The Rise of Wesnoth

This is the place for discussing development of mainline campaigns, reporting bugs in them and providing overall feedback.

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santi
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Post by santi »

I beat Troll hole on hard with much less, something like 380 or so. The key was not to waste any units looking for the (random) troll positions
-and finding the spiders instead, killing which gets you no bonus. Instead, let the trolls come to you. Use your heavy troops(grand knights and Maulers) backed by healers to form a line and mages to blast through trolls, plus send Burin and a silver mage for a flank attack.
I had another reason for waiting: I wanted to make another silver mage
so I had a blue mage kill the tentacles and level to red. Plus some more selective troll killing, got me close to silver and this was handy in the Vanguard. I finished the scenario at turn 17 I think, but I did lose
a royal guard, which I think I could have saved. So don't waste time with the spiders. I could post a replay if you want. But getting to a new land with 260 is impressive. How much did you arrive to "a rough landing with"?
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tr0ll
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Post by tr0ll »

baruk wrote:The final scenario is probably the toughest in terms of raw difficulty, however the gold and recallable units I had available made it more straightforward. Also the fact that you do not need to worry about casualties or gold means you can throw everything you have at it without repercussions.
I noticed this reasoning in the walkthrough as well, but it feels like metagaming. The strategy it suggests is not supported by the in-game knowledge available to the player/hero at the beginning of the scenario: Although you clearly must defeat the orc vanguard and fool the Lich, you still have the fickle elves to worry about so it does not make sense to treat it as the battle to end all battles.

I guess this is not an issue if the scenario is reasonably winnable without sacrificing everything. I haven't succeeded at Normal difficulty after 2 tries (i don't want to use the ai exploit mentioned in the same walkthrough).

Regardless, i wonder if it is possible to have (or perhaps there already are) repercussions in the campaign-closing feedback for a commander who ends up with no money or few high level units? I didn't notice any evaluative feedback of that sort when i finished the training campaigns.
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Theater Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels of war.

Post by boulderbum »

One thing I am curious about, which doesn't really come out in the discussion of each scenario, is a bit about progression from scenario to scenario. A concise list of one person's campaign would give me an idea as to how I am doing. i.e.

Scenario 1 end: 230 gold 1 lvl2 (knight)
Scenario 2 end: 346 gold 3 lvl2 (2 knight, 1 white mage)
Scenario 3 end: 146 gold 5 lvl2 (2 knight, 1 white mage, 1 red mage, Haldric) 1 lvl3 (Paladin)
...and so on.

There is a fair amount of discussion about individual scenario strategy (which I believe is more properly defined as tactics), but not a lot of examples of overall campaign strategy.

As an example, I am looking at Clearwater port... I have a fair number of diverse leveled units, but because of poor tactics earlier (over-recruiting in the woodlands and cave) I am low on cash (100 gold) so I have to bugger off on the first ship, or just fight until loss of units becomes inevitable (even though I have fought through to the southern leader and killed him on one attempt) This leaves me at Lich point, again with 100 gold, and again, I can win the scenario, but more white mages would be better... so I probably should have concentrated more on leveling mages in the swamp earlier (by killing scorp's)

I guess what I am getting at is the old "How hard did you find this scenario?" question is more directly related to what resources you had when you had when you started, then it is to the quality of the scenario itself. (see discussion of clearwater - success varried greatly depending on starting gold and units.... one charged with 10 knights? he must only have been leveling horsemen for the first 5 rounds!)

I think a few lists as I suggested above would help newer players evaluate their success better, and also help campaign developers evaluate the quality of their overall campaign progression.

Any takers? Just and idea...
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santi
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Post by santi »

Well, there is a thread for TROW as well as replays(hope they work with the new version). These will give you an idea of how you're doing,
if you really want that. But the best advice is if you are not happy with how you're doing is simply to go back and replay
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Re: Theater Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels of w

Post by Glowing Fish »

boulderbum wrote:One thing I am curious about, which doesn't really come out in the discussion of each scenario, is a bit about progression from scenario to scenario. A concise list of one person's campaign would give me an idea as to how I am doing. i.e.
That is a problem in a lot of campaigns, and the longer they get, the more of a problem it is. You have to know not just what to do in the current scenario, but how that will effect the next ten scenarios.
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Re: Theater Strategic, Operational, and Tactical levels of w

Post by boulderbum »

Glowing Fish wrote:
boulderbum wrote:One thing I am curious about, which doesn't really come out in the discussion of each scenario, is a bit about progression from scenario to scenario. A concise list of one person's campaign would give me an idea as to how I am doing. i.e.
That is a problem in a lot of campaigns, and the longer they get, the more of a problem it is. You have to know not just what to do in the current scenario, but how that will effect the next ten scenarios.
That is kind of my point... I have already played through on medium difficulty: HttT, UtBS,and the South Guard. I also started ToTB, but hated the cheesy dialog. Anyway, going back and restarting is not a big issue for me, been there, done that. I am pretty sure I can muddle my way through this campaign as well. I don't want to watch replays and copy their tactics, but I want a guideline on where I can improve a bit. A concise statistical listing gives me hints to how to play the campaign with out specific tactical blow by blow details... does that explain what I am looking for a bit better? (of course, maybe I am just too lazy to download and go through someone elses replay.... nah... it just doesn't sound like fun)

Anyway... thanks for the feedback.
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santi
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Post by santi »

I think you're making life too hard on yourself: The point is in each scenario you try to achieve the scenario objectives in the most
economical way, that is avoiding overrecruiting for instance as much as possible. See that as a challenge. For instance in TROW one could
get out on the first ship in Clearwater port, but it should be possible and
not compromise your chances to stay and try to kill them all. You may not make it in time, so get out on the last ship rather than losing, but so what? The campaign is winnable even so, it may just force you to play better in the next scenaria
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Post by Shade »

santi wrote:I think you're making life too hard on yourself: The point is in each scenario you try to achieve the scenario objectives in the most
economical way, that is avoiding overrecruiting for instance as much as possible. See that as a challenge. For instance in TROW one could
get out on the first ship in Clearwater port, but it should be possible and
not compromise your chances to stay and try to kill them all. You may not make it in time, so get out on the last ship rather than losing, but so what? The campaign is winnable even so, it may just force you to play better in the next scenaria
This was one bug that was 'fixed' after I left that I kinda disagree with. Originally there were more turns after the last boat left and bonus got turned on. So if you left on the last boat you got the bonus for the extra turns as a little boost. People found this confusing-- as the last boat would leave with turns left. When I was active, I defended the extra turns and the bonus as the payoff for staying. I suppose Haldric finding a chest of gold in the last ship would also be appropriate... (Hint to the actives :) )

Some things to keep in mind from when I designed TRoW:
-It was designed to ramp up quicker than HttT
-Most scenarios were designed to have a 'final boo'. This was mostly because the pre-0.7.9ish AI was really crude and after you broke the first rush in HttT it was all mop up. After the AI got better I was still fond of them.
-I put a lot of effort into TRoW so that an average player should do fine on medium if they play each scenario no more than twice. Most of my effort went into trying to prevent the amount of gold a player could bring forward from 'going exponential'. Hence 'Temple of the deep, that long Sea Voyage, and those intimidating final scenarios. Santi's advice is sound.

Actually, one of the last things I did before I burnt out and fled in the .9.8 or .9.7 days, was normalized the difference between easy, medium, and hard between TRoW and HttT. (I only made it about 1/3 of the way through re-touching HttT with much help from others.) But I did normalize the difficulty and manage to audit most of the WML in HttH. Old WML rotted quick in those days.) The primary difficulty differences were that HttT ramped up slower, had fewer 'final boo's, and less in the way of nasty surprises. The other difference was that HttT offered more of a chance for player's gold to 'go exponential'. In TRoW after I got a scenario to work, I played it twice and wrote down how many turns it took, what the payout was, and how much total gold there was. HttT never got that methodical bit of treatment. You can get away with overkill in HttT-- TRow, not so much...

(Please note: much of this might have changed. I can't speak to the current state of things very well.)

edit: I made a flippant comment about burning out about .9.7 or .9.8-- It wasn't just Wesnoth. I was in a job I hated that was killing me. My 5 year relationship was beginning to collapse. You know the lady Jessica-- That was homage to her (She's less cynical but just as experienced). I had modest fears that Wesnoth would never get to 1.0 and never have a balanced well integrated unit set, but I was projecting a lot of life stuff into Wesnoth as well. I went away for a couple of weeks and every time I touched Wesnoth I felt sick. I was done.

I look back really fondly at my 'Wesnoth Time'. There were a lot of really good people here. I'm sure there still are (I'm just around less). I was happy to be a small part of the magic for a little while.
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santi
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Post by santi »

Shade, nice to hear from you!!
Just to let you know, I was feeling good about myself after beating the final scenario with 376 gold on hard(using good strategy and abusing silver mages), until Kalis pointed out it was a piece of cake(on hard) since he had a crazy amount of gold. Tracing this back, we found out he was able to arrive in Wesnoth with over 500 gold[but he optimizes everything, even the units he recruits to have the best traits]. So looks like despite all your efforts, people who play scientifically will find a way to increase the gold exponentially. HttT, it looks to me, went the other way and I reinstalled the scenaria dumped (Mountain Pass and Valley of Statues), for otherwise I was going into Dwarven Doors with 800+ gold on hard.
I think there is a consensus that TROW is the best designed campaign
and a model for others. Too bad we cann't have more of it
You may also find it interesting that Jessica has apparently outlived TROW and will probably figure in other, pre-TROW campaigns to
appear.
Shade
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Nice to see you as well

Post by Shade »

Nice to see you as well!

It's been a while since I've even logged in here but I always enjoy skimming my way through to see the latest 'doing that are transpiring'. I grin when I see posters I remember-- I love this forum in particular. It's great to see people with stories to tell hacking away on something.

Ultimately, I think that it's fair that a skilled player who maximizes his gold reaps his just reward. There funny thing is that I was never a skilled player. Anybody that ever saw me in MP could telly you that. My big concern was 'an average player on medium', and making Easy and Hard predictably easier and harder than that.

I refined a method of doing that in TRoW-- Then kind of applied it to HttT. HttT's weakest point, IMHO, was that it grew very organically. I loved it. It's what made me start playing Wesnoth (I still play from time to time)-- But TRoW was designed from the outset. I knew where the story was going. I knew where I wanted an up and down flow in difficulty. I knew the portions where I wanted to drain gold. TBH- I could hardly beat TRoW on 'hard' when I was active. (The scariest thing I ever saw was that in the 'Troll Cave' in HttT team troll was getting well over 100 gold per turn on Hard.)

I'm happy that people still like TRoW and that it hasn't bitrotted to the point of being removed. Many thanks to whomever has been giving it love across all of these releases.

As far as Jessica in other campaigns. He he, I'm sure she'll be flattered. (We're still in contact, but we enforce distance. Mutual strong feelings but it's not like the fundamental problems are fixable, so it is what it is and we've gotten on with the show.) Like she needs a bigger ego :)

Cheers and have fun to all Wesnothers old and new!
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santi
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Post by santi »

Yes, you could tell there was a hand guiding TROW's development.
When I was designing LoW I had the story more or less written down from the very beginning(I think I only added a few things to support both the HttT and Turin's version of the Sceptre of fire story), but one of the specs was to have as many different strategical challenges and fighting as many races as possible, but without compromising the story. The other spec was explaining the post-TROW and up to HttT history of Wesnoth, the golden age in particular and aiming for consistency(that is "explaining" things rather than having disjoint stories. Of course you don't want to explain too much as this constrains ne stories). I'm not sure explanation was a spec in TROW, but the whole idea of the tests in Wesnoth justify why Haldric and co would make new enemies(Saurians, Nagas, Trolls), which would be used by Jevyan's forces in the last scenaria is just
brilliant.

Anyway, maybe we can bring you and Jessica back for the lead roles if ever we get to "Wesnoth, the movie"!
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Compliments on the storytelling

Post by Zaklog the Great »

I just finished The Rise of Wesnoth campaign (at easy level, he admitted sheepishly). I'd like to congratulate the creators. Considering the limitations of the medium, not only did you create a fun game, but you also made a very interesting storyline. Well done.
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Post by dfranke »

I think the relative difficulty of levels in this campaign needs a bit of tweaking. The later scenarios are too much more difficult than the earlier ones. I've played it a couple times on normal and could never get past the quests: the undead quest was trivial, but then the best I could do would be to manage a pyrrhic victory against either the saurians or trolls (dragon quest was hopeless) and then be too bankrupt to continue. This time through I played on easy. The quests and the climax were then challenging-but-fun, but the rest of the game was too easy. Peoples in Decline is kinda boring when you start it with 2000 gold.
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Post by sjm »

I hope I'm posting this in the right place and not rehashing old news - I tried the search function, but I can't figure out how to determine which page in a 28 page thread contains my search terms from the results list :(


Anyway, I was just playing TROW and reached the scenario "A new land". The scenario objectives say "avoid engagement for as long as possible". So I avoided combat for the full 48 turns (on easy) only to be told that I'd spent 1.5 hours tactically moving my mermen around and watching the AI in order to "suffer defeat".

First off, the scenario objective is clearly flawed - if you do fulfil it, you suffer defeat (can't avoid engagement longer than the turn limit can you?). And secondly, seeing as I need to engage to progress, is there anything to be lost by simply thwacking the first enemy on the head that comes along and saving myself an hour of watching the AI shuffle it's units around? The whole thing struck me as an exercise in how not to design a scenario.

Otherwise I've been having a blast, but I would really urge the campaign designers to fix this by - either make it clear that you do need to engage, or fix the scenario so that if you reach the turn limit the dialogue also triggers (and maybe give the player a proper reward for actually doing as they were ordered to).

I actually found playing so as to avoid combat a different challenge from the usual fare, so I think there is some potential there - but you do need to make the objective clear, and, if you do want players to avoid combat, you need to reward them for doing so, not punish them :D
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Post by zookeeper »

sjm wrote:Anyway, I was just playing TROW and reached the scenario "A new land". The scenario objectives say "avoid engagement for as long as possible". So I avoided combat for the full 48 turns (on easy) only to be told that I'd spent 1.5 hours tactically moving my mermen around and watching the AI in order to "suffer defeat".
:augh: I'm shocked. I'd never have thought someone could manage it for that long. You should get a medal for that I think.
sjm wrote:First off, the scenario objective is clearly flawed - if you do fulfil it, you suffer defeat (can't avoid engagement longer than the turn limit can you?). And secondly, seeing as I need to engage to progress, is there anything to be lost by simply thwacking the first enemy on the head that comes along and saving myself an hour of watching the AI shuffle it's units around? The whole thing struck me as an exercise in how not to design a scenario.
Agreed on all counts, the scenario is clearly flawed.
sjm wrote:Otherwise I've been having a blast, but I would really urge the campaign designers to fix this by - either make it clear that you do need to engage, or fix the scenario so that if you reach the turn limit the dialogue also triggers (and maybe give the player a proper reward for actually doing as they were ordered to).

I actually found playing so as to avoid combat a different challenge from the usual fare, so I think there is some potential there - but you do need to make the objective clear, and, if you do want players to avoid combat, you need to reward them for doing so, not punish them :D
My initial reaction was that we need to get rid of the playable part of the scenario altogether, or to make it involve combat in a "normal" manner. However, I think it's a good idea to have a turn limit and reward the player (heavily) if they manage to avoid combat till the end.

Now, how new are you to the game? Has the campaign been difficult up to that point on the easiest difficulty, or has it been rather easy for you? I'm asking to get an idea of what the turn limits should be approximately, as I haven't heard anyone actually managing it to the end before (nor do I have any idea of how many people actually even seriously try it). Also, what version of Wesnoth did you play on? A replay of the scenario would be an interesting thing to see as well, if you have one (a normal savefile from the end will do as well).
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