Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Feedback for the mainline campaign The Hammer of Thursagan.

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devavrata
Posts: 119
Joined: August 30th, 2012, 8:59 pm

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by devavrata »

Content Feedback wrote:The Hammer of Thursagan, scenario 5 - Invaders:

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Battle for Wesnoth 1.8.3, Easy/Medium/Hard
Content Feedback wrote:(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
8 - At last some difficulty
Content Feedback wrote:(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear
Content Feedback wrote:(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear.
Content Feedback wrote:(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Orcs are powerful enemies - their blows are so powerful that any of their level 2 units is capable of killing one from your level 1 units in a single attack. Besides, wolves are fast, so they can surround your units in order to attack them from many angles.
Best strategy is to forget about the land on the south side of the river and cross to the north side. While the two orc leaders south of the river lose their time taking villages and fighting the bandits, fight the northern orc leader - besides, this orc leader is special, it gets a minimun of 14 gold per turn, so it's best to take it out as soon as possible. When the southern orcs go for you, await for them on the north bank of the river so they become easy targets. Soon enough, after the northern orc is killed and the first wave of southern orcs is defeated, you'll find that the rest of the southern orcs are disperse fighting bandits all around the landscape - so it's easy to cross the river back and to take on the remaining orcs. Only then you can think about taking villages, most of them will have been cleared of bandits by the orcs by now.
Content Feedback wrote:(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7
Content Feedback wrote:(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
It is quite nice as it is. Bandits make for an interesting strategy twist.
Content Feedback wrote:(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No
Content Feedback wrote:(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
-
SBak
Posts: 78
Joined: October 8th, 2011, 1:36 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by SBak »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Easy and medium 1.8.5 and 1.10.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
This ranges from a 7 to a 10. This is what I call a 'baptism of fire' type of scenario which determines just how well you can play Dwarves. It's not as scary as it looks at the start when you see all these enemy units appearing but still... It also depends on how many levelled units and how much gold you come into the scenario with.

(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?
Also very clear.

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


Mainly getting through the scenario. I usually come into this scenario with Aiglondur and some others levelled up (lvl2) and some not. I tried numerous times but initially didn't get past a dozen or so turns. I read the walkthrough, tried going down and starting from the south west Orcs but got wiped out in the middle, and this also happened when I tried to go north. I thought going north was a better solution as I had all my units out in open territory and space, the bandits were containing the Orcs over in the north east and I had a starting point of a few remaining Orcs in the north.

What invariably happens is that a couple of Wolf Riders come over with say an Orcish Grunt, but then they flag the villages in the north and all of a sudden I'm also swarmed with Thugs, Footpads and Thieves on unfavourable terrain plus the few other Orcs.

I have actually got through the scenario and have worked out a basic strategy which is following a line east of the keep along the thin stretch of mountains towards (and beyond) the small keep or ruined castle in the centre of the map. I've found this works because the eastern Orcs are drawn further east by the bandits, the south west Orcs are fighting bandits due south and the northern Orcs are still far away and have to cross the river. I've managed to level up some units from the stray bandits (usually footpads) which come north bringing the Orcs and this is usually now where they meet my level2 units and Aiglondur becomes a Lord. I stay clear of the forest due south and find that there's not much difference going round it.

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

9-10. This scenario has taught me the vast range of strategic and tactical options you can employ with Dwarves so that each time I play it I get something out of it.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Nothing needed IMO.

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

Numerous... including engaging with the enemies too early, taking chances on bad terrain, not to mention numerous lucky Wolf Riders and Orcish Crossbowmen.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?


N/A.
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Chief_Chasso
Posts: 132
Joined: December 15th, 2012, 2:36 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by Chief_Chasso »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?: Easy, 1.11.15
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10): 6
(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?: Very clear. Just a minor thing- I didn't think it was necessary to have "the villagers are attacking us" every time a village was captured. I think the first message is sufficient to get the idea. It was just a little repetitive.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?: Getting past the first wave of orcs. It didn't seem the outlaws held up the orcs for very long.
(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?: No suggestions. This was a fun overall scenario.
(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?: I didn't check.
SP Campaign: Rally For Roanic
thebends43201
Posts: 6
Joined: April 25th, 2015, 5:36 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by thebends43201 »

The Hammer of Thursagan, scenario 5 - Invaders:

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on? 1.12.2, hard. 256 starting gold

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10) 6, but I think I got pretty lucky at a critical stage, otherwise who knows, prob 8. Strategy-below

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

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

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario? Took 2 tries. First time I went east, thinking I could use the mountains, but it's pretty hard to hold a line, plus enemy gets some forest so it's hard to kill them. Success was going north, holding off green and then holding the river, where you can chop up most of blue and purple. The rest is mop-up.

I lost two level 1s and two level 2s. I should have lost a level 3 Lord as well but got lucky. I basically launched him onto a vanguard hex to hold the river, and was prepared to lose him as long as he could hold the end of my line for 2 night turns. I ended up around turn 31 with massively negative gold, but four level 3s and 3 level 2s (plus the loyals.)

The keys to solving this level (imho):
1. ignore the walkthrough and go north, at least on hard. It spaces out the enemy so they don't hit you all at once. (I had one turn after taking out most of green to set a line on the river to handle next wave.)
2. start with enough gold and level 1 troops that are within 16 XP of levelling up--you may have to replay 1-2 scenarios to make this happen. But you can't really heal at any point, so you'll need to heal via leveling up. Getting you guys to heal this way is prob only way to win.
3. Once you're engaged with green, use the gryphon to nab the northern villages green has already flagged: he has lots of income so I felt I needed to cut it off. (The other 2 go negative gold for a while, plus they are spread out so when they recruit later on, the units are alone and easy to pick off.)
4. Make certain to use the Inspire trait on the witness. He's more helpful doing that and only occasionally throwing the bolas. Otherwise he only has 39 HP and can die easily.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10) 8, but I really though at the beginning I was gonna hate this one. ;)

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun? I think I only faced 2- assassins. If there had been more this would be close to impossible. So 2 max seems reasonable.

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

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
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Inky
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Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by Inky »

(1) Level and version? Hard (Lord), 1.12.4, 225 starting gold
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 8. Enjoyed the challenge here.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Fine.
(5) Challenges? Large amount of high level orcs.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 8
(7) Changes? It's good as is!
(8) Restarts? None.

I leave most of the villages to the orcs at the beginning so they can trigger the bandits and fight amongst themselves. Then I place my dwarves on the mountains and wait for them to come. I level Angarthing to level 3 here, and leveled several dwarvish lords also - a pretty unstoppable force.
Finished turn 24/40
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shadow12
Posts: 98
Joined: November 6th, 2015, 1:06 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by shadow12 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on? Medium. 266 starting gold.
(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? very good!

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting surrounded by enemy and villagers. The orc leaders were hard to kill, they could easily kill a level 1 dwarf. Wolves long range of attack.

Strategy:
. Starting 266 gold. Recalled all high level units (plus gryphon) and recruited until gold is gone. Avoid villages, if you pause to fight villagers, it will weaken you and give orcs time to sneak up.
. I Moved everyone southeast and waited in the strip of mountains until the majority of fighting between the orc army and their villagers was done. (I dont remember his color or name.) If a wounded strayed, I gained easy points killing him.
. Killed that leader and his remaining army. Attacked during the day when they are the weakest. Healed my wounded in claimed villages. Kept my units close together. Watch for attackers from the north. Retreat out of range from powerful orcs at night, wait until daytime.
. Moved east, then north to the second castle. This was more difficult since many of my units were not at peak health. Attacked from the mountains during the day.
. Moved north then west across the river to the last leader. Many of my units were level 3 at this point so it was not hard to kill him. It just took time to get there. Ended turn 30.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
9. It was fun. After I knew that villages spawned angry villagers, I choose to let the orcs fight them. The orcs kept landing on villages. I was able to level-up a lot of units by coming in after the enemy was weakened.

It was a pretty large map. I used my gryphon to capture villages after I took over the area, still I had no carry over gold at the end because of the time to make it to all 3 leaders. But I ended with some high level units, 5 level 3's and 4 level 2's.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Cannot think of any.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
yes. I restarted from turn one. The first time I rushed out to capture villages and wanted to quickly take over the closest leader. It did not end well. Next time I went at a slower pace, going southeast first. Best to hang back awhile first ... and avoid landing on villages.
Sometimes life unexpectedly throws a Troll or a nasty Queen Naga in your path.
Linthar
Posts: 77
Joined: September 14th, 2006, 12:16 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by Linthar »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Hard 1.13.13

(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?
It was clear but not particularly interesting.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Understanding how the map works. When you start the map it looks like you're going to have to fight three huge armies of orcs. I tried playing grabbing villages so I could have places to send units to heal and looked for a defensive position to fend off the orcs from and in general I moved slowly enough that lower two orc factions had a chance to smash through all the bandits they spawned and group up together and things went poorly, but in the process I had a chance to see just how long the bandits could bog down the orcs. I restarted the scenario from scratch, rushed straight down the south side of the map ignoring every village not directly in my path, and I was able to smash my army into the southern orc factions forces while all the orc factions were still tied up with bandits, and that allowed me to smash the orc forces apart piecemeal.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6. Its an interesting scenario and a nice big battle, the only problem is how slow each turn goes watching all the orcs fight bandits all across the map.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
The orcs AI was way to focused on the bandits. Even when my units were near by they were way to focused on trying to kill the one or two bandits still alive, then deal with the massive dwarven army right next to them. Also I don't think villages should be capable of spawning more then one group of bandits. The northern orc faction contributed very little to the fight because the bandits spawned from one of the villages kept recapturing the village, so the northern orcs were trapped in a never ending battle of clearing out the bandits recapturing the village and spawning more bandits. In fact at the point in which I beat the scenario they were still fighting, and their leader died with 5 or 6 units alive because his remaining forces were fighting bandits when my army attacked from a different direction.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I had to restart once because of a poor initial strategy as detailed in my answer to question 5.
LordWolfDan
Posts: 216
Joined: September 30th, 2018, 7:31 am

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by LordWolfDan »

(1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?

- 1.14.5, Easy

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

- 6

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

- At first unclear, because it says "Kill all enemies", which meant that in order to win, I had to kill the leaders and the remaining enemy units. But it got me clear when I killed the last orc leader and I won, despite having few more bandits and orcs to deal with

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

- It's very interesting. Something tells me that bandits might be the main enemy of this campaign. Having dealt with them in the villages and orc mentioning masked ones, I wonder what they are doing in old dwarwish kingdom?

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

- Trying to get as less attacked as possible as Angarthing didn't have healing ability yet and taking villages was a challenge because of bandits

(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?

- Having a bandit leader hiding in one of the villages, randomly chosen village that is

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

- Not really
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josteph
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Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by josteph »

LordWolfDan wrote: November 14th, 2018, 9:04 am (3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

- At first unclear, because it says "Kill all enemies", which meant that in order to win, I had to kill the leaders and the remaining enemy units. But it got me clear when I killed the last orc leader and I won, despite having few more bandits and orcs to deal with
Thanks, I just fixed this for 1.14.6, both in this scenario and in scenario 10.
LordWolfDan wrote: November 14th, 2018, 9:04 am (7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

- Having a bandit leader hiding in one of the villages, randomly chosen village that is
Random, unpredictable surprises are not easy to do well: https://wiki.wesnoth.org/BuildingScenar ... forcements

But it sounds like you find the Easy difficulty level is, well, easy. Maybe you ought to try the campaign on a higher difficulty :)
supperman
Posts: 18
Joined: February 5th, 2020, 2:43 pm

Re: Scenario Review: THoT 5 - Invaders

Post by supperman »

Content Feedback wrote: March 10th, 2008, 10:49 pm (1) What difficulty levels have you played the scenario on?
Challenging 1.12.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9 - I readily admit that I'm not an expert and my tactics were probably far from optimal, but I still think that chances tilt toward a Pyrrhic victory.
This scenario pretty much guarantees that you start the next one with minimum gold and few surviving veterans.

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

(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?
Finding a better than hopeless strategy. I think going north first is the only "realistic" possibility.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5. It gets better when you start seeing victory a distict possibility.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Have fugitives hiding in the villages. They then ambush the orcs normally. You could also place a highwayman to the ruined castle where he would hire more bandits. The fugitives should then be loyal so they don't ruin his economy.

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