A Tale of Two Brothers

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octalot
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by octalot »

Note that the walkthrough specifically comments about this:
walkthrough wrote: While attacking undead at night is often foolhardy, in this case you only need to take out the Dark Adept leader, and he's a sucker for blasting units at night. If you march a couple expendable units to the edge of his range, he'll probably oblige, leaving himself open to your retaliation. Even at night cavalry make quick work of a Dark Adept.
I don't have time to playtest your AI version now, but the bug might be a feature...
Konrad2
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by Konrad2 »

octalot wrote: May 4th, 2018, 9:40 am I don't have time to playtest your AI version now, but the bug might be a feature...
How about having time to watch the first replay then?

EDIT: Should have linked it.
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=10335&start=45 (last post)
mattsc
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by mattsc »

octalot wrote: May 4th, 2018, 9:40 am Note that the walkthrough specifically comments about this
We should change the walkthrough then. The walkthroughs aren't design documents, they are after the fact descriptions of how to play the scenarios. The reason why the AI was set up this way was almost certainly that at the time AToTB was created, custom AI functionality did not exist and/or nobody was available or took the time to write one. But even if it was a feature, that does not mean that we cannot change it later. The new behavior does not make the scenario significantly more difficult and it makes (somewhat) more sense for a side with only three units.
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octalot
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by octalot »

I agree the new behaviour makes more sense in-universe, but disagree about the difficulty. The new behaviour does not make the scenario significantly more difficult for a player who is experienced with Wesnoth, but this is the beginner campaign for players who aren't experienced with it.

In Konrad2's replay, we see the player moving between the two forces, with ZoCs arranged so that at most two enemies can attack any of red's units. He's playing on hard, but he's also starting with all of red's units at full health. The strategy leaves the possibility of red's leader (58hp) being attacked by both the adept (12-2 with ToD) and guardian (10-4 with ToD, before resistance), which leaves the main UI suggesting there's a possible leader-killing 64hp of damage. Only by taking account of resistance do we see that leader's resistance to blade means that the worst case would leave him on 2hp.

Konrad2's playing on hard, but swapping the revenants to skeletons changes it to a possible 45 hp (with resistances) or an apparent 51 hp (forgetting the resistances). As the player's already fought the elves, that could easily be more than the leader currently has.
new_walkthrough wrote:Version 1.14.1 and later only: The AI for the Dark Adept leader was changed, he is now much more careful and uses the skeletons/revenants as shields. Luring him out does not work any more.
Thanks for updating the walkthrough but the new text doesn't explain how to handle this. Consider that this is a situation where the walkthrough needed an explanation of how to lure the adept out, and the target audience is players who aren't familiar with the tactics. The new text's "does not work any more" doesn't tell a player, a player who's already looking for hints, how to handle the new difficulty.
Konrad2
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by Konrad2 »

Huh. How about adding the ai only on hard? It is 'supposed' to be a challenge for veterans (tbh it isn't xD).
mattsc
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by mattsc »

octalot: Those are all fair points. In my opinion, the better behavior outweighs the "slight" increase in difficulty, but it is just that: a subjective opinion and words like "slight" don't really mean anything as they are not quantitative. [By contrast, you provided an actual quantitative argument, but whether that means it is now harder than it should be for a beginner is still an opinion.] Anyway, the last thing I/we want to do is scare away new players in the first campaign they likely encounter.
Konrad2 wrote: May 6th, 2018, 7:31 am Huh. How about adding the ai only on hard?
The motivation why I (we, I didn't do this without discussing it with others first) added the AI is not to add to the difficulty, but because the new behavior makes more sense (in-universe, as octalot says). So how about this instead: we make the guard units weaker; make them two skeletons on the harder difficulty, or a skeleton and a revenant, and a skeleton and a walking corpse on easy (there are only two difficulties for AToTB).
Konrad2 wrote: May 6th, 2018, 7:31 am It is 'supposed' to be a challenge for veterans
I don't think so. It's supposed to be slightly more challenging for beginners, not for veterans.

As for the walk-through, well, yes. What I was implying with that comment was: that paragraph described unusual behavior by the AI that does not exist any more, so you fall back to the standard play style against undead that was already described earlier in this and the previous section. That should probably be said specifically though.
Konrad2
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by Konrad2 »

mattsc wrote: May 6th, 2018, 2:20 pm So how about this instead: we make the guard units weaker; make them two skeletons on the harder difficulty, or a skeleton and a revenant, and a skeleton and a walking corpse on easy (there are only two difficulties for AToTB).
I propose a skeleton and a Soulless for easy (because a guardian without ZoC is no guardian at all).
mattsc
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by mattsc »

Konrad2 wrote: May 6th, 2018, 2:53 pmI propose a skeleton and a Soulless for easy (because a guardian without ZoC is no guardian at all).
Very true. :P

In any case, we've had some more discussion on this, including input by one of the original creators of AToTB, and we decided that we will not put this change into 1.14. It is worthwhile doing, and the dark adept rushing ahead in not a desired design feature, but we want to take the time to actually do a real balancing job here rather than something like: well, two skeletons sounds about right, but maybe I use a skeketon and a revenant just because I like that better. ;) Doing this for 1.15 means we don't have to rush it in and will get some feedback from people testing it before 1.15 becomes stable (1.16). I was never entirely comfortable with changing something like this (something that isn't really a bug) in the middle of the stable series anyway.

Bottom line: this is going to be in 1.15/1.16 together with some balancing adjustments, but not in 1.14.
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by glowing-fish »

I haven't played Wesnoth in campaign mode for a while, but I was curious, and wanted a quick and easy play through. So I played this campaign.

I decided that since I have been playing Wesnoth for over 15 years, and that since this was a "Novice" level campaign, I could play it on the Challenging difficulty.

I lost in the second scenario. I didn't just fail to complete the second scenario, I was overran and had my leader killed. I then replayed it on easy, and got through it quite easily. The second scenario is still the hardest part of it.

The first scenario is still difficult on easy, because the enemy has poison and the player doesn't have any units with heal or cure. I think I ended up with all but one of my units poisoned, and had to cycle them through my villages to cure them.

This isn't a problem, but it is kind of an odd thing to hit players with in the first scenario of what is supposed to be a tutorial campaign. Cycling units through villages is an important skill in Wesnoth, but its not the most fun and easy thing to do for a brand new player.
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egallager
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Re: A Tale of Two Brothers

Post by egallager »

I have made an add-on campaign out of my fork of this one, called "A Tale of Two Brothers With a Third Difficulty" and the thread for it can be found here:
https://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=53601
Feel free to integrate any of the changes I made in it that seem good back into mainline!
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