So, it's been a while, but I've finally come out with a new campaign, set in the World of Orbivm (i.e. the Imperial Era). Thus, I am announcing "a new campaign by turin".

This campaign is a sequel of sorts to Alfhelm the Wise; it is from the point of view of the Cavernei, not the Marauders, but it will make much more sense if you've already played AtW Part III: "The Dark Depths of the Forest". In the timeline of Orbivm, it occurs in parallel with that campaign segment.



It has been released on the dev server, and should work with 1.5.7+. You'll need the most recent version of the Imperial Era as well; I just released 0.17.6, which is pretty much the same as 0.17.5 except for campaign play. Enjoy, and as always, C&C welcome.

Nice to know that you are still making campaigns. I played all your last ones and I like the availability of multiple campaigns in a different setting that all tie together.

Hopefully this one is just as good as the others. I will certainly post actual feedback here eventually.

Well, IMO it's as good as the other ones, but beware it's somewhat... different. I may have been channeling all the bad aspects of Gene Wolfe's writing; the plot, while I think perfectly reasonable, can feel disjointed as parts, especially the final two scenarios. It might not really feel like a conclusion.... I dunno. I'd actually be really interested to hear if people think it works or not.


BTW, you'll need to download the newest IE release too; I include all the campaign-only units that are used in multiple campaign in the IE itself, and there are some new ones for GC.

Gene Wolfe's writing has bad aspects?

I am using 1.5.7.

Edit: Sorry... no Imperial_Era installed... I thought game automatically downloaded it when game said about dependency... :/

I haven't made up my mind about that yet, but if it does, this campaign suffers from similar ones.

hi, I'm lost in scenario 3, where is the minor entrance (goal 3/3)?
so far, playing on medium, scenario 1 was pretty harsh, all those lvl2 outlaws were giving me considerable trouble, had to resolve to save/loading. I've managed to level 3 lvl 2 units. Finished by turn 17.
Scenario 2 was fine.
I like this campaign, thanks

The 'minor entrance' is in the west, at 3,46... there's an item on it to point it out, but I guess items aren't visible through fog. Dang. Does anyone know a way to point out a hex as important to the player if they can only see it through fog?

I found scenario 1 to be pretty easy. I lost scenario 2 the first time I tried it; I had recruited and played very conservatively, resulting in me getting steamrollered by the reinforcements. The second time I brought out all my big guns from the first scenario, finished the second objective at a reasonably quick pace, and then took my time wiping out every last enemy on the map.

Are you really supposed to have unlimited time in that scenario? Not only does it give you a shot at taking out Lokka, but I found scenario 3 to be pretty beastly given how little starting gold you have due to the lack of bonus in the previous scenario; of course, if you do kill Lokka you can sit around and get infinite gold (I just advanced as soon as I had finished him off).

Nope, you are Turin Turambar, Master of Deception, by deception mastered. And you are not on Wesbreak, or if you are, it is not a canonical Wesbreak since you have been posting a lot lately.

Me too.

Good point about unlimited turns in scenario 2... when playtesting it, I figured people wouldn't be able to take out Lokka (he's supposed to be undefeatable), and so they'd be forced to run away anyway. But I guess some people can in fact defeat him. Problem is the plot makes no sense if you do - it only works if you're forced out of the caves, because there's no reason you'd leave voluntarily if you were about to finish Lokka off. :ponder: Guess I'll just set a turn limit and let those good enough to get the upper hand before the turns run out be perplexed as to why their main character is turning tail and running when he's about to win...


Oh, yeah, forgot to change my signature now that I'm not on Wesbreak due to being back in the USA.

He is not all that hard to defeat, at least not on easy. As long as you can get to the two choke points to his castle. Defeating him would be essentially impossible if the back door of the summoning room was missing or if at least one path from his castle was wide enough for two or three units at a time. Next scenario is hard enough that I gave up on it.

Good point... I'll make it easier for his troops to get out into the open.



The third scenario is probably the hardest and longest of the campaign. (I might edit scenario 7 to be more epic at some point, but for now it's kinda wimpy.)

So yeah, the third scenario's supposed to be hard. But not impossible. I'll think about modifying it a bit... for starters, make sure you have enough starting gold; try editing the scenario file to give {GOLD 150 130 120} rather than {GOLD 100 90 80} or whatever it has now. (I've changed this in SVN, but I don't think that change made it to the released version.)

Can you tell me how far you got into the scenario before you gave up?

I just picked up the campaign and I like it a lot so far, with the exception of the fact that scenario 2 seems to be almost impossible to me. ...alright, that was what I was about to write, until I thought "maybe you *can* recruit units" and found out that you can, in fact, recruit more reinforcements to send through the lodestone. This should be mentioned somewhere, as I immediately ruled it out based on the fact that no-one with a gold crown was still on the sending end.

Still, I'm excited about dwarven spellcasters

Back to playing the campaign.

Just finished the second mission and failed the 3rd. In the second mission, I was basically forced into turtling in the lodestone chamber for the entire mission. This worked out well, and I ended the mission with several level 3 units after whittling away the enemy forces slowly over the course of many turns. Some saveloading was also involved ;(. Basically, I couldn't find a way to break out of the lodestone chamber with enemies swarming around the entrance. Any forward progress beyond the fort tiles would put my units at a disadvantage, allowing them to be attacked by more enemy units (of which there were plenty) and putting them at slightly lower defense. Forced to turtle, I was able to do so (barely) by saveloading at critical moments to force levelups. Once I had a bunch of level-3 units and my opponents were mostly dead, I broke out, killed the remaining enemies, and headed for the exit (Although I probably could have taken out Lokka if I had wanted to spend a bunch more turns on it). Still, having a time limit would have made the map pretty impossible (It took me 55 turns, but given my strategy, that time could vary widely).Basically, I'd say that the enemy that you have to kill should recruit far fewer units, to the point where breaking out is feasible in under 10 turns (before the reinforcements arrive), so that the map plays like it feels it's supposed to.

Comments on the third scenario:

Armed with a plethora of level 3 units, I recalled a Runemaster, a Dragonguard, a Sentinel, and a Lord to accompany my Runemaster and Monitor heroes (That was from default starting gold, as I'd played the previous scenario in the red...). I proceeded to shrug off and destroy the ice bears I encountered without TOO much difficulty, although at one point my Monitor took a few hits and was doing poorly. I spend 2 or 3 turns near the top of the map dallying around, but other than that, I was moving Gali at full speed continuously. I made contact with the elves around turn 25, and got Gali near enough to the entrance for the guards to pop out on turn 30, at which point I lost on time. Given that the player isn't supposed to have a bunch of level 3 units, this map seems like it needs more turns (and maybe fewer bears?). As a side note, the bear image was missing from the campaign (I copied the image from Alfhelm the Wise's campaign, creating images/monsters as a directory in the process), and several times the Monitor commented on the snow but the map didn't change, giving an error about maps without headers being unsupported. The first couple of times it worked, though.

I like what I've seen of the campaign so far, even if it is a bit difficult. I'm playing on Normal mode, but I find myself saveloading quite a bit to survive. Of course, all of the Imperial Era campaigns seem much more difficult than the standard campaigns to me, but I'm not sure whether that's the campaigns or the era's unit balance.

Keep up the excellent work.