Eastern Invasion 4.3; Mal-Ravanal's Capital

[JakeCWolf]

So I decided to take this route instead of the other two at the choice in Ill Humors, and while listed as "Challenging" I find it feels damn near impossible. At first I had blamed myself for rushing through the first three scenarios without taking the time to level up my troops/heroes, but now I feel that even doing so hasn't made it all that much easier, for reference I am also playing on the Easiest difficulty, I save scum enough as it is.

I start with 425 gold and my veteran roster includes after some light xp farming on the previous scenarios;

Gweddry, lLieutenant

Dacyn, Mage of Light

2 White Mages one resilient, intelligent the other intelligent, quick

Longbowman who is resilient and quick with the Magic Quiver

Shock Trooper who is resilient, quick

And couple units halfway to leveling or with no exp but good traits

Am I expected to have more then this at this point? My goal is to save all the Knights and Paladins before killing the Dark Sorceress and bailing. I split up my units sending the quick White Mage and Longbowman up to (slowly) save the northern Knight, keep the other White Mage and two recruited Heavy Infantry near the swamp by the choke to keep the recruited undead at bay, send a force with Dacyn southeast to rescue the Knights and loyal Paladin and split off Gweddry southwest with a third force once I'm out of funds to recruit (and up to my eyeballs in negative upkeep) to free the Knight and then south to get ready to jump on the Dark Sorceress when I have all the Knights and Paladin freed to end the scenario.

The problem I keep running into is getting bodded down in the bog by the bog dwelling boglodyte undead, who seem intend on getting in my way, enough so that I'm not even half way to freeing all the Knights and barely have freed the Paladin before Mal-Ravanal does himself a big think and sounds the alarm and everyone begins recruiting like mad. The final hurdle when I have been close not not quite there has been the Death Knight and Lich recruiting 6-7 units of mixed levels 1-2 and then just balling up a bunch of units and sicking them on me all at once when I near the last few Knights and the Paladin, sniping the Deathblades would be easy if I could get to them without stumbling over boney cronies left right and center.

Is there something I'm not doing right or some trick to make the AI behave in a useful way? I know most of the common tricks but not sure if there is some advanced tech I'm unaware of or if this one scenario is just borked and unfairly tilted in favor of the AI, which I'm loathed to consider out of hand but thee evidence of that being the case is stacking pretty high.

Any detailed help would be great, the walk-through on the wiki which I have been following incase you couldn't tell feels out of date for the current iteration of this scenario.

[Dalas120]

Oh no! Campaign creator here: Mal-Ravanal's capitol is intended to be a serious challenge but it's definitely possible to rescue every knight, and on Easy especially isn't intended to be too bad.

Could you send in a replay of a failed attempt, so I can see where I might need to make the scenario easier? I can also play through from your starting save and show a replay of how I'd beat it.

[JakeCWolf]

As a long time Wesnoth nut (if being on the forums for over a decade didn't give that away, lol) I have plenty of feedback on the scenario even without a reply;

1. The loyal Undead scattered about 'on guard' should in my testing remain as such, they should stay right where they are until I unit gets within move to attack range, as it stands they all move towards the player forces on their leader's first turn and I don't think they should. Them being on guard properly would make the player consider their moves carefully and not just move the max they can.

2. The Lich and Death Knight balling up 6-7 units and just keeping them there is really irritating to have to deal with. I assume they do this because there is a programmed barrier that they are forbidden from advancing their units past until some condition is met (like a player unit getting too close), but when triggered causes them to raggle fraggle all over the player's units, most notably the ones trying to free the Knight southeast of the Paladin, makes snipping the Deathblade nigh impossible. To keep them from doing this maybe restrict their gold income a bit at the start or allow them to move units past the barrier towards the player? I'd rather deal with a trickle of level 1 and 2 bone baddies then all of them at once.

3. Make the turn counter before Mal-Ravanal catches on to Dacyn's presence and getting serious a little more generous, maybe have it vary by difficulty? 15 for Easy, 12 for Medium and 10 for Hard? Or have the wake up be more dynamic in some way, like doing things that would alert the Mal-Ravanal sooner. What if both the Lich and Death Knight were 'asleep' and only woke up when the Knight closest to them was freed or the player's units got to close, this then triggering the 10 turn timer to save the Knights and Paladin and gtfo? This way with careful planning you could snatch two Knights before being on the clock, so to speak.

4. Speed up Mal-Ravanal's ghost summoning a bit, he spends a good 30 seconds summoning all his spooky boys when really he could make one summon animation and add some SFX and they all appear, before moving on to his normal recruiting, better yet keep him from normal recruiting on the turn he wakes up as well?

For reference I'm all for a challenge, I'm fine with a dozen do-overs and a tad bit of save scumming, but I picked the Easy difficulty to not have to fight the RNG every step of the way, and that what I feels like is real enemy of this scenario. On top of that the attack vectors are very limited to get to the Knights and Paladin before that 10 round deadline before everything goes tits (the bird) up. Heavy Infantry being the only ones to do meaningful damage and be able to take retaliation means all it takes is one boney croney on the swamp bridges and/or a bad RNG to cause the whole conga line rescue teams to grind to a halt.

Attached is the closest I've gotten without save scumming, the mob of boney cronies sent by the southern Death Knight are what boned me (pun intended).

[JakeCWolf]

I managed to do it at last! Did have to scum a bit, but I did do it, yay me lol.

[Dalas120]

Congratulations! This makes my playthrough a little unnecessary, but I finished the scenario before I saw your victory post so I might as well

Here's my replay starting from your save, leaving 180 gold unspent for an extra challenge (also no savescumming). Saved all knights, despite poor -14%/+4% luck. Took me 4 attempts to get this victory.

I took heavy losses (which IMO is to be expected on difficult scenarios without savescumming), but I gained a lot more than I lost so I'd have no qualms about continuing this playthrough.

EI-Mal-Ravanal’s Capital replay 20240530-203912 easy diff all knights.gz

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I assume they do this because there is a programmed barrier that they are forbidden from advancing their units past until some condition is met

Programmatically, you're correct that that's why (more or less), but the reason for that is to create the effect you mentioned ("when triggered causes them to raggle fraggle all over the player's units"). Mal-Ravanal is toying with you at first, holding back most of his armies. Then he realizes you have Dacyn and he sends everything after you.

Speed up Mal-Ravanal's ghost summoning a bit, he spends a good 30 seconds summoning all his spooky boys when really he could make one summon animation and add some SFX and they all appear, before moving on to his normal recruiting, better yet keep him from normal recruiting on the turn he wakes up as well?

I can speed up his animations, if that's what you mean? I'd deliberately drawn this out to make the player feel "wow, that's a huge amount of ghosts", but you're probably right that it's excessive if you're not playing on accelerated speed.

Difficulty

Given that this is the hardest mission of the hardest branch (even on Skirmish/Easy), and that you're also trying to 100% the optional bonus objective, I think the current difficulty level is reasonable.

For reference, on Invasion/Hard, in my old ironman playthroughs I considered it a victory if I rescued Terraent and 2 knights, irrespective of my losses. IIRC Konrad2 had a stream where he got all the knights on Invasion/Hard, but he had to savescum a few times to pull it off.