The South Guard

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Rubric
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Rubric »

zookeeper wrote:You sure you weren't just moving the dragoon on the dirt and/or road hexes (which are treated as flat, taking up 1MP) and Deoran on the actual cave floor hexes (which take up 3-4MP for mounted units, as you'd expect)? That sounds like the likeliest explanation.
My mistake -- sorry for the false alarm. I found the replay file and saw that the Dragoon was indeed moving as it should. I guess I was confused by the fact that he had 10 moves while Deoran had 7, so he can cross 2 cave hexes per turn while Deoran can only cross 1. Chalk it up to newbness.
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Adamant14
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Adamant14 »

A choice in the fog:

Just a minor issue.

The message "We found the lich!" is spoken two times.

Noticed using BfW 1.11.5
Author of Antar, Son of Rheor ( SP Campaign) | Development Thread + Feedback Thread + Replays of ASoR
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Elvish_Hunter
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Elvish_Hunter »

Adamant14 wrote:The message "We found the lich!" is spoken two times.
Thank you for the report. :)
Fixed in master: http://git.io/mluXqg .
Current maintainer of these add-ons, all on 1.16:
The Sojournings of Grog, Children of Dragons, A Rough Life, Wesnoth Lua Pack, The White Troll (co-author)
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Adamant14
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Adamant14 »

id=02_Proven_by_the_Sword

I wonder about this line:

Code: Select all

                [message]
                    speaker=Urza Nalmath
                    message= _ "Now the Guard will feel the wrath of my new friends! It is time for the dead to wage war! Rise, warriors!"
                [/message]
It is displayed after the first undead are recruited. That is somehow strange in my opignion,
I would suggest to display it before the first undead is recruited.
Maybe you should better use a prerecruit event. :hmm:




id=07a_Into_the_Depths (two different issues, I don't think the one causes the other)

The sighted side=4 ( Trolls ) is fired way too soon.
It fires always on turn=2 (side_5_turn_2)


Then the game crashes the turn after the Trolls switched to my team (side=5)
stderr wrote:error ai/actions: Error #-1 (action_result::AI_ACTION_FAILURE) in recruitment by side 4 of unit type [Troll Whelp] on any suitable location
EDIT: Seems to be the same bug as here
Thank you mattsc.

Difficulty HARD
BfW 1.11.7
OS Windows 7
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zookeeper
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Re: The South Guard

Post by zookeeper »

The first two issues should now be fixed, too.
TheCatLord
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Re: The South Guard

Post by TheCatLord »

So, I recently decided to do something completely ridiculous in the first scenario and beat the enemy leader without ever moving to the river fort (actually not that hard to pull off on the easiest difficulty thanks to your free level 2s). Consequently, I started the next scenario without Sir Gerrick, and since he's such a major character, some dialogue ended up mangled and the later scenarios "Tidings Good and Ill" and "Pebbles in the Flood" (where he's supposed to become your leader) became impossible. I have a couple suggestions for how to fix this:
Option 1: If the player kills the enemy leader and doesn't have Gerrick, create him as if from the standard river fort moveto event. There should probably be dialogue where Gerrick comments on Deoran winning without him, either praising his courage or chastising him for recklessness (or both). This gives the player a bit more freedom and adds story flavour.
Option 2: Use a FORCE_CHANCE_TO_HIT macro to ensure that the player can't hit the enemy leader if they don't have Gerrick. This is rather simple to add and makes sure the player does what they're supposed to.
Konrad2
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Konrad2 »

in “Into the Depths” if the trolls give you vision on Mal M´Brin, then there is no dialog between him and Ethiliel
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skeptical_troll
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Re: The South Guard

Post by skeptical_troll »

Are there still plans to revise the last scenario of the elves branch?
Beside the obvious gameplay issues, I guess many agree that it doesn't make much sense storywise (why do elves fight against members of their own kin siding with Deoran? Why do they refuse to listen to Ethiliel who is introduced in the story as a powerful druid?). If this is the case, I'd like to suggest a fix which requires minimal modifications and hopefully preserves the author's intention as much as possible.

After defeating Mal'brin, Ethiliel does not follow Deroan back to Westin but remains in the woods, the reason being that she wants to honor the memory of Mebrin and perform rituals to 'purify' his body and put his soul to rest, together with the other elves in the expedition. He was a very important figure for the elves and her personal master, after all. Later in Westin everything happens as is now, humans are accused by elves of killing Mebrin, except that Ethiliel and her elves are not there. The scenario will just be a siege in which the player needs to hold for N turns, after which Ethiliel will appear and have her Gandalf moment, putting the bloodshed to an end. If this sounds too much like a weird surprise, Deoran may be sending a messenger to Ethiliel at the beginning of the scenario to solicit her intervention (a reasonable thing to do, I'd say).

advantages:
1) the conflict between elves and humans and its resolution would be better justified
2) no fratricidal fight between elves
3) the scenario would not end in 3 turns
4) it would be a defensive scenario in a (introductory) campaign which doesn't feature any.
5) it requires some work, but not a ton. Namely:
- adding a couple of lines in the final dialog of 'into_the_depths' where Ethilien says she will not return immediately.
- adapting the dialog of the final scenario, removing the Ethilien part at the beginning and adding her arrival (1/2 lines at most).
- balancing the amount of enemies and number of turns to resist in the last scenario. The spawning mechanism could perhaps remain the same, but it might have funny effects (the player will have to minimize the enemies' losses while surviving...)

disadvantages:
there is the unwanted consequence that in 'return to Kerlath' the player won't have the elvish units available, but this scenario is so straightforward that that will hardly make any difference (maybe the turn limit could be increased since humans are slower).

If this plan sounds sensible to the developers responsible for the campaign (zookeeper I imagine), I'm happy to lend a hand and experiment, if further help is required.
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zookeeper
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Re: The South Guard

Post by zookeeper »

skeptical_troll wrote:Are there still plans to revise the last scenario of the elves branch?
Beside the obvious gameplay issues, I guess many agree that it doesn't make much sense storywise (why do elves fight against members of their own kin siding with Deoran? Why do they refuse to listen to Ethiliel who is introduced in the story as a powerful druid?). If this is the case, I'd like to suggest a fix which requires minimal modifications and hopefully preserves the author's intention as much as possible.

After defeating Mal'brin, Ethiliel does not follow Deroan back to Westin but remains in the woods, the reason being that she wants to honor the memory of Mebrin and perform rituals to 'purify' his body and put his soul to rest, together with the other elves in the expedition. He was a very important figure for the elves and her personal master, after all. Later in Westin everything happens as is now, humans are accused by elves of killing Mebrin, except that Ethiliel and her elves are not there. The scenario will just be a siege in which the player needs to hold for N turns, after which Ethiliel will appear and have her Gandalf moment, putting the bloodshed to an end. If this sounds too much like a weird surprise, Deoran may be sending a messenger to Ethiliel at the beginning of the scenario to solicit her intervention (a reasonable thing to do, I'd say).

advantages:
1) the conflict between elves and humans and its resolution would be better justified
2) no fratricidal fight between elves
3) the scenario would not end in 3 turns
4) it would be a defensive scenario in a (introductory) campaign which doesn't feature any.
5) it requires some work, but not a ton. Namely:
- adding a couple of lines in the final dialog of 'into_the_depths' where Ethilien says she will not return immediately.
- adapting the dialog of the final scenario, removing the Ethilien part at the beginning and adding her arrival (1/2 lines at most).
- balancing the amount of enemies and number of turns to resist in the last scenario. The spawning mechanism could perhaps remain the same, but it might have funny effects (the player will have to minimize the enemies' losses while surviving...)

disadvantages:
there is the unwanted consequence that in 'return to Kerlath' the player won't have the elvish units available, but this scenario is so straightforward that that will hardly make any difference (maybe the turn limit could be increased since humans are slower).

If this plan sounds sensible to the developers responsible for the campaign (zookeeper I imagine), I'm happy to lend a hand and experiment, if further help is required.
Yeah, the scenario definitely is supposed to be revised.

First, one random thought: Ethiliel could simply state that she'll visit Westin after the rituals are completed in X days, so you could instantly have an ETA without a messenger.

However, I think the permanent loss of elvish recalls is something that would be a huge tomato surprise, especially when leveling up some Shamans would be a really attractive idea. It's true that if you side with the bandits, you lose the elves already, but at least the repercussions of that choice are rather telegraphed, and you haven't had the chance to feed all that much XP to the elves yet at that point.

So, the scenario is definitely one of the most flawed mainline campaign scenarios, but it would be great if it could be fixed without introducing another problem that would immediately become the new thing to fix. Currently, the story arguably isn't great, but I think that can be fixed by better dialogue explaining why the other elves aren't believing Ethiliel. The gameplay is what I think is the bigger problem, and that's something that at least on paper should be easier to improve, and I can certainly come up with some ideas for that if you wish to lend a hand.
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skeptical_troll
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Re: The South Guard

Post by skeptical_troll »

Sure, I'm happy to lend a hand if you have ideas. I think that a big decision to make is how much of the original design you are willing to retain, cause I understand that transforming it into a siege it's quite a big change.

Some more brainstorming:
zookeeper wrote:First, one random thought: Ethiliel could simply state that she'll visit Westin after the rituals are completed in X days, so you could instantly have an ETA without a messenger.
The thing is, by reading the story it seems that there are few weeks of time-span between the scenarios, so maybe it's not so obvious.
Forage and game were scarce in the gloomy woods. The men’s spirits were lifted by the thought of home, but their bodies became gaunt. The long weeks of trudging northward took its toll.
Thinking better about it, there is actually no necessity to remove the other elves from the recall list, if that's too drastic. Nobody else has the authority of Ethiliel, so it makes sense that they would only believe her, when she arrives.

An alternative suggestion: Ethiliel brings the remains of Mebrin to Westhin, for similar reasons as above (perform some ritual, bring him back to his woods...). When Ithelden accuses the humans of killing him, she decides to bring the remains to him to prove that he fell for necromancy instead. So the scenario objective will still be to move Ethiliel to some point in the map, but she will have limited MP (could be based on difficulty) because she is carrying the body of his dead master, scarred by the transformation into a lich. A similar mechanism is used in the saurian scenario of LoW, if I remember right. I think in this way the dynamic would be very close to what the campaign's author had envisioned (escorting Ethiliel to the go-to point, opening a breach through the enemy elves).
Konrad2
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Konrad2 »

Bug in 'Proven by the Sword' (1.14.0)
Enemy unit takes one of my villages, turns that village into neutral instead of capturing it.
Guess regarding the cause: That unit is one of the 'Criminals' that were spawned on the map with the scenario start. Maybe those unit can't properly execute the 'burn the villages that don't belong to them' order. The move in the village, it's not mine anymore, they don't destroy it, but it's not theirs because the village is supposed to have been destroyed?
TSG-Proven by the Sword Turn 6.gz
End turn, see unit moving in without destroying the village
(33.7 KiB) Downloaded 958 times
TSG-Proven by the Sword-Auto-Save7.gz
After the (undone?) deed
(35.58 KiB) Downloaded 690 times

EDIT:
'Choice in the Fog'
I decided to stick with the elves for my first run, which means defeating the outlaw leader is a win condition. That's why I noticed that the win conditions do not update after defeating him.
TSG-Choice in the Fog-Auto-Save8.gz
Before
(56.72 KiB) Downloaded 724 times
TSG-Choice in the Fog Turn 8.gz
After
(56.88 KiB) Downloaded 689 times

EDIT 2:
'Into the Depths'
The dialogue between Ethiliel and Mal M'Brin doesn't trigger if Mal M'Brin is sighted by my trollish allies.

EDIT 3:
Those issues are all on github.
1: open
2: closed(fixed)
3: closed(fixed)
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Tom_Of_Wesnoth
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Re: The South Guard

Post by Tom_Of_Wesnoth »

A couple of minor points about the writing:

1. Mebrin is described as having lived at the time of Haldric I, which would make him over five hundred years old by the time of The South Guard. I don't believe elves are meant to live that long anymore.

2. The ending text refers to the "Aetherwood" - I'm not sure if this is meant to mean Aethenwood or the "South Wood", or just elvish woods in general.
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nemaara
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Re: The South Guard

Post by nemaara »

1. I guess that's written in, but I suppose he could possibly live 500 years if he had a particularly strong connection with the faerie world. The rest of the lore isn't totally clear wrt strict limits on Elvish lifespan, so I'll leave it for now. (Also technically it doesn't say he was alive at that time, but it's definitely implied...)

2. Fixed, thanks. ^_^
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revolting_peasant
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Re: The South Guard

Post by revolting_peasant »

nemaara: The initial campaign dialog mentions the "Heart forest" as lying to the South of Aethenwood. However - the map doesn't mention it, and instead has two other forests to the South of it: The Southwood and the Black Forest. Also, we have the "Heart Mountains" in the Northlands. Actually, that forest is never mentioned again in the entire campaign.

So, should that Heart forest really exist?
Last edited by revolting_peasant on April 1st, 2022, 7:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mal_shubertal
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Re: The South Guard

Post by mal_shubertal »

I just assumed when it said "heart forest", it meant something like "old growth forest", meaning it had never experienced logging/habitation. Another term like "primeval forest" might be clearer and give the same flavor.
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