[Historical] Liberty

[ott]

Some comments on 1.7, though many of these apply to earlier versions also.

• Na-Galaga in Gray Woods doesn't seem to recruit Vampire Bats, even though they are in the recruit list.
  
  I've never seen Helicrom recruit either Rogue or Shadow Mages in Gray Woods.
  
  Is the plural of Lich Liches or Lichs?
  
  "Helicromm" should be Helicrom.
  
  Helicrom's death speech "I'm a goner" sounds a bit odd.
  
  In Hard, Helicrom has 300 gold to recruit with in Glory, against a fixed 500 gold reward that can be chosen by the player at the end of Gray Woods. It then seems on Hard one should always choose the gold (a bit counterintuitive that) or possibly the ability to recruit thieves and mages, and never for Helicrom to come back for the final battle. What is your reasoning here?

[Shadow]

Ok the pics for the animations are now in but it seems you´ve forgot to include the attack image for the Highwayman in the unit cfg file

[scott]

Some comments on 1.7, though many of these apply to earlier versions also.

• Na-Galaga in Gray Woods doesn't seem to recruit Vampire Bats, even though they are in the recruit list.
  
  I've never seen Helicrom recruit either Rogue or Shadow Mages in Gray Woods.
  
  Is the plural of Lich Liches or Lichs?
  
  "Helicromm" should be Helicrom.
  
  Helicrom's death speech "I'm a goner" sounds a bit odd.
  
  In Hard, Helicrom has 300 gold to recruit with in Glory, against a fixed 500 gold reward that can be chosen by the player at the end of Gray Woods. It then seems on Hard one should always choose the gold (a bit counterintuitive that) or possibly the ability to recruit thieves and mages, and never for Helicrom to come back for the final battle. What is your reasoning here?

It's funny that we must be playing in parallel. I just upped the side 5 gold for glory to 700/600/500 (not sure if 1.7.2 has it that way or not without archiving my version and downloading). I originally figured getting both the gold and recruit ability (indirectly) was like combining options 1 and 2. The drawback was supposed to be that option 3 was less than options 1+2 and you couldn't control the units. However, Level 8 on hard is so hard that I raised the gold - side 2 just has too many guards on hard. As long as medium is winnable and fun to play, which I think it is, I don't mind this one being a nut buster. I might also raise the orc gold a tad.

I'm not sure if it's in 1.7.2 or not. I'm pretty sure the 1.7.2 config file has the highwayman-attack frame - are you sure you're looking at the right version?

Ok, so for the rest...
I'm a goner is a goner! It's campy, I know. The rest of the death speeches are so melodramatic anyway it didn't stand out to me. Oh our freedom! Will we be free now! I don't know! I think it's an element of the genre. Even well-written rpgs cannot help but sound like a soap opera sometimes. It's hard to write real-sounding dialogue because it has to be overemphasized - it's the only communication the character has with the player pretty much. But, I'm entertaining suggestions.

Warcraft uses Liches, I don't know.

As for recruiting, this has a tendency to change as versions of the game are released. He used to recruit all thieves and rogue mages. I wonder how it would play if I only allowed him to recruit mages? It might be fun, but then we would all be sick of mages. I also thought about giving him a couple free mages to showcase them. This is still up in the air.

Re: the bats, it doesn't bother me. I think the AI currently favors ghosts over bats in the majority of the situations (and he can see what you recruit). Back in 0.8.3 it was different. I might wait this one out becuase the ghosts may change again.

[ott]

Found some time to download 1.7.2 and finish The Hunters (with wesnoth-0.8.8). I'm now starting Glory, but Helicrom has 300 gold and is essentially useless, just like poor Gwydion (after all, what can he do with only 80 gold). I'm getting slaughtered with the defenders having 460 initial gold and 25 gold per turn; the daily reinforcements don't help either (effectively another 30+ gold per turn). Only the orc puts up a decent resistance, with poison units. I've so far managed to get one unit next to one of the trap doors, but in general the cramped entrances to the castle just get filled with a steady stream of loyalists while the outlaws have no skirmishers to work around the ZOC. I will try finishing The Hunters with more gold and/or more advanced units, but I don't think I can do enough to swing the tide.

Could you upload your latest version, please?

[scott]

Ok, 1.7.3 is up. I could have sworn 1.7.2 had the changes, but clearly not. I also had some trouble getting the new graphics to show up, but I think it was caused by multiple copies of the highwayman.cfg file. If I can win Glory on Hard with Helicrom getting 400 gold, I will change both medium and hard to give him 400 gold and easy to give him 500 gold. I don't want any of the choices to be a dog.

[ott]

How much gold should I be aiming to start Glory with?

[scott]

With allies at 500 gold, I started with 246 and won on hard. I recruited 1.5 castles of veterans and the rest of my gold went to footpads. I let the allies, the Elense, and the orcs draw out the bad guys and snuck in to the towers.

I have a saved game on my final turn, but I have trouble getting it to play out as a replay. It replays for 6 turns then spits out an error message and give you the reins. But, you can probably look in the file for turns 6-13 (tedious).

I had a really hard time to get to this point with that much gold, but I think it might be possible to win giving the allies 400 gold. The Elense also got a small gold bump, and if it's too hard with 400 I might see if strengthening the orcs helps any.

[ott]

Thanks for the replay. I tried exactly the strategy you did, with slightly fewer level 3 troops but 231 starting gold, but the loyalist commander seems to always have enough troops available to block the entrances. The allies have never lasted long enough in my attempts to draw out the enemy to allow me to sneak in. Perhaps I'm just consistently unlucky, certainly your allies seemed much more effective than the ones I see (if one looks at just the allies to rule out any differences in playing strength). Subjectively it certainly looks like there are fewer loyalists swarming around in your replay. I'll try a few more times.

In one attempt, I did sneak a 23/24 XP Poacher into the castle, and it managed to do three of the four trapdoors before the number of troops in the castle got so high that it couldn't progress to any 60% defense tiles closer to the fourth trap door. This absolute avoidance of attacking a unit close to advancing is clearly a bug in the AI, will file a separate report.

[Rothrorn]

Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed this campaign.....any chance of a sequel?

[scott]

Hello. There is some activity among the outlaws.

Version 1.8 of Liberty is out. Here are the highlights:

- compatibility with 0.8.9 difficulty level labels

- some dialogue cleanups

- balancing: the L3 Huntsman. He is now faster in swamps, making it a preferred terrain. This is partly to make a better niche for the Ranger.

- new unit: the human L3 Ranger. He's no elf, but he's close. He's an alternate upgrade to the L2 Trapper. While the L3 Huntsman specializes further with the bow and swamp terrain, the L3 Ranger develops better melee skill and movement on a broader range of "wild" terrain

- new unit: the L3 Shadow Lord. If you ever watched "Conan the Barbarian", you know Thulsa Doom was both a fighter and a mystic, with a creepy sort of charisma. Well, that's this guy.
-- I'm working on a ranged attack halo, but it may never get done
-- His attack missile is cumbersome - basically a big cloud of shadow power with some spiky shards in the middle
-- Honestly you'll probably never get to see his attack or defense animations, but I think we might have a first: animated defense that's different for whether or not he gets hit.


There are a lot of custom units in Liberty. Adding millions of units to the game generally has a negative effect on gameplay. However, in Liberty there is a very narrow range of characters you get to play with and against in this campaign. Thus, a fleshed-out outlaw line is a necessity if you're going to make a whole campaign out of them. I guess you can take the gryphon campaign as another example. I thought the ranger line would add some variety as well as some incentive to level poachers, which can be quite fragile (low melee, not elusivefoot).


I am considering letting you keep any rogue/shadow mages recruited in level 6 if you pick option 2. As it is now, options 3 or 1 are generally better.

As for a sequel, I'm glad you like it but I don't know where else to take the story. We know they have some problems with undead when Konrad meets our outlaw friends, but otherwise not much happens to them. I was thinking of starting an AMLA-based RPG campaign set in the Golden Age -- just for fun and for the 2 out of 56 who think Wesnoth is an RPG.


Thank you to playtesters and bug reporters, shadow for graphics, and torangan for working on a Deutch translation.

[quartex]

Thanks for updating your campaign to 0.8.9, scott. I really enjoyed playing with the outlaws and was worried that it might be overlooked by newer players. I'd love to see more RPG-like campaigns and look forward to trying anything new you may produce.

[scott]

Just released 1.8.3, which has:

some very minor improvements in gameplay
- allow undo tags added where appropriate
- heroes are non-renamable

a minor graphical improvement
- Shadow Lord's melee attack is much better now

a major addition to hero units
- a floating shield icon indicates who your non-killable (hero) units are. There is a lot of support for using laurel wreaths instead, but some feedback on the concept would be good.

I'm also planning on giving out traits for some of your starting units to help with the first and third scenarios, but that's for a future release.

[blackjack]

Scott

For the first scenario, you may wish to consider placing a label for the village to the north so that players know where they are supposed to be protecting.

[scott]

That's a pretty good idea.

[Monkey]

scott, you probably would like to change the map of elesenfar, since the one on Heir to the Throne has changed dramastically