4c. Mal-Ravanal's Capital

[Content Feedback]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

[sine_nomine]

Invasion, 1.18.0
My initial impression was "WTF am I looking at". The undead capital is a mess of different terrain types and it takes a while to discern the actual gameplay structure of the map. It's also hard to predict how the AI will behave, especially with enemies scattered everywhere, so a trial run of the scenario to scout things out is almost mandatory.
Even after scouting it's hard to get used to the defensive enemy AI. I need to make suicidal moves and hope that the enemy won't swarm my important units.
I tried to save all the knights so I went negative on gold and had to sacrifice units to free the knight in the bottom right. Also barely managed to kill the bottom left leader before I was overrun.
I killed the lich near Terraent in one attempt and got punished for it.
The achievement popped up when the last knight was freed, but it's not much of an achievement to free them all and then die. Maybe move that to the end of the scenario. Achievements aside, there could be a line of dialogue at the end acknowledging you saved them all.
Terraent has cool gold armor and a neat fire attack. I might have missed something about his backstory, I thought he and his men were wesnothian but he has dark skin so maybe they're foreigners? Is there some other area he comes from?

[Dalas120]

> The achievement popped up when the last knight was freed, but it's not much of an achievement to free them all and then die. Maybe move that to the end of the scenario
Good point; will fix.

> I might have missed something about his backstory, I thought he and his men were wesnothian but he has dark skin so maybe they're foreigners? Is there some other area he comes from?
No backstory tbh, I just thought a black dude in gold armor was a pretty visual.

[DeadScout]

x5 invasion, 1.18.0

couldn't pass it with bonus goal, even tried to replicate "sine_nomine" strategy which is cool alas suicidal and still hard to manage i think 10 turns threshold is low maybe push it to 13 before you get swarmed from all directions at once
over all i like it's unique side stories and hidden rewards that surprise you this campaign is now officially the hardest for me
in the end didnt save the knights i just went for the killl

[DeadScout]

finally managed to barely pass this scenario with heavy losses, but am not proud of it after 4 days of trial and error i could only on the last day keep mimicking "sine_nome" strategy which i loved since i used the same when i play with elfs, until i won
i didn't do the reload/save but i did reload many times to change unites movements often to get better situations after i miss up badly, like not paying attention to a bat near an injured unite with 1hp left

[fredbobsmith2]

(1) Incursion 1.18.4
(2) 10
(3) Perfectly clear.

(4) Reasonably interesting dialog. Gweddry seems to change his mind a bit too quickly, perhaps add a comment about how Mal Ravanal can't be killed when Terraent hits him.

(5) I'd say the biggest challenge is doing everything in time while navigating swamp, defensive AI behavior, and compensating for RNG. For example, I'd send two units north, but if they ran into significantly bad RNG, they could easily both be killed while freeing no knights. Similarly on the southeast front, if Shock Troopers or White Mages missed their hits, the lack of mobility and defensive AI would often bog down my units enough that it becomes impossible to rescue the paladin.

(6) 5. A little too frustrating, given that this was on the medium difficulty. I replayed the entire campaign getting the start to improve my recall list and starting gold but was still barely able to rescue all the knights. I imagine it'll be essentially necessary to give up one or two of them on hard.

(7) Less swamp or cave tiles might be nice.

[fredbobsmith2]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on? Invasion (Difficult) 1.18.4
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10) 11
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives? Clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario? Very good, but again, why does Gweddry give up his plan to attack so quickly?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario? I replayed the entire campaign from the beginning, twice, to try to beat this while saving 5 knights (I gave up on the 6th, might be possible with a silver mage). I recalled all my L2 and L3 veterans, which were 2 WMs (white mages) + 1 MoL (mage of light), 2 STs (shock troopers), 2 experienced L1 mages, 1 crystal longbowman, 1 experienced spearman, and recruited 2 extra HIs (heavy infantry) and 1 mage. The longbow and 1 WM went north starting turn 1, their goal was to assassinate the north deathblade while fighting off some stray skeletons, then go east through the swamp and free the northeast knight. The 2 HIs die holding the centre, while Gweddry, the spear and 1 mage go west. Everyone else (1 MoL, Dacyn(MoL), 1 WM, 2 STs, 2 mages) go south and fight through the enemy to get to the knight and paladin. It is possible to free the southeast knight but I'm not sure how I would do so without losing both the knight and the rescue team, as it will be around Turn 9 by the time the paladin is freed. The freed north knight comes south to assist the west team with fighting the southwest enemy, although I ended up having to save-load to get the kill on the deathblade, otherwise he one-turn-kills the L1 mage. The east team ended up coming all the way back to assist the west team, using a knight to lure the enemy leader off their keep.
In hindsight, this scenario could've played out easier if I had 1. sent an experienced mage west instead of a fresh one, and gotten an earlier white mage on that front. 2. put more experience into the red mage in an earlier scenario, to get a silver mage for the east front that could then help the west front sooner. It may have been more helpful than having the 2 half-levelled L1 mages and the other partially-levelled WM.
In my replaying of the earlier scenarios, I spent much more effort in S1 to get 2 WMs, instead of 1 WM and 3 STs as I had the first time, as STs are just much less useful on this scenario. I also fought the trolls in S2 instead of skipping them; this results in barely finishing the scenario on time but gives a decent amount of experience. For S3 I also farmed the enemy units for a few turns instead of going straight for the east leader, this was very helpful for giving exp to some L1 mages on that east front. For S4 I again took much longer in the swamp; instead of sending out fencers to grab the herbs and die I formed a hedgehog around 2 healers and slowly rolled through, killing several L2 units.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10) 7, don't like swamps
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun? Less swamp?