Secrets of the Ancients (Undead Campaign)

[Wayirr]

That would have made it too easy I think.

Well, the player is able to convert enemy bats into zombies but not his own, except for the first one, it seems illogical. Why would not you allow him for example, recruit bat soulless for same price as regular bats (13g) or some more if you feel like souless default cost is too low?

In "reality," a necromancer should be able to raise any unit that dies on the battlefield, but that would be ridiculous.

I guess there might be some restrictions since some corpses might be too damaged to be of any use, though it would be still interesting to see a campaign where necromancers could actually do that.

I think it's more interesting to have a variety of levels, and it's quite possible for units to be overpowered, especially when they are loyal.

The problem with zombies is they are mostly useless in campaigns unlike multiplayer, because in mp you want to kill as many enemies as your could while in sp you also want to distribute XP optimally, which is impossible with zombies as xp poured into them is mostly wasted: you could not advance them past Soulless which is only 13g worth, which is less then its recall cost (20g). I see three possible solutions for the problem: a) lower recall cost for them b) let player recruit nonhuman variations and or soulless directly c) let them level past lvl1.

and it's quite possible for units to be overpowered, especially when they are loyal.

You could make two loyal kids quite powerful if you knew in advance that adept will be able to turn into ancient liches later in game. But if you do not know then footpad/thug line seem better because you could make necromancers from regular adepts instead, but cannot get strong impact units other way. I propose to add some perks to compensate this disadvantage for the case when player picked non-adept path for them earlier.

[beetlenaut]

it seems illogical.

In "reality," a necromancer should be able to raise any unit that dies on the battlefield, but that would be ridiculous.

What I was pointing out with my quote, is that gameplay is always more important than logic. Sometimes logic has to suffer to make the game more challenging or fun.

it would be still interesting to see a campaign where necromancers could actually do that.

Then you should try Invasion from the Unknown.

you also want to distribute XP optimally, which is impossible with zombies as xp poured into them is mostly wasted

If you can't recruit soulless, then XP put into creating them is not wasted. Once they are level-1 though, experience they get is wasted, so it is a tactical decision whether the waste of experience is worth the chance to plague the enemy unit. It's a trade-off, and it's up to you. Trade-offs like this are part of Wesnoth--not to mention life!

You could make two loyal kids quite powerful if you knew in advance that adept will be able to turn into ancient liches later in game.

Weren't the icon, title, image, and faction of the game enough of a hint?! You should also know by this point that you can get death knights, so non-multiplayer units are clearly activated. That's another hint. So, turning them into outlaws is another trade off.

[Wayirr]

What I was pointing out with my quote, is that gameplay is always more important than logic. Sometimes logic has to suffer to make the game more challenging or fun.

I do not see, how exactly not being able to summon bat zombies makes game more fan, I would think otherwise as most of campaigns only offer human zombies to recruit which is a little boring, it could make it a little challenging if you try to keep zombie bats alive like I did, but I do not really like this sort of challenge. Though a compromise is possible, by giving the player a story reason to not being able to do certain things, like "I won't kill my bats to make zombies because I like them and they do not die often by themselves, while if they are killed by others, their corpses have broken wings bones and are useless for that reason" - sort of dialogue somewhere in beginning, warning the player he won't be able to obtain more bat zombies anywhere but in a certain cave.

You could make two loyal kids quite powerful if you knew in advance that adept will be able to turn into ancient liches later in game.

Weren't the icon, title, image, and faction of the game enough of a hint?! You should also know by this point that you can get death knights, so non-multiplayer units are clearly activated. That's another hint. So, turning them into outlaws is another trade off.

It's probably my fault, but I have had no idea I could advance skeletons to death knight until I read this forum thread, so I obtained first knight after gryphon mission, when kids were already lvl3 outlaw.
And same goes to ancient liches. I assumed them to be able to turn into liches in future (since story said something about immortality), but not to ancient ones.

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,
I usually only write stuff, but the introduction looked persuasive enough for me to give this one a try I'll report when I'm finished

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[WhiteWolf]

Hi,
I finished the campaign. I'd say story is a 8/10, but I lacked a twist or something in the end
I really liked the extra graphics, and the little embellishments you made.
Gameplay is more-or-less smooth and balanced, up until the end of the campaign - see later.
I played in Normal difficulty (your easiest), and I consider myself an intermediate/bit-below-intermediate player.
The game is very hard even in this difficulty, but can be made without any further notice.
However, The Mage map is very costly. Wicked, and those high-level warriors are lacked further on. But this is still fine.

My first obstacle was the Abandoned Outpost, alias spider-map. That is simply impossible, due to lack of time. I retried three times, and found out that Chocobones are the best, because they usually one-hit each of them if they are on bad background, but it still takes 10 turns to defeat their first wave, and every second of my units fall. So, in order to get their second party, I'd need to recruit, there is a nice option in the second castle for it, but I'd need to wait for gold to come - but I've only got 32 turns. I couldn't even kill the spiders in that time.. I'd recommend at least +20 turns, it'd be still very hard, because you simply have to kill all of them, since you cannot get by.
A small notice:

Spoiler:

Ardonna says that the spiders are sleeping, but the first wave comes at me anyway. No, they can't see me, but they come anyway. An ai_special=guardian missing from the maybe? The second wave fills the guardian role well.

Sorry, I had to debug through this map. I was left with 3-4 units, and 1 turn left after the fight. Against 6 spiders.
P.S: If I have to lose because turns run out, at least give me a message from one of the characters why that happens A simple 'Defeat' message is very rude to the poor player

I do not know what happenned on the Lava and Stone. Ardonna leveled up to Ancient Lich, so my right-wing party was pretty much unstoppable, and I covered my left wing with Ras-Tabahn, and two more units. The Green Trolls never attacked - they just stopped at the other end of the bridge, and were afarid to attack. Wesnoth bug maybe? Gameplay attached, but thanks to this bug, I could win without any hardship.

SotA-Lava_and_Stone_visszajátszás.gz

(53.39 KiB) Downloaded 574 times

The second obstacle was the dwarf map. Another impossible stuff. Game-replay attached, with this much gold against that many level 3 Lords, I can't manage, sorry.

SotA-North_Knalga_visszajátszás.gz

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I'd need to debug through it, but it'll give me false gold carryover onto the last map, so I can't comment on that one.

I didn't encounter any bugs, only a few little notices:

Spoiler:

On the Mountain Pass where you receive a Chocobone for free - isn't he supposed to be 'loyal'?

On the Mortality map, when Ras-Tabahn is supposed to be lying on the altar, and he's speaking, we can clearly see, that his hidden unit is standing next to the altar. I think you should teleport that unit to the altar tile, to make it a little bit more convincing.

To sum up, I think this is a very good campaign, it starts with brutal effects, but then gets a bit monotonous, and very hard due to poor balance.

Good work however, very enjoyable, hope this feedback helps,
Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[beetlenaut]

very hard due to poor balance.

I don't think this is the case. I think you are doing something wrong:

Spoiler:

You sent an army of skeletons against trolls and dwarves. Both enemies are resistant to the skeleton's weapons, and your skeletons are especially vulnerable to theirs! This is a recipe for disaster. The situation would have been reversed in your favor if you had used ghosts. You didn't even need to have them on the recall list already: I started with your Lava and Stone save and recruited two castles full of ghosts (plus a couple magic users). I had no trouble against the trolls, and leveled three of the ghosts too. The dwarves were still tough because three wraiths is a little low, but I got through on the second try there, though with few survivors. I really missed the healer though. You shouldn't have let him get attacked by someone who could kill him. Your other loyals would have been nice too, especially if they were liches. I suspect that your trouble with the spiders was similar. I got through it on hard by using three spectres and four liches plus a few ghosts and ghouls as cannon fodder to protect my important units while they healed. No skeletons, because the spiders do impact damage.

Spoiler:

Ardonna says that the spiders are sleeping, but the first wave comes at me anyway.

She says she hopes they stay sleepy. Obviously, they don't.

No, they can't see me, but they come anyway.

Spiders have very keen senses other than sight, so why not?

On the Mountain Pass where you receive a Chocobone for free - isn't he supposed to be 'loyal'?

No. I couldn't see any reason why.

On the Mortality map, when Ras-Tabahn is supposed to be lying on the altar, and he's speaking, we can clearly see, that his hidden unit is standing next to the altar.

That's obviously a problem, but it works fine when I try it. Can you send me a screenshot so I can see what you are describing? A savefile would be nice too.

Thanks a lot for you feedback! I am planning a minor update sort-of soon, and on easy, I will probably reduce the number of enemies on the maps you had the most trouble with.

[WhiteWolf]

A spider can still one-hit any of my level one ghosts with nets, and my spectres and nightgaunts fell to the mages before...

Well, the Chocobone is not a unit I specifically asked for through recruitment or recalling, it was given to me by stepping onto the bones tile, and since it happenned without me knowing the consequences (and also without any option not to get that rider), I cannot allow myself to recruit Chocobones at will, without getting a non-loyal unit which being lvl2 seriously disturbs my gold income, and thus my gold-carryover. Just kidding. It'd still be fair to label it loyal, but it's your decision

Umm I'm not sure I can make a screeshot, but a replay is here:

SotA-Mortality_visszajátszás.gz

(32.83 KiB) Downloaded 613 times

Spoiler:

I'm talking about the opening animation, when he is already lying on the altar (nice image ), and he says: "Yes. I'm ready. Do it."
During the message (according to my Wesnoth settings) there is a 'selected-style' green edge to tile x,y=11,5, where his hidden unit is standing.

I scanned your .cfg file. Solution is simple:
At this message (line 281), the id of the speaker shouldn't be Ras-Tabahn, but id=necromancer_on_altar
It'll look like this then:

SotA-Mortality_modified.gz

(12.09 KiB) Downloaded 519 times

You can copy the portrait of Ras-Tabahn into the lying-unit's description if you think it's better that way

Best regards,
WhiteWolf

[beetlenaut]

A spider can still one-hit any of my level one ghosts with nets,

Yeah, clearly level-1 ghosts are almost useless against spiders, but spectres are great.

my spectres and nightgaunts fell to the mages before...

Why would you use spectres against the magi? One maybe because of it's mobility, but it's very likely to die. It's the same problem as with skeletons vs. trolls: Humans are resistant to the spectres' damage type, and ghosts are very fragile to theirs. I used a bunch of cheap, level-1 skeletons backed up by leadership and a couple heavy hitters backed up by the healer. Level-1 skeletons with a death knight behind them do more damage than a spectre (potentially, at least) because of the humans' resistances to arcane. And the skeletons don't make you cry if they get taken out in the next turn! You can't always just use your most powerful unit. You need to think about resistances--especially with undead.

Now I see what you mean about Ras-Tabahn. That didn't used to happen. I'll change the id like you suggested.

You make a decent argument about the chocobone too. I'll consider it.

[Inky]

(Campaign v. 1.0.1, Wesnoth 1.12.0, Medium Difficulty)
This is a really excellent undead campaign. Extremely well written text, lots of varied scenarios which encourage using all the different unit types, and a nice challenge too.

I found it pretty balanced. Gets a lot harder near the end, but you get much more powerful units so it evens out.

Didn't come across any bugs, but a couple typos:

Spoiler:

From scenario 1:

" _ 4 III, 23 YW: [underscore is inside the quotation mark]

... Incatations focus the mind to the task.

And in Ardonna's ancient lich description:

"An experienced lich can easily tap into the power of the spirit world and throw freezing lightning to devistating effect, or drain the very life force from a body. The power available to a lich like this is awsome to behold.

Really enjoyed this campaign. Loved how the story explained about how each of the undead units came to be. It's great that there's a use for all the units too; I feel like other undead campaigns like Descent into Darkness only focus on the ghost line. This campaign feels a lot more complete.

Thank you for your hard work!

[Sargon1]

So far I must say immersive atmosphere, excellent art and scripting, great dialogues, but has some balance issues. I'm now stuck in the gryphon map on mormal. I tried every possible battle tactic, I tried every even vaguely viable army choice, from simply calling on my old guard to spamming literally every unit available. I took care not to allow the gryphons to attack from mountains. I tried luring and rushing, I tried capturing and holding villages, I tried to screw around with the AI with bats, all of that with liberal use of savescum, but I always run into the same problem: too many [censored] gryphons. I lure away six with bait, and four more surround the other part of the army. I kill triple my number, but they still keep coming. I'm almost out of the mountains, but there's three more waiting for me there. Eventually, with nowhere to rest, they always dogpile on one of the necros and bury him under their sheer numbers. It would be doable with liches, but normal wizards always get pecked to death.

[Inky]

So far I must say immersive atmosphere, excellent art and scripting, great dialogues, but has some balance issues. I'm now stuck in the gryphon map on mormal. I tried every possible battle tactic, I tried every even vaguely viable army choice, from simply calling on my old guard to spamming literally every unit available. I took care not to allow the gryphons to attack from mountains. I tried luring and rushing, I tried capturing and holding villages, I tried to screw around with the AI with bats, all of that with liberal use of savescum, but I always run into the same problem: too many [censored] gryphons. I lure away six with bait, and four more surround the other part of the army. I kill triple my number, but they still keep coming. I'm almost out of the mountains, but there's three more waiting for me there. Eventually, with nowhere to rest, they always dogpile on one of the necros and bury him under their sheer numbers. It would be doable with liches, but normal wizards always get pecked to death.

Yes, this scenario is quite difficult! My strategy was to use dark sorcerers / necromancers to kill the gryphons and mass skeletons (40% blade resistance, decent retaliation) to shield them.
A few ghosts are really good too because with their mobility they can use hexes your other units can't to finish off wounded gryphons, and only need 2 kills to level up.
I don't think bats are a good choice here - they die way too fast and don't do much retaliation damage. Maybe get a couple for grabbing villages in the beginning - it's worthwhile to grab as many villages as you can since the gryphons will generally leave your villages alone in favor of attacking you.
Having a death knight or two to lead your dark sorcerers and skeletons can help a lot.
Good luck!

[beetlenaut]

I appreciate the nice comments. Thanks!

So far I must say...has some balance issues. I'm now stuck in the gryphon map on normal.

I don't think balance is the problem because people don't usually get stuck here, and you have Inky's replay. Maybe you don't have enough gold. For Normal, 300 seems about right, though you could do it with less.

I played this a number of times on Hard and learned not to stay out of the mountains: your units get the same defense boost as the gryphons, and it leaves you more room to maneuver in the center and rotate wounded units in for healing. All of Inky's advice is right on. I use a bunch of skeleton archers instead of skeletons, but that's more of a style preference. If you want, you can watch my replay on Hard with 194 gold.

[Wussel]

I was very impressed with the ship. Finally a decent sailing boat in Wesnoth!

I was just thinking to myself to give the hull shape 5 seconds but than I got really hooked. Added some planks, some shades and last even some transparancy again. You definitely gave that thing a lot of thoughts.

I even got convinced that different sizes could be done with the terrain thingy, if the cutting would be done accordingly. I did some preliminary tests as well.

Oh, I deceided to test a more teakwood look of the floor only. I did not put the stuff onto the reling files, but you get the picture. If you like any of it please let me know.

This is the version without transparancy.

and the one with it. I decided the dark brown bumpers are not needed below the water line.

Please keep in mind that the reling patch is still original, but could be adapted easily.

[beetlenaut]

I was very impressed with the ship. Finally a decent sailing boat in Wesnoth!

Thanks! I got hooked on the ship for a long time myself. I spent a couple weeks drawing all those details, and cutting it properly did take a lot of thought. By the time I got to the hull, I was getting tired of it though, so that part is kind-of basic. Your hull looks a lot better. I will use it in the campaign if you make it easy for me to drop in. I do think the dark-brown boards should probably go all the way down though. The deck, on the other hand, I don't really like. Mine may be a little too dark, but this one is too light. Some of the details in the ropes and sails get washed out.

I was originally planning to add a ship's wheel in the captain's starting tile, and anchors chained up near the bow. I doubt I will get to it though, so if you are still hooked...

[Wussel]

Here you go. The hull in your format. Version with brownish wood bumbers all the way down.