[Historical] Scenario Review - EI 12 - Captured

Feedback for the mainline campaign Eastern Invasion.

Moderator: Forum Moderators

BroodKiller
Posts: 30
Joined: August 12th, 2008, 9:24 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by BroodKiller »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
Medium, Wesnoth 1.8.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3-4. Honestly, and since I had a lot of leveled Heavy Infantry and Horsemen, I didn't get a sidekick for the heroes; it was still basically a walk in the park. In the Throne Room, if you keep to the western wall and only attack whomever you need to, then Dacyn and Gweddry at lvl3 (which you can easily get until now) can kill whatever comes in 1 turn and stay alive.
As for the prisoners - there is nothing better at removing the guards than Iron Maulers, backed by Paladins. The rest is just 'sorround and eliminate', with Maulers/Shock Troops working as point units to absorb any sneaky Trolls. Actually, in the end I even played a few turns more just to eliminate everybody in the Throne room and the guards.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Unclear. I made an educated guess that I was supposed to follow into the tunnel and not right into 5 guards with just the 3 heroes, but it is not obvious enough, I guess.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear and interesting.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Good as it is.
Clean...Simple...Devious...I like it
podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by podbelski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.9.8, top difficulty, no reloads

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
"6", though it's quite possible to lose due to a single unlucky turn - orcs and trolls are devastating in caves.

I finished in turn 21, and start the next map with 305 gold... hope I'll manage to win cause I don't see how can I make it quicker.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
meh...

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
- praying to not get unlucky
- finishing as fast as possible for a gold bonus

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
it's good, probably "7"

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I really don't see the purpose/meaning of the 3rd holy water item. I have two already, and even if I get the 3rd one it will be nearly impossible for all 3 holders to survive in the next scenario... also, these items were not very useful so far. Either remove it or replace with smth different.

Also, I've got totally tired of Owaec, he's fkn slow, traitless and his special weapon ability DOES NOT WORK. I looked through WML and it seems the code is not fully implemented. So I decided it's a fair trade to make my Owaec quick, he can now move two hexes in caves hooray :)

And finally, there is an orc warrior stuck in the wall [25,11].
Attachments
EI-Captured_replay.gz
(31.17 KiB) Downloaded 787 times
podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by podbelski »

...btw you can put in a couple of goblins here and there to add more variety
line
Posts: 94
Joined: January 11th, 2012, 9:21 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by line »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.8.6, hard
158 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6, but very frustrating once I know, that I won't bring enough money to the following scenario.
The throne room is also very depending on bad luck - especially with the troll additional to the orcs.

It seems that my imprisoned units consume too much gold, because they are highly experienced. So they cost me more than 30 gold each round. From their appearance to the end in turn 22 that's more than 300 gold. As I cannot finish much faster, this scenario burdens me with too few gold for the next mission.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Finishing much faster than about round 20 (what I failed to accomplish).

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
The throne room is hard and depending on luck (as you cannot intentionally prevent the troll from joining the party).
Failing on putting me into a better position for the next level was frustrating. No fun.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
It's meant to be sadistic I guess, so leave it the way it is. I feel punished for having well-levelled troops and I can't bring about roughly 300 gold to the next scenario (what is not sufficient to try for killing everyone, what means I will have to say goodbye to many of my veterans.
Attachments
IdF-Gefangen_Wiederholung_anzeigen.gz
(28.05 KiB) Downloaded 799 times
line
Posts: 94
Joined: January 11th, 2012, 9:21 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by line »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.8.6, hard
106 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5, I took a safer route with Gweddry this time and went in a big sweep through the orc leader's cave, keeping a good distance to him and therefore preventing him and additional lvl-2 units to jump off the castle towards me. But still, an earlier finish than in round 21 was not possible.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Finishing much faster than about round 20 (what I failed to accomplish).

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
Honestly I must admit, that the throne room is not that hard, than I thought before. Crossing it in a big sweep reduces the risk of losing a unit to a minimum. Again: My well levelled army and to watch them eating up my funds (and knowing the consequences for the next scenario) is no fun.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Meanwhile, I have to admit I admire the creation of this scenario with it's decisive influence on the following one.
If you have the necessary number of veterans to be able to at least try to kill the leaders in the next scenario exactly these veterans will consume your gold and therefore prevent you from being able to recall them. Otherwise, with only few veterans you might take enough gold into evacuation - but no army to attack the trolls. Very smart.
Attachments
IdF-Gefangen_Wiederholung_anzeigen.gz
(33.44 KiB) Downloaded 891 times
User avatar
Ninjuri
Posts: 167
Joined: April 28th, 2012, 2:59 am
Location: California

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Ninjuri »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
Easy 1.10.2
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Pretty clear, just escape.
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I'm not really sure, how did the units in the tortue chamber manage to get their weapons? Were they never taken away? Was there never a lock or a gate on the chamber? How could they just walk out like that.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Having all my leveled units appear with half health... really?
I had to reload a bunch of times when my heros fought the leader. Him and his units had some 1 hit kill attacks on me, even being leveled.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Not use all my leveled units that i worked hard for, perhaps spawn some random ones, i cringed whenever one died.
Fate is against me.
SBak
Posts: 78
Joined: October 8th, 2011, 1:36 am

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by SBak »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
Easy 1.8.5 and 1.10.5 (I quit Medium at the previous scenario).

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Again another 9 or 10.

(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?
A dramatic improvement which cannot be over-emphasized and the best so far in the campaign.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Again dealing with a scenario with the odds stacked heavily against you. I remembered the hassle getting Owaec across the river and figured that getting him through this was going to be a pain too. I wasn't wrong.

I only managed to reach the Throne Room by putting a Red Mage first and Owaec last. Twice I lost by Gweddry meeting a Blood Bat the second time he had Dacyn behind him. Whatever damage he caused with his crossbow was taken back in the counter-attack. Having Dacyn behind him just meant it took five turns for the Blood Bat to kill him instead of three.

When I got my units to the Throne Room there was a mix of level2 and level 3 units so repeated attempts just to get to the Orcish Warlord leader because either Gweddry or Dacyn got killed. Then you have the turns spent healing just to get the hitpoints to make the attack. The leader is quite robust and also prone to recruit when he's being attacked so again, more attempts.

Simultaneously my 13 recalls often didn't have a White Mage or only one, even when I went back and levelled more and then you find that you've got Orcish Assassins outside with a level3 Troll.

I've only got through with a lot of luck and by keeping my recalls in the Torture Room setting up a choke point. At least half get poisoned.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
1. I'll start out by saying that the game is great, it's free and there's a lot of work gone into the campaigns as a whole. On any campaign you can accept that some scenarios are weaker than others, or are silly, or are harder or not so straightforward. But this is three dodgy scenarios in succession and my least favourite of all the mainline campaigns.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I've got to be honest I'm in the middle of this campaign and I'm starting to feel like I've been misled. Consistency seems to affect the Intermediate campaigns more than the others. On Easy or Medium High Pass in the Hammer of Thursagan has a similar problem.

This isn't so much about bad luck or fairness, because part of the game play involves working with a disadvantage and somehow finding a way of turning it to your advantage. There are other scenarios in the other intermediate campaigns where the odds are stacked against you, such as the second to last scenario in Liberty a couple of scenarios in Legend of Wesmere and High Pass in The Hammer of Thursagan but you learn key skills such as recovering from losing lots of units or high level units, you learn to sacrifice, to take chances and it all somehow evens out in the end.

But here the inconsistency and 'spikes' are just too much. On Easy or Medium you face fewer enemies so have fewer chances to level up units. Probably also like me a player makes more mistakes, doesn't have enough experience and therefore is less efficient at managing gold. It's a particular problem in this campaign because you're playing a limited Loyalist faction - the most versatile of all factions with the most different types of units (over half of which you cannot recruit) playing against the strongest of all the chaotic enemies - the Undead.

In all the other intermediate scenarios you have a chance to recover from the inconsistencies because the factions are not as diverse and they are better supported and the campaigns take a more balanced route afterwards. After High Pass and Forbidden Forest in the Hammer of Thursagan for example you have Fear and the Siege of Kal Kartha and you can recover and even when you fail to level up units in these two scenarios you have ample opportunity to do so in the final scenario because you're fighting level1 Dwarves long before you meet the Undead.

But here there's not much opportunity to recover because Mages are so crucial to the campaign and your enemies are becoming stronger and are well capable of dealing enough damage to kill any level 1 unit and you're just not going to get the opportunities to level up the other units to support your Mages.

At this point I can abandon the campaign and try my luck on one of the 'expert' campaigns which are harder but generally seem to be much more balanced, such as The Rise of Wesnoth.

Therefore I would suggest either balancing out this entire campaign or ditching the Easy option and making it an expert campaign.
User avatar
Maiklas3000
Posts: 532
Joined: June 23rd, 2010, 10:43 am

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
challenging (hardest), 1.11.12. Also 1.8.3 previously in this thread, but it's a totally different scenario now!

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6. More scary than hard (but that's good!)

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
First time I sent Gweddry west to the dead end and lost. I guess it serves me right for not looking carefully for another tunnel.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good, but there is a glitch with the dialog regarding the gold. It says, "All the gold the orcs took is in this chest!" Then it says "You've regained 0 gold!" That might not be so bad except that it's a victory condition to retrieve this zero gold, which is annoying. To fix this, I suggest you give the 100 gold bonus in the previous scenario to Dacyn when he gets to the stronghold, if Gweddry has not already gotten it. I was out of time and couldn't get Gweddry into the stronghold, so no gold. Oh yeah, I guess Gweddry could spend all the gold by buying units there, so you still need to trap this zero gold situation in Captured.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
At first I thought I was getting senile, because I didn't remember any of this from when I played Captured years ago. Finally I realized that this Captured is a totally new scenario!

It took some thought to derive the best way to release the prisoners. I could do it all on one turn, with my disguised infiltrator going to the middle cell, Gweddry going to the right cell, and a fast Ogre from the middle cell going to the left cell. Also, using my White Mage as the infiltrator got him into position to tend the wounded.

Make sure you have an additional White Mage or Mage of Light before you play this scenario, or you may be hosed! To be extra safe, make it a Mage of Light, because you get all your highest level units in the cells (so if you might not get all your L2's if you have a lot of leveled units.)

Ogres are terribly useful in this episode (so make sure you level up your Young Ogres in the previous two scenarios), but by the end I was starting to run out of them. I lost other L2's as well. Towards the end, you'd think that the dribble of L3's running in would be easy to take out given your now overwhelming horde, but they are spaced just close enough together to continue to be a threat to your units, so good job on scenario design.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9, very enjoyable and different, good job. It's also a nice balance of leveling up units versus losing units, so that it's neither an XP-fest nor a total culling of the roster.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
You might want to make it impossible for all three starting units to be L1. Every time at the start, I was given only 3 L1 units: two Spearmen and a Mage. Fortunately, the Mage had high XP, so I was able to convert him into a White Mage. I think I would have needed some luck to get past the initial combat if my Mage didn't already have high XP. Or maybe any three L1's can defeat that weak opposition... I don't know. It is cute that in my case three L1's wound up freeing everybody.

I believe Owaec could have been killed on the first round following the jailbreak, and I don't think there is anything I could have done to eliminate that possibility (and thus defeat.) I don't like failure due to randomness. It didn't happen, though. You know how you can toss a sacrificial Spearman to the Cuttlefish in some scenarios to save your important units? Same thing here: I tossed a Spearman and a Horseman to the trolls. But that only reduced the chance of Owaec getting killed. The scenario designer might want to tweak his positioning a bit, to make it possible to screen him.

(8) WML?
It's good. There are some errors due to deprecated syntax.
Attachments
EI-Captured_replay.gz
(50.81 KiB) Downloaded 933 times
User avatar
Alarantalara
Art Contributor
Posts: 786
Joined: April 23rd, 2010, 8:17 pm
Location: Canada

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Alarantalara »

Maiklas3000 wrote: (8) WML?
It's good. There are some errors due to deprecated syntax.
Was this a continuation from 1.10 saves? If so, the deprecated syntax is in the units carried over from the saved games and is unrelated to the scenario itself.
User avatar
Maiklas3000
Posts: 532
Joined: June 23rd, 2010, 10:43 am

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Maiklas3000 »

Alarantalara wrote:Was this a continuation from 1.10 saves? If so, the deprecated syntax is in the units carried over from the saved games and is unrelated to the scenario itself.
Yes, it was a continuation from 1.10 saves.
User avatar
flammstrudel
Posts: 74
Joined: April 13th, 2013, 9:08 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by flammstrudel »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
1.10.3 hard (Challenging - Royal Guard)
100 gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Could be be better. Who needs to move where to end the scenario? I suggest adding a marker.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The throne room is scary. Good demonstration what orc warriors can do to you in permanent darkness. And quite frankly: a little bit of luck is necessary. If two of them hit 6 out of 6 you are going to lose someone.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
It's good. 7/10

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Shorten the initial dungeon crawl. It serves no purpose, spawn my heroes right next to the entrance to the throne room. The city area should contain a fair number enemies (Goblins?), right now it's empty. Owaec's movement cost on cave tiles should be reduced from 4 to 3.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Sloppy game-play on my part. The main cave is extremely unforgiving.
Attachments
EI-Captured_replay.gz
(29.7 KiB) Downloaded 739 times
User avatar
Wedge009
Developer
Posts: 17
Joined: June 24th, 2009, 11:17 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Wedge009 »

  1. Easy on 1.12.0. I understand it's been rewritten as of 1.11.10 - I can't remember what the old scenario looked like as I haven't played EI since the 1.4.x release.
  2. Given that this is supposed to be easy, it was a huge step up in difficulty compared to the rest of the campaign up to this point (explained below). I dare say it was even harder than Mal-Ravanal's Capital.
  3. Objectives were fine.
  4. It wasn't clear what the Orc-disguised unit was supposed to do, especially given what happened to me the first time (explained below).
  5. The troll guarding the south-west entrance to the throne room came and clobbered my trio before one of them had even put on the disguise. This also meant he lost the disguise since he can't get past the troll without being spotted, making rescuing the rest of the team impossible. I had to reload when it became clear that it wouldn't be possible to break through without the disguise (all the enemies in the room charged into the corridor, blocking any hope of entrance).
    The other issue I had was that once I had rescued one room and the Hero units became assigned to me, all the enemies in the room would target one of them. With so many level 3 trolls near them, this effectively becomes an instant game over. Eventually, I realised Dacyn could reach the north-east prison and I sacrificed the newly-recruited level 1 units within to screen my Hero units (my recall list wasn't big enough to fill the whole prison, though I didn't expect it to be).
  6. Aside from the aforementioned difficulties, this was a fun scenario to get experience once the party was all rescued.
  7. Is it possible to tell the enemies inside the throne room not go charging into corridor to attack the starting trio? At least until one of the prisons is unlocked, or the non-disguised members of the starting trio enter the room.
    Also, is it worth re-arranging the throne room guards so the Hero units have a chance to survive on their first turn? Or somehow updating the AI script to give them a chance of survival in the first round.
Soli Deo Gloria
User avatar
Wedge009
Developer
Posts: 17
Joined: June 24th, 2009, 11:17 am
Location: Sydney, Australia

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Wedge009 »

I haven't tested it yet but the updates with release 1.12.1 sound like they should resolve the difficulties I observed in 1.12.0. Thanks.
Soli Deo Gloria
Nel
Posts: 8
Joined: March 4th, 2015, 8:55 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by Nel »

(1) What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
Medium, 1.12.0

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5 - it was interesting to think about how to free all units as quick as possible

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good. The disguised unit is nice to use :-)

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Not getting poor Owaec killed. Also tried several ways to let Gweddry escape quicker, didn't find any other solution than letting him first hide behind cannon fodder units and then from behind reach the escape tunnel.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
no idea...
Attachments
Io-Capturés_revoir_la_partieb.gz
(46.8 KiB) Downloaded 673 times
User avatar
greenghost2008
Posts: 6
Joined: April 20th, 2015, 9:37 pm

Re: Scenario Review - EI: Captured

Post by greenghost2008 »

This Scenario seems broken. When ever I get my commander to the exit he would say something like,"made it" the mage guy would say,"get back here" and then I'd lose. I can't figure out how to get past this scenario because of this.
Locked