An Orcish Incursion, Revised [Mainline Campaign]

[ZIM]

It is heavily guarded! Erlornas had to go through the swamp to bypass most of Rualsha's orcs.

...but I get what you mean. Which difficulty did you play on? I'd dramatically increased Rualsha's army size compared to the original AOI, but if you played on Hard/Deadly and still found the scenario fairly easy I'm happy to turn the difficulty up further.

Well, I played in Normal. But I don't mean the scenario is too easy, it's just that for something as important as the gate, you would think Rualsha would have stationed more orcs to guard it. I understand that this is a short campaign, so you don't have enough time to gather veterans to be able to fight a much harder fight, I'm just trying to build my case for proposing to replace Rualsha. I personally think the current one is a good compromise.

Featuring Selmar directly a good idea, and is something I went back and forth on during development. My concern is: my biggest motivation for restoring AOI is for nostalgia - as a recently-removed mainline campaign, there've been a lot of people who're sad it's gone and want it back.

Because of that, I've tried very hard to keep the campaign similar to the original, adding and polishing while still keeping all the original characters and battles. I worry that adding Selmar to the final scenario would be too major a deviation from the original, defeating the purpose of re-adding the campaign.

I also think that showing orcs breaking free from their undead masters is a unique addition to the lore, and bridges the gap between TRoW (where orcs serve the Lich-Lords) and LoW (where orcs decide for themselves).

That said, I hadn't meant to imply that Rualsha *easily* defeated Selmar - it certainly might've been a huge epic battle. We see at least one little piece of that battle in S2, with the orcish infighting. Maybe it would help if I added more mentions or allusions to a major battle in the past? Orcish and undead corpses surrounding the portal? That kind of thing.

Regarding the lore, all this time I always assumed that the orcs in the north came via ships from the Old Continent gradually. I think this revision is the first mention of a portal, right? So I didn't consider about the importance of bridging how the orcs went from being the lackeys of Lich-Lords to free people. Now that you said it, I think the current setting is the better option. The infighting does allude to the rebellion, but you would think that if Selmar doesn't have problem sending the ones loyal to them out to hunt rebels, that means Selmar is confident about defeating Rualsha with their remaining forces. Although you could argue further that Selmar could be overconfident and leave themselves unguarded and that's why Rualsha could easily defeated them. I think you could just leave the current one as is.

Hmm, that's not good - the AI should prefer retreating towards its leader, not away from its leader (except for weird cases, like your whole army being between the fleeing unit and their leader).

If you have a replay showing weird retreat behavior, can you send it? I'll take a look at why the AI is doing the wrong thing.

I guess this is one of those weird cases then, I did try to corner the leader with a bunch of leveled units.

Copying a response I wrote in discord regarding a similar suggestion:

I'm usually more than happy to include different objectives in campaigns, but since my main motivation for re-adding AOI is filling players' nostalgia, I'm worried about straying too far from the original. I don't want people to be excited their favorite campaign got re-added, only to be disappointed it now plays very differently than it used to.

So I'd tried to keep all the literal objective text unchanged, but to add gameplay variety by changing up the maps and dynamics (S2 is a FFA, S3 is "move your army to the northwest corner of the map", S6 is "survive until turns run out", etc). I don't have any mainline criteria condemning "defeat enemy leader" specifically, just that each campaign meet a certain level of gameplay variety / strategic complexity.

I've added a lot of new plot compared to the original as well, of course, but similarly I've tried to keep the core story and characters intact (that's a part of why you fight Rualsha in the final scenario instead of Selmar, for example).

That said, perhaps I'm being a bit too strict about pandering to nostalgia. While I'm not sure about the drastic redesigns you suggest for S5, I could certainly change S3 to "move Erlornas to the west edge of the map" or such, and rebalance the scenario accordingly.

Since this is a revised version, I assumed you want to make it different enough from the original one. But I understand. Although I have further feedbacks, I think we should really make a consistent explanation on what happens to undeads when their master died. In regular defeating the enemy leader scenarios, it's not considered so they're left on the field. But in epic battles, usually there's an event for killing all remaining recruits when the leader is killed. But in scenario 5, we see that the undead, which I assume are Selmar's, still remain although damaged. Maybe we could just use the original scenario, where we fight a Lich, and add a dialogue about how the lich is Selmar's underling or something like that who are fleeing from the orcs since Selmar is defeated?

[redbeard2]

Yeah, I believe the way Mech has it set up is that Erlornas is held in prison between AOI and the start of LoW. Then during LoW you free him.

That doesn't fit well with dialogue in scenarios 4 and 5 of the new LoW:

with the dialogue in Kalian Under Attack:

[message]
id=Galtrid
message= _ "Thanks for your help, friends. So who are you, and why have you come to Wesmere?"
[/message]
[message]
id=Kalenz
message= _ "My name is Kalenz, with me is my friend Landar and a squad of northern elves. We need to meet Lord Erlornas to ask for his help."
[/message]
[message]
id=Galtrid
message= _ "Lord Erlornas? I have served him since the orcs first landed on the continent. Recently they returned in even greater numbers, so my lord led the army north to finally destroy them, and entrusted me with guarding the citadel. We all await his return..."
[/message]
[message]
id=Landar
message= _ "It seems things are not going too well for him if the orcs have laid siege to Ka'lian!"
[/message]
[message]
id=Galtrid
message= _ "My lord's military talent is undeniable. Come, I will introduce you to the Council."
[/message]

and then in Clouds are Gathering:
story={CAPTION ( _ "Lomarfel")} + _ "Forgive my intrusion, my lords, but I have important news! Terrible news! Our army is defeated, and Lord Erlornas is captured!"
[/part]
[part]
background="portraits/logalmier.webp"
scale_background=no
story={CAPTION ( _ "Lord Logalmier")} + _ "How is that possible?"
[/part]
[part]
background="story/characters/lomarfel.webp"
scale_background=no
story={CAPTION ( _ "Lomarfel")} + _ "The orcs proved stronger than we thought. We failed to defeat them, Lord Erlornas ordered a retreat. On the way back, we were ambushed by saurians. They captured the lord; from their barbaric shouts I understood they were dragging him to Saurgrath..."
[/part]

In these it seems quite clear that the Elves, when Kalenz arrives, are entirely unaware of Erlornas being defeated and captured, and Logalmier has just come to bring the news. There is no way that a decade long separation of time can exist, either Legend of Wesmere starts in 9 YW, or Erlornas was captured in a different conflict after Incursion. Either way the timeline is not in keeping with the campaign dialogue. It's fairly clear that a lot of what the elves talk about (like Haldric's betrayal of the treaty, and the orcs going after the humans after failing to take Wesmere) happen DURING LoW, not before.

[lhybrideur]

It is heavily guarded! Erlornas had to go through the swamp to bypass most of Rualsha's orcs.

...but I get what you mean. Which difficulty did you play on? I'd dramatically increased Rualsha's army size compared to the original AOI, but if you played on Hard/Deadly and still found the scenario fairly easy I'm happy to turn the difficulty up further.

Well, I played in Normal. But I don't mean the scenario is too easy, it's just that for something as important as the gate, you would think Rualsha would have stationed more orcs to guard it. I understand that this is a short campaign, so you don't have enough time to gather veterans to be able to fight a much harder fight, I'm just trying to build my case for proposing to replace Rualsha. I personally think the current one is a good compromise.

What about adding more orcs with ai_special=guardian south on the south of the gate. Numerous enough that you don't want to attack from there but not close enough

Featuring Selmar directly a good idea, and is something I went back and forth on during development. My concern is: my biggest motivation for restoring AOI is for nostalgia - as a recently-removed mainline campaign, there've been a lot of people who're sad it's gone and want it back.

Because of that, I've tried very hard to keep the campaign similar to the original, adding and polishing while still keeping all the original characters and battles. I worry that adding Selmar to the final scenario would be too major a deviation from the original, defeating the purpose of re-adding the campaign.

I also think that showing orcs breaking free from their undead masters is a unique addition to the lore, and bridges the gap between TRoW (where orcs serve the Lich-Lords) and LoW (where orcs decide for themselves).

That said, I hadn't meant to imply that Rualsha *easily* defeated Selmar - it certainly might've been a huge epic battle. We see at least one little piece of that battle in S2, with the orcish infighting. Maybe it would help if I added more mentions or allusions to a major battle in the past? Orcish and undead corpses surrounding the portal? That kind of thing.

Regarding the lore, all this time I always assumed that the orcs in the north came via ships from the Old Continent gradually. I think this revision is the first mention of a portal, right? So I didn't consider about the importance of bridging how the orcs went from being the lackeys of Lich-Lords to free people. Now that you said it, I think the current setting is the better option. The infighting does allude to the rebellion, but you would think that if Selmar doesn't have problem sending the ones loyal to them out to hunt rebels, that means Selmar is confident about defeating Rualsha with their remaining forces. Although you could argue further that Selmar could be overconfident and leave themselves unguarded and that's why Rualsha could easily defeated them. I think you could just leave the current one as is.

What about adding a little something when Seimar is killed? Either Ernolas or Leara could say something about a disturbance in the magic flux of the Lich Lord but still feeling it (maybe weakened) (because the gate is still there). Or is it the reason with the Scenario 5's undead are weakened? If so, I did not make the link.

[Dalas120]

Regarding the lore, all this time I always assumed that the orcs in the north came via ships from the Old Continent gradually. I think this revision is the first mention of a portal, right? So I didn't consider about the importance of bridging how the orcs went from being the lackeys of Lich-Lords to free people. Now that you said it, I think the current setting is the better option. The infighting does allude to the rebellion, but you would think that if Selmar doesn't have problem sending the ones loyal to them out to hunt rebels, that means Selmar is confident about defeating Rualsha with their remaining forces. Although you could argue further that Selmar could be overconfident and leave themselves unguarded and that's why Rualsha could easily defeated them. I think you could just leave the current one as is.

I know that's the common assumption, but I don't think it really makes sense for a number of reasons. As I understand it, here's the timeline established by mainline:

- TRoW: the Lich Lords teleport orcs to the Green Isle via some sort of magical gate. This ability is never used again.

- TRoW: most of the Green Isle's ships fled to Southbay, and from Southbay to the Great Continent. There were not enough ships to evacuate the entire population in one trip, so Haldric does two.

- TRoW: Jevyan brings an orcish army to the Great Continent, with enough numbers to seriously challenge Haldric's forces. The orcs come via scrounged ships from around the Green Isle, and only make one trip.

- TRoW: The orcs lose the vast majority of their boats in battle with Haldric, and flee. At this time there were no orcs on the Great Continent.

- LoW: 19 years after TRoW, so many orcs reach the Great Continent that they nearly succeed at wiping out the elves in their own forests. The orcs even nearly capture the Lintanir Forest; far, far away from the coast.

- LoW: Even elves and humans allied are unable to defeat the orcs by force of arms; they have to force an orcish civil war instead.

- After LoW, orcs were not powerful enough to conquer meaningful chunks of elvish or human lands.

Putting all that together, I don't see how the orcs could've gone from having virtually no ships at the end of TRoW to suddenly fielding a large enough fleet to bring massive armies to the Great Continent in time for LoW - IRL renaissance shipbuilders took several years to build just one ship, and needed specialized equipment and facilities. Even if orcs did somehow manage to assemble a fleet of epic proportions, I definitely don't see why they would've suddenly stopped using that fleet to bring in new orcs after LoW.

Although I have further feedbacks, I think we should really make a consistent explanation on what happens to undeads when their master died. In regular defeating the enemy leader scenarios, it's not considered so they're left on the field. But in epic battles, usually there's an event for killing all remaining recruits when the leader is killed. But in scenario 5, we see that the undead, which I assume are Selmar's, still remain although damaged. Maybe we could just use the original scenario, where we fight a Lich, and add a dialogue about how the lich is Selmar's underling or something like that who are fleeing from the orcs since Selmar is defeated?

I agree that it would be nice to have a consistent explanation, but mainline handles undead in so many different ways that I feel it's not possible to standardize everything. Like you say, there's plenty of campaigns where undead die when their leader does. But in other places, like DiD, we see that undead can survive without their master, and can even operate with some basic degree of intelligence. In some campaigns, like EI, we even see both.

I think for an explanation to work across all mainline, we'd need to allow for undead to be created in different ways, and/or imbued with different quantities of magic. Some undead need continued sustenance from their master, while others can be built to operate indefinitely. Or maybe very old undead accrue power over time, while freshly raised undead collapse as soon as their master stops maintaining them.

In these it seems quite clear that the Elves, when Kalenz arrives, are entirely unaware of Erlornas being defeated and captured, and Logalmier has just come to bring the news. There is no way that a decade long separation of time can exist, either Legend of Wesmere starts in 9 YW, or Erlornas was captured in a different conflict after Incursion.

Huh, good catch, thanks. I'd had the impression Mech told me it was supposed to be AOI, but maybe I'm misremembering. Let me ask him about it.

What about adding more orcs with ai_special=guardian south on the south of the gate. Numerous enough that you don't want to attack from there but not close enough

Sure, I can do that. There's actually already more guards on Hard/Deadly, but I can boost them up even further and change them to be equally strong on all difficulties.

What about adding a little something when Seimar is killed? Either Ernolas or Leara could say something about a disturbance in the magic flux of the Lich Lord but still feeling it (maybe weakened) (because the gate is still there). Or is it the reason with the Scenario 5's undead are weakened? If so, I did not make the link.

Yeah, that's meant to be the reason. Erlornas says "Their lich master offers them no power. Where is the cruel will what first raised them from the ground?" The answer to that question is revealed in the next scenario - Selmar is dead.

[ZIM]

I know that's the common assumption, but I don't think it really makes sense for a number of reasons. As I understand it, here's the timeline established by mainline:

- TRoW: the Lich Lords teleport orcs to the Green Isle via some sort of magical gate. This ability is never used again.

- TRoW: most of the Green Isle's ships fled to Southbay, and from Southbay to the Great Continent. There were not enough ships to evacuate the entire population in one trip, so Haldric does two.

- TRoW: Jevyan brings an orcish army to the Great Continent, with enough numbers to seriously challenge Haldric's forces. The orcs come via scrounged ships from around the Green Isle, and only make one trip.

- TRoW: The orcs lose the vast majority of their boats in battle with Haldric, and flee. At this time there were no orcs on the Great Continent.

- LoW: 19 years after TRoW, so many orcs reach the Great Continent that they nearly succeed at wiping out the elves in their own forests. The orcs even nearly capture the Lintanir Forest; far, far away from the coast.

- LoW: Even elves and humans allied are unable to defeat the orcs by force of arms; they have to force an orcish civil war instead.

- After LoW, orcs were not powerful enough to conquer meaningful chunks of elvish or human lands.

Putting all that together, I don't see how the orcs could've gone from having virtually no ships at the end of TRoW to suddenly fielding a large enough fleet to bring massive armies to the Great Continent in time for LoW - IRL renaissance shipbuilders took several years to build just one ship, and needed specialized equipment and facilities. Even if orcs did somehow manage to assemble a fleet of epic proportions, I definitely don't see why they would've suddenly stopped using that fleet to bring in new orcs after LoW.

Well, imo that problem also applies with this setting, you would think there are multiple gates open at once, and in a long time for there can be such great host. I personally just assume the rest of the orcs that survives flee to the Northland and bides their time. I think it's said somewhere that orcs breed rapidly, right?

[Dalas120]

Well, imo that problem also applies with this setting, you would think there are multiple gates open at once, and in a long time for there can be such great host. I personally just assume the rest of the orcs that survives flee to the Northland and bides their time. I think it's said somewhere that orcs breed rapidly, right?

I don't think so - we saw in TRoW that it only took maybe 3 months for a single gate to completely demolish Stormvale, and maybe 6 months to overwhelm every city on the Green Isle except for Southbay.

It's been 5 years between WoF and AOI, so assuming Selmar's gate is similar to Jevyan's, that means a WHOLE LOT of orcs had the chance to come through. I'd tried to imply that in AOI with lines such as...

Linaeara: "Orcs have wholly taken these lands, swarming in great numbers over the plains and the hills. Traveling openly, you will surely find yourself hunted."
Elf: "We have warred with orcs before, madame mage."
Erlornas: "We have <i>skirmished</i> with orcs. I should not be so quick to pit our merry little band against all the vastness of the north."

As well as Rualsha: "If you think to stop me, elf, you come too late. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of orcs have already spread across the north.""

[Dalas120]

---- v1.0.7: ----
S03 'Valley of Trolls': Redesigned. Erlornas now needs only to move through the valley, not kill the troll leader. Map and balance adjusted.
S05 'A Detour through the Swamp': Redesigned. Erlornas now needs only to move through the swamp, not kill the undead leader. Map and balance adjusted.
S05 'A Detour through the Swamp': The map is now littered with orcish corpses. When approached, Linaera and Erlornas theorize that a major battle was recently fought here.
S06 'Showdown': Added more enemy guards at the south edge of the gate. Added orcish corpses throughout the map.
S06 'Showdown': Linaera now personally dispels the gate, and laments the loss of the Wesfolks' old knowledge.
AI: when unable to reach a retreat target, fleeing units will now be more cognizant of allies when deciding how to act.
AI: the AI will now pull troops from further away to help defend its leader.
AI: when ignoring a retreat to try and kill a low-hp enemy, enemy leaders are valued at 999 instead of their gold cost.