Children of the Dust [SP campaign for BfW1.14]

[skeptical_troll]

Hello everyone!

Children of the Dust is a two-suns era campaign, which is my take on the decades right after the Fall, focusing on the struggle for survival of dwarves in a continent where the Zhangor-led Wesmere (see UtbS) is the dominant power. Co-protagonist will be the aragwaithi, which the player will be able to control in many of the scenarios. Although not central to the story, also saurians are available to be used.

The campaign is complete and has 10 playable scenarios. It was meant to be a quick project without too much overthinking and pain, but it soon became a reminder that there's no such thing as a 'quick project without too much overthinking and pain'. I did my personal approximate balance, but I feel some scenarios still don't really work as envisioned, so any comment and feedback to improve on that is really welcome.

Gameplay
Typically scenarios are standard Wesnoth skirmishes with a couple of larger battles. Healing will be purposely limited to a few units (except in a couple of scenarios), The only relevant variation on the game mechanics is that units will 'specialize' depending on the kill they get. They will deal more damage against races for which they have a better kill score. Also, in a few scenarios dwarvish miners will be able to light camp fires to provide illumination or to erect barricade to slow down enemies.

Gimmicks
units can get nicknames depending on what happens in the campaign (most typical example is when they kill important units). If you have good ideas on possible nicknames related to possible events, please do make suggestions. I also fiddled with the new name generator to give specific name to the aragwaithi, since I did not want them to have wesnothian names.

[Konrad2]

Add-on description:
by the old allies -> their
fluorish -> flourish

The difficulty selection dialog would be cooler if you wrote the names of the units in parantheses behind the respective difficulty (for example: Difficult (Explorer)).

S1
The elves have the teamname '2'.

EDIT:
And the scenario is probably missing the defeat conditions 'Turns run out'.

EDIT 2:
S2
Why is everyone okay with the saurian leader dying? They do not even comment on his death. Also, S2 is missing 'Turns run out' as well. (Now I dare to claim that all of the scenarios with a turn limit are missing that defeat condition.)

S3
commrades -> comrades
It would be cool if some of the defending units on the map already some specialization vs humans.

[skeptical_troll]

Thanks for the corrections! will fix them with the next version

The difficulty selection dialog would be cooler if you wrote the names of the units in parantheses behind the respective difficulty (for example: Difficult (Explorer)).

Oh, that's a thing I really never understood, but it's true it is a standard Wesnoth convention, so why not!

Why is everyone okay with the saurian leader dying? They do not even comment on his death.

I confess I'm kind of lazy when it comes to last-breath dialog, I struggle to find something which doesn't sound cheesy or excessively pathetic, so I always leave them in my to-do list. None of the main characters have a death dialog yet, I hope I'll get the inspiration soon

It would be cool if some of the defending units on the map already some specialization vs humans.

nice idea, it would make total sense! Will add some specialization consistent with the experience they show

[Konrad2]

Are you aware that there has been a Dunefolk rework, which is in 1.15 right now?

S3
Updating scenario objectives would be nice.

EDIT:
I don't get at all where to place the journey on the wesnothian map.
S1 is somewhat close to Wesmere, so it's not much further south than the Great River.
S2 is somewhere with mountains, and probably close to S1, because the elves can reach them with an organized raid group and they can do so pretty fast.
Now the dwarves travel south, through the mountains.
S3 is south of Wesnoth (because that's where the Dunefolk live), but still barely on the other side of those mountains that are close to Wesmere. And they somehow crossed Wesnoth north to south.
S4 is in the former Bitter Swamp, so they crossed Wesnoth from south to north. Also, they did it within a month minus the time they spend scouting around the oasis before they left.
Did I get that right so far?

[skeptical_troll]

Are you aware that there has been a Dunefolk rework, which is in 1.15 right now?

I know, I have a whole dunefolk campaign to update, fixing this only scenario will be nothing in comparison... I guess I will update this scenario when I port the campaign to 1.15 or 1.16, together with RftA.

I don't get at all where to place the journey on the wesnothian map.

Right, I'd add a map, but I'm not aware of after-the-fall maps, so it would be weird to put a map with weldyin in it knowing it is destroyed . Anyway
S1: I imagine it quite far from Wesmere actually, dwarves are trying to stay away from elves, but from Wesmere they are sending hunting parties on quite long range. So south Wesnoth basically, where also S2 takes place. Most likely south of the Dulatus hills ( a battle happening there is mentioned a couple of times, I assume elves to have military outposts even out of the forest now that Wesnoth disappeared ).
S3: the north-western border of the desert. a trade outpost from which caravans used to start the travel across the desert towards the dunefolk cities. So still not too far from southern border of Wesnoth.
S4: Indeed, former Bitter Swamp. which lies East of wesnoth and it used to be huge (at least according the the maps I remember). Not sure where they may be exactly but isn't too important.

EDIT: when do you feel the objectives in S3 should be updated? Right now they are when they reach the outpost, do you think this should happen at another time too?

[Konrad2]

when do you feel the objectives in S3 should be updated? Right now they are when they reach the outpost, do you think this should happen at another time too?

When the caravan reaches your keep or when you defeat the enemy leaders, whichever happens first.

EDIT:
S4
You forgot to add an event that ends the scenario when Walohrt reaches the northern edge of the map... xD

S5
I think this scenario would feel better if Walohrt and Formythlin would lead two different sides, reverting to one side once they manage to meet up. This would also avoid having units that are recallable by both of them. Or my sorceress teleporting over.

[skeptical_troll]

S4
You forgot to add an event that ends the scenario when Walohrt reaches the northern edge of the map... xD

Actually, I forgot to update the objectives, that was an initial idea, but then I thought this was much more natural as a standard kill-leaders scenario. Uploaded a fix because this could be really confusing.

S5
I think this scenario would feel better if Walohrt and Formythlin would lead two different sides, reverting to one side once they manage to meet up. This would also avoid having units that are recallable by both of them. Or my sorceress teleporting over.

I initially discarded this idea to avoid messing up with the gold and recall list, and let players some more freedom. Still I see how being able to recall units on different sites is not quite realistic. Will try to experiment with that.

[lucid1]

Hi, thank you for making this campaign! I like the variety in the scenarios and it's been a lot of fun playing it so far.

However, I seem to have run into a problem/bug:

Spoiler:

After playing The Gates of Aerthelka on Normal difficulty, I ended with 88 gold on turn 20.

I start the next scenario (Witnesses of an End) with 35 gold and the strict requirement to recruit 5 units. This is barely possible (4 miners and a smith). But the message in the instructions says "Gold from the previous scenario will be entirely carried over to the next one", so I think this might be a bug? (On the other hand, if this is actually how it's supposed to work, then I think the scenario does seem a bit too hard to make progress on with just 35 gold at the beginning...)

Also, the Notes in the instructions say I may recruit up to 5 units, but the main instructions say "Recruit 5 units". This seems like a contradiction. I can't end my turn if I recruit less than 5, so I guess the main objective in the instructions is the one that is correct, but then the first bullet point in the Notes section seems misleading.

Finally, after recruiting 4 miners and a smith on turn 1, and ending turn, I get the following error:


<Lua error> ai/micro_ais/cas/ca_forest_animals_move.lua:55: bad argument #1 to 'insert' (table expected, got nil)
stack traceback:
[C]: in function 'table.insert'
ai/micro_ais/cas/ca_forest_animals_move.lua:55: in field 'execution'
[string "local self, params, data = ......"]:2: in main chunk


[skeptical_troll]

Hi lucid1,
that's indeed a bug, thanks for pointing it out.

I start the next scenario (Witnesses of an End) with 35 gold and the strict requirement to recruit 5 units. This is barely possible (4 miners and a smith)

It is intended to be a scenario where you recall veterans. I uploaded a quick fix, if you restart the scenario it should work.

Finally, after recruiting 4 miners and a smith on turn 1, and ending turn, I get the following error

Which version of Wesnoth are you using? I'm afraid this is related to a micro_ai bug in one of the previous versions which is now fixed. At least I don't see it in 1.14.11 (I use the steam version). I don't know what the effects might be though.

[lucid1]

Thanks! I now get 135 gold at the start -- I assume that's how it's supposed to work? (I'd have thought it would be a flat 100 gold if the previous level's gold didn't matter for this level and just got carried over to the next level.)

The AI error still occurs (which is probably expected). I'm using 1.14.5 at the moment. (I believe that is the latest Ubuntu version; I'm not sure that 1.14.11 is available for that system.)

[mattsc]

The AI error still occurs (which is probably expected). I'm using 1.14.5 at the moment. (I believe that is the latest Ubuntu version; I'm not sure that 1.14.11 is available for that system.)

Yeah, this was fixed in this commit, which is first present in 1.14.6. If you want, you can just find this file and make the change yourself (as you can see, it is minimal). Since this is a Lua change, it does not need recompiling. Or you could just play past it (and remove the error message with ctrl-x). [I don't know though if that would cause a problem for this or later scenarios, it does disable that part of the AI for the rest of each turn on which it occurs; skeptical_troll will have to comment on that.]

[skeptical_troll]

Thanks! I now get 135 gold at the start -- I assume that's how it's supposed to work? (I'd have thought it would be a flat 100 gold if the previous level's gold didn't matter for this level and just got carried over to the next level.)

Yeah actually should have than that way. Not just for cleanness, but I don't want the 100 extra gold to be carried over, it might be too much for the last level. Fixed now.

I don't know though if that would cause a problem for this or later scenarios, it does disable that part of the AI for the rest of each turn on which it occurs; skeptical_troll will have to comment on that.

Assuming that when the AI is disabled the default AI takes over, I'd say that there aren't consequences on other scenarios, but this one will feel a bit weird (missing enemies in some part, or they won't behave as intended).

[Konrad2]

Oryol (from 1.0.0) demands upkeep.

The Enemies Meet
If all my leaders are in tunnel I cannot capture or hold any village.

Code: Select all

[event]
        name = die 
        [filter]
            id = formythlin, walhort, vigjal, oryol 
        [/filter]
        [endlevel]
            result = defeat
        [/endlevel]
[/event]

walhort -> walohrt

EDIT:
Trying to kill all enemy leaders with commandos only does not work. :/ There is not enough time (on hard).

[skeptical_troll]

Oryol (from 1.0.0) demands upkeep.

Fixed!

The Enemies Meet
If all my leaders are in tunnel I cannot capture or hold any village.

Right, didn't think about it. I was thinking that some player could try to just hide with all leaders and wait but decided to let them try. Now I set the condition that you can't send all leaders in at the same time. There will still be corner cases in which the expendable lizard leader is killed while the others are in a commando, but I don't want to put tighter conditions for the moment.

Trying to kill all enemy leaders with commandos only does not work. :/ There is not enough time (on hard).

Interesting, perhaps 5 turns to move a commando was a bit too slow. I reduced it to 4, like in medium, and also added a couple of turns to the limit (1 on medium). Not that I necessarily want that all leaders are killed that way, still this will give more options.

[Konrad2]

You do have replay topics for this campaign now, but I have not yet uploaded replays or completed it's counterpart in the wiki. But I plan on doing so sometime soonish.

EDIT:
The Wolves' Path Reopens
report on our -> Report
this should work -> work.

The scenario objectives are a little bit confusing because you have to send your wizard to 49,9 to close 49,8.

EDIT 2:
If your poisoned unit kills an enemy, the poison is removed. Probably due to way you apply 'Specialized'.