16. Eleventh Hour

[Content Feedback]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

[Vendrick]

(1) Invasion, 1.18
(2) 8
(3) Clear
(4) Great
(5) Dark Adepts and Dark Sorcerors are the most dangerous units, making the NE and SE fronts the most difficult to hold (at least for my army composition).
(6) 10: One of the best scenarios in mainline, it's so good. Genuinely fantastic and so finely tuned.
(7) This might be my favourite mainline scenario. I started writing in detail about why I think it's great but the post would be too long.

The map design, the AI modifications, the story beats are all fantastic. The Undead forces pulling back to give the player a small reprieve before a renewed onslaught is a great touch. The allied AI leaders being able to mount a half-decent, flexible defence is also really cool.

I forgot to save the original Invasion replay. This was quite a comfortable win since this was my 2nd playthrough on Invasion, I had favourable RNG, and no real veteran losses earlier.
(A civilian randomly moved onto a castle hex where I wanted to recruit so I debug killed them.)
The Dark Sorcerors are the best enemy units on the map, so crushing the Necromancer leader opposite the SE general with a cavalry charge makes the scenario way easier (they don't even have pierce damage). I was intending to abandon the NE front between Turn 12-15 since the Undead wouldn't be able to inflict any real damage at that point, but that Undead side had terrible luck.
I dropped Hahid's Holy Amulet early and then completely forgot about it until the end.
Yannic and Soradoc company are extremely useful and I didn't even get half of them killed this time.

[sine_nomine]

Invasion, 1.18.0
I was trying to kill all the leaders before the last turn and I think I made poor strategic choices so my perspective might be a little skewed. Still, I can see that this scenario is much better now that it's mainly a fight along the city walls rather than a fight within the city.
The enemy leaders are grouped together as pairs in this map. This is particularly annoying because the camera jumps back and forth between each leader when they recruit units. It also means that killing a single leader has very little impact, as the other leader will use the gold to recruit more units instead. The enemies all receive a bunch of gold on turns 6, 9, and 14. Therefore it's very beneficial to kill a pair of leaders on turn 6 before they recruit. I picked the south and southwest ones, but this might have been a mistake.
On turns 5, 10, and 15 the enemies activate special retreat AI. Even though it's always night, even if they have a foothold in the city, they will gladly ignore your exposed units and jump into the water as part of their retreat. This is particularly advantageous on turn 5 because it means you can rush down leaders without facing much opposition. It might be better to aim for three or even four, e.g. by sending the baneblade user to assassinate a leader on his own. Anyway if you know about these retreats in advance you can take full advantage by jumping into the moat for extra kills, etc. On turns 10 and 15 the retreat AI is in effect but the leader has already recruited a new wave of units so it's harder to assassinate the leaders. And for some reason any newly recruited units seem to be able to attack on the same turn they are recruited.
The enemy leaders all have some loyal units that don't attack unless you move within their range. I'm glad these units have visibly reduced movement ranges to indicate when they will attack, this lets you strategize accordingly.
The allied NPCs seem to do a decent job at defending the walls. They never jump into the water and they can swarm around the occasional enemy that enters the city. It would be nice to have the option to right click on the NPC leaders to change their AI, because defending the wall isn't so useful when all your units are on the other side, but it's not a big deal. The allies do move on to other areas once you kill the enemy leaders.
There are a bunch of civilians who run around at the start of the scenario before disappearing. They sometimes block you from recruiting, which is annoying. Also a couple of the civilians look like they're taken from another era or something, particularly the one that starts at 37,19. I'd recommend swapping her for another one.
Because I took the "hard" route early on I got Yannic and several extra units. Very useful.
Without ever touching the plague staff Konrad is able to recall my undead veterans in addition to recruiting and recalling from the normal list. If he picks up the plague staff he loses the ability to recruit and recall normal units, only undead. If he drops the plague staff after that he loses the ability to recruit and recall units entirely. An easy fix would be to make Konrad refuse to pick up the plague staff but the "I will not begrudge" speech won't make sense for him.
Konrad is neutral, should he be lawful?
In my playthrough I attacked the south and southwest enemies first, then my southwest group went around the map clockwise and my south group returned across the bridge to help the southeast group. I was lucky to kill the north leader before he recruited units on turn 14 without losing anyone important. And on turn 18 the northeast leader fortunately recruited some weak units so I could make some space to attack. I don't think it's worthwhile to kill all the leaders, but killing two on turn 6 is definitely encouraged.
It would have been useful to have a silver mage here to support multiple groups and possibly move items around the map. I didn't train any early on because I was expecting to get a loyal red mage (but I'm glad he's gone).
Lots of mountain village terrain in this map. Strange how humans have more difficulty moving through their own cities compared to dwarves and orcs.
I haven't tried playing this scenario without items or recalling, it seems like an interesting idea but I gave unremovable items to loyal units.

[Dalas120]

>An easy fix would be to make Konrad refuse to pick up the plague staff but the "I will not begrudge" speech won't make sense for him.
Will do! And I'll prevent him (and any other non-main-trio leaders) from from recalling undead veterans).

> Konrad is neutral, should he be lawful?
That's bizarre. According to the game files he should be lawful; I'll take a look. Something must have changed in 1.18, because he was definitely lawful in 1.17.

[Traumflug]

As I was unaware of the campaign threads here, I previously wrote in a new thread: viewtopic.php?p=697582

Invasion, 1.18.0
[...]
In my playthrough I attacked the south and southwest enemies first, then my southwest group went around the map clockwise and my south group returned across the bridge to help the southeast group. I was lucky to kill the north leader before he recruited units on turn 14 without losing anyone important. And on turn 18 the northeast leader fortunately recruited some weak units so I could make some space to attack. I don't think it's worthwhile to kill all the leaders, but killing two on turn 6 is definitely encouraged.

In that other thread I claimed that two of the three strategies laid out in the wiki walktrough aren't possible and laid out an estimate of what would be required to do it: 1200 gold, 60 strong troops, for 3 simultaneous attack directions. Wasn't that wrong, I see here 524 starting gold, usage of another ~500 gold as turns go on, and 2 directions. I just couldn't imagine one can build up such an impressive recall list in earlier scenarios (6 Mages of Light, 6 Paladins, many others, right?). Kudos to you!

Anyways, here's a pretty minimalist approach:

• Do nothing before first enemies appear near Garard's Hold, which is around turn 9. Literally. Just click End Turn and wait. To mitigate the boredom, seize these villages near the general's keeps.

• When enemies appear, recall defensive troops you don't need in the next scenario (The Duel). In lack of such, recruit heavy infantrymen. Two Mages of Light are helpful.

• Do use Konrad II's quite strong leadership, he doubles(!) the strength of your nearby units. Fight for minimal own damage.

• Fight only strong enemy units. Keep weak ones, like Ghosts, untouched. With some luck they keep their place near you, holding off stronger enemies from attacking you. Don't fear not fighting at all with a unit. It doesn't matter whether you're surrounded by 2, 3 or 5 rows of enemies.

With these simple remarks, this scenario is suddenly pretty simple. Just a number of standard actions and patience to wait for these countless enemy movements.

EI-Der letzte Tag Aufzeichnung 20250421-231810.gz

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This nicely shows what a wide range of game play Battle of Wesnoth covers. Just play for win or train, train, train for a rich set of recalls. Excellent!

[fredbobsmith2]

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on? Invasion (Difficult) 1.18.4
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10) 8
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives? Clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario? Very good, though I feel like some more dialog could give some needed relief between the long turns.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario? I came in with nearly 600g, 7 paladins, 5 MoL, 3 arch/great + 1 silver mage, 2 maulers + 3 holy RGs/halbs, and various other leveled units. The strategy to defeat all leaders was to send 2 separate strike teams to the south and southwest leaders, then split them up with one group going clockwise and the other counter clockwise. I previously tried starting with the two east leaders but their armies take much longer to get through so I've never succeeded in defeating them both before turn 7. An important tactic to extend my gold and get units to the front lines faster was to recruit on the small keeps closer to the moat using Yannic for the northeast, Owaec for the northeast, and Gweddry for the south. Notably, each time the enemy retreats on turns 5, 10 and 14, it gives a good opportunity to strongly push towards the enemy keeps. None of the fronts except the two strike teams could push beyond their defensive positions.
In terms of unit composition, for the southwest team I had the baneblade MaA and sentinel Grug, along with Dacyn, Gaennell, and 3 paladins. Positioning the MaA and Gaennell around Grug makes this a very strong formation that can safely push through the enemy defenders. For the south team, I had 4 paladins including Terraent, plus 2 great mages and 1 MoL recruited at the south keep. This team had the problem of navigating around the chocobone's reach and took slightly longer, even with the 2 GMs. For the northwest and north skeleton enemies I had Owaec recall the maulers and recruit some HIs, plus the dwarf rune master, orc crossbow, crystal bowman, and an arch mage and a holy halb, while Konrad sent over a MoL to each front. These two fronts are reasonably easy because of the effectiveness of HIs. The two east fronts used various regular units without amulets, like the Soradoc units and the survivor longbow and dwarf thunderguard, as well as 2 MoL. These fronts probably had the hardest time, and required the most help from the silver mage. They also take the longest to push through due to the large number of units, and are dangerous to defend against because of the dark sorcerers.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10) 10
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun? None, maybe less deeper water around the bridges