Choose your side

[Agis]

Greetings.

This is my first post here so first of all a big THANK YOU for all you developers who have made this great game,

My suggestion is: Would it be possible to choose the side you play with in Campaign games?
For example, when you played "An Orcish Incursion" you would be given the choice to play as Elves or Orcs.

Sometimes, when I play I think of what I would do if I were in the opposing army. I often wonder if my plans would work and I really wish I could put them into practice. Futhermore, that would double the value of the Campaign Mode. Any comments?

[Chief_Chasso]

Welcome to the forums.

From a narrative perspective, this wouldn't make much sense. For instance, if you played the orcs in An Orcish Incursion, and you defeated the elves in the first scenario, that would be the end of the story.

[Agis]

I understand. Wouldn't it be interesting in a scenario-by-scenario case, like a strategy drill?

[HomerJ]

It would probably be much easier to make a UMC-campaign that features all the characters from, in this case, AOI, and clone-rewrite all scenarios. I've had this kinda thought very early on in my history with BfW but never got into it.

Greetz
HomerJ

[beetlenaut]

Wouldn't it be interesting in a scenario-by-scenario case, like a strategy drill?

There is a large problem with this: You couldn't possibly lose. The Wesnoth AI is pretty good for a computer program, but it's not nearly as smart as a person. So, in every scenario, it is given two or three times the resources as the human to make it fair--twice the gold, more income, more high-level units, and so on. If you played on the side with twice the resources, it would be so easy it would be boring.

It's not a terrible idea, it just wouldn't work for Wesnoth.

[Velensk]

This reminds me of markm. He once made a campagin where you played through HttT as Li'sar. The problem was that the plot didn't change. So in order to continue, the player actually had to lose, despite having a heavy resource advantage (your enemy did have plenty of gold and leveled units but not enought to make things difficult).

[beetlenaut]

The problem was that the plot didn't change. So in order to continue, the player actually had to lose

That's an interesting idea. He should have turned that one scenario into a cutscene though.

[Velensk]

markm was full of interesting ideas.

I think most of them had usability issues the way he envisioned them though.

It wouldn't just be that scenario. In the next one, you have to chase down an AI Konrad as he tries to cross the river and hope he doesn't die to the fish or the orcs. (And you could still spawn a team of Royal Guards if one of his units got to close to you). Your ability to protect him from the fish is very limited so mostly you have to sit there and ignore him and hope that he gets really lucky.