Campaigns without turn limit

[dfTruF]

Greetings.

Are there any campaigns without turn limit for every map? (or with much bigger limits, e.g. 120..300)
I ask because in my opinion, turn limit makes a campaign more like linear puzzle to solve. Most maps in Wesnoth campaigns are rigid and story line is rigid too.
I think that good strategy game should offer a player chance to recover from unlucky coincidence, but this requires more time (turns). So probably, most players is forced to use save-scumming in most campaigns, with harder difficulty.

Someone can say something about milking XP and gold. But it can be prevented by scenario design and foes' capitulation (at random moments, when they are on losing position obviously).

[Heindal]

Sure there are a lot of campaigns like this. In RPG campaigns for instance in which you visit a city to buy goods or travel a worldmap it wouldn't make sense to make a turnlimit. Turnlimits can simply be deactivated by using "turns=-1" when designing a campaign.

[Velensk]

I'm curious, how exactly would you prevent experience and gold milking through scenario design? If you're thinking of throwing scuds of reinforcements at the player at periodic intervals then you'd have to make them rather ridicules to overcome what some players are capable of. Also, on an infinite turn scenario, you'd have to do early finish bonus's manually and arbitrarily or not have a finish early bonus (say what you will about the need to be meticulous but strategically, encouraging players to try to finish quickly without taking excess risks makes things more interesting).

I can assure you that all of the more difficult campaigns are quite doable without relying on save-scumming to undo bad luck.

[dfTruF]

I can assure you that all of the more difficult campaigns are quite doable without relying on save-scumming to undo bad luck.

For someone who plays in permadeath mode (based on self discipline, because the game doesn't have permadeath option), even one reload is regarded as save-scumming.
In my opinion almost all difficult campaigns in Wesnoth are not doable without relying on at least one reload, when player didn't play these campaigns in the past, or didn't read walkthrough, even when player uses optimal strategies for lucky or unlucky circumstances.

[Anonymissimus]

I'm curious, how exactly would you prevent experience and gold milking through scenario design?

Good question.
I tried to event a few such scenarios for my own campaign, which follows "standard wesnoth gameplay" most of the time. (Sure there is a huge difference here, you need a scenario type for which it would make sense to set a turn limit). It's difficult.

gold milking:
no village gold or no villages, no base income, no other repeatable means of getting gold
If all scenarios are of this type, the player only has the defined starting money. Unit upkeep can (should) be disabled and/or all units can be auto-recalled. IftU has a long sequence of that.
experience milking:
There can be a finite number of enemies. For instance, in one scenario I made all enemy leaders disappear once their unit count drops below a certain count or the first one is killed, this should make it very difficult to keep the status in a way to milk experience. They also disappear once a certain turn number is reached, in case the player still manages that.
There can also be scenarios which cannot be won (spam ancient liches or something), in which you need to retreat at some spot to survive or die (to win). IftU "Face your fate" is an example. You loose the ability to recruit there once you have (over)completed the scenario objectives.

[Velensk]

For someone who plays in permadeath mode (based on self discipline, because the game doesn't have permadeath option), even one reload is regarded as save-scumming.
In my opinion almost all difficult campaigns in Wesnoth are not doable without relying on at least one reload, when player didn't play these campaigns in the past, or didn't read walkthrough, even when player uses optimal strategies for lucky or unlucky circumstances.

If you consider even reloading from the start of the scenario to be cheating then you're right, they aren't designed to be played that way. If that is the kind of experience you're looking for then you'll have to make for yourself. For myself, I'd rather have the greater challenge with as many retries as it takes than something that can be beaten so effortlessly that I don't have to take risks. I'm not sure wesnoth is the best system for that kind of puzzle.

@Anonymissimus: I don't have any problem with using such techniques for individual scenarios but an entire campaign that played like that would be frustrating in its own way. Of course, it's not as though the traditional Wesnoth campaign format is without its frustrations so I guess it's a matter of choosing your poison. As I mentioned earlier, I like the incentive to try to win quickly.