Too many campaingns have you fighting orcs/undead.

[Crow_T]

I think the easy* solution would be to expand the orc lineup, atm it's kind of sparse compared to humans. Diversifying the orcs, orcs with blunt weapons, heavy orc units, I mean really beasty, give orcs some unique traits eg berserk/bloodlust, etc. Expanding what is available to the orcs would be a good thing in terms of variety, considering how much they are played against. This being said, atm if imps/trolls were used more in conjunction with orcs that could really round things out.

I think undead are perfect, they are fun both against and on your team, one of the best factions IMO.

*easy in analyzing, as opposed to doing

examples: orc butcher, has "cleave" that reduces enemy blade defense by a percentage, can cure +4 due to feeding meat to allies
orc juggernaut, fed a special diet, is bigger and badder than most orcs, high hp with both blade and impact damage, slow (imagine a line of juggernauts slowly approaching)
orc zealot, fast, has an attack like 3 or 4 x 8, low defense though because is reckless (maybe reckless is an orc trait, trades defense for # of attacks)
orc rioter, uses backstab + firebombs
What about a trait where if an orc kills something it eats part of it, gaining 8 hp back? Or how about cannibal, if an orc dies near an adjacent orc it eats it's flesh to gain hp back- too gruesome?


With orcs you can get really dirty, as in cheap heh. I think orc traits can have trade offs as seen in the zealot, they are bred to die in war. Do as much damage as possible before they die.

*edit I want to say these limitation are better known while playing as orcs, as in SotBE, plus just looking at the unit list.
*edit edit: This could be a better solution to reprogramming the AI, depending on the available resources

[Eru_Iluvatar]

In LotR, humans and hobbits have farms and fields but elves and orcs have none. Forests and caves are definitely not places where one can grow food and breed cattle. More of it, Mordor is described to be a wrecked land. How this waste could feed the huge armies who dwell here ?

This topic isn't active, but I must say that Tolkien mentions, when Frodo and Sam are in Mordor wondering how they get food, that there is a massive farming and ranching operation near the Sea of Nurnen in Mordor.

[Sanae_Kotiya]

I think the easy* solution would be to expand the orc lineup

I'd like to see another goblin unit, actually. Perhaps a skirmisher? I think a skirmisher would be really appreciated - that or a goblin witch unit with a magic attack.

[Mabuse]

well, "being evil" is of course to some extent a matter of perspective.

that doesent change anything though. if you have a human-based campaign running, then undead and orcs (and other humans allied with them) are the ultimate enemies, since these races/creatures represent the opposite of what free living people want to be.


undeads eat humans for example, it obviously clear that they are enemies of the humans. (that may sound stupid (also english isnt my native language), but brings it down to the point. who wants to live in a ghoul cave and try to argue with a bunch of ghouls about good and evil?)

necromancers want to break the free will of people and want them to be slaves - now nobody would say "yay, lets serve the necromancer as a mindless slave, and yay again, he raised my dead mother from the grave and use it a mindless slave too - even more worse to any human that has a religion that has strict burial conventions - necromancy is always an unwanted act, it simply immoral ---- you dont believe me .. go to the next graveyard and exhume some graves .. and then argue with good and evil ...)

orcs are a primitive, unintelligent race and will simply try to crush any human in sight if he shows any weakness, thats just their way of living. (and for being unintelligent they can be easily utilized by a more powerful foe .. to do the things they are good at: crush and burn somethign down. for an orc thats absolutely ok. but it s also ok if other races find orcs terrible and not worth to be left alive))

also from the point of humans every other race can be evil it it worship the wrong gods.

we can argue endlessly from the perspective, but after all then we must also discuss about wether adolf hitler was just a guy with a vision when he killed a few million people on its way to world domination. after all, he just wanted to enslave all the other inferior races .... to create a better world ... ... on the other hand .. stalin did the same ...



now im too lazy and my english skills are not sufficient enough to go deeper into the discussion, but we can agree that being "good/evil" is a matter of perspective, and from the point of a free-willed human undead, orcs and basically everybody that threatens his live, the world he is living in and his freedom is an enemy. and necromancers greeding for power, undeads, orcs and these beings just stand for all that.

the necromancer has probably just a vision of him ruling the world.


ultimate enemies feature also the pointlessness of negotiations. since their way of living/their motives are completely contrary to our way of living. its just not possible to co-exist - since you know that THEY will show no mercy once they are stronger than you, or get the opportunity.


To Topic:
I also make SCN and its always hard to find "believable, ultimate" enemies other than necromancers, demons that threat mankind, or orcs and the other potencially evil races.
wood elves as we understand them simply dont make so good ultimate enemies, since they are a basically peaceful, intelligent race, that is not focused on war and expansion. so its not really "believable" if a story features the "evil wood elves on their campaign to world domination". dark elves would be a better solution for that.

evil dwarves are also imaginable, but they are more potencial allies of humankind.


of course its imaginable that wood-elves got corrupted and see humans as "evil-creatures" that must be destroyed, but after all, when it comes down to the ultimate cliches, elves and dwarves are potencial allies of mankind, while orcs, undead and other humans are classical enemies. cliches are no bad thing.

sense for art and creation, peace and freedom are "good" values

destruction, slavery and war are "bad" values

⁂

[/color][/b]

I'd say that when you attack at night, you are ambushing the enemy and he does not have enough time to prepare the position, so you don't have to care too much about the strategy, all you need is to swarm the enemy camp as fast as possible - the soldiers you need are individuals, chaotic (and also, night hides all mischief, so making people obey any kind of law under these circumstances is impossible).
If you are attacking during the day, you can see into a greater distance, and prepare the strategy for battle better; the enemy is prepared for combat and the battle has to have a well-prepared strategy, where team play is required - the soldiers you need are team players, lawful.
Therefore, the chaotic units favour nocturnal combat, while the lawful units prefer fighting during the day, and are more experienced at fighting at that time of day.

well, thats some kind of explanation which makes some sense, and i would like to add racial-specific stuff:

Its simply that bright sunlight HURT the eyes of chaotic creatures like orcs, for undead it may be even some kind of pain.
while the usual lawful units like humans simply see little to nothing at night. elves and dwarves may have less color vision-receptor cells (which are responsible for light-vision) in the eyes (than humans) but more cells for mesopic vision, which makes them have no advantages/disadvantages at night/day.

of course that racial explanation doesnt grip when you compare other humans like Outlaws/Necromancers and other Loyalists, but you can for example say that outlaws are more used to act at night and have acquired some kind of night vision .. to an extent when they have disadvantages at day, propbably they feel uncomfortable, since they are not used to act there, their usual strategies dont work when everything is revealed.

anybody who had a conjunctivitis might know what it means when you have to avoid bright sunlight, when it hurts in the eyes and you surely suffer a penalty in daylight combat then. other races or people who get used to act mostly in darkness may have such a penalty when they act in bright daylight. if you live years in dark places then your eyes may hurt in bright daylight.

liminal units can act best in there are no extreme sources of light, but they require at least a bit of light.

[Drakilian]

Just going off of the title, haven't read the thread yet.
I completely agree, a good deal of the time I just straight up ignore campaigns because i'm so sick of playing what's basically the exact same storyline and fights but with slightly different units.
Does the following scenario sound familiar to any of you?
"Elves are in the forrest, enjoying themselves, being peaceful elves and such"
"Big, bad orc/undead attacks, or elf hero is picked to investigate big-bad orc/undead attack."
The ensuing campaign usually takes place almost entirely in forrest terrains, with the developer occasionally throwing in non-forrest terrain to compensate for the unending boredom that the constant green background and orc/undead-massacres tend to induce, with maybe an incredibly slow, tedious cave-crawl or two, because having units move one to two hexes a turn on a huge map is every player's dream scenario. The end battle is usually in a forest, or a half-forrest half-any other terrain.
I think it should sound pretty familiar, as that's just about every campaign with elves against orcs/undead. (I'm not saying that's every elf vs orc/undead campaign, but it's pretty damn close)

The human (as in, lawful humans. Not specifically loyalist) campaigns aren't much better. It's almost never anything other than outlaws, orcs, or undead. You have to wonder where all of the human vs human (that isn't an outlaw) scenarios are. I mean, it's not exactly uncommon for humans to go to war with each other, I would hardly think that wesnoth would be the exception to this, and yet every antagonist race/faction (except for the dark legion) tends to follow the outlaw units in fighting style and unit types, as well as behavior.

So, umm, to conclude, yes, these enemies are used way too often, and the hero armies remain the same way too often. A few of these campaigns are fine, but them dominating the campaign choices just results in a bunch of similar, typical campaigns. Lazy writing indeed.

[taptap]

You people should seriously play more User Made Content (Look here: http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Guide_to_UMC_Campaigns) - there are literally dozens of campaigns available and quite a few of them are at least on par or better than mainline campaigns both in gameplay and originality. Some are even catching up in art assets. I mean after playing An Orcish Incursion and Legends of Wesmere I couldn't see elves anymore as well - but you surely don't have to play this kind of campaign all the day. Try Invasion from the Unknown / After the Storm, try A New Order, try The Founding of Borstep, try Roar of the Woses, try Panther Lord, try Imperial Era campaigns ...

Is it that just because Saurians are less pretty than humans, elves and mermaids that they magic must be evil?

Less pretty? They are cute! They are the kittens of Wesnoth.

undeads eat humans for example

You are too much into zombie movies. There is exactly one undead unit type that eats cadavres, the others are humans (bones and souls).

sense for art and creation, peace and freedom are "good" values / destruction, slavery and war are "bad" values

War is an art.

[A Guy]

Ghasts actually eat their victims alive.

[gorgolok]

I think we shouldn't be looking at this only from a story perspective. One important factor to me is terrain defense, which human players tend to use a lot better than the AI. Elves and Dwarves are terrain specialists - an aggressive AI will put them out in the open where they are easily shredded, a defensive AI will make the game lengthy and costly with lots of air-hits.

Orcs and Undead are presumably used more often since they aren't affected as much by terrain. They even go together well with Orcs requiring "standard" strategy and Undead calling for a higher level of specialization to exploit their weaknesses. They were built to be AI enemies, and they're good as exactly that.

About humans: there are too many to effectively recruit against, so an enemy using them would have to limit the choice of units available to a single enemy leader (usually it's either lawful or chaotic, not both).

[TheCripple]

I think we shouldn't be looking at this only from a story perspective. One important factor to me is terrain defense, which human players tend to use a lot better than the AI. Elves and Dwarves are terrain specialists - an aggressive AI will put them out in the open where they are easily shredded, a defensive AI will make the game lengthy and costly with lots of air-hits.

On the other hand, campaign maps can actually have huge sections of mountains or forest in a way multiplayer maps can't, which makes this much less of an issue.