The Rise of Wesnoth - final scenario

[AgentTBC]

I'm playing through the campaigns included with the main download in order. (So I've played through Heir to the Throne on the hard difficulty, for example). Right now I'm trying to finish up The Rise of Wesnoth on HARD difficulty. It's been relatively smooth sailing so far; the trick was getting through the third and fourth scenarios with my army and treasury mostly intact. After that it was a bit easier.

But the last scenario (The Rise of Wesnoth) seems impossible to me on this difficulty. I'm starting it with 375 gold and I just can't get enough units to hold back the massive number of enemies that start hitting me on about turns 11-12. After 10 turns I've eliminated one enemy leader (the orc camp to the west) and have not lost any units yet, but I've got about 23 on the map and a treasury of something like -300 so there will be no more units. And the remaining enemies have 80 or so units, the bulk of which are about ready to begin pummeling me, and they are recalling more units every turn.

Normally I would gradually fall back at night and hammer them during the day but they have four units for every one of mine and they can simply absorb the casualties I inflict while gradually whittling my health down. I've considered other strategies like sending a second or third force down to try to hold the bridges as long as possible, but with only 22-23 units we're talking sending 4-5 units to hold each bridge if I send HALF my army away at the start.

I just don't see how I can stand up to an enemy force that is four times the size of my army and gets bigger every turn and that's AFTER eliminating one encampment relatively quickly. I could devise a way to draw off the bulk of the enemy and send Jevayn down to the big baddie and get him killed but I don't see any way to do that and to eliminate all but one of the enemy leaders.

Any suggestions? The best I can come up with is to replay the last 4-5 scenarios and try to build up a bigger warchest. If I started this scenario with 600 gold I could recall the rest of my units and maybe hire enough crappy level 1s to use them as bait at night so my main force doesn't get ground down in night battles. Is 375 gold not enough?

Unfortunately there is a scenario (Rough Landing) not too far before the end that seems deliberately designed to eliminate your treasury. You only get about 3 towns and have to hire a ton of merfolk for the island battles since it is a water map, and there's simply no way to finish the map with any gold in the treasury. Up until that point I had been slowly accumulating gold. So that puts a maximum on how much I can save for the end, since I'm basically starting from 0 at that point.

Tips? This is on the hard difficulty like I said. I played a bunch of the campaign on normal and it would likely end up fairly trivial judging from how I was doing before I restarted on Hard.

[Glowing Fish]

Well, since it is the climactic scenario of a hard campaign on hard difficulty...I would say that maybe this is just part and parcel of what is going on?

There is only so much juice you can squeeze from a rock, and I don't think there is any clever way to do this.

Besides, of course, what order are you taking the 4 challenges in? There is an order where you can preserve most of your money with them.

[AgentTBC]

Besides, of course, what order are you taking the 4 challenges in? There is an order where you can preserve most of your money with them.

This was my thought for my best option. I realize this should be a hard scenario, but I don't think it's possible with the force size I can presently bring to bear without a bunch of save+reload and I've been trying to minimize that. It seems to me that if I save the dragon scenario for last if I build up some cash before it I can bee-line for the dragon, kill him very quickly, and skip the whole wiping out the other leader parts.

I'd rather replay some earlier scenarios and win "fairly" than just keep trying various things until I get lucky with some dice rolls.

[jomini]

Try a quick blitz attack to the first 2 enemy leaders nearest to you ie rush them with calvary and kill them before they can call up all their units. You've got this knight with you when you start the scenario--consider sending him ahead of the other calvary units to be called up later. Speed is the crux. Then just keep rushing through to the rest of the leaders without staying back to deal with the remaining units. Of course, you'll suffer a lot of casualties--most likely your precious lvl3 grand knights and paladins as well. You might want to consider using rogues as fodder--they have high evasion, their attacks work well against undead and they have ranged attacks.
Of course, I had around 1000 gold when I started the scenario. Was the previous map the one with the fog of war and an enemy keep right in the water?--if you're refering to that one, try using the rogues to hold the coastline as well--the high evasion seems more valuable than a high defense. They're cheap too! Only had to smuggle 4 merman and a silver mage across to finish off the leader.

[AgentTBC]

Yeah, my lack of gold was the key. I went back and replayed the scenarios where you get to choose the order (dragon etc) and did them from hardest to easiest this time instead of easiest to hardest. Don't ask me why I decided to do them in exactly the wrong order the first time around.

I started the final battle with about 570 gold instead of 370 this time and it made all the difference. It let me make a multi-pronged attack instead of having to keep almost all my forces in one spot.

Rise of Wesnoth was really a good campaign, particularly on the hard difficulty. A lot of them are too easy even on the top difficulty level.

[JBAYBAY]

YOU JUST NEED MORE CASH

[Turuk]

JBAYBAY, please avoid posting in all caps, thank you. For reference, the Posting Guidelines are here.


Three laws of robotics into latin? Or at least the second and third ones. Your translator missed out on a few words.

[archerboy]

That scenario, and that whole campaign, is bloody hard, even on the "normal" setting. I can't remember any scenario where the player is not outnumbered at least 2 to 1 (typically 3 to 1 or worse).

One thing that seemed to help me a little on that scenario you mentioned is to get a few footpads/outlaws, and have them move quickly along the edges of the map. Since the enemy is not affected by fog of war (another unfair element of the scenario), a lot of the enemy troops will go chasing after them, postponing the inevitable massive bombardment on your main forces. I'm not sure how jomini managed to hold onto 1000 Gold and grand knights, but yeah I'm sure that would help...

[HomerJ]

I can't remember any scenario where the player is not outnumbered at least 2 to 1 (typically 3 to 1 or worse).

So... never heard of Northern Rebirth, I assume.

I think the major challenge in that campaign is money, if you play just average you go into the kalian with minimum gold and from that it's really hard. Then again, I didn't play it with the new gold carryover system yet, does that make it better?


Greetz
HomerJ

[zookeeper]

I can't remember any scenario where the player is not outnumbered at least 2 to 1 (typically 3 to 1 or worse).

So... never heard of Northern Rebirth, I assume.

I think the major challenge in that campaign is money, if you play just average you go into the kalian with minimum gold and from that it's really hard. Then again, I didn't play it with the new gold carryover system yet, does that make it better

I'm pretty sure it does, since firstly the minimum gold in the late scenarios was upped and since you'll always carry over some of your finishing gold as long as it doesn't end up negative.

So I don't think the latter half of TRoW is especially plagued by annoying gold issues anymore.

[santi]

I don't think the latter half of TRoW is especially plagued by annoying gold issues anymore

Bummer! It was sooo satisfying to beat each one of those scenarios-it forced you to play efficiently, almost flawlessly, calculating the risks, using the silver mages to fly and help where
the front was falling apart, beat wave after wave, then recuperate and so on.