Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

[UK1]

Alright, I did play what was finished through on the difficult setting. I got kind of shafted by luck several times and was unable to beat it without reloading. It basically went like, "Wow, 9/10 strikes missed on 60%? I think not." I think it's incredibly challenging, but manageable. I really liked the story and I really liked all of the scenarios with a minor exception that I will get into in a moment. I just want to say thank you for being a part of the community and for contributing what looks like it's going to be an excellent campaign.

My only issue is the Bandits scenario. You're essentially pitting a bunch of Footpads and Thugs against Undead that don't have anything besides Skeletons and WC's. Engaging them in an actual battle was suicide, so the scenario kind of forced me to employ cheap gambits as opposed to actual strategy; such as knowing how the AI responds to bats taking villages and what-not. Essentially, I spent the first three turns advancing to draw them down, spent the next three turns retreating while moving my bats around and taking their unprotected villages, drew them to my keep and killed them in detail. It was hard in the sense that if I had approached it as a tactical wargame, I would have lost horribly because I really had no answer to Footpads. But it was easy in the sense that if I approached it through a series of clever tricks and AI-preying knowledge, I couldn't possibly fail. Essentially, my problem with the scenario is that I wasn't playing Wesnoth. I was playing "Ukraneean Takes Advantage of His Knowledge of the AI To Win".

That being said, there are several responses that people will have to this that are so hopelessly predictable that I will address them right here.

Spoiler:

"In warfare, sometimes you have to retreat/employ maneuvering tricks/dance around the enemy to engage in a war of attrition/wear them down/tire them out."

I don't have a problem with any of that. I have a problem with the fact that I was forced to un-immerse myself and metagame in order to win. A player who had a brilliant knowledge of tactics, perhaps even Wesnoth tactics, but had never played against the AI could not have done what I did. Your objection is ridiculous and entirely non-sequitur (as that's not what I was arguing) and if you thought this while you were reading what I read, then you should cry.

"I/So-and-so played that scenario and I/they engaged the enemy head on and won, and it was glorious, and the women and children rejoiced!"

Good for you. You succeeded where I failed miserably because I couldn't for the life of me figure out a way to engage a superior force with units that preyed on my units' weaknesses in a direct confrontation and not get my butt handed to me. You are clearly a Wesnoth legend, here is your laurel, and please accept my daughter's hand in marriage.

"Making you exploit your knowledge of the enemy is good!"

Not of it's metagaming. A Legitimate exploitation of my knowledge would be anything that I can look up in the Wesnoth encyclopedia.

"Clearly you should have recruited more Walking Corpses as they do not have an impact weakness."

Walking Corpses are more luck reliant. Against Footpads; a unit which already has 70% defense on the vast majority of this map, that would be unwise.

"Clearly you were bad at the last scenario so you didn't have enough gold in this scenario."

False, I did quite well in the scenario before this one and, besides, a given scenario really ought to be possible with the default amount of gold. But that's beside the point.

If your objection falls under any of these, please just refer to my pre-recorded answers.

Bonus Round: "What?! A scenario has to be possible with the default amount of gold?! But [insert objection]!"

Yeah, I realize that this is up for debate. I can go into the reasons why I feel that way, but I won't right now as we've already thread-jacked enough by you responding to what was really just an offhanded comment.

[8680]

Your objection is ridiculous and entirely non-sequitur (as that's not what I was arguing) and if you thought this while you were reading what I read, then you should cry.

The tone of this passage in particular, and of your pre-emptive responses to the “several responses that people will have to this that are so hopelessly predictable” in general, seems to me to be rather uncivil. In future, please do try to be civil, per Posting Guidelines point 1b if nothing else.

[beetlenaut]

I just want to say thank you for being a part of the community and for contributing what looks like it's going to be an excellent campaign.

I'm glad you are at least mostly enjoying it.

About Bandits: I did design it to be beatable legitimately. I always do most of my fighting near the village south of the center, and none near my keep. I mostly keep my units in the trees, so the enemy units are forced to attack from the path. That makes the footpads beatable, and the others easy to kill. I do keep bats around the villages to the east, retaking them when I can, but not trying to hold them long. That seems like a natural idea though, and not metagaming, because of the large number of villages on the coast there. I've beaten this scenario four or five times this way on hard, and the last time was with only 18 extra gold. So, you don't need to take advantage of the AI to win.

[UK1]

I just want to say thank you for being a part of the community and for contributing what looks like it's going to be an excellent campaign.

I'm glad you are at least mostly enjoying it.

About Bandits: I did design it to be beatable legitimately. I always do most of my fighting near the village south of the center, and none near my keep. I mostly keep my units in the trees, so the enemy units are forced to attack from the path. That makes the footpads beatable, and the others easy to kill. I do keep bats around the villages to the east, retaking them when I can, but not trying to hold them long. That seems like a natural idea though, and not metagaming, because of the large number of villages on the coast there. I've beaten this scenario four or five times this way on hard, and the last time was with only 18 extra gold. So, you don't need to take advantage of the AI to win.

*shrug* I could be completely off-base and I was just entirely missing something. That's totally possible. Maybe the AI would have spread out more than I predicted by the time it reached me or something. My playing keep-away with a quarter of his forces may have just been a cop-out, but at the time it was the only path I saw to victory.

[beetlenaut]

I stayed up way too late a couple nights, and instead of working on later scenarios, I rewrote Becalmed (scenario 4). The ship now has two decks, a few villages, and a time limit.

I also tweaked the difficulty of Following the Shadow (scenario 6) on hard. I made the AI concentrate on recruiting pillagers since those are harder to deal with. It's not a lot harder, but you may have trouble if you don't finish the previous scenario in good time.

[beetlenaut]

Chapter 2 is out now! It's a little light on story art, but it's all there. I did break a rule though. After some changes, there are now two battles against similar enemy units. Oh, well. It's still not all orcs all the time.

Tell me what you think.

[Crow_T]

I didn't even notice that this was expanded until yesterday

I'm playing on easy so my feedback may not be valid, but anyhow...

Spoiler:

On the zombie wave one, is there a micro ai in use? I actually scared them into a corner with a couple of wraiths on the front line. I would say on easy you could really increase the number of zombies, maybe by 1.5X. The second wave was just a couple?

[revansurik]

Well, this weekend I decided to celebrate the oncoming semestre's end by playing some Wesnoth campaign - something I hadn't done since last year, and so I downloaded this new campaign. So far, I'm enjoying it; I'm fond of female protagonists, and Ardonna looks cool with her somewhat nonchalant way of doing things (or so she looked to me). She also sounds a bit naive too, as she refers to her undead as 'friends'; considering how she grows fond of her first bats, she sounds like she has some attachment to her creatures (at least in an owner-pet way). I might be reading too much into her, but I'm kind of expecting some sort of brutal disillusionment, like her minions turning against her, to take place
As for the balancing, I played it on Normal, and I found it well-balanced overall, though the one in the ship was no challenge, as those sailors are no match for skeletons and ghouls. BTW, I really liked the ship; though it looked weirdly oversized in the Blackwater Port scenario, the ship fight was really cool - though I didn't understand why I could send my units inside the ship; did I miss something, or am I not intended to go there?
A little suggestion I might give would be related to the battlegrounds scenario. Being a campaign that takes places very earely in Wesnoth's history, when the humans still knew little of the land and its past, adding a few unique ruins and pickable items (like ancient elven weapons and magic robes) might give an interesting, gloomy and mystic feel to the scenario. Though, considering that it's not a particularly large scenario which has weak(?) opponents, maybe such details are not important at all.
Anyway, I'll be waiting for the next and final chapter. Good thing you'll release it in mid-July, by then I'll be on vacancies

[beetlenaut]

Spoiler:

On the zombie wave one, is there a micro ai in use? I actually scared them into a corner with a couple of wraiths on the front line.

I don't know why that happened but there is no micro-ai. I'll see what I can do later. This scenario is not meant to be that difficult on any level, but I made it easier on normal than on hard of course. Perhaps I went too far.

I didn't understand why I could send my units inside the ship; did I miss something, or am I not intended to go there?

I'm not sure I understand this. Do you mean you were unable to use the bottom half of the map on 04_Becalmed? It should be accessible through the trap doors on the top as long as the stairs on the bottom level are not occupied. (That's a limitation of the BfW engine.) Could that have been the problem?

adding a few unique ruins and pickable items (like ancient elven weapons and magic robes) might give an interesting, gloomy and mystic feel to the scenario

There are some ruins, particularly on 11_Battleground, but I'm not going to add items. I do like to get them (as a player), but they also cause me problems, as the units with them are suddenly special and too important to lose. I am always tempted to save-load to get them back.

Chapter 3
The first half of chapter 3 is on the server now. A chunk of real life hit and left me without my computer for a while, which is why the campaign isn't finished yet. The rest is being worked on though, and really should be finished in another week.

[beetlenaut]

Finished! The final scenario took me a long time, but I think it turned out pretty well. Let me know what you think.

In other news, I made Training_Session more of a challenge on all difficulties.

[Velensk]

I've been playing through again now that it's completed. The ship level is so much better now.

I post to report a bug: On the level where you run past the goblins to enter a cave all of the 'sighted' events fired the firs time I moved a unit.

[beetlenaut]

I've been playing through again now that it's completed. The ship level is so much better now.

Yeah, there were some good suggestions. Glad to hear you approve!

I post to report a bug: On the level where you run past the goblins to enter a cave all of the 'sighted' events fired the firs time I moved a unit.

It seems that the development version is still a moving target, and a change in 1.11.16 broke my events. Thanks for the report, and it's fixed on the server.

[caoraivoso3]

well i played all the campaign and i think the story was nice, but it ended to early, we need to know the end and we also need to have bad and good things in the story because this story was to straightforward if you know what i mean.

[beetlenaut]

well i played all the campaign and i think the story was nice, but it ended to early, we need to know the end

But what is the end with an immortal character? I had to stop at some point, so I stopped when the main character

Spoiler:

got disgusted and removed herself from the world. (At least for the time being.) There will be no more battles for her, so you can't continue to play. But there is a continuation to the story: Descent into Darkness. The book that Mal Keshar reads is Ardonna's journal. (If that was not obvious, let me know.) As for Ras-Tabahn, we know he fails because Elensefar is not a haven for dark magi.

we also need to have bad and good things in the story because this story was to straightforward if you know what i mean.

No, I don't know what you mean. Good things:

Spoiler:

Ardonna creates unit types, meets friends, and accomplishes her main goal.

Bad things:

Spoiler:

Ardonna's interests carry a death sentence, she is hated and attacked everywhere in Wesnoth, and in the end, she has failed to accomplish one of her goals.

What kind of change are you suggesting?

[zookeeper]

As I resumed from the last save of the earlier version and played up until scenario 12, I noticed a few typos and minor polish issues:

- "Hold you tongue!"
- "Sluggish water water pooled [...]"
- The image for the "you can now recruit ghosts" message is a scaled-down version of the black-backgrounded Ghost portrait.
- Ardonna kept the same Dark Adept portrait even as Dark Sorceress, but switched to the female Necromancer portrait when she leveled up, which I presume is not intentional.