The South Guard, Re-Revised - New Mainline Candidate

[egallager]

If the first campaign needs to either be the tutorial, or at least use the same units as the tutorial, maybe the first campaign needs to be elves?

The overlap between the elves' fighter and archer lines makes them forgiving to players who haven't chosen ones that exploit the enemy side's weaknesses. Those lines don't get abilities or weapon specials until L2, and of the specials that they get at L2, two are immediately useful in a way that's obvious to the player (leadership, marksman), leaving only one that might not seem useful (ambush).

Good point, that was one of the big strengths of the old tutorial.

Yeah, old tutorial seemed to feed pretty seamlessly into either AOI or HttT

[Gothyoba]

Why should the first campaign use the old tutorial units though? I don’t see any problem here. AOI could be a good tutorial, but I don’t think it would be any better than making TSG a tutorial.

[Kapiork]

Why should the first campaign use the old tutorial units though? I don’t see any problem here. AOI could be a good tutorial, but I don’t think it would be any better than making TSG a tutorial.

Yeah, isn't the plan to replace the old tutorial ("Battle Training") with a this tutorial campaign?

Good point on the "forgiveness" of elvish units however. Something to consider.

[Dalas120]

Using a cavalryman as the main hero means that the player won't understand the numbers on screen until they understand resistances. For a game that depends a lot on numbers, the tutorial ought to introduce things in an order that a player can understand them - otherwise there's a risk that they'll just think "well, all the reviews that said it was too focused on RNG were right".

This is a great point; thanks for bringing it up. I'll change Deoran have higher HP but to use his resistances from TDG - 0% blade/impact, -20% pierce - which should keep the numbers making sense for a new player.

Not ideal that they're different from a standard Cavalryman, but the player doesn't get access to Cavalrymen in TSG so hopefully it's not too severe of an issue. In a perfect world I'd have a custom animated sprite for him.

The overlap between the elves' fighter and archer lines makes them forgiving to players who haven't chosen ones that exploit the enemy side's weaknesses. Those lines don't get abilities or weapon specials until L2, and of the specials that they get at L2, two are immediately useful in a way that's obvious to the player (leadership, marksman), leaving only one that might not seem useful (ambush).

Good point, that was one of the big strengths of the old tutorial.

Good point on the "forgiveness" of elvish units however. Something to consider.

I agree with the goal here - more forgiving units - but I disagree that elves are more forgiving than humans.

Elves are more fragile than their human counterparts, and rely heavily on positioning/terrain to perform well. They also have several non-standard features, such as full movement in forest and (in the case of the archer) better defense in forest than in castle or village.

In comparison, human units are cheaper, tougher, and more disposable, while overlapping almost as much as the elves (bowman and archer have identical melee damage; spearman has only 3 less ranged damage than fighter). And while the spearman has extra complexity from first strike, the elves all have extra complexity from dextrous.

More importantly, the campaign is intended to be easy enough on Normal (and especially Easy) that it shouldn't require careful unit choice to complete.

Undead, and thus plague, are integral to TSG's story, but TSGRR S02's use of plague, along with shouting it out at the start of S02 can be interpreted as "letting your recruits get killed doesn't seem that bad, so we've thrown a mechanic into the tutorial to make you see it as bad now, even if we won't explain it until later". It feels like misinformation to put it early in a tutorial.

Can you elaborate on this? I'm not clear how plague feels like an artificial tutorial mechanic, vs a natural consequence of zombies. I don't think the player really needs to be told that letting their units die is a bad thing.

Yeah, old tutorial seemed to feed pretty seamlessly into either AOI or HttT

I think it feeds great into HttT, but unfortunately not very well into AOI or AToTB (which were the campaigns it suggested you play next).

Yeah, isn't the plan to replace the old tutorial ("Battle Training") with a this tutorial campaign?

Yep, that's correct!

[octalot]

I don't think the player really needs to be told that letting their units die is a bad thing.

That's the problem - they need to learn that letting their units die isn't always a bad thing, at least from a game mechanics point of view. One of the big speed-bumps in the game is understanding that you should recruit some L1 troops, and not worry too much if they die. At the most cynical point, decide that troops which you aren't going to recall again are costing you upkeep; but at a much less serious level, understand that sometimes you need to let the bulk on the enemy damage land on fresh recruits, instead of dropping that damage on experienced troops who'd have a high but not certain chance of survival.

the elves all have extra complexity from dextrous

The way that strong and dexterous work is easy to understand, and it works on the player's turn, affecting the stats that they can look at on their turn. It's giving the player extra complexity, but in a way that won't be bad if they ignore it, and shows the player part of the game if they want to remember which units have the bonuses.

First Strike only works on the enemy turn, and some of what it does should affect the AI calculations. For Loyalists, giving spearmen as recruits is unavoidable, yet one of the "what does this do" things about them is complex to understand.