Eastern Invasion Revamped

[Dalas120]

Hello!

I've always loved the idea of the Eastern Invasion mainline campaigns, but felt the execution was... lacking. For my own enjoyment, I've spent around a year (on-and-off) making a lot of changes, including a few new maps, a different plot with more characterization, and extensive "quality-of-life" tweaks.

I've been enjoying playing EI with my changes, but there's a lot of polishing that still needs to be done, and the balance at lower difficulties is atrocious.

If I finished up the EI revamp, would there be any interest in playing this as an add-on?

[beetlenaut]

I agree that EI could use improvement. I've only ever played it once, and I found it more often frustrating than fun. Your changes sound positive.

I would say there is moderate interest in that kind of thing, but not huge: I made nightmare versions of HttT (10 months ago) and TSG (two weeks ago). Together, they have been downloaded from the add-on server about 700 times at this point. There is also a modification of NR similar to what you are doing that has 400 downloads in five months. There are easier versions of AToTB and SotBE with the same kind of numbers, too.

[Lord-Knightmare]

If I finished up the EI revamp, would there be any interest in playing this as an add-on?

Hi,

So, Eastern Invasion currently holds the title of the second-worst mainline campaign (there is even a youtube video of someone pointing out everything wrong with EI), thus a revamp would be quite welcomed.

Also, if the end product is better than current one, and is well-received, you may try to request changes be adapted to the current EI (which desperately needs a revamp anyways).

Anyways, good luck.

[Dalas120]

Sounds good, thanks! I'll keep working on it, and hopefully get some playtesters to help with balancing.

[egallager]

There are easier versions of AToTB and SotBE with the same kind of numbers, too.

Those are mine! To be clear about AToTB, I wouldn't so much say it's easier, as it is that the easiest difficulty is now more tutorial-ish (with more messages), while there's now a new middle "Normal" difficulty between the existing Easy and Hard ones.

[ArthurMitchell]

To be clear about AToTB, I wouldn't so much say it's easier, as it is that the easiest difficulty is now more tutorial-ish (with more messages), while there's now a new middle "Normal" difficulty between the existing Easy and Hard ones.

I actually replayed your version of AToTB on all 3 difficulties to see what the differences were.

And while there's definitely some differences, like the adept from scenario 2 becoming an ally or an enemy in the next scenario depending on difficulty, I definitely felt it was... lacking... since I didn't discover more secret hidden nuggets, when I explored the maps, especially that huge castle in scenario 3. If you add a text on the final scenario like: "We defeated our enemies, but what if our journey had been different?", you can add even more changes which are unique to each difficulty and incentivise the player to replay the campaign. I think scenario 4 especially has the least ammount of variance.

But either way it was a cool idea for me, to replay a 4 scenario campaign 3 times and discover new things, instead of a longer campaign just once. Usually I play campaigns on the highest difficulty (for the challenge) or the lowest (for a quick playthrough), but this was a new experience so thought I'd share.

[egallager]

To be clear about AToTB, I wouldn't so much say it's easier, as it is that the easiest difficulty is now more tutorial-ish (with more messages), while there's now a new middle "Normal" difficulty between the existing Easy and Hard ones.

I actually replayed your version of AToTB on all 3 difficulties to see what the differences were.

And while there's definitely some differences, like the adept from scenario 2 becoming an ally or an enemy in the next scenario depending on difficulty, I definitely felt it was... lacking... since I didn't discover more secret hidden nuggets, when I explored the maps, especially that huge castle in scenario 3. If you add a text on the final scenario like: "We defeated our enemies, but what if our journey had been different?", you can add even more changes which are unique to each difficulty and incentivise the player to replay the campaign. I think scenario 4 especially has the least ammount of variance.

But either way it was a cool idea for me, to replay a 4 scenario campaign 3 times and discover new things, instead of a longer campaign just once. Usually I play campaigns on the highest difficulty (for the challenge) or the lowest (for a quick playthrough), but this was a new experience so thought I'd share.

OK I opened an issue on GitHub to track this: https://github.com/cooljeanius/Two_Brothers_With_A_Third_Difficulty/issues/8

Edit: Did you try getting the passwords intentionally wrong in scenario 3? A lot of the variance in that scenario comes from when the player does that.

[ArthurMitchell]

Did you try getting the passwords intentionally wrong in scenario 3? A lot of the variance in that scenario comes from when the player does that.

No, I always said the correct one, since I didn't want to fight even more enemies, on top of the orcs and undead.

I think you can actually create some variance in this scenario. On easy the characters give the password automatically as part of the story, since new players may forget it. On normal you give the player two chances to say the password, but if he gets it wrong he fights some outlaws as punishment. And on hard both times you're forced to fight a larger outlaw group, because the adept gave you with the wrong password, but you get a nice bonus in return after killing the second group. Preferably not just gold, but a unit or item - or maybe a secret path into the castle avoiding the orcs.

Just my two cents.