Siege of Elensefar Too Hard

[mcv]

No "possibly" about it. Isle of the dead is, until you get the hang of it, probably a harder scenario than Elensefar.

I had to replay Isle of the Dead only once before I succeeded, and Siege of Elensefar about 10 times. I think I had to replay The Elves Besieged almost as much as Siege of Elensefar. The number of times I need to retry before I succeed is my best indicator of the difficulty of a scenario. The opposition in Isle of the Dead is tough, but if you keep your units together and keep an eye on how far the nemy units can move, it's not really all that hard. The biggest problem is that you have to fight with fresh, inexperienced units of a different type than what you're used to. I lost my loyal outlaw too.

Losing some units is unavoidable, but fortunately they're all cheap.

[AThousandYoung]

No "possibly" about it. Isle of the dead is, until you get the hang of it, probably a harder scenario than Elensefar.

I had to replay Isle of the Dead only once before I succeeded, and Siege of Elensefar about 10 times. I think I had to replay The Elves Besieged almost as much as Siege of Elensefar. The number of times I need to retry before I succeed is my best indicator of the difficulty of a scenario. The opposition in Isle of the Dead is tough, but if you keep your units together and keep an eye on how far the nemy units can move, it's not really all that hard. The biggest problem is that you have to fight with fresh, inexperienced units of a different type than what you're used to. I lost my loyal outlaw too.

Losing some units is unavoidable, but fortunately they're all cheap.

I used all suicide mermaids to assassinate the Liches. It wasn't that hard. The hardest part was having the enemy land units attack my fort. If I had to do it again I would recruit defensive units later on. My later mermaids never reached the target Liches while Konrad was in series danger.

[mcv]

I used all suicide mermaids to assassinate the Liches. It wasn't that hard. The hardest part was having the enemy land units attack my fort. If I had to do it again I would recruit defensive units later on. My later mermaids never reached the target Liches while Konrad was in series danger.

Interesting approach. I used mostly land units, and used mermen to grab coastal villages, distract the first lich a bit, and help on the assault on the second lich.

[silent]

Land units to kill north west lich and his units. white mage and footpad should easily slay units if combined with a few footpads and thugs

Loyal storm trident wielding merman and loyal "should be leveled to a priestess" iniate should go and wipe out all of the south west lich's troops (add another merman for sacrifice or bring in the hunter who is really great if a netcaster.

While I think of it, the is absolutely no reason to go via the peninsula. free loyal white mage, free loyal footpad and in the dwarven doors scenario, you can get a free loyal bandit. It seems the same as the rise of wesnoth choosing between swamp and midlands, no reason to choose midlands when there's a free loyal white mage in the swamp. There should be a reason why you'd choose the latter, but there is never a good reason.

[roman_sharp]

Thanks for the tread, guys, that brought me to this forum, helped to understand that I'm not the only one having painful difficulties with this scenario and gave some tips.

The first tries to win were a nightmare, I thought about stopping to play Wesnoth at all . Then I started campaign from scratch, changed my recruiting ways and some tactics.

So, my solution:
- Prepare to the next battles from the start
- recruit Mages and raise them to White Mages, they are very useful as second line of healers after the fighters, as undead busters, as "field hospitals" (village can heal/cure one and one White Mage can heal six around him). The second line of healers neutralizes power of orcish poison blades .
- raise Elvish fighters to heroes, they are pretty good against both melee and ranged attacks (especially in village/forts/forests).
- raise Horsemen to Knights - charge attacks are risky, often better use sword to save HP to withstand the next enemy attack (and then promote them to Paladins, because you'll meet many undead).
- hire one or two Elvish Scouts to capture villages early and quickly and raise money.

You can't do much before "Isle of Anduin" - you have to run to save your life.
Don't forget to get the Storm trident in Bay of Pearls.
Don't finish Mulf Malal's Peninsula early. Wait in line and beat every possible bit of experience out of the undead and Dark Adepts. You'll make less money, true - but you'll get the experienced army you can't buy other way.

Close to Elensfar then...

Main group of my army consisted of 4 Knights, 3 White Mages, 2 Elvish Heroes (thanks to Mulf Malal) .
I recalled Merman with the trident, he doesn't play big role, but is useful.
I recalled 2 Elvish Scouts and sent them to flanks (eastern bridge and western Island) to make enemy feel pressure.

The main group stood before the central moat to meet the attackers. First one assassin come and got killed, then came three (swordsman, crossbowman and assassin) and got killed too.

Then enemy decided to wait and formed a group in the city, close to bridge to western island where one my scout stood.

And on this turn my army crossed the moat, formed the defense line on the main island, triggered thieves revolt. To wreak havoc I sent thieves in suicide attack on the Orcish leader. Here I caught some luck: thieves managed to hurt the leader badly (but two perished and one more level 1 later) and my knight killed the leader and got promoted to Paladin.

This was the perfect moment, I think, because dawn came, and in the daytime Orcs and Undead are weak and humans are strong, so then they were a toast.


I didn't find the Elvish Shamans useful: they can't cure when are level 1, they don't have much HP and their magic isn't as powerful as human is (even level 1 Mage can deliver 7-3 arcane), so they aren't that much useful against undead or even orcs.

[pauxlo]

So, my solution:
- Prepare to the next battles from the start
- recruit Mages and raise them to White Mages, they are very useful as second line of healers after the fighters, as undead busters, as "field hospitals" (village can heal/cure one and one White Mage can heal six around him). The second line of healers neutralizes power of orcish poison blades .
[...]
I didn't find the Elvish Shamans useful: they can't cure when are level 1, they don't have much HP and their magic isn't as powerful as human is (even level 1 Mage can deliver 7-3 arcane), so they aren't that much useful against undead or even orcs.

Shamans (and their level-ups) have "slow" - this is useful, if you use it right. (And they have 70% defense in forest, like elven archers.) The Siege of Elensefar is doable with only shamans and some druids/sorceresses. And they need quite less XP than mages to level up, so you can level some shamans instead of one mage. So, for healing you can use druids, for undead busting sorceresses quite similar to white mages.

[roman_sharp]

Shamans (and their level-ups) have "slow" - this is useful, if you use it right. (And they have 70% defense in forest, like elven archers.) The Siege of Elensefar is doable with only shamans and some druids/sorceresses. And they need quite less XP than mages to level up, so you can level some shamans instead of one mage. So, for healing you can use druids, for undead busting sorceresses quite similar to white mages.

I tried this couple of times, but didn't find the results valuable.
- shaman's and even druid's attack with "slow" seems too weak for my playing style, good attack weighs more for me than their Elvish abilities
- it's harder for me to get them promoted because weak attack means that "killing blow" they might deliver is weak too
- also AFAIR they have less initial HP, and the campaign battles often happen far from forests

Maybe, like the contemporary Russian proverb says, I "just don't know how to cook them"

[Caphriel]

Cube them, bread them with a spiced breading mixture, fry them until the edges are just turning brown, then simmer them in a white wine sauce until tender. Serve with a light salad.

[HomerJ]

Couple of points here...

I tried this couple of times, but didn't find the results valuable.
- shaman's and even druid's attack with "slow" seems too weak for my playing style, good attack weighs more for me than their Elvish abilities

Of course I don't know your playing style but keep in mind that the slow attack isn't for dealing damage. Even if it would deal 0 damage it would still be useful because you can take out enemy tanks for one turn. Having damage halved makes the Orcish Warrior less effective then a grunt but the real good news is that retaliation damage is affected. With a single shaman (or two) and a knight, every melee based enemy is doomed if the shaman will be properly protected.
Of course you are facing trouble when slow does not hit at all, but then again the shaman is only 15g.

- it's harder for me to get them promoted because weak attack means that "killing blow" they might deliver is weak too

True, but hey, thats a lesson you have to learn anyway, if the enemy can be killed by the shaman, try it, but have another unit at your service that will 100% kill it. The lvl 2s however are very reliable killers for their magical attacks (yes, the druid too).

- also AFAIR they have less initial HP, and the campaign battles often happen far from forests

This might be true, but remember that they are supporting units anyway, drastically speaking, if you have them attacked you did something wrong on zoc and protection.


Greetz
HomerJ

[reapy]

This might be a moot topic since it started out old. But anyway I recently found some time to really play wesnoth (had visited and goofed around with it on and off for a long while ). So I have played a lot of strat games before and generally understand how things flow.

This is definitely the first road block in the game, but I was glad it was there. Many of the other scenarios seemed to be trivial after defeating the first 'wave' of bad guys coming at you.

I played through the south guard campaign on easy since this seemed the best place to start to understand the game. Even then I didn't quite understand what was going on with terrain defense though I knew higher was better

So off I was on the heir to the throne. In terms of the trident, I saw it, and wasn't really sure wtf was going on but figured it was an item of some sort, so just moved a unit over top of it to see what was going on before needing to restart the scenario.

For a lot of maps at first I had to restart scenarios once I figured out what was going on. In these cases I had made big mistakes like for the underground ones (just finished those up) I didn't know it was 'stupid' to deploy horseman, had to learn through trial.

This siege was pretty tough and the first one I realized I had to reload a bunch. I had been nursing my 'main' units trying to develop level 3's etc and I would reload a turn if I put a soft unit in a dumb place by not understanding unit match-ups properly, I figured I'd be in deep do do if I lost my vet units as I continued on.

One thing that I though in terms of the design of the siege was that it was just so hard I was going to have to lose a few major units along the way and live with it. I realized that Daefldor (sp) wasn't kidding in the last scenario that we should visit the undead and level up some units to the south along the road instead of bipassing.

So I figured that after the siege we'd be given a few softy levels to get some level 1 guys back up to level 2/3 so we could plow on. I guess I have feared that if I lose my strong units I won't be able to clear some campaigns.

One thing I have seen though is that as I progress and take out level 2 and level 3 units it becomes much easier to get a level 1 guy to level 2. And level 2 guys seem to be able to handle most things thrown at them, doing enough damage to earn their own XP.

So I guess what I'm saying is that, the cblock that is this map is good, gives a taste of how the game can get your brain working, and forces you to actually learn to take into consideration everything from terrain position and time of day. Also as I learned having crap units moving into the next few scenarios it wasn't too hard refill the ranks with lost units.

One thing Im sadface about though is that I don't really see in the game so far (but again I haven't even touch skermish type maps) a need for money management. If I have a nice recall list I can put out a pretty killer force right away at the start of most maps and I can just go negative in gold for a long while before my units start controling the map to climb back out.

Well anyway, just wanted to say I found this map to be pretty great, a lot of fun, and a good piece in the campaign, enough that when I was playing it, I knew I'd see lots of talk about it on the forums, and sure enough, here it is.

[Jozrael]

Glad to have you reapy! You've got a number of insights, some of which will stick with you and some of which I think you'll improve on as you play more.

I agree that campaign gold management can be a bit finicky - this may be a sign that you've improved past the difficulty level you are playing! It used to be much worse before they reworked it. It may get another iteration some day in the future.

[Maiklas3000]

First of all, balancing campaign games is especially difficult, as players who level their troops quickly will do much better than those who do not.

Second, although this is a hard battle if you don't think, this isn't that hard a battle with a good strategy. To put it concisely, use a conservative blitzkrieg with your main force supported by backstabbing thieves to overwhelm the city troops. The undead are not a problem, but you should either advance quickly and prevent them from crossing in force or else make a bow-shape trap for them to enter the city after you've dispatched the city troops.

Third, isle of the damned is at least sometimes more difficult, so the thesis that Siege of Elsenfar is a nasty surprise is unwarranted.

Bottom line, Siege of Elensar is just right.

[Zerovirus]

... Strangely, I suck at wesnoth and yet the first time I ever played I beat Siege of Elensefar without any trouble on Normal.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

I never found this scenario to be any trouble at all either... I never even knew it was supposed to be a more difficult level.

[Pseudointellectual]

Just so this isn't a chorus of, "This scenario was easy!!" I've gotten into playing Battle for Wesnoth several times. This is maybe my third or fourth time. Each time I was thwarted by this scenario and eventually lost interest. This time I am trying like heck to beat it, but I'm still unable to. I empathize with the OP. I'm wondering if maybe I should check out one of the other campaigns and come back to this one when I've had some more practice.