The Deceiver's Gambit - New Mainline Candidate!

[Vendrick]

To be clear, I think Delfador, Deoran et al. only read as morally bankrupt in the context of their service to Garard.

I do think the exaggerated characters are a good way to approach Wesnoth campaign writing and it would be a shame to flatten Garand altogether.
I like a couple of Garard scenes in isolation. After the conversation with Maddock, Garard's desperate grasp to cement his place in history works well as a foil to Delfador and lays bare his disdain for his heir.
Garard's drunken self-pity and desire for validation is well-written in that it resembles the sentiments of an actual drunken (diagnosed) narcissist, but that guy genuinely doesn't have a soul. If the intent is to foster sympathy, it would probably be better to have him also express empathy for something other than himself.

I don't really have a problem with the king being terrible in and of itself. I think Garard is pretty plausible as a king, it's just that how awful Garard can be is constrained by the fact that the heroes serve him and the stakes of the coup. At the same time, the Eldred and Ashievere relationships also require Garard to be failing as a person.

I think it's more of a case of modulating Garard's failings rather than a wholesale rewrite. He can still be a bad person but the throne as an insitution should be less of a scourge on the world.

The campaign doesn't have to hew to the criticism of every random forum post; feedback is useful at the author's discretion but it shouldn't leave the campaign sterile.

[Spannerbag]

Apologies for posting this here, but I wasn't able to find any feedback on TDG, apologies if I somehow missed the thread...

Could some kind soul post a replay of htf to beat "Ring of swords" please?
OK, I'm not the strongest of players but I should be able to beat the damn thing on easy but I can't.
(Didn't help that on the first attempt I thought the objectives were one or the other not both - I just assumed both was impossible).

I have multiple difficulties so need some advice here.

Starting gold: usually 200+ so should be enough, surely.

Statistics: generally in the expected range so not the RNG.
(That said, when I view successful replays there's often a few critical exchanges that go well for the player that if they had lost would really dent their chances...)


Questions:

Recall roster
What sort of units/levels would you expect to have available by this stage?
When I started the scenario my regular recalls were all L1 except for 2 white mages and a red mage.
I did try to promote a few bowmen/spearmen and had a couple of spearmen past halfway to L2 but they usually managed to miss when trying to finish off heavily wounded enemies hence the mages got the xp.
By this point the familiar had levelled up once as had Deoran (extra hp).


Delfador spell selection
I can never decide which spells/abilities to select for each scenario because they all seem useful?
Some thoughts on which are best would be helpful.


Strategy
At time this had me rage quitting in utter frustration.
The only route I haven't tried yet is ignoring the lizards and heading straight north across the lake.
I've never managed to contain the lizards and a direct frontal assault, given the night heavy schedule, is awkward and by the time the northern lizard is removed I'm almost out of time to rescue the queen.

Also, later on in the scenario there are usually a few assassins around and most of Garad's units are poisoned so are cured - but not healed - by Methor.
As a result Garad often loses control of a couple of key hexes (15,12 and/or 15,13) and the village at 19,10.
So I often have to divert a couple of units to die heroically reinforcing a very thin defensive line.
Maybe I should just leave them to it and hope for the best...

Clearly I'm not deploying my forces very well but I don't seem to have enough troops to attempt everything at once, especially as the turn limit is so tight and you can guarantee any unit with less than a dozen hitpoints will be killed by the lizards.
I did try panacea but I found it too restricting on Delfador's mobility (due to needing to move adjacent to a wounded unit).

I'm playing on easy ffs, it shouldn't be this hard but whatever I'm doing wrong I can't see it.
So, any help, suggestions, replays etc. gratefully received.
Until then, I'm giving up on this scenario.

Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[Dalas120]

Uh oh, that's not good! Easy is supposed to be E-A-S-Y, especially for an experienced player. Thanks for letting me know this scenario is too hard - I'll need to change difficulty (and probably pretty drastically too).

If you'd like to post a start-of-scenario save, I'd be happy to play through and post a replay showing the strategies I usually use to complete the scenario (though it's a scenario balance issue if careful strategy is needed to win on Easy).

[Lord-Knightmare]

Code: Select all

----v1.0.5:
Difficulty tweaks: Easy/Normal now have more enemies, but also more starting gold.

Perhaps this was a little bit too much? I mean not everyone plays seriously so some found it more hard than others, while others found it too easy.

[Spannerbag]

OK, replayed the previous scenario (The Deceiver) to try for a better start... and made things worse?
Don't really understand why - the stats look OK but in this playthrough I felt under a lot more time pressure and Methor's ai made some odd moves.
I had to save-load at the end when, running out of time, multiple magic attacks all missed and I didn't have turns left to recover.

Anyway attached is a replay of the Deceiver;

TDG-The Deceiver replay SBag.gz

(63.3 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

and the corresponding start to Ring of swords.

TDG-Ring of Swords1 Sbag.gz

(90.54 KiB) Downloaded 2 times

Also the scenario right from the start if you prefer.

TDG-Ring of Swords SBag.gz

(13.89 KiB) Downloaded 3 times

Had kinda hoped Delfador's xp might've refreshed but it didn't so if I was going to play the scenario I'd go with passive and spells that don't need xp.
At least the recall roster is a bit better.
Unfortunately my previous save was overwritten so I don't have that anymore and if anything this start is even worse (a bit less gold and Delf has minimal xp).

So, I haven't attempted this particular version of ring of swords yet but I'm sure if I did I'd fare no better.
In the previous version Delf had some xp but not a huge amount (as is the case here I blew it all in the Deceiver using Blizzard).
Be interested to see how you get on.

If you want to replay the Deceiver for a better start to Ring of Swords please let me know and I'll post the start of that too.

Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[Spannerbag]

OK, played the Deceiver again and managed a slightly better finish in terms of Delf's xp.
Convinced myself it was worth trying Ring of Swords again.
Did 2 things differently; didn't help Garard and took more risks.
Managed to to get through by the skin of my teeth, as this replay shows.
Talk about a near thing...
Cheers,
-- Spannerbag

[Dalas120]

Victory, glorious victory! And with 74 gold left in the bank

[Dalas120]

UPDATE - I'm working on version 2.0 of TDG. Feedback thread here: viewtopic.php?t=58257

[Spannerbag]

Victory, glorious victory! And with 74 gold left in the bank

Thanks for the replay, most informative and helpful.

Nice job, clever defensive use of Delf's abilities I hadn't thought of... that alone would have made the entire scenario a lot easier!
Also am I right in thinking you used Delf to lure the ai in certain directions?

Stats reported no losses!
I always feel I have to recruit a few expendables (hence my elongated recall list).

If I get chance might try something resembling your approach and see how I get on.
Out of interest, was this replay your first and only attempt, or did you have a few failures first?

Thanks again, cheers,
-- Spannerbag