17b. All-In

[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?

[bobpanda]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
normal(incursion)
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
10
this is a very very difficult scenario, especially no save and load.
(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?
7
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
i only played this scenario on normal(no save and load), the enemy undead swarm is totally endless and powerful, the most deadly units among them are chocobone, dark adepts and dark sorcerers, they may take out one L3 royal guard in one turn at night. Moreover, player's forces are limited, but AI's undead swarm never stops recruiting, so player cannot waste too much time and suffer too many units lost. If player did not save all 3 generals in the last(the eleventh hour)scenario(all three are absolute necessary) and have 10+ high level undead-killing units in recall lists, I would not suggest playing this scenario. Only in normal difficulty, I lost 20 L3 units and killed 15000g enemy units totally to win, which is even much more than the scenarios of the NR campaign. I cannot imagine how difficult the scenario would be on hard.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
This scenario is too difficult, i think the difficulty should be reduced by a little bit....
And the achievement of this scenario is almost impossible, because Mal-Ravanal will attack you very actively after he shows up.

[Vendrick]

(1) Incursion (reduced difficulty from Invasion), Invasion, 1.18
(2) 8
(3) Clear
(4) Excellent
(5) Difficult to pull out specific points because the whole thing is fairly difficult. Chocobones, Dark Sorcerors and L2 Ghosts are obviously the most dangerous units so I killed those Liches first which had the added benefit of securing half of the map.
(6) 8
(7) This is a pretty good large-scale field battle: the multiple fronts, distinct AI recruit lists and AI modifications (massing for attacks at night) keep it interesting.

On the replay:

Spoiler:

I popped open the staus table on Hard and saw the AI was packing a truly obscene amount of infintely recycling gold and decided to try my hand at Normal and maybe get the Warmonger achievement.

This was easier than playing straight through on Normal, because of the extra experience from playing the rest of the campaign on Invasion / Hard.

I skipped Turn 1 then reloaded so I could see what units each AI leader was recruiting.

I was overly cautious with gold, since I had a bunch of mercenary (+30% damage while gold > 0, else -30% damage) units on the field and I didn't know how long the scenario would last or what would happen when Mal-Ravanal appeared.

I was keeping one of the southern Liches alive but blocked from its keep so the gold refund was less than <100% efficient. This wasn't actually very relevant because by that time I was killing more units than the AI could replace from its 3 hex keeps. (The Liches seem to be capped at Level 2 units only.)
In a similar vein, I was planning to keep one of the west Dark Adepts alive, but it would have been much better to just kill 2/3 of them early (unless they can gain the ability to recruit Level 2 units with a large enough gold reserve).

At time of writing, there's a bug where achievements can be earned by watching replays so I also reloaded the scenario to save a replay after earning the achievement to hopefully avoid that.

During the day, with a Holy Amulet, max adjacent units and multiple +damage AMLAs Owaec can deal 117 damage and one-shot Mal-Ravanal. It's beautiful...

I'll have a try on Hard and attach the replay here later, but the scenario takes quite a long time even on Incursion / Normal.

EDIT: Attached Invasion Replay - a noticeable bump in difficulty when killing the first few Liches but still quite achieveable. Second phase plays similar to Normal - 900 gold in reserve is the same as 500. I nearly get Owaec killed again but otherwise a decent replay. The Sentinel Shield is pretty silly here.

[sine_nomine]

Invasion, 1.18.0
At first I thought this scenario was a puzzle, with a focus on destroying leaders in a way that takes more gold out of circulation. I rushed down the three dark adepts and used their keeps to recruit more units, then wiped out three liches. Afterwards my initial plan was to defend the city while my three strike forces killed the other leaders, then I would kill the remaining undead troops once there was no more gold recycling. But I soon realized that the undead had plenty of money and the limiting factor was keep size, so the better approach is to kill as many enemies as possible once you begin your assault and keep killing until they're all gone. In retrospect I should have recalled more units earlier and been more aggressive during the second day. I had high gold going into this scenario which made it easier than it should have been. Plus Gaennel, Yannic, etc. Seems like the real challenge is to win after taking the "easy" route.
At the start of this scenario you're given a lot of free units with high exp so I finally got some silver mages.
After killing four liches the final boss appeared in the bottom right, and I killed the remaining minor liches soon afterwards so there were no more reinforcements to worry about. I had a huge army at that point so I played carelessly. I was able to lure out the new enemies outside of the boss' range. Surprisingly, he remained motionless for multiple turns while I killed his recruits and only approached when I put a unit within his attack range.
Story-wise I like the different types of corpses recruited by different leaders, it conveys the idea that the undead are attacking everywhere on the continent at once. And the ending of Dacyn's journey was nice. By the way if you finish this scenario with Konrad holding the staff he appears twice in the ending and the Konrad in the bottom left does all the talking.

[Dalas120]

> Seems like the real challenge is to win after taking the "easy" route.
Yeah, this scenario is intended to be hard, and requires as many bonuses as you can get. Players with small recall lists and/or few loyals should go with
"The Duel" instead; hopefully I communicated that properly at the ending of "Eleventh Hour".

> I was able to lure out the new enemies outside of the boss' range. Surprisingly, he remained motionless for multiple turns while I killed his recruits and only approached when I put a unit within his attack range.
Ok that's definitely not intended. Let me investigate; something must have changed since 1.17.

> By the way if you finish this scenario with Konrad holding the staff he appears twice in the ending and the Konrad in the bottom left does all the talking.
Lmao, ok that's funny. Will be fixed once I disallow him from picking up the staff

[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) 8
(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? It's great. Though, is Dacyn accepting that he is going to die, or something worse than that? Also, again, some more lines during the scenario might help break up the long turns.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario? Started with 270g, but the extra 450 from the 3 generals was enough. My overall strategy was to assassinate the closer enemy leaders, while saving my gold and income to defend and counter against the rest.
For phase 1, I started by recalling the baneblade and the paladins, who along with most of the starting troops assaulted the south and west leaders. Yannic assassinated the west adept on turn 2, and the baneblade team knocked out the southwest lich by turn 4. 2 silver mages, the merfolk, and 3 paladins went straight south and took out the lich around turn 6; for this one I noticed the leaders will often only come out of their keep 1 hex, but this was enough to lure him into the water and get charged by Terraent. The southeast team had Gweddry, Owaec, 2 paladins and some others, and took a bit longer, finishing around turn 7. Finally the northwest team first rushed down the adept leader on turn 3 or so, with 2 paladins, one of the ally generals, some HI-types, and 2 red mages. I used his keep to recall an additional mauler and a MoL to then finish off the northwest lich.
Phase 2 starts at around second dusk. Until this point, the 4 east leaders have mostly kept their troops around their own keeps, and I've only lightly manned the walls with some of the starting HI (who were too slow to join the phase 1 strike teams). As they start to move in, I finally recall essentially all of my veterans, having banked just enough gold at this point. Mal-Ravanal shows up as I defeat the northwest lich, but at this point I have several holy RGs/halbs, several maulers, 3 arch/great mages, and most of the MoLs, plus misc units like the crystal bow, the runemaster, the slurbow, etc. They easily fight through the second night, and by the third dawn I have nearly 70 units on the field, and the enemy totals around 30. To get the achievement I let Grug and a silver mage encircle Mal-Ravanal while other troops finish off the remaining enemies.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10) 10
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun? None