MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Discussion of all aspects of multiplayer development: unit balancing, map development, server development, and so forth.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

nuclear216
Posts: 4
Joined: October 30th, 2010, 1:31 pm

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by nuclear216 »

Hi,

I plaid the campaign two times on 1.8: in short, great job! :D

I got as far as season 2 actually, first time season 1 only, than learned how to play it, survived next try with another fella, got to season two (badly injured) and died learning how to tackle it for next run.
If this is going to be the pattern it should be a very fun MP scenario to do, especially if one keeps trying with the same person, It also seems to me that faction combination for the two player is a key strategic element for making all 7 season, but I got only to season 2 so anyone share this feeling?

Yet I feel that some tweaking and refinement might still be needed, I personally found it very hard and challenging, no error are allowed anywhere and sometimes it's too much, but it's still feasible if the two players work together very well, so this is kinda this campaign strength and it's drawback at the same time, which is basically fine but maybe could improve if eased up a bit IMHO.
A few general point on how it could be made easier, not necessarily better depending on one's view:
  • 1) enemy unit leveling, shouldn't be so easy, my first take at season 2 enemy levelled many water and horse unit, would it be possible to make it so that enemy exp is not 70%?
  • 2) If this is going to be a increasingly difficult curve maybe first seasons could be made easier, allowing at least one player (maybe one at a time? this could fit with the coop strategy of this campaign very well I guess) to keep gold easier
  • 3) Seems to me that enemy recruit are randomized, which is good if one design it keeping in mind all possible players faction combination, but it also introduces a strategically element that makes it very hard, of the two time I did season one the first enemy came down with horse+peasant+heavy infantry, second time they came with archers+peasant+heavy, but I'm really not sure of this, can anyone confirm?
But overall I feel that keeping gold is the hardest part of it, one has to be both very careful with spending but also needs cannon fodder and it's too hard to save gold for the next scenario so if I were the designer and wanted to ease it up a bit I'd rather add villages in some scenario to give the opportunity to keep more gold for the next one.

As far as the two scenario design I saw till now they're great, nothing to object there, except maybe some specific tweaking that could make it easier:

Season One
I Immediately assessed the situation as that we had to hold the enemy at the middle part of the map taking early hold of those villages keep enemy there on the plane while attacking them from villages/hills/forest and take control of the villages at the bridge as early as possible, possibly keeping hold of side villages and the other bridges with fast moving unit, than either force the bridge enemy units or quickly lure out and surround the enemy leader with a some unit sneaking from the side bridges. Is this a correct assessment? anyone tackling it in a different way?
I feel the middle part villages (not those at the bridge end) could be moved down to allow easier access and positioning for the players, than again I like dwarf and I always play with them so I move slow on planes

Season Two
We tried to hold the west bridge to our island while taking control of the north big island, one player (elves) defending the bridge and I (dwarf) moving to the north Island and taking hold of it making good use of those mountains, but in the end we were defeated by his leveled unit (horse and water) and I'm still uncertain on how to tackle the water unit the enemy pours out.
I feel that this scenario could make us of some more villages for the players in the eastern small island.
There's only one there and it cost a unit some turns to move there and it's strategically insignificant except for villages for gold, so there could me more of them there to make it worth the trip and smooth a little bit the overall campaign difficulty.

Thanks for reading, if anyones wants to play this campaign with me I always choose dwarf, I play since years strategy games and wesnoth since a few years on and off, mostly SP campaign, I finished all dwarf official campaign and some more others, now I just felled in love with MP campaign.
I take into account things like day/night cycle, leveling, defence terrain, I like to talk and plan carefully the strategy and I'm Italian, playing usually at 21:00-02:00 PM UTC/GMT +1 hour, so if anyone has a few nights to spend trying this campaign I'd be glad to play.
Rya
Posts: 350
Joined: September 23rd, 2009, 9:01 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rya »

Thanks for the feedback. You should note however, that the levels are basically designed keeping in mind that human players can play better than the AI. That's why the map design is generally in favour of the AI. The players are supposed to figure out a tactic to prevent the AI from taking advantage from the map design too much or even trick the AI.
1) enemy unit leveling, shouldn't be so easy, my first take at season 2 enemy levelled many water and horse unit, would it be possible to make it so that enemy exp is not 70%?
Enemy units need to level fast, to balance out the players being smarter when it comes to leveling units. If the AI levels up too much and you never level up, there must be something wrong with your strategy. Try playing yours units so that the enemy units with high exp don't have the possibility to kill any of your units. Retreat wounded units with exp, instead of letting them suicide.
Fast leveling units of the AI is also needed to balance the game over time. It is not supposed to get easier towards then end.
2) If this is going to be a increasingly difficult curve maybe first seasons could be made easier, allowing at least one player (maybe one at a time? this could fit with the coop strategy of this campaign very well I guess) to keep gold easier
The key to keep more gold lies within the early finish bonus. It's worth a lot more than keeping lots of villages and saving up money. The turn limit is set so that good players can finish each stage 10 turns early (for example the first stage in 20 turns). Finishing 10 turns early already means 120 (300*0.4) carryover gold only from that, plus 40% of the gold you currently carry. The players that finished the campaign had around 160 carryover gold in most scenarios.

If you want an easier start that allows you to keep more carryover gold, you can simply modify the starting gold. I didn't block changing it. The default is 100, but you can set it to 150 or 200 or 800, whatever you think is best for you.

The main mistake I observed that most player do in the first scenario is involving their leaders too early. Then realizing they can't win without recruiting new units, then they walk back and re-recruit and then realize, they can't finish the scenario in time anymore. Keep your leader close to your base in the first 10 turns and keep recruiting new units. Only when you get the feeling you have enough units to win with them (turn 11-15), start moving your leader towards the enemy base and involve him into combat. This tactic will allow you to finish the stage early and still have more than 100 leftover gold.
3) Seems to me that enemy recruit are randomized, which is good if one design it keeping in mind all possible players faction combination, but it also introduces a strategically element that makes it very hard, of the two time I did season one the first enemy came down with horse+peasant+heavy infantry, second time they came with archers+peasant+heavy, but I'm really not sure of this, can anyone confirm?
If the AI always recruited the same units, it would reduce the strategy a lot. In Wesnoth (especially also in ladder matches), it is very important to react to the units that the enemy recruited with the appropriate counter units. You will not be able to beat the campaign by only recruiting one type of unit.
In the first scenario however the AI will only recruit Peasants on the first turn, so you can at least react to those with useful units. Otherwise keep a versatile party. The units the AI can recruit are usually limited to one faction plus 1-3 extra units. You as players can use the fact that you work together and can have two different factions. It is quite possible to get a versatile army together.


By the way, it's pretty much worth getting the villages, even if they are further away. In most scenarios it's good to have a few scouting units that don't fight but steal villages instead. If you play Dwarves, get a Gryphon (preferably with quick) that first gets the southeast village and then the northeast village and then tries to steal the villages further to the west. Considering the reduced upkeep having 2 more villages for 20 turns is worth 120 gold. That makes up for the cost of the Gryphon (Gryphons are also cheaper if you recall them: 20 gold).


I hope I could help you a little and wish you a lot success. :-)
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
nuclear216
Posts: 4
Joined: October 30th, 2010, 1:31 pm

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by nuclear216 »

Rya wrote:Thanks for the feedback.
...
I hope I could help you a little and wish you a lot success. :-)
Well actually last night I found a partner with my skill level and we play well together and we past winter then we were too tired to continue.
We're tackling it with Drake/Dwarf combination and it's working very well we started with 175 gold.
They say the repetition is the mother of success, what can I say: beautiful maps, if the intention was to challenge the player to "out trick" AI with different strategy that is exactly what is getting us past the games, I was finally able to find the right recruit order and learned a few things on the way and I'm stashing gold, having a few trouble keeping leveled unit but that's due to my too aggressive strategy.

The very interesting dynamic is that we want not just to win a scenario but to win it in a specific way, units level wise, gold wise, and now you're pointing me out to early finish bonus which we achieved 10 level before finish for all the scenarios we plaid so far.

Thanks for all the fun we're having, because once one finds the right approach they're both challenging and fun.
User avatar
Flyro
Posts: 27
Joined: March 12th, 2011, 9:58 pm

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons - Beta testers needed

Post by Flyro »

Rya wrote:Hmm, since I couldn't find any testers I just put it on the add-on server now.

You can find it as "The 7 Seasons Campaign".

I tried to update it again but it didn't work. :-/
How do I update it? I changed the pbl file a little (the title and the version), but it always uploads it with the old title and version number.
Any idea?
How did you solve it? Ive got the same problem. please PM ansver.
Rya
Posts: 350
Joined: September 23rd, 2009, 9:01 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rya »

Hm nope, don't remember how I solved it. It has something to do with your folder structure and files you need to put together so it shows up on the add-on server, then you can just select "add my campaign" on the add-on screen at the bottom.
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
User avatar
Flyro
Posts: 27
Joined: March 12th, 2011, 9:58 pm

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Flyro »

Rya wrote:Hm nope, don't remember how I solved it. It has something to do with your folder structure and files you need to put together so it shows up on the add-on server, then you can just select "add my campaign" on the add-on screen at the bottom.
NP i solved it myself by deleting the server.bpl and make a new one
salade
Posts: 50
Joined: January 3rd, 2011, 5:48 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by salade »

I played 7 seasons once 1-2 months ago, forgotten what difficult it was and my partner and i should completed map 2 or 3.

Compare to World Conquest(WC, another mp campaign), i miss the concepts of heroes and treasures in WC and get bored shortly. I think the point of playing (multi scenario) campaign is that we can develop our army and heroes progressively. Treasures give unique skills or improvement to any unit. And both treasure and heroes are partially random, together with randomly generated map, every game is different. I haven't got bored to play WC map 1 even though i have repeated it for so many times.

The 7 Seasons use static map. for map 1, the map is large and it takes a long time to travel back to castle to recruit. When I play WC, i like to reduce the size of the map from default so that fights could happen sooner. And has the leader is the best unit at the beginning, i could use it to fight in the frontline and when I need to recruit, it won't take too many turns to travel back. The 2nd map, as i remember, has a lot of forest that is favorable to elf.

so far, i didn't see the unique selling point of this campaign. say, u could make campaign with great story, beautiful map, unique features (your shop/treasure/hero etc.). i think similar to the official single player campaign isn't that attractive to me, but it's just me.
Rya
Posts: 350
Joined: September 23rd, 2009, 9:01 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rya »

Well the selling point for one is that it doesn't include any customs, like treasures and stuff. It is full vanilla gameplay like the official campaigns just for two players. That is exactly what I couldn't find.

I don't like WC because of the treasures and how the AI recruits everything at the beginning just to end up with no money later on. I improved this in The 7 Seasons, by focusing on making the AI get slightly more gold per turn rather than giving it more starting money and less gold per turn. Another selling point (this is pretty rare overall in Wesnoth, even the official campaigns aren't challenging in such a way).

Another selling point is the "silent story". It doesn't have any text, but yet it has a story told through the maps.

A already made the maps fairly "small", but not "tiny". I think that 5 turns to reach the enemy base seems to be best strategy-wise. If they are smaller a lot of strategy is lost. Same reason why people say that it's impossible to balance tiny maps.
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
User avatar
Rigor
Posts: 941
Joined: September 27th, 2007, 1:40 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rigor »

i think i couldnt have described it better. the vanilla gameplay after so many additional gimmicks is the reason why i liked it too in the firs place. nothing surprising, nothing where u thought "its overpowered" just plain AI vs u and others. while WC is very entertaining too, and for myself its always worth a shot after some months, the 7 seasons are too. its the difference i guess.
SneakDog
Posts: 3
Joined: May 18th, 2011, 9:27 pm

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by SneakDog »

I played this map with my friend, He is very new to the game and I'm not that good at it, so we played on easy, thinking beginner might be slightly too easy.
He played as dwarves and I picked loyalists, a faction I usually don't play with.
We got slowly slaughtered on map 1, the enemy had too much income for us to keep up with and we couldn't get any harder to reach villages.
I did like the looks of the map though.

Edit: uploaded the replay, you can see us fail now!
Attachments
The_7_Seasons_Campaign_herspeel.gz
(49.84 KiB) Downloaded 427 times
Rya
Posts: 350
Joined: September 23rd, 2009, 9:01 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rya »

You didn't really play on "easy". First of all it has no difficulty setting, just a starting gold setting that defaults to 100. Second of all you used the default starting gold of 100 if I remember correctly (watched your game live).
Try starting with 150 gold or more next time. :-)

And thanks for playing.
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
willis
Posts: 11
Joined: March 1st, 2012, 2:17 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by willis »

My wife and I started playing this campaign using Wesnoth 1.8 - We were in the middle of the winter scenario, upgraded to Wesnoth 1.10, and tried restoring our existing saved game (I know, dubious at best). It seemed to work fine, but the AI seems to make significantly better decisions, so we got trashed. Eventually we went back to 1.8 to continue the campaign.

Am I correct that the AI is a lot better in 1.10, or am I just making excuses for poor luck/tactics? Are there any plans to update the Seven Seasons and make it available for 1.10?

Oh, and thanks for making a great multiplayer campaign - it's exactly what I was looking for, just plain vanilla Wesnoth for two players.
Rya
Posts: 350
Joined: September 23rd, 2009, 9:01 am

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by Rya »

Thanks for the positive feedback! I'm always happy when someone enjoy something I made. :-)

Unfortunately, I'm not planning to upgrade the campaign to 1.10. It seems so unnecessary having to do it every time a new version of Wesnoth is released. This should be something that is done automatically and in such a way that a campaign creator has to come back every year and update his campaign again and again. -.-'

I'm not sure about the changing in the AI but I heard that it improves in 1.10 as well. It doesn't have much to do with the campaign, it uses the official AI except that it recruits more randomly so that each playthrough is a bit different.
Wesnoth
The developer says "no".
hay207
Double Style Tourney #1 Champ
Posts: 121
Joined: November 26th, 2009, 5:46 am
Location: Egypt

Re: MP Campaign: The 7 Seasons (Add-On) - Try it now!

Post by hay207 »

Who ported the addon to 1.14?
Gold need to be fixed.
Ports: Velensk's tower defense, dov's deep shrine, Scrolling survival, Scrolling survival Co-op, Temples of the nagas.
Addons: Tower defense maps , some ANL scenarios like: ANL 3p "A New Land" survival type, and ANL Co-operative map for 2p
Post Reply