Invasion from the Unknown (1.14.4) for Wesnoth 1.6 ONLY

[loonycyborg]

Player is punished way too much for NOT playing the first part of the campaign. Losing the recall list with some really special units, not having enough AMLA's on your actual units. You're supposed to have SOME recall list and at least the loyal units you would normally get.

I'd say you're really punished for continuing from first part. After all, much of the fun is in leveling your units, and after part 1 you'll likely have recall list filled with level 3-4 units. Where's the fun in leveling level 3-4s?
IMO it's much better to start from part 2, recruit some civilians and get non-trivial levelups again.

[csarmi]

Okay my nice project has halted right in the beginning

How do I make the AI avoid all forest terrains for example?
I've tried this:

Code: Select all

[ai]
	[avoid]
		[filter]
			[filter_location] 
				terrain=*F*
			[/filter_location] 
		[/filter]
	[/avoid]
[/ai]

[Iris]

AI parameters do not use standard location or unit filters yet.

[Iris]

Happy new year!

I released IftU 1.10.2 yesterday around 13:00 (GMT-04:00+DST), but forgot to announce it officially since I got busy with mor... less important stuff

If anybody wants to run it in Wesnoth 1.5.7 (when that is released), though, you'll need the following archive:

Invasion_from_the_Unknown-patchdist-3132-partial.tar.bz2

Patch distribution to make the 1.5.7 engine use Kitty's portraits for our heroes, Galas, Erathan, Althurin and Igor, and make Igor available on HARD when starting Episode II.

(33.35 KiB) Downloaded 339 times

Just uncompress it so that it overwrites IftU 1.10.2' contents. Basically this patch archive ensures Kitty's transparent portraits are used for Galas, Erathan, Althurin and Igor if you are running Wesnoth 1.5.6+svn@certain_revision or the 1.5.7 release, or 1.5.7+svn as of this writing. Elynia and Anlindë did not need this fix since they have their own unit_types. The patch also has a fix for story maps on 1.5.7+svn.

And know that it won't work for the fixed characters (Galas, Erathan, Althurin and Igor) unless you play the scenario in which you first saw them from the very start. Unfortunately for Galas, that means either the first Episode I scenario, or the first Episode II one.

And I do not plan to release a fixed 1.10.2a release with this patch yet.

3) Actually anything might work, just make sense the elven AI have a simple to follow, but effective strategy that the player KNOWS (so he can plan for that) and that makes sense knowing the enemy AI's 'burn everything and attack with maximum agressiveness' strategy. Maybe start a counterattack on one of the dawns (enable leaving the forest and set agression higher).

You know what? I'll try to do it myself (I dont know much about WML however so it might take me a while).

It is unfortunate that the default AI is too limited for all the stuff you described. I am not a developer in that area either, and the code is so ugly that I cannot even try to improve/extend a thing in there. Also, the default AI is quite predictable, hence many people find MP games more fun than single-player campaigns. So you can actually learn the ally's strategy in this scenario and prepare yourself for it.

The ideal solution would be using FormulaAI or PythonAI for the ally side in this scenario to control the AI's actions, but I lack the knowledge for using any of the two systems; I don't know a bit of Python (I only know C, C++, C#, Java, Perl, some JavaScript and shell scripting in DOS, cmd.exe and Bash), and FormulaAI is a new capability of the 1.5.x engine that I haven't explored in detail yet. All I know is that it will convert the "why not LUA" FPI in a non-issue in 1.5.7 once it is released. And that I intend to use it quite a lot in IftU for AI and WML arithmetics once I get the hand of it.

Another thing that comes to mind: Player is punished way too much for NOT playing the first part of the campaign. Losing the recall list with some really special units, not having enough AMLA's on your actual units. You're supposed to have SOME recall list and at least the loyal units you would normally get.

Sorry for not getting it, but I did balance the few first scenarios of this episode so that, at least in NORMAL difficulty, they are playable without the gold and veterans from Episode I. And also I did it in such way it does not turn those scenarios too easy if you do have the gold and veterans.

Not recalling Igor on hard? WTF?! So if you play hard difficulty, you miss some fun? Something really important? That's NOT how it should work, I mean it's a really bad way to punish someone for higher difficulty.

I guess it was a random thing that occurred to me a year ago when I split the campaign in half. I don't like it either at the moment, so I'm fixing it in SVN; the patch above also fixes it!

And about having more recalls, it is impossible unless I make a fixed/randomized pseudo-recall list that will most likely not suit the needs of all players. Balancing those scenarios in NORMAL difficulty turned out to be an easier approach.

Oh, and by the way, I haven't really balanced the campaign for EASY and HARD. It's a pity that none of my assistants with commit access have any experience in balancing. And I just lack the time nowadays to do full balancing, specially with such a big campaign, and that's why I probably won't make more user-made content in the future...

BIG FAT NOTE: when reporting bugs from now on, please include the version of IftU you are playing, the game engine version, and whether you applied the patch above or not!

[docrock]

applying the latest fix to save-games beginning with "over the sands" did not work and cure dehydration. restarted in "memories from the depths" in the hope of at least this working out. oh well, "over the sands" is just a tiny little scenario, no probs playing through again (*lol*). btw, will this work out or do i have to do something ugly like starting over the whole campaign or hacking saves?

[Iris]

In general, changes to particular scenarios' code require you to start the scenario from scratch again - either from the start save (e.g. IftU-1-Over_the_Sands.gz) or the last turn of the previous scenario. And make sure you really downloaded 1.10.2.

And for the patch above, I said:

And know that it won't work for the fixed characters (Galas, Erathan, Althurin and Igor) unless you play the scenario in which you first saw them from the very start. Unfortunately for Galas, that means either the first Episode I scenario, or the first Episode II one.

Though you don't need to worry about the above patch unless you use Wesnoth 1.5.7.

[docrock]

In general, changes to particular scenarios' code require you to start the scenario from scratch again

i feared so.

actually, this time i did much better in the "over the sands" desert scenario. ended up five turns earlier than last attempt and with much better units.
then i hit crossfire. this scenario now does go completely differently than it did in 1.4.x i might say. in earlier days the outlaw did not have much to bother chaos and undead. now he just owns. i had problems to even get to the chaos and undead leaders before the outlaw ended them. also, i'd say because of a village missing crossfire does end with not enough gold for the player. i'd thought i was pretty quick and did not shy from using hq units to kill key enemies, but still, 255 gold is not enough for moon valley to play in style. maybe that village would have made a difference, maybe a bit more gold from the outlaw leader. maybe i'm just playing badly.

[docrock]

so, playing "moon valley". insanity. lots and lots and more lots of orcs. still, mal keshar does own. so incredibly. killing three crossbow-orcs and a warrior in one single turn. is that how it is meant to be? well, it really does feel a lot better now having a real advantage of the completely overpowered hq units. but still, i'd also like to use trappers and prowlers, and as it is now they are just cannonfodder for mal keshar to march on. "a virtually unstoppable unit", yes, that was a great quote. he is eating up xp like mad and killing everything in his way, no matter if day or night. don't mess with mal keshar. you'd not like it.

[docrock]

Elf vs. Goliath: good changes i think, do make things more interesting, besides that, plain slaughter.

Errand of Hope: for a few turns lost control of things when everybody crushed into each other and i had to defend. else, all good with that one, i think the player is now more forced to let the trolls hit chaos while helping the dwarfes, which works out pretty well after one gets it.

The Library: not many changes i think, but i triggered the touchplate and no shaxtals appeared. didn't there use to be a continuous spawn of them from the holes?

[Iris]

The Library: not many changes i think, but i triggered the touchplate and no shaxtals appeared. didn't there use to be a continuous spawn of them from the holes?

Eek.

A bug, probably originated from the 1.5.x compatibility changes. I'll check it. Don't hold your breath though.

[docrock]

hmmm, reached "The Source of Light", just one thing maybe: shouldn't Althurin also be able to trigger the "win" event in the previous one? he is loyal, the scout of the group and also a hero char.
also noticed: the "Lich" advancement for dark sorcerers is back! not that i would not like it, but wasn't that removed for 1.4.x? overpoweredness me thinks maybe. which will not stop me from using it, harrrr.

[Iris]

The Library: not many changes i think, but i triggered the touchplate and no shaxtals appeared. didn't there use to be a continuous spawn of them from the holes?

Eek.

A bug, probably originated from the 1.5.x compatibility changes. I'll check it. Don't hold your breath though.

Stepping onto the touchplate crashes Wesnoth with a segmentation fault.

I'll have to use my red title again. Bye vacation...

[docrock]

"The Source of Light" went rather smoothly as i thought, ended up in turn 44 with 213 gold for next, which i thought was quite ok. gave Galas the berserk and the drain potion. he already has the poisoned bow, but interestingly does not use it for defense despite it doing more damage than his own ranged attack. i sure could have finished this one four or six turns earlier by only recalling lvl3 and lvl4 elite units, but i doubt that this would change much to the carry-over gold because of the higher upkeep.

in "Strike on New Knalga" i noticed that Galas had kept the bow and the drain ability, but lost the berserk for some reason. also it proved while playing that i could barely match up with the chaos forces for a stalemate on my part of the map until their reinforcements came in. after that not even running for the dwarfen main castle could save me. guess it just was not enough gold. can i fix the Galas berserk myself somehow in the save or should i wait for a patch? and should i switch to 1.5.7 now so deep into the first part or better switch when going to the second part? and will i be able to carry over the hero chars with their advancements and specials?

[Iris]

...but lost the berserk for some reason

That's result of a discussion I had in the other thread some time ago. I forgot to fix the potion's description about it:

http://wesnoth-umc-dev.svn.sourceforge. ... ision=3225

Now it is fixed in SVN.

So no. Don't fix Galas. He is not supposed to keep the berserk ability. Nobody is supposed to.

and should i switch to 1.5.7 now so deep into the first part or better switch when going to the second part? and will i be able to carry over the hero chars with their advancements and specials?

I'd advice you to not switch unless you want to see the characters' portraits stop working properly (in such case you'd have to apply the patch above and restart from the first scenario to fix e.g. Galas, or hack saved games with obscure transitional WML...).

But even if you are using Unix or Windows, you can always have more than one copy of Wesnoth installed. There are many topics about that in the forums...

[docrock]

thx for the quick response, now i am enlightened

concerning installations, i already got 1.4.7, 1.5.6 and 1.5.7 running, it's just the question which campaign to play on which version, well, if it's only the portraits ... guess i am gonna switch between the parts then