In Defense of Kharos

[Konrad2]

I like that I get to play Kharos units, but I don't like that it conflicts with the lore.

About half a year ago, the Kharosians lost contact with all their settlements in the furthest east. Messengers never returned. When more towns started to disappear, the ruler of Kharos, the High Priestess of Light, Anthi, ordered the middle-lands fortified in order to beat off possible attacks by the invisible invaders. After one month contact was lost again, but this time, two cavalry archers managed to escape to the west. From their reports it was understood that they were attacked by masked beings, full of madness and anger, aided by terrifying three-headed beasts, capable of easily devouring a man...

-> if it's any town that was attacked, there should have been no survivors, and no chance for anyone to flee to begin with
-> also, if it's not one of the first towns to be attacked, it would be weird for them to not be aware that enemies might be approaching

Small things:
Typo in S2
EOMa_Chainlady -> EoMa_Chainlady

You added a village to Kharos riverside, while removing one on the enemy side in S2. Why?

When Rakdan kills a unit, he talks as if he was the one being killed.

(There seems to be no music in any scenario.)

[Tarcil]

I like that I get to play Kharos units, but I don't like, that it conflicts with the lore.

About half a year ago, the Kharosians lost contact with all their settlements in the furthest east. Messengers never returned. When more towns started to disappear, the ruler of Kharos, the High Priestess of Light, Anthi, ordered the middle-lands fortified in order to beat off possible attacks by the invisible invaders. After one month contact was lost again, but this time, two cavalry archers managed to escape to the west. From their reports it was understood that they were attacked by masked beings, full of madness and anger, aided by terrifying three-headed beasts, capable of easily devouring a man...

Small things:
Typo in S2
EOMa_Chainlady -> EoMa_Chainlady

You added a village to Kharos riverside, while removing one on the enemy side in S2. Why?

When Rakdan kills a unit, he talks as if he was the one being killed.

(There seems to be no music in any scenario.)

Thanks for the feedback. Did you play all scenarios already? Bc. the lore conflict will be mitigated a bit throughout the campaign. (and inferno8 said it is ok ^^)
Fixed the typo and I think I also fixed the Rakdan thing with the last update, at least it doesn´t appear anymore in my playthroughs. I have fixed the village, thx.

[Konrad2]

Thanks for the feedback. Did you play all scenarios already? Bc. the lore conflict will be mitigated a bit throughout the campaign. (and inferno8 said it is ok ^^)
Fixed the typo and I think I also fixed the Rakdan thing with the last update, at least it doesn´t appear anymore in my playthroughs. I have fixed the village, thx.

No, I've played only up to the second scenario so far.

[Tarcil]

No, I've played only up to the second scenario so far.

Ok. I am curious for your further feedback and glad that all typos are gone soon from my campaign ^^
Edit: Regarding the music, I will add some. I always play without wesnoth music and hear other stuff, so I simply forgot, that this is my own choice and not the default setting

[inferno8]

Hi, I playtested the campaign 2 weeks ago and apart from some lore conflicts and other things, the add-on has the potential of becoming something really great in the future, in my opinion.
At the moment in terms of design it feels like something between TLU and classic wesnoth campaigns which I find interesting. There are no flashy terrain graphics but on the other hand it makes up in fairly good dialogues and really cool location names. Tarcil contacted me a few days ago asking for some feedback in terms of lore and general direction of the project. Unfortunately I was really busy so my feedback was limited at that time, but I am still thinking of ways to improve some of the scenarios and the story not only in Tarcil's campaign but also in TLU as well.

About half a year ago, the Kharosians lost contact with all their settlements in the furthest east. Messengers never returned. When more towns started to disappear, the ruler of Kharos, the High Priestess of Light, Anthi, ordered the middle-lands fortified in order to beat off possible attacks by the invisible invaders. After one month contact was lost again, but this time, two cavalry archers managed to escape to the west. From their reports it was understood that they were attacked by masked beings, full of madness and anger, aided by terrifying three-headed beasts, capable of easily devouring a man...

-> if it's any town that was attacked, there should have been no survivors, and no chance for anyone to flee to begin with
-> also, if it's not one of the first towns to be attacked, it would be weird for them to not be aware that enemies might be approaching

Konrad's right. But on the other hand isn't that part of TLU lore too unrealistic? It would require incredible skill and excellent strategy to burn a few villages to the ground without even being noticed. Tharis would also need to leave no survivors and kill all messengers trying to flee and warn other settlements of the invasion. The easternmost parts of Kharos are very sparsely populated so I wouldn't be surprised to see the strategy of rapid obliteration of some small villages to be actually successful, but at some point someone would probably notice the invasion and warn Kharos. That's why I am seriously considering rewriting that [story] part in TLU so that cavalry archers Atiros mentions play their role much earlier.

Tarcil already knows this, but I want to post some invasion details here as well, so that we can come up with a few interesting ideas on how to improve things even further:

Spoiler:

The invasion and the Kharos response to the threat was a long process which took many months. In fact there were three stages of the Tharis invasion.
The first stage was probably pictured in the first act of this campaign.
The second stage was about defense of middle-lands. I really liked this line of Anthi's dialog mentioning it in the campaign: "We will build up a defensive position east of the capital and try to stem them at the Sunwhite Mountains."
The third stage is described in TLU: "When the downfall of the middle-lands was certain, Anthi realized that the Kharosian army could not possibly prevail against such a powerful enemy, so she decided to bet everything on a legend, which spoke of ancient siblings who abandoned their homeland and set out to the desert.".

I personally have some plans for the official Kharos campaign in the future, but it will probably depict other events happening somewhere else. Having said that, Tarcil's IDoK has a chance to become canon at some point, but this will require lots of work and cooperation. At the moment it feels like the add-on is made of two or three mini-campaigns and I am still not sure if it is a good or a bad thing. Maybe it would be better to focus exclusively on Soroc and his quest of reaching Kharos and end the campaign there. I am still thinking about it but Tarcil will be the one to decide. It is his campaign after all

[Tarcil]

Thank you for your detailed answer. I will definitely think about your suggestions!

[Tarcil]

Version 0.2 is out

Code: Select all

 Changelog
-added scenario 9
-some story background images
-some more map details added

The campaign is now at a stage where it could logically end and being continued with its story in TLU or being expanded. But I am currently unsure where to go. Story wise this should be the last scenario fo a while.

[Atreides]

Hi, I gave this a try too. S1 is as far as I got (seems I just don't have time/patience to play campaigns all the way through :), still working on Heir to the Throne from when I installed 1.12.6 in Jan. 2019!) but I definitely enjoyed the desperate bridge defense.

Did notice some things that could use fixing up though:
1) The dialogue has a lot of periods that are missing spaces.Like this one. :) (If this is on the back burner to fix after the important stuff is done that's fine but it does annoy nitpicky people like me, hehe)
2) The icon for the campaign when selecting it is missing. You used a graphic from another add-on which is not a dependency, not everyone has it installed.

Just some nitpicks, good news eh? <grin>

[Tarcil]

Hi, I gave this a try too. S1 is as far as I got (seems I just don't have time/patience to play campaigns all the way through , still working on Heir to the Throne from when I installed 1.12.6 in Jan. 2019!) but I definitely enjoyed the desperate bridge defense.

Did notice some things that could use fixing up though:
1) The dialogue has a lot of periods that are missing spaces.Like this one. (If this is on the back burner to fix after the important stuff is done that's fine but it does annoy nitpicky people like me, hehe)
2) The icon for the campaign when selecting it is missing. You used a graphic from another add-on which is not a dependency, not everyone has it installed.

Just some nitpicks, good news eh? <grin>

Thank you for the feedback. I noticed the missing spaces too, it seems like I have to make double spaces in the editor...And I will also look at the Icon, even as I thought, that I put it into the right folder...

[gnombat]

Thank you for the feedback. I noticed the missing spaces too, it seems like I have to make double spaces in the editor...

I've seen this issue occasionally in other campaigns - it's actually caused by having an unquoted string. (I'm not sure why that causes the space to be lost after the period, but it's simple to fix, since normally you want the string to be quoted and marked translatable anyway.)

[Tarcil]

Thx. That was it. I have fixed it.

[Konrad2]

S3
and ravage through -> and ravaged through
soot in the air -> soot in the air
catch some breathe -> have some time to catch our breath

[Atreides]

Hi, I gave this a try too. S1 is as far as I got (seems I just don't have time/patience to play campaigns all the way through :), still working on Heir to the Throne from when I installed 1.12.6 in Jan. 2019!) but I definitely enjoyed the desperate bridge defense.

Did notice some things that could use fixing up though:
1) The dialogue has a lot of periods that are missing spaces.Like this one. :) (If this is on the back burner to fix after the important stuff is done that's fine but it does annoy nitpicky people like me, hehe)
2) The icon for the campaign when selecting it is missing. You used a graphic from another add-on which is not a dependency, not everyone has it installed.

Just some nitpicks, good news eh? <grin>

Thank you for the feedback. I noticed the missing spaces too, it seems like I have to make double spaces in the editor...And I will also look at the Icon, even as I thought, that I put it into the right folder...

Oh even if the sprite is there the wml is pointing at the other add-on and will never find it. (unless installed of course)

[Konrad2]

S4
Those Sunfire Garrison units start moving immediatly, even though they cery much look like they are supposed to keep defending?

[Tarcil]

S4
Those Sunfire Garrison units start moving immediatly, even though they cery much look like they are supposed to keep defending?

You are right, forget to set them to guardian. Fix´d.