[SP Scenario] Drakes Rescue

[skeptical_troll]

Hi everybody, motivated by my own suggestion and in the style of what Sire is doing , I tried to do a stand-alone scenario myself. I chose drakes mainly because I rarely had the chance to use them in mainline.

In this scenario you can have also a limited number of saurian, not as recruit but from an event. You fight mainly against loyalists and poachers+advancements.
You need to rescue three drakes chiefs captured by Wesnoth and to escort them back to the mountains.

It is complete but still a first version, likely to be changed according to the feedback I get (in particular I am planning changes in the second phase, where you need to bring the prisoners back).

It's calibrated on medium, I usually beat it in about 40 turns without save-load (I consider myself an average player) but with really heavy losses. I suspect 'difficult' might be too difficult for the moment.
Happy to hear what you think!

[Inky]

Scenario version 1.0.0

Hey, this was a really fun scenario! (Drakes are my favorite race - they look awesome and they're deadly!)

The one issue I have with it is that after you've rescued the drakes, chances are you've already defeated most of the enemies on the map so there isn't really anything left to do anymore besides auto-route the three drakes to the sign and hit end turn for around 11 turns.

The reinforcements on turn 25 were no threat at all. What I think would be more interesting would be maybe several waves of much stronger loyalists arriving right after you free the drakes (I would do this based on when the player frees the drakes and not on a fixed turn, otherwise players who free the drakes earlier would have a much easier time). Then it would turn into a defense scenario where you'd have to hold the south long enough for the three drake chiefs to reach the northeast mountains.

Caged drakes images: it looks kind of weird that the drakes are sticking out of their cages everywhere. The Dead Water campaign has a large cage image - maybe that would work better? Also, if you just place the image of the unit there instead of the actual unit, you won't have the HP bars sticking out.

Replay: Faced with all the bowmen/poachers/trappers, my strategy was basically mass clashers. Lack of healing was the main challenge as there was really only one usable village (the one southwest of your keep) so I tried to manage experience to heal by leveling up. Running away at night and attacking at day for two days was enough to demolish most of the enemy forces. I sent the saurians + glider straight north where they freed the caged drakes on turn 15 (second watch) and killed the human leader on turn 16 (somewhat risky). After that the scenario was a very easy walk to the signpost. Finished turn 29/43.

DrRe-Drake_Rescue_replay.gz

wesnoth 1.12.5 / hard

(30.78 KiB) Downloaded 533 times

Some minor typos:

Spoiler:

line 12: "During the reign of Queen Ashviere, a number of emissaries were sent to the four corners of the continent... -> Asheviere

line 13: ...demanding a supply of drake warriors as a tribute to preserve freedom and independece." -> independence

line 125: We will camp here until the reinforcments arrive, -> reinforcements

line 133: We are doing our duty for an higher goal! -> a higher goal

We bring peace and civilization, we spread the good wesnothian values in the wild word to guarantee a better life to all living beings, drakes included." -> world

line 185: "Humans reinforcements are approaching from the city of Soradoc, in the South. -> Human reinforcements

line 201: "I cannot wait to burn the meat of those humans traitors!" -> human traitors

line 215: "Free the three drakes chiefs and bring them to the mountain tiles at the very North-East (where the mark is)" -> drake chiefs

line 219: "Death of any of the three drakes chiefs"

line 223: "To free a drake from its cage you need to put one of your unit next to it" -> one of your units

line 232: "Humans reinforcements will join the battle at turn 25" -> Human reinforcements

line 274: Their camp is North than here. -> Their camp is north of here.

[skeptical_troll]

Hi Inky, thanks for trying this out and for the detailed suggestions and corrections.

Based on your feedback, your replay and some plans I had, I just uploaded a new version with the following modifications.

-I changed the starting time in the schedule as in a previous version, so that you don't face the first wave of trappers/poachers at day. This should make more difficult to crash their first attack.
-The loyalist reinforcements will arrive when you free the drakes, and will come at waves of two lancers and a knight every three turns. Frequency and number of unit might be changed for balancing issue.
-Few turns after you free the drakes also some outlaw reinforcements arrive, but just once. I'm thinking of ways of giving the player a warning about the triggering of reinforcements so that he can counteract. This was the reason why I initially chose a fixed turn for them to arrive.
-I use the large cages from 'dead water' now. They are still a bit small and they do not look very nice. I tried to use 'hide_unit' in combination with 'place_image' to get rid of health bars, but apparently 'hide_unit' do not work well with save-loading, as the units are no longer hidden if you load from a previous turn. Simplest thing would be to create the units when they are freed, but I need to study how to setup the initial dialogue in that case.
-the leader is now expandable, i.e. you can win with the units you are left with if he dies.

-in the future I may decide to add some guardians to the cages, so that using only the saurians and the glider will be more difficult, but I'm not sure if it's a good idea to remove this option for the player.

EDIT: I changed again, the leader is not expendable otherwise the AI behaves somewhat funny, namely it stops playing

[Paulomat4]

Hey skeptical_troll!

I tried your scenario today and I really like it! Forced me to think but wasn't unbalanced or something.
I like it!

[DeCoolest_Cat]

It was very enjoyable. Beat it on my second try. I like how it made me think and plan, instead of just rush in. I must say, the reinforcements wiped out all my drakes in about 3 turns, maybe tone them back a tiny bit. But either way, great scenario.

[skeptical_troll]

Hey, thank for checking this out, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I agree with you that reinforcements are a bit too heavy now, I'll regulate them a bit more depending on the difficulty level.

[taptap]

Very much enjoyed this. Commendable drake scenario featuring what I like most in drakes: sunshine, fresh air, supreme mobility and blademasters tearing into their enemies (the only L3 I got).

Added my replay. I depended mainly on fighters. Played a bit unfocused in the swamp - unnecessarily lost a saurian, missed moving them at least once and moved only very late (with reinforcements already on map) to rescue leaders in a night time lure-and-fly-around way sacrificing my loyal glider in the process. I wanted the main assault from east to do the rescue work, but had to switch plan. Assassination did not seem a viable strategy with all the pikemen standing guard and with my strongest saurian dead. Hard difficulty.

[sergey]

skeptical_troll, your campaigns and scenarios are great! There is everything - fun gameplay, tactical challenge, interesting plot. Fantasy characters are usually either canonical heroes or pure evil. I don't like that, to say the truth. That's why I like your characters so much, they are just like real

DrRe-Drake_Rescue_replay.gz

(39.68 KiB) Downloaded 500 times

[Konrad2]

The difficulties are 'missing' unit names. (I guess that's just a style question though.)
Drakes had little time to react -> The Drakes had little time to react

The teamnames 'drakes' and 'humans' are written lowercase (unlike 'Hunters'). And '(Royal) Army' would probably a better fit than 'humans'.

EDIT:
When you kill side 3, it does not lose it's villages.

[skeptical_troll]

The difficulties are 'missing' unit names. (I guess that's just a style question though.)
Drakes had little time to react -> The Drakes had little time to react
The teamnames 'drakes' and 'humans' are written lowercase (unlike 'Hunters'). And '(Royal) Army' would probably a better fit than 'humans'.

Thanks for the corrections/suggestions, I fixed those.

When you kill side 3, it does not lose it's villages.

That's kind of intended, as side 3 reinforcements appear some time later, so the side needs the condition defeat_condition = no key. It shouldn't affect the gameplay in any way, however.

[Konrad2]

Just a small thing, but the scenario awards (most times) the wrong laurel/wreath upon completion. (Apparently caused by using the old difficulties syntax.)
Details as to why and how to fix it can be found in issue #3983.
(Yes, this is pretty much a copy paste post.)

EDIT:
You called the add-on 'Drakes Rescue' while naming the scenario 'Drake Rescue'.

EDIT 2:

(This quote is here to give you a notification.)

[skeptical_troll]

Oh thanks, I totally missed this comment! Let me fix these.

[Konrad2]

Just putting this here.