In Hearth of Durn-Turum - dwarvish SP/MP campaign!

[dwarftough]

I still don't know what it means for a troll to flee. Retreat for one turn, or leave the battlefield?

Retreat for one turn. It's stated in objectives: "A successful thunderer (and his advances) shot will cause the affected troll to flee in panic for 1 turn."

[white_haired_uncle]

Just to be clear, my point was not "how do I play this specific save?". It was "you CAN lose (or so close to it the end is the same) before you get a chance to play".

[dwarftough]

Just to be clear, my point was not "how do I play this specific save?". It was "you CAN lose (or so close to it the end is the same) before you get a chance to play".

I see but my point is that you can't be blocked by elves if you calculate your moves correctly to not get stuck. No even randomness here, you don't depend on whether you hit those rangers or not really

[white_haired_uncle]

I still don't know what it means for a troll to flee. Retreat for one turn, or leave the battlefield?

Retreat for one turn. It's stated in objectives: "A successful thunderer (and his advances) shot will cause the affected troll to flee in panic for 1 turn."

Interesting. I can see that being useful if when it retreated it decided to attack another opponent behind it. Or if it retreated immediately when hit, so you could push back the enemy line. But if it just means he retreats and regenerates for one turn while his buddies move up to the front line, that's kind of the opposite of what I want an enemy troll to do.

I see but my point is that you can't be blocked by elves if you calculate your moves correctly to not get stuck. No even randomness here, you don't depend on whether you hit those rangers or not really

Okay, say I'm not blocked in. How many turns does it take for the elves to get to the caravans, and how many does it take for me to get there and do something about it? If the AI's goal was to destroy the caravans (aka win), I don't see me being able to do much about it.

[dwarftough]

Interesting. I can see that being useful if when it retreated it decided to attack another opponent behind it. Or if it retreated immediately when hit, so you could push back the enemy line. But if it just means he retreats and regenerates for one turn while his buddies move up to the front line, that's kind of the opposite of what I want an enemy troll to do.

I see your point about trolls, especially small whelps, retreating and healing while you probably want to damage them in retaliation, but still I found scarying trolls quite useful. For example, you can scare away a big lvl 2 troll to get some time for regroupping/rotation. Or when you want it to get out of your way.

Okay, say I'm not blocked in. How many turns does it take for the elves to get to the caravans, and how many does it take for me to get there and do something about it? If the AI's goal was to destroy the caravans (aka win), I don't see me being able to do much about it.

In fact it's enough time for you to get there when you don't get blocked. Here in the screenshot you can see turn 4 with just one keep of recalling/recruiting, and it's far from lost if anything. Two elvish horses won't take down caravans, your dwarivsh ally pressures elves as well, your units are on the field. And it's even just one keep of units, you may have more coming from both the central keep and the sideway, so you're pretty okay, maybe you can lose a caravan but still you put a decent fight, so it's definitely not lost with any chance to fight.

Further it may process this way

It was just one keep of recalls, and even that isn't lost before you can do anything.

Maybe turn timings are tight, you have no tempo to lose, but that's the entire point and challenge of the scenario. What challenge would it be if caravans had just free passage to the cave?

[dwarftough]

imageeeeee.png (137.71 KiB) Viewed 3105 times

We're glad to announce that v1.1.0 patch has been released!
This is an extensive patch that took into account feedback we've received so far as well as some of our own thoughts about replays we saw. Changelog:

• S5 was made easier and hopefully no longer broken, enemies get less gold and all enemies disappear when you defeat their leader.
• Monsters in S5 no longer target villages
• Gold veins have more hp, that means more gold you can mine
• S6: more zones with illumination for easier defense against trolls
• S6: big boss has less income when the scenario switches to the final stage
• Map tweak in S3
• S3: enemy doesn't have extra spawns but has more income on higher difficulties, so the fight is more about village control
• Little text fix in the epilogue

[dwarftough]

I'm very happy to announce a release of a new v1.2.0 patch! Available on the 1.18 add-on server

Changelog:

• ported to 1.18
• full Russian translation
• S1: side chambers are more evident
• S3: the ally has more starting units. The enemy has more preflagged villages, so the player has to consider economy and discover the side chambers
• S4: caravans are spawned instead of recruited, no more extra caravans on the field (in the previous version the ally bought 3 caravans even when he needed to get only one more)
• S6: new map with more space
• S6: now the player has to defeat both enemy superiors to win
• dialogues fixes

[Otdoy]

Just finished this campaign. It is so well designed for a dwarf campaign! Dungeon crawling. Ressource collecting. Those classic enemies, trolls and elves. The scenarios were very well balanced, always a little bit tough, never impossible. The campaign is not too long and ends with a great climactic battle. The mega weapon is hilarious. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience! I had a lot of fun.

[dwarftough]

Just finished this campaign. It is so well designed for a dwarf campaign! Dungeon crawling. Ressource collecting. Those classic enemies, trolls and elves. The scenarios were very well balanced, always a little bit tough, never impossible. The campaign is not too long and ends with a great climactic battle. The mega weapon is hilarious. Thank you very much for this wonderful experience! I had a lot of fun.

Thank you for your kind words, it means a lot!
Two major ideas that Mechanical had when we started to make this campaign were to create a campaign about dwarves only, without outlaws (many doubted it's possible to design engaging gameplay with dwarves only) and to make it in the classical style (without too many fancy items or crazy abilities). I hope we did a good job. Even the mega weapon is made by the default means, if you think about it, still it bangs

[Otdoy]

Yes you really did succeed. I agree that each race has a "classical style" and that scenarios written along those lines are more immediately believable and engaging. It can be fun (and disturbing) when a race is forced to operate on difficult ground. But too much of this and then, like you say, a campaign creator might do weird stuff for it to be winnable. I was even afraid of this in your first scenario, when the dwarves had to face the elves in the woods. But it turned out to be a limited and controllable situation, with good reasoning for the situation, as viewed from both sides. Great writing! Thanks again.

[Konrad2]

Replays & Statistics

S1
Stats

Spoiler:

IHoD-Ruins of Durn-Turum replay 20240821-110950.gz

(32.29 KiB) Downloaded 69 times

S2
Stats

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IHoD-It Starts with Coal replay 20240821-121944.gz

(up to turn 20)

(61.54 KiB) Downloaded 67 times

IHoD-It Starts with Coal replay 20240828-103438.gz

(79.44 KiB) Downloaded 59 times

S3
Stats

Spoiler:

IHoD-Fateful Encounter replay 20240828-113449.gz

(54.17 KiB) Downloaded 63 times

S4
Stats

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IHoD-Reunion replay 20240828-120621.gz

(43.1 KiB) Downloaded 56 times

S5
Stats

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IHoD-Gold Rush replay 20240904-092441.gz

(44.72 KiB) Downloaded 51 times

S6
Up to turn 21
Stats

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IHoD-Barrel of a Gun replay 20240904-103625.gz

(99.27 KiB) Downloaded 57 times

Spoiler:

IHoD-Barrel of a Gun replay 20240911-173037.gz

(115.01 KiB) Downloaded 46 times

Stats campaign

Spoiler:

[Snarkus]

Thanks for creating a fun campaign!

Very well designed maps especially I thought - from the first mission, the empty Durn-Turum entrance is very atmospheric.

Just some feedback on a couple of the missions - I was playing on the middle difficulty.

Misson 2 with the trolls

Spoiler:

I saw another poster saying the thunderstick troll scare mechanic wasn't helpful - my experience was it actually *was* really useful, once you figured out how to use it and commit to it (hire the max 6 of them).

I.E. - bring them in groups of 2 or 3, and use them to scare away the L2 trolls in an area - help hold chokepoints without heavy losses and allow the rest of your troops to focus-fire down the weaker trolls, advance, take villages then take out the leaders.

The Gold Rush mission (5?)

Spoiler:

By this mission I had a lot of L3 veterans ... and seeing I was needing to fight dwarves to claim resources, hired quite a few of them to go on the attack. Which I did, and wiped out enemy leader before turn 20 ... and then mined out all the gold. I probably managed to mine 2/3 of the available max gold?

But even then, after capturing all villages and mining all gold - I was about 100 gold short of the target and only going up about +1 gold. Realised 20 turns was no use to me, would have to re-start - pretty anti-climactic.

Obviously the tactic was I should have been more parsimonious in my recruits and go for a more gradual victory but - maybe consider give more hint re that in the dialogue? And/or put some more gold reserves near the enemy dwarf camp, to make the "heavy attack to wipe them out" strategy I used viable?

Final mission

Spoiler:

Great set-up!

I do always inwardly groan though in a scenario where the AI Ally says they will "hold off the enemy" on a particular front, since they are so useless at defending vs superior numbers (won't just occupy defensive terrain, keeps attacking with heavily injured units rather than healing on villages etc).
So even with regular firing of the special weapon by me, they got overrun by the trolls after about 10 turns I think (I did send one guardsman).

I realise you need a real risk of them being overrun to give tension to the scenario, so maybe not an easy fix for this.

In hindsight I should have done what I normally do - ignore the AI ally's pledge to defend and set up several good defenders (guardsman + advances) to do majority of rotate & defend myself.

Anyway - just some player feedback. The intro did say it was a challenging campaign so I didn't mind some losses & retry after tweaking strategy. Overall this campaign taught me a bit more the importance of concentrating forces on most useful objective when limited in resources and facing tough enemies, rather than try to gradually expand on all fronts at once.
E.g. even the very first mission - on my 2nd go, did a lot better when I only tried to clear 1 of the side chambers initially with max effort, then do the other a bit later.

[dwarftough]

Thank you for your feedback! Glad you liked it.

I do always inwardly groan though in a scenario where the AI Ally says they will "hold off the enemy" on a particular front, since they are so useless at defending vs superior numbers (
I realise you need a real risk of them being overrun to give tension to the scenario, so maybe not an easy fix for this.

In hindsight I should have done what I normally do - ignore the AI ally's pledge to defend and set up several good defenders (guardsman + advances) to do majority of rotate & defend myself.

We are actually kinda proud about AI in mission 6 because it's generally better than what you can usually get. Most of the time we tested it happened to withstand by itself for a lot of turns. But sometimes it indeed was crashed, and honestly in our recent playthrough we seriously struggled in the final scenario.

Scenario 5 is a failed experiment. The idea looked very interesting and promising but the implementation didn't succeed to fully encompass that. It happens, we learnt something too.

We the authors played this campaign several months ago and looking with a fresh eye got a number of ideas for improvements, for all scenarios. So, when we finish our current works, Durn-Turum 2.0 will definitely be next