The War of the Dragon

[docrock]

so, *sigh*, here i am at it again, in "Broken Bridge" those friggin devlings kill the white mage "Hawken" before i even can get close to him. and i'd say i didn't do too badly as i killed already two of the devling leaders by turn 13. but really, why has the AI him melee vs. superior melee fighters? i mean, it's a mage. he should be using ranged, yes, really.
edit: his prob is that he uses up his units too quickly i think. and himself he does not even stand crap damage as a white mage (especially as he successfully refuses to visit any villages for healing). maybe he could get some gold injection around turn 10-11 to allow him to maintain some kind of ZoC around his castle. as it is it is too random imho.

[Turuk]

After looking at the replay, I have to say it's kind of what I thought it would be.

Still on my first way through, and I mirrored your moves in going down the middle, but I underestimated the amount of cavalry I would be facing and the benefit of those weavers, I saw the way you decimated 5 of them in a turn because of their ranged attack.

Ah, well let's see if I can get through with what I have.

[Velensk]

If you're having problems with Hawken getting himself killed before you can get units to him, that is something that I should fix. I don't know why he's using his melee attack, that sounds like an AI bug.

For this one you should send your leader to his castle, so that you can recall some units close to him while your other units handle the devlings.

[docrock]

well, approach: split army in two, send each to destroy one devling leader (east and west), send leader straight to the middle with a small escort to save white mage. white mage does everything to get killed. hummm...

[Turuk]

My solution so far as to the Hawkin problem is that the first thing I just did is go to him.

Recall all the units you'll need and move down to him, you'll take a couple attacks on the way, but they are still working to try and get to him by the time you get there. Once there, there's a keep and for castle tiles for your army, plus two villages you can "borrow" from Hawkin if you need the extra healing.

Also, I dropped a few units off along the way. 2 Pathfinders went east to harry the black devs, and the oathkeeper went west to take out the red leader since all his forces are running south.


EDIT
Attached replay beating Broken Bridge. Strategy seemed to work excellently, took a loss of one oathbreaker, but beyond that it was just a matter of paying attention to the right units.

[Turuk]

Apologies for the double post, but also a bug report.

In Broken Bridge, when Alloria died, the scenario did not end, it let me keep playing.

[docrock]

right, guess i will try that strategy too. might even be more sucessfull. well right, still, if i do it that way, i bet i'd get much less xp ... oh well ..,

[Turuk]

It worked exceedingly well for me, and you do end up getting a great deal of experience, I'm now going into the next scenario with seven lvl 2s, 5 of which are close to being level 3.

Necessary too, as the next one proves to be an interesting challenge.

[Velensk]

Apologies for the double post, but also a bug report.

In Broken Bridge, when Alloria died, the scenario did not end, it let me keep playing.

That is so weird: All the death events are a macro that is shared by all the senarios. I've tested it, and it works for the first two senarios, but not that one. I do not know how that works.

[Turuk]

Fair enough, as I figured she might just be a bit crucial for the rest of the campaign, I just went back a turn.

Also, excellent job on the map for The Way Under. A real challenge, it's currently driving me crazy, but it's oddly fun too. I also appreciate the design so that if the player did not have any ciphers left to recall, they could still (albeit slowly) get to the necessary points. Not a problem for me, but I was thinking about it as they flew around.

[The Black Sword]

Hi Velensk, I've been playing EOM for a while and its been really nice, just wanted to say great job on it.

Anyway I agree with the other 2, this has to be the hardest campaign that I've played and I've often needed multiple attempts at the scenarios but there always seems to be a way to win so I'm really enjoying it.
First scenario was tough against the warg but I just let the throw themselves against Lisaundra and mopped up with seekers and gatekeepers. I think I may have finished this early looking at the other comments because I found the next scenario not so bad.
Scenario 2 I was able to recall all of my army plus a couple of shards. Still needed two attempts though because of bad recruitment first time.(gatekeepers need to be recalled first)
Broken Bridge was very hard and I think I needed the most attempts for it. Eventually I got some shards to go village hunting and then ran down to Hawken straight away and recruited my army there, it was pretty easy after that.
I thought 4 was rather impossible at first but I held the 1 wide gaps in the south with tag-team shards and then played survival against the forces up north, which wasn't so bad with no enemy behind me. After the first wave it became doable though the Hydra extracted a heavy toll.Also Guardian spear for Runeforger is nice!
I love defensive scenarios so the next was great. My only problem is that the best tactic seems to be not counter-attacking at all, which isn't quite so fun. The player needs an incentive to kill units I think. It'd also be nice if the corpses stopped spawning inside my lines but that isn't so big.
I'm currently playing 'Fleeing the Dragon' so I shouldn't comment until I'm finished but at the time of posting I must say I think those crazy warg seem much too strong.Its the base income that gets me but I'm sure I'll figure something out.
Edit: Also, I just noted the above problem in Fleeing the Dragon aswell. It also says Death of Lisaundra instead of Alloria in the victory conditions, so I thought it was just a typo.

Really nice campaign, great fun and I hoped that helped a bit.

[Velensk]

It did, it confirmed something that was bugging me about senarios 5 and 6.

When I was testing this, I only got through six because of extream luck near the end, and five seemed like a great concept but missing something.

I'm thinking I'm going to have to find a way to give some bonus for kills in five. This will also work to make six a little easier.

[t3st3r]

Your campaign will fail to load on *nix-based systems (actually, got this problem in my Linux).

Reason is simple. Unixes and all similar systems are case-sensitive when it comes to dealing with file system. So you can have "File" and "file" in same directory. These are 2 different files. In Windows you however can not store files in this way. In Windows there could only single file exist and it could be referenced both as "File" or as "file" or even as "FiLe".

So, in Linux your campaign fails at load on 1st scenario with error claiming that map was not found.

Really, you're referencing map as "1start.map" in config files but on actual file system it is named "1Start.map" after downloading from server

So in *nix based systems (maybe Macs too) this will lead to loading failure.

To fix this: ensure that files are named exactly as they're in your config files. Including symbols case

To get idea, I fixed 1st scenario and now it loads:
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 6779 2008-11-03 10:36 1start.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 6779 2008-11-03 10:36 1Start.map

You can see, I copied "1Start.map" to "1start.map". Now campaign loads.

[Velensk]

I use a mac. One of the reasons I do is so that I don't have to deal with this reguarly. Either way I've got if fixed on my version, so when I release it again, people shouldn't have that problem. Report any more of these you find, because I'd never notice them.

To get idea, I fixed 1st scenario and now it loads:
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 6779 2008-11-03 10:36 1start.map
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 6779 2008-11-03 10:36 1Start.map

I've got no idea what that is all about, though understanding it does not seem nessisary to fix the problem.

[t3st3r]

I've got no idea what that is all about, though understanding it does not seem nessisary to fix the problem.

It was just directory listing with newly named map. I copied map so now campaign loads .

So I was able to play campaign reasonably well (other maps at least up to 5th scenario are OK for me).
But I noticed strange issue on scenario 5 (The Way Under). There is mention that I can try to ally with elementals. However, at least path to shrine of fire elemental is not passable by windsong units. I can only fly here by one of crystals and this surely not works (I can see filtering in WML file, huh). As for me it looks like no windsong units can fly over chasm or walk through deep water. And there is no routes to shrine of fire elemental except via deep water or chasm. This seems to be bug (re-check map passability).

And uhm, as far as I can remember "Djinn" creatures are called "Genie" on English (I could be wrong since Endlish is not my native language). Is this "Djinn" same as "Genie" creatures? Genies are mythical creatures living in old lamps and capable of casting some powerful magic.