements of guerrilla warfare that have cropped up in Wesnoth from time to time, like terrain advantages for your side, and I think you would have a really interesting UMC or maybe even mainline campaign.

[Elfarion]

This sounds awesome! I imagine, it could be done by implementing certain conditions that change future scenarios. So your decisions and their consequences would influence other parties' behaviour. I am not familiar with coding scenarios, so I can't tell how it would be done specifically, though.

[Shinobody]

There are lot of units and skills that would be perfect for such campaign (conceal, poison, backstab, ambush etc.) as properly used they'd allow to defeat technically stronger foe.
Also, stealing villages (reminiscent of IRL cutting supplies) is already a viable tactic in Wesnoth.

[gooby]

There are lot of units and skills that would be perfect for such campaign (conceal, poison, backstab, ambush etc.) as properly used they'd allow to defeat technically stronger foe.
Also, stealing villages (reminiscent of IRL cutting supplies) is already a viable tactic in Wesnoth.

Cutting supplies is a facet of just about any war. At a strategic if not tactical level, WWII (Pacific Theater) was as conventional as any other war and a major part of our victory was just ... strangling the resource-bare nation of Japan. By the end, they had amazingly diminished access to oil, rubber, ammunition, even food if I remember correctly. It might well have been possible to win easily at that point without dropping the atom bomb, but that's another story...

Anyway, conceal, poison, etc. are great. What I am talking about though is something not captured in those abilities: alienation of the civilians working in favor of the underdog.

[Shinobody]

How about something like this?
"Guerilla" factions would be unable to recruit units in keeps, or capture villages - instead, they'd be able to get troops from villages, though selection would be random. To compensate, it'd allow to get units normally unavailable - loyal, or already experienced. Also, villages visited by guerillas would start sending income to them, yet without being actually captured - they'd still belong to player who had them before, and send them income too. Only way for "organised" player to get villages to stop helping guerillas would be to visit them with troops (as if to get rid of collaborators).
Also, instead of a single leader, guerillas could start with multiple (only for purpose of winning conditions) as to symbolise how hard is to fully destroy decentralised militias.

If we'd want to go deeper, there could be some kind of "reputation" mechanism which would change with some actions (e.g. ability to pernamently raze villages from map, or force level 0 civilians to join you for free - would decrease reputation, while capturing/visiting villages would increase it). Reputation would influence recruitment prices for both "organised" and "guerilla" factions, and quality of availible recruits for guerillas. Both sides could also use special untis that can influence the reputation (similar to real-world propaganda). Such mechanism could show how reliant guerillas would be on support of local population.

[gooby]

Something like that, but of course there should also be opportunities for the superior force to aggravate the villagers. (Including opportunities for you, the player, to goad them into doing so.)

[taptap]

Cutting supplies is a facet of just about any war.

Yes, just one very hard to integrate in a game like Wesnoth. I found WiF (World War II board game) has a great way to do supply - but I wouldn't want it in Wesnoth.

Imo asymmetrical warfare is best done with L0 / L1 mix in special terrain, swamps for saurians or poachers, forests for elves - and it already happens in many scenarios. Say Northern Rebirth 1st scenario, Invasion from the Unknown 2nd scenario, Legends of Wesmere (when you start with Kalenz and without your recalls) against L2 enemies, several scenarios in Panther Lord, Dead Water 1st scenario, The Roar of the Woses - several scenarios and probably many more. In a way you can say most of Battle for Wesnoth is asymmetrical warfare, because you often have disadvantage in strength but advantage in terrain, initiative.

[gooby]

I'm not just talking about the rock-paper-scissors model. I'm talking about alienation. See above.

[Midnight_Carnival]

Sounds great, but a question:

these civilians - are they units you recruit/find on a map or are they "creep" units? I personally have no objection to these, but I can see how a new computer player with a different AI which controls the units which do not belong to one player or another might be difficult to code.

Had and idea myself for a map in which unoccupied villages recruit peasants, woodsmen, etc... while mountains/forests recruit wolves or outlaw units and so on, pretty much at random, not every turn. These units would defend themselves if attacked and might side with one player for various reasons. Your style of play might determine which type of "natural" unit sides with you. I gave up becasue I'm a lazy and desponent git

[Groggy_Dice]

One of Bob the Mighty's old (1.4) multiplayer scenarios, "A Nation Betrayed", claims to feature "a special village-loyalty system, allowing players to generate funds and swing the support of the townships in their favour" as insurgents rise up against their king.

[Chrysophylax]

Cities of the Frontier has a lot of very useful code, including stuff to make wild animals and bandits (as I recall, it uses 13 sides, most of which are empty on turn one). Invaders in THoT and Northern Outpost in EI both spawn enemies when villages are captured, while Liberty has villager units. A New Land has code for making special abilities and modifying terrain. It shouldn't be too hard to combine these.

The system I'm imagining would use variables something like this:

Spoiler:

wild_animal_spawn_rate governs the rate at which wild animals (wolves, gryphons, bats, giant rats, etc.) spawn, duh. This should slot neatly into the CotF code. wild_animal_roaming and wild_animal_aggression could be used to alter their behaviour.

bandit_spawn_rate and guerilla_spawn_rate govern the number of bandits (hostile to all) and guerillas (hostile to specific sides - you can have pro-enemy partisans as well as pro-player ones!) that spawn in open terrain. This should also be easily accomplished with CotF code - it'll even make groups of them and increase their power for you. bandit_spawn_rate increases over time, while guerilla_spawn_rate decreases over time and increases when the guerillas' enemies do provoking things. Both decrease when units of the appropriate side die. Note that CotF has bandits who capture and bandits who raze - the latter kind should probably be left out of this campaign.

angry_villagers governs the number and level of the villagers (peasants, woodsmen, ruffians, poachers, thugs) that spawn when a village is captured or razed. Razing spawns more and better units. Capturing, razing and killing villagers boost it, but it slowly declines over time. I can't think of a convenient way to include the number of times a particular village has been triggered - you'd need a separate variable and capture event for each village. The villagers decapture villages in the same way as the ones in THoT. You might be able to use protect_location to make them protect the village which spawned them (by storing with kill=no the capturing unit, with a filter to prevent villagers triggering it - I'm not sure whether first_time_only=yes would apply before the filter), but it will make them protect every village.

The overall effect should be to create wild animals that attack everyone who gets close, bandits who attack everyone and try to capture villages, guerillas who attack specific teams and try to capture villages, and villagers who try to defend their homes.