Rogue Order

Discussion and development of scenarios and campaigns for the game.

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aaronwright
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Rogue Order

Post by aaronwright »

Hey all, this is a feedback thread for a new campaign I've created, called "Rogue Order." It uses an alternate play style focused on exploration, stealth tactics, and guerilla warfare, so I'm hoping it'll be a fresh addition to the community. Any and all feedback will be greatly appreciated, and I'm particularly interested in comments on playability and balance. I've played through twice on medium difficulty, adjusting the gold as needed. But I'm concerned that my knowledge of the maps may skew my results, so let me know if any scenarios are too difficult, or too easy, and if there are any gold hangups.

Campaign is on the add-on server. Thanks in advance for any feedback! Here's the summary blurb, to give a feel for the storyline:
After the Age of Fear, a rogue mage steals the secrets of his former order to forge a new path in the north. Feiren's theft of the Silver Tomes launches him and his wife into the midst of Elensefarian intrigue, as their possession of the secret arts now hinders the political aspirations of the last remaining silver mage.

On the run, this new, rogue order must overturn a plot to monopolize the silver arts, deceive Lord Konrad II, and steal the Sceptre of Fire.

A campaign focusing on exploration and stealth tactics.

(Intermediate level, 8 scenarios.)
aaronwright
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Joined: January 5th, 2023, 8:40 pm

Re: Rogue Order

Post by aaronwright »

All right, so I received some feedback on the first scenario a while ago, via private message. @Helmet, if you see this, I apologize if my reply didn't come through. It looks like it's stuck in my "outbox" rather than being listed under "sent." I couldn't figure out anything that needed to be done, so I'm just assuming that I did some sort of tech idiot move or something, lol.

Anyway, Helmet said the first scenario seemed unwinnable. He (?) posted the right strategy, but found that he didn't have enough turns to finish. Due to the weirdness of the scenario (it's meant to be a tutorial of sorts for a hide and teleport kind of playstyle), I figured that just giving the user unlimited turns would work better than trying to balance gold with a higher turn count. So I updated that, rebalanced the second scenario, and have a fresh version of the campaign loaded onto the server.

Thanks anyone for any further feedback :-)
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Heindal
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Heindal »

Update: sorry I had to catch a train and drive through half of Germany, so now this post has been updated.

I tried your campaign. It is innovative, has cool features and sometimes funny dialogues, it is well designed and mostly you have to think a bit outside the box. Many references to wesnoth lore, I can not say if it is all correct, but I assume it is more or less correct from what I know.

Feedback: as it is innovative it can be annoying and challenging at the same time to find a solution for some levels. You as developer probably know the features and possible solutions and I can say that you can do a lot of amazing strategies with the options of the campaign. It is a super-cool puzzle if you get used to the abilities, as you are usually outnumbered and constantly attacked, this can lead to frustration especially when you have a tight time limit.

It started with the campaign, where you had to flee over the river. Obviously you must weaken the forces of Lintrius, without overwhelming them so that they stay alive - however while most of your forces are stuck inside the river Lintrius sometimes behaves sucidial. I finished the campaign a little bit earlier, than I had to, but the desert at the end was a little bit annoying, as you units are very slow and you are running out of time. On the other hand, that gave the campaign a little thrill. However it could be that Lintrius is defeated because you haven't delayed the orcish troops long enough.

I found the silvermage with conquering 4 villages pretty hard. I finished it in turn 24 and I think this time limit is a little bit hard.
There are a couple of reason for this:

When beginning the campaign, you don't know that this campaign ends at turn 24 so I carefully advanced, checking the altar and was there at the lich in turn 3, I effectively lost one turn.

Even so I could by chance finish game by turn 16 maybe, I was luck in the end I could get to the western town, with Leya as I was countered by an undead corpse, a ghoul and a squid. Just because they replaced of there positioning I was able to get through.

The forest are too few near the entrance and you can not hide, except you use Rover, which can not teleport and is very useful in the other locations. I found the western part the hardest, as many enemies can poison and there are just a few units that can counter that, which are on the other hand needed. I think you assume that some units survived such as the elf shaman (which doesn't have to survive, as well as Rover). With Rover it is indeed pretty easy to get the second village in approximately turn 8. To get number 3 and 4 is way harder, due to water or the enemies.

I couldn't defeat the liches and that would probably take a lot of load/save scumming. I think even with optimized attacks of all three starting characters, you will probably need 2/3 turns, turns you don't have. Returning with an adequate squad also takes a lot of time.

However, your campaign is really cool, offers a great challenge and a unique gameplay. Very well done. Think about smaller changes and balancing such as more turns in some scenarios, as well as checking for typos (capitol? = capital?). Also I wonder why the add-on has 36 MB as size, which seems a lot for just a couple of scenarios.

Also note: one bug - some terrains have 0% defense on some tiles of the railroads. It is not a big issue, I just wanted to mention it.
Last edited by Heindal on March 20th, 2023, 8:20 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Konrad2
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Konrad2 »

Any chance that you can use a newer Wesnoth map as background?

S2
The scenario objectives say that 'all' enemies have to be defeated. But you win as soon all enemy leaders have been defeated, even if other enemy units are still around.


I've very much enjoyed the two scenarios I've played so far.

S3
Honestly, the scenario felt very easy, even though I'm playing on hard. I can bypass pretty much every enemy but the undead, and those are not a challenge at all, especially with how much gold the merfolk have.

S5
Lintrus needs a silver crown.
It doesn't feel like this scenario can be beaten by defeating all enemy leaders, at least on hard. There is just not enough time.

The Throne of Water being, well, surrounded by water, was somewhat of a tomato surprise, as it means I needed a merfolk to sneak in there. Not enough room to sneak a Rogue Wolf through the water paths.

S6
LIntrus' test -> Lintrus test (upper case letter)
seige -> siege (multiple times in this scenario)

Enemy turns in this scenario take unusually long.

I think you should disable the 'Silver Mage' advancement for mages that are not on my side. Otherwise it doesn't make as much sense story wise.

Replays
Spoiler:
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Heindal
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Heindal »

Konrad2 wrote: March 20th, 2023, 4:39 pm S3
Honestly, the scenario felt very easy, even though I'm playing on hard. I can bypass pretty much every enemy but the undead, and those are not a challenge at all, especially with how much gold the merfolk have.
Interesting - I found it pretty challenging, but I felt a little bit rushed so did not recruited/recalled more of the merfolk and had a pretty dumb strategy - I admit that. After sacrificing wave after wave of mermens to save Bernie who is hidden at the stupidest of positions, not many of the merfolk survived in my first try of that campaign. I felt the desert at the end pretty hard - it is a good way to counter merfolk, but every of your units just has two turns there, it is more a less bad for any unit. However I found it thrilling from my relatively low strategic player level (I also don't optimize by load save scumming and accept losses).
S5
Lintrus needs a silver crown.
It doesn't feel like this scenario can be beaten by defeating all enemy leaders, at least on hard. There is just not enough time.

The Throne of Water being, well, surrounded by water, was somewhat of a tomato surprise, as it means I needed a merfolk to sneak in there. Not enough room to sneak a Rogue Wolf through the water paths.
While I agree about silver crown and the lack of time.

I have to disagree with the Throne of water, because I did that with Rover using stealth. There is a cool way for island hopping and as he has nightstalk in his advanced form, he can pretty much sneak inside without any problems. There is a small island with trees next to entrance, which you can use. So I has pretty much foreseen that tactic. But I agree that you can not use merfolk here, as the only position where you could recruit, it will take them 4! turns to get into the water (and in that time, the enemies are already there). There is also a giant waterbase in the south east, which can't be used due to this and the short amount of time. Ok I felt a little bit dump, as merfolk can hide in dark water, still there are some design flaws in that location, when it comes to the merfolk strategy.
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Konrad2
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Konrad2 »

Heindal wrote: March 20th, 2023, 8:10 pm Interesting - I found it pretty challenging, but I felt a little bit rushed so did not recruited/recalled more of the merfolk and had a pretty dumb strategy - I admit that. After sacrificing wave after wave of mermens to save Bernie who is hidden at the stupidest of positions, not many of the merfolk survived in my first try of that campaign. I felt the desert at the end pretty hard - it is a good way to counter merfolk, but every of your units just has two turns there, it is more a less bad for any unit. However I found it thrilling from my relatively low strategic player level (I also don't optimize by load save scumming and accept losses).
I don't quite understand what you mean with the stupidest of positions. As I knew i had to save Bernie, I sent Rover into the city on turn 1, which means I can reach even the 'worst' position before any enemy is even close to reaching me. I never had to fight the Humans to pass, I only had to stall them a bit after I left the city.
And the lvl2 merfolk made short work of the walking corpses, even in the sand.

I have to disagree with the Throne of water, because I did that with Rover using stealth. There is a cool way for island hopping and as he has nightstalk in his advanced form, he can pretty much sneak inside without any problems. There is a small island with trees next to entrance, which you can use. So I has pretty much foreseen that tactic. But I agree that you can not use merfolk here, as the only position where you could recruit, it will take them 4! turns to get into the water (and in that time, the enemies are already there). There is also a giant waterbase in the south east, which can't be used due to this and the short amount of time. Ok I felt a little bit dump, as merfolk can hide in dark water, still there are some design flaws in that location, when it comes to the merfolk strategy.
When I treid to sneak Dover over there, there were a bunch of skeletons coming his way, because that Lich Lord received some gold..? Which is why I didn'T think I'd make it in time.

Also, you misunderstood me. I did sneak a Merfolk to the elemental village, using the submerge ability.
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Heindal
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Heindal »

I don't quite understand what you mean with the stupidest of positions. As I knew i had to save Bernie, I sent Rover into the city on turn 1, which means I can reach even the 'worst' position before any enemy is even close to reaching me. I never had to fight the Humans to pass, I only had to stall them a bit after I left the city. And the lvl2 merfolk made short work of the walking corpses, even in the sand.
There are three windmills in the city. So I checked them piece by piece. For me the priority was to secure the base in the south-east, which allowed me to recruit four units. And it is nice that you did that, however you still need to get Feiren to that location. As far as I saw, he can not teleport to allied cities, so you still have to get a unit there. I did not think of recruiting a merfolk of my own - a mistake in the strategy, however I just explored the scenario for the first time and wanted to discover it, not find the best possible solution. I think a majority of players play that way. As I said, I did not reload and played it iron-man like.
When I treid to sneak Dover over there, there were a bunch of skeletons coming his way, because that Lich Lord received some gold..? Which is why I didn'T think I'd make it in time.

Also, you misunderstood me. I did sneak a Merfolk to the elemental village, using the submerge ability.
You sneaked with the merfolk, I did not, because I didn't realize they could submerge (until the very end), so this wasn't an option for me. The island I'm talking about is just single tile, most likely enemy units will take another way. And yes the lich seems to be "activated" when he spots you (or maybe an event based on turns.).
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Konrad2
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Re: Rogue Order

Post by Konrad2 »

S2
Dahlia has a silver crown, even though her death does not cause you to lose any scenario. Probably just should have a 'loyal' marker.
-> Except the last scenario, where you still need to mention her death in defeat condition.

S7
dispath -> dispatch
This scenario feels a bit easy.

Epilogue
nacent -> nascent
we lost my -> We lost my
ooh, I should -> Ooh, I would

bone crusher is a nasty tomato surprise. Maybe summon it next to her castle, not next to the village, where my scout unit likely is?


In general, I have to criticise how you brought 'Eloh' and 'Yechnagoth' into this all (I might be biased though because I like IftU, AtS, and Genesis a lot), and that the Silver Arts now have spread among a lot of people. Like, there will have to be some explanation why only Humans have acess to the Silver Arts later.

Also, no idea if it even can be canon that they know of the Dunefolk.

Not to mention the Lich-Lord stuff.
Attachments
RO-Epilogue replay 20230322-095613.gz
(97.47 KiB) Downloaded 23 times
RO-Silver Age replay 20230321-184609.gz
Just making my escape
(80.21 KiB) Downloaded 30 times
RO-Silver Age replay 20230321-195238.gz
Taking out the enemy leaders first
(90.79 KiB) Downloaded 24 times
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