Oath of Allegiance [SP Desert People Campaign for 1.13.5]

[Kwandulin]

btw, are you planning to draw some new units any time soon?

No, the campaign already has quite a few additional units.

[ForestDragon]

btw, are you planning to draw some new units any time soon?

No, the campaign already has quite a few additional units.

i mean for stuff like Ashen Hearts

[Kwandulin]

Ashen Hearts already has quite a few additional units, too. I don't see a reason to make more

[ForestDragon]

Ashen Hearts already has quite a few additional units, too. I don't see a reason to make more

eh, i was just asking, nevermind

[ahmannar]

In the end this is an hobby, so do what's best for you .
Regarding the story screens, i think they are a good idea so it's probably worth it to wait for the next dev release and see if it will work again. Also, having more text in the other scenarios will probably help in making that one less "information heavy" when compared to the rest.

The bug that i got happened in the first turn of the "Drought" level without me doing any action with the units (right after the initial dialogue ending), but since it only happened one time out of multiple attempts, while also being a visual bug, it might not be anything serious. If it happens again, i'll try to give you more information regarding that situation.

I'll give my opinion on what i consider the turning points regarding the difficulty of the campaign, while also comparing the mechanics on some scenarios that i think are very good regarding the balance (putting it in spoilers since this might become huge and i'll talk about multiple plot points):

Spoiler:

-> The use of infinite spawn/large hordes of enemies can lead to one problem that you have already pointed out, in which it can make scenarios have only 2 outcomes. The first one is the player not having an army good enough to deal with it, which will make the player losing quality in his army in these scenarios. On the other hand, the second outcome is the player having an army good enough to handle them and just use them to feed great amounts of exp.
Basically what this does is that players will get very weak or very strong with this approach. The fact that there are some scenarios in sequence that use this ("Cloud River", "Eye of the Hurricane", "Sandthorn Pass" and "Th'arwya") dictate the condition of the player's army for the rest of the campaign.

-> Of these 4 scenarios, i think that the Cloud river is the one that can be balanced more easily if necessary. Giving a reason to have a tighter turn limit would be enough, in order to make this scenario less of a farm fest and more of "break trough the formation before it's too late" (The vizier could begin a new incantation in the beginning of the scenario, which the athvari would sense that was accumulating a great amount of power, making it necessary to kill him before he was successful with it);

->The fact that these scenarios are too easy not only has to do with the infinite spawn, but also with the nature of the challenges presented in them (even if you are redoing some of the scenarios, i think sharing this can be helpful). Scenarios such as "Peril", "A Whisper in the Sands", "Six Feet Under", "Face to Face with the Snake" and "Beneath the Sands" have features that make it necessary to have fresh recruits and even sacrifice part of the army. Things such as additional objectives that require extra effort, fighting on multiple fronts, being surrounded from all sides, having to rush the enemy quickly or having to run from a vastly superior foe are things that are not presented in the scenarios that i mentioned on the previous points. Those basically boil down to having a single formation that rampages trough the enemies, which is something that would never work in these 5 scenarios. In my opinion, that is one of the main issues with the scenarios that are too easy. I feel that i might not being clear enough in this point, if you feel that way tell me and i'll try to be more specific;

-> In the end, i would say that what makes the campaign turn to being easier than it should be is the combination of high amounts of exp that are easy to be farmed. It only takes 2 or 3 scenarios to nullify the challenge of the following ones. I agree with you that balancing around infinite spawns must be very hard, although it might be extremely useful in scenarios where the point of them is to exhaust the gold and recalls of players. Currently the second part of the campaign doesn't have scenarios to do this (except the last one, but in that case what matters is winning and not the amount of units alive by the end of it). The use of mechanics such as the one i referenced in the last point are the best way to create difficulty that can´t be dealt with raw power of recalls (in my opinion) and that is what is lacking currently on the second part of the campaign.

Removing the non-linearity and infinite spawns in this stage of the game seems like the way to go, it will be better for you to balance it and your ideas for the new scenarios seems very good in theory. You could make it so that they employ traps and ambushes on the player (which would make sense since they are thieves and might fight more with their brains than just brute force), while giving some foreshadowing and hints so as not to make it tomato surprise regarding the game play element. Having in the end pledging alliance to Kesh would also make it have more justification in giving additional challenges in the next scenarios since the player would have more options regarding with who to fight with or having other advantages. You could even associate them with the djinn archer, for example, as he could be affiliated with them in the past and manage to use his association with them to convince the thieves to get rid of Kesh, in order to not be eventually wiped out by them.

If you want some more opinions from me just ask, i really like this thieve's guild idea of yours.

[Kwandulin]

Your analysis regarding the easyness of certain series of scenarios sounds reasonable. I'll try to come up with a thieves' guild scenario that'll use these guidelines.

I am still not content with "Beneath the Sands", as the "being hunted by some evil guys"-theme is already used in "Peril" and the afariyaten seem to be too much of an overwhelming force. Any ideas on how to redesign that scenario. The dwarvish trading route theme should be kept, though. I am thinking about maybe escorting/following a dwarvish caravan to the trading post of dwarves and just leaving the red djinns out (thus, it would be the power of the Sphere and not the afariyaten that caught the athvari in the scenario before).

I am also thinking about adding some magical scimitars as enemies, that pop up from chests, attack the player and may be picked up as a weapon once defeated. It'd probably add some flavor to it. Any ideas on that?

[ForestDragon]

nice ideas not too much else to say though

[ahmannar]

Surely it will come out very good, considering your work in this campaign .

You have a good point regarding the fact that the afariyaten seem like a repeat of the elves situation from the early part of the campaign, but stronger this time. Maybe using that escort idea of yours, while giving the control of the caravan to the player and making that it contained something valuable/wanted for the trolls so they would have a motive to try to stop it. The player could encounter the caravan, with some dwarves being brutally beaten by trolls. The dwarves could ask the player for help in getting the caravan to a certain location and there would be a need to break the trolls formation and guard it along all of the path from the ones that were coming for it. You could give a high income to the trolls and retain the low number of villages, in order to force the playstyle of escorting the caravan and make it so that trying to kill the trolls would lead to eventually being overwhelmed by then. This way you could make use of much of the scenario as it is now, but get a completely new one in terms of gameplay and feel.

I think that your idea of the magical scimitars are quite nice, as they fit the idea of giving rewards to the player in exchange for additional challenges. You already have things like this in the campaign and, as long as they come with trade-offs (the case of the level "Peril" is the best example of this, in my opinion), i think they are always welcomed. I think it's important for these trade-offs to happen, because in that case it's a matter of wanting to get extra bonuses in exchange of gold/units/other resources and not simply becoming more powerful.

[Delicius169]

... you get a lot of loyal units, some even on high lvl for free.really too many... it makes game much more easier.

[ahmannar]

Like I and others have said in the past (including you now Delicius169), the amount of free loyal units does indeed seem too high at the moment. It probably wouldn´t be a problem if the middle part of the campaign was harder than it is right now, but it could be even then. There's probably some testing to be made regarding it and there's also some suggestions to reduce their impact on the campaign that aren´t just straight removing them.

[Kwandulin]

Updated OoA to v.0.10.0

• applied ahmannar's dialogue suggestions
• sword in S2 can now be picked up by L2 units
• in S3, Narfi now doesn't care about villages
• Dawoud is now "Dawoud"
• Balariel is now an elvish bloodmaiden
• fixed Wahdet not becoming a half-djinn under certain circumstances
• removed Sandthorn Pass and Harbor of Tharwya
• added scenario "Blackhands"
• Iskandar can now close portals within a radius of 1
• wyvernrider can now wield spears
• fixed fortiy and protect
• XP of Ibn Khazul is now taken over after the siege of Serrul
• improved Calik stats
• any unit can now visit the wyvern merchant
• in Uzar the Betrayer, petrified soldiers now awaken randomly
• Khazran's gift now longer grants the arcane attack type
• fixed gold carryover bonus throughout the campaign
• change Ilriel's appearance when she reaches max level
• S9 Beneath the Sands now features some dwarvish travellers that need to get escorted to a dwarvish trading post
• added magical scimitars that may pop up from chests
• add small bonus when Azyan kills Equaba at the Great Wall of Kesh
• removed Sakran from Serrul

I also updated the first post of this thread: viewtopic.php?p=579394#p579394

[ahmannar]

Quite a huge update this one, guess it's time to replay the campaign once again
Currently i have less free time at hand so i´ll be slower at providing feedback. Nerverthless, i´ll eventually do it.

[ForestDragon]

quick aethetic critique: the magical scimitar uses the normal attack incon, while it should look better with this, since it has:

scimitar2.png (3.52 KiB) Viewed 4076 times

also, i somehow uses the human hit/die sounds (unless these things can talk, which i doubt they can, it looks ridiculous )

[ahmannar]

Since i have already given feedback to the campaign in this format, now i'll mainly comment on bugs, the changes that have been made, further suggestions and eventual changes in difficulty caused by the changes/places where it might feel too easy or hard. I'm replaying it on Hard once again.

Drought:

Spoiler:

Difficulty: 6.
Dialog/story: The extra dialogue you have included seems very nice.
The dialogue regarding picking up the sword only talks about it being pickable by arif and doesn't mention his advancements. Since they are also allowed to pick it up and this could eventually cause some players to not give it to one of them (in case they are acquired in this level), i would suggest to change that bit of the sentence to something like " An Arif and his advancements can pick it up" to avoid misunderstandings.
Level of fun: 8.
Restarts: Not needed.
Bugs: Didn´t seem to catch any of these.
Final statistics: 9 recruits, 4 advancements, 1 loss, 28 kills, 70 bonus gold.

EDIT: Peril:

Spoiler:

Difficulty: 7/8, i think it's a good choice to remove the gold from the bottom of the map, it didn't make too much difference if someone wanted to get the reward. Although you said in the changelog that narfi no longer cares for villages, some of his units still went for them. For some reason i couldn´t break the trolls defenses in time like in my previous attempt in the past and, with limited time to play this, i just went with the worse result that i got here after a couple of retries xD.
Dialogue/story: The dialogue regarding Nuvdael looks good here, but i would suggest a little modification in the sentence that begins with "Usually, we are not lead by a high king..." to this:
"Usually we are not lead by a high king but by several sages, each originating from a nearby forest. However, a century ago the Southwoods were poisoned and cursed by a shadow that inhabits the black forests that lies in the south of our woods. He was one of the few who didn't accept the demise of our home and thus, he bravely led his troops against the forces of the darkness, fighting them back and cleansing the Southwoods from them. It was in that time when our sages recognized that wisdom and words alone can't protect our realms from dangers, the actions of the people can also bear fruits. Thus, Nuvdael was crowned high king."

I wrote the full sentence instead of indicating the differences, it may be better this way for you to compare the 2 versions in case you like this one.
Level of fun: 9.
Restarts: 2 restarts needed, was tempted to restart a third time after i lost the arif turned into masun that fetched uthain in the most stupid way (he's slow as hell), but just rolled with it.
Bugs: Like i said earlier, don´t know if it's a bug or not, but some elves are still capturing villages.
Final statistics: 8 recruits, 6 recalls, 4 advancements, 6 losses, 22 kills, -2 bonus gold.

A Whisper in the Sands:

Spoiler:

Difficulty: 8.
Dialogue/story: Just giving some minor suggestions for modifications in the 2 new pieces of dialogue.

When recalling uthain, replacing in his dialogue the " those deserts" for "these deserts". Although "Give me a break" isn't wrong to use in this context, it seems a little bit too modern to be used in this setting.

In the dialogue regarding the pain of ilriel, the use of "ouch" doesn´t seem appropriate to convey pain, at least i associate it with something like with getting hurt in the finger (a minimal pain). Maybe "Arrrrgh" or something like that could be better used here?
In the last sentence of Dawoud in this piece of dialogue, having him say "Nothing is what it seems in these realms. We'd better hurry, though, so that we have a possibility to ease your pain."
Level of fun:8.
Restarts: 1.
Bugs: Didn´t find any of these.
Final statistics: 9 recruits, 6 recalls, 5 advancements, 5 losses, 53 kills, 106 bonus gold. I figure the value of gold being much lower this time around is partially to do with the new carryover gold system (i think that in the previous playtrough i had better management of the villages, but going from 250 to 106 seems too much of a difference to be just because of that). If that's the reason for the much lower number of carryover gold, than the "fix" could be the beginning to making the campaign harder, which i'm all for it.
Random Remark: The objectives say "Defeat the bandits", which might give the impression to the player that he has to defeat every enemy on the field (even more because the level "Drought" says "Defeat the bandit leaders"). However, defeating the bandit leaders is enough to end the level. I would suggest to change the objective to "Defeat the bandit leaders" in order to avoid possible confusions.

Six Feet Under:

Spoiler:

Difficulty: 5.
Dialogue/story: While the new dialogue feels good, the expression "no problemo" seems, again, something too much modern to say.
Level of fun:8.
Restarts: 0.
Bugs: Didn´t find any of these.
Final statistics:8 recruits, 1 advancement, 8 losses, 4 kills, 4 bonus gold.
Suggestion: At the moment, getting the item in this level seems something that is expected and very easy to do, since getting away from the center of the map means having less enemies to fight. Since it gives a huge advantage to the unit that gets it (probably being the best item in the campaign), it should probably be harder getting it than it is right now. Since just surviving this level is very easy to do, getting the item could be the factor that would make it harder.
If this seems like a good idea, maybe some kind of guardians around the area of the sphere could do the trick. This way, getting it would mean having to breakthrough them, while managing to not get caught by the duneworms that are chasing the player.

The Pearl of the Desert:

Spoiler:

Difficulty:Overall, i would say 8.
Dialogue/story: Very nice cheering dialogue you have in here from Ibn Khazul .
Level of fun: 7.
Restarts: 2, the lower number of starting gold, along with maybe some unlucky rng made the enemy getting to the khalid and him dieing.
Bugs: Didn't noticed any of these.
Final Statistics: 5 recruits, 11 recalls, 6 advancements, 9 losses,30 kills, 76 bonus gold. Since the difference from this level to the same on the previous playtrough continues to be noticed and barely nothing was changed in the village strategy grabbing (went from 200 bonus gold to 76), i would say that fixing the carryover might indeed help making the campaign harder. I'll wait until finishing the campaign to form the opinion of whether this seems enough to achieve it or not.
Random comment: The removal of the merchant seems a good idea, it removes the "win more" status of the players who come here and are relaxed to pass the level with some extra gold and that choose to use it to improve their units.

[taptap]

I happen to know Turkish. Having machine-translated Turkish as the mysterious, ununderstandable language the Khalifate soldiers speak early on is somewhat distracting for me. I can't be the only player who speaks Turkish, right? (Basically, I can read what they say, but it sounds really wrong.) Do you have any plans for that dialogue?