Imperial Era Campaign - Epic of Vaniyera

[turin]

Wesnoth v.1.5.9 on Mac OS X 10.5.6
Downloaded the campaign a few days ago. Running in EASY.

I am having real trouble wth EoV-Arendian Border.
The problem -- I am being overrun by boltriders. There are currently about 30 of them running down my futile efforts to throw troops in their way.

The problem appears to be that the cost for Jacov to recruit them is "1" each. He seems to think this is good value and recruits more every time he makes it into positive cash. Thus, he can consistently manufacture more cavalry faster than I can heal the damage that I take from killing the leading edge.

Can you please tell me how to change the recruit price & what you recommend as a more appropriate entry?

Uh... yeah, that's not intended behavior. It's a bug in the Imperial Era itself, actually; you should edit the file Imperial_Era/units/human-arendians/Boltrider.cfg and add a line reading "cost=30". Yeah, 30 gold sounds about right. Maybe a bit low, but not so much as to make him spam only that unit.

Other, less disruptive bugs --
I promoted Vaniera in my last attack defending the fortress. In the next scenario Vaniyera returned as level 2 [Leader] and I had a SECOND Vaniyera (level 3) which I have been able to recruit ever since. I have not been able to promote him again to see if I get yet another Vaniyera. However, regardless, I suspect this is not the intended behaviour. (But it sure helps, having 2 assassins)

Yeah, that's not right either. I'll look into it.

Also in ArendianBorder -- Turn 1 NPC recruits generate errors --

At difficulty EASY, trying to recruit a: archer but no unit of that type [Drewyn]
At difficulty EASY, trying to recruit a: archer but no unit of that type [Jacov]
At difficulty EASY, trying to recruit a: fighter but no unit of that type [Jacov]

Weird. The WML makes it clear they shouldn't try to recruit archers... I'll look into it.

--> Both NPC Arendians recruit only level 2/3 cavalry.

Yeah, the AI tends to favor high-level units, usually excessively so. Not much I can do about it though, besides maybe cap their recruiting of those units (which is possible)...

At the ancient battlefield --
I would really appreciate it if the dialogue warned me that I may only recruit for one turn.

Good point.

[shisui]

More curiosities --

Charging 30 each excellently resolves the endless horde of horse archers. I think they are weaker than a Chief (32), so 30 seems a good price.

A "bolt rider" pays 4 movement to cross deep water, but considers Coastal Reef impassible.
And, if you somehow got your horse onto that reef, then it has 100% defence.
Perhaps this needs correcting.

To consider:
I am not sure that I agree that a bolt rider should not be able to cross mountains. If you are modelling Arendian cavaly after Mongols or Navaho, then they should use terrain costs closer to an Elvish Outrider. If you are modelling them after Carthaginians or Persians, then they should be able to cross mountains, but at heavy penalty (move 4 or 5 ?). If they are modelled after Japanese or Chinese horse archers, then "impassible" is correct -- for cultural reasons, not any inability of their troops.

From a game perspective, there is a huge difference between the ability to spend a turn crossing a tiny thread of mountains; or not at all -- think of Konrad at the Dwarven Gate, picking between a Paladin or an Outrider. In the longer term, I think that an Arendian unit mix is more balanced if they have some units that are able to cross mountains, regardless of how long it takes.

[turin]

I'd be OK with letting the Bowrider unit cross mountains but not letting the Horseman unit do so. It'd do even more to emphasize that the Horseman is considerably heavier armored.

[shisui]

I am in complete agreement on that.

I am just suggesting that only the *lightest* Arendian cavalry unit be allowed to cross mountains. If they have an even lighter recon unit that I have not met yet, then it should be the one instead. This would matter most to their ability to see an attack that was in-coming over those mountains.

I like how your Imperial Age units allow you to build an army that emphasises armour or agility, within any given style. I also like how the most flexibility comes when you are permitted to mix cultures. (Something that only the Empire should be able to do on a consistent basis.) There is good balance between each culture, so that they can stand on their own; yet enough differences that it does not look like you made any effort to provide balance between them -- thank you.

[Craw]

Reaction: Anabasis is greek, while emperor is of latin origin.
Would something along the lines of "Ascent of the emperor" be less awkward?
"Anabasis of the Basileios" may be abit on the far side.
Why are english-speakers so obsessed with foreign loanwords anyway?

Because English is comprised almost exclusively of foreign loanwords.

On topic: Man, I thought the legion unit was seriously overpowered the first time I played against it, but when I tried the Fall of Silvium, I quickly learned its weaknesses. So far, your campaigns are well balanced, both in difficulty and in variety. I was confused re: one turn recruiting in the dead hero scenario. The lack of a note in the scenario intro led me to believe it was a bug, especially considering the level of polish on the rest of your scenarios. Keep up the good work, all of this free entertainment is really great in today's economy!



Fixed your quote tag. - Turuk

[Theron]

The Epic of Vaniyera 0.2*, medium difficulty / Wesnoth 1.6.1a / Mac OS X 10.5.6

Scenario 4/5: recall list bug
At the end of scenario 4 (Just in Time) ALL surviving units are switched to side 1.
At the start of scenario 5 (Remnants of the Past) I have in the recall list (beside MY units) :
MY Vaniyera, level 3 <- already reported by shisui
2 units from Faolan <- this may be intended
2 Legionnaires (!)

I'm attaching Remnants_of_the_Past.gz.

* as displayed in the add-on download.
In the campaign chooser (Version 0.0.1, 01-18-08) is shown.

[Kelben]

Yeah in fact I had the same issue (the legionnaires' one). In fact you can recall all the units which were not killed the previous mission from this player side (the one with the legionnaires). Maybe it is also because he is the most likely to be the last one eliminated...

[turin]

OK, think i figured out the problem; if you edit the scenario file for 4_Just_in_Time.cfg, and change every instance of "{MODIFY_UNIT description=" to "{MODIFY_UNIT id=", it'll probably work. I haven't tested this yet.

[Jym]

This campaign is, I think, on the easier side - I was able to beat it on normal without losses, which I definitely can't do with any of the other campaigns I've written - so it would probably be a good introduction to the Sidhe faction.

Hum, obviously I need some tips on playing them I've never played any of the Imperial Era faction before...

I just downloaded the campaign and start playing it in normal difficulty. Already the first battle scenario was pretty difficult and I had to restart it once to finish it and could only manage to keep 5 "veterans" out of the 10 recruits I had... I am a pretty old Wesnoth player (started with 0.9) and consider myself rather a good player having finished several campaigns both mainline and UMC (can't remember the count).

A first problem with this scenario is that the rage ability of the fury units doesn't worked as explained; The description says that it is only used in offense but it actually also worked in defense. Given the strength of the marauder's warrior, this actually turned my furies into expensive ulfserkers with less HP and catastrophic resistances... Which is why I restarted the scenario this time recruiting warriors rather than furies for they are easier to keep alive and far less expensive and almost as efficient...

My second problem come with the fact that the marauder's warriors have a resistance to blade while all the units I can recruit in this first scenario have only blade attack. This basically makes me less efficient than I should. Raindancer, of course, have the lightning bolt but they can stand the retalation in the oponent turn, so one must recruit a mix of wizards and fighters (as always). Moreover, the fact that we are both chaotic in this first scenario makes the usual "wait for your time of the day" tactic useless.

Then, in the second scenario, both problems came true again. The "rage in defense" issue makes the furies not so useful against the level 0 auxiliary since the green oponent doesn't hesitate to send a few auxiliary against a fury. Even if the first and second one get killed by the length of the battle, the third of fourth manage to finally get ride of my unit. Well, it's not cost efficient but it is enough to prevent a too offensive use of the fury and buy time waiting for the legionaires.

The "blade resistance" problem then came again while fighting the legionnaires. Well, again, having no real choice of my attack type (as I don't believe an army of raindancer can stand a chance) i have to fight with sub-efficient units. Well, this time I can try and retreat by day and attack by night as the lavinian are lawful, but there is not so much place as to make a proper retreat... Also, i guess that if I had more veteran from the previous scenario I could try to level up units in a proper pattern and a couple of level 2 units could turn the fight...

So, if you could give me a couple of tips on how to play the Sidhe, i'd like them


Also, in the second scenario I found it pretty frustrating that Vaniyera starts 8 hexes from the keep with only 7 MP thus preventing recruit/recall at turn 1 and loosing 1 turn in the rush to chose where the battle should happen.

[Mist]

(as I don't believe an army of raindancer can stand a chance)

Eh, people of small faith
Hvaing beaten the campaign recently I'd advice the following :
1) Raindancers, raindancers and even more raindancers. Your raindancer to non raindancer ratio should be nearing 1 - 1. These guys got three magical atacks with damage type most opponents are not resistant to. They kill or maim everything, from auxilaries to archers (yep, raindancer on forest at night will seriously hurt an archer with little harm to himself), and they can be leveled to thunderblades which become your prime meele units later on. You seem not to belive in them, but they are the key to basicaly all the campaign.
2) Fighters are not meant to fight. Until you level them, lvl1 fighters are needed to soak the damage, screen the raindancers and finish allmost dead opponents. You don't attack with fighters, you let them get attacked and hope for high counterattack damage.
3) Time of Day. It's basicaly the same as with undead facing drakes, if the opponent is not broken you run when the sun rises and don't get back till it sets.
4) Forests. Lavinians are absolutely crap in the trees, they get 30% def compared to 50% in the open. Draw them in the trees and they are easy to pick out (Don't go to deep though, they got crap movement as well and just won't follow going for your villages instead)
5) Ignore Furies. As you said they are really hard to keep alive and just not worth 20gp they cost.
6) Fight conservativly, recycle wounded units with fresh ones, fight narrow fronts, don't spread units, don't leave more than two potential attack hexes open, don't take risks. In this way you'll usualy win the war of attrition against the ai since it rarely groups units and the recruit waves tend to spread with slower units lagging behind.

[Jym]

Hum, OK, basically the general strategic tips slightly specialised

My problem was more with the marauders of the first scenario since I suffered heavy losses there... At this point neither daytime nor deep forest can help as they are also chaotic and have 50% def in forest... Well, I'll retry with a bit more raindancers (I had 4 raindancers and 7 warriors).

Thanks.

edit : OK, so this time I went for 5 raindancers and 5 warriors and it went smoothly (no loss, 1 herald...) I watched my replay from yesterday and actually I think that today I was more cautious in my advance than yesterday. I took more time to regroup and attack the keep after the end of the big clash and that probably is the reason of success... I didn't double checked the stats to see if I was unlucky yesterday, today I was a bit lucky (+4%/-16%)... Well...

[Jym]

A first problem with this scenario is that the rage ability of the fury units doesn't worked as explained; The description says that it is only used in offense but it actually also worked in defense. Given the strength of the marauder's warrior, this actually turned my furies into expensive ulfserkers with less HP and catastrophic resistances... Which is why I restarted the scenario this time recruiting warriors rather than furies for they are easier to keep alive and far less expensive and almost as efficient...

By the way, I just edited the abilities.cfg of the Imperial Era to change the macros for the rage abilities and add an "active_on=offense" stanza to each of them.

Now, they work as their description suppose them to work, I'll continue the campaign that way.

I don't know what was the intended behaviour of the rage, ie whether the description or the implementation was buggy. i changed it that way just to make it different from berserk and have something else to try

[flatrat]

Hello Turin, et. al.,

I've been lurking for years, so 1st I must thank one and all for BoW and the many enjoyable hours I've spent playing it. I particularly like the Imperial Era for its variety of interesting tactical and strategic challenges.

Indeed, I find it so challenging that invariably I have to restart a few times to make it through. I'm playing on moderate difficulty. In my most recent pass through the Just In Time scenario, I finally managed to finish off Quantis and then Marsis Vesuvius before Faolan could get himself killed by charging into combat and then getting surrounded (it took me a while to figure out how to protect him).

Below I've attached three saved games.

• EoV-Just_in_Time_Turn14-Pre2ndVaniyera.gz - just before Vaniyera finishes off Vesuvius
• EoV-Just_in_Time_Turn14-Post3rdVaniyera.gz - just after Vaniyera finishes off Vesuvius and is clearly now a 3rd level Shadowdancer
• EoV-Remnants_of_the_Past_Turn1-2ndVaniyera.gz - Vaniyera is a 2nd level Veiledblade. If you pull up the context menu from one of the keeps open hexes, you can recall Vaniyera the 3rd level Shadowdancer.

I really know nothing of the games internals, but I would be happy to furnish any other information you can tell me how you find.

Cheers
flatrat

[flatrat]

Just a quick follow-up. At the beginning of the next scenario, Retribution, the leader is the 2nd level version of Vaniyera, and the 3rd-level variant is still available for recruitment.

[Turuk]

Moved the bug posts to where they would be pertinent.