Hunters of the East

Post by **Inky** » February 29th, 2016, 7:37 am

Played a few more scenarios (campaign version 1.1.9b for scenarios 3-6, 1.1.9d for scenarios 7 and 9, hard difficulty):

Comments on scenarios 3-9

EDIT:
On second thought extra gold is a huge help in The Ambush, having 1-2 more wolves can mean capturing the caravans a turn earlier. I guess what I meant is that having the right units against the guards is more helpful than having more gold.

My recall list: mostly a ton of leveled footpads and elvish sorceresses. I kept trying to level thugs but they kept dying on me, I didn't manage to level a single one to level 3 yet. I like the footpads more anyway since this campaign is full of forest/mountains and a 5 movement thug isn't going anywhere.

Added the replays (to see my exact recall list you can save the game from the replay, then load the saved game, then hit recall)

skeptical_troll · February 29th, 2016, 12:28 pm

Hi Inky, thanks for the comments. Quick answers:

Scenario 3: I recently decreased the gold saurians get when you arrive there. Probably I've been too merciful and will change it. I'm not sure if I'd like to leave only one caravan, although 2 or 3 could be enough (even from the previous scenario). I already uses the payment excuse to make them faster, so I'll think of something different. I am glad to hear that this scenario is not boring as the big map was concerning me a bit.

Scenario 4: Ok, there is definitely too little gold on hard, will fix it. In my spirit, it is good to force the players to recall veterans (I don't like campaigns where you can indefinitely enlarge your recall list with strong units) , but probably here it is a bit extreme.

Scenario 5: good job with the loyals! I will clarify the objectives better. Concerning the trees, I will change the dialogue of units climbing them, like saying "There is a lever, I'll try to pull it" or something that justifies the fact that you need two units at the same time. I understand these kind of Karoshi-style puzzle are a bit out of the place in Wesnoth, but I thought they could help immersion a bit.

Scenario 6: based on what both you and Taptap said, I think I'll change the objectives to 'find the master with Nirydia or Swethorvast' and trigger victory when you move on of the two units there. This will be more in the wesnoth style and won't require painfully moving nirydia beyond the rune.

Scenario 7: yes, I expect the player to have leveled shamans from the previous scenario. I think it is also fair to think that the player will try levelling thugs and footpads, as the story tells quite clearly that the main enemies are undeads.

About the carryover: I can only say that I am really crap at managing gold among story-only scenario. I've been creating problems continuously since I switched to the 40% system. Basically I forgot that there are two story-only scenarios between 7 and 9!

Now however I fixed it. You should have had 130+55=185 of gold.

Scenario 9: In my idea thieves are mainly a distraction for the guards (somehow similar to your tactics), and I did not want to provide the player with easy footpads as I said before. I like your suggestion of changing the escort units based on the difficulty level though, I think I will do it. I am not sure if I agree that starting gold does not help you, it certainly makes the retreat easier and also allows to spam more units to keep the few guards busy. There is always an high risk of loosing precious units though.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » February 29th, 2016, 8:27 pm

@inky: So jealous about your shadow lord. Such a beauty. I missed him. Interested in your recall list, seems to be very different from mine. (EDIT: Yes, very different. My recall list is much more melee, but only 2 outlaws.)

Scenario 3: The caravans saw plenty of action in my playthrough protecting key units when one of my columns got all poisoned in some village free area. (Savegame is in this thread.) Even though they can't fight, they were far from useless.
Scenario 7: It is save to assume everyone levels a few shamans, thugs, footpads before, scenario 6 is impossible to finish without getting several level 2 shamans imo.
Scenario 9: Capturing the caravans a turn earlier is huge. You require 2 less turns and are less exposed to pushing opponents (and all that damn poison) - it is just not possible without distraction. Contrary to inky I believe gold helps a lot, 150, 170, 190 play very differently (having spare units to capture the caravan is big) even though you need enough muscle to wrest the caravans from their guards. Still curious how people played this with low gold before the time of day changes (thanks for them, now it is a proper night raid).

Ruffians / thugs / footpads: I like ruffians. They are really cheap and intelligent ones level up from a single L2 kill. However, thugs and footpads still die pretty fast at L1. As recruited units they are very cheap as well, but at 20 gold a piece when recalled, they are really expensive units, I am not sure they are worth it compared to 3 ruffians or 4 mud crawlers? Levelling them to L1 is easy enough, but is recalling them as L1 ever worth it unless they have already high xp?

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » February 29th, 2016, 9:55 pm

taptap wrote:Ruffians / thugs / footpads: I like ruffians. They are really cheap and intelligent ones level up from a single L2 kill. However, thugs and footpads still die pretty fast at L1. As recruited units they are very cheap as well, but at 20 gold a piece when recalled, they are really expensive units, I am not sure they are worth it compared to 3 ruffians or 4 mud crawlers? Levelling them to L1 is easy enough, but is recalling them as L1 ever worth it unless they have already high xp?

I agree with you, I think even in my playthroughs I hardly recall thugs and footpads as L1. However, in scenario 3 it is likely that you level up at least 4-5 of them. You may get 2 high level units from ruffians in scenario 6 (although this may not be the case the first time you play it) and in scenario 7, depending a bit on luck, some footpads and thugs are recalled for free (one possibility is recalling more here). They will be in danger, but it is also a chance to level them up. It is also not uncommon that a ruffian get levelled twice in a single scenario, making worth the recall. However, I want to keep the number of these units under control, otherwise this campaign would be too similar to Liberty or NR. Having 3-4 outlaws/fugitives for scenario 9 should be sufficient, I reckon. Withing some limit of reasonable freedom, I'd like the players to use poachers (archers in general), wolves and mud crawlers when convenient (I agree that fire guardians are not so useful for their price though, except for their speed in scenario 7, where they can quickly cover critical points). That's why the recruit list looks kind of funny. If you go further on, you will get additional motivation to rely on archers.

Post by **Inky** » February 29th, 2016, 10:41 pm

(note: I added my replays to my earlier post)

Unit variety: I think you may also want to limit the number of elvish shaman recruits then - I don't know how much you get to use the elves in the later scenarios, but elvish sylphs are the most powerful units in the game (not to mention amazing against undead) so this may turn into a shyde / sylph fleet campaign. (I think I had around 6 elvish sorceresses (+ Nirydia as an enchantress) and 4 druids after Besieged.)

EDIT:
Scenario 11 (Finding Tocletus)

Spoiler:

Scenario 14 (Legend of Swethorvast)

I'm pretty sure this scenario isn't possible - the undead reach the northwest peasant leader around turn 10, which is about how many turns it would take if you sent your fastest units straight there. Even if you made it there with some units they wouldn't survive against the undead horde alone (note that turn 10 is Dusk).

Sometimes the peasant leader will move off the recruiting space - it might be better if they just stayed put, otherwise it's hard to cover them.

And with the shadow / wraith recruits you'd have to surround all 6 hexes around a peasant leader to protect from a lucky leaderkill. And you could potentially have the situation that one of the hexes is taken by an allied level 0, so you can't put your own unit there. I think the easiest solution is have the leaders be level 1 or 2 so they won't die to a single attack.

Bugs:
-The two caravans from ambush are on my recall list.
-In scenario 13 when you pick the armors you can have one unit pick up two armors for 100% resistance

(though I didn't do this)

It would also be nice to have an overlay for the armored units so you can find them in the recall list easily (especially if you have multiple units of the same type).

Typos (Scenarios 4-11):

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 1st, 2016, 9:29 am

Inky wrote:Scenario 14 (Legend of Swethorvast)

I'm pretty sure this scenario isn't possible

Damn, I am having really an hard time balancing this one (which is the scenario I am the least happy of at the moment)! In my playthroughs it swapped continuously between obvious and impossible every time I changed it.

Making the peasant leader more resistant, as you suggest, could be a good way of giving you more time and make their survival less luck-dependent. I am not sure what could be a suitable L1 or L2, maybe I'll just increase their HP.
Do you think I should not let them share the keep? I thought it was nice to leave the player the possibility of recruiting there (e.g. with the wolf).

Inky wrote:-The two caravans from ambush are on my recall list

Oh well, this is fine, it was a tough battle to capture them, now you deserve two nice empty caravans in your recalls

Inky wrote: -In scenario 13 when you pick the armors you can have one unit pick up two armors for 100% resistance (though I didn't do this)

didn't even think about it! Will fix it. I was thinking of how to mark the armored units with an image or something, but I'm not sure of how to do it. I remember in some mainline campaign there are some small overlays to keep track of mermans with tridents etc, I may just copy what is done there.

I have a language question, if you don't mind:

Spoiler:

RainerT · Post by **RainerT** » March 1st, 2016, 9:39 am

Hi,

I really enjoyed the campaign so far, however I run into a bug in scenario 7. At the beginning of turn 4 Den should apear, but it doesn't happen. The dialog starts and Swethorvasts and Nirydias dialogs are shown, but not Dens. I played 1.1.8. Since I noticed 1.1.9b is current I upgraded without success even after restarting Wesnoth and the scenario. I play the 1.12.5 packages on Debian Linux.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 1st, 2016, 9:44 am

Hi RainerT

RainerT wrote: At the beginning of turn 4 Den should apear, but it doesn't happen.

Now, that is weird, the only thing I can think of is that it wasn't properly stored at the end of scenario 3 (the forest). Did something strange happened at the end of scenario 3 (in particular, did Den and his pals get back to their hut, as they are supposed to)?

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 1st, 2016, 11:41 am

"reding" - I instantly thought of "red mages", i.e. turning your rookie mage to a red mage.

RainerT · Post by **RainerT** » March 1st, 2016, 1:04 pm

skeptical_troll wrote:Now, that is weird, the only thing I can think of is that it wasn't properly stored at the end of scenario 3 (the forest). Did something strange happened at the end of scenario 3 (in particular, did Den and his pals get back to their hut, as they are supposed to)?

No. He left with his mates when I reached the island. I add an save at the end of turn 3. Perhaps it helps to analyze the bug.

taptap · Post by **taptap** » March 1st, 2016, 2:11 pm

Scenario 11: Archery, faerie fire and some clubs did the job. Not sure what to make out of Kylp (silver?). I don't actually need healers or spell casters (if the elves stay with me til the end). Initially, when facing majority of both opponents it was somewhat tricky, they later engaged each other more. Started with 232 gold, go into next one with 201 gold. (Finished with another master bowman and a pikeman, but still low on footpad-types.) The way the campaign works, I have now 3 L3 Master Bowman, but 0 of the corresponding L1 and L2, so I probably won't recall them much before the end.

Next scenario: If I recall the mud ruler, I can recruit mud, but I get a weird message for recalls (currently no recalls at the position). It is just out of curiosity, I intend to recruit a few, and not bother again with my L1 mud, but the message was just weird.

tribes55 · Post by **tribes55** » March 1st, 2016, 4:43 pm

Hello!

First of all, I'd like to say that I found the basis of your campaign interesting, however, here is my take on the introduction scenario:

The scenario is far too large for an introduction into a story line. For me, large maps are fine, but they're generally only enjoyable when you're invested into the campaign and it's story. That is not what happens here, instead, it is the first scenario, and I have no investment into the campaign.

I'm not sure if people would disagree or agree with me, but here are a few suggestions that I have:

-An event at some point within the first scenario that speeds the scenario up. (Ex. Main character gets a horse)
-The scenario is done in stages. Maybe the map could start out small, and gradually expand. I'm not sure how to do this, though.
-There is more dialogue-- why is this Lich so dedicated to kill a few peasants? This might be elaborated upon later on, but I would suggest introducing, or foreshadowing it earlier on, if that is the case.
-The character is given a speed attribute

Granted, a lot of these would impact the current state of balance in the scenario. That's just what I think would make the campaign and scenario more captivating.

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 1st, 2016, 6:36 pm

@RainerT: looking at your save, the variable where Den is supposed to be stored is not there. I am afraid that something wrong happened at the end of scenario 3, or something unexpected cleared the variable. Do you have a save or a replay from scenario 3 (you can send it to me in a PM if you like)? It is normal that he left after you reach the island (he's going back where he first appeared).

@Taptap: I tried recalling the mud ruler and recruiting/recalling some mud in that scenario, and I did not see that message. Were you prevented to recalls your mud veterans? I don't know what is causing that problem

@tribes55: thanks for the feedback, I guess you are making a good point. I think I will follow the second of your suggestions, which will not alter too much the gameplay and don't require rebalancing. There is actually no need to show anything at the beginning but the southern part of the map. I may also add some dialogue to help setting the mood, maybe when the undeads reach the village for the first time.

Post by **Inky** » March 1st, 2016, 9:28 pm

reding: oops, my mistake, I assumed it was a typo because I've never seen the word before. It's probably fine as is then because it's very easy to guess the meaning from context. As for something pretentious using more familiar words, hmmm, maybe something like "I have insufficient time for discourse at the moment"

Peasant leaders sharing keep in scenario 14: The problem is you need to shield the allied leaders with your own units and it's hard if you don't know where the leader will move on their turn. A possible solution - move the peasants to last in the turn order, that way if the leader moves you have the chance to shield them with your units before the undead take their turn.

Drake flare leader: he's missing the leadership ability at level 2 (but gets it when he levels up).

skeptical_troll · Post by **skeptical_troll** » March 1st, 2016, 11:00 pm

Inky wrote: "I have insufficient time for discourse at the moment"

I like it, I think I'm gonna use this one, I don't wanna be pretentious myself!

Inky wrote:move the peasants to last in the turn order

Good idea, I just uploaded a new version where, together with other improvements discussed above, the peasant leaders have high HP and come after the undeads in turn. I also gave them the ultimate weapon, but that's highly experimental so I am not sure if I will keep it! I still need to test the scenario now, I think it will still require a big rush to save the peasants.

Inky wrote:Drake flare leader: he's missing the leadership ability at level 2

fixed, thanks!

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