Asheviere's Dogs - New Mainline Candidate!

[Mechanical]

I'm glad to present you an updated version of Asheviere's Dogs campaign, which is supposed to be included in the game's 1.20 release!

Learn the violent story of Queen Asheviere's rise to power, and fight by her side as she consolidates power over both her enemies and her allies.

### Key Features ###

- 8 scenarios with unique challenges. Each mission will be different from the previous one;
- Tactical battles in which you will be able to show off your Wesnoth skills;
- RPG elements: you will be able to find artifacts and build a dialog with some NPCs. Your decisions will fill each playthrough with a unique experience.
- 8 varied achievements.

### Note ###

Note that the old version has been removed from the addon server. We are talking about the new version of the campaign, starting with 2.0.0. If you still have the old version - no big deal, just download the new one and make sure you pass it. You can easily identify the new version by the description and the white color of the player.

### Special Thanks ###

To dwarftough, Jonathan Kelly, Dalas and ForestDragon. These people have provided invaluable support to the campaign!

[Rembo_1]

Just played through it on normal difficulty and I enjoyed it, a bit of feedback however:

The amount of xp gained from scenario 3 creates a kind of snowball effect that makes almost all the following levels very easy to beat, as you have to kill around 10-15 level 2s, along with 2 level 3s while not really losing any units because they don't fight back most of the time.

The second to last scenario seemed a bit slow, sometimes it would take several turns to get past a bottleneck but the enemies did not pose much of a threat. Also I only played through to path of teaming with the fire ants, and if I am looking at it right it would let you team with either side, but allying with the normal ants and then getting them on your side seems fairly pointless, because their blade type melee attacks would do nothing vs the large amount of high leveled units in the last scenario.

Other than that, it was quite fun and I hope to see it added to mainline soon.

[Mechanical]

Just played through it on normal difficulty and I enjoyed it, a bit of feedback however:

The amount of xp gained from scenario 3 creates a kind of snowball effect that makes almost all the following levels very easy to beat, as you have to kill around 10-15 level 2s, along with 2 level 3s while not really losing any units because they don't fight back most of the time.

The second to last scenario seemed a bit slow, sometimes it would take several turns to get past a bottleneck but the enemies did not pose much of a threat. Also I only played through to path of teaming with the fire ants, and if I am looking at it right it would let you team with either side, but allying with the normal ants and then getting them on your side seems fairly pointless, because their blade type melee attacks would do nothing vs the large amount of high leveled units in the last scenario.

Other than that, it was quite fun and I hope to see it added to mainline soon.

Thanks for the feedback, glad you liked the campaign.

As for the ants - no, you can't team up with gray ants. You can either team up with the fire ants and get their squad as a reward, or destroy them and loot artifacts from the human characters.

[Lord-Knightmare]

Dalas requested I make some time in my busy schedule to try this new version out so here we go:

Attached Save Files, and now the feedback. I will keep it brief and to the point.

Scenario 1

• I remember this scenario being a lot harder in the old version but I see the bonuses are more achievable now. Nice.
• Good Scenario
• I like the references made for Mech's earlier works: Dirty Blood, Lifetime of Stones, as well as a reference to the Rootless

Scenario 2

• Oh, the Lords are now Loyalists core units. Okay, more doable now.
• I made some careless moves in this scenario but still managed through
• I found it amusing that I saw the other orc leader get bullldozed by the enemy loyalists, and yet I got his reward. Hehe.
• No improvements needed. Good as is.

Scenario 3

• Scenario good as is. No improvements needed.
• I wonder if my current win streak is due to the Slurbow requiring so little XP to reach the level 3.

Scenario 4

• Scenario good as is. No improvements needed.
• Oh, it has a small intro "mini boss" fight now? Okay.

That's all I got for now. Will resume playing the mainline candidate version from Scenario 5 "Discipline" next week.
But the improvements have been commendable so far.

[Konrad2]

Bazurs lvl 1 recruit animation is a bit too quick. And it seems I cannot undo recalls due to it.

S1
I also like the bonus units, especially the names.
I didn't quite the my human riders basically attacked at night instead of a better time. And it would have been nice if I could have choosen which leader they attack after being told what kind of units I earn.

S2
Check S1 of Rootless for a macro to make the units on the map have less than full hp and some xp to simulate them having seen battle. (especially the units to the south of the enemy leader)
The recruit animation of my allied leader plays whenever the rebel leader is recruiting.

It's weird that the Guard on 32,17 doesn't have traits.

(gurgling)) -> (gurgling)

I'd suggest awarding the achievement only if you win the scenario as well.

Because of the daytime of the scenario starting, it felt like I had very little agency.
1) The point at which the rebel leader is getting attacked / has lost the fight is turn 8/9/10, which is daytime. My loyalist ally deals likely at least 30 dmg per unit. I'll be at 20 dmg, up to 30 maybe. Meaning, the rebel leader could be sitting at 80 hp, I have no way of killing him, but my ally just oneshots him with sending knights and lancers at him. Can happen if there is just one hex free (though less likely). 2-3 hexes make it depend on luck if the enemy is surviving. Anyway. Feels uncomfortable. If this was happening at night I could influence it more.
2) The first turn I can fight during the night is turn 7 I think. At that point the scenario is basically already over (15 turn turn limit too). The enemy fields lvl 2 unit, some with charge, meaning all I can do is watch my units being cut apart if I try to go in during the day. :c

The bonus objective is also sometimes simply not doable. If the rebel leader commits too many unit on the orc 'ally', they simply die. (And the rebel leader is being overwhelmed even earlier.)

It feels hard to believe that Barzug gets away with killing his 'ally'. Especially the way he tries to justify/downplay it makes me think it more likely that he gets executed before leaving the battlefield.


S3
Very weird that none of the Shock Troopers have any traits.

Stats and replays
S1

Spoiler:

AD-Orcish Comradery replay 20250121-153700.gz

(33.29 KiB) Downloaded 63 times

S2

Spoiler:

AD-Welcome to Wesnoth replay 20250121-172324.gz

(53.81 KiB) Downloaded 37 times

[Lord-Knightmare]

Coming back to this:

Discipline

• Good as it is. No improvement needed.
• I guess one thing I would suggest was some hint at keeping that 100 gold in stock for those war party of wolf riders

Art of War

• Ah, a new scenario.
• I had to complete this at a lower difficulty as the middle proved a bit too much. The Halberdier of side green and the Iron mauler of side purple was a bit too much to handle. Lingering poison does not really help for these 2.
• Anyways, the scenario was entertaining.

Underground Feud

• I noticed that the side tunnels are now mandatory to explore now, compared to the previous iteration.
• Good as is. No improvements needed.
• Finally learnt what the potential trait meant. Very interesting.

End of War

• I guess this scenario is more or less the same as before. One thing I noticed is that the new Lightning bombardment mechanic. Very nice.
• AI allies were okay EXCEPT Ghuvog. He initially recruited, but after the first batch, he did not recruit anything. 350 gold and still no recruitment. This led to him being swarmed by the Side 3 loyalists. I had to debug and buff his HP to prevent a wipe due to dumb AI. I guess this is a bug.
• Any way to make the enemy leaders stay within 1 hex of their starting keep? I guess I have won fast due to them leaving the defended castle to attack me in the open and then lost the ability to recruit anything else as I blocked the return path to their keep. This is true for all 3 leaders. See reply (if it loads, assuming I did debug Ghuvog's survival)
• I see in the end that Dommel got Halstead as his hold. This sort of contradicts what I had initialized about him already being commander of Halstead before the events of The Deceiver's Gambit. Kind of leaves my loyalists campaign about Sir Kalyan in a lore hole. Anyway to convince a lore adjustment?

Anyways, the improvements and the mainline candidate adaptions have been very well executed.

[Mechanical]

Thanks for the feedback, Lord-Knyghtmare! Glad you liked the campaign overall. Thanks for reporting the bug in S08. I've released a mini update that includes the hotfix:

v2.0.1
- fixed bug with Lod's recruiting anim in S02;
- fixed bug with Ghuvog's recalls and recruits in S08;
- enemy leaders now don't move far than 1-3 hexes from their keeps in S08.

[Konrad2]

S3
sword arn -> sword arm
beat and plunder -> fight and plunder

Iron Maulers armour:
Listing the blade res improvement before the pierce improvement would make more sense, because the UI is blade, pierce, impact from top to down.

Heavy Infantry should say something when attacked even if it's just 'stay in formation' or something.

Maybe add a death rattle to the Iron Mauler?

S4
I'd love to be able to pick 1 unit myself for my intial units.

inolve -> involve

If Lady Aviel does not count as a Rebel Leader, pls make the objectives say to take down the Bandit Leaders.

S5
scared -> should come with a trait tooltip 'this unit is too scared to fight back'

Punk surviving (when he is on your side) holds no reward, it would be nice if there was some.

S6 (and technically S2)
Asheviere has very underwhelming stats for her lvl. Especially mismatched with her lvl 4 description 'her knowledge of magic makes her a worthy foe' while only a 15x2 attack. Great Mage has 17x4, better melee, and more hitpoints. (Young Queen should be lvl 2, and Dark Queen lvl 3, like it's in mainline?)
Maybe make her a lvl 3 unit with a stronger version of leadership? She would still be a weak lvl 3 unit, but it would be clear enough that she wields power through others.

S6
I think it's odd that the time of attack differs between 'start with scouting' (turn 12, according to Lord Grey), and 'start without scouting' (turn 7).
When recruiting a first unit, the nightstalk message appears
will be removed once turns end -> will be removed once the first night ends

As it is, add to the notes that there is no early finish bonus.

Defeat 2 of rebels lords -> Defeat two of the rebel lords

Suggestions for S6:
emphasize Asheviere's desire to have enough soldiers left to march on Dan'Tonk
- let amount of units lost influence gold in final scenario
- add turn limit -> scenario going on too long implies too many losses
- maybe a limit of how many unit I can lose
- combinations of these ideas, for example losing x unit -> less gold, and losing x +20 = defeat or something

- maybe another achievement for S6, tied to the amount of losses or the ratio of losses

S8
Fun fact, Ron can recall (orcish) units.
Bazurs recruit animation is triggered when Ron recruits.
Isolde should have a new death message after you open the gates. Her dying in full view of allied forces makes it obvious that it wasn't Bazur and his orcs that killed her.
Hidden acheivement maybe: open the gates with ants. xD

The notes refer to 'Battle of Weldyn', but it should be 'The Art of War'.

Asheveire -> Asheviere

'Open each gate ...' objective should be removed when all gates have been openend.

14,26 is a village outside of the gates, but belongs to De Ferres. It would make more sense if it belonged to Chief Ghuvog.

The scenario actually is empty in a sense. The scenario is too long and large scale for how little dialogue is happening. While the lightning keeps striking, not much is happening outside of that. It seems like all interesting things (opening the gates, Delfador showing up, his exchange with Leollyn) happen in the first 10 - 15 turns, and afterwards it's really just 20 more turns grinding to take the enemy leaders down.
I think it would be great if there was more dialogue happening, more people running into each other that used to fight side by side, but are now fighting against each other. More of a reaction to orcs invading. Some reaction to Isolde and Bazur showing up in the middle of the city. A reaction of my enemies when I open a gate. Some attempt of Asheviere to attack Delfador (an attempt that fails of course). The enemy leaders/Delfador commenting on their allies dying, them losing the battle. Citiziens being caught in the crossfire.
Stuff like that.

Replays in order

Spoiler:

AD-The Iron Hunt replay 20250128-155224.gz

(53.38 KiB) Downloaded 61 times

AD-A Prophecy in the Royal Forest replay 20250128-164452.gz

(61.69 KiB) Downloaded 61 times

AD-Discipline replay 20250128-173826.gz

(78.92 KiB) Downloaded 73 times

AD-The Art of War replay 20250204-162126.gz

(79.1 KiB) Downloaded 83 times

AD-An Underground Feud replay 20250204-170226.gz

(84.68 KiB) Downloaded 56 times

AD-The End of the War replay 20250211-170912.gz

(182.92 KiB) Downloaded 37 times

[Mechanical]

Thank you so much for streaming the campaign! Unfortunately, I don't have a chance to watch the finals stream, but I hope you enjoyed the campaign overall. I've started making improvements based on your feedback. Here's what's ready at the moment (the list will be updated):

Code: Select all

S1: 
- moved the dialog with the choice of riders to 1 turn of side 4, i.e. after showing the tasks
- the starting time is now the second watch, i.e. riders face enemy orcs in the daytime. 
S2: 
- added the “smart, quick” trait to the guardian
- fixed a typo in “gurgling”.
- moved the start time to “ dawn”, now the player will be able to attack earlier. 
- added a macro from Rootless to simulate a battle between starting human fighters
- reduced the attack goal for side 3 (allied orc) for Elec's side.
S3:
- fixed typos
- fixed the order in which resistances are listed in Iron Mauler armor
- added a phrase for the first attack of heavy infantrymen
- added a phrase for the death of the leader of the heavy infantrymen
S4 
- corrected typos
- replaced “rebel” with “bandit” leaders in quests
- added the ability to recall 1 of your own units on turn 1 (or 2 if the player doesn't have Aryn).
S5 
- added a hint on the “scared” trait
- Punk now comes under the player's control if the dialog is successful
- Added Punk's last breath phrase
С6 
- Added the defeat condition “lose 30 soldiers” (with the phrase Ashevir) 
- Removed the tooltip about the “nightstalk” ability (note and phrase will suffice)
С8
- Ron can no longer recall orcs 
- Fixed “Battle of Weldyn” to “Art of War” in the notes
- Added dialog between Delfador and Leollyn on turn 20 (written by Dalas) 
- Added an achievement for opening all the gates with ants
- Added comments from rebel lords about each other's deaths (written by JK)
- Added comments from rebel lords about opening gates 
- Now the task to open a gate is only displayed until all gates are open
General: 
- Removed Bazur's animation when hiring, which was causing issues with summoning canceling
- Dumped some PRs from Gothyoba with spelling improvements. Many thanks to him for his help!
- Made the spaces around the _ sign in dialog lines consistent
- Strengthened Asheviere's levels 3 and 4 a bit, added her melee attack with poisoned stiletto (3-3 and 5-3 respectively)

As for the lack of traits in heavy infantry - I did that intentionally. I wanted the strength of heavy infantry to be the same and not depend on random. Almost all traits complicate the mission in one way or another, and the smart trait doesn't carry any meaning.

[Mechanical]

@Konrad2

I think it's odd that the time of attack differs between 'start with scouting' (turn 12, according to Lord Grey), and 'start without scouting' (turn 7)

The idea was that the lords either attack in concert, or Ashevir disrupts their plan and they attack alone. However, forcing the lords to stand still until turn 12 would be too long. That's why there's such a difference.

When recruiting a first unit, the nightstalk message appears

This is done deliberately, do you think it is ok to dispense with this message?

add turn limit -> scenario going on too long implies too many losses

I intentionally left an infinite turn limit so players could pump a really strong army for Asheviere and Ghuvog if they wanted to, of course. Sort of like the cave mission in the actual version of DiD.

combinations of these ideas, for example losing x unit -> less gold, and losing x +20 = defeat or something

I'm afraid in case of a “pyrrhic victory” in S6, Asheviere may be left without any gold at all in S8. Such mechanics could very much affect the balance of the campaign and create unforeseen problems.
I think one limit on the number of losses would be enough. How about 30 units? (you losed 22, but I consider you as experienced SP player)

[Konrad2]

When recruiting a first unit, the nightstalk message appears

This is done deliberately, do you think it is ok to dispense with this message?

It should be okay, I don't remember why I mentioned it.

I'm afraid in case of a “pyrrhic victory” in S6, Asheviere may be left without any gold at all in S8. Such mechanics could very much affect the balance of the campaign and create unforeseen problems.
I think one limit on the number of losses would be enough. How about 30 units? (you losed 22, but I consider you as experienced SP player)

That sounds good to me.

[Mechanical]

Released version 2.1.0a!
The list of changes can be found in the post above.
Many thanks to Konrad2, Jonathan Kelly, Dalas and Gothyoba for their help!

[Mechanical]

Released new patch - v2.2.0!

General:

- Red color.
- Changed the mechanism for restricting enemy leader movement from the citadel (the old one was causing issues in the logs).
- Removed the “heroic” trait from enemy leaders.
- added Gothyoba in credits for his text assistance

Mission 2:
- Changed Elec's behavior pattern. He now evenly defends the castle instead of heavily focusing on the orc.
- Slightly reduced Asheviere's gold.
- Made the river crossing more accessible.
- Added a castle-building animation for allied orcs, similar to Bazur's.
- Allied orcs now react less to the player's units and prefer to attack Elec's forces.
- Asheviere's veterans are now saved to S6 (except for Roland Knights and Lt. Lod).

Mission 3:
- Neutral knights now have 0 gold per village until activated (on either side).
- This prevents them from passively accumulating gold, ensuring their strength remains as intended.

Mission 4:
- Now when a unit with fire moves to a warehouse, he stops on a neighboring hex before burning it (in the old version, the animation looked like a bug).

Mission 5:
- The orc rebellion now always occurs on the next turn after defeating Gwido, ensuring the player has all active units ready to fight the orcs.
- Removed the vengeful elf event, as it often felt like a tomato surprise that disrupted the player's rear villages at critical moments.
- Reworked the Punk event: Punk now arrives on turn 3 and automatically initiates a dialogue with the player. This eliminates the need to sacrifice a unit to access hostile dialogue options.
- Sir Gwido no longer automatically triggers on the player's level 3 units.
Removed the marksman ability and +1 melee strike from Sir Gwido.
- Sir Gwido no longer moves outside his starting castle.

Mission 6:
- Gameplay revamp: The scenario now follows a standard timetable from the start, with a turn limit of 12. Sir Ellaent attacks as soon as both lords are scouted. Otherwise, all enemies attack simultaneously on turn 12. Once the enemy attack begins, the turn limit becomes infinite.
Removed heroic traits from lords and added some gold as compensation.

Mission 7:
- Added new death phrase for Isolde.

[Konrad2]

Ftr, why the TC change? White seemed to fit well.

[Scaramush]

The campaign's interesting to play, I enjoyed the story and the enhanced dialogues, and the feeling of being on the "bad" side is nice too. The only thing is that you could make it more challenging, right now even on the hard difficulty it's like carving through a piece of cake. especially in the scenario with HI, where they pay no attention to you whatsoever, except for the ones you attack directly. they could really use some more aggresive patterns. But overall it's a very strong campaign which i'll be glad to see added to mainline.