recommended campaign sequence

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michaelbr
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recommended campaign sequence

Post by michaelbr »

I've played this game few years ago, decided to give it another try. I remembered when I played the 1st time, I followed the sequence from this page https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Mainline_Campaigns, which started with Heir to the Throne, but on the Getting Started page (https://wiki.wesnoth.org/GettingStarted) it showed Tale of Two Brothers, which one should I start with? The reason why I'm asking this is the last time I got stuck pretty fast, so I'd like to start the right way to get familiarized with the game and its characters. I assume this game will start from easy to difficult campaigns.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
Michael
otzenpunk
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by otzenpunk »

I think, the order the campaigns are presented in the Campaign menu, is a reasonable one. Afaik the order changed a couple of releases ago, for this particular reason. Of course, you can always leave one out, or leave it for later, if you don't like the story or don't want to play this special faction. If you've played AToTB (Loyalists), AOI (Elfs) and TSG (Loyalists) in a row, for example, and you want to have a little bit of variety, you probably don't want to continue with HttT (long campaign, again with Elfs and Loyalists).

A Tale of two Brothers is also a good start, because for some reason it hasn't got a medium difficulty level. So after you've played a number of the other campaigns, "beginner" is probably too easy for you, but you aren't fit for "challenging" yet.
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michaelbr
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

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otzenpunk, thanks for your prompt reply, I'll follow as suggested, and thanks for the tips too.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
Michael
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Aldarisvet
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by Aldarisvet »

Do not forget about user-made campaigns from Add-ons section. Much of content there is better than mainline one. In my opinion.
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michaelbr
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

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Aldarisvet wrote: September 13th, 2019, 7:49 pm Do not forget about user-made campaigns from Add-ons section. Much of content there is better than mainline one. In my opinion.
Thanks so much for this tip, didn't even know they exists. I just did a quick search, it seems the post for best campaigns are old (2012), do you mind to share with me
1) which addon campaign in your opinion is good.
2) when I search for addon campaign, is it version specific (I'm using 1.14, so I can only add 1.14 addons?).
3) where can I find user addon campaign?
Thanks for your time, for saving me time to look for in the net.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by otzenpunk »

Aldarisvet wrote: September 13th, 2019, 7:49 pm Do not forget about user-made campaigns from Add-ons section. Much of content there is better than mainline one. In my opinion.
Yes, there are very good ones out there. But a lot of them is quite mediocre and/or incomplete as well. So if you're new, and don't know exactly what to look for, I'd still recommend to stick to Mainline for the moment, until you get bored with the default campaigns.

Also, a lot of the mostly praised UMC campaigns tend to be rather epic and long, with 40, 50 or even 100 scenarios, which I'm personally not a fan of. I myself liked, amongst others, Swamplings, Roar of the Woses, Cities of the Frontier and, most favorite, Founding of Borstep, but neither of them would I rate as beginner-friendly.
michaelbr wrote: September 14th, 2019, 4:57 am 2) when I search for addon campaign, is it version specific (I'm using 1.14, so I can only add 1.14 addons?).
3) where can I find user addon campaign?
Just click on "Add-Ons" in the main menu, and select Type: Campaigns. The Add-On mechanism is version aware, that means that everything you're installing this way is automatically supposed to work with your specific installation.

One thing, I forgot to mention yesterday.
The reason why I'm asking this is the last time I got stuck pretty fast, so I'd like to start the right way to get familiarized with the game and its characters.
Don't try higher difficulty levels too fast. If you managed to succeed one campaign in "beginner" mode, for example, don't suppose you're now not a beginner any longer, except you really cake-walked it. Otherwise you might succeed in another campaign on "normal" for a couple of scenarios, but then get stuck, because you might have survived them, but didn't manage to level enough units/keep valuable units alive/save enough gold/etc. This then might not be obvious at first, but instead you just seem to struggle with a particular scenario, which then seems not to be winnable at all, which can be quite frustrating. (Advancing from "beginner" to "easy" and "normal" capabilities happens pretty fast though, then proceeding to "challenging", "difficult" or "nightmare" takes a lot more effort imho.)

Also, Wesnoth is quite complex, and takes a while to learn, (not the rules, but how to play,) and you probably won't be able to succeed with all of the mainline campaigns in a row, even on their lowest difficulty level. All of the campaigns do offer a choice of different levels, and it's really part of the game, to rerun them and try to get better, avoid mistakes you made in former runs, succeed on higher difficulties, etc.
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michaelbr
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by michaelbr »

Thanks so much for you tips, I'll do as suggested, start with mainline then after completed several, then I'll do the addons. One last question, I couldn't find the Roar of the Woses, but there's one called Story of the Wose, could be this one or it hasn't been ported to 1.14? Thanks again for your tips/suggestion.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

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michaelbr wrote: September 14th, 2019, 11:41 am One last question, I couldn't find the Roar of the Woses, but there's one called Story of the Wose, could be this one or it hasn't been ported to 1.14?
No, Story of the Wose is a different campaign. Roar of the Woses might haven't been ported to 1.14 (yet).
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michaelbr
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

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Great, thanks so much for your tips and suggestions, it's much appreciated.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
Michael
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Aldarisvet
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by Aldarisvet »

michaelbr wrote: September 14th, 2019, 4:57 am Thanks so much for this tip, didn't even know they exists.
Well, I had the feeling when I wrote that.
Because I myself got about custom made campaigns only years later after I played Wesnoth first.
It is simply unobvious what 'Add-ons' button means.
Moreover, this problem was discussed and several people told the same about 'years', still nothing happened.

The first problem with mainline campaigns that they are all tactically monotonous. Hold a frontline, rotate and heal wounded. You can get bored with it quickly.
The second problem of mainline campaigns is poor storylines in many of them. About a half of mainline campaigns not worth playing at all in my opinion. The other half is ok or even good. Well, these all from my opinion of 37-year man. I know from my own experience that what you can find quite exciting when you are 17 you can find boring and primitive when you are above 30. Recently I was translating South Guard mainline campaign to Russian after it was reworked greatly. What I found is that how boring the storyline is and how boring to translate it. The whole plot is: An elvish Sage was kidnapped by some evil guys, was tortured badly and became evil himself (became lich) after that. Pfffff. But one campaign - Orcish Incrusion - has no storyline at all. The whole plotline is: Orcish Incrusion. :cry:

The problem with custom campaigns that there are really lot of them and there is no system in how they can be rated. Many are uncomplete, made by beginning developers or full of bugs. But in fact those authors who really like to create put much more efforts in their campaigns that were put in mainline stuff. Almost all of mainline stuff was mainlined kinda before 2007, and was mainlined in a hurry because Wesnoth was developing fast. From that time these mainline campaigns haven't changed much. Many UMC authors got far ahead after that.

You can look here for UMC -

https://wiki.wesnoth.org/Guide_to_UMC_Content

These campaigns are at least finished and free of bugs.

Personally I would suggest you to upload 1.12 version of Wesnoth and play two campaigns by Faelord - Amaranthine Stone and Alariel's Fairy tale. You will not regret I assure you. Unfortunately the author havn't imorted it to 1.14.

michaelbr wrote: September 14th, 2019, 4:57 am I just did a quick search, it seems the post for best campaigns are old (2012)
Here is a wide-scale poll that I initiated for Android UMC Pack Project (2016). You can see results here -
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=44112&hilit=UMC+Pac ... 45#p603328
Last edited by Aldarisvet on September 14th, 2019, 10:00 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by EarthCake »

Aldarisvet wrote: September 14th, 2019, 8:39 pm Personally I would suggest you to upload 1.12 version of Wesnoth and play two campaigns by Faelord - Amaranthine Stone and Alariel's Fairy tale. You will not regret I assure you. Unfortunately the author havn't imorted it to 1.14.
Amaranthine Stone is first add-on I've ever played. It is fantastic.
Aldarisvet wrote: September 14th, 2019, 8:39 pm The first problem with mainline campaigns that they are all tactically monotonous. Hold a frontline, rotate and heal wounded. You can get bored with it quickly.

Isn't that more or less problem of all campaigns?

I agree somewhat with you, but there are some exceptions.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by Aldarisvet »

EarthCake wrote: September 14th, 2019, 8:59 pm Isn't that more or less problem of all campaigns?
Well, if you make your campaigns similar to mainline, you get similar results, yes?
The system in which AI get many gold at the beginning, then spend it during several first turns, then you either survive this wave with the standard frontline system either you dead, this system is a fault.

I expessed many my thoughts about it here -
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=44003

I prefer another system - there are many villages in the map and AI have the constant flow of money from villages so there is no 'the first and the last' wave. You either win the battle for villages or you will be overwhelmed with time. So you simple cannot sit and wait while AI will break his forces over you, you have to spray your hand over the whole map.

I must say that in my campaigns I tried to implement this principle.
It is good when you play with low level units as a meat and you cannot recall much veterans.
For now I am working with prequel scenarios for my Zombies:Introduction campaign, and I really get a pleasure testing it. No camping here!
EarthCake wrote: September 14th, 2019, 8:59 pm Amaranthine Stone is first add-on I've ever played.
Same for me. I got lucky. Because otherwise at that time I could completely get bored with Wesnoth.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by Tom_Of_Wesnoth »

Aldarisvet wrote: September 14th, 2019, 9:29 pm I prefer another system - there are many villages in the map and AI have the constant flow of money from villages so there is no 'the first and the last' wave. You either win the battle for villages or you will be overwhelmed with time. So you simple cannot sit and wait while AI will break his forces over you, you have to spray your hand over the whole map.
I think that this approach still has the problem where the AI recruits one 'wave' of units, and then a trickle of individual units. At the start of most scenarios, the AI is going to have at least 100 gold, probably double that - and so, it will recruit a 'full keep' of units at the very least, more likely two or three keeps' worth.

After that, even if there is a lot of villages on the map, the AI's income isn't going to be enough for multiple units a turn. Even an income of, say, +35 gold, is only going to fund a single L2 unit a turn.

I think if you want to avoid the 'first a wave, then a trickle' gameplay, you need to give the AI money, not every turn, but a lump sum every few turns, so that it keeps recruiting in waves.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by Aldarisvet »

Tom_Of_Wesnoth wrote: September 14th, 2019, 11:36 pm 'first a wave, then a trickle' gameplay
How beautifully you expressed the problem :D
Tom_Of_Wesnoth wrote: September 14th, 2019, 11:36 pm I think that this approach still has the problem where the AI recruits one 'wave' of units, and then a trickle of individual units. At the start of most scenarios, the AI is going to have at least 100 gold, probably double that - and so, it will recruit a 'full keep' of units at the very least, more likely two or three keeps' worth.
I already know how to solve it and implemented it in my forthcoming sequel of Zombies:Introduction.

Imagine that:

1. The enemy has 3 leaders of the same side. This also means that if you kill one leader, other two will retain control of all villages controlled of this side (comapre with 3 sides system - one leader lost - all his villages lost for AI, and other sides must regain these villages again to get money for them). This is important.

2. Both 3 leaders has only one recruit tile. So both 3 camps are made of 2 tiles, one for the leader and one for recruitment. That means that AI can recruit only 3 units per turn maximum. This totally smooths initial gold amount problem :D
Actually you could put initial gold to 0 to avoid the problem at all but for different difficulties you must adjust an initial amount of gold for AI. Again, it is imortant that AI's income would be almost fully dependent on number of village it controls. Of course you always can give to AI some amount of gold per turn to support a permanent stream but this woudnt be a fair battle in which it would be important to fight over villages, hence, to divide your forces.

3. Profit. Enjoy a steady stream of enemies. Of course you must take into account the cost of units AI can recruit and an initial number of AI's villages so there would be no too much gold deficit or surplus for AI.

Also, as I mentioned many times, you should avoid giving possibility for AI to recruit many high level units (same for the player, only some heroes/loyals must be of high level). Because high level units costs much, to fund it's recruitment you must either to create really huge map with many-many villages or to increase gold per village. In all mainline campaigns villages have only healing importance in later scenarios. It is no more battles for villages, for map control, for the economy, it is always a stupid defence massacre. Because of that Wesnoth recall system is a fault.
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Re: recommended campaign sequence

Post by michaelbr »

Thanks to all of you for so many useful information, learned so much just in the last few days. :lol: Now I need to digest them one by one and start playing.
Thanks for your comment/suggestion.
Michael
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