Antar, Son of Rheor [Development Thread]

[Adamant14]

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This is the development-thread for 'Antar, Son of Rheor', this is the right place to post:
- ideas
- story improvements
- balancing suggestions
for feedback please use the Feedback thread


The campaign is finally finished (though it is now shorter as once planed), only the last two scenarios may be still a little bit unbalanced and may need some improvements and fine tuning. The story lacks also at some points, any suggestions are always welcome.


I decided to maintain my Add-On only for the latest version of BfW.


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Videos:

Replays of my campaign played and uploaded by Niekdo

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[Adamant14]

If anybody here downloaded my campaign, constructive criticism and bare impressions are welcome.
Reviewing just a scenario will be as welcome as reviewing the whole campaign.

When posting feedback, please answer these questions:

(1) Number or Name of the scenario.

(2) What difficulty level have you played the scenario on?

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

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialogue and storyline? What can be added to make the story clearer / more interesting?

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

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

(7) Did you cheat? And why?

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

(9) Was there a bug in the scenario?

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


I'm interested how someone else than me plays the game,
so can anybody please upload a replay for me.



Thank's a lot

[Eugen]

Hello, I'm playing your campaign now and enjoying it very much. I especially like various special units such as village elder, apprentice mage etc. The variety of scenarios and scenario objectives is satisfying. All and all - perfect campaign for Saturday morning hangover

[Gwynnedrion]

can't get past the first scenario where he zombie rushes me. I'd suggest giving the player heavy infantry as a base unit.

[Adamant14]

It is possible without Heavy Infantrymen.
Use the terrain, use the right units, use the right time of day.
It is possible.
And don't wait till your enemy has no more gold,
because this will not happen in the first scenario.
There is also an important fact to win the first scenario,
but I don't want to spoil it here.

[Gwynnedrion]

Do you mean

Spoiler:

the two loyal lvl 0 units you find in the village?

[Adamant14]

Do you mean

Spoiler:

the two loyal lvl 0 units you find in the village?

No

If you want, I send you a PM.
Just ask me.

[MRDNRA]

can't get past the first scenario where he zombie rushes me. I'd suggest giving the player heavy infantry as a base unit.

I can see why you would want them, but cavalrymen have decent impact resist, although their low defense means they're vulnerable to chain suiciding. Have tried once so far, and I was lucky at one point, one of my cavalrymen got levelled up from chain suiciders, when one more hit would've killed him. He later got killed anyway, by chain suiciders!

I think what I'm going to try next is cavalry rushing straight through the zombies, if my strategy on this 2nd attempt doesn't pay off, that strategy being mainly cavalry spam (along with a few other units).

On a side note to the creator, I find it interesting that you have enabled the recruiting of sergeants. I am not aware of any other campaign which does this, and it could prove very handy to have the extra leadership later.

Edit: Had another try, cavalry spam doesn't really work. I think bowmen are in fact the answer, they don't do much melee damage, hence chain suiciding doesn't work so effectively on them. Going to try that now.

Edit 2: After a few further attempts, using various strategies, I can honestly say I cannot find a way that would involve winning without recklessly losing loads of units in an all out constant assault, which is in itself totally unfeasible anyway.

[Adamant14]

On a side note to the creator, I find it interesting that you have enabled the recruiting of sergeants. I am not aware of any other campaign which does this, and it could prove very handy to have the extra leadership later.

I think I should limit the number of sergeants to recruit in the next version

Edit: Had another try, cavalry spam doesn't really work. I think bowmen are in fact the answer, they don't do much melee damage, hence chain suiciding doesn't work so effectively on them. Going to try that now.

Edit 2: After a few further attempts, using various strategies, I can honestly say I cannot find a way that would involve winning without recklessly losing loads of units in an all out constant assault, which is in itself totally unfeasible anyway.

If you need a hint, send me a PM

Do you play EASY, NORMAL or HARD?

[taptap]

Well done! Love to see a fencer hero. (I hope I can recruit more fencers later.) Just played the first two scenarios on hard.

Scenario 1:

It was the first time I had an enemy AI with 2000 gold in scenario 1. And you want the walking corpses to chain suicide otherwise it will be too many too soon. It is however not easy to time good enough to level up enough units and still make your way to the enemy keep.

Scenario 2:

Some ugly surprises that can leave you in very bad shape. Very recall list sensitive - skeletons (well I can blame myself for levelling to pikemen in the previous scenario when it is clearly a fight against undead).

[Gwynnedrion]

Even with the hint the creator gave me I couldn't beat the scenario. Maybe it's me but I think the chain suiciding and the amount of enemies is too hard. The necromancer is overpowered imo. Someone post a replay if they can. Offcourse, this scenario has alot to do with sheer luck.

[taptap]

Even with the hint the creator gave me I couldn't beat the scenario. Maybe it's me but I think the chain suiciding and the amount of enemies is too hard. The necromancer is overpowered imo. Someone post a replay if they can. Offcourse, this scenario has alot to do with sheer luck.

It is not even a necromancer just a mere adept. And you have a huge income and many turns yourself, in fact, I believe it is a very forgiving scenario, you can stupidly lose half a dozen units without any serious impact on the result. Apropos impact, you know that Heavy Infantry is weak against the impact damage of walking corpses and has worse defence than spearmen on most terrain? Seriously the solution is:

Spoiler:

Walking corpses have no zone of control. So you can spend some time defending around the forward keep conveniently levelling units (swordsman, another lieutenant, a knight would be handy, don't make too many pikemen as I did), and some more units in the east (anchor your defense in villages and add another unit in the middle for the ZoC that you have to change in between, have spare units ready to exchange), but when you finally decide to go for the adept in the right ToD you can just ignore most of them - a one space wide opening is enough to walk through their lines - losses don't really matter as long as you protect your loyals and keep your east strong enough. You have plenty of time and nearly unlimited gold yourself so you can bank for quite a while just don't overrecruit early on. If you have a problem with your units dying make sure you don't unnecessarily attack on your turn they will come to you anyway, offer them enough spots to kill themselves during daytime.

I would however change the 2000 gold into a high base income, unlike the 2000 initial gold you can then scale between the difficulties, so that maybe on easy he is spamming some corpses less per turn.

On the loyals:

Spoiler:

It is a bit counterintuitive to level a peasant from L0 straight to a L2 "village elder" - if you know this the skeletons in scenario 2 would have been so much easier. Why not make him a ruffian as well and let the player choose - with likely the same result -> one going thug, one going footpad?

[Adamant14]

Even with the hint the creator gave me I couldn't beat the scenario. Maybe it's me but I think the chain suiciding and the amount of enemies is too hard.

Is the first scenario too hard?
Who else thinks so?

It is not even a necromancer just a mere adept. And you have a huge income and many turns yourself, in fact, I believe it is a very forgiving scenario, you can stupidly lose half a dozen units without any serious impact on the result.

Nevertheless, I recommend to avoid losing too many of your units. Every lost unit is one more for your enemy.

Apropos impact, you know that Heavy Infantry is weak against the impact damage of walking corpses and has worse defence than spearmen on most terrain?

That's right.

I would however change the 2000 gold into a high base income, unlike the 2000 initial gold you can then scale between the difficulties, so that maybe on easy he is spamming some corpses less per turn.

On EASY you have three extra-turns. I thought that is enough, but I think about your proposal.
Maybe not a bad idea.

On the loyals:

Spoiler:

It is a bit counterintuitive to level a peasant from L0 straight to a L2 "village elder" - if you know this the skeletons in scenario 2 would have been so much easier. Why not make him a ruffian as well and let the player choose - with likely the same result -> one going thug, one going footpad?

Agreed.
I will change this in the next version.

Offcourse, this scenario has alot to do with sheer luck.

No, I don't think so. Really I don't think so.
Maybe this scenario is too difficult, but it has not much to do with only luck.

Someone post a replay if they can.

For me too.
Someone please post a replay.
I am curious how someone else than me plays this campaign.

Thanks for playing,
and thanks for the report.

[taptap]

Scenario 3: Is fine with me. Level units, bash skeletons and some more walking corpses. There are better wolf sprites in Wesnoth wonder why you don't use them.

Scenario 4: Bugs me endlessly. Not that winning itself is too hard, but if you want to remove my recall list you can do so directly (go over the other pass and they died in the snow). But I have no idea where the goblins come from they are sheer endless in numbers and unlike mainline goblins have annoying ranged capabilities (picking of a full health dwarf from a hill happens easily, no wonder as the L1 has marksman) + Roc rider mobility + you have no choice of units and thus are stuck with a bunch of 4 MP guys (2 HI + all dwarves and you can't omit the slow movers by different recruitment in the previous scenario) that need 16 turns pure walking time (turn limit is 24). After I lose some units too much, I am unhappy about the result and want to restart the scenario anyway usually after the second night and 2/3 of the road. I know this is realistic and all such, but definitely not fun.

Looking in the code you seem to replace all killed goblins regardless of how many I am killing. Spawn a limited number per turn until they are complete ok, but you put a dozen in my way and instantly replace them when I fought my way through them? I mean their annoying axemen are faster than most of my army and even most of my levelled units (that - did I mention it - I did not choose myself) have no retaliation against them = the chop down even L3 pretty fast, but when I stop to kill them with some faster units you re-spawn them completely the next turn. Meh. (Maybe it works better when putting ranged units in the rear that the AI doesn't want to attack with axemen, but still.)

Scenario 1:

I don't think that adding or removing some turns changes the difficulty much. (It is easier to build for the rush to the castle if you have some more turns a little more money, etc. but it is not really necessary as well.) I don't think the difficulty scales enough for this scenario when regardless of difficulty the adept is recruiting a full castle of corpses from first to last turn, that is why you have complaints by those who play on easier levels.

[Adamant14]

Scenario 4: Bugs me endlessly. Not that winning itself is too hard, but if you want to remove my recall list you can do so directly (go over the other pass and they died in the snow). But I have no idea where the goblins come from they are sheer endless in numbers and unlike mainline goblins have annoying ranged capabilities (picking of a full health dwarf from a hill happens easily, no wonder as the L1 has marksman) + Roc rider mobility + you have no choice of units and thus are stuck with a bunch of 4 MP guys (2 HI + all dwarves and you can't omit the slow movers by different recruitment in the previous scenario) that need 16 turns pure walking time (turn limit is 24). After I lose some units too much, I am unhappy about the result and want to restart the scenario anyway usually after the second night and 2/3 of the road. I know this is realistic and all such, but definitely not fun.

Not fun?
The idea is avoiding useless combat.
Rush to the signpost fast as you can, the enemy is definitely not beatable, and that's indented.
With how many unit did you start. How many survived?
How many healers? (ideally you had two healers)
Witch level had the healers?

Looking in the code you seem to replace all killed goblins regardless of how many I am killing. Spawn a limited number per turn until they are complete ok, but you put a dozen in my way and instantly replace them when I fought my way through them?

I test-played this scenario many times without loosing much units.
The goblins are week on flat-land.
I suggest to avoid fighting them on hills.
Even with dwarves I avoid this.
Hurry your units direction signpost,
don't waste much time fighting.
And use the healers. (two healers are not bad, especially on level 3)