The Sojournings of Grog (3.6.1 is out)

[Elvish_Hunter]

And hopefully I should be able to release a new version with some more balanced levels in the next days.
EDIT: version 2.10.11 is on the 1.9 server. This includes difficult levels for B4, B5 and B6, and less "suicidal" AI settings for allies in B5.

[shadowblack]

A minor issue with the first scenario: Upon capturing one of the human villages the purple humans appeared... and the village I had just captured was given to them even though my unit was still in it! Is that intentional, or just an oversight?

On Hard the first scenario was rather challenging due to the lack on anyone who can cure poison. It took careful planning + some luck to avoid too many of my units getting poisoned before I managed to level that mermaid. Fortunately first the naga boss grouped his units defensively and then decided to go kill the Soulless (who in turn got lucky and managed to kill several nagas), leaving me with fewer enemies to deal with. Overall - considering that this is the first scenario in the campaign - the difficulty is fitting for the Hard level.

Scenario 2: I started with all of my elves on level 1 (and only the shaman close to leveling up). There were quite a few level 2 enemies (and even a level 3 after meeting Elyssa) so even with good planning the early battles took some luck to avoid losses. Even after some of my units reached level 2 and the initial clash with the bandits ended there were quite a few enemies (including a few level 2s), so the fighting was rather challenging until almost the end, even after I manged to kill the bandit leader - as befitting the Hard difficulty.

So far Hard is hard (as it should be).

Scenario 3 (Homecoming): There are two errors in the replay:
1) Even the area outside the caves counts as being inside the caves, so the game thinks my elves have a 25% penalty. As a result the game complains that my druid did 5 damage instead of 4 (she was on the sand, outside the cave, so had no penalty at that time)
2) The halo around the dwarven runes is MISSING in the replay. The effect of said halo is also missing, and the game complains about one of my units having done 7 damage when he was supposed to do 5 (he did 7 thanks to the bonus from the halo)

The scenario itself wasn't very hard (it helped that I got lucky a couple of times when it mattered, and got unlucky when it made no difference). Maybe the dwarves just got unlucky with their attacks, but the bats seemed stronger and more dangerous than the dwarves.

[Elvish_Hunter]

A minor issue with the first scenario: Upon capturing one of the human villages the purple humans appeared... and the village I had just captured was given to them even though my unit was still in it! Is that intentional, or just an oversight?

I'll look the code, but if I remember correctly it is intentional.

Scenario 3 (Homecoming): There are two errors in the replay:

Some days ago, I finished playing UtBS on Hard. I got an out-of-sync replay here as well, so now I'm not much worried about the broken replays issue. Anyway, I'll check if I can file a report.

The scenario itself wasn't very hard

Well, I'm planning to replay all mainline campaigns on Hard; and so far, my impression is that, if you manage to resist the assault of the first scenarios, the higher amount of XP available makes later scenarios even easier than on Easy.

[Tet]

Can I ask a question about the code for the troll fire shaman? Where did the Fire blast animation came from? How can I use it for Wesnoth 1.6?

[Elvish_Hunter]

Where did the Fire blast animation came from?

It comes from the 1.8 (and 1.9) mainline Troll Shaman.

How can I use it for Wesnoth 1.6?

If my memory serves me well, in TSoG for 1.6 there should be the old Troll Wizard unit that uses such code. But... isn't 1.6 a bit outdated?

[shadowblack]

The scenario itself wasn't very hard

Well, I'm planning to replay all mainline campaigns on Hard; and so far, my impression is that, if you manage to resist the assault of the first scenarios, the higher amount of XP available makes later scenarios even easier than on Easy.

Generally, that's true for the early scenarios of a campaign. But as you get closer to the end the enemies start having a lot of high level troops and a lot of gold while you have limited gold and thus cannot recall all of your high-level troops, so things get complicated.


Anyway, I finished the next five scenarios. There are errors in some of the replays due to the missing rune halos (and the effect of said halos), but those can be ignored.

Difficulty seemed appropriate for the Hard level. Just one thing: PLEASE give a warning in Every Troll To Do His Duty when time is running out (for example when there are just 4 turns left). I didn't even realize I had used 14 turns. It's easy to run out of time if you get unlucky with your attacks and get slowed down by the orcs, especially if you start with min gold and can recall only 7 units.

[Tet]

Yep 1.6 so old. Problem is solved. I looked into the wizard in more details.

I am concerened about the shield ability.
There is no filter in place. Would the shield protect an enemy units in direct contact too? Really bad in my humble opinion.

[Elvish_Hunter]

There is no filter in place. Would the shield protect an enemy units in direct contact too? Really bad in my humble opinion.

Thanks for spotting this. I'll add an "affect_enemies=no" just to be sure (but it should be no by default).

[shadowblack]

Just finished the final scenario of part I. There was an obvious error in the text when the drake ambassador died, but apart from that everything was fine. No bugs as far as I could see.

EDIT: Finished The South Gate. At one point I started to get bored with stalling the dwarves, but overall it was fun - especially seeing what happens if you hold them off long enough. Just for that it was worth it.

There are errors in the replay due to the fact that in the actual scenario the cave area has its own time schedule, but in the replay it has the time schedule as the area outside the cave.

EDIT2: North Gate: Wow, that's a lot of orcs! Took some luck to avoid significant losses.

One thing I don't understand is how is it determined when the dwarves arrive? I tried looking at the code, but there are no comments and I can't figure out why they arrived when they did...

Rearguard: This seemed like a good chance to earn my level 2s some experience, so I chose to fight. Even with mostly level 2s the scenario was rather easy (as long as I was careful with my units' placement). If it is meant as a breather scenario and a chance to level up a few trolls, then it is perfect.

[shadowblack]

Okay, I finished all except the last scenario:
1) Waves and Waves: At first this scenario seemed impossible - my allies had hardly any gold and thus hardly any units. Worse, they all gathered in the NW corner of the city, interfering with each other's ability to recruit new units and making it easier for the drakes to enter. And the shortest path to the city required going near the orcs. Fortunately the blue orcs acted cautiously and defensively and did not attack me as soon as they got the chance, which allowed Ormron to bypass them and get to the city on time, before the limited number of defenders got slaughtered. The scenario turned out to be MUCH easier than it looked
2) Defense: I underestimated the power of the enemies and made the whole thing much harder than it would have been if I had recalled a few more units, but by carefully using (read: sacrificing) my allies' units (especially green's) I managed to avoid any significant losses
I had given up on killing the last orc leader, but he gave me such a nice chance I just had to take it.
3) The Back Door: I got rather careless with Grog's group, which almost got Elyssa and Krunk killed, but apart from that no significant difficulty
4) Flying above the Sand: Not much to say about the scenario itself. The replay starts with "<Invalid WML Found> [Player] not supported at scenario toplevel"
5) A Powerful Ballista: There's something wrong with the ballista - when it hits an enemy with the ranged attack it does not display the damage; instead some coordinates are displayed. Also, loading the game does not change the result - if in the current round your first attempt to hit a particular target missed your following attempts to hit the same target during the current turn will also miss no matter how many times you load a savegame (not sure if this is intentional or not). Oh, and the replay starts with "<Invalid WML Found> [Player], [player] not supported at scenario toplevel" (yes, two [player] tags in the message)
6) The last starts with an invalid WML message. I'll leave playing for a future version, when it has difficulty levels

[Elvish_Hunter]

4) Flying above the Sand: Not much to say here

You know, Gryphons aren't good speakers. Those beaks... By the way, do you think that Young Gryphons are well balanced as units? And what about the balancing of the White Troll and the Gold Mage (although you chosen the Great Mage advancement)?

5) A Powerful Ballista: There's something wrong with the ballista - when it hits an enemy with the ranged attack it does not display the damage; instead some coordinates are displayed. Also, loading the game does not change the result - if in the current round your first attempt to hit a particular target missed your following attempts to hit the same target during the current turn will also miss no matter how many times you load a savegame (not sure if this is intentional or not).

The "coordinates" are due to the fact that, until 1.8, the C++ engine rounded the values; now, Lua makes calculations with floating point numbers. I already fixed it with a [set_variable] round=ceil, but my real plan is to try rewriting the code in Lua, at least partially.

6) The last starts with an invalid WML message. I'll leave playing for a future version, when it has difficulty levels

Yes, it's because of a [set_variable] contained in a macro. Fixed in my copy.
I'll try to upload a new release as soon as I can.

[shadowblack]

4) Flying above the Sand: Not much to say here

You know, Gryphons aren't good speakers. Those beaks... By the way, do you think that Young Gryphons are well balanced as units? And what about the balancing of the White Troll and the Gold Mage?

Young Gryphons - yes, they seem fine. I didn't use them much because they are rather fragile and most of the time I didn't need fast units, but that's just my style, I guess. In any case they were my favorite way of killing ulfs during the South Gate scenario, and will probably be useful in the final scenario too
White Troll - yes, my favorite custom unit. I didn't try the poison attack (it's one of the last upgrades I picked - maybe even the last) since it has just 1 strike, so I can't comment on that one. The aura attack is great when maxed (especially against enemies with high defense), and the mud storm is also very good when completely or nearly maxed, at least as long as Krunk has enough HP left (especially useful against enemies that are one hit away from death). Just one thing - I honestly had no idea what Obscure does until I chose it. Maybe Deilluminate or Darken would be a better name? Or at least some hint what Obscure does (when I read the name my first thought was about some sort of hiding ability)...
Gold Mage - no idea, haven't checked yet. But I think it will be quite helpful in some scenarios.

[Elvish_Hunter]

With more delay than I expected, due to real life, version 2.10.12 is on the 1.9 server. C1 Jaash, C2 and B7 were rebalanced: now I need to rebalance only C1-Zurg. In C2, all the support ships have a multihex attack (2 hex radius). Some fixes were added as well.
About the [player] bug in replays: I'm using the persistent=yes save_id= in an implicit way, by changing the leader, to avoid storing the whole side; this may cause such small error, but I hadn't the time to test and fix it.
Also, by trials and errors, I managed to run wmlxgettext on Linux: this means that, if I understood correctly how it works, I'll be able to generate the .PO file for translation without using WesCamp.

[shadowblack]

I continued my earlier game and finished C1 and C2 (replays attached). Comments:
1) Those five drakes that appeared in C1 made no real difference. The scenario would have ended exactly the same way even if they did not appear at all. Maybe increase not only the level, but also the number of drakes? For example 5 on Easy, 7 on Normal and 9 on Hard? Alternatively make them appear sooner: turn 5 on Easy, turn 4 on Normal and turn 3 on Hard.
2) It's great that all ships now have a ranged attack, but that brings a minor problem with it: If multiple ships can fire on the same target, there's no way to tell which ship is which. The context menu mentions Support Ship 1, Support Ship 2 and Support Ship 3, but which one is which? Also, the extra ranged attacks made the whole scenario a bit too easy. Is there any way to make it so that the ships have a ranged attack only on Easy and Normal, but not on Hard?

By the way, is it me or did one of the tentacles (the first one I killed) not regenerate when its turn came?

I'll try the last scenario a little later tonight.

[Elvish_Hunter]

Maybe increase not only the level, but also the number of drakes? For example 5 on Easy, 7 on Normal and 9 on Hard? Alternatively make them appear sooner: turn 5 on Easy, turn 4 on Normal and turn 3 on Hard.

Yes, I'll do it.

The context menu mentions Support Ship 1, Support Ship 2 and Support Ship 3, but which one is which?

I'll try to fix it.

Is there any way to make it so that the ships have a ranged attack only on Easy and Normal, but not on Hard?

#ifndef HARD before the ranged macros.

By the way, is it me or did one of the tentacles (the first one I killed) not regenerate when its turn came?

These are mainline tentacles, and they should regenerate, if not you just found a bug.