Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

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Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Content Feedback »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
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Fennlt
Posts: 3
Joined: August 11th, 2008, 7:22 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Fennlt »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Expert
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
10
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
very clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
fun, a good mini-showdown... however the last scenario was a letdown
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Fighting three incredibly powerful bosses... I had to rely on ridiculous luck to win
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5, would've been more fun if it wasn't so hard on expert
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Just... a little more money... or a little less hard
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
no
miekka
Posts: 62
Joined: December 30th, 2007, 2:48 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by miekka »

1. Easy
2. 10
3. easier to say than to do
4. Decent. The fact that Malin's sword actually becomes weaker is quite funny.
5. Dealing with all the crossbow orcs
6. 8. The last leader escaping is a relief.
7. I don't know...
8. No
blue
Posts: 26
Joined: July 8th, 2009, 11:43 am

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by blue »

1. Evoker (challenging) 1.6.4
2. 5
3. Crystal clear
4. Very nice
5. None
6. 8
7. Maybe just a bit more gold to the enemies
8. None
Benefuchs
Posts: 54
Joined: February 24th, 2009, 9:40 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Benefuchs »

(1) medium, 1.6
(2) 5
(3) standard: kill all enemies (didn't expect the last one to run, though)
(4) nice dialog "But what when he's dead already..."
(5) none really. Recalled/recruited for 3 turns, then rushed west, took the western orc's keep and sent some troops south to the chiefs, who were unguarded, while their armies were east of me.
(6) 8
(7) no idea
(8) no.
(9) N/A
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Maiklas3000
Posts: 532
Joined: June 23rd, 2010, 10:43 am

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Difficult (hard); 1.8.3; 437 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I find the dialog... disturbing. It's almost as if the necromancer were... hiding something.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The scenario naturally develops into a two front war and then even develops a bit of a third front as amphibious orcs make landings. It's a challenge to keep all the fronts in good shape.

Since I went with an all ghost force in the previous scenario, and since this scenario is the first with dark adept recruits, this was my first experience with a truly mixed undead force, using a little bit of everything. I started to catch onto walking corpse force management. That is, although you want to give them kills early on to create more walking corpses, later in the scenario you want to funnel kills to other units and to treat the walking corpses as even more disposable than they are at the start. Unfortunately, about when I stopped giving kills to the walking corpses, the scenario ended unexpectedly, when the last orc leader fled, leaving my forces XP starved.

I finished on turn 15 of 30. The scenario result was -1 shadow, +1 revenant... not highly successful in that respect. The loss of the shadow was a harsh penalty for a simple lesson. I went for an easy kill of a warrior with my high XP shadow, but left it exposed to an archer.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9. It's a vanilla scenario, but the novelty of a mixed undead army kept me tickled pink.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
The orc leader fleeing at the end is a nice touch to avoid a boring mop-up operation. However, I would put each keep within a warlord's MP of the board edge. The southwest one could go over in the mountains, so that he does not run an absurd distance in one go. Also, I would have him say something before running, because otherwise it's a bit disconcerting when playing on 2x animation acceleration... you see the second orc chieftan die, and in the next instant you see the blur of a running unit, causing some panic and confusion.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Lightly commented. Could maybe add something about the fleeing last leader.
Attachments
DID-Orc_War_replay.gz
(77.49 KiB) Downloaded 1645 times
Thrash
Posts: 223
Joined: June 25th, 2010, 1:54 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Thrash »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

1.8.3, Hard, 295 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

7

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Above average.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Wolves running around the ends of my line and over the river with seeming ease.

Still getting hang of using undead.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

7. The fact both chieftans came out and attacked combined with the third chieftan running away == no mop up.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

Nothing comes to mind.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

No.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?

Third orc leader running is uncommented.
Attachments
DID-Orc_War_replay.gz
(49.63 KiB) Downloaded 973 times
santosis
Posts: 74
Joined: October 11th, 2010, 12:04 am

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by santosis »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Challenging (medium) 1.8.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7 - First few rounds were tricky, then it was easy

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
I expected to kill all three leaders (and was wondering about time), killing only two was fortuitous.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Solid.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
I sent my assassin unit to the marsh and slaughtered many of the SW troops. I then slowly moved my main troop West, creating some zombies for meat shields.

I finished in round 22/30, with 108 gold. I'll carry 132 gold over to the next scenario.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8 - pretty fun and challenging.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
None.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Nope.
Doopliss
Posts: 23
Joined: February 9th, 2011, 8:29 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Doopliss »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Normal (challenging), 1.8.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6. If you struck as quickly as possible, the enemy numbers were manageable.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Okay.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting spread too thin.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6. It was basic, but my undead had developed enough to give me some new toys.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
None come to mind.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Nope.
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GagarinGambit
Posts: 51
Joined: February 2nd, 2011, 12:36 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by GagarinGambit »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Hard 1.8.4

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7, challenging to hard. The difficulty lies in finding a strategy that works and successfully defend in multiple fronts, but after you defeat the initial attack it's easy.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
They're clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
As usual, the dialogue is well written and the way each character speaks gives you some insight about his personality.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Surviving the initial attack. My first attempt was a failure because I underestimated the orcs and I was cautious in recruiting, the second went pretty well and I had only minor loses (although by checking the statistics I see that I got a little lucky as well). Anyway, I see that my strategy was slightly different from what is suggested in the walkthrough, so I'm attaching a replay, it's more descriptive.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9, that's another exceptional scenario.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Again, I believe it's near perfect already.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Other than my poor play at first, no.
Attachments
DID-Orc_War_replay.gz
(27.37 KiB) Downloaded 898 times
Linux. Space technology.
podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by podbelski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.9.6, Hard, 401gp, no reloads

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
probably 6. I had plenty of gold, and a clear plan on my 2nd attempt: rush to the bridge taking a strong stance, but waiting for the blue orcs to arrive and only then recruit skeletons to battle them in the keep. It all comes down to proper unit selection, sane tactics and a bit of luck to beat everyone easily.

finished on turn 20/30, lost 4 killed 40

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
picking up good mix of troops and choosing defense spots

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
probably 7, everything is good but kinda standard

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
a bit more gold to the orcs? though it might become really tough if you start with much less gold than me. The scenario is very good as is, I think giving more strength to the orcs can make it more challenging, but not more fun.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I sent too small force to the bridge first, and aimed to kill the northern orc with the rest of my army at the same time. This didn't work well, had rough clashes on both spots and then restarted
Attachments
DiD-Orc_War_replay.gz
(36.3 KiB) Downloaded 865 times
randomhero
Posts: 1
Joined: August 11th, 2011, 1:41 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by randomhero »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Hard, 1.8.0

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7, challenging but not too hard. had about 300 gold in the beginning.
tactics helped a lot to make it easier -->

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear, with a little surprise

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
normal, but last orc flees without dialog from him. could add a line

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
figure out how to deal with orcs from three sides. there were few healing opportunities for my non flying units, so i had to deal with lots of low lp units, espacially towards the end.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
quite fun, i like to distract the ai: 8

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
not really.
First I recruited a castle of ghost and level2 and shadows, in order to assasinate the middle leader. I moved them to the swamp, which proved to be very useful. Then I recriuted a mixed force of skeletons, a few adepts, ghoul a ghost and some bats. I had two bats distracting the northwest orcs forces by stealing villages. That slowd him down a lot, and also weakens his reinforcements. The core group including the heroes went south in order to hold the beach against the southeast attack. While I used my ghosts in the swamps to draw single units,(wolfes preferably) into the swamp, where they would find a sudden death, the core group could stand against the initial attack at the core without great losses. For the next rounds the battle was well balanced. I kept being slightly on top, but could move forward only very slow in oderer to preserve troops. The middle orc recruits like crazy, the others were pretty weak. After 12-14 rounds I couldfollow my initial plan and attack the middle leader with the ghost forces, and the remaining rest got the southeast leader, who ran off his castle.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
ayearhasgone
Posts: 56
Joined: October 28th, 2010, 5:36 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by ayearhasgone »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Medium, 1.9

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
The usual

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Deciding on a general strategy was tough-- which orc to go after first? Take them all at once or try to divide and conquer? I decided to make a run for the north orc before the southern forces hit my rear. Sadly that wasn't the case. I ended up slugging it out in the middle of the board with all forces converging on me at once. I managed to take care of north and mop up most of the southern forces, but was left with a few hardened veterans and little else. I headed to the north keep, recruited another disposable land army, and pushed south.

As usual, my ghost force was mostly intact, but my land army was decimated despite all efforts to level a skellie. I managed to level a dark sorceress, so I decided to move on without repeating the scenario. After reading the walkthrough it appears that I chose the hard way to go about things.

This is really the only "standard" scenario in the campaign; the rest are unusual tactical situations. While this is refreshing, my only real criticism about this campaign is it's hard to get a feel for playing undead in general, due to the overwhelming number of "standard" scenarios.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
None

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
n/a
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taptap
Posts: 980
Joined: October 6th, 2011, 5:42 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by taptap »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

1.9.9, Summoner (Difficult)

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

7

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Well, the third warlord running was a little surprise.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

Malin Keshar, the campaign hero, is portrayed somehow sympathetic, but that makes him look plain dumb. I would prefer a truly evil but intelligent hero for an undead campaign.
Let us face it: He is on a genocidal campaign against the orcs, but it isn't really reflected in the dialogs. He is still talking "you are bad, you killed my friends etc.", this is getting old rapidly after the second scenario = massacre in the goblin village.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Breaking through the southern forces in time. Delaying northern units from arriving without losing too much too fast.

350 gold, plan: I had only one shadow after the last scenario, but 2 wraiths and a spectre, my strategy was to rapidly migrate south fighting, then engage other forces. I was scared of fire heavy AI recruits. I recruited adepts, skeletons, bats in the first keep - which had a great effect on the opponents recruits (manipulating AI recruits by your recruiting sequence can be a big help in campaigns), the SE warlord recruited 3 trolls, 1 grunt, 1 wolf and only 1 crossbowmen in his keep. My main ghost recalls came on turn 3, but then the AI spent most of its gold already.

I decided to go directly south with the main force with a little delaying action (a ghost and a bat in the north). Especially the bat was quite efficient in delaying crossbowmen from arriving just by making them walk back and forth at the northern edge of the map. Another bat was playing cat and mouse with a pillager and a crossbowmen in the central swamp. The ghost in the north got rekilled, but the AI decided to retreat 2 wounded goblin knights for healing (so I engaged the northern forces only when the main fighting was done.) While this worked fine, I didn't manage to break through in time, was reduced to very little villages in between and had plenty of negative gold per turn by the time I killed the SE leader (turn 12), because I had to temporarily concede the whole area north of the river to the northern AI. The rest went smooth, SW dead by turn 18.

4 losses, 33 kills, 7 advancements + 2 more adepts w/ high xp.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

7

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

No.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

Many crashes mostly at the end of the opponents turn. There is something with 1.9.9 that causes it to stop quite often on Mac, oddly this gives you the feeling that you are save-reloading, because after a crash-reload even if you don't get better rolls, you optimize positioning.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
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Ninjuri
Posts: 167
Joined: April 28th, 2012, 2:59 am
Location: California

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 5 - Orc War

Post by Ninjuri »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Normal 1.10.2
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
100%
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Pretty good.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Basically fighting a 4 front war. Ghouls and skeles holding the east and west bridges to step the flow of units, my ghosts duking it out with assassins in the large center swamp, and a mix of units trampling the north-west field toward the lone orc leader up there.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
The last orc escaping was a cheap cop-out for me, because i already had his ZOC blocked. Him and the other cheif were both just about to simultaneously die that turn, now i feel like charging both of their bases simultaneously was a waste.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No
Fate is against me.
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