Tactics Puzzles (for 1.12/1.14)

[Inky]

Hey everybody, I made my first Wesnoth add-on!

These Wesnoth puzzles were inspired by tactics problems in chess (and Crimson_Conure had the original idea). In these puzzles, everyone is given a 100% chance to hit, and you have to achieve some goal like killing an enemy leader without losing any of your own units. In order to do that you'll have to make optimal use of hexes, leadership or illuminates, etc.

There's a menu where you can select which puzzle to try, and it keeps track of which ones you've solved already.

Each puzzle has a hint which you can read using the right click menu. If you're still stuck, there's a text file included in the addon with solutions to all the puzzles, or you can ask here!

So far there are 4 puzzles, but there will be more to come!

Any feedback at all, whether it's about the puzzles themselves (too easy? too hard? too tedious?), whether the hints are helpful, coding advice, ideas for new puzzles etc. is welcome!

[MathBrush]

This sounds really cool! I’ll have to try it later.

[Caladbolg]

Hey, nice work! The puzzles are great, not too easy, not too hard. They took me about 20 minutes, but I'm a lousy tactician and I haven't really sat down to play Wesnoth for a while. The 4th puzzle had me a bit stumped as it took me a while to remember that the drake has leadership . I'm sure someone who plays Wesnoth more regularly and is more into tactics would be able to solve them all easily. All in all, I think the third was most difficult and maybe that's the difficulty you should be aiming for in the future.
I don't like the tactics problems in chess, but surprisingly I found this a really fun time-waster. Looking forward to new additions!

[skeptical_troll]

If there is justice on Irdya, this should be the add-on which receives the most feedback in Wesnoth's history!

The story is really intriguing and the scenarios are pretty well balanced. I passed all the levels but I feel I've been a bit lucky throughout, so please give less gold to the enemies.

The idea is really great and I think the levels are very nice. My favourite was the second one, but also the third was excellent.

Spoiler:

I found the fourth the easiest, partly because it is more constrained, you (you as 'Inky') can only attack from the northern hex, and the fact that everyone must survive makes the order of the attacks easy to guess.

I really look forward to play more of these!

[Vulpine]

Nice! I played through them pretty quick, but it was mostly trial and error. I had to use a hint on the third one before I realized what I was doing wrong.
Well done!

[Samonella]

Yup, it's as good as everyone says it is! Typical Inky humor mixed with interesting puzzles, Wesnoth doesn't get much better than that. Everyone reading this, play it if you haven't!

Quick critique: the right-click menu won't explode if you use this scaled version of qmark.png (normally I'd use an IPF, but the only 1.12 option seems to ruin the image).

[Inky]

Wow!! Thanks so much for the comments, everyone!!

I was inspired to make another one, so there is a fifth puzzle now!

This sounds really cool! I’ll have to try it later.

Cool! I'm playing your drake campaign again right now

I don't like the tactics problems in chess, but surprisingly I found this a really fun time-waster. Looking forward to new additions!

Thanks Caladbolg, glad you had fun!

The story is really intriguing

I'm glad you liked the "story"
I agree the 4th puzzle may be a bit too obvious. I'll think about how to make it a bit more complicated - maybe I'll add a couple enemies next to the leader and you'd have to get rid of them first.

Nice! I played through them pretty quick, but it was mostly trial and error. I had to use a hint on the third one before I realized what I was doing wrong.
Well done!

Cool, glad the hint was helpful! Don't worry, you are supposed to use some trial and error, unless you like doing lots of tedious arithmetic

Typical Inky humor mixed with interesting puzzles, Wesnoth doesn't get much better than that.

I can't think of a sufficiently positive response so I'm just going to spam these:
I added the question mark, thanks for sharing it! (For some reason the old one looked fine to me though)

[ForestDragon]

great job with the addon! though in the fifth puzzle, the hints are a bot too vague in my opinion (the swordsman/javelineer don't seem to have a clear purpose). Also, it's not really possible to capture a village and then teleport to it on the same turn, as units lose movement. btw, I think it would be a good idea to make puzzles with multiple solutions, to add more depth to them.

[Ravana]

It is possible to capture village and teleport to it at same turn - just unit that captures it should attack and die.

[skeptical_troll]

Well, the fifth one does have multiple solutions. I suppose this is the 'alternative' one because it deals much more damage than necessary to the leader.

[Elder2]

This is ridiculous, im surprised, well done man, it was actually hard xD The hardest was the second puzzle, it was the most absurd unintuitive thing I have seen in wesnoth, i have been thinking about it for like 10 min or so and for the most part did not know what to do. The third one was also very ridiculous and quite hard haha, also something of which you would never really think in a normal gameplay, the last one was a bit complicated but ultimately not that hard comparatively.

[Inky]

I added a 6th puzzle now! I'm less happy with this one since it depends a lot on trial and error rather than logic, but I wanted to make a puzzle about the annoyances of babysitting level 0 units which I'm sure everybody is familiar with
(And another puzzle idea is having a typical useless Wesnoth ally trying to get himself killed and you have to protect them).

great job with the addon! though in the fifth puzzle, the hints are a bot too vague in my opinion (the swordsman/javelineer don't seem to have a clear purpose)

Thanks ForestDragon! I added a sentence to the 5th puzzle's hint about how to capture and teleport to a village in the same turn (basically, what Ravana said).
The javelineer wasn't supposed to do anything, it was supposed to be a distraction so you don't always assume that every unit is important to the puzzle (though in this case, skeptical_troll found a use for him!)

Well, the fifth one does have multiple solutions.

Ah, I completely missed that! Nice find! No need to bend spacetime with teleporting when you can just walk over
I like that solution too so I left it in and added it to the Solutions text file, but the hint still suggests the originally intended teleport trick.

it was actually hard xD

This is the ultimate endorsement, if EoZ says it's hard!
And these puzzles are definitely pretty artificial but they're sort of based on regular Wesnoth concepts. Like how it's useful to level units with leadership ASAP (puzzle 2), or how sometimes when you have a severely wounded unit you can try to get some extra damage into the enemy leader by attacking and then moving another unit into the vacated hex (puzzle 3).

[Ravana]

So that comment was actually relevant. Havent observed these games.

[Vulpine]

I loved the sixth one!

Spoiler:

It was interesting finding the right balance of damage and healing.

I'm going to have to spend some time trying to figure out that teleporting trick you're talking about on the fifth one. Otherwise, nicely done!

[Elder2]

The sixth puzzle is so much counting, I have never had to count so much in wesnoth before. And in the end it turned out that the healing from drain upon killing an unit doesn't work like I thought and I have been wrong all these years xD