Legend of the Invincibles

[Naron]

I have read the above proposals and I must say that I do not like some of them.
If demigods skills are reduced then they no longer differ too much from regular units.
It is assumed that the demigods are extremely rare beings with powers also extremely rare (and enormous). I read this in their description.
So I reject the idea that they would become too mortal.
But what I say is strictly my opinion. Which does not really matter.

[Arrogancy]

By the way, does anyone else get an error where upon AMLA level up, you get a duplicate unit appear on the map? And more often than not the duplicate shows up in place of an already existing unit?

[Ugmpag]

I enjoy the wide open freedom to choose in this campaign and find it really gives it a "re-playability" factor. The rpg like freedom to choose my own weapons and resistances makes this stand out for me. My only concern is too much tweaking might force me down a particular path more suited to another players game style. I see redeem as just one of the many play options available to me and am glad I can pick to use it or not. Once I have completed a mainstream campaign a few times I move on, but I keep coming back to this one because it is never the same.

I've only collected a complete reapers set once. Gave it to a blood bat, fed him a strength potion and had a deadly little long range assassin . Still haven't had a murderlust weapon drop. The high power items seem pretty rare and are best suited for leveling up units in my current play style. I did have fun gearing up an invincible Efraim and blasting through the scenarios on my first run through (even cheated a little) and just dropped all the -1 movement point items. Now I have the chance to go back and use the slower items and concentrate on trying the multitude of advancement paths of the other units.

Thanks again for all the work you have put into this. I am still amazed that even a half dozen chapters in I still run in to new and original scenarios. I was skeptical that anyone could keep a campaign fresh across a hundred scenarios or more, but you have pulled it off!

Post 2
Arrogancy, Are you playing on the 11.1 development release? If so, the duplicate unit bug happens quite frequently when playing this campaign. I just dropped back to the 11.0 release and the campaign works great.

[TheZ]

Still haven't had a murderlust weapon drop.

there is only one murderlust weapon that drops, and that is a staff that by the time it drops is fairly useless. the main benefit of the murder lust weapons is that you craft them

[Arrogancy]

Yes, I'm playing on 1.11. Well that explains a lot.

Just got Particle Storm. Doesn't seem worth it. Arcane damage? Don't enemies get highly resistant to that in chapter 8? It's not as if the demigods are exactly having a hard time killing things anyway. It seems like it would be a lot more viable to just pick an easier attack type and stack the resistance reduction effects for it, then load up on defensive abilities.

I think I'm going to stop playing. This campaign really isn't very much fun any more; the appealing thing about Wesnoth is that it asks you to make interesting tactical decisions. In Legend of Invincibles, there are no tactical decisions, just a strategic one: how to build my demigod. If I build them right, tactics aren't necessary.

Dugi, it seems to me that you are often responding to criticism by saying why you don't want to change the system - because of the story, or the existent system, or whatever. I think this response may not be the best way to make the game better. In my experience a successful game comes about when you try to build around the fun, rather than try to make the fun happen around what you've built.

[Dugi]

@RainerT
So you suggest to remove lightning from them? Okay, I might do that.
About the resistances, I don't have so much experience with the gameplay/items strategy, just specify which units should get these extra resistances, and I'll do it if it won't be too much.
The stuff with redeem is explained bellow.

@arobinson
I understand that you are fed up with the redeem balance issue. I just wonder why you haven't told it earlier.
A small attempt to change your mind: If your suggestion to return the balance is valid and has a potential to work, it should make it relatively balanced again. Less retaliation kills imply less experience taken, that implies worse abilities of survival and that forces your leaders to take cover and use normal attacks to gain experience and defeat the enemies.
The redeem stuff is explained bellow.

Note that I don't think that nerfing the ability to advance is going to fix the issue

A few advancements can increase their resistances by 10 percent or so. The thing that was making them unwantedly strong was probably a synergy of resistances, heal on hit, offensive abilities and huge amounts of hitpoints. Nerfing exp should make offensive and defensive abilities a disjunction and huge amounts of hitpoints would no longer be.
After 30 advancements, you have 200 hitpoints and you need 800 exp to advance. Getting them would need 14700 exp.
If each advancement added 10 percent to maximum exp instead of 20 points, after 30 advancements you would need 3500 experience to advance. Getting them would need 32000 exp.
This means that after a dozen of advancements, the leaders would need several times more exp to advance, making it more difficult to gain more experience. Although obtaining 30 advancements is possible, obtaining 50 advancements requires 34500 exp, while the exponential way would require 229000 exp (3000 kills of level 10 enemies!). This would let the player take only about 40 advancements. Increasing it by 20 percent per level as with usual units would limit the leaders at about 25 advancements. Maybe it should be 20 percent per level as the absolutely regular AMLA instead...?
Here is a table:

Code: Select all

number	20		+10 percent		+20 percent	
0	200		200		200	
1	220	420	220	420	240	440
2	240	660	242	662	288	728
3	260	920	266	928	345	1073
4	280	1200	292	1220	414	1487
5	300	1500	321	1541	496	1983
6	320	1820	353	1894	595	2578
7	340	2160	388	2282	714	3292
8	360	2520	426	2708	856	4148
9	380	2900	468	3176	1027	5175
10	400	3300	514	3690	1232	6407
11	420	3720	565	4255	1478	7885
12	440	4160	621	4876	1773	9658
13	460	4620	683	5559	2127	11785
14	480	5100	751	6310	2552	14337
15	500	5600	826	7136	3062	17399
16	520	6120	908	8044	3674	21073
17	540	6660	998	9042	4408	25481
18	560	7220	1097	10139	5289	30770
19	580	7800	1206	11345	6346	37116
20	600	8400	1326	12671	7615	44731
21	620	9020	1458	14129	9138	53869
22	640	9660	1603	15732	10965	64834
23	660	10320	1763	17495	13158	77992
24	680	11000	1939	19434	15789	93781
25	700	11700	2132	21566	18946	112727
26	720	12420	2345	23911	22735	135462
27	740	13160	2579	26490	27282	162744
28	760	13920	2836	29326	32738	195482
29	780	14700	3119	32445	39285	234767
30	800	15500	3430	35875	47142	281909
31	820	16320	3773	39648	56570	338479
32	840	17160	4150	43798	67884	406363
33	860	18020	4565	48363	81460	487823
34	880	18900	5021	53384	97752	585575
35	900	19800	5523	58907	117302	702877
36	920	20720	6075	64982	140762	843639
37	940	21660	6682	71664	168914	1012553
38	960	22620	7350	79014	202696	1215249
39	980	23600	8085	87099	243235	1458484
40	1000	24600	8893	95992	291882	1750366
41	1020	25620	9782	105774	350258	2100624
42	1040	26660	10760	116534	420309	2520933
43	1060	27720	11836	128370	504370	3025303
44	1080	28800	13019	141389	605244	3630547
45	1100	29900	14320	155709	726292	4356839
46	1120	31020	15752	171461	871550	5228389
47	1140	32160	17327	188788	1045860	6274249
48	1160	33320	19059	207847	1255032	7529281
49	1180	34500	20964	228811	1506038	9035319
50	1200	35700	23060	251871	1807245	10842564

I can assure you that this would nerf it.

And the idea about redeem chance per attack would cause an issue, let's say you try to slow 10 enemies with blizzard, but you get unlucky and you kill one enemy with redeem. But I'll still think about it, although I am supporting my idea with percentages.

Why nobody replied about the possibility of cooldown time for redeem?

By the way, does anyone else get an error where upon AMLA level up, you get a duplicate unit appear on the map? And more often than not the duplicate shows up in place of an already existing unit?

I tried to fix it on the latest version of LotI, and when I tried it it seemed to work. The problem was that wesnoth code was changed and it wasn't even mentioned in the changelog. Anyway, as it was already told, it work okay on wesnoth 1.10 and everything before and also on 1.11.0 (the features of 1.11.1 are not used in LotI anyway, because they are not in 1.10).

Gave it to a blood bat, fed him a strength potion and had a deadly little long range assassin.

Wait, where did you get a blood bat recruit?

Just got Particle Storm. Doesn't seem worth it. Arcane damage? Don't enemies get highly resistant to that in chapter 8?

It was not intended to be obtained in chapter 8 (the expectations have gone terribly wrong), and you don't know what you will face in chapter 9...

I think I'm going to stop playing. This campaign really isn't very much fun any more; the appealing thing about Wesnoth is that it asks you to make interesting tactical decisions. In Legend of Invincibles, there are no tactical decisions, just a strategic one: how to build my demigod. If I build them right, tactics aren't necessary.

Please remember that the first part of the game, the one that exists for longer, is not like that because it is somehow balanced. The leader-only in chapters 7-8 is a result of a miscalculation and I it will be fixed. If it was intended to be like it is at the moment, the gameplay would be much different.

Dugi, it seems to me that you are often responding to criticism by saying why you don't want to change the system - because of the story, or the existent system, or whatever.

There was an original conception, and most suggestions are like a step back. I am trying to find a way to return it to the original conception (that was not criticised itself, only its failure), and I believe that replacing the linear increase by an exponential increase might fix it, but I want do discuss it first (actually, discuss all possibilities, though it might not seem like that). I am not rejecting the other ideas, but I would prefer to try to make the original conception working.

Diagram of the problem:
Many advancements -> both good attack and defence, a lot of hitpoints -> killing everything in retaliation -> many advancements
Many advancements -> healing a lot from advancing -> killing everything in retaliation
Killing everything in retaliation -> no reason to do anything else than redeem -> getting particle storm in scenarios where it is useless yet
I really think that nerfing the many advancements part of the circle would be the ideal solution.

[Arrogancy]

Right, so this is sort of what I meant. It seems to me there's sort of a fallacy in the idea of an "original concept that no one criticized" and trying to get back to that. People aren't likely to criticize a concept, because there's usually nothing *to* criticize - concepts are too amorphous. Usually you only discover that there's a problem with a concept once you start trying to implement it. Like, say, socialism. In theory, the communal ownership of property is a great thing - and hey, in some cases, like Wesnoth itself (open source), it even works! But in many other cases, it fails miserably. Or take direct democracy, like that practiced in ancient Greece, where every citizen votes directly on every matter of law. It obviously cannot be made to work outside of a small city. But if you were to try to make it work, and it didn't, it would be the wrong idea to try to get back to the "original concept".

It seems to me that a better way to go about thinking about this is to focus on the goals, not the concept. Like, the goal of democracy is self-rule; you can get there in a large country by electing representatives. The goal of Legend of the Invincibles seems to be to inject character-building (choosing abilities at level up, choosing gear) into Wesnoth's system. In essence, you want to be able to preserve the interesting tactical decisions inherent to Wesnoth while adding interesting strategic decisions such as what abilities to pick and what gear to pick. That's your goal - correct me if I'm wrong. And there's the tell a story goal, too, but let's be honest, we're all here for the gameplay.

It's not clear how redeem serves this goal. I mean, really, what is the purpose of this mechanic, anyway? If your only goal is the thematic idea that Efraim and Lethalia aren't eating souls anymore, just keep the old soul eater mechanic but say it's a redemption mechanic instead.

Actually, I want to go back to that original question for a second: what IS the purpose of redeem? Like, from a behind-the-curtain standpoint, why swap out soul eater for redeem?

[Ugmpag]

I think I picked up the blood bat recruits somewhere in the middle of chapter four. They became available as recruits around Invasion or Bloodbath. There have been a few updates since then, so I don't know if they are still available.

[TheZ]

I think I'm going to stop playing. This campaign really isn't very much fun any more; the appealing thing about Wesnoth is that it asks you to make interesting tactical decisions. In Legend of Invincibles, there are no tactical decisions, just a strategic one: how to build my demigod. If I build them right, tactics aren't necessary.

Dugi, it seems to me that you are often responding to criticism by saying why you don't want to change the system - because of the story, or the existent system, or whatever. I think this response may not be the best way to make the game better. In my experience a successful game comes about when you try to build around the fun, rather than try to make the fun happen around what you've built.

arrogancy, i don't know if you have read though the past 69 pages of the topic(i have) but the first 7 chapters went though the same that that chapter 8 is going though right now. as does everything out there it goes though several phases of building, development, beta test, refinement, release, fine tuning, finished product, upkeep. chapter 1-6 are in the upkeep phase were they are done and not much if anything will be done to them. Chpater 7 & 8 are in the fine tuning phase were the people who have used the product voice in there ideas to make said product better. Granted this isn't really a "product" in the normal terms as it is free but the concept still works.

if you didn't find the later chapters fun, state why

Actually, I want to go back to that original question for a second: what IS the purpose of redeem? Like, from a behind-the-curtain standpoint, why swap out soul eater for redeem?

from my stand point redeem is the new soul eater. They have the same purpose, that is allowing alternative advancement paths to be taken and allowing the player to design the unit to there liking. as As they are no longer undead "eating" the souls of the people they conquered makes no sense from a story point of view but Dugi wanted to keep the alternative advancement path idea so he implemented redeem as a substitute. That being said you have a point in that it is fundamentally different than soul eater as you HAVE to attack it to get the count up were as with soul eater you can kill in retaliation and in attacking.

Maybe a solution would be to allow them to be actual attacks both ranged and melee were you can use them as retaliation. Since the enemy units have such a high level jump unless you spend a LOT of time on an time unbound map you stand little to no chance to redeem anything very well. Something like a 1-2 attack for the melee were you try and "touch" the unit to redeem them, after all you basically absorb them?

Dugi, putting a cool down on redeem doesn't seem practical unless you drastically reduce the increase in # of redeems needed.

[Dugi]

@Arrogancy
You have guessed the goal of modifications of wesnoth gameplay in Legend of the Invincibles correctly.

But communism and democracy are not good examples for this. Communism was never achieved in any place except small communities, and they never even attempted to reach it, because it was so strikingly absurd and nobody could imagine how to reach that utopia. All that was ever reached was socialism and that worked somehow, but it did not prove as a good alternative to capitalism, although it had its advantages (like immunity to economical crisis). Democracy works to a certain extent as well (just people don't understand most of the things enough to decide about it (politicians neither, but they have some experts at least), so the direct democracy is impossible).

Late Legend of the Invincibles' gameplay conception was obviously not reached. My blind faith in a simple mathematical model was proven wrong because of an unexpected synergy of factors. I was reported this problem only recently. It is far from being proven to be unsolvable, like a perfect democracy or communism (outside small communities). That is why I want to try to repair it before completely redoing it.
IMO, the problem with having to redeem constantly can be fixed with cooldowns (that might be combined with a decrease of redeems needed). And this problem appeared as a consequence of the problem with overly strong leaders, that is causing and caused by the amount of advancements gained.

If that matters, the original point of redeem was to make a change from soul eater. If that matters, redeem was added in version 2.2.0, and that was also the version where soul eater was added as a replacement for feeding that, obviously, was causing the leaders to be extremely overpowered, reaching like 500 max hp (and there were better armours). Soul eater was a success. Redeem seemed to be okay, I just redeemed weak units if I found some and used normal attack against strong enemies. The problem arrived when many decided to increase redeem into an incredible power in areas with unlimited time and weak enemy spawns, that let them redeem anything. I was expecting this possibility, so I made it add no experience, to force the players to choose between getting the redeem power of experience (I want to add cooldown to it to improve this). But this failed when retaliation kills became a source of exp too strong and the reason to kill with offensive attacks disappeared (because the leaders became way too strong).

I think I picked up the blood bat recruits somewhere in the middle of chapter four. They became available as recruits around Invasion or Bloodbath. There have been a few updates since then, so I don't know if they are still available.

I cannot remember adding them there. I will have to add them some AMLA in the future.

@TheZ
Your reply to Arrogancy's post was perfect.

Maybe a solution would be to allow them to be actual attacks both ranged and melee were you can use them as retaliation.

The problem with this is that area of effect attacks in retaliation would kill plenty of enemies very easily. It would really badly limit your control over the battlefield, and would destroy the enemies much more easily, insanely increasing the gap between normal units and leaders.
Btw, an attack with 1-2 damage would be never used for retaliation, only if I had made all other attacks of that range attack-only.

Dugi, putting a cool down on redeem doesn't seem practical unless you drastically reduce the increase in # of redeems needed.

Yes, I will probably half it. I don't want the players to lag behind enemy levels with it, nor to have to redeem all the time when possible to avoid lagging behind enemy levels. But I don't want the players to obtain particle storm too quickly neither (also because it is useless in chapter 8, deceiving people).

[gooby]

I was finding scenario "Any Means Necessary" essentially impossible (on Normal) until I considered a tactic I have otherwise found counterproductive and desperate: spamming cavalry.

Mass recruited Lancers; it's turn 4/21 and both the generals are dead.

Prospects looking very good now.

(Incidentally, I opted out of necromancy, as the advantages were lame.)

[gooby]

Now there's virtually no infantry, just mages, and they are getting massacred here.

It's like something out of the Thirty Years' War; this is absolute cold-blooded murder.

Hahahaha oh man

[gooby]

In "Diplomacy" some of the ghosts can't escape the void they are created in.

Is this intentional?

[Dugi]

I was finding scenario "Any Means Necessary" essentially impossible (on Normal) until I considered a tactic I have otherwise found counterproductive and desperate: spamming cavalry.

Some scenarios are meant to be a bit puzzle-like. This Gordian Knot was intentional (many scenarios have such tricks).

In "Diplomacy" some of the ghosts can't escape the void they are created in.

That is possible. I did not care much about it because they will be quite a cannon fodder later anyway (you'll see in scenario 5). Scenario Diplomacy was meant to be some kind of display of their huge power, so I cared mostly about the rule of cool there. Does it particularly bug you?

I have added a cooldown to redeem, halved the number of redeems needed, and nerfed the leaders' experience to an exponential. Also fixed the issues mentioned above. You may want to try out whether I have succeeded to fix that huge balance issue.

[gooby]

Thanks but I can't know whether it's fixed because I've played through that by now.

Anyway, Lethalia's "dark aura" (from an item) poisons allies in "Into the Shadows".