V1.7/1.8 SP Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Feedback for the mainline single-player campaign Legend of Wesmere.

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BigCheese
Posts: 27
Joined: August 20th, 2009, 7:05 pm

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by BigCheese »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
medium 1.7.6

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
4 - slaugthered the enemy while they tried to cross the river

(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?
very good

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
not to suicide/exposing units

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8 - I beat the crap out of those traitors

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Lander (archer) recalled Lander (sharpshooter); Lander (sharpshooter) went to the front and got himself killed -> I won; this should be fixed

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
none
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Maiklas3000
Posts: 532
Joined: June 23rd, 2010, 10:43 am

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
hard; 1.8.2

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7 or 8. Keep in mind that all four of my non-loyal shydes went over to Landar in the previous scenario, as did two out of three of my enchantresses, and I had no sylphs at that point. Furthermore, Landar kept at least one of the enchantresses in End of War! Going into this scenario, my recall list consisted of a sylph (just promoted), an enchantress (just promoted), a hero, a captain, and level 1's. Also keep in mind that my loyal troops (except Anduilas and Cleodil) were under command of the suicidal allied leader in the previous scenario, so they didn't make it to this scenario. So basically I had three starting units, four recallable units, and 400-something gold, which I turned into a swarm of level 1 units.

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

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I hated the ending dialog. For heaven's sake, I just killed Landar, and he's going off into a speech. It should be one line, like, "Kalenz, forgive me after my death!" (Or, if you take my later advice about adding a scenario, "You have not seen the last of me!") Then Kalenz can go off in a speech if you really want. The sweet ending is not necessary and sort of sickening. We just finished the campaign from hell. We promoted dwarves, only to have them leave. We promoted Landar, only to have him turn against us. We promoted elf fighters, only to have some defect to Landar. We promoted elf shamen, only to have almost all them defect to Landar. In the end, we had to beat Landar with level 1 recruits. We don't need dialog to make us feel better about striking down Landar. We're pretty darn happy about it, really.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The scenario reminded me a lot of the saurian scenarios. There was an initial assault wave that seemed like it would overwhelm my forces. The enemy succeeded in breaking my line, and flanking my line, repeatedly. Yet somehow just when I thought I couldn't hang on any longer, there were almost no enemy left to kill. I lost a lot of units and I promoted a lot of units, again like the saurian scenarios.

Having no healers except Cleodil was a concern, but I finally got a shaman to promote to druid.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8. Very well balanced, if you're stripped of almost all your promoted units.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
This is how normal scenarios should be, in terms of toughness (keeping in mind that I had only four level 2+ units in my recall list.) But the scenarios in this particular campaign were generally extremely difficult, with many players including myself crying "impossible" at times (even though no scenario was impossible.) You had a couple of the biggest and toughest battles of any campaign. So, this was an anticlimatic finish. I say add one more scenario, where Landar has gone undead and the scenario is extremely tough, approaching impossible, so only the very best players can beat it and have bragging rights. At the start, Cleodil can say, "See Kalenz? I told you we should have cut off his head before we buried him!"

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No.
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santi
Lord of Wesmere
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Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by santi »

"I say add one more scenario, where Landar has gone undead and the scenario is extremely tough, approaching impossible, so only the very best players can beat it and have bragging rights"
Initially Low had some 8 more scenario, most of which have now merged in delf's Memoirs because otherwise the campaign would be too long for many people's taste. Landar becoming undead is probably premature because at this time (before Delf's Memoirs and Iliah-Malal), nobody in Wesnoth knows how to summon undead.
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Maiklas3000
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Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by Maiklas3000 »

Well, it seems to me that Landar could still become undead, since he drank a double dose of wraith juice. He could then lead some sort of army - maybe not an undead army, if he can't know how to summon them, but maybe orcs. Or if undead summoning will be understood within Kalenz' lifetime (he's an elf, remember), you could flash forward to the distant future, with an aged Kalenz and his aged loyal followers coming out of retirement to face the threat of undead Landar and his summoned undead army.

If End of War is to be the last scenario, then I think it would be cool to toughen it by making have Landar go invisible (which I also suggested is how he should weasel out of the previous battle.) This would require adjusting how invisibility works in The Chief Must Die, because you wouldn't want it to work that way in the final scenario. And anyway, it was lame how the orcs just stood there waiting to die in The Chief Must Die. I would have invisibility work like rangers, except with very high defense at all times, and the ability to disappear in any terrain when not adjacent to enemy unit.

It would be lame if Landar goes invisible but just sits on his recruiting square, so bring in someone else to do the recruiting. Maybe a couple scenarios ago when you abduct the player's fighters, you could save one of the marshalls/champions specifically to be the leader here (and so he would not appear in the previous scenario.) If invisible Landar goes kamikaze like the normal AI, then the scenario would be pretty easy, so make him conservative, sort of ninja-like, going for easy kills, not always attacking when possible, or maybe even make him cowardly. You could also give Landar several more units of his own type (avenger or sharpshooter, normally) that go invisible at the same time Landar does. That would really drive people crazy, especially if it doesn't identify the unit by name when it's adjacent.

It's a huge change and would take some work, but it would fit the campaign, being another case where the player is forced into a new situation where he has to devise a new strategy.
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santi
Lord of Wesmere
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Joined: April 6th, 2004, 12:32 pm

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by santi »

That could be a possibility. Perhaps his rage can turn on invisibility or something like that.
Incidentally, the King must Die has gone through a number of different changes -originally the idea was 90% defence and no attack by the orcs unless the elves attack first. But then again you have 2 people who should not die against an army. Hard to talk strategy then
Thrash
Posts: 223
Joined: June 25th, 2010, 1:54 pm

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by Thrash »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

1.8.3, Medium, 716 starting gold.

Also, I fixed my version so that all my shaman line was available to me instead of being given to Landar. I believe this is what is intended based on the story line. Pretty clearly made a big difference.

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

4, while the bulk of the forces were engaged in a battle, I notice Landar was just hanging out down in the fort with no other defends, so I snuck a small contingent off and killed him long before the battle was going to end otherwise. Not sure I would have won in time in a slugfest.


(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 enough...

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Probably figuring out I had to assassinate Landar, otherwise it was just a slugfest with the usual terrain and troop management issues.

(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?

Some units guarding Landar would have made it tough, or even if he had followed his army into battle.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

No.
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kukn
Posts: 10
Joined: July 9th, 2010, 9:30 am

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by kukn »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Hard, version 1.8.2

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
4, but not a bad thing after the head-ache missions and messups before that.

(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. I second Maiklas' reaction to the end dialogue.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
No big challenge.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5 - it's pretty nice, but anticlimactic and really simple with a good tactic - if you send part of your force to stop his army and meanwhile send a smallish group of fast units (Kalenz, Cleodil and any M7+ units) down south to sneak round to Landar.
I had lots of money left from Northern Battle (750+g) - that is a good thing imho, I bought up some twenty level 2's and made myself a strong army good enough to beat Landar's army straight on with a bit of effort.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Make it so that you can't easily sneak round to Landar - make the map smaller so that the fighting is more intense and you have to push your way to Landar - give him less starting money and a much higher income, so that he can get a steady trickle of new units to fight your army (which will start big and dwindle through losses - forcing you to really push fast enough to get to Landar before his endless reinforcements beat you into submission.
I also like Maiklas' idea about making Landar invisible.
All in all the last 4 missions of LoW just aren't fun enough, and what with the bug making Landar steal all my fairies, the repeating of old maps and with no interesting new game-balancing ideas in any of them, they had me just wanting to get the campaign over and done with as fast as possible so I could go on to a different campaign. Pity that, as up to Human Alliance (incl.), the campaign had me quite enthused...

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No.
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santi
Lord of Wesmere
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Joined: April 6th, 2004, 12:32 pm

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by santi »

The initial story was that Landar gets no fairies(because their leader is ... Kalenz's girlfriend).
But this resulted in perhaps too easy scenarios and I assume that's why this was changed.
Thrash
Posts: 223
Joined: June 25th, 2010, 1:54 pm

Re: Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by Thrash »

santi wrote:The initial story was that Landar gets no fairies(because their leader is ... Kalenz's girlfriend).
But this resulted in perhaps too easy scenarios and I assume that's why this was changed.
If you mean Landar can recruit fairies, fine. If you mean Landar gets all of Kalenz experienced faeries (which is what happens now), the opening dialog from Northern Battle is misleading:
Kalenz can only recall shamans and their advancements from his former army; the rest of his men joined Uadredia before he arrived.
Edited: "wrong" -> "misleading"
Jabie
Posts: 107
Joined: December 2nd, 2010, 12:50 pm

Re: V1.7/1.8 SP Scenario Review: LoW 23 - End of War

Post by Jabie »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Easy 1.8.5

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

3. Considering how many horrific missions I went through to get here, this one was a walk in the park

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

Defeat Landar.

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

A worthy end to the scenario. There was also a nice snatch of dialog where one of my units killed off a former friend.

There wasn't enough campaign pay-off though. See Changes for a couple of ideas on how to develop that.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

At one point I thought time was going to be an issue. It wasn't, but as this is the final scenario, it might be fun to give the player a little more time and let them really enjoy it.

Strategy: We both have about 1000 gold, but I can use Healers and he can't. I guess there was always only going to be one winner. Most of the fight took place in the North East Forest, which I could never quite fully occupy. A small detachment of elves held the middle bridge. Thye looked menacing enough that Landar's elves took the fight to the NE forest. There was a small skirmish on the SW bridge including an inspired gambit by the AI that nearly paid off. Once Landar's army was dust, I strolled across the map towards him. At least he didn't hide in the Forest like a coward. Kalenz was awarded the ultimate honour of defeating Landar and ending the war.

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

9. A great scenario to end the campaign with.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

* Give the player more time. This is the final fight. Let them have enough time to enjoy it.
* Make Landar Chaotic and give him a magical melee attack to simulate the power he has drawn from the potion.
* Campaign pay-off 1: I mentioned before (http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=51&t=22453) that if the player saves Elsomithr in "Elves Last Stand" he ought to turn up in this mission. Elsomithr could have died in Landar's putsch, but his son or daughter could turn up in this scenario seeking revenge.
* Campaign pay-off 2: In my analysis of Costly Revenge (http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 1&start=15) that there needs to be an option for Kalenz not to commit genocide, by having Landar trick him. This is where the pay-off comes in. The eggs Kalenz saved from the first village were given to a Saurian Oracle who can turn up on turn 6, thanking Kalenz and offering his services. Landar can react to this, tirading about how the traitorous Kalenz sides with an enemy of the Elven People in his quest for power.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

A couple "What do you mean I missed four times at 70% on my first attack?!?" moments.
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