Campaign: The Tribe

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cph
Posts: 129
Joined: May 12th, 2007, 4:29 pm
Location: London, UK

Campaign: The Tribe

Post by cph »

I have just uploaded my first attempt at a Wesnoth campaign, "The Tribe", to the campaign server; and it is also attached to this post.

It's a campaign as Northerners against a variety of opponents, starting with fairly small armies and building up as the campaign progresses. There are 8 scenarios & the plot for the campaign is complete as far as it goes. It's my first campaign so the first 2 scenarios are fairly ordinary, but it gets more interesting after that.

This is for wesnoth 1.2.4; I haven't tested it on any other version (and the 3rd scenario uses some non-trivial WML, so it's possible it would have problems on other versions).

Difficulty/balancing: this has been tough so far. I have only been playing Wesnoth for maybe 2 months, so I'm not a very experienced player (HttT at Medium is a comfortably challenging game to me, let's say). I have aimed therefore for something around the same difficulty as HttT; whether I succeeded is for you to judge. I have tested only at Easy and Medium (Hard would probably be too hard for me :-) ).

General comments, bug reports etc welcome. Replays would probably be interesting to me too - no doubt you will come up with ways to beat the levels that I never thought of.

I'm still thinking about how to take the campaign further - it's not an epic campaign, so in theory it's totally open-ended. I have ideas for extending it, but with 8 scenarios done I decided it was time to get some feedback.
cph
Posts: 129
Joined: May 12th, 2007, 4:29 pm
Location: London, UK

v0.2.0, released for wesnoth v1.3.6

Post by cph »

New version released. The campaign has been ported to v1.3 (only works on 1.3.6 or later), and is now on the v1.3.x campaign server.
  • Tidy up WML, use 1.3 macros;
  • Use 1.3 terrain features where appropriate;
  • Redesign scenario 7, this is much more interesting & gives a more substantial fight on both sides of the lake; also submerge plays a bigger role, as originally intended;
  • Prefix scenario ids with numbers, (so stats.wesnoth.org orders them right).
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TL
Posts: 511
Joined: March 3rd, 2007, 3:02 am

Post by TL »

Cool little campaign (just tried it on 1.3.6), but the troll hole scenario is kind of lame. Fighting through the endless stream of troll whelps with only 1 unit at a time is just frustrating. The ending was a little bit anticlimactic as well, both in terms of story and the combat itself. There didn't seem to be much to suggest that this is the end and the tribe is saved or whatnot, so the ending seemed kind of abrupt. And really, fighting level 1 enemies (at least that's what appears on the medium difficulty) is kind of a joke that late in a campaign, especially when you just got a gold boost.

I did generally think it was a very good short campaign, though. I particularly liked the river raid and undead lake scenarios. If it was longer the lack of diversity in recruits and level up options would be a bit tedious but as it is I think it's just about right.
MDG
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Joined: June 7th, 2007, 11:18 am
Location: UK

Post by MDG »

I was hoping you'd upgrade this to the development branch :D (mainly because I really didn't want to go 'back' to the stable version).

Like TL, I've played it all the way through and, for a first attempt at a campaign, I'm very impressed. Unlike TL, I played it through at the easiest level. This is on 1.3.6.

No show stopping bugs, a few minor things to give feedback on;

1) You might want to sort out the magenta team colours on the difficulty levels at the start, just check some of the mainline campaign files for non-magenta examples.

2) Noticed that the elven hero's name in the second scenario is "= Elthir". I checked the scenario cfg and I'm guessing the equals in the user_description is supposed to be an underscore for translation purposes rather than part of the actual name.

3) Where you place units directly within scenarios (rather than the player or AI recruiting them) they don't get any traits. If this is not deliberate then use the modifications tag and add specific traits, or else use the random_traits=yes attribute/value within the unit tag. The Naga were one example of this issue.

4) You could use the IS_HERO macro for the goblin leader and the footpad ally. Helps make it clearer that they are important and shouldn't die (it adds one of the crowns to the units at the top of the hp/exp bars). Delfador, Kalenz, Lisar all get this in Heir to Throne. Same in the other mainline campaigns. Check the scenario cfg for Elves Besieged in HttT.

Very enjoyable overall. I would agree with TL about the underground scenarios, too many one hex wide chokepoints/tunnels and game play can begin to drag. I'd also agree that the (current) last scenario was perhaps disappointing for the reasons TL outlined above but, I believe you deliberately left the ending open? If not, you may want to increase the difficulty of the climactic scenario and add in an epilogue scenario to wrap things up.

AI seemed to do some odd things in a few scenarios but I'll need to test this again and see if I can catch the odd AI decisions in a replay. If so, I'll post it up.

Anyway, congrats... nice job.
cph
Posts: 129
Joined: May 12th, 2007, 4:29 pm
Location: London, UK

Thanks

Post by cph »

Thanks for the feedback.
MDG wrote: 1) You might want to sort out the magenta team colours on the difficulty levels at the start,...
2) Noticed that the elven hero's name in the second scenario is "= Elthir". ...
4) You could use the IS_HERO macro for the goblin leader and the footpad ally...
Thanks, these changes will be in the next version.
MDG wrote: 3) Where you place units directly within scenarios (rather than the player or AI recruiting them) they don't get any traits. If this is not deliberate then use the modifications tag and add specific traits, or else use the random_traits=yes attribute/value within the unit tag. The Naga were one example of this issue.
Yes, particularly the Naga, since I make the player pay normal cost for them. I'll go through and add these where appropriate.
TL wrote: ...the troll hole scenario is kind of lame. Fighting through the endless stream of troll whelps with only 1 unit at a time is just frustrating.
We'll have to agree to disagree on that one - I rather like Troll Lair. It's a bit mean perhaps, making Northerners fight in a cave without Trolls (& against Trolls). But I quickly found tactics that I was comfortable with, and enjoyed it more than, say, Troll Hole in TRoW, mostly because orc archers & assassins seem to be good anti-troll units. It's better to fall back and have 2 units to one troll, rather than waste time fighting 1-on-1 against regenerating units; & move forward to the next junction or widening when the opportunity presents.
TL wrote: The ending was a little bit anticlimactic as well, both in terms of story and the combat itself.
Yes, it's incomplete at the moment; the outlaw scenario will only make sense if it's made harder or if you had to retain gold for a later battle. The storyline is essentially open-ended, and there's nothing in the existing plot to lead to a climactic battle, so I need to come up with an ending.

I originally intended that I might do 3-4 more scenarios. I'm finding that, with Northerners lacking any healers, I tend to recruit a lot of Troll Whelps as soon as they are available; which is fine for a few levels, but could get dull. I need to try adding some further scenarios and see if I can make it sufficiently different/interesting - or I could just cut the final scenario and make getting the dwarves' treasure be the conclusion.
MDG
Posts: 378
Joined: June 7th, 2007, 11:18 am
Location: UK

Further scenarios

Post by MDG »

cph wrote:
TL wrote: The ending was a little bit anticlimactic as well, both in terms of story and the combat itself.
Yes, it's incomplete at the moment; the outlaw scenario will only make sense if it's made harder or if you had to retain gold for a later battle. The storyline is essentially open-ended, and there's nothing in the existing plot to lead to a climactic battle, so I need to come up with an ending.

I originally intended that I might do 3-4 more scenarios. I'm finding that, with Northerners lacking any healers, I tend to recruit a lot of Troll Whelps as soon as they are available; which is fine for a few levels, but could get dull. I need to try adding some further scenarios and see if I can make it sufficiently different/interesting - or I could just cut the final scenario and make getting the dwarves' treasure be the conclusion.
Did they get pushed out of their home territory by other Northerner's? If so, perhaps another scenario could be the retaking of their home? Alternatively, if not, perhaps while they were away someone or something took up residence where they lived and needs to be dealt with upon return? A third option might be vengeance against some of the other tribes they were struggling against under their old leader?
cph wrote:Thanks for the feedback.
You are welcome. Thank you for a great small/mid-size campaign. It really was fun to play.
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TL
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Re: Thanks

Post by TL »

cph wrote:We'll have to agree to disagree on that one - I rather like Troll Lair. It's a bit mean perhaps, making Northerners fight in a cave without Trolls (& against Trolls). But I quickly found tactics that I was comfortable with, and enjoyed it more than, say, Troll Hole in TRoW, mostly because orc archers & assassins seem to be good anti-troll units. It's better to fall back and have 2 units to one troll, rather than waste time fighting 1-on-1 against regenerating units; & move forward to the next junction or widening when the opportunity presents.
This was the strategy I attempted on my first runthrough, which subsequently failed miserably due to lack of time. Even with 2-3 units per troll I had difficulty killing them faster than they got replaced; it's possible that I may have been more successful if I had done a better job leveling units and keeping experienced units in previous scenarios (I only had 2 crossbowmen and an orc warrior to start with, although in the process I leveled up a couple of others including a slayer), but it's not very good for the campaign's flow that there's this one scenario in the middle of the campaign that's vastly more difficult than anything before or after it.

After running out of time and trying again I managed to slide in with a victory on the very last turn. Where the length of the narrow corridors and the number of troll whelps had stopped me from making any progress from my 2- and 3-unit killzones before, this time I made a deliberate effort to muscle forward through the narrow passageways and actually managed to make enough headway to get a couple of high level units through to fight the troll king in time to kill him.
cph wrote:I originally intended that I might do 3-4 more scenarios. I'm finding that, with Northerners lacking any healers, I tend to recruit a lot of Troll Whelps as soon as they are available; which is fine for a few levels, but could get dull. I need to try adding some further scenarios and see if I can make it sufficiently different/interesting - or I could just cut the final scenario and make getting the dwarves' treasure be the conclusion.
I don't know, I think keeping it interesting that much longer might be difficult. The basic spread of northerner units is kind of boring for long campaigning due to lack of diversity in units and levelups. A big climactic battle to cap things off is always nice, but I'm not sure how much you could add before it got tedious.
Rothrorn
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Joined: April 26th, 2004, 8:03 am

Post by Rothrorn »

Hello

I've just finished this campaign and really enjoyed it. I would rate it as being among the best, it had an interesting plot which developed logically and didn't just seem to be a series of loosely connected battles like some campaigns can. I think it could and should be made at least a few scenarios longer - maybe detailing the trip home (against vengeful dwarves, elves etc). Anyway, thansk again for a great campaign.
Rothrorn the Wise
Deodand
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Joined: January 8th, 2007, 2:41 pm

Re: Campaign: The Tribe

Post by Deodand »

I played and enjoyed the first scenario 2 years ago. Anyone considering an update to 1.6 for this?
cph
Posts: 129
Joined: May 12th, 2007, 4:29 pm
Location: London, UK

Re: Campaign: The Tribe

Post by cph »

I'll be picking this up again - port to 1.8 and overhaul.
cph
Posts: 129
Joined: May 12th, 2007, 4:29 pm
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The Tribe 0.2.2 - for wesnoth 1.8.0

Post by cph »

Okay, I've finished a port & overhaul of my campaign. Porting to 1.8.0 proved easy enough thanks to wmllint.

I decided that some of the levels were a bit dull, so I discarded 4 of the original 8 levels. (Including the unpopular Troll Lair; one underground level is enough I think.) I have added 3 new levels. I think there is enough variety, with some unusual levels or levels requiring a bit of strategic thinking, to keep things interesting.

It's on the add-on server now. Let me know if you hate it, or have suggestions, or if I have made any silly mistakes. I've done a fair amount of testing (at easy and normal, anyway).
cph
Posts: 129
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Location: London, UK

Re: Campaign: The Tribe

Post by cph »

I have updated this for 1.9.x and uploaded it to the 1.9 add-on server. I have made no major changes to the campaign; I have just replaced some deprecated macros that I was using and updated the scenario objectives to use some of the newer macros.

7 levels; everything seemed to work well on my play-test. If you have any feedback then please post here.
Velensk
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Re: Campaign: The Tribe

Post by Velensk »

I know it's been awhile since anything happened here but I just wanted to say that I liked this campaign. Nice, short, simple.

I felt the story and ending were not strong but that's not too important to me.

I felt that the Troll scenario (playing on medium) was a bit luck dependent. It seemed to me that you had to set up an assassination given the resources you have (I came in with about 160 gold and only one level two and another close) this is a bit chancy. I suspect that if I'd gotten a pillager it wouldn't have been such an issue but without one it seemed chancy.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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perseo
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Re: Campaign: The Tribe

Post by perseo »

Wow! Thank you Velensk, I decided to have a try at the campaign after reading your comment and so far is being a great campaign.
See ya!
"I was pulling a barrow, when I saw a stalking horse
what a beautiful day!- he said- for visiting a red herring
and getting hoarse."
Working on this campaign: The septentrional tower
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