Under the Burning Suns

[quartex]

Thanks for all the comments xant. The feedback is appreciated. Once I finish the campaign I plan on going back and rebalancing scenarios. Looks like the lava cave in scenario 5 is a bit too difficult. I'll go back and make it easier once I have time. The Dwarf ghost isn't supposed to disappear until after you bury his body, that might be a bug. The wand is supposed to be only midly useful, that is sort of an secret bonus, and I didn't want it to massively change the difficulty of the game. Giving a big fighter poison would be too powerful.

There is a similar secret when you ally with the trolls if you look hard enough.

I intentionally didn't add the elvish sorceresses, becuase I didn't want the player to get cold magic, and becuase they don't fit with the theme of the high elves. The elvish sorceress was added later, it is really more of a high elf unit than a wood elf. A unit with a cold attack might make life easier, maybe I will add them once I go back and rebalance things. I'm not sure.

I realize that the two paths in scenario 5 aren't perfectly balanced, I was concetrating more on creating interesting encounters rather than making the two paths exactly the same.

Hope you enjoy scenarios 7 and 8 as well.

[quartex]

A nice idea about those sorcerers!

Thanks. No offense to fmunoz, but I actually liked the old dark sorcerer artwork better than the 0.9.3 artwork. It seemed more appropriate for the traid of dark mages. I think they are pretty cool villans.

[ben]

...for whenever you get to rebalancing. I'm playing on Normal.

First of all, great campaign! I've really been enjoying it. And I think everything is pretty well balanced through scene 4. (Though I wish the opening dialog for 4 didn't suggest 'punching through the orcs rather than defeating them all' which is terrible advice.)

Scene 5 works well. (I allied with the trolls.) But I come out with lots of gold. Lots and lots and lots of gold. 1800, or thereabouts. Is that in the neighborhood of what you intended...?

I really like the first half of scene 7. But I wish the flooding was turn-ased, rather than event-based. My initial strategy was to send my troll ally up ahead to clear out each cavern, and follow with the others as fast as I could. Intuitively, this seemed like a good paln--he was max level and could pretty much handle everything; but of course, with event-based flooding it's a terrible idea. So I ended up bunching everyone up at entrances, which is a bit to much gaming of the game for my taste.

The second half of 7 was pretty easy, what with nearly infinite gold and all. That pretty thoroughly takes the sting out of the increasing prices of units. Also, the messenger doesn't seem to make much of an effort to escape the valley. He'll move in that direction, but by and large he'd rather attack my troops than run. Great idea for the scene though--if he were a bit harder to catch it'd be a really interesting stategic puzzle.

Scenario 8 was similarly underpowered, given that I still had plenty of gold. I was pretty tired and made some blunders when I played it, and I still rolled through it without much trouble. It seemed like each of the villians would have one wave of high level guys, but almost no reinforcements beyond that. The final council in particular sent out a few skeletons, but once I'd beaten them there was practically no one interested in defending the boats. (oh, and capturing the ships with mermen seemed to work just fine. bug? or are they lying when they say they can't?)

Anyhow, like I said, it's a really, really great campaign. Thanks!

-Ben

[ben]

Sorry--by normal above, I meant medium difficulty, not easy.

-Ben

[quartex]

Sorry--by normal above, I meant medium difficulty, not easy.

-Ben

In my campaign I assume you mean "Challenging"? (as in the middle difficulty)

I agree with your critique that by scenario 8 the gold gets out of hand, and the later scenarios are a bit too easy. The balance is decent until the end of Scenario 5, where you often have way too much gold, and thus can recruit almost infinite numbes of units. Right now I worry more about telling a story and making fun encounters, than making sure that everything is balanced perfectly. But it does look like I should go back and make the latter parts of scenario 8 a bit harder. The merfolk aren't supposed to be able to capture the boats, I think I screwed that up.

In scenario 7, the reason why I made the flooding spready based on events was that otherwise you might get to encounters where the enemie were already underwater. I wanted to make sure that as you entered each cavern, you wouldn't find it already half flooded. And if I set all the tunnels to flood at the start of the scenario, that's what could happen.

In my campaign there are a lot of special encounters where enemies ambush you, that's why sending out one scout to go ahead is often a bad idea. I encourage the player to move in well protected groups.

Thanks for the feedback, when I go back and polish past scenarios, I will try to fix some of the problems you noted.

[Ave]

Shouldn't terrains like 'swamp water', 'shallow water' etc have an underscore?

[Ave]

These images are missing (or the reference is bad)
skeletonrider-moving.png
undead-skeletonrider-attack1.png
undead-skeletonrider-attack2.png

The struggle scenario made corrupted savegames.
Hmm, this could be an engine bug?
the offending part is a variable named: saw_cairn/totem

[unsung]

I think i'll play thiis but do you always kill the loyalists in this campaign?

[scott]

Unless they kill you first

[torangan]

You don't fight the loyalists usually, you've got differing enemies through the campaign.

[quartex]

These images are missing (or the reference is bad)
skeletonrider-moving.png
undead-skeletonrider-attack1.png
undead-skeletonrider-attack2.png

The struggle scenario made corrupted savegames.
Hmm, this could be an engine bug?
the offending part is a variable named: saw_cairn/totem

Ave, thanks for the reminders. I fixed the bad links for the undead horseman. And I changed the variable name for the saw_cairn/totem variable. I suspect that the '/' character was causing problems.

Yes, the id's for shallow_water and swamp_water probably should have underscores. Help me out, where did you notice that the underscores were lacking?

I'll post an update with these fixes and more soon.

[quartex]

I think i'll play thiis but do you always kill the loyalists in this campaign?

I think you have the wrong campaign.

If you read the background text and dialogue you'll find that there aren't many loyalists in this campaign. It's set in a very different world. I suggest you try it out. For best results I suggest you wait until I post an update, version 0.5.1, in the next few days.

[quartex]

0.5.1 has just been uploaded to the campaign server.

The biggest change with this update in the introduction of some very fine portraits, drawn by Pickslide. If you start the campaign over from the beginning, you will find that all the main characters have portraits.

I realize that at this late in the game many players do not want to start back at the beginning, so I have manually added the portraits to all the conversations in scenario 8: Blood is Thicker than Water. So if you reload that scenario, you will also be able to view the wonderful portraits.

Scenario 8 has also been made slightly more challenging, especially since the Iron Council can now actually recruit units and the merfolk cannot capture the ships. If you start over at scenario 1 you will also find that the random traits macro for the units you discover will actually work this time. I am hard at work on the final scenario, and it is very exciting.

Enjoy!

P.S. Observant players will notice that there is now a slight discrepancy between the portrait of Nym who has blonde hair and the older unit image of a red-headed elf. This will be addressed as soon as I find someone who wants to create new custom unit artwork for my heroes.

0.5.1 changelog:

scenario 1:
-Updated small mudcrawlers attack type

scenario 8:
-Increased income of rebel elves, improved recruit list slightly
-Increased income of humans, improved recruit list slightly
-Increased income of dark sorcerers, improved recruit list slightly
-Change elven villages to human villages
-Manually added portraits to conversations for scenario 8
-Fixed bug: Merfolk can no longer capture ships
-Fixed bug: Dark sorcerers can now move and recruit units

-Added portraits for Kaleh, Garak, Nym, Zhul, Elyssa, Grog and Rogrimir
-Fixed bug: Fixed random traits macro so it actually works
-Fixed bug: Fixed broken Undead Horseman image links

[Ave]

units/human_captain.cfg terrain types like 'swamp water' 'shallow water' need an underscore instead of space.

[quartex]

units/human_captain.cfg terrain types like 'swamp water' 'shallow water' need an underscore instead of space.

Thanks. I'll fix that.