Campaign challenges

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HomerJ
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by HomerJ »

Maiklas3000 wrote:In another thread, someone said he always restarts a campaign upon a loss - never restarting the scenario. How about that for a challenge?
That can get pretty annoying quickly since there are really long scenarios involved in NR, plus one that is as a matter of fact somewhat dependent on a bit of luck (settling disputes). That being said, my last run was probably pretty close already. IIRC I only restarted Stolen Gold because I got the Lich killed when approaching one of the troll leaders.

So not for me, but maybe someone else wants to try that.


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taptap
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by taptap »

How about playing NR with mortal White Mages and no other challenge?
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by Wesbane »

taptap wrote:How about playing NR with mortal White Mages and no other challenge?
In described conditions this is not a challenge at all. Skilled players will never even expose such a unit as white mage to direct risk. So it is very likely that they actually will never learn about their invincibility from game.
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taptap
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by taptap »

Northern Rebirth imho features the best (Infested Caves) and the worst (The Pursuit) scenario of mainline, and I know others agree but would vote Infested Caves the worst, but Infested Caves doesn't force you to kill everything as those other multi-leader scenarios in NR do. It is really simple, if you need immortals and/or too much overpowered loyals to make a campaign playable then there is a design flaw. It is also a little comment on "campaign challenges" achieved by exploiting this immortality. There is an easy remedy, just change herodeaths.cfg accordingly, and while I am sure that this is still beatable most of the NR challenges announced in this thread would have been impossible. I don't know whether or in which shape I manage to work through the study room without immortals though.

I am happy with NR until Clearing the Mines. While killing all those ghouls is fun, you end with simply too much experience. Then obviously the author thought he has to top this experience by throwing ever more opponents at you. As you are reliant on 3 healers, he made two of them immortal... You have zillions of dwarves so there was a necessity to remove them temporarily (completely removed first, recruits only later) everything is very logical but still the result is somewhat sad. The last time I played it on difficult I abandoned it at Eastern Flank, winning once though in bad shape but no motivation to replay. On the other hand Infested Caves I can play it again and again it never grows old to me, it isn't too difficult once you get the knack of it. (The difficulty scales badly though, i didn't found nightmare significantly harder than difficult, because it isn't initial gold that matters most but income.)
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by HomerJ »

To my defense (although I don't think it is necessary ^_^ ), I am pretty sure that most if not all of the runs I did on the different challenges would have worked in the same way with mortal mages as it did, with maybe 2 exceptions:
one is of course the pursuit, because your mages need to attack the lich and can be killed in retaliation, but this does not concern a particular challenge.
Second would be Settling Disputes which I found impossible at times even with suicide mages. Without them you would probably just need more trials but it would still be possible. Again, this does not concern any particular challenge, but the scenario in general.

In the replays I had attached back then (at 1.6 I think, maybe even some 1.5 in it :hmm: ), it could be seen that suiciding mages mainly delay enemy forces or kill them faster. Leaving aside Settling Disputes, these strategy was purely for convenience and not vital for winning or losing, at least to the best of my knowledge.

All I can say is, if you have beaten NR on Nightmare, try some for yourself and see. It's fun. :D

As closing remark, I remember that I only found out the mages were immortal after finishing on the second difficulty level (again to the best of my knowledge as of today), but I like that concept, since it is unique in mainline


Also: Nice to see this topic revived.

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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by taptap »

Well, I changed the Northern Rebirth code. The mages are mortal, but I will turn Malifor killable by conventional means in exchange. This probably isn't a real challenge in the sense of this thread, but I guess Northern Rebirth on Nightmare is challenge enough for now.
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Elvish_Conquerer
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by Elvish_Conquerer »

How about this:

Must level at least one unit to level three every scenario.
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by HomerJ »

Elvish_Conquerer wrote:How about this:

Must level at least one unit to level three every scenario.
For what campaign? Seems impossible for many.

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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by alluton »

He didn't state whether it is leveled form level 0,1 or 2. So infact it can be rather easy. (Tought not on talk only scenarios.)
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by HomerJ »

alluton wrote:He didn't state whether it is leveled form level 0,1 or 2. So infact it can be rather easy. (Tought not on talk only scenarios.)
I was thinking mainly of first scenarios were you usually start with very limited resources.

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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by Elvish_Conquerer »

Yeah, reconsidering it seems pretty hard, and leveling a unit to level 2 is too easy. I was just trying to think of something new. What if, in a kind of speed run, you put a timer on all of your turns?
"Not only that! He made the AI so smart that, it changes the RNG without affecting statistical analysis! So even if you calculate the probability of getting what you got, it seems reasonable, even though it isn't. We've uncovered a massive conspiracy!"
HomerJ
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by HomerJ »

Elvish_Conquerer wrote:Yeah, reconsidering it seems pretty hard, and leveling a unit to level 2 is too easy. I was just trying to think of something new. What if, in a kind of speed run, you put a timer on all of your turns?
Did you try what Jozrael suggested, cause that's pretty similar. So basically playing as fast as possible and adding all turns together and compare to our numbers... :D

Edit: Hm, on second reading I think I misunderstood your proposal, you want to limit the time to use for single turns? Hm, interesting...


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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by UnwiseOwl »

Currently most of the way through a run of EI recruiting and recalling only Heavies, which probably equates to easy mode in a mostly vs. undead campaign, but the lack of mobility and healers makes to some tight scrapes on a number of scenarios.
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Inky
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by Inky »

A Tribute to the Mighty Elvish Scout (An Orcish Incursion, scouts only)

In my opinion one of the most useless units in all of Wesnoth has to be the elvish scout, and normally I almost never recruit them - they're expensive, terrible in combat and only good for grabbing villages (but a quick archer can often grab villages too, and actually help with the battle later) / seeing through fog (very rare in campaigns).

So I thought it would be interesting to try to play a campaign with only scouts. I thought of HttT first but I just don't see how Siege of Elensefar for example would be possible, on hard at least. Maybe it could work on Normal?

However, AOI is actually pretty easy to beat this way due to generous turn limits (meaning lots of gold), lots of forest terrain and relatively low enemy gold.

Rules:
Hard difficulty, no saveloading, no units other than scout types and the leader Erlornas (i.e. don't use Linaera/the loyal mages, or the loyal rangers in the final scenario). Restarts from scenario beginning are okay (I only have to do this three times in total though).

General strategy:
-You won't have healers so you need to use villages. Fortunately with scouts' mobility they can reach far off villages to heal safely.
-As usual with elves keep them in the forest if at all possible; however scouts do so little damage that you often must use a lot of hexes - including flat terrain - to kill any enemy. (Even using all available hexes you often won't kill anything.)
-In several scenarios (the troll one, the undead one) Erlornas will be the only real damage dealer so I make maximum use of him.
-For killing enemy units I prioritize archers as they do extra damage to scouts.
-Because your units are so weak it's often best to just go for the leaderkill rather than try to kill everything.

I basically use Erlornas / level 2 or 3 scouts as damage dealers and mass level 1 scouts as fodder. Often the level 2/3 scouts get used as fodder also. In other words this will be a very high loss campaign!
Individual scenario summaries
S1 Defend the forest
100 starting gold

To stretch my gold I recruit only 3 scouts initially since I have 3 villages, and use these scouts to grab villages next turn. I get some bad luck with the stupid scouts not hitting anything, and I lose the majority of my units during the night, but then fortunately the orc gets some bad luck too. I manage to level a couple of riders, as well as having two scouts one kill from leveling.

Finished turn 14/24
One restart to change tactics - I form a line near my keep and let them come to me instead of attacking first.

S2 Assassins
168 starting gold

This scenario is tough due to all the poison! Again I recruit very lightly initially to preserve my income. I hold the water's edge near my keep, even putting some scouts on 40% in order to make sure the orcs can't step onto land, and kill the orcs as they come into the water. It's especially crucial to get the assassins in the water because if they get onto land you can attack them all day and keep missing. I try to place either fodder (inexperienced scouts) or the more resilient riders at the weak points of my line.

Finished turn 12/24
One restart - I tried to hold the middle island the first time but I got overrun. Holding the starting island spreads the enemies out a bit and also you can reinforce with new recruits.

S3 Wasteland
164 starting gold

Without any villages, this scenario is difficult due to no healing at all! Since there's no opportunity to heal I try to strike hard and fast. I lose a bunch of leveled units here.

Finished turn 8/24. No restarts.

S4 Valley of Trolls
166 starting gold

Another difficult scenario, as the only good damage dealer against trolls is Erlornas himself. It's pathetic seeing how many elvish scouts you need to kill a single troll whelp. Fortunately the trolls have very low starting gold so things don't get too out of hand. I recruit/recall one keep and immediately send Erlornas west. I rush the western leader ASAP during the day (he can be lured out with a scout), then wait until the next day and take out the eastern one, using the western leader's keep to recruit some more fodder scouts.

Finished turn 15/24. One restart due to Erlornas dying to some very lucky troll hits.

S5 Linaera the quick
158 starting gold

A leaderkill is absolutely necessary here. The orc has superior numbers so I simply suicide rush the leader with all my scouts. I lose two outriders but level another, and level Erlornas to 3.

Finished turn 5/24. No restarts.

S6 A Detour through the swamp
221 starting gold

(I don't use Linaera as it would make things too easy.) Again, Erlornas is the only unit good against undead so I use him to take out the revenants (at least, when he is not missing them five times in a row with his magical attack!) and also the lich at the end. The scout units do an amazing 2 or 3 damage per attack to the revenants with their bows, and are only good as meatshields/distractions. I suicide some scouts into the lich during the day (using their ranged attack), desperate to soften him up so I can kill him before night comes.

Finished turn 10/24. No restarts.

S7 Showdown
235 starting gold

(This scenario would be trivial using only the loyal rangers, so I don't use them.) The hint in the objectives about the enemy being well-defended from the south is lying. Who needs sneaky rangers when you can mount a frontal attack and demolish his entire army with the mighty Elvish Scouts?

Finished turn 14/24. No restarts.
AOIReplays.zip
Wesnoth 1.12.4 - AOI scouts only
(130.56 KiB) Downloaded 474 times
Summary of this whole campaign: Even against the worst elvish units, orcs have no chance against elves in the forest!

Total restarts: 3 (no reloads)
Losses: 35 total: 29 scouts (!), 3 riders, 3 outriders
Luck: slightly positive (damage inflicted is about even, but I take about 5% less damage than expected)

Based on my playthrough I think a more accurate description than "scouts only" would be "using scouts as distractions while Erlornas kills everything."

General note on the campaign difficulty: I think this campaign is far too easy on hard, making it boring for Wesnoth veterans (even using the worst possible recruits I have a relatively easy time). On hard, I would suggest removing the hints in the objectives, removing the rangers in the final scenario, and increasing (maybe doubling) enemy gold for all scenarios.

HttT is a good example of a beginner campaign which teaches you the basics of Wesnoth, but the hard difficulty is actually a fun challenge even for experienced players.
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Re: Campaign challenges

Post by beetlenaut »

Inky wrote:I thought of HttT first but I just don't see how Siege of Elensefar for example would be possible, on hard at least.
I have done HttT on hard recruiting only scouts. It's harder than shamans or magi only, but not as hard as horsemen only. (I did allow myself to recall loyal units on these runs though, so I did have a healer. And merfolk on Siege of Elensefar.)
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