BfW is a game that relies on save-scumming too much

[TrashMan]

I can't help but disagree. Because if it were true, then there wouldn't be players like me who beat the hard difficulties without savescumming, using strategy instead.

That's like saying that because someone wins the lottery, the lottery isn't a sham.
It's also implying that anyone else isn't using strategy.

[Konrad2]

I can't help but disagree. Because if it were true, then there wouldn't be players like me who beat the hard difficulties without savescumming, using strategy instead.

That's like saying that because someone wins the lottery, the lottery isn't a sham.
It's also implying that anyone else isn't using strategy.

No, it's like saying that because someone wins the lottery, it's possible to win the lottery. (Which is true. The chance is just very close to 0, even by generous definitions of winning.)
Even then it's a bad comparision, as the chances for winning without savescumming are so higher by so many magnitudes that (at least) my mind stutters when trying to compare those chances.

It's merely implying that there are people using savescumming as part of their strategy, or as a crutch to save themself from frustration or a waste of time (aka learning more about strategy/testing what works and what doesn't). I probably should have made myself clearer.
It's also a proof that it is possible to play without savescumming.

[beetlenaut]

It's really bad when you lose loyal units or heroes that way.

Well, there's your problem. Apparently, you are putting your important units in positions where they can die. Doing that is not playing carefully. If you have five important units, and they each have just a 1% chance of death each turn, you can expect one of them to die about every 20 turns. So, you'll rarely make it through a scenario without having it happen. (And actually, 1% CTK is pretty rare. In the kind of situation you describe, 5-10% is more common if it's not 0%.)

[Aldarisvet]

Heh. Every multiplayer player knows that you should never put your leader in the situation in which he/she even theoretically can be killed.
Same about heroes and loyal units in campaigns. One should learn to play the game first. Playing campaigns and playing multiplayer are two different realities, and this is not about Wesnoth only, it is about every game. One passed several campaigns on hard using save&loads and think he is an expert in Wesnoth after that? A grave mistake of a novice player it is.

[Tad_Carlucci]

My natural style was to push hard and fast, to take the opponent deep in his territory before he could muster his forces. That can work OK in some cases, but it leads to disaster in others. Sometimes its best to just hang back and use distance and the terrain to funnel the opponents through choke points into your line. Each game is different. The trick is to be able to 'read' the map, and to be able to adjust as the battle develops. Now, Gods know, I'm not expert at this, and I get still my arse handed to me more often than not, but I've learned that the fault is most often mine and not the game designers.

The Save and Load functions are there for several reasons. One of those is to help you learn that a battle IS winnable; otherwise you'd declare the game unplayable and move on to another. But that feeling that you're relying too much on re-loading when things are not going your way means just that. Instead of declaring the game unplayable without re-loading, look for different ways to proceed. That's why we advocate looking at other's replays. "Why is he starting off by retreating into that forested mountain pass before recruiting? Ah, look at that, just one or two units can hold the pass until the opponent runs out of stream and, then, he recruits a few fast units the catch the leader, all alone, just before time runs out!"

[octalot]

Has anyone done a mod that records the times that a unit was at risk of death? I think it would be neat to see something on the right-hand side status bar that says "had a 45% CTD turn when lv1 with 5xp, had 1% CTD turn when lv2, ..."

[Ravana]

It is too complicated for mod to provide. And risk of death could also be from much greater risk of death of those who would attack.

It might be possible to keep track in context of attacks that happen.

[gnombat]

It's really bad when you lose loyal units or heroes that way.

Well, there's your problem. Apparently, you are putting your important units in positions where they can die.

I've noticed that some campaigns tend to force the player to rely on loyal/hero units too much. (Usually UMC; mainline campaigns are generally better in this regard.) Either they have too many loyals/heroes or they always auto-recall all of these and don't provide much gold for recruiting/recalling expendable units.

A few loyal/hero units are fine, but generally I find that the mechanics of the game are more fun when most of your units are of the expendable variety.

[Aldarisvet]

It's really bad when you lose loyal units or heroes that way.

Well, there's your problem. Apparently, you are putting your important units in positions where they can die.

I've noticed that some campaigns tend to force the player to rely on loyal/hero units too much. (Usually UMC; mainline campaigns are generally better in this regard.) Either they have too many loyals/heroes or they always auto-recall all of these and don't provide much gold for recruiting/recalling expendable units.

A few loyal/hero units are fine, but generally I find that the mechanics of the game are more fun when most of your units are of the expendable variety.

I am sure that many heroes and loyal units is great. In Chapter III of my campaign there are 9 loyal units and 8 heroes at some moment. But it is ok if your enemy has only lvl1 units and you have a meat to recruit. AI sometimes even not dare to attack lvl3 heroes. I am absolutely sure that the way mainline campaigns go is a fault. Both player's and AI's expendable units, meat units must be lvl0 or lvl1. Otherwise it goes unbalanced in later stages of the campaign because villages loses their importance - too much gold needed for AI to recruit high-level units. I repeat, AI must never recruit lvl2, and lvl3 units, this disbalances a game. All later stages scenarios of mainline campaigns sucks because of it.
If a game interest is about advancing units - then this feature must be reserved for autorecalled loyal units, not for a meat.

Instead of giving to AI 3 lvl3 units better give him 9 lvl1 units or 15 lvl0. In the first case when fighting lvl3 units it really would be much about RNG. But even lvl0 units can be interesting to play against. Give them poison, backstab, berserk, make them mobile, flying and this low-level enemy meat would create a challenge for you.

Also a thing that must be understood. In fact in later stages of mainline campaigns you often get several high-level units that formally are expendable but in fact you cannot afford losing many of them. Often common player just reloads to prevent losing these high-levelled units also because he/she cherished them throughout the whole campaign. It is a psychological thing. These units are not a meat, they are beloved veterans for the player. He even gives names for them. They cannot be expendable. But yet they are forced to be played against a lot of lvl3 enemy units. So better to admit the fact that the player likes to cherish and give him many loyal units to advance.

Also imagine a multiplayer scenario where a player cannot recruit lvl1 units but can to recruit lvl3 at full price. Imagine that a map is not so big and a starting gold is about 150. Oh, that would be a pure RNG and not about village controlling.

[gnombat]

I am sure that many heroes and loyal units is great. In Chapter III of my campaign there are 9 loyal units and 8 heroes at some moment. But it is ok if your enemy has only lvl1 units and you have a meat to recruit.

I haven't played that campaign so I can't comment on it specifically but in general it's not really the absolute number of loyals/heroes that's important as much as the proportion of them in your army (relative to the number of expendable meat shields).

Some campaigns (especially the loyal-heavy ones) seem to require you to keep nearly all your units alive at all times and to restart any time you lose a unit, which tends to get tedious after a while (in my opinion).

[beetlenaut]

Has anyone done a mod that records the times that a unit was at risk of death?..."had a 45% CTD"

I made a feature request for allowing you to simulate an enemy attack on your units so you could more easily check that kind of thing before your turn was over, but it never got implemented.

I repeat, AI must never recruit lvl2, and lvl3 units,...this feature must be reserved for autorecalled loyal units...So better to admit the fact that the player likes to cherish and give him many loyal units to advance...Oh, that would be a pure RNG and not about village controlling.

You are describing a traditional roll playing game, and BfW is not intended to be one of those. IMHO, the worst style of RPG is where your heroes grind through huge numbers of low-level bad guys, a few at a time, without ever being in actual danger, and it sounds like you are demanding that we change mainline BfW to that. Fortunately, it's not going to happen. Of course you can make UMC in whatever style you wish. I know there are a fair number of people who agree with you, so there are quite a few UMC campaigns like that.

[The_Gnat]

I can't help but disagree. Because if it were true, then there wouldn't be players like me who beat the hard difficulties without savescumming, using strategy instead.

That's like saying that because someone wins the lottery, the lottery isn't a sham.
It's also implying that anyone else isn't using strategy.

What I find amusing is that if you look back traditionally every year (sometimes even more often than that) someone creates one of these topics and everyone argues all the same things again

Come on people, there is no 'right' answer to this. Wesnoth is not too RNG based or not RPG enough and it certainly is perfectly designed either. It is just a certain amount of randomness and a certain amount of strategy. Some people like it, some people don't. No one has to like it, but for the people who do like it, don't worry, it is not a personal threat if someone says they don't prefer wesnoth's RNG design or prefer games on which the enemy recruits lvl 1 instead of lvl 3.

What makes wesnoth great is not the perfect weight that has been placed on the randomness and the strategy, it is the fact that the game is so easily modified and customized that everyone can play exactly the way they want to! There are 1000's of add-ons and if you like one thing you can do that, if you don't you don't have to do that. Finding new campaigns to play and new mods to play them with is what makes wesnoth great and the constantly evolving nature and great ideas of the community mean that people don't have to all agree about the game but they can all still have fun.

(disclaimer, of course their is a limit to what mods can do, sorry if you want a 3d shooting videogame you need to go look somewhere else, haha )

P.S. -

I made a feature request for allowing you to simulate an enemy attack on your units so you could more easily check that kind of thing before your turn was over, but it never got implemented.

That is a great idea!

[sergey]

RNG is too much of a factor and there is little to no room for error, since your units can die too easily and too fast, so you can't even retreat them.

Novice campaigns are more tolerant to player's bad decisions. Intermediate/expert campaigns expect that player makes good/the best decisions. I am sure that for intermediate/expert campaigns it is required to always check how many enemy units can attack each of your units. Actions -> Show Enemy Moves menu item (or corresponding hotkey) shows that. Doing that, you always know which of your units can die this turn and decide if that is acceptable risk.

What I do know is that it doesn't feel like I'm playing a strategy game. Since the entire setup doesn't really allow for much strategy to begin with.

Perhaps Wesnoth has higher entry threshold than many other strategy games? I feel like it has a lot of different aspects, it is very diverse and customizable. I already dedicated a lot of time to learn Wesnoth and still sometimes find something new. If the game is too hard for you, try playing easier campaigns / easier difficulty levels / use debug mode. I think there is nothing bad if one uses debug mode, since the main goal of the game is to have fun.

Also I think that it is hard to balance this game. Sometimes "normal" difficulty is too easy for me and "hard" is too hard. Gold carryover, veterans, only few difficulty levels makes the game hard to balance. To mitigate that I change difficulty levels in a mid campaign to keep it both challenging and fun for me.

[Aldarisvet]

I repeat, AI must never recruit lvl2, and lvl3 units,...this feature must be reserved for autorecalled loyal units...So better to admit the fact that the player likes to cherish and give him many loyal units to advance...Oh, that would be a pure RNG and not about village controlling.

You are describing a traditional roll playing game, and BfW is not intended to be one of those. IMHO, the worst style of RPG is where your heroes grind through huge numbers of low-level bad guys, a few at a time, without ever being in actual danger, and it sounds like you are demanding that we change mainline BfW to that. Fortunately, it's not going to happen. Of course you can make UMC in whatever style you wish. I know there are a fair number of people who agree with you, so there are quite a few UMC campaigns like that.

It is not about "your heroes grind through huge numbers of low-level bad guys". I do not mean that heroes and loyal units must be so "fat" that they could not be killed at all. I do not like the idea of overpowered heroes myself. If you imply "Legend of the Invincibles", no, I never played that campaign and I do not like that concept.

It is about the fact that the importance of villages is close to zero in later stages of mainline campaigns. All you can do is only to recall all your lvl3 units and just a bit new lvl1 and with these you are to resist hordes of lvl3 units of AI. After that your gold count quickly goes to huge minus (and same for the AI btw). This means that the only thing you can do is just to defend using front&rotate&heal strategy. After AI stupidly breaks his hordes on the rock of your solid front then you just go and kill his leaders. This is boring! This is a fault!

For me ideal Wesnoth must look like the first three scenarios of The Rise of Wesnoth campaign. At the same time kinda last 7 scenarios of the same campaign or even more are simply sux. Look, after about kinda 5 scenarios you main heroes reaches lvl3 and they cannot advance further. The same about most of your veterans. This kills the main interest of the game - to advance you heroes. Given that UtBS was a breakthrough for Wesnoth that partly solved the existing problems. But that breakthrough was made a decade or more ago?

When I made my own campaign I deliberately divided it into 3 independent chapters so in each chapter your heroes begin with the new type of unit. So in Chapter I a hero starts with lvl1 and can advance to lvl3, in Chapter II he/she starts with lvl2 and can advance to lvl3, in Chapter III he/she starts with lvl3 and can advance to lvl4. But at the same time there are lot of loyal units in Chapter III that can advance from lvl1 to lvl3. So my system is quite more complex compared to mainline campaigns where you just have a faction or two to advance and where a hero is just a unit from that faction.

it sounds like you are demanding that we change mainline BfW to that

Nah. I do not demand this. I clearly understand that Wesnoth is too ossified.
I just point to clearly weak places. Many think that RNG is a weak place of Wesnoth, but nope, the problem is much more complex.

[TrashMan]

It's really bad when you lose loyal units or heroes that way.

Well, there's your problem. Apparently, you are putting your important units in positions where they can die. Doing that is not playing carefully. If you have five important units, and they each have just a 1% chance of death each turn, you can expect one of them to die about every 20 turns. So, you'll rarely make it through a scenario without having it happen. (And actually, 1% CTK is pretty rare. In the kind of situation you describe, 5-10% is more common if it's not 0%.)

What is the point of heroes then? Having units that you put into some corner and hide them? Doesn't sound very heroic!
It should be extremely difficult to kill a unit in one turn, especially heroes. You need to have some room for errors, a turn to react and save them.
And your hero can appear to be a safe place, but it turns out it's not. Let's say the neemy can't approach becuse another unit is in the way. And then THAT units gets killed despite the odds and suddenly your hero is open to attacks.
Or what about units that are invisible in certain conditions and you get ambushed?