Scenario 2: The Chase

Feedback for the mainline campaign A Tale of Two Brothers.

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Remellion
Posts: 51
Joined: December 25th, 2015, 3:18 pm

Re: Scenario 2: The Chase

Post by Remellion »

Remellion wrote: December 26th, 2015, 2:49 pm 1. Played on Grand Knight (Challenging), 1.15.14. Also numerous times before on 1.5, 1.6 and 1.8 and 1.12, so I know what's coming.

2. Difficulty is oddly enough OK. Again the challenge is to keep loyals alive, although being a short campaign with an army of loyals, it isn't crippling to lose a few. (Was a little too reckless and lucky with my knights, but it worked out...) I remember having great difficulties in earlier versions when facing the onslaught of elvish scouts; could be down to luck or better strategy on my part now. Probably around 6/10.

3. Objective is clear. Go north. I remember being surprised by the shroud at the north hiding the full length of the map when I first played this scenario ages ago, then scrambling to finish in time, but unless the player dallies there shouldn't really be a danger of running out of time.

4. Dialogue is simple and effective. The elves' motivation for the fight is a little out of character I think; simply removing or changing Nil-Galion's dying lines may be better. Or hinting in the introductory dialogue that he has a different motivation than he lets on.
Now the elves' dialogue makes a lot more sense. Still the same hostile tone hinted in the scenario introduction, but it also makes sense why they're more hostile to a large group of horsemen and spearmen than to a small party of mages. Great improvement.


5. Challenges. Mostly the initial onslaught of scouts. They have mobility, terrain and time of day advantages in the first few turns, along with a healthy elvish hero right up the front lines. Scouts have high mobility, meaning that they can easily reach in and pick off any wounded or weak units in your formation. Likewise they can very likely reach any available hex unless blocked or ZoC'ed, so leaving open hexes around your units is particularly dangerous.

With that in mind, the natural strategy is to let them come to you. Loyalists being pierce-heavy is good versus the mounted scouts, and spearmen being cheap and having melee and ranged retaliation is extremely useful. Staying in the 60% starting keep and letting the elves attack from 40% flat, keeping a tight formation helps survival. Leaving only 2 hexes open on your loyals also increases their chances of survival. When dawn finally breaks, the tides turn naturally to your favour. (I lost a spearmen, and should've lost a knight in the subsequent hasty rush northwards... careless and greedy play there.) This time, just fodder spearmen. Lots of fodder spearmen. It hurt, and the time limit combined with a lack of safe villages near the camp meant that I took losses, and had to hurry north with a wounded party. Whoever survives is probably levelling up. Also, I restarted the scenario once since I made a blunder costing a levelled unit (it was probably still even more winning than this replay though.)

The other issue is realising that there is shroud on the north side of the map, and reaching in time to complete the objectives. Knowing this beforehand, I rushed north, and had enough time to farm the revenants for exp before finishing (recalling footpads for this purpose at the start.)
Thank you Muff Toras for rushing towards the hostile war party out to get you, it really helped with that time limit.


6. Funnosity is a 7 for me, since figuring out how to survive the start is interesting. Once the elves run out of fodder though, the rest of the scenario is just a steamroller north.

7. Improvements... Hm. For a start, a bigger keep for the elves, and more gold (perhaps to start recruiting on turn 4, such that the elves put some sterner resistance after the initial rush.) Likewise, the dark adept shouldn't rush out suicidally - maybe deathblades rather than revenants to increase their range, and definitely something to stop the adept coming out to die. Or perhaps setting the adept at 2 exp to leveling up, such that it might become a more interesting situation to finish him off. This is all still true, but the challenge is still as good as it already has been. At least the dark adept no longer runs out in front of the revenants, he stays behind his skeletons.
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mal_shubertal
Posts: 93
Joined: December 1st, 2018, 6:58 pm

Re: Scenario 2: The Chase

Post by mal_shubertal »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
1.16.2 Challenging
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good enough. The elves are pretty unreasonable and suspicious, but that appropriate as a bunch of strangers are running around in their forest.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Healing and protecting the wounded. You have to manage ZOC really carefully or the scouts will just run around your whole army to attack the unit you want to protect most. The wose was also weirdly challenging if you don't have many units with blade attacks.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I like it. I really like how the AI makes the enemy dark adept use the revenants for cover rather than just attacking super aggressively like the AI usually does.
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HenryY2020
Posts: 21
Joined: February 4th, 2020, 7:24 am

Re: Scenario 2: The Chase

Post by HenryY2020 »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
1.16.9 Challenging
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7. Fighting elves in a forest is not my idea of fun.
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Pretty good. It's an improvement over previous versions.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
4
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
No suggestions for now.
JL42
Posts: 66
Joined: December 9th, 2023, 11:19 am

Re: Scenario 2: The Chase

Post by JL42 »

What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
v. 1.16.10
Grand Knight / Challenging
How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7 – This scenario was surprisingly hard for being in a beginner campaign, even though I already had a couple of leveled units to throw into the fight.
How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear.
How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
The dialogue here was kind of confusing. The elves said the necromancer was a prisoner, but it was actually the brother? I guess maybe it just means the elves didn't know what they were talking about, but it was never really clarified. Writing in general in this campaign needs a lot of work.
What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Just surviving the insane onslaught of Scouts/Riders in the first few rounds. Beginners who didn't understand the enemy weaknesses and used the wrong units or moved into the forest would probably have an even harder time. After the first 3 or 4 rounds the map has no challenges at all.
How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
1 – Kind of like the first map in this campaign I found it just awkward and annoying.
What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I think the main thing here would be to just replace most of the Scouts/Riders with Elvish Fighters. This scenario has a really dumb mechanic where you just get totally mobbed with numerous Riders, a Hero, and a Wose in the first couple of turns, before you can even get set up, and then after that you just walk through the rest of the map with basically zero resistance. It's supposed to be a "chase" but it's actually more like a siege. I would make it more like a conventional scenario where the elvish leader has some more gold and additional tiles to recruit into, rather than the enemy starting with a ton of existing Riders. Might need to add a few more turns of time and some additional villages if making that change. As with most of this campaign, better dialogue and some instructions about unit weaknesses for beginners would be very helpful.

About the Overall Campaign:

New players are directed to this one right after the tutorial. But I don't think it works very well as an "Intro" campaign, at least not in its current form. The first couple of maps are awkward and frustrating, effective combat requires an extensive knowledge of game mechanics, and the storyline is decidedly blah. There's basically nothing in the way of explanatory dialogue or introduction to the units and the game setting, as can be found in Heir to the Throne. The characters and context don't have much depth to draw people in. If this was my first introduction I would not come away with a very good impression of Wesnoth as a whole. It makes sense to have a short-and-simple campaign as the first one, but this just isn't it.

The campaign could benefit from extensive text rewriting to provide better narrative and more explanation of the units for beginners. Give that task to whoever wrote The South Guard or Heir to the Throne, both of which are much better in that regard. I also think some adjustment to the first two maps to provide simpler, more defensible terrain and more straightforward challenges (different enemy units) would be useful. Should note that I'm playing it on the harder difficulty (does anyone actually play on easy?), so that could possibly affect the unit distribution, but it doesn't affect the terrain or writing.

In its current form I have to give the campaign just 1 out of 5 stars. I would nudge beginners toward starting with Heir to the Throne, or maybe The South Guard, rather than this one.
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