The War of the Dragon

[docrock]

The Way Under:
this worked out well for me (at least on default difficulty), made a stand in the beginning for 11 turns blocking everything that tried to come over the river while getting me the fire elemental and getting rid of the ghosts, then headed north in a closed bulk blocking the tunnels so that i could only be attacked by one enemy a time at each of them, made another stand before crossing that passage that leads to the great open space where the saurian chief resides. concentrated on killing him (which helps a lot), then got me the wind elementals while pressing west. found the hydra with scouts (i used the reavers-line for that, excessive scouting does pay here) and set out for her with my strongest units hp-wise on the frontline and tried to keep out of her range while myself getting close enough to circle her when she would actually attack. there i got lucky for one turn, coz when she attacked she did not manage to kill a single unit and i had lured her between bad terrain for her and good for me. double-circled her with the inner ring attacking her with fire and the outer holding off those pesky naga. managed to kill her in two turns. after mopping up the remnants of her army i headed for the naga in the north-west, which proved harder than i had thought. isolated him by blocking tunnels again while attacking with flyers and at the same time sending a few teams for taking his villages southwards and stopping the devlings. took me like 10 turns to bring him to a point where he could only recruit one naga a time and i could kill 2-3 each turn. after 6 more turns he came out of his castle and got splattered. afterwards everything is easy. just got the earth elementals and killed the devlings on the beach. ended up in turn 92 without loosing a single unit and a very well leveled-up army. btw: after killing the hydra the objectives should be changed back to "get the elementals and leave the cave" or something like that. kinda confusing as it was as somehow i was always a bit afraid of that hydra reappearing again ...

Lisaundra's Stand:
got owned there bitterly as i wanted to do it without recalling any units but instead recruited only celestials. made it to turn 6 with some luck but definitely have to try another approach here and will play that one again.

haven't played on yet.

[Velensk]

I know full well that any unit that survives the way under is likely to be at max lvl by the time you leave (though it's pretty good to get through without losing anything, I've never managed that). I don't think I need to include picking up the elementals as an objective, because they are a very optional side quest.

Turn 6 ? Surely you mean 16? I'd say the next level would be practicaly impossible without suriviving about 15 turns, and hard unless you survive more. I played through it without windsong, and managed to get to turn 16 on my way through.

[docrock]

Turn 6 ? Surely you mean 16?

err, nope, i mean turn 6. it was a mix of minimum starting gold, bad recruiting, bad movement and a lot of bad luck, especially vs. the minotaurs, they cut me like butter. which does prove that it is perfectly well possible to mess this one up with own incompetence and being distracted by incoming phone calls. *sigh* i am absolutely aware that i got handed over royally there, that's why i will try again seriously.

edit: actually the elementals (especially wind, both level-up lines) do pretty much own vs. the devlings imho.

edit2: oh my, i must have been blind. replayed Lisaundra's Stand and got over the full 40 turns, lol. i just recruited legionaires till end of gold, then moved lisaundra and valiant up to 13,1 and 12,1 respectively by protecting their path with the units with the quick trait and defending southward with the strong traited. in turn 36 when things looked already pretty dim both valiant and lisaundra amla'ed. ha. those two took one heavy death toll from the dragon's forces that day. yet, it would be nice to have some ending dialogue where the dragon shows up and rips our heroes to pieces if you actually manage to go 40 turns. like "those stupid minions of mine are not even capable of eliminating such puny enemies. i have to do this myself." kinda rewarding to the player actually i would think instead of kicking him out of the campaign with a "you have been defeated". how can i be defeated if i don't die in a scenario i have to? attached a replay for your convinience, though it does seem kinda corrupt, so there also goes a save. ah, also one more thing. when lisaundra is near valiant she only does heal 4 even when not doing anything. shouldn't she then heal 6?

Escaping the dragon:
the silver mage falls into a hole in the ground when you bring him to the faerie. guess this is intentional, but some information would help. also, it seems for me the events don't trigger, like no "more infested warg", no victory when i reach the celestial's castle, no nothing. and the dragon never does show up (or i was too quick). ended up in turn 48 by going just down the east side, scouting heavily and just fighting the warg (which were quite tough with only recruited celestials). still, i think a great scenario idea with all that fighting going on. ended up with a pretty decent crew of celestials with mostly lvl2 units in them.

Battle with the unseen:
the runesmith does not show up without extended era installed. besides that: not doable with default gold and after having debugged myself out of the scenario before. well, at least not without extreme luck. giving up on it for the moment.

[Velensk]

I find your report interesting, and conflicting with my own experiance.

I'm suprised you managed to survive fourty turns with lisaundra and valiant, but it sounds like you bottled up in a cornor, which was not what I was trying for with the map, though it dosn't suprise me that it worked. Being attacked counts as doing something, if that would be what's cauing the healing to be only four.

I suppose I relied on my players knowing a bit of folk lore about elves. They were supposed to take things/people who attracted their intrest under the hill (or otherwise abduct, or make dance forever said subject). In most stories that would be children, and/or handsom young men. People tooken under the hill were never supposed to be seen again.

The runesmith shouldn't require extended era, it's used in a mainline campain, and I thought I had the art directories running to that campain folder.

Do you have any idea why said events didn't trigger?

What makes that senario so impossible? For me it was doing the last one before the dragon showed up, and caught up to me that was impossible. In this one the only thing that gave me lots of trouble was holding of in the west, and getting help to hector before he gets himself killed, but I managed it without extream luck.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, I couldn't read either the save, or the replay, they were both corrupt.

[docrock]

I'm suprised you managed to survive fourty turns with lisaundra and valiant, but it sounds like you bottled up in a cornor, which was not what I was trying for with the map

yea, it's what i meant, when i saw that special weakness of this map i really thought i had been blind before. as given the coordinates of the heroes to end with i'd guess you can follow my approach pretty closely. and the legionaires just own in standing power vs. drakes, which are the biggest threat on this map imho, because of speed and damage. when stopping them with the impassable mountains on the map everything was easy. with every unit they killed of me they put a non-attacking living-dead obstacle in their way. and the amla was absolutely at the right moment.

I suppose I relied on my players knowing a bit of folk lore about elves.

oh, well, as far as i am concerned they are only supposed to seduce men who wander the forests alone.

but I managed it without extream luck.

well, as it seems extreme luck does not apply to me either. i have to do it the hard way. but i guess most of my probs were due to me debugging out of the last scenario. i did not have any bonus gold that way (which i would surely have had ...) and could not recall enough units to make a professional zoc. so i decided to retreat to the central castle and fight two wars from there. maybe i was in error on this. getting clamped is never good.

concerning the runesmith it really showed up only after installing extended era. i am using BfW 1.4.6 on Vista Ultimate 64 (a curse for itself).

as for the events not triggering, i tend to say this is the fault of my debugging coz i could not get out of the last scenario without doing the :n thing.

edit: as for the saves, i dunno how long they don't seem to work except for my own installation. maybe someone can give me an explanation. maybe this is due to vista64. i am despairing on this as i can't post replays or saves without people telling me "it won't work".

[Velensk]

I came into that senario with about 200 gold if I recall (don't remember if that was minimum or not). The idea on the left is not to try to make a professional zoc, but to hold it untill you can bring more firepower onto the map. To do this, I used several crystals, the runesmith, a light spirit, a messanger, and a couple crusaders, and a couple wizards, and William. I headed to the center and huridly recruited a couple spirits and recalled a windsong. The goal was to keep them away from Hector so that he wouldn't kill himself. Once I had them headed towards the castle, I had secured more income for myself and I was able to pull in more recalls. I was able to use this to lever the senario in my favor, and eventualy win.

[docrock]

I came into that senario with about 200 gold if I recall (don't remember if that was minimum or not). The idea on the left is not to try to make a professional zoc, but to hold it untill you can bring more firepower onto the map. To do this, I used several crystals, the runesmith, a light spirit, a messanger, and a couple crusaders, and a couple wizards, and William. I headed to the center and huridly recruited a couple spirits and recalled a windsong. The goal was to keep them away from Hector so that he wouldn't kill himself. Once I had them headed towards the castle, I had secured more income for myself and I was able to pull in more recalls. I was able to use this to lever the senario in my favor, and eventualy win.

respect, it was the minimum. what about the other issues?

[Velensk]

I don't know, also something dosn't make sense about the amount of gold I had, consitering the time I finished, the amount of gold I'd have should have been greater because of bonus. I am not positive what other issues you are talking about.

Going on the assumption that the other issues you were talking about were about bugs:
I'm thinking that I should realy play through my campain again and test all these issues again (and get back my saves for each of the lvls). I don't know what is causeing the problems, and after reading the code again I still can't figure it out. I'm positive that it was working for me awhile back, but if I'm the only one for whom my campain works, then it's little use distributing and testing it. It may be something basic like things not working because I'm working with a system that is not very case-sensitive, or it may be that your computer has problems.

Going on the assumption that you were talking about gameplay issues:
I think that I'm going to have to put the impassible mountains back in the mountains. The reason I had origionaly tooken them out was something that I gave up on anyway. In my origional plan, the drakes would fly through the mountains to attack you from behind, except that this proved to actualy be a little easier because this let you deal with the main force without the dragons, plus the AI code that made the drakes do that was malfunctioning. I am seriously consitering revising the terrain on that map, to try to offer more tactical possiblities/challanges. One change I have in mind is moving the undead keep northward, so that the main undead attack will hit you from behind. However I'm also thinking of changing the terrain on the front flank to make it so that you arn't forced to fight the drake in the open, and to make it more tacticaly interesting.
As far as other quirks to encourage agression (because as Black Sword mentioned, one trick that helps is to not attack so that you conserve hp), I'm thinking of makeing it so that the celestials you recruit in this senario start with 8xp, and makeing it so that Lisaundra knows a spell involving dragons blood, that will let you summon fire wisps useing the blood (three drake kills grants fire wisp, who is almost usless against drakes).

The next senario, being heavily dependant on changes made to the last one, will wait for my evaluation until I've got the previouse one the way I want it.

The battle with the unseen is a level I'm fairly happy with. You need to be clever to deal with invisible enemies, and the extra 20% defence is a great boost, however ultimatly the player has the power to crush the quantitiy/quality of enemies sent at them (especialy when you factor in your allies), they just have to get around to useing that power, without Hector dieing on them.

Edit: As a note, I did check on the runesmith, and apparently I don't have the art going to that campain folder, I'll fix this in the next release.

[The Black Sword]

Hi velensk, I finished the other scenarios and meant to get back to you about them but forgot.
After trying a couple of different strategies, I noticed that the warg tended to drift towards the middle, so I decided the best thing was to sacrafice some speed for some decent fighters(quick dreadnought/heretic) and go back to the original plan of going through the warg, letting them drift away from their leader first. This worked well, and I got through without serious losses(messengers and the heretic to the drakes). However the rogue didn't recruit when I met him and if he had then I would probably have lost most of my force when the drakes caught up. Btw, I finished the previous scenario at turn 14, I think I could do better but at the time I couldn't be bothered replaying.

In the next scenario hector kept suiciding himself but the previous bug occurred where the scenario didn't end, so I killed both leaders(drakes are pretty bad against DJinn and savants/arbiter) and when I saw there was no next scenario I didn't replay.

I would suggest some trees in front of Hector so his reach isn't so far, but it seems you want it that way, so it's probably doable.

[Arko]

Hi lads,
could you please tell me what is the trigger action to win "Fleeing the Dragon" scenario. I am running out of ideas. (coordinates would be very helpful)
Thanks in advance.

Arko.

[Turuk]

Arko, I PMed you with the coords, that way the answer is not posted up on here.

[Mellor]

I was able to defeat the Dark Dragon in 'Lisuandra's Stand', and, with Lisuandra as leader and Alloria no where to be found, proceeded to 'Fleeing the Dragon' and 'Battle with the Unseen', still with Lisuandra in command and Alloria on a long holiday (perhaps to Ibiza?). Should 'Lisaundra's Stand' be edited to preclude the possibility of victory (something along the lines of having the Dark Dragon kill Lisuandra on the final turn)? In any event, should 'Fleeing the Dragon' be edited to return Alloria to her position as leader?

By the way, the crystal shards, which are easy to level up against level-two enemies, are very useful against the drakes (which have low resistance to cold attacks), which I defeated first. I also used shards to occupy villages within the ring of defences and kept teleporting them from Lisuandra's castle into those villages, thereby keeping the attacking saurians, minotaurs, and undead busy. Meanwhile, I sent Light Spirits and Crusaders southwest to defeat the undead. After that, a slow, cautious advance upon the Dark Dragon's forces worked well.

[Velensk]

In fleeing the dragon Alloria does become leader again. If she dosn't then that is a bug.

That level is meant to be lost, and is already very diffrent in my version than in yours. Though I guess I'll have to make edits to make that less plausable. Btw: how much gold did you enter the level with?

[docrock]

I'm thinking that I should realy play through my campain again and test all these issues again

lol

but if I'm the only one for whom my campain works, then it's little use distributing and testing it.

exactly that is the reason to put it up on the server. additionally, just coz i am having troubles from debugging and stuff like that does not mean other people are having this either. keep up the great work. i love this campaign. your's, together with Utbs, IftU and BMR are the greatest and most demanding campaigns one can get for BfW imho. and i love it when i can actually lose a scenario.

I am not positive what other issues you are talking about.

rotflol, you spent too much time in the military. or where else does language like this originate from?

[Mellor]

[quote="Velensk"]In fleeing the dragon Alloria does become leader again. If she dosn't then that is a bug.

That level is meant to be lost, and is already very diffrent in my version than in yours. Though I guess I'll have to make edits to make that less plausable. Btw: how much gold did you enter the level with?[/quote]

Alloria was no where to be found in 'Fleeing the Dragon'.

I entered 'Lisuandra's Stand' with over 1100 in gold and spent it furiously on Shards.

Why not allow an option in which, if the Dark Dragon is killed, Lisuandra nevertheless dies from some wounds or is turned to stone by a stealthy cockatrice?