Campaign challenges

[HomerJ]

Yea that's fine to move this; being gone for a long time I'm not exactly current on recent threads .

I was using the dev version . I suppose I can run it on stable as well. I'll add to my OP when I finish it on stable as well.

Not necessary if no changes have been made to the campaign.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Jozrael]

Well aren't the AIs vastly different?

[HomerJ]

I skipped using the dev branch this time so I am not familiar with the changes. If you say so, Jozrael, I believe the AI is vastly different.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Turuk]

The two topics have been merged together, it can now be another type of campaign challenge for those interested.

[HomerJ]

I just finished HttT on Hard + No Recalls + playing as fast as reasonably possible. (I did give myself time to plan at the beginning of each scenario.)

Total time: Whole campaign in about 7 hours. (It was broken up over several days.) I did save-load for some stupid moves, but it was pretty minimal.

I could post replays if anyone's interested.

Elvish Pillager gave me an idea here, so it's my pleasure to present replays of my newest Northern Rebirth challenge!

Usual conditions: NR - Nightmare - Only loading beginning of scenario saves (which is a serious pain in "Pursuit")
Special conditions: No recalls.

This may seem not that hard, but remember that this also means no Dwarvish Lords, or dwarves at all after "Clearing the Mines", and only level 1 units to start scenarios where you face exclusively lvl 2 or 3 orcs or undead.

My comments: First of all it's an unusual way of playing, one can be pretty reckless with lvl 2s or 3s. Second, what this is also about is cash. One definitely needs huge amounts to stand a chance, so one ends up trying to end very early (were appropriate) in agreement with Elvish Pillager.

Spoiler:

With every challenge, my use of the white magi gets more suicidal. Since they don't die, I sent them straight into the open arms of the enemy, they will be attacked, retaliate, get killed, respawn... and thus chew of xp off many enemies.

Scenario by scenario comments (contains spoilers):
Obviously, the challenge really starts in "To the Mines". Before, as always, "Infested Caves" is for hoarding money. After everything is settled, one could even think about suiciding units towards the end to lighten up the upkeep. However, it is absolutely vital to level Zlex and Tallin ASAP.

To the Mines

Simple. Bait the Direwolf leader, lock him, kill him. Other units (except loyals) go for distraction. At least that's what I planned, the leader came to me on turn 6 anyway to grab a village which he shouldn't have.

Clearing the Mines

Can be actually fun, because you can push so hard (given the appropriate amount of money).

The Pursuit

Hard. Lvl 2 and 3 undead against lvl 1 humans underground. I spend all money in recruits of masses of footpads and thugs, eventually some level. I made a mistake when I "accidental" killed Malifor with a wrong unit. I had promoted Zlex to Royal Guard and had him grab the Rod of Justice. I know some people like giving it to Tallin (presumably because it adds movement thus more leadership), but remember the Rod makes a Royal Guard almost invincible, and he will be auto recalled every scenario. Careful with Krash, one wants him also level up asap but he dies very easily underground.

Old Friend

Since no levelling of troops is required (except the heros) I don't recruit whatsoever just sit in my keep, and kill what comes through the door. Makes the scenario much faster too.

Settling Disputes

As always, very hard because of the time limit. Oddly enough, Stalrag would not leave his keep in my first few tries (I usually run east without recruiting to do that in Stalrags keep), so I recruited fodder which I sent south with Abhai and Krash. I made heavy use of the suicide-magi and got a little lucky in the end when Elenia and Zlex survived heavy fire.

Elvish Princess

Absolutely no way to take out the eastern orc leader first. I just recruited some fodder while heros head straight for the stronghold. The magi of Light again will suicide, good thing is that you have 3 flyers (and can recruit griffons) as well as the liches which can cross deep water.

Introductions

Play as usual. Focus on levelling Eryssa.

Stolen Gold

Another hard one one might think, but the trick in this level is to defend the mountains where Krash will reappear, while a party of your Elves, Undead and a footpad or two moves directly east and takes out one Troll leader after another. The Ancient Lich and your Spectre can take out Troll leaders single-handedly. One can win this one with almost no recruits especially Krash should not waste money, because no one will get out of the mountains before its over. One can try to defend 5,13 to 5,17 for example with a handful units.

Eastern Fortress

I tried to sneak Tallin around the south to enter the castle before two of the Orcs that were hoarding their money were able to recruit, but I failed and had to restart, so I played it conservatively. First recruits were a keep full of griffons though, which let me claim the island before the orcs could, that helped a lot. After that I chopped my way through the waves of orcs, eventually getting Tallin to a recruiting space inside the castle, recruited mostly spearman and cleaned up afterwards.

Get the Gold

Okay, this took me days, but only because I wanted to save Sisal so badly, being afraid that my money resources were insufficient. Trick is to recruit some 10 griffons, fly them around and block every spot on the river that Sisal could move to. Tricky when Sisals troops kill orcs in the river and open up a spot for her to move through. Finally I got lucky when Sisal was badly injured and poisened early and sat on a village for the rest of the turns. Premier: First time ever I recruited ulfs in NR, used them to dispose off almost dead units, saving the fire power of the Liches, Magi, and Rod for full HP enemies (Orc leader recruits till turn 7 a full keep each turn). Elvish recruits almost exclusively sorceresses because of the magic fire power.

Showdown

Usual tactics work fine, again, griffons to help keep Hamel alive, also drake backups for Hamel. Sent the Liches to Krashs keep to help defend the camp, but proved to be unnecessary. Very handy: four evlish Druids help healing in Tallins camp (because the magi are on their suicide mission again) Also note that I was not especially careful and even forgot to move the magi a few times .

I think that's enough for now. Feel free to ask what I didn't explain properly.


Edit: Added spoiler warning.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Elvish_Pillager]

Second, what this is also about is cash. One definitely needs huge amounts to stand a chance, so one ends up trying to end very early (were appropriate) in agreement with Elvish Pillager.

Hmm, that's actually not how it worked in my HttT run. Most HttT scenarios are set up so that you get a substantial disadvantage from recruiting for more than one or two turns.

The battles do tend to go very fast, though, because all your units are cannon fodder. It basically works like this:
- In order to kill with level 1 units, you have to mob the enemies. Doing that inevitably leaves some of your units on low-defense terrain.
- The enemy will usually attack the ones you leave on low-defense terrain, so there's no point leaving any of them in defensive positions (except for selectively manipulating where the enemies attack so that you can kill them more easily on the next turn.)
- Besides, since the enemy always attacks level 1 units for the chance to kill, you can blast away indiscriminately with your heroes. (Although you have to AMLA Kalenz a lot before it's entirely safe.)

Alternatively:
- The only decent damage you have is from your heroes, so you need the mobility to use them every turn.
- You can't have that mobility if you insist on putting them in easily defended positions, so you end up having to defend them with level 1s in low defense spaces.
- Given that, you might as well use your remaining level 1 units to attack as much as possible.

The only level where I remember wanting more gold was the last one, where you can spam 40g Knights.

[HomerJ]

I see that there is a big difference between the two campaigns.
In NR, there are two kinds of scenarios: Massive battles, where you need to spam lvl1s and level them to be able in the later turns to break through the waves of enemies or scenarios where you only need your heros and just a few fodder units, but turn limit is tight.
For the former you need cash because the enemy leaders usually pump out more units per turn than your heros can kill.

With

One definitely needs huge amounts to stand a chance, so one ends up trying to end very early (were appropriate) in agreement with Elvish Pillager.

I was simply refering that you tried to end your scenarios as quick as possible as part of the challenge, whereas in my run it was (to some extend) necessary to accumulate the cash.

Greetz
HomerJ

[Jozrael]

Figured I'd shoot another campaign today, but only had time for a short one. AToTB: 9/16/12/10. Total: 47. I had horrid RNG on that last scenario: 40% under on damage dealt . Should've shaved a couple turns there.

So my current turn tallies are:

AOI: 64.
AToTB: 47.

If someone wants to compete with least gold of units lost, or most gold at end, or some other random criteria, I'm always up for a competition .

My rules are: always hardest mode. Reloading begin-of-scenario saves only (I turn on :nosaves to remove temptation ).

[HomerJ]

I will give it a try over the holidays, but on 1.6.5.
Your numbers say almost 12 average on AToTB, 9 average on AOI. That's somehow surprising, then again, I didn't play those recently enough to remember too well.


Edit: Hm, here's my count for AOI: 7, 10, 6, 12, 6, 10, 7;
57 total, 8 on average.

I sucked on the swamp.


Greetz
HomerJ

[zookeeper]

Here's replays for UtBS on hard with no recruiting at all, only recalling. The limitation didn't end up being much of a nuisance at all due to the large number of units you get in the first scenario (much more than I remembered it to be), and I didn't actually lose but a few units (a champion and two rangers, I think) before Battle for Zocthanol Isle. In fact I had a several lvl1 units who I think I didn't recall even once.

The definitely hardest scenario without major losses was A Stirring in the Night, and I ended up making a flavour/balancing change to it as a consequence (I finished the scenario with those changes applied). The initial fight in A Subterranean Struggle against the dwarves (I picked trolls) was also really tough and mostly dependant on luck. I got all the reinforcement trolls I got there killed because I thought I couldn't keep them anyway, but looking at the scenario code I think I could have kept them, had they stayed alive...which would have been a rather good choice.

I didn't refrain from loading mid-scenario autosaves if something went horribly wrong, but I probably didn't do that much more than a dozen times overall throughout the campaign.

[Jozrael]

You keep the trolls/dwarves until you would exit the caves, when you keep one as your guide.

[HomerJ]

Since this thread popped up again (which is great), a little fun challenge that I just started (back on 1.6.5): HttT with only a single unit of any kind present during a scenario (of course applies only to manually recruit/recall) which makes you lose if your elvish scout levels and you already have a rider present.
It's challenging because you have only a little number of units available for a scenario and no fodder spam is possible.

Greetz
HomerJ

[joshudson]

Challenge for Story of the Wose on hard: No loads at all.

If you lose a scenario, start the campaign over. If you need to do something else, leave Wesnoth running in the background.

[HomerJ]

I'm afraid I am running out of ideas for NR challenges...

Last one I finished just yesterday was "no other recruits than dwarves from To the Mines on" (so basically no recruiting after scenario 4 Clearing the Mines).

But it's not a challenge after all, I had literally no problems going through the campaign with an unstoppable force of Lords and Dragonguards. It doesn't even make any difference in Eastern Fortress when you don't recruit drakes.
For Showdown, I completely abandoned the N and S camps, had the leaders head to Hamels keep along with some quick dwarves from Tallins camp to bodyguard him (Hamel).

Anyone has an idea? Probably I'll go all footpads next time and see where it goes.


Greetz
HomerJ

[Maiklas3000]

In another thread, someone said he always restarts a campaign upon a loss - never restarting the scenario. How about that for a challenge?