[Campaign] Electrifyre: An Aragwaithi Story [1.17/1.18]

[Lord-Knightmare]

Hello,

It's me again. I have made a 9-scenario campaign featuring the Aragwaithi faction of War of Legends. It's for 1.18.x and later BfW Wesnoth clients.

The first difficulty of the campaign is aimed at being a tutorial for players playing Aragwaithi for the first time ever, with hints and guidance on how to win the scenario effectively.

The other 2 difficulties are a bit more on the challenging to appeal to more proficient players.

Requires the latest version of "War of Legends" to be installed, as the latest one had patch changes for the stats of some Aragwaithi level 2 units.

Lastly, I may need some assistance with refining the dialogue, story text and text of the campaign.

There are a total of 10 available achievements at the time of this writing. Might be more in an update.

[Numero]

Hey I tried it, and played the first two scenarios on the easiest difficulty, my first time playing with the Aragwaithi faction, and I liked the hints you gave for newbies.

Electrifyre-A Village Robbed Aufzeichnung 20240309-134540.gz

(15.99 KiB) Downloaded 52 times

Electrifyre-Southern Sojourn Aufzeichnung 20240309-141731.gz

(25.68 KiB) Downloaded 51 times

edit:

Electrifyre-Fogbound Valley Aufzeichnung 20240312-005532.gz

(25.54 KiB) Downloaded 45 times

The fourth scenario I tried, but failed, part of my units at the left secret enterence, the other part died in front of the gate. So I lost (on time, because they did not kill my leader) I don't have the save anymore, sorry

[SexyPringles]

Finished the campaign. It's short and sweet and it's nice introduction to Aragwaithi faction, nice to see that they are getting some love. The first 3 scenarios I was able to complete in challenging difficulty but at the last scenario I had to change it to tutorial level of difficulty after failing in it 2 times due to time limit.

[gnombat]

Is the 4th scenario working right? I'm getting this error message:

Code: Select all

error wml: [side] not supported

Looking at the code, it seems that there's a bunch of units listed there that aren't showing up in the scenario.

[Lord-Knightmare]

Is the 4th scenario working right? I'm getting this error message:

Code: Select all

error wml: [side] not supported

Looking at the code, it seems that there's a bunch of units listed there that aren't showing up in the scenario.

Oh yeah, that's a bug. Fixed it. Will try to push an update by this week.

[Lord-Knightmare]

Update:
I shall release new version soon. Just the following left to do:
- Playtesting
- Side events for S4 and S5
- Balance for S2
- Further adjustments for scenario 2

As for scenarios 6 to 9, yeah they will come at a later date.

[holypaladin]

Minor bug in achievements. I think it was to be "all" vampire leaders instead of "both" vampire leaders as they are more than 2

[Lord-Knightmare]

New version 1.0.6 has been released for Wesnoth 1.18.x

ChangeLog

Code: Select all

Changelog v1.0.6

======================

v1.0.6
--> Added new achievements and sub-achievements
--> Refined existing scenarios
--> S04: hidden achievement title has changed
--> S04: bonus objective is no longer present
--> S05: new side objectives added

[Lord-Knightmare]

Minor bug in achievements. I think it was to be "all" vampire leaders instead of "both" vampire leaders as they are more than 2

Yeah, about that. I changed the achievement completely since that objective was way too much. The newer one is more achievable.

[Vendrick]

I played on default difficulty. S3 and S4 are probably the best scenarios. It's fun to dissect the vampire army in S3 and S4 is interesting as a holdout scenario that requires the player to be aggressive.

The final scenario seems boderline impossible and extremely fragile, most obviously where you have to kill an Arch Mage with the swordsman hero. I reloaded a few turns to heal before attacking the chamber (Archmage fried my leader the first time) and won with heavy losses, but it was still up to random chance including things like the AI's recruitment choices and choice of village to heal on.
The objective switch is also an unpleasant surprise - I thought I would win once my leader picked up the sword.
I came in on minimum gold from S4 and made bad recalls (didn't realise it was the final scenario) but I'm lost as to what the proper strategy is here.

[Lord-Knightmare]

I played on default difficulty.
S3 and S4 are probably the best scenarios.
It's fun to dissect the vampire army in S3 and S4 is interesting as a holdout scenario that requires the player to be aggressive.

Good to know.

The final scenario seems borderline impossible and extremely fragile, most obviously where you have to kill an Arch Mage with the swordsman hero. I reloaded a few turns to heal before attacking the chamber (Archmage fried my leader the first time) and won with heavy losses, but it was still up to random chance including things like the AI's recruitment choices and choice of village to heal on.
The objective switch is also an unpleasant surprise - I thought I would win once my leader picked up the sword.
I came in on minimum gold from S4 and made bad recalls (didn't realise it was the final scenario) but I'm lost as to what the proper strategy is here.

Spoiler:

The proper strategy is recalling a minimal attack force (with 1-2 enchantresses) and rush into a side gate and then make your way to the sword. Take the sword and then attack the leader.

The objective switching...yeah, I suppose if you are not aware of it, it will be unpleasant.
So, I am going to give you more turns once you get this artifact weapon.
I think the extra turns might be enough.

Oh, and this is not the final scenario anymore. Due to popular demand, I have extended the plot to 9 scenarios.

For your replays, I am particularly interested how a player navigated the second scenario and the 4th one.

How did you like it so far?

[Vendrick]

I don't think extra turns would actually help that much - the difficulty isn't because there aren't enough turns to secure the chamber and setup a clean leader kill, its because the leader is a L4 mage that can recruit 4 L1/L2 units with high experience directly into the fight every turn. I "won" on 27/28, but everyone would be dead before 29.
(I assume the mage has restricted recruitment and can only have a limited number of units on the map?)

One of the castle hexes on the path to Electrifyre could be converted into a keep so the player could replace some losses before having to kill the mage.

Do you have a replay of a win where the player isn't dependent on RNG to win?

You could definitely be in a much stronger position than I was entering the chamber, especially with an advancement to the L4 leadership unit lined up. Even so, it could easily take 3 attacks to kill the mage and you can expect to lose 1-2 units per turn.

In S2, I think I overrecruited Scouts. They're weak enough that they barely killed any ants for the allied side and the experience they got would have been better spent on some line infantry later on. I was more cautious with L1 units than I would have normally been because they're cheaper to recall. I did expose the loyal unit to needless risk at one point but it was otherwise a comfortable win.

In S4, I restarted on Turn 2 after seeing how many vampires were coming. I didn't think I could hold out with any significant gold carryover so I decided to spend it. The forests and snow hexes, and beacons made directly south of the keep an attractive spot, so I abandoned the starting villages and relocated there. I didn't attack the vampire leader because of its 45 ranged damage, and I didn't want to scuff my infantry to kill an enemy leader that wasn't attacking.

Gameplay-wise the campaign is fairly good and outperforms a fair amount of mainline material.

I'm a little dubious on the recall costs mechanic because of how much more it rewards holding back advancements and running level 2 units compared to "normal" Wesnoth. It probably isn't worthwhile to recall something like a L3 pikeman, especially with such strong leadership units available. The percentage recall cost is definitely better than full recall costs though.

[Lord-Knightmare]

Do you have a replay of a win where the player isn't dependent on RNG to win?

Electrifyre-The Mage and the Sword replay 20240407-171710.gz

This is my one.

(49.56 KiB) Downloaded 78 times

[Lord-Knightmare]

One of the castle hexes on the path to Electrifyre could be converted into a keep so the player could replace some losses before having to kill the mage.

In the next update, I will give you this, and something extra. No new scenarios developed for now though.

[Vendrick]

Thanks for posting the replay. I really don't mean to be annoying about this.

In your replay, the mage immediately goes bankrupt - over 100 gold in debt - and she never recruits another unit (this is aided by your decision to hang back). In my replay, the mage gets a gold refund (14g) every time any of her units is killed by either side. She never goes bankrupt - in one turn she recruits 5 units.

The 14 gold effectively recycles 50-100% of a unit's recruit cost. This means any serious fighting becomes a death spiral (see my replay). Additionally, there are various non-loyal guards which cost the AI upkeep, so killing them gives the AI less upkeep as well as the immediate gold boost.

I replayed the scenario (using debug to expose the AI's gold and extend the turn limit) with the same recruits but with the strategy of limiting how much gold the AI had access to at once. This mostly involved waiting around (5+ turns where I did nothing), killing the minimum number of guards, and timing the kills of AI units around entering the chokepoint and occupying the AI's keep (the AI had over 100 gold when I blocked the keep). The replay is very boring, but for comparison in my first replay kills were 847G and losses were 169G, and were 572G and 15G in the second. Ignoring the AI's leaders gold cost (110), it is almost double the gold amount in kills.

The gold refund makes the scenario very swingy - I think would either let the player know about the gold refund, or remove it and modify the AI's base income / provide some additional backline villages so that recruiting is more consistent.