Legend of the Invincibles

[Dugi]

It's granted mostly by items, not AMLA. Anyone can have it.

[rytas]

I feel all AOE AMLA's were created without penalties in mind and some 'Great enchancements' and now are no longer that great nor enhancements but more 'situational skills' that you want to use once in a while and not to be in a way all the time.

All AoE AMLAs were created without the current penalties in mind. However, as I've written recently, the penalties used to be different, giving no exp for kills, so as a result, many people were not using these attacks.

What you may not realise, these penalties can be quite well mitigated using the wrath ability (or having someone with hate speech nearby). As long as there are many attacks, the penalty is marginalised. If there are few of them, some recharging attack might be necessary to switch to.

I'm quite confident in Wesnoth and in particular LotI (past/present) mechanics.
I do realize that these penalties are negative wrath and wrath/hate speech is the way to mitigate.
I do not consider 'giving no exp for kill' equivalent to current situation with -wrath (also penalty to kill != penalty to attack).

In my view the 'no xp penalty' was always a sign of unfinished nature of AOE implementation and considering how overpowered some combos were i usually tried to avoid using them as it was no fun and unnecessary.
Now this try with penalties is correcting one illogical thing - giving xp for kills, and tries to make AOE not that overpowered - that i welcome.

But the problem is, now there is another illogical thing - you are forced to suffer AOE penalties even if you have no INTENT to use AOE.

...
Why everyone around has normal FF and now Lethalia is special? If she tries to use that same FF she is suddenly exploding with energy fireworks and is dead tired in no time, while everyone is going forward if nothing happened? This gives very weird feeling. Why would I, Lethalia, the demigod, have no ability to use just little bit of simple FF that everyone can if i wish so?

Same with cleave. One day I learn to hack to the sides like a madman. Good. Thats tiring, understandable. But the giggle is, now, every time I try to attack anyone (a single monster or a group) I'm hacking like a madman. I can't stop. Really. Its tiring, I understand. But why I can't do that simple 1v1 hack&slash that I was able to do before? I have learned it long time ago, its in my blood and bones, its impossible to forget. But still, I can't. Must be some wicked curse. I hack like a madman and feel very tired. Damn.
...


p.s. next idea: Make menu item in spirit of 'Disable attacks for retaliation' that says 'Disable AOE'. Would this be not too complex to implement? Would need some indication that when its in 'disabled' state..
p.s.s. giving no penalty when AOE attack affects only one target still sounds nice to me.

[Dugi]

Things like giving all attacks an additional attack as a copy that has no AoE or adding an option that disables it is not hard to implement. However, it would be confusing and/or annoying to control for users. In the next project, you can configure any attack (and any number of versions of any spell) with various modifier skills, allowing you to have a super strong volley of fireballs with massive AoE and ricocheting from enemies, at a massive cost and a weak fireball with small area of effect simultaneously and chose from between the two easily, but it's not very doable on LotI that tries to use as much of the traditional game mechanics as possible.

So I suggest this:
1. A neglectful penalty of cleave
2. Adding AoE to some attacks as an alternative (there are already some AMLAs that add attacks that are based on existing attacks, just with a small extra). This should be Lethalia's faerie fire, Elder Mage's fireball and... huh... suggest something, please.

[matsjoyce]

@Dugi: Krux fireball in chapter 8 and 10, as it's really weak ATM w/ AoE.

[Delicius169]

And Scythemaster is really weak with his whirlwind attack now, he has nothing usefull, even before there was no need to recruit him, and now it s even worse. Same for phantom.

Exterminator is fine as he is, he has chaos attack which can be really advantage now.

[nuorc]

suggest something, please.

FDL comes with Aoe, not sure about other legacies.

[Dugi]

Okay, now Lethalia's explosive faerie fire advancement adds a new variation of the attack that does explosive damage and its damage is always the same as the damage of normal faerie fire. Krux has a new AMLA path that improves the damage of both (explosive) fireball and faerie fire. Fire Dragon Legacy's last advancement no longer adds the explosive weapon special, it adds a new attack with it. Cleave now decreases damage only by 2. Scythemaster's damage was increased.

[nuorc]

Lethalia's explosive faerie fire advancement adds a new variation of the attack that does explosive damage

I don't really know what you mean. Will I have the choice to have a faerie fire attack without AoE and thus without the penalty? In the first part I can choose not to add AoE and thus have a good ranged attack without penalty, unlike in the second part.

Fire Dragon Legacy's last advancement no longer adds the explosive weapon special, it adds a new attack with it.

But the first attack you get from FDL already comes with cone. So I still can't have that legacy without AoE/penalty?

[Dugi]

Will I have the choice to have a faerie fire attack without AoE and thus without the penalty?

Yes. The advancement that added explosive adds a new attack with explosive (its damage is always the same as the non-explosive one). Which means that if you take it, you'll be able to choose between no AoE, cone and explosive.

But the first attack you get from FDL already comes with cone.

I have removed the cone and increased its damage a little bit to recompense.

[nuorc]

@Dugi: Sounds great. THX!

[rytas]

Okay, now Lethalia's explosive faerie fire advancement adds a new variation of the attack that does explosive damage and its damage is always the same as the damage of normal faerie fire. Krux has a new AMLA path that improves the damage of both (explosive) fireball and faerie fire. Fire Dragon Legacy's last advancement no longer adds the explosive weapon special, it adds a new attack with it. Cleave now decreases damage only by 2. Scythemaster's damage was increased.

I still think that making penalty dependant on enemy count affected might be the better way to go, at least with cleave/cone, eg:

Code: Select all

enemies hit -> penalty:
 1          ->  0
 2          ->  2 
 3          ->  4 (full cleave)
 4          ->  6 (7?) (full cone)

this way cleave/cone could be left as it is, not making them into separate attacks or anything, and behave quite logically, eg:
"I hack/cast so wide/far as I'm able to reach the enemies, but not that wide/far if there is no one to reach."
(With explosive/whirlwind this convention does not hold, as you still may require a big boom/full swing even if 2 enemies are affected)

Other changes seem positive so far, thanks.

[Dugi]

@rytas
I understand what you mean, but I don't think it's a good idea. It would allow you to use a huge range attack that could be used to attack two enemies quite far from each other for little cost. Furthermore, it doesn't discriminate between weak enemies that will be killed fast, enemies who take almost no damage due to their resistances or harmless targets you do not care about (like much of the infernal flora). That way, you might just use the attack with greatest range to hit the maximum number of enemies, ignoring attacks that have a lesser range and should be far less exhausting.

### Poll ###
Results:

Code: Select all

Early finish bonus awarding also items or gems depending on an estimate what could be obtained by farming	22%
Early finish scaring enemies to summon Beezelbub, an optional tough enemy that would give massive exp and drop many items and gems	26%
Bonus objectives for finishing early, possibly giving massive awards for finishing incredibly early (awards would be items, high gems, units, ...)	22%
Numerous turns saved over many scenarios unlocking secret advancement paths	18%
Something nasty happening if you're late in scenarios often misused for farming (terrain changes, demons appearing, debilitating blood falling from the skies)	4%
Tight turn limits	2%
Enemies dropping nothing after a certain turn (maybe also giving no exp)	4%
Something else (say what somewhere)	2%

Beelzebub has won the poll. Saving turns will bring an optional super hard enemy that will be very rewarding (however, I am quite sure some players will find him trivial, like everything I have created so far).

[rytas]

It would allow you to use a huge range attack that could be used to attack two enemies quite far from each other for little cost. Furthermore, it doesn't discriminate between weak enemies that will be killed fast, enemies who take almost no damage due to their resistances or harmless targets you do not care about (like much of the infernal flora). That way, you might just use the attack with greatest range to hit the maximum number of enemies, ignoring attacks that have a lesser range and should be far less exhausting.

I specifically said that solution i have suggested does not work for such attacks, it might be applied only to cleave/cone.

I envision explosive/whirlwind class AOE attacks to be created as a separate form of normal attack, like you just have did with Lethalias FF and same as whirlwind is added; these huge AOE attacks should stick to fixed penalty.
Cleave/cone thou can be easily left as enhancements to the normal attack with variable penalty and behave very logically.

I hope i have understood what you have meant correctly

[Dugi]

Sorry, I assumed you meant all AoE attacks and meant cleave and cone as examples.

However, I still don't think it's a very good idea. What if you don't care about the other units? You gain the exertion even if you don't want, cleave and cone will still be a burden. You'd have to avoid unimportant secondary targets (attacking a big demon, imps swarming around), adding complexity where it's not interesting. Furthermore, having similar things behave slightly differently is confusing. Lower penalty is what I think to be a better idea.

Update:
I have made the promised update. Besides the recently mentioned changes, it makes the add-on work on wesnoth 1.13. It will show some error messages, press Ctrl+X to hide them, they are harmless. There will also be some hidden errors (if there was an easy solution without breaking compatibility with 1.12, I would have used it).

Beelzebub appears on hand-picked locations in 80 scenarios. These scenarios are mostly in chapters 2, 3, 7, 8, 10, because you won't have many turns saved in chapters 1 and 6, in chapter 4, you will often have your army split, you won't be able to save many turns in chapters 5 and 9. But you can meet him in any chapter except chapter 9.

[ahmannar]

I voted that the 4th chapter was the one in more need of improvement but i would say that the 5th comes close to it. I'll try to give my opinions and reasoning on this :

4th chapter->We start the 4th chapter with only our 2 heroes and the campaign has a mix of stand-alone levels with little to no replayability(like the infiltration on the castle with efraim or the one in his mind with lethalia), levels in where the opposition is too easy just for the heroes(all of the levels with efraim until he deals with the vampires can easily classify into this and the 1st one with lethalia surely classifies like this) and levels with huge armies that consist of throwing massed recruits(the ones against the kingdom of wesnoth). This creates some problems(at least, in my point of view):
-> A number of levels that consist of purely hack and slash with one unit with no tactical options at all;
-> The nature of the chapter makes that there´s no interest or benefit of maintaining any units alive. Since the units from the previous chapters will be always more useful than the ones we can get from just this one, there´s not even an incentive to preserve some for the next chapter, given the amount of casualties that exist;
-> This probably is too much personal, but the big battles that do exist consist mostly of "recruit large number of appropriate units, smash them all". The fact that there´s no need to preserve them along the chpter and that, when needed, there´s option to recruit high level units, it trivializes a bit these levels.

Possible improvements:
->Give the enemies units more bonuses so that they are more of a challenge in general(vampires have a reason for it and the wesnothians could be powered by the mages of the kingdom to better defend their country, among other explanations);
->Give less turns in the stand alone/almost stand-alone scenarios, give the enemy more gold and give some special units to the enemy so that these don´t continue to be farm levels, while creating the need to recruit an army(even if it is just for the purpose of screening the leader and making a passage for him).


5th chapter->Until we reach the dungeon part, the enemies are too much "normal" to be any kind of match for the 2 main heroes. Given the current state of the chapter, with the exception of the first level where the machines of the big bad appear, all scenarios until the dungeon can be soloed with the heroes. There has just been too many scenarios and, at this point, the enemies from these levels don´t have even a slight chance to kill them. Once we reach the dungeon it gets a little bit more complicated but considering the previous recalls, the number of available spells, the ways to weaken the general are and final boss, it can all become too much easy if done properly.

Possible improvements:
->Introduce the machines earlier on the campaign. They are the only kind of enemies capable of killing the heroes at this point and the ones that require recruiting units;
->Remove some ways that make the dungeon easier/rework them so that not all of them weaken the enemy but provide more options instead;

I hope this can be of some use. I could try to elaborate more on some of these topics and be more specific if you want in the future.