General Criticism of the Mainline Campaigns

[Yojimbo252]

Perhaps the word criticism is a little too harsh as I'm loving the game and enjoy the campaigns but what I've noticed is that the campaign scenarios (as individual battles in their own right) play very differently to 1v1 or 2v2 and imo what BfW is about.

Sweeping statement I know but let me explain...

My main complaint is the balance between starting gold, number of villages and number of turns for the majority of scenarios. A very typical scenario sees you spending all your starting gold upfront on recalling/recruiting units and then going heavily into debt in the middle game because there's insufficient villages within your reasonable grasp to upkeep your army. On many maps there isn't enough even if you were to control every village.

As a result the struggle for village and hence map control becomes almost insignificant and makes way for more or less a dash for cash to defeat the enemy leader(s) as quickly as possible with your initial force (that is unlikely to expand beyond turn 2-3 because of the negative gold situation above). This is because the return in achieving the objective 1 turn sooner multiplied by the total number of villages on the map (whether you control them or not) far outweighs any advantages of controlling a handful of outlying villages that aren't on your direct route to victory especially when you consider that those bonus gold turns are upkeep free.

Now I like purist fixed orders of battle strategy games as much as the next person but BfW with the gold and recruitment system isn't about that. I was under the impression those aspects were included to foster a dynamic and fluid strategy game that forces the player to adapt to changing circumstances as they select what force composition is best suited to counter what they know of the enemy and as a result the player must secure an economy sufficient to support that.

What I would like to see in campaigns is more emphasis on the ongoing struggle over villages and map control and less on how quickly you can kill the opposing leader(s) with your starting force. To achieve this perhaps we need to see more scenarios with a greater number of villages, less starting gold and less carryover % for early finish bonuses.

Thoughts?

[beetlenaut]

...imo what BfW is about.

BfW was designed for and around campaigns. Multiplayer came later as almost an afterthought.

I was under the impression those aspects were included to foster a dynamic and fluid strategy game that forces the player to adapt to changing circumstances as they select what force composition is best suited to counter what they know of the enemy

That would be nice, but the AI isn't good enough to do that. The only way for it to possibly beat the human player is to overwhelm them with too many units at once.

less starting gold and less carryover % for early finish bonuses.

The carryover was recently changed from 80% to 40% for many campaigns, which also evened out the starting gold.

[Yojimbo252]

...imo what BfW is about.

BfW was designed for and around campaigns. Multiplayer came later as almost an afterthought.

Which was developed first is largely neither here nor there. The fact remains if you're going to have an income, recruitment and upkeep system then scenarios ought to be developed with that in mind. Giving the player a relatively large wad of cash upfront and not enough villages on the map to support the force they can purchase with it but allowing them to go negative is going to foster a fixed order of battle style of game and lessen the importance of securing a strong economy through map control.

I was under the impression those aspects were included to foster a dynamic and fluid strategy game that forces the player to adapt to changing circumstances as they select what force composition is best suited to counter what they know of the enemy

That would be nice, but the AI isn't good enough to do that. The only way for it to possibly beat the human player is to overwhelm them with too many units at once.

Irrespective of AI limitations, there's no reason why you can't provide the player with that type of gameplay experience by setting up the scenario where they can't buy everything they'll ever need initially. Essentially where they must battle for control of the map to be able to gain sufficient funds to build up a critical mass rather than starting with it.

less starting gold and less carryover % for early finish bonuses.

The carryover was recently changed from 80% to 40% for many campaigns, which also evened out the starting gold.

I think that's a step forward but not enough in isolation. The number of villages on a given map is the key and ought to have a direct influence on how many units can be sustained by either side.

Ever wondered why most mainline scenarios start out with a big gush of troops on either side and huge conflict at the beginning which then turns into a trickle as if someone just turned off the recruitment tap? Some may prefer that type of battle which is fine but others may view it as an anti-climax. I think a campaign that included more scenarios with gradual build up at the beginning and peaking towards the end will create more tension and excitement for the player.

As an alternative to increasing the number of villages on each map, has anyone thought of increasing the value of each village by allowing each to maintain more troops or provide more gold? And when I say more gold I mean more income during the scenario, not early finish bonus.

[zookeeper]

I can see why it might be more fun the way you propose, but whether it'd really work is something that'd need to be tried out. It sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some unintended negative gameplay consequences (like making the scenarios feel more like grinding). It'd be pretty simple for someone to make such a version of a mainline campaign for people to try as an add-on, for example.

[Blarumyrran]

I too don't like the current ideology, but especially recalling. The central idea behind recalling as far as I know is that you can keep the units that you develop an affinity with - which does nothing to justify the constant 20 gold recall cost; really the recall cost is the root of not all but certainly a big part of the evil. The world would be a better place if the recall cost would be the actual unit cost - it would still be viable against recruiting new units in that you might have the recalled units on higher level that are not available for recruitment, you might have them on higher xp & you can see their traits. Plus the affinity.

Although I'd really go even further than that; the whole mechanic of keeping a list of all the dozens of units whom you have recruited in the past, seems very unKISS to me. A game isn't a place for such lists which the player is forced to use and pick favorites from (as he would be dropping an advantage that the scenario designer presumed he would have, otherwise). I have no concise idea of what would work better though.

[Ken_Oh]

I think there are some good ideas in this thread. I would like to play a campaign that implements them. *hint hint*

[jb]

Which campaign are you talking about?

And don't say "all of them".

If you want make any progress, be specific about which campagin you are speaking of. Which scenario, how much gold did you have, and how much "negative" gold made you feel the way you do. How many villages were on the map, and how many villages do you think it "should" have. Was your upkeep too high because you recruited/recalled too many units? Did you end the scenario with some units seeing so little action they didn't need to be recalled?

Being overly general about a situation isn't particularly helpful.

It's more likely to balance individual scenarios rather than an entire campaign.

[5dPZ]

Or to make wesnoth campaign more like MP play, we can limit the power of recall - Make the recall list restricted to loyal units that are/were part of the scenario plots.

And substitute the non-loyal units recall with a "discovery" system - when you level up a spearman to a swordman, you gain access of recruitment of swordman starting next stage for the rest of the campaign. This way players won't get upset if they lose a lv 3 that they had been working on for 5 stages.

Also, reducing the initial gold for both player and Ai is good. Right now, it's like both sidess recruiting for 3 rounds, starting an early big fight, then the rest is mainly boring time finishing off enemy leader with sparse kills. We should make initial gold less for both side and make it more like MP play. Each stage should focus on village occupation, recalling a few characters that have been introduced in previous stages (for a fair cost), and a MP-like game, unless it is designed to be survival/escape scenarios.

[Velensk]

I don't think campaigns need to play more like multiplayer. It seems like it would make them less fun without making multiplayer much better.

Balancing individual scnearios by decreasing gold is something I have no problems with though.

[Ken_Oh]

Which campaign are you talking about?

And don't say "all of them".

If you want make any progress, be specific about which campagin you are speaking of.

This was my initial reaction too, but he really is making a general comment. But, again, like zookeeper said, I'd like to see this in action before making up a real opinion on it.

[Rya]

Or to make wesnoth campaign more like MP play, we can limit the power of recall - Make the recall list restricted to loyal units that are/were part of the scenario plots.

And substitute the non-loyal units recall with a "discovery" system - when you level up a spearman to a swordman, you gain access of recruitment of swordman starting next stage for the rest of the campaign. This way players won't get upset if they lose a lv 3 that they had been working on for 5 stages.

I actually really like this idea, but it would be a pretty huge change to the current gameplay. And it won't really make it more like multiplayer imo..

This was my initial reaction too, but he really is making a general comment. But, again, like zookeeper said, I'd like to see this in action before making up a real opinion on it.

Well I can say that (almost every scenario of) South Guard certainly plays like this. You recall/recruit as many units as you can until your money runs out (or you have to start running because really strong units chase you) and then you have to basically fights your way through without recruiting/recalling again. Getting villages for gold was completely unimportant except for two scenarios.


Edit: The only thing I personally dislike about the campaigns is that it's very hard to play them without any unit losses and that there's no way to revive your characters. Most scenarios indeed play like "Recruit as much as you can -> fight till the end", so why not just give the player only story-driven characters and remove the whole recruiting altogether. I personally would really like to see a campaign like that.

[Yojimbo252]

It sounds like a good idea, but I wouldn't be surprised if there was some unintended negative gameplay consequences (like making the scenarios feel more like grinding).

True, I think a scenario developed with this in mind may well take longer as it could turn into a tug of war, oscillating as the time of day favours one side then the other. So I'm not proposing a campaign should be made up entirely of these type of scenarios as like you say the player may feel the whole experience quite tedious.

But where a scenario is designated as a 'Big Battle' confrontation rather than an 'RPG party hack and slash' I think more consideration needs to be given as to how many villages are required to support each army and also provide sufficient surplus income so that troops can be recruited as replacements throughout the battle.

I too don't like the current ideology, but especially recalling. The central idea behind recalling as far as I know is that you can keep the units that you develop an affinity with - which does nothing to justify the constant 20 gold recall cost; really the recall cost is the root of not all but certainly a big part of the evil.

I don't see the constant 20 gold recall cost as a major issue. Yes it's quite inexpensive for a level 2+ unit considering some level 1 units can cost 20 or even more but the greater upkeep of the higher level units is there to balance that. A level 1 unit costs 1 gold upkeep whereas a level 2 unit costs 2. All other things being equal, from an upkeep point of view you'd have to question whether that level 2 unit is worth 2 x level 1's.

However going back to my original point, where a particular scenario doesn't have enough villages to support all your level 1's then there's simply no reason to recruit them because they are effectively of equal cost as your higher level recalls. In other words if the unit's upkeep is going to play a major factor in determining their cost to you over the course of a scenario then the number of villages has to be of an adequate level to allow for a distinction between maintaining a force of lower level troops as opposed to higher.

Without that adequate level you're simply faced with the choice of X number of high level troops vs the same number of lower level troops which becomes a no brainer decision.

The world would be a better place if the recall cost would be the actual unit cost - it would still be viable against recruiting new units in that you might have the recalled units on higher level that are not available for recruitment, you might have them on higher xp & you can see their traits. Plus the affinity.

I'm not sure I agree with that. I see no reason why recalling higher level troops can't be slightly more cost effective than recruiting lower level troops to encourage and reward players that vet their units and keep their survivability rate high. If you make the cost of the recall equal to their value then coupled with the higher upkeep you take away that incentive.

Although I'd really go even further than that; the whole mechanic of keeping a list of all the dozens of units whom you have recruited in the past, seems very unKISS to me. A game isn't a place for such lists which the player is forced to use and pick favorites from (as he would be dropping an advantage that the scenario designer presumed he would have, otherwise). I have no concise idea of what would work better though.

I don't see this as a problem. If a player has vetted a number of troops from a wide variety of troop types then that gives him more flexibility later in the campaign to pick the right force composition to achieve a given objective. I think this adds value to the BfW campaign system rather than detracting from it.

Which campaign are you talking about?

And don't say "all of them".

If you want make any progress, be specific about which campagin you are speaking of. Which scenario, how much gold did you have, and how much "negative" gold made you feel the way you do. How many villages were on the map, and how many villages do you think it "should" have. Was your upkeep too high because you recruited/recalled too many units? Did you end the scenario with some units seeing so little action they didn't need to be recalled?

Being overly general about a situation isn't particularly helpful.

It's more likely to balance individual scenarios rather than an entire campaign.

The point of this thread isn't to pick an individual scenario or campaign to pieces. If I was going to do that I would have posted in the Mainline Campaign Feedback sub forum. The intenion here is to discuss the BfW economic system that underpins the campaign scenarios but imo isn't being used to it's full potential in certain scenarios. But before singling out any specific examples I wanted to gauge people's opinions to see if others shared a common view.

Was your upkeep too high because you recruited/recalled too many units?

I'll just highlight this quote because this is the guts of the problem as I see it. There are a high number of mid to late campaign scenarios that don't contain enough villages to support the force you can afford with your starting gold. Now yes you could as a player simply recruit/recall less troops which would slow your gold depletion rate but it will still eventually hit zero at some stage in the mid game. And by the time you start to get into an income surplus because you control the vast majority of villages on the map you've probably already won the scenario anyway so there's no point in recruiting/recalling when you do have available gold again. So you find yourself in the situation where beyond the opening turns there's little or no recruitment.

Given the above and the fact that you will likely hit zero gold sooner or later mid game why wouldn't you simply recall the strongest force you can assemble right from the outset, explode across the map straight towards the enemy leader(s) ignoring all villages except the few on a direct route that provide a tactical advantage, be damned how far negative the upkeep takes you and finally secure the biggest amount of early finish bonus cash you can to offset the upkeep deficit in preparation to repeat the process next scenario?

Or to make wesnoth campaign more like MP play, we can limit the power of recall - Make the recall list restricted to loyal units that are/were part of the scenario plots.

And substitute the non-loyal units recall with a "discovery" system - when you level up a spearman to a swordman, you gain access of recruitment of swordman starting next stage for the rest of the campaign. This way players won't get upset if they lose a lv 3 that they had been working on for 5 stages.

As mentioned earlier in this post I don't think the problem is in the recall system.

Also, reducing the initial gold for both player and Ai is good. Right now, it's like both sidess recruiting for 3 rounds, starting an early big fight, then the rest is mainly boring time finishing off enemy leader with sparse kills.

Precisely how I see it.

We should make initial gold less for both side and make it more like MP play. Each stage should focus on village occupation, recalling a few characters that have been introduced in previous stages (for a fair cost), and a MP-like game, unless it is designed to be survival/escape scenarios.

I agree with you that encouraging village occupation is the key.

But I don't won't to limit choice. If a player wants to spend big early on and recall their heavy hitters straight away that's up to them. But that means they will have a large wage bill without the villages to support it at that point in the game and that will send them into deficit rapidly. A different player might recruit/recall lightly initially because you don't need a level 3 Iron Mauler to take a safe village tucked away in your rear corner and perhaps recall his big players once a forward keep is secured to save on upkeep during the 'travel time'.

However for that to be a valid strategy that will be suitably rewarded for a given scenario, village occupation and sustainable upkeep has to be incentivised and bonus cash for early finish has to be disincentivised.

I don't think campaigns need to play more like multiplayer. It seems like it would make them less fun without making multiplayer much better.

Balancing individual scnearios by decreasing gold is something I have no problems with though.

Fair point, I'm not suggesting every scenario has to follow this formula but more along these lines would broaden campaign variety.

[Bottle]

I don't play multiplayer, but I have now completed every campaign (on easy, heh), and what you seem to be suggesting is something along the following lines:

Instead of giving players a significant percentage of their finishing gold (80% or 40% + a fixed amount), give them either a small fixed amount (eg. 60-100; enough for a keep of 3-6 units) or say 10% of your previous gold haul (which will hopefully come out around the same sort of area), to create some village-grabbers. Then, have each village give 1 support gold as normal, plus say 5 additional gold (instead of 1). Then you will start with an initial recruit, and then be able to recruit 1-2 extra units per turn once you've captured say 6 villages (if you're on a keep), as appears to happen in MP. (As I say, I don't play multiplayer yet, but I've read a few forum accounts of what happens there.) This prevents your "produce an army and move out for the leader" *problem* (as you see it), forcing the player to move slowly and methodically and building up a force to take out the enemy. You could still get an end of scenario bonus for an early finish based on how many villages you have if you want to go with the 10% option instead of the fixed amount. And that would indeed be a fun scenario to play from time to time.

The problem then is fourfold. Firstly, it limits the AI to having a similar recruitment option, otherwise your initial recruit will be quickly swamped by the 20-odd units that a fixed starting AI gold currently provides. As already stated, the AI is not as clever as a human by a long stretch, so it would need a different advantage to make the missions a challenge, for example it gets 8 gold per village instead. But that may not be easy to balance and would require the AI to play sensibly with regards to village-prioritisation, something it doesn't always do.

Secondly and more importantly, having this as a new "standard" way to do campaigns will get very boring very quickly. There are only so many things you can do with this idea; you can't do desperate defence scenarios (eg. the Valley of Death on Hard in HttT) because you won't be able to expand to grab villages when you're surrounded, you can't do "escape" scenarios because the whole point of the escape scenario is that you gather a small band of warriors to cover you and then start running (unless you cover the map with keeps, which makes it too much of a "you have to go this way or you're toast" scenario), you can't do dungeon crawls, etc etc. You'd need to completely cover the maps in keeps to reach your final objective (which usually requires the leader to move to a space a long way from his starting keep) and still be able to do recruiting.

Thirdly, a lot of people have problems with the turn limits as it is. There's no doubt that this method would greatly increase the time taken on each scenario because you'll need more time to build up a strong enough force to make a push, especially on larger maps. So you either make the enemy weaker and keep the turn limit the same (too easy), or you extend the turn limit. I'm all for the odd "epic" scenario (The Underlevels was a fantastic scenario) but most people don't have time for having 50-turn scenarios all the time.

And fourthly, there is certainly strategy involved in the "early finish bonus" way of doing things. It tests your ability under time pressure. Removing that entirely would certainly give a less frenetic feel to most scenarios, leaving you to focus entirely on the battle at hand instead of planning for the future, something every good commander needs to do. Reducing its effect would probably be more desirable.

So yes, fun as an occasional change to a campaign, but don't make a campaign that only uses this sort of idea. The best campaigns are the ones where you are fighting a different enemy in a different way on a different map every scenario. It makes it more fun and more of a challenge. It would be good as another option to add to a campaign consisting of an escape scenario followed by a dungeon crawl followed by a defence scenario followed by a MP-esque scenario, yes.

[Noy]

Which campaign are you talking about?

And don't say "all of them".

If you want make any progress, be specific about which campagin you are speaking of. Which scenario, how much gold did you have, and how much "negative" gold made you feel the way you do. How many villages were on the map, and how many villages do you think it "should" have. Was your upkeep too high because you recruited/recalled too many units? Did you end the scenario with some units seeing so little action they didn't need to be recalled?

Being overly general about a situation isn't particularly helpful.

It's more likely to balance individual scenarios rather than an entire campaign.

The point of this thread isn't to pick an individual scenario or campaign to pieces. If I was going to do that I would have posted in the Mainline Campaign Feedback sub forum. The intenion here is to discuss the BfW economic system that underpins the campaign scenarios but imo isn't being used to it's full potential in certain scenarios. But before singling out any specific examples I wanted to gauge people's opinions to see if others shared a common view.

Well to be perfectly frank, this approach makes your post entirely useless. We're not going to redo every scenario or even a portion of them based on vague conceptual notions of how to develop scenarios. Personally I like having most of my recruits available on the map in the first few turns, though I can see at times how changing the gold available at certain times would make it interesting. But just saying "there should be some variation in how gold is used" is something nobody is going to disagree with, and doesn't help whatsoever.

If you have suggestions about how to make certain scenarios better or more interesting through different use of gold, then make that suggestion in the campaign sub forum. You'll actually have far better luck there. In addition if you have these great ideas, why don't you try your hand at creating a campaign? That might cater better to your own tastes and be "proof in concept" that can be applied later.

[Cataphract]

Noy, if you really want someone to name specific campaigns wherein this is the case, but not say "all of them," you'll be asking for a dishonest answer.

In every single scenario I have played in every single campaign I have played, I have found Yojimbo's impression of the system to be true, with the exception of the first couple scenarios in any given campaign while I'm still trying to assemble a "dream team." Can you name a campaign where, for the majority of the campaign, it makes more sense to spend time struggling for a resource advantage than it does for you to just blow all your starting cash on the best troops available, then go perpetually negative while beating face with a ridiculously large army (large enough that not even all of the villages on the map can support them) of high-level units?