A New Order.

[AxalaraFlame]

Akladian_Warrior.cfg

(12.72 KiB) Downloaded 248 times

Akladian_LightInfantry.cfg

(12.79 KiB) Downloaded 268 times

Akladian_Pikeneer.cfg

(10.88 KiB) Downloaded 280 times

Akladian_Fastfoot.cfg

(1.54 KiB) Downloaded 272 times

This unit is far from been balanced. Nerf down its hp to 43 or give him 1 less movement point are all doable. Take care of it.

I still have lots of stuff to upload here, but I have to depart now. The main character lines (Hargarthen and Lorin) are not adapted to this new system yet, two bugs are not reported, one dialogue error is not found (but I know it do exists!). Have a good time with your children and wife!

[szopen]

Thanks a lot! I will have time in Thursday to check whether everything is OK, and in next week I upload a new version. By that time maybe I will get also final portrait, though it's low probability event.

[szopen]

AxalaraFlame,

I really appreciate all your effort and the time you had spent trying to
made Akladians balanced better. However, there are few things which I don't
know whether I like. I hope you will forgive me any errors I'll made in the
following. I am writing this on my laptop at night.

Warrior must advance to the Leader.

Clansman cannot advance to the Leader. Simple clansman cannot lead the other unless
he first proves himself as able leader. This is something absolutely out of
question. This was discussed before, in fact first discussion about that was
several years ago and both I and other maintainers already rejected any
proposals to change it. This won't be changed, period. The leaders should be
relatively rare. Hence also their prohibiting cost; but I have no strong
option to almost twice reducing their cost.

I see that you have pushed HP of Akladians a lot. Again, as i said before,
the fact that Akladians are vulnerable and may die a lot is a feature, not
a bug. Akladians should be able to be fully healed with reasonable time
just by sitting in villages. I thought I made my opinion clear on this. And
again, this also was discussed before. The proposals to boost HP of Akladians
was first made when Oto Buchta aka Tapik was maintainer, and it was rejected
then. Indeed I see a lot of changes which change the inexpensive troops
to be used in a swarm fashion, into sparta-like elite infantry (LightInfantry
is the best example of this - rising twice their cost, increasing
their attack and their HP).
This make sense for the lords, storywise. Not sure about plain soldiers.

As an example, you've said that Fastfoot are too powerfull. I never had problems
with them -- i see you have increased their HP and reduced their cost. Indeed
I can see they may be too dangerous now.

I will see how this changes work in game, maybe in Thursday.

I will see how this changes work in game, maybe in Thursday.

Akladians pretty much WORSHIP swords. Therefore, the conscious decision to
use almost exclusively swords and pikes. The Shieldguards abandoning swords
and using maces is interesting idea and may address the issue of the neutral
line being too "boring". Therefore, although I don't like it, I may accept it
(reluctanctly). In addition, the issue is here also the sprite -- the sprite
will be inconsistent with the unit desription. Sprites won't be changed
any time soon. In fact, one person has volunteered to do them, but he then
disappeared.

Remember that Akladians won't be made into separate era. They are balanced solely
for this campaign and the primary concern is to deal with the reports
made by players. Those concerns were generally that Akladians are too tough.

I will check the changes myself and I will publish new version next weekend.
I would ask the players to check the new version of the campaign, especially
those, who had the issues with game balance before, and then I will made
the final decision whether to keep those changes or not. As I said,
I don't like many of those changes, but if they will make the game
more pleasant and satisfying for the players, I will go for them, no matter whether I like them or not.

[szopen]

I went through five first scenarios with new units and I have impression that first four were too easy, and then I hit into the orcs and cannot pass them using my previous tactics (and after all, I designed those scenarios!). I will start anew. I have new problem with rebalancing Battle of Barnon. I don't want to introduce new changes in text (the keeping translation updated is pain the a*), but I can easily destroy EACH of the lords alone, though Bor Cryne did me a bit of problems.

In weekend I will have more time to check it further.

[szopen]

Last two days I was balancing first four scenarios. I really should be doing something else, not playing again and again Battle of Barnon -- yesterday I have spent more than 8 hours playing this. The problem is not only the new statistics, but also that I try to incorporate the suggestion of removing all "hidden" bonuses for the enemies (so no "reinforcements!"). I also removed the turn limit. Right now, each time I play, the game ends in stalemate, with enemies producing steady stream of units, which I slaughter, occasionally loosing one or two units and replacing it with another. I played once more than 40 turns (Extremely frustrating).

It means that new release probably won't be in monday, as I hoped. But it could be in next week. I welcome suggestions from players, who played the campaign and remember Battle of Barnon. Especially, I'd love to see the replays from players, who defeated all three players, or at least one of them.

I already tried moving enemies castles further, adding swamps to blocking their progress, with new villages and increased base income.

[Askarian]

i find this campiagn by other people's instructing. it is good, but too long; and my english is bad, and my dictionary cannot find many words in it, or they dont mean the thing in the dictionary in the campaign. did you think of make it shorter, the english easier?

[szopen]

i find this campiagn by other people's instructing. it is good, but too long; and my english is bad, and my dictionary cannot find many words in it, or they dont mean the thing in the dictionary in the campaign. did you think of make it shorter, the english easier?

What's your original language?

[szopen]

Geez, I am starting to hate it. Another few nights trying to balance battle of barnon with new stats and without any "cheats". I came to the point when I am able to win, but with only one (3rd level) unit succeeding in escaping, and if I do not try to escape early enough, I am always overhelmed. In addition, no longer I can kill Bor Cryne with "early strike"-kind strategy. So currently I managed the scenario to be finally "not too easy" but it's a bit too "to hard". OTOH, I assume only 250gp, while it's easy to have 350gp at this point. I would really love to see the replays from other players, if only for seeing the game style.

Obviously, I use "save-reload" tactics sparingly, so I do not reload each time i lose a unit. It means players heavy on save-reload may took the scenario as already balanced enough.

The issue is that there are at least three other scenarios (oracle, haeltin, orannon) which in the past I lost several nights on balancing, and it's really awful thought to go through that nightmare again. Definetely there will be no release this week.

[szopen]

I've decided to put online the effects of my efforts so far. Battle of Barnon is rebalanced -- cheats are removed, taken into account some suggestions, and scenario is winnable right now. This is a changelog for a release. I am no longer able to kill Bor Cryne, and i fail one or two turns to kill Uri. The problem I have now are "Lorin's wars" which in past were quite hard (and they supposed to be), while right now they are practically piece of cake with proper tactics and enough good units from earlier scenarios.

Battle of Barnon may be changed again in the next version
Changelog for 1.2.7
* changed units/_main.cfg and akladian stats for Clansman, Leader, Chieftain,
Lord (by AxalaraFlame, with small changes)
* New portrait for Bor Cryne, reused also as story_furious.png
* removed bar.png and rauke.png, replaced by akladian_lord.png
* added bunch of {IS_LOYAL} to a lot of unit definitions
* modified 04 battle of barnon to make it harder (larger base income for enemies),
changing a map. AI does not cheat in the scenario any more
* making base income larger for scenario 02. It's not to make the scenario harder,
but rather to increase the chances that player will level up his units
* strange bug with Hoyre refusing to escape fixed in Battle of Barnon
* corrected three typos in Polish translation
* HUMAN_DIE and HUMAN_FEMALE_DIE sound lists added
* scenarios checked up to 10th, next scenarios may be not balanced. Hired
Swords was waaaay too easy with reduced fire resistances, so upped it by 10%.
* Siege of Haeltin was now too much piece of cake, added a bit base income to
enemies, plus +50 to each side if player has above 400gp
* Bugfix: Oyre posthumously was saying he killed himself in self-defense.

[AxalaraFlame]

Bro, I am back to town. How's everything going on these days? Anything special happened? I forget to tell you that I have made many reserved projects if you are not satisfied for the former version. What's more, I made some mistakes(did u notice any?). I will contact you later.

[hagabaka]

I recently started this campaign and really like the emphasis on characters and the diversity of unit factions.

Spoiler:

I also like the way your army gets separated making you need to level new units from scratch at times. A big problem I have with most campaigns is that after just a few scenarios I have usually developed a max level unit of every type, which removes a lot of fun in playing afterwards. This is a really good way to solve that problem.

However, this also introduces the problem that you can't easily foresee the value of a unit in the future, without knowing the modifications that will be made to your recall/recruit list. I was able to recruit Wisemen in one of the earlier scenarios, but since it was not a hard fight, and Wisemen are pretty useless other than healing, I only leveled up one. In Battle of Barnon, I could also recruit Wisemen, but it wasn't really easy to level them in that fight. I evacuated all my units that were advanced at least once, or were close to. I assumed the units that were not evacuated would be probably lost forever, but thought they would be pretty worthless and I could always recruit again if I needed them. When Reme and Lorin parted ways, I gave Lorin 1 Holyman out of the 5 unit allowance. Now I've finished a few scenarios on the Scouting map, and united with Reme and Lorin, and it's occuring to me that if I leveled and retained more Wisemen it would make the fights from now on much easier. Having access to both melee and ranged fighters from akladians, loyalists, outlaws and elves, I'm really only missing healers (I chose to level my Elvish Shaman to Sorceress). At this point I can recruit Clansmen again, and I guess I'll probably be able to recruit all units at some point in the future, but even then it would still be too much of a pain to level Wisemen in later scenarios. Also, it seems that the Akladians I leveled until the Swamp scenarios are just wiped out, except the 5 that went with Lorin. It would be nicer if Reme could keep one or two units that would join me later too.

Also, having so many unit types to choose from, it's hard to prevent some of them from being rendered useless. It's a nice surprised when a few peasants and a bowman with loyal and other traits joined my troops, and I think they can probably be useful in later scenarios if I could level them, but I think the fights now are too intense now for me to recall them. At least, I wouldn't be able to do it and also win the "heroic bonuses". I guess I'm just too greedy. To be fair, if I had unlimited access to Akladians and Elves, this would be even a worse problem, so I guess the problem I complained about in the previous paragraph has to exist to help with this problem.

In contrast to you, szopen, I load the game whenever a unit dies, so I don't really have much to say on the actual difficulty of the fights. It feels right for me though, and I like the maps so far, which offer tactical position choices yet do not give you complete advantage, and have terrain features well integrated with the plot and dialog.

Edit:

Spoiler:

Sorry, I checked my recall list more closely and there are more than 5 Akladian units. It still seems fewer than the number I evacuated in Barnon, but maybe my memory is wrong. Also, it looks like there are more modifications to recruit/recall list to come...

[szopen]

I forget to tell you that I have made many reserved projects if you are not satisfied for the former version.

I have already rebalanced first 10 scenarios for new stats. I have only problem with fire (non)resistance of Akladians - the only sensible taactics now is to recruit a lot of naffats and with them, "lorin's war" are piece o fcake.

I made some mistakes(did u notice any?). I will contact you later.

I haven't

[szopen]

Spoiler:

Sorry, I checked my recall list more closely and there are more than 5 Akladian units. It still seems fewer than the number I evacuated in Barnon, but maybe my memory is wrong. Also, it looks like there are more modifications to recruit/recall list to come...

Spoiler:

After Battle of Barnon you ar eforced to pick 5 Akladian units - it seems unlikely that you could have more UNLESS you a) convinced Reumario to join you b) Lorin killed so many enemies, that they decided she is worthy to be a leader and they join you.

BTW, if you upgraded the Kyobaine, do you like her lines?

[AxalaraFlame]

Hi Mr.szopen, I am back. Some bugs for you, and, one important thing.
1. Did you check this map-editor bug, caused by ANO before?

Check it and kill it mercilessly!

2. Well, I noticed you have some criticisms on the units having even greater HP than before. That is troublesome, but won't cause trouble if you did this: their fire resistances is 10%, tested and proved. With that 10% nerf, they released much greater range of variability able to modify.
The problem is you gave 20%...... I gave them this nerf was determined to make them as easy to kill as before, but now they are really too awesome.

My test data will complete soon. These are posted here twmporarily. GL HF!



Axalara

[szopen]

This bug should be already fixed.

As for fire resistance, the problem is, that with 10% fire resistance the "Lorin's wars" are walkovers. Naffats cut through the Akladians like hot knife through the butter. Two choices is either to add more gp to enemies, or to remove naffats from the recruitment list. I do not like both. And the next time I will have time to balance will be probably only in weekend, and likely later.