Desert Traders [1.12 SP scenario]

[drakearbiter]

I liked this SP scenario very much! Quite a refreshing change as I am faced with random spawned monsters. Also earning money from successful protection of trade routes (failure of which will result in most likely defeat). I was defeated twice on hard, but won in the third attempt.

The game was difficult in the beginning when I was under siege from bandits streaming from one side and nagas in the other. I was almost overrun, but the nagas decided to attack bandits caught on sand (easy prey), which resulted in me surviving the initial siege. There is element of luck and unpredictability here. From then on the game got progressively easier. I had only one scorpion spawn though.

It was however, fun to watch the bandits getting eaten by giant spiders though. I only had to face one spider.

Using wesnoth 1.14.7 and scenario version 1.5b

[white_haired_uncle]

Interesting scenario. I won on easy (in 70 turns), but I think I played it really poorly. Replay's attached, but it's pretty boring, so...

Spoiler:

I figured I'd open up the coastal and eastern routes to get some cash coming in, then stage an attack on the bandit leader. With gold being an obvious limiting factor, I wanted to focus on levelling my units and having some healers for support.

I didn't deal well with the way the enemies tended to come in in waves, in particular I didn't even notice the nagas at first. So I ended up basically playing catch-up, scraping up units as I could and running from fire to fire. I was able to level some units, but I didn't support them properly and so they got picked off by swarms of enemy units. I took one shot at charging the bandit leader when he was well injured by spiders, but he recruited a bunch and kicked my rear.

I never opened up the other two routes. I finished with 13 caravans from the east and 2 from the coast (most coastal caravans being killed by the nagas I didn't handle well). IMO, the eastern route is just too easy, it's mostly challenged by scorpions who just aren't much of a match for burners, especially once they start to level up.

I went ahead and played 10 more turns just to kill the bandit leader. I found myself in a weird position, in between any of the enemy waves and having several caravans just cashed in (they had been blocked on the eastern route by a single spider that took a while to kill, so once the path was cleared they all made it to the market at about the same time). I'm not sure if the idea of this scenario is to sit back and pick just the right time (between the waves of enemy attacks) to go aggressive, or if that's just the way the RNG played out.

BTW, I really like the way the desert monsters attack the AI as well as the human (I didn't notice if they attacked each other, like spiders vs scorpions). Seems to make for interesting choices (do I jump in a grab a cheap kill for XP, hoping both sides don't turn on me, or...?).

One thought: It might be nice for caravans to have at least a defense-only attack. The idea being that even if they have no weapons, an attacking enemy could suffer damage by, for example, tripping on a rock and cutting themself with their own sword.

[skeptical_troll]

Hi WHU!

One thought: It might be nice for caravans to have at least a defense-only attack. The idea being that even if they have no weapons, an attacking enemy could suffer damage by, for example, tripping on a rock and cutting themself with their own sword.

Oh well, why not? It could just add some fun, in the general spirit of the scenario. In another campaign I made there are caravan with some anti-theft balista system (as AMLA) , I can probably introduce it here.

IMO, the eastern route is just too easy, it's mostly challenged by scorpions who just aren't much of a match for burners, especially once they start to level up.

I know, my intention there was to prevent frustration and grant the player at least some flow of cash with little effort, given that the other routes could be tricky to keep open. On harder levels it may not be enough though.

I can't say there is a clear idea on how to win the scenario, I created it (some time ago) just to experiment with some alternative mechanics, and the extreme RNG makes games quite different from each other, also in terms of difficulty. I know this is against canonical BfW design principles, but for a stand-alone scenario it should be acceptable, and I thought it added *some* replay value.

[LienRag]

Do you plan to make a campaign out of it ?
It was a bit frustrating at the end of the scenario to just quit all the characters and setting...

[skeptical_troll]

Do you plan to make a campaign out of it ?

Not really, I conceived this as a stand-alone scenario focused on game mechanics. I haven't planned to make a story out of it, but if anyone is interested in replicating the mechanics/settings in their campaign I'm more than happy to provide help.

[Konrad2]

The roadhouses don't work for Dune Horse Archers.

I'm not sure if I was very lucky the first 20 turns (almost no enemies showed up), or if it's a bug.

[skeptical_troll]

Hi Konrad2!

The roadhouses don't work for Dune Horse Archers.

Indeed that's a bit where I forgot to update names. Fixed now.

I'm not sure if I was very lucky the first 20 turns (almost no enemies showed up), or if it's a bug.

Part of it may be luck, a lot of spawning is random in this scenario which makes it a bit unpredictable. On the other hand, some enemies only spawn if you have opened a particular route. Nagas get very aggressive when caravans are travelling along the coast, just like trolls are only getting out of the cave if you open either of the northern routes.

What I expected to happen a bit more was perhaps scorpions being annoying in the eastern route, which is usually the easier source of income. I've slightly increased that probability, but I'd rather avoid this to be too frustrating either.

Thanks for spotting these problems!