1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.17

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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doofus-01
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

I haven't abandoned this, I'd have removed it from the add-on server and posted it in the abandoned campaign thread if I had. I do have an overhaul planned. I gave up on the three parallel branches idea; it is too hard to keep them synchronized without making it repetitive.

I will get back to it when I have Bad Moon Rising squared away, using what free time I have. So, it will be ready when it is ready.
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lostnumber
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by lostnumber »

Why did you give up on the three branches? I thought that was a nice idea
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by lostnumber »

Even though you are not currently working on this, I thought I'd do a little testing for you.

Kthon:

Scenario 1

- No Dialogue plays when elvish leader dies, this feels odd and you should add something

Interlude Dialogue:
"this needs more thought"
Improper tense, it should be "this needed further thought" but you might want to change it to "merrited" or "warranted" for better connotations

"fortunatly"
should be 'fortunately'

Scenario 2:

Works fine, no complaints

Scenario 3:
Echidna does not heal between levels, I ended up losing on the first turn here from an elvish attack, I had to replay the end of Scenario 2 to make sure she was at a high hp.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

lostnumber wrote:Why did you give up on the three branches? I thought that was a nice idea
I'm not completely giving up on it, but the alternating scenarios (Humans-1 -> Khthon-1 -> Primeval1 -> H-2 -> K-2 -> P-2 etc.) is going out the window. Instead, it will just be three chapters.
lostnumber wrote:Even though you are not currently working on this, I thought I'd do a little testing for you.

Kthon:
Thanks. I do plan to keep this branch/chapter mostly as is (sans bugs, of course), except for Storming Weldyn and the one after it. Those will get re-done.

The Human chapter will probably be much the same, most changes toward the end.

The Primeval chapter will get the heaviest revision. The targeting cannons thing currently near the end will be used, but that scenario is getting sunk.
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lostnumber
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by lostnumber »

In general terms, one thing that sticks out to me on the Kthon scenarios is the same thing I saw when I tried the campaign out this summer: Lack of proper pacing (in terms of gold and units). Since there is no turn limit on any of the scenarios, and since most of the AI will continue summoning a unit or two every turn even with 0 villages, its fairly easy to just camp out and kill units/farm gold. Usually I choose to end scenarios at around ~500 gold, but if I wanted to I could get enough to fill the entire screen with yaks.

In your other BMR campaigns the ability to generate large amounts of gold and level between scenarios works because A) you feel like you earned it (you have to go out of your way and fight enemies between scenarios) and B) the amount of units the AI throws at you (at least on hard) makes it a difficult campaign even with the ability to earn gold between missions. Here it kind of feels like the game is as hard as you want it to be.. Now typically fine tuning balance and pacing is one of the last things you would worry about in designing a campaign, so probably you would want to finish up all the scenarios and story first, but its something you'll need to fix eventually.

In terms of the units, they have been refined since my last play-through and they look improved. However there are a few notes I would make on them

- Not enough options. You did add separate tier 2.5 guys for the horse and ram, but I'm still left feeling like another unit type could really be used, and it would be nice if the Yak got a tier 2.5 as well. The T2.5 are also completely worthless in the campaign, when compared to their alternate upgrade path. However I could see how in some scenarios they would be very useful, due to their Arcane and Fire damage types (for example, Kthon vs undead).

- Starting units are REALLY weak. Now I'm assuming that this is generally how you intended the progression to work, since the tier 3 units are powerful (especially the yaks). But its something to keep in mind when you get around to balancing things. T1 elves and humans will stomp all over your animal pals in a fair fight.

- It seems like they might have been buffed a bit, but just like last playthrough, I found the horse to be almost unplayably weak compared to the other units. Now clearly he is intended for a "scout" type role instead of frontline combat, and at 10 gold he is extremely cheap. Perhaps in multiplayer where village grabbing and scouting is crucial this might prove to be an important piece. But in the campaign (as in most campaigns) almost all of the action is heavy offensives and combat, and the horse isn't even worth 10 gold or the recruit space when compared to yaks or rams. Even when costing only 2/3 as much as a yak, he has only 1/2 the hp, and his upgrade path is fairly marginal. 15-2 is not very powerful for a T3 unit, and he has about half the survivability of his counterparts. I probably recruited more horses then any other unit in an attempt to level some up (I'm the kind of person that likes having at least one of every unit type) and I found it very difficult to keep them alive for more then a turn or two. When I finally did get one leveled up the result was hardly worth the effort.

-Lack of a decent ranged unit. The fact that NONE of your starting units have a ranged ability, and when two of the upgrade paths finally get one its fairly weak, is a rather large drawback. Maybe this is precisely the dynamic you intended, but I found it irritating that elvish archers were able to rain death from the forests while I was utterly incapable of responding. Spearman are also absolutely brutal against the cthon, since their first strike slaughters rams and they pack more firepower then yaks, and most Kthons are slightly vulnerable to pierce. A ranged attacker would help tremendously against spearman units. I think a few royal Halbidiers could probably destroy and entire Kthon army as is

- The mages are just straight up weird. I like the concept of getting them from attacking healers, and the idea of having them possess other units is interesting. But as it is, I ended up with a ton of them and not much use for them. They have insanely high HP considering the fact that you dont even have to pay for them, which makes them almost impossible to kill or bring to the red in the first place. However their damage is almost non-existent and besides occasionally using one or two to slow high level units I mostly just left them standing around. It would be neat if you expanded this line. Perhaps the mage could get his own upgrade path and fufill both the "more variety" and "lack of a ranged unit" problems I pointed out earlier. I would also say that you need to somehow limit the number of healers that get summoned, or limit the number of mages you can recruit. Because due to the aforementioned lack of pacing and infinite AI summons, you can literally get dozens of these things when really you'll only ever use 2-3
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by lostnumber »

You said the other Kthon scenarios were getting redone so I decided to give primevals a spin

Primevals:
I'm going to do a bit of dialogue editing if you dont mind. Your writing is very strong compared to the mainline standard, but there is always room for improvement.

Intro Dialogue:
Spoiler:
I'll hold off on doing any more dialogue suggestions/corrections until I get a reaction from you. If this is useful to you I'd be happy to go through the rest of the dialogue in trinity and also your original BMR campaign. (Your overall story is quite strong I feel, but I'm sure there are technical and stylistic things that could be improved)

Scenario 1
No problems from the gameplay perspective, but the story and dialogue could maybe use some refinement. I was a little confused as to what was going on and who the three different factions were
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

lostnumber wrote:-Lack of a decent ranged unit.
If I ever get the Mages thing worked out, that should be somewhat alleviated. The Mages should be able to produce Archers.
lostnumber wrote:I'll hold off on doing any more dialogue suggestions/corrections until I get a reaction from you. If this is useful to you I'd be happy to go through the rest of the dialogue in trinity and also your original BMR campaign. (Your overall story is quite strong I feel, but I'm sure there are technical and stylistic things that could be improved)
I'll probably be re-writing most of the Trinity text, so it is probably best not to waste your time on that. But the BMR text is pretty mostly final, so that would be helpful.

Thanks.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.5 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

0.0.6 went to the server. The updates are mostly just to prevent the changes in the Khthon faction of Archaic Era from completely breaking the campaign. I haven't revised anything yet.
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TeamAmerica
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.6 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by TeamAmerica »

I played Easy
Version 1.7.11 beta (the newest version I believe)

trinity v 0.0.6

On the Kthon line, I found a few bugs (sorry if they're already been said by other people, I'm too lazy to read through everyone else's posts right now.

- In several of the scenarios, Leggon/Echidna starts with no moves/attacks. Theres no explination given so this kinda confused me. If thats how its meant to be, maybe including an explination of why would help make sense.

- The victory conditions didnt work in any of them but the first one (specifically the ones where I had to "capture" certain people). I ended up using debug n to skip ahead and see how the next scenario was.

- In Dan Tonk (the scenario before Finale), Whenever Echidna attacks the queen she takes >100 damage, even if she kills the queen before the queen gets to attack.

Big fan of BMR/Trinity. Hope everything comes together successfully. :)
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.6 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

0.0.7 just went to the server. It is a fairly big re-write, the first scenario of each branch is not changed much, the human branch is only changed a little. Most scenarios will need some revision, but the overall form is there. There are about 4 scenarios each.

- The choice of branches is gone, you are forced to play them all. This is because I don't want to keep an equal number of scenarios for the three sides. I don't know how to juggle the story arc so that you don't get three slow points in a row then three epic battles in a row, for example.

- Most of the maps of the Primeval branch are re-done. The Nemesis & Co. vs dwarfs scenario should be quicker now. The two Primeval scenarios after that are playable, but not balanced. It does end in a bad place, story-wise, but that will be fixed when possible.

- Some of the Khthon maps are re-done. The second Khthon scenario should be less problematic, but it may still need some revision. The fourth scenario, where Echidna attacks Weldyn, is supposed to be the final Khthon scenario. I used a Weldyn map from one of the mainline campaigns (EI, I think), but that may need to change. Ideally, the fourth scenario is impossible without the act of the elf lord(should make sense if you play it), so it will take some time to get that right.
TeamAmerica wrote:In several of the scenarios, Leggon/Echidna starts with no moves/attacks. Theres no explination given so this kinda confused me. If thats how its meant to be, maybe including an explination of why would help make sense.
I'd forgotten about that, will fix next time. It's a bug.
TeamAmerica wrote:- In Dan Tonk (the scenario before Finale), Whenever Echidna attacks the queen she takes >100 damage, even if she kills the queen before the queen gets to attack.
That scenario is dead & gone.
TeamAmerica wrote:- The victory conditions didnt work in any of them but the first one (specifically the ones where I had to "capture" certain people). I ended up using debug n to skip ahead and see how the next scenario was.
Hopefully, that is not so true this time around.

Thanks.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.7 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by WYRMY »

In Storming Weldyn, I've attacked Ryaeron with Echidna and converted him but I haven't won yet. How do I get to the next level?
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.7 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

You need to kill every human. I hadn't meant to leave it like that, but for now, that is how it is. I'll change that next time.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.7 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by LarsWyrdson »

I am enjoying Trinity quite a lot, btw! Unfortunately, I am stuck at the same point, even though I upgraded to .7 In Rebirth, victory conditions aren't working. I am stuck on "Slay the elves" even though Status table confirms that Kheldan is the last one. If I attack Kheldan with Echidna, she just kills him and the game hangs.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.7 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

I think I may not have accounted for Keldan being the final Elf. I'll fix that when I can, probably this weekend. Until then, you can either reload a save that has more elves, or create an elf on Keldan's side by
1. typing ":debug"
2. right-clicking on an empty hex
3. select "create unit" (or something like that)
4. choose some elf unit
5. You might need to make it the same side as Keldan, so right click again and select "change unit side" until it is on the same side.
6. Attack Keldan
7. Kill artificial elf

EDIT: Forget all of that, I was remembering an earlier version. This scenario needs some work, but the problem may have been that you killed (rather than just attacked) Keldan, it didn't occur to me to test if that prevents the victory events from firing.
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Re: 1.8 SP Campaign: Trinity 0.0.7 (~15-20 scenarios)

Post by doofus-01 »

0.0.8 just went to the server. I think Rebirth (fighting elves) scenario is fixed. There are a few other minor fixes, but the main thing is that I added a couple more scenarios (that will need some revision) so that the thing ends in a better place, and I can focus on fixing the scenarios that exist.
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