Zombies:Introduction campaign 2.0

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Inky
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Re: Zombies vs Bandits single scenario

Post by Inky »

Zombies vs. Bandits v0.1.0

Hey, this was a fun and interesting scenario - very satisfying to start a zombie apocalypse, hehehe.... :twisted:
It's a nice tactical challenge too, and the balance on hard seemed just fine to me.

Minor comment: maybe in the Note at the beginning, you could add that in order to check the resistance tables and movetypes of the different corpses you can look them up under the Walking Corpse entry in Help, since some players may not know this.

And maybe add some dialogue to the bandit's side since it's strange that they don't ever say anything (I see that you haven't added the story yet, so maybe you were planning to anyway).

Replay:
Since the bandits almost only use impact and pierce attacks, I recruited about 2/3 Wose types (40% impact/60% pierce resist) and and 1/3 Dwarf types (20% blade/impact/pierce), plus the occasional bat for getting villages. I didn't bother with trolls/saurians/swimming types since saurians and swimming corpses have bad HP and resistances, while trolls are almost the same as dwarves but without the 20% impact resistance. (While trolls do have 4 MP compared to dwarves' 3, their 2 movement cost in forest/mountains means they are actually often slower than the dwarves.)

Got some good luck in the first few turns which allowed Velendar to get to level 1 quickly, but other than that the luck was mostly even.
Defended near the keep (so I could keep reinforcing with new recruits) until about turn 30. Once I got Velendar to level 2 and some level 1 Soulless, the zombie horde was pretty much unstoppable.
Defeated the bandit leader on turn 42/50 (one interesting thing you can do at the end is lure out the bandit leader and steal his keep to recruit with Velendar, but the bandit leader died before I could do it).
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ZVB-Poor_bandits_replay.gz
wesnoth 1.12.5 / hard
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 6 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

Hi!

There is no more Zombies vs Bandits scenario on the add-ons server, I deleted it. Instead I uploaded Zombies:Introduction campaign that of 6 different scenarios in the same map. It is kinda not a 'vertical', but a 'horisontal' scenario-tree campaign.

Whats new:
1. Now you play with your zombies not only against bandits, but against another additional 5 factions. All them are balanced against your army. Now you can get also goblins and mounted zombies by zombification of your enemies. Unfortunatelly it is not possible to create a balanced enemy faction with drakes to get some zombie drakes. Drakes are too mobile, have too much HP and resistant to crush attacks (also zombie bats are vulnerable to crush attacks of gliders).

2. The storyline was greatly updated. There is deep common intro storyline and then different long starting and finishing dialogues of the campaign. I hope you will like it.


@Inky
Thank for your feedback, it pushed me to finish a long work today. I saw your replay, I agree that wose and dwarvish variations are best vs bandits (however a bit others still are useful, saurians on swamp/forest tiles and swimmers on water/swamp tiles). What I can say, that against other factions you would have to try totally different strategies.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 6 scenarios in one map

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Enemy: Bandits
Difficulty: Normal
Replay:
ZI-ZombiesIntroduction_replay.gz
(26.4 KiB) Downloaded 544 times
Remarks:
A scenario that is optimised to be playable on boring rainy days. I greatly enjoyed it. The bandits are weak against Wose Corpses and Dwarven corpses and hence, the spam strategy was highly effective.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 6 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

Thank you for your high assessment and for the replay. You finished bandits relatively easy, as I can see. But I really hope that someone will try other factions, other than bandits.

They create different gameplay, and I used not only core units, but some custom from mainline campaigns. I was thinking and testing a lot while creating balanced combinations for enemy factions, so AI would use them effectively. Enemy factions are created not on the basis of race, but by the tactical compatibility, so they are quite unusual. However I had to put some background under all these (at least by giving some logical names to the factions) and also there are no absurd combinations (like an elf and an orc in one faction).

In general I think that playing that map is close to playing multiplayer games because AI playing relatevily effectively, it uses land tiles with better defence while attacking because it have choice (while in mainline campaigns a landscape mosty monotone or even a landscape created to help a player to defend, not to help AI to compensate it's stupidness), and also player cannot create defencing front for frontline/rotate/heal system. Partly it because level0 zombies are too weak and AI can relatively easely kill them. So that advantage that player often use in mainline campaigns, when he put wounded units back until full heal almost do not work. It is better to be agressive too to get more zombies. As AI by default is too agressive, he cant guess to care about wounded units in a proper way, so this gameplay somehow evens out the differences between a player and an AI so a player had to create not so blatant tactics to overcome AI than in mainline campaigns.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

Finally, finally, finally I did it!
Version 1.0.0 of Zombies:Introduction is uploaded to the 1.12 add-ons server.
The campaign is absloutely complete now. As before, the first scenario have 6 options. This time I added the second, final scenario, without choices. The campaign discover playing with (the first scenario ) and against (the second scenario) zombies.
I have to say that I am very content with the result. The storyline is intense and deep and self-sufficient dispite there are only 2 scenarios in length. And yea, in the second scenario a huge plotline twist is awaiting you.

Now about tactics. In this scenario I for the first time used ideas that I disclosed here - viewtopic.php?f=8&t=44003#p595840 . Not fully, but at least partially. Despite I do not use some absolutely new special abilities the gameplay is totally different from the mainline. You no more can use AI stupindess. I was barely able to defeat AI in the second scenario, sometimes I felt helpless and even had no idea what to do and what I was doing wrong. And this was not because AI has a lot of money and a lot of units, nope. AI has not so much handicap actually. There is no obvious tactics you can use there, planning and micro-control is needed at the every turn, thinking is needed badly, you cannot just make a front and rotate wounded units.

Now a printscreen from the second scenario, I hope it will stimulate an interest to the campaign :D
printscreen.png
I need a feedback for the second scenario and also a feedback for 'other-than-bandit' options in the first scenario. Thank you for the attention.
Last edited by Aldarisvet on August 10th, 2016, 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by ForestDragon »

i found a typo in the ending:
Spoiler:
Last edited by ForestDragon on August 7th, 2016, 3:56 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

ForestDragon wrote:i found a typo in the ending:
Velendar's ancestor: Velendar's descendant
Thank you, I fixed it.
However I can say that I do not like when people just go and see other's code/text, this is mega-spoilering.
I really consider a point to put an option in the beginning of the every scenario - 'I do not want to play the scenario, just let me see the storyline/dialogs' which would activate testing scrpits putting 3 great mages in the camp of the enemy so everything could be finished in the first turn of the every scenario.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by ForestDragon »

Aldarisvet wrote:I really consider a point to put an option in the beginning of the every scenario - 'I do not want to play the scenario, just let me see the storyline/dialogs' which would activate testing scrpits putting 3 great mages in the camp of the enemy so everything could be finished in the first turn of the every scenario.
well, there is debug for doing that stuff already
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

ForestDragon wrote:
Aldarisvet wrote:I really consider a point to put an option in the beginning of the every scenario - 'I do not want to play the scenario, just let me see the storyline/dialogs' which would activate testing scrpits putting 3 great mages in the camp of the enemy so everything could be finished in the first turn of the every scenario.
well, there is debug for doing that stuff already
I still have no Idea how to use the debug mode and do not want to know.
Moreover, I am sure that this is for geeks. Command lines like in MS-DOS I suppose? You really think that common people would use this (or even know about this)?
I think that there is a huge audience that cannot pass this campaign even in the easy difficulty. My own elder son is a good example.
So I definetely decided that I would add this "put 3 Great Mages in the enemy camp" feature immediately.

EDIT:
I've implemented fast win option in some humor way (in Faelord style when he was making funny dialogs between characters while testing death of the enemy leader but he covered it under comments).
Also the way it is done for the scenario1 is even differ a bit from the way it is done for scenario2 for the more fun.
EDIT2:
The campaign is available on 1.13 server from the now.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by doofus-01 »

Aldarisvet wrote:I still have no Idea how to use the debug mode and do not want to know.
Moreover, I am sure that this is for geeks. Command lines like in MS-DOS I suppose?
As a UMC creator, debug mode should save you a lot of time. Type ":" in 1.12 (or ";" then backspace in current 1.13 - it's a known bug) to bring up the command line, then type "help" to see your options. ":debug" will enable ":inspect", the gamestate inspector, which is a GUI that allows you to see some of what is going on with variables, events, and unit data on the fly.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

Wow, what I've just found!

http://www.slideserve.com/cwen/zombies

It's a serious presentation dedicated to zombies theme that named
Zombies: An Introduction to the Undead

Epic of Gilgamesh
“I will knock on the gates of the Netherworld,
I will smash the door posts, and leave the doors flat down,
And will let the dead go up to eat the living,
And the dead will outnumber the living.”

- Written before 1300 B.C.

I think I can use it as the epigraph to the campaign.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by The_Gnat »

Aldarisvet (in a differn't thread) wrote:If you interested, I would suggest to begin with Zombies:Introduction which is the prequel to A Whim of Fate. I really need a feedback about it. Especially about the second scenario of it, which I think is tactically innovative.


Hi Aldarisvet. I had fun playing Zombies:Introduction! I played it on easy difficulty and fairly easy. The only thing i was confused about was the startup message:

"This campaign and this scenario in particular is quite hard for the beginners even in the easy difficulty. If you are interested only in exploring the storyline/dialogs you can agree on the following proposal that will teleport 5 Silver Mages on the enemy camp at the first turn, so the conflict can be solved immediately (though you will miss an opportunity to taste a quite tactically untypical gameplay)"

Since there are only two scenarios i miss the point of teleporting mages into the enemy camp?

EDIT: Though reading some more of your thread i assume it is for testing :P

I played scenario 1 vs the goblins and naga and enjoyed it, it was a good untypical game due to the level of the units and the fact they are all zombies. The only thing i found though was that the zombie bats are quite over weighted. I bought pretty much only zombie bats and a few zombie trolls (to fight the naga brawlers) but the bats took all the towns and i continued to recruit bats until they ran out of money and were easily overwhelmed.

I believe it would be different depending on who you fight but i will test to see! :D

Scenario two was good also but i personally think it was not as unique, because the enemy just had lvl 0 zombies which aren't too hard to defeat (obviously if he could recruit anything else that would be in-appropriate) i didn't have any trouble defeating him though because the hag basically could kill one enemy per turn and after my half dozen spiders stole all the villages he was also overwhelmed and defeated. I think on this scenario the hag should be reduced and also the arcane power though it is pretty massive i didn't have to use because he doesn't have enough money.

I won scenario 1 vs goblins in 21 turns at easy difficulty.
I won scenario 2 in 10 turns at easy difficulty.

I think that because of the amount of villages in the map that is the key to winning and what allowed my to easily win both scenarios.

Overall i had fun :D and enjoyed and will post comments after i test the other scenario options!!!

I also like the story line and that you've got some story art! and i look forward to see what happens to that staff ;)
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by Aldarisvet »

Hi, The_Gnat!
The feature with Silver Mages partly is a joke and partly is a possibility to see dialogs on different branches if you do not want to try all of them in a serious way.
I tested everything on Hard, so I cant say anything about Easy difficulty. Obviously you are the player that experienced enough, not a beginner at all.
I recommend you to try everything on Hard, so you will find what it is really about (actually the second scenario was insane on Hard for me). And, I hope, you do not use save and loads, don't you?
I would really appreciate your replays on Hard.
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by The_Gnat »

Hi Aldarisvet, yeah i think i should probably play it on a harder difficulty :D (btw i don't use save and load)

When i try the rest of the options i will post my comments. Thanks for making this cool campaign 8)
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Re: Zombies:Introduction campaign - 7 scenarios in one map

Post by The_Gnat »

I am just starting another of the Zombies:Introduction scenarios and noticed that the "peaceful intellectuals" option at the start of the campaign just makes it so you fight goblins. You probably know this and have just not implemented it yet but i thought to mention it anyway. :D

Also when playing the law enforcers, Light Switch says "...Peasants should dig in their mud and do not poke their dirty noses...". I'm no grammar expert ;) but i think it should say "...Peasants should dig in their mud and do not poke their noses..." with the do removed.

Its a tiny minor thing that doesn't really matter at all, but i noticed so i thought to say something :D


EDIT: I've played zombies introduction versus law enforcers just now and i liked it even better than versus the goblins! :) I played it on hard and i think it was lots of fun. After playing this, i think that in the goblin scenario there wasn't enough goblins (it was mainly naga's i fought) and i think it would be good to put in some other goblins (plenty of people have made cool goblins like this)

But about the Law Enforcers: I was expecting some more loyalists because of the name but i only fought Merman Spearmen, and Mages. It doesn't have to be changed but i think for the "law enforcers" i would prefer loyalist spearman,bowman,and others... (just an opinion though)

Also i won the scenario in 12 14 turns (on hard) with the bat strategy again. I think taking all the villages is overly powerful because it gives so much more money than other strategies. Maybe decrease the amount of villages. Other than that it was a great scenario and i will post more when i play the rest! :D

Heres the replay :
ZI-ZombiesIntroduction_replay.gz
(23.98 KiB) Downloaded 513 times
Last edited by The_Gnat on November 13th, 2016, 8:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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