[interface][mainline] Campaign author's expected XP

[octalot]

I'd like to have a UI hint at the start of each scenario comparing the army that you have to the army that the campaign author expected you to have.
The aim is to be able to realise that your army is too weak earlier, and avoid having to go back and replay multiple scenarios to recover. It also gives a way to check whether a scenario that wiped out a lot of your recall list was meant to be a hard scenario that reduced your army, or whether you simply missed the strategy.

Obviously this means that the campaign authors / maintainers need to add the data.

I'm thinking that there could be three levels of hints (and "off"):

• Obvious spoilers: This is along the lines of "you don't have many arcane attacks, and you'll need them", it gives away information about future scenarios.
• Potential spoilers: This does the checks similarly to the "obvious spoilers" level, but the hints simply say that there's a weakness somewhere, without saying what it is.
• Raw stats: This simply says whether the army is as strong as expected, and the gold as high as expected. This level specifically does not warn when you have a generally strong army with a bad weakness against a specific faction, even if that faction will be the final enemy of the campaign. But (as in example 4 below), it will warn if the weakness is that there aren't enough L3s.
• Off: the current interface, no warning that the army is weak.

It could also useful to allow the hints to be normally off, but in the "campaign statistics" dialog have a hint button that shows which scenario was the one where the army started to lose ground.

Having the UI to set the hint level, there are a few other events hints that might be triggered from WML based on the hint level (at the bottom of the examples section).

Spoiler warning: I've tried to anonymise which campaign each example comes from, but there are spoilers below.

For the examples, 3 L2 (impact,arcane) means 3 level 2 units whose primary damage type is either impact or arcane. The logic probably needs to count an about-to-level unit as being as good as the level that it will become. It also needs logic for "primary" damage types, because a unit with 7-3 pierce and 4-2 impact shouldn't count as an L2 (impact) unit.

Example 1:
The campaign has three "easy" scenarios in a row, which need to be used for building up gold and levels. The player misses the tactics for the first one, gets the army wiped out, but then plays on for two more scenarios before getting an unwinnable scenario.

• All hint levels: warn that the army is far too weak.

Example 2:
The author is expecting the player to have at least one white mage, 3 other L2s with the right damage types to handle undead, and at least 3 more L2s.
There have been no undead in the campaign so far, and it would be a plot spoiler to say that there will be.
Author expectations: 300 carry-over gold, at least 7 L2, at least 4 L2 (impact,arcane,fire), a white mage
A white mage would count for all three expectations.
A mage of light would count for all three expectations, and maybe it should count as more than 1 L2.

Player's recall list: 250 carry-over gold, 1 mage of light, 3 L3 (impact), 2 L3 (pierce), a few L1s
This needs the logic that 6 L3s are better than 7 L2s.

• Hint level raw stats: gold is slightly low, but the army is stronger than expected
• Hint level potential spoilers: same as raw stats only
• Hint level obvious spoilers: same as raw stats only

Player's recall list: 100 carry-over gold, 10 L2s with pierce damage, no L2s with arcane or impact damage, lots of L1s

• Hint level raw stats: gold is very low, but the army is stronger than expected (*this is an evil hint, it misleads*)
• Hint level potential spoilers: gold is very low, army is stronger than expected, but the attack types are not diverse enough
• Hint level obvious spoilers: gold is very low, army is stronger than expected, but then gives the exact tests that are failing

Player's recall list: 300 carry-over gold, 1 mage of light, 2 L2 (impact), 3 L1s (impact) who are about to level, 3 L1 (pierce) who are about to level, a few other L1s
This needs the logic for about-to-level L1s.

• Hint level raw stats: gold is as expected
• Hint level potential spoilers: gold is as expected
• Hint level obvious spoilers: gold is as expected

Example 3:
The campaign diverges, there are two scenarios in each path before the paths rejoin. The first scenario of each path is against humans, the second is either orcs or undead. Each path would be an equal difficulty.

• Any hint level: The hints on the undead path would be the same as those in example 2.

Example 4:
The campaign has a scenario where only the leader and 3 other characters are recalled, and there's no keep at the start of the level.
Author expectations on the preceding scenario: leader L3, 2 L3
The leader is counted for the 2 L3 target, so the expectation is that the leader and one other will be L3.

Player's leader and recall list: L3 leader, no other L3, 20 L2 but none close to levelling

• Any (?) hint level: Warning that there aren't enough L3s

Example 5:
The campaign has a scenario where a group of the player's army defects and become enemies
Author expectations: leader level at least as high as the defectors' leader, at least half as many L2 non-defectors as L2 defectors
This one probably would need to be coded as campaign-specific WML.

Player's leader: the leader is weaker than the defectors' leader

• Hint level raw stats: no warning
• Hint level potential spoilers: leader too weak
• Hint level obvious spoilers: leader too weak

Player's recall list: almost all the army will defect

• Hint level raw stats: no warning
• Hint level potential spoilers: army is stronger than expected, but the attack types are not diverse enough (something campaign specific, based on the criteria for defecting)
• Hint level obvious spoilers: leader too weak, not enough of (specific unit type, or a specific attack type) (doesn't say why, but leads to the non-defectors being leveled)

Other hints 1:
The campaign diverges for one scenario. One path lets you recruit a loyal white mage and has a reasonable chance of all your L2s surviving. The other path is meant to be a challenge and will leave your army weaker.

• Any hint level: Should probably warn at the start of the challenge scenario.

Other hints 2:
A particular unit has a huge surprise bonus, keep them alive for about five scenarios and they become the leader of an allied faction, increasing your income, recruitment types and number of castle hexes that you get.

• Hint level raw stats: no hint if they die (as it currently is)
• Hint level potential spoilers: same as one of the other 2 hint levels
• Hint level obvious spoilers: if they die, a warning that they're really worth keeping alive

The campaign-specific WML already has a last-breath event for this character. If the engine lets the WML read the hint level setting, the rest of this can be implemented in WML.

[Ravana]

I suspect that even if it becomes core, it will all be implemented in WML with power comparing logic in Lua. So technically it should all be possible to implement already. Though without official support I doubt it will get enough data to be useful.

Main difficulty would be getting the maintainers to include that info. For implementing I guess obvious way would be including some kind of data structure in each scenario which the evaluation wml compares to what player has, and returns message if needed.

[beetlenaut]

As a content creator, I am often surprised at the methods players find to get through difficult scenarios. I wouldn't want to tell them that they were "doing it wrong" because they weren't playing the way I expected. There is also another big problem with this plan: A skilled player can get through some scenarios with half the resources of a weaker player. I wouldn't want to accidentally tell a weak player that they were doing fine because I got through the scenario about the same recall list and gold.

The campaign-specific WML already has a last-breath event for this character.

And that's the way this type of hint should be handled I think--by messages in the context of the story at specific points when necessary. Failing to give the player a hint when they will face a large disadvantage should be considered bad form at least, and maybe even a bug. (UtBS is the biggest offender of this rule in mainline, but it's being worked on.)

If that's not enough, there is another, better way to handle this I think: With different levels of walkthroughs. We already have fairly specific walkthroughs, but we could also add less specific ones that only list what kinds of units and gold you should have after each scenario. There are a lot of people with the skill to do that, and it wouldn't require getting the content creators to add this information (which would be a challenge impossible, as Ravana pointed out).

[Chewan]

A well-elaborated proposal... A lot of work for campaign authors / maintainers... unnecessary, if there was a UI hint at the start of each campaign evaluating the player's qualities as a warlord (based on the standard difficulty levels, the number of save-loads, total kills in Wesnoth...)!
Just kidding, perhaps I don't see all the benefits of this idea...
Units gain XP (or not) – what's the problem with the 'commander' gaining XP by replaying a scenario/campaign?
Many/All ? campaign creators give special consideration to the replay value of their work, and IMO, scratching one's head a little over the best strategy, accepting that one failed to use the proper technique or look through the author's conception, dealing with the unexpected... all this is part of the fun. Fantasy game doesn't necessarily mean that things stray in ALL aspects from real life.
Adding walk-throughs seems to me an easier and better way to solve issues with a player's lack of time, patience, experience – even bugs due to yet unbalanced or insufficiently thought through campaigns.

[ancestral]

I think campaign authors should be concerned about this, but I don’t think specific keys need to be implemented here. Simple if/then WML can trigger a message before or after a scenario. Better scenario design solves this problem. (Warn the player, grade the player, reward the player or help the player out, or cause a “mission failed” if the player doesn’t have enough resources to effectively continue.)