Campaign: Saboteur and Savior 0.62 (Extra version added)

[savagust]

There are two versions: 'Standard' and 'Giant'.

The latest 'Standard' version is 0.62. Tested on Wesnoth 1.2.5.
(Can be downloaded from the add-on server or HERE. )

The latest 'Giant' version is 0.61. Tested on Wesnoth 1.2.5.
(Can only be downloaded from HERE. )

Differences:

'Standard'
---Can choose the size of battles.
---Each faction has its own homeland.
---6 factions which are Wesnoth's default factions.

'Giant'
---Cannot choose the size of battles.
---Each Wesnoth's default faction has its own homeland while others have the same homeland.
---24 factions. These factions and units are obtained from Wesnoth's default factions, "Extended Era", "Imperial Era", "Era of Myths", productions of Neoriceisgood, graphic library of Wesnoth's wiki. Thank their authors.
(I have modified them in order to make them compatible with each other. As a result, they are slightly different from the originals. )

Factions of 'Giant' version
------------------------------
Drakes
Knalgan Alliance
Loyalists
Northerners
Rebels
Undead

Aragwaith
Arendians
Celestials
Chaos
Dark Elves
Devlings
Dwarves
Elementals
Frost Elves
Kalifa
Lavinian Legion
Marauders
Outlaws
Shifters (Therians)
Sidhe Elves
Steppe Orcs
The Warg (Wargs)
Vampires



This campaign is modified and expanded from The Endless War but with a lot of differences.
(Lots of stuff stolen from "The Endless War", "Extended Era", "Imperial Era", "Era of Myths", "Defense of the Castle"
Thanks for all of them! )

---Number of factions for player to choose from as player's faction or enemy faction: 6 for 'Standard', 24 for 'Giant'.

---Death of player's leader does not result defeat except first fight.

---Deaths of player's units are permanent.

---Enemy faction would be random every fight.

---Player can choose the level of enemy units.

---Fights between first and last, would be random maps which consist of 7 types. The type of random map would be randomly selected every fight.

---First fight would be player's homeland based on player's faction.
Last fight would be enemy homeland based on enemy faction.

---There are two phases in this campaign:

1. Fight:
Initial gold of player and AI in each fight is fixed.
However, there would be some bonus gold gained from previous fight by the deaths of hostile units.
In addition, player's side would also gain "military assets" from previous fight by the deaths of hostile units.

2. Shopping and Tactic:
You can advance your units, buy special units or perform tactics by spending "military assets".
Unused "military assets" would be stored for later uses.

---System of territory:

During each fight,
please imagine that your initial castle is your captured city and enemy initial castle is enemy captured city.

If enemy leader is killed,
enemy city is captured by you and enemy retreat to their previous captured city.
If your leader is killed,
your city is captured by enemy and you retreat to your previous captured city.
If turns run out,
you retreat to your captured city, and so do enemy.
(Now, the number of turns is more than enough which equals to 0.05 of the enemy default initial gold every fight. I think it needs to be more balanced. )

for example:

If enemy leader is killed in "Fight for Territory 30",
next scenario would be "City of Territory 30",
then "Fight for Territory 40".

If your leader is killed in "Fight for Territory 30",
next scenario would be "Our Last Stand" (City of Territory 10),
then "Fight for Territory 20".

If turns run out in "Fight for Territory 30",
next scenario would be "City of Territory 20",
then "Fight for Territory 30".

However, there are two exceptions.
If your leader is killed in "Fight for Territory 20",
all is lost.
If enemy leader is killed in "Lay Siege to Enemy Last Stand" (Fight for Territory 100),
final victory is achieved.

@Our Last Stand (City of Territory 10)
(Phase: Shopping and Tactic)
----------|----------
Fight for Territory 20
(Phase: Fight, in player's homeland based on player's faction. )
----------|----------
@City of Territory 20
(Phase: Shopping and Tactic)
----------|----------
Fight for Territory 30
(Phase: Fight, in random map)
----------|----------
@City of Territory 30
(Phase: Shopping and Tactic)
----------|----------
Fight for Territory 40
(Phase: Fight, in random map)
----------|----------
@City of Territory 40
(Phase: Shopping and Tactic)
----------:----------
----------:----------
----------:----------
Fight for Territory 90
(Phase: Fight, in random map)
----------|----------
@City of Territory 90
(Phase: Shopping and Tactic)
----------|----------
Lay Siege to Enemy Last Stand (Fight for Territory 100)
(Phase: Fight, in enemy homeland based on enemy faction. )

[TL]

This is a really cool campaign! It needs some polishing work though (lots of typos, the intro text tends to use too many exclamation points, things could be a bit better explained) but it's got a lot of interesting ideas (even if they were maybe borrowed from other places )

Oh yeah, and there's a lot of debugging stuff left in (like the super-griffon and the rob the bank option)

I tried it on the hardest settings and can confirm that yep, it's hard. I managed to win the first scenario without cutting it TOO closely but then on the second scenario I got ripped to shreds since I didn't have that nice easy to defend castle. One thing I noticed though: the AI recruits a WHOLE LOT of scout units (cavalry for loyalists, wolves for northerners, etc.) which probably makes it easier than it should be. One thing that helped in the first battle was that it was loyalist vs. loyalist and 70% of the AI army consisted of cavalry so I responded with a lot of piercing units. Next scenario I faced northerners and all the wolf riders (even upgraded ones) did make things a little easier at first but I ended up getting swamped anyhow.

Oh yeah, and also when your leader upgrades from the cursed soul unit you keep the undead trait. Is this supposed to happen?

[Ken_Oh]

Very cool. I haven't played it yet but I love that someone got some usage out of The Endless War (that and it looks like a cool idea). I hope to play it soon and hopefully you'll have put something in I can take back and use in TEW.

[savagust]

OK, I got it and played Undead with Sergeant leader versus Undead in the first round and got this after saving. It also happens if I try to reload:

Ken Oh,

I tried that several times but that error didn't occur.
By the way, did you play it with Wesnoth 1.2.4?
Did you try that with other faction?

Did anyone else have the same problem? Please let me know.

lots of typos, the intro text tends to use too many exclamation points, things could be a bit better explained

TL,

I am not a good storyteller.
For me, the story of this campaign is just a package but that still took me 5 days... Also, I am not good at designing nice package, so I packaged it with newspaper.
For those exclamation points, Dark's voice is very loud and intimidating.

Oh yeah, and there's a lot of debugging stuff left in (like the super-griffon and the rob the bank option)

Both are the only things that I left purposely for players who want to help debugging.
Players have their choice of using them.

One thing I noticed though: the AI recruits a WHOLE LOT of scout units (cavalry for loyalists, wolves for northerners, etc.) which probably makes it easier than it should be.

Number of the AI's scouts is based on number of villages.

From my observation, the AI would use slow units to capture villages if I set fewer scouts that it recruits. As a result, the strength of the AI separates. Therefore, I prefer not to interfere with it.

Furthermore, I don't think scouts are weaker in my opinion.
The level of threat from scouts is based on different situations, for examples:
1. Goblin Pillager: That's hard for undead.
2. Dragoon: It's tough if you don't have enough piercing damage.

Oh yeah, and also when your leader upgrades from the cursed soul unit you keep the undead trait.

I know that but I don't know how to get rid of that.
If I remove the undead trait from the cursed soul, undead unit who has advanced from that would lose the undead trait.
If I don't remove the undead trait from the cursed soul, non-undead unit who has advanced from that would have the undead trait.

Lastly, I decided to keep it because that doesn't affect much.
Also, the undead trait of player's leader still makes sense since he would be reborn after death except first fight.
However, it doesn't make sense if undead unit doesn't have undead trait.

By the way, this is my first campaign and I still have a lot to learn.
Any reply is appreciated.

[TL]

lots of typos, the intro text tends to use too many exclamation points, things could be a bit better explained

TL,

I am not a good storyteller.
For me, the story of this campaign is just a package but that still took me 5 days... Also, I am not good at designing nice package, so I packaged it with newspaper.
For those exclamation points, Dark's voice is very loud and intimidating.

Oh, I get it. A campaign like this doesn't really even need much of a story, but if you're going to have a story you might as well do it right. The story you've got is kind of an interesting one and would be great if it could be touched up a bit.

Scary and intimidating is one thing, but lots of exclamation points aren't necessarily very scary. About the only place you see that many exclamations in a row is in advertisements and comedy routines.

Number of the AI's scouts is based on number of villages.

From my observation, the AI would use slow units to capture villages if I set fewer scouts that it recruits. As a result, the strength of the AI separates. Therefore, I prefer not to interfere with it.

Furthermore, I don't think scouts are weaker in my opinion.
The level of threat from scouts is based on different situations, for examples:
1. Goblin Pillager: That's hard for undead.
2. Dragoon: It's tough if you don't have enough piercing damage.

The problem is that the AI at current settings produces more scouts than is actually needed for capturing villages, there's always 3 or 4 scouts running around capturing villages plus 3 or 4 more than just run straight towards the player to get slaughtered.

There is a setting in the AI tag which can tweak how many scouts the AI uses, so you might want to mess with that a bit. While it's true that scouts can be just as dangerous as other units, over-recruiting them is never a good strategy (and the AI has enough strategy problems already!) For instance if a big mix of units comes at you then dragoons can be really deadly because you have a limited number of piercing units to handle them. But when the AI just throws lots and lots of cavalry units at you then you can just recruit lots of piercing units and massacre them. Specialty units like the pillager could still be a problem except the AI isn't smart enough to recruit them exclusively, so it will end up throwing a lot of wolf riders that aren't much of a danger to undead.

[savagust]

I tested it several times and I agreed that the AI should recruit fewer scouts. Therefore, I have made a new version.

0.58 has been released and can be downloaded from the first post.
This version is still only available for Wesnoth 1.2.4.

Changes:

@AI
---The AI would recruit fewer scouts to capture villages.
---For the AI's scouts, the value of village is higher than the value of player's leader.
---Modified AI's recruitment pattern.

@Story
---Replaced some exclamation points of Dark's words in 'Saboteur'.

[TL]

Cool! This campaign is already incredibly fun. I'm currently slogging through hard with Knalgans and having a great time. Things like being able to choose whatever leader you want (regardless of faction) and buying new weapons/units makes your army very customizable, which I love. The system of "military resources" was a bit confusing at first but I think it is a very good system. You get a very limited number of military assets to spend but I think that's a good thing since it makes you choose how to spend them VERY, VERY carefully.

One other reason it's good the AI doesn't recruit so many scouts: in this campaign capturing villages really isn't worth very much. There are so many units on the field that it's very rare to see anyone's income above 0 during fights. This is probably for the best since the fights already take a very long time, if the enemy was earning money and making more units all the time they would get even longer! It's a bit different from most campaigns since how much money you have to spend doesn't really depend on capturing villages or beating time limits but I like it. Some people might not like the huge size of the fights though (personally I think it's cool having these giant armies fighting but waiting for 40-50+ enemies to move can take a while...)

We definitely need more campaigns like this. It would be a lot of work, but there's no reason it wouldn't be possible to make a campaign with premade maps and more of a storyline that used a lot of the same systems...

[savagust]

Things like being able to choose whatever leader you want (regardless of faction) and buying new weapons/units makes your army very customizable, which I love. The system of "military resources" was a bit confusing at first but I think it is a very good system. You get a very limited number of military assets to spend but I think that's a good thing since it makes you choose how to spend them VERY, VERY carefully.

I am happy to hear that.
By the way, the goal of this campaign is to be a VERY random campaign of survival with custom accessories.

Some people might not like the huge size of the fights though (personally I think it's cool having these giant armies fighting but waiting for 40-50+ enemies to move can take a while...)

I like big battles.



I think this campaign is complete now, so I have uploaded it. However, it doesn't mean that it would not be improved.

The following are my hopes of this campaign:

1. Add more factions

That's what I want to do first. I think that would increase the fun substantially but it needs lots of work. I don't worried about the balance between factions because enemy faction is random every time and the AI's has advantage of initial gold all the time. Imbalance would make you win the game more easily/hard. However, imbalance should be avoided and not serious.

2. Add more styles of random map

Now, extreme styles are not added, such as desert and cave. Desert would advantage Drakes substantially and cave would advantage Knalgans and Northerners. However, I think player should fight in dreadful conditions sometimes since it's a campaign.

3. More tactics

For examples:

@Player can increase the number of his castles or decrease the number of enemy castles.
(I'm not sure whether I can make it work or not. )

@Assassinate enemy units---decreases Enemy Bonus Recruitment Budget.
(That's simple but may not be an good idea. )

@Search the wild ---that would bring you extra objects randomly:
(That's what I want to do first but success is not guaranteed. )

-Unit:
Random low or high level unit would join your side.

-Gold:
Extra military assets with random amount.

-Legendary Weapon:
Random powerful weapon which is not available from the forge.

-Rune stone:
Random rune stone with different type and rarity would advance one ability of one unit, such as damage, HP, attack type, weapon special and even ability.

-Nothing: Your bad luck.



However, I want to make it compatible with 1.3.2 first but I have no idea what I should do. If anyone knows, please tell me.

[Clonkinator]

First I'd like to say, this campaign is great. Second I have to say, however, is already a complaint: When I first saw the city shop screen I almost became color blind. Please use the colors a BIT more rarely or use darker colors, or my eyes will get hurt
Also I'd really like to see an option in the beginning: "Do you prefer normal or BIG battles?" because, well, the system of this campaign is really great, but I don't really like THESE masses of units. So I'd like to see an option that about halves the gold for each side, so the size of the battles gets reduced.

[Troy]

nice campian

but there are more problems, I won the campian at hard in 1 hour do to the fact that 711s are 1 gold and unbeatable, for an advantage seeker like me, I could not help but rucruit them, I said "hmm, wow! I only need 3 of them to win!"

[TL]

After playing this campaign a little longer I have another comment to add, about the difficulty. Generally the difficulty levels of this campaign seem a bit "off". In my experience the first scenario tends to be difficult but winnable, then the second scenario is INSANELY hard, but after that it gets easier and easier once you have lots of leveled up units. This is especially true if you picked level 2 enemy units at the beginning. The enemy does get a bigger money advantage the farther you go (I just beat territory 70 in my Knalgans campaign, and the computer barely had time to finish all its waves of recruits before I fought my way to the leader!) but that mostly just means it's throwing hordes of weaker units at your experienced and powerful units. You might ocassionally lose an experienced unit but you're also leveling up more and more of them every battle. I think it would make more sense if the level of enemy recruits was based on how far into the campaign you were, so it would be level 1-2 for maybe the first four fights and then level 1-3 after that.

[savagust]

Thanks for replies.

Someone (Please forgive me that I have forgotten your name ) told me that Brazier Creation (and those who have the same movement type) cannot move to lava and this makes its 'lavahome' useless.

I found that this is because that line of movement costs, 'lava=1', doesn't work. I think that is because Lava is alias of Chasm by default and this makes Chasm's data replace Lava's even though Lava's data is defined separately. Therefore, I need to allow it to move to both of chasm and lava instead of only lava. However, I preferred not to do so since it doesn't make sense that non-flying units can move to chasm. I would fix this if I find a solution.

Please use the colors a BIT more rarely or use darker colors, or my eyes will get hurt

That's my fashion.
Those colors are used for making those informations to be recognized more easily because I know that there are too many informations...

Also I'd really like to see an option in the beginning: "Do you prefer normal or BIG battles?" because, well, the system of this campaign is really great, but I don't really like THESE masses of units.

Yes, that's a friendly option. I may add it to the next release.

I won the campian at hard in 1 hour do to the fact that 711s are 1 gold and unbeatable, for an advantage seeker like me, I could not help but rucruit them, I said "hmm, wow! I only need 3 of them to win!"

Just do what you would like!

Generally the difficulty levels of this campaign seem a bit "off". In my experience the first scenario tends to be difficult but winnable, then the second scenario is INSANELY hard, but after that it gets easier and easier once you have lots of leveled up units. This is especially true if you picked level 2 enemy units at the beginning. The enemy does get a bigger money advantage the farther you go (I just beat territory 70 in my Knalgans campaign, and the computer barely had time to finish all its waves of recruits before I fought my way to the leader!) but that mostly just means it's throwing hordes of weaker units at your experienced and powerful units.

That's true.
In my opinion, experienced players should pick level 3 enemy followers while beginners should pick level 2. Level 1-2 units are insufficient to kill Level 3+ units because one units can only be attacked by 6 sides even though there is an overwhelming force.

I think it would make more sense if the level of enemy recruits was based on how far into the campaign you were, so it would be level 1-2 for maybe the first four fights and then level 1-3 after that.

I have thought about that before but I think that enemy should always attack with full strength.

[St.John]

is this dead?
god i hope not, this campaign is amazing!!!!
fantastic, i love it XD

[St.John]

whoops read the wrong date
still, awesome campein, i love it.

[savagust]

Version 0.62 has been released.
This version is still only available for Wesnoth 1.2.4.

Changes:

@Difficulty
Number of enemy castles is based on different territories. Also, enemy homeland of Loyalists has one more castle than others.
(TL has mentioned that AI has not enough time for finishing recruitment to bring its advantage of greater initial gold into full play. I hope this setting would improve this situation. )

@Size of battles
Player can choose the size of battles: 100%, 75%, 50%.
(Clonkinator's suggestion)

@Styles of random maps
Added "Desert" and "Cave". Improved "Marsh" and "Aqua".

@Advancement of Cursed Soul
Replaced Vampire Bat with Blood Bat, Walking Corpse with Soulless, Goblin Spearman with Goblin Impaler and Goblin Rouser.



Thanks for your replies and suggestions.