03 - Ka'lian under Attack

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

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Ninjuri
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Ninjuri »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth 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?
clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
fine
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Sooooo many orcish assassins at the start, there was poison, poison everywhere!
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
None, it was doable.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
no
Fate is against me.
TwoFry
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by TwoFry »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.2 Hard
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9
(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?
Decent
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The main challenge I had was that after passing the initial siege phase, all the recruits simply formed a solid block of units around black's leader, only breaking off a few wolf riders if I left an weak unit on flat land. This made it nearly impossible to use my terrain advantage and I was overwhelmed multiple times by the sheer bulk of my opponents forces
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
2, almost quit the campaign due to this
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Change the enemy AI so they attack the Ka'lian. After turn 12 I didn't have to defend at all, and the game was remarkably static and frustrating due to the enemy massing all their forces around black's keep.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Multiple times I had to restart after being overwhelmed by a mass attack during bad time of day.

I really can not understate how terrible of a time I had due to this problem, it was like nothing I've ever seen before in a campaign
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tr0ll
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by tr0ll »

It behaved the same on Normal. (wesnoth 1.10.5) The orc leader says "we wait for main army" so it is in character to do that. The fact they are hard to defeat when bunched up around their stockade says the AI is doing a good job. However, on Normal, the orcs hanging back made it easy for me to regroup from all the poisoning and prepare the counterattack. If they had used their wolves to take out all the elvish villages i would have been finished. The orc across the river was left undefended. Replay attached.
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LoW-Ka’lian_under_Attack_replay.gz
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vanatteveldt
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by vanatteveldt »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.4 Medium
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7
(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?
OK
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Keeping units alive, especially the Kalian ones. Also I just hate dealing with assassins. I tend to recruit 80% archers, and assassins have very high resistance on good terrain, so even if their damage is quite modest it is hard to get them killed, and extremely annoying to have many poisoned units before we get access to healers. Sometimes I had to decide to just 'retire' a poisoned unit because it would occupy the village too long to get back to battle on time, and send it back to a remote village to tend the fields.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8. It is quite nice to have a fairly tough defense, where you really have to shuttle units around and take gambles with damaged units and/or move units into the water in order to kill off enemies; and then switch from this defense to an offense with coordination between the two armies. I think they should let the player control allies more often, it is much more fun than watching the AI do stupid stuff.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Not much actually. I think the second AI wave can be beefed up a bit. There was a strange "'wait' changed to 'attack'" message which looked more like a debugging statement than like dialogue. I'm guessing this has something to do with the complaint by other posters that the AI just piles up units instead of attacks.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Nope. I reloaded once or twice due to tactical mistakes, especially forgetting to move leadership units into place before attacking.

After Kalenz arrived there were a couple of turns of pitched battle in the northern plains, mainly fought by Kalenz' army with some assistance (read: suicide elves) from the Kalian. The main forces of the Kalian moved west and south to occupy the villages there to get healed (the two villages in the kalian are not nearly enough). The southern orc responded by sending a force of assassins south, which is nice because it diverted them from the northern battle. I had to retreat the Kalian elves to the second line of villages and could attack at dawn, and killed the orcs with some casualties (but who cares, it's not my army right? :-)). The northern battle was a massive XP-fest as I could use terrain and villages to my benefit and the battle started at dawn. I think I started with 1 marksman, and now my leaders are L2 and L3 and I have 7 L2 archers to recruit (did I tell you I much prefer archers over fighters? :-)) and an archer and fighter that are 1 kill from L2. Also nice that I could use suicide Kalian elves to lure the orcs onto bad terrain and to make sure that they didn't kill my precious Kalenz elves. After the battle it was the usual mop up of closing in on the enemy leader and killing it. By the time the norhtern orc leader was killed and my troops crossed the river, the Kalian elves also arrived at the southern keep, so that wasn't even funny. Most annoying event was that on Kalenz turn I got the last leader down to around 1 health so the Kalian elves got the kill XP.
Attachments
LoW-Ka’lian_under_Attack_replay.gz
Edit: replay does not work, it doesn't seem to handle the player switching. I immediately get a (WML?) error that player is not available at the top level, and it displays Kalenz' gold for Kalian. After turn 7 it melts down, not understanding where all these new elf movements come from and not understanding where the orc leaders get the money for recruiting from.
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Velensk
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Velensk »

This isn't really feedback but a request that the bird sound effect either be removed or made so that there's a pause between iterations. Without either it can get pretty annoying really fast.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
fabi
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by fabi »

Velensk wrote:This isn't really feedback but a request that the bird sound effect either be removed or made so that there's a pause between iterations. Without either it can get pretty annoying really fast.
Agreed.
I also like to disable it during the night.
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max_torch
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by max_torch »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.7 Hard
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
4
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
100% clear
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
very good dialogue. The trash talk between elves and orcs are amusing.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Killing the enemy leader early to earn more gold while trying to level up several units. But alone there isnt really much of a challenge as long as you dont expose your leaders.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8. the defense part was very cool. then getting a lot of units levelled here is fun.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Make the orcs protect the south leader as well. leaving him unprotected doesnt make sense, not unless you add dialogue that sort of explains why his men abandoned him to die or something.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
yeah on my first try I wasnt aware of the gobliln wolf's far movement so I ended up exposing kalenz and wolves killed him. at the second try i got it right slowly picking the orcs off.
Ninjamestari
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Ninjamestari »

(1) What difficulty levels and what version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.7 Hard
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear, I wasn't expecting the scenario to continue after the first 9 turns but that's ok.
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
The dialogue is well written.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Not loosing too many units, especially at night. I played a bit sloppy and lost the loyal guy anyway.
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8, I felt like I had to fight at night too to beat the time limit which is cool. Fighting against mass wolf riders is nice with archers.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
-
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
On my first try I lost so many units when fighting against the orc blob that I couldn't kill the southern leader.
The AI behaved differently this time, it used much more goblin knights and less orcs. I think it was a bit easier because the AI sends goblin knights to fight you while keeping the orcs at base.
Attachments
LoW-Ka’lian_under_Attack_replay.gz
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Maiklas3000
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) Level and version? Hard, 1.11.15, a lot of starting gold.
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 8.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Fine.
(5) Challenges? I moved my leader (Galtrid) to a keep, but I was unable to recruit! Finally I found that only the easternmost hexes in the island-fortress could be used for recruiting. [Edit: Silly me. Now I see that the fortress is split in two, one keep for each half, so no bug for recruiting.] Furthermore, both the labels and the unit locations were shifted up 6 hexes from where they should be, so Galtrid starts outside the fortress, across the moat on the bank, and the assassins do not start in the water (except for 2 of them.) It's difficult to hold the fortress, but given that the orcs run away once Kalenz arrives, it's not as hard as it looks. The orcs ball up in the northwest corner (unless you did a bad job of defending the fortress), and you have to advance slowly and carefully, peeling off layers of their defensive onion, one at a time. I finished on the last turn. I could have made it one turn earlier. I finished with ~350 gold for Kalenz, but alas, the screen said Galtrid had negative gold and no carryover, and said nothing about Kalenz. I start the next scenario with 220 gold, and Landar has been busted from Avenger all the way down to Archer! Kalenz is still a Captain, but lost all his XP. When I try to recall troops, it says I have no troops to recall. Sniffle. Game over, man, game over!
(6) Fun? (1-10) 1 due to bugs, but would be an 8 otherwise.
(7) Changes? You need to fix the bugs in unit placement, recruitment hexes, and the side used to carry gold and troops over to the next scenario. The whole campaign is broken, otherwise.
(8) Restarts? I lost once when I could not figure out how to recruit! No save-reloads.

This concludes my effort to play through LoW under 1.11.15. There will be no more reviews.
Edit: Recovered, see below.
Attachments
LoW-The_Elvish_Treasury.gz
Starting file for the next scenario, so you can see how messed up it is.
(13.9 KiB) Downloaded 739 times
LoW-Ka’lian_under_Attack_replay.gz
This replay crashes for me, probably because of the change in sides.
(87.5 KiB) Downloaded 722 times
Last edited by Maiklas3000 on June 21st, 2014, 5:29 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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iceiceice
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by iceiceice »

Thanks for reporting, I have linked to this on the bug tracker here:
https://gna.org/bugs/index.php?22221

If it isn't fixed for 1.11.16 then most likely we will have to disable the campaign for that release.
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Wesbane
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Wesbane »

Maiklas3000 wrote:I start the next scenario with 220 gold, and Landar has been busted from Avenger all the way down to Archer! Kalenz is still a Captain, but lost all his XP. When I try to recall troops, it says I have no troops to recall. Sniffle. Game over, man, game over!
It sounds like the same bug reported in Elvish Dynasty thread and similar to the problem of getting unearned carryover gold in 1.9. Try this:
Reload last turn of scenario. Save game after your victory was claimed, in linger mode. Reload that save and continue game from it. Everything should be back to normal. Magic. :mrgreen:
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Maiklas3000
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Maiklas3000 »

Thanks, that worked, though the last save file I had was from turn 19, so I had to replay 15 turns. Now the start of the next scenario looks correct and my recall list is not empty. The new replay still crashes, FYI.
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Inky
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Inky »

Original post (version 1.10.4)
Spoiler:
(1) Level and version? Hard, 1.12.4, 384 starting gold
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 8, due to tight turn limit.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Fine.
(5) Challenges? turn limit, getting the NW orc at the end.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 10, especially the beginning - I loved the precise management you must do at the beginning to level units.
(7) Changes? The two elvish riders have an elvish horse archer advancement - guessing this isn't intentional?
(8) Restarts? one restart (to beginning) since Kalenz died to one the wolves guarding the northern orc because I hadn't noticed it....should have used ctrl+v.
Attachments
LoW-Ka’lian_under_Attack_replay.gz
Wesnoth 1.12.4 / hard
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Last edited by Inky on September 19th, 2015, 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
mattsc
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by mattsc »

Wesbane wrote:It sounds like the same bug reported in Elvish Dynasty thread and similar to the problem of getting unearned carryover gold in 1.9. Try this:
Reload last turn of scenario. Save game after your victory was claimed, in linger mode. Reload that save and continue game from it. Everything should be back to normal. Magic. :mrgreen:
After looking into this, it turns out that it wasn't necessary to reload in linger mode (although that was one option). Loading any save from after Kalenz and Landar were back and continuing to play from there would have done it. So that's why this did not happen consistently for everybody.

But in any case, gfgtdf now fixed this for 1.11.16+dev and 1.13.0-dev, so it should all be good for 1.11.17.
Linthar
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Re: V1.9/1.10 - 03 - Ka'lian under Attack

Post by Linthar »

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

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

(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.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
The scenario can be divided into 3 sections. The initial 9 turns of assault, then fighting the remains of the attack and the forces of the brown orc for control of the map, and then finally taking out the enemy leaders. The initial assault, while painful, especially due to a million assassins poisoning your troops, and having only two villages to cleanse the poison in wasn't too hard. I counterattacked aggressively, went on the offensive with the level 2 leaders to make sure the assassins died fast, was very careful to never let an orc get out of the water, and was not at all afraid to let weakened units die to buy more time (after all there was no realistic way to heal all of them). This rather aggressive strategy worked so well that on the ninth turn I didn't have any attackers left and I was even sending forces to the north and south to start grabbing villages.

The middle portion of the scenario was pretty easy too. The orange orc was focused solely on defending his base. I had some skirmishes with the brown orcs forces but even with all my forces split in two covering the northern and western fronts, I had enough forces to overpower him (especially with the map being 90% forest).

But killing the orange orc leader was a nightmare. His base was full of level 2 units, was surrounded by empty plains with little defensive terrain, he had a 200+ gold reserve to replace anything I destroyed, and despite owning a mere two villages still had a positive income. My first victory was from a direct assault on his base, which was a rather costly victory. I eventually came up with a better strategy of taking advantage of the fact that he will at times come and attack enemies that are within movement range of his keep, and did an all out assault on him the turn he came out, and I managed to just barely take him down in one turn. There was another tense turn or two after that while his remaining forces tried to kill off my incredibly vulnerable troops in return, but I was quickly able to stabilize and the scenario was effectively over.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
4. The orange orcs defensive, I'm going to stay near my base no matter what strategy, may have been effective, but its not fun. The challenge is no longer in beating the enemy, its in beating the time limit. Without the time limit it would be pitifully easy to amass a force capable of overwhelming the stationary and non growing army of the orange orc. And fighting a time limit removes a lot of the fun of wesnoth. There's no back and forth, no slow gaining of ground, just a relentless push forward against a clock.

To make my point clearer I'm not trying to say I'm opposed to a scenario forcing me to be aggressive. The problem here is less that the orange orc is playing defensively, and more that its incredibly obvious that he's not the real obstacle, and that the AI is blatantly trying to stall until the time limit runs out. The orange orc spent a good 10 turns with 200+ gold not recruiting a single unit, because all his keep squares were full and he wasn't moving any units even a single tile to free up a space. That doesn't make a lick of sense unless the orange orc is playing solely to win by me running out of time.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Looking at the WML it looks like the orange orcs would actually be aggressive if I was terrible at defending during the first nine turns. Just make that the behavior all the time. It would be much more fun, to have the battle continue nonstop with new waves of level 2 troops from both enemy leaders heading to the center isle, trying to buy time for your newly arrived armies to turn the tides, instead of a lengthy breather as you move everything into position, and a very punishing final assault. If you don't want to go that far, at least make him spend his excess gold, to send more units to harass me once he has his defenses in place. Right now any time I tried to lure a few enemies out to chip away at him, the net result is almost zero gain as he just refills he keep with all the gold he refuses to spend. Its a challenge but not a fun type of challenge.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I needed about 2 reloads to beat the scenario successfully, then I took another two reloads figuring out how to refine my strategy to avoid taking heavy loses. Every time the only trouble was from assaulting the orange orcs base.
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