[Historical] Heir to the Throne: Making 'easy' really easy

[Dave]

I'm working on making the easy level in Heir to the Throne truly easy. The difficulty of the game is fast becoming the biggest criticism, so I think at least the 'main' campaign should have a truly easy 'easy' level.

The main way I am doing this is by removing the "dig yourself into a hole" possibility on easy level. That is, on easy level, if the player makes it to a scenario, I want to make it so the player will be able to win that scenario. No more, "well you defeated the hordes of orcs, but you lost all your heroes doing it, so now you're going to die."

I'm doing this by firstly making sure all scenarios are fairly easy, and secondly by setting the minimum gold for scenarios to a level such that it's reasonably possible to win the scenario with the minimum gold, and no recalls.

The methodology I'm using to test is to play the scenario with the minimum amount of gold and no recalls, and playing it fast: no long thinking, just making moves fast, without thinking much at all. If I can beat it under these conditions, then I deem it easy enough.

These changes should make it insanely easy for an experienced player to win....but experienced players shouldn't be playing on easy now, should they?

So far, this is my analysis of the scenarios:

- Elves Besieged: allies are so powerful that they can help you swarm the enemy; you can still pick up a little experience if you're lucky/clever. No change needed.
- Blackwater Port: few enemies, allies are a good help; no change needed.
- Isle of Anduin: very mildly challenging for someone who doesn't have any recalls yet. Increased turn limit to 40 turns to allow players to make a few mistakes etc.
- Bay of Pearls: battle on land could be tough, but the battle at sea is so insanely easy that the player should be able to win that, and then at the very least hold on on the land for a draw. No change needed.
- Isles of the Damned: It's a little difficult to get to Moremirmu, but not so hard, and not necessary to be able to hold out the turns. Enemy really isn't that threatening on easy. No change needed.
- Siege of Elensefar: This would be rather difficult if the player didn't do well on earlier scenarios. Made minimum gold 200, and set the orc's gold down from 120 to 100. This basically means at a minimum the player will have 200 gold vs the enemy's 200 gold. Also increased turn limit to 40 to give the player plenty of time to win. The enemy does start with some villages, but the player has a free recall, and gets the thieves. Should now be easy enough.

---

That's all I've done so far. I might make the difficulty level go up just a teensy bit after SoE, but I really do think it's fair that if we call a difficulty level 'easy', it really should be that.

David

[Ardonik]

- Isles of the Damned: It's a little difficult to get to Moremirmu, but not so hard, and not necessary to be able to hold out the turns. Enemy really isn't that threatening on easy. No change needed.

May I suggest two things for this scenario:

1. Increasing the turn limit so a relatively new player can beat both enemies within the time allotted? Instead of 27, how about 30 or even 35?
2. Ensuring that Ulaf finds Moremirmu before he discovers the revenant and its entourage? This could be done by ensuring that that XAKAE_TRAP was always at the bottom and MOREMIRMU_TRAP was always at the top on the easy difficulty.

The idea is that on easy, Moremirmu should always join you on your noble quest by the time you finish the scenario. That might make finally this level more desirable than Muff Malal's XP Bonanza (currently a much better choice for new players, but much harder to get to).

[Hermooz]

Some thoughts:

- Elves Besieged: allies are so powerful that they can help you swarm the enemy; you can still pick up a little experience if you're lucky/clever. No change needed.

I could agree on no change needeed on balancing, but maybe some dialogue revision could help in hinting new players that they should NOT try to make many XP in that scenario.

- Blackwater Port: few enemies, allies are a good help; no change needed.
- Isle of Anduin: very mildly challenging for someone who doesn't have any recalls yet. Increased turn limit to 40 turns to allow players to make a few mistakes etc.

Instead of extending turn limit in Isle of Anduin, why not extending it in BP? So it's much more likely that the player could have at least some close-to-advancement unit, and having some early advancements could probably lower the difficulty of ALL following scenarios in a sort of "positive feedback" way.

- Siege of Elensefar: This would be rather difficult if the player didn't do well on earlier scenarios. Made minimum gold 200, and set the orc's gold down from 120 to 100. This basically means at a minimum the player will have 200 gold vs the enemy's 200 gold. Also increased turn limit to 40 to give the player plenty of time to win.

There's a problem: giving more time to player does not lower difficulty, because if the player takes too much time before attacking orcs, the undeads join the battle, and he/she will have to fight the two enemies together, instead that one at the time.

Perhaps on "easy" the undead AI should be tweaked to be less aggressive (if possible), or maybe it could be slowed down by putting some impassable hex over the city northern bridges (this should be possible in WML, right?).

just my 2 cent

bye