Does the contemporary Son of the Black Eye campaign work as intended?

[BajMic]

Hello,

I have my eye on the SotBE campaign. I would like to know what is the current consensus of the developers regarding the state of this campaign. Is there any demand to update this campaign? Do you have any "to do" lists on it?

There are many old walkthroughs that praised it, but it's been a long time ago. Right now I am very skeptical if after the AI updates and the like this campaign still plays as intended. On Nightmare, in particular, you are supposed to cheese the levels and the self-destructive AI in order to win.

My particular experiences, amongst many, are:

Towards the Mountains of Haag: Gruu tries to get himself killed relentlessly. He goes against all your attempts to keep him alive. Always attacks first, even if low on hp, while the Blemaker lags behind. The player is not supposed to expect him to spawn, which pretty much turns him into a Tomato Surprise.

Saving Inarix: The "commando" units, including Dwarvish Guardsmen, that have taken the bridge don't hold their position. Instead they just charge your units, abandoning their strong positions and letting you cross early. This isn't a rational move that you would expect from a genuine opponent, it's pretty much willingly throwing the game.

Clash of Armies: AI units block the ship loading zones, denying themselves the ability to drop the troops across the river. Merfolk that spawn in the river are so aggressive that they would rather get lured onto dry land instead of seeking targets on the bridge, or staying in the water to cover the ship drop-off zones. Abusing overly aggressive AI that concedes a winning position just to land one more hit is cheese.

Civil War, The Coward: Is this really up to standard to make a "no village - carryover only - race the timer" scenarios? Challenging? Yes. Fun? I dare to question.

Jetto the assasin: Keeping this loyal unit alive is such a hard work, and for little to no reward. The lowest level unit of the squishiest type of all, with very limited ability to claim kills for xp, is such an odd choice for a loyal unit.

In general: The deficit of villages and overly-tight time limits make this campaign more Troll than Orc. You keep racing the timer against a self-defeating AI that plays to loose, and the timer is so tight it pretty much funnels the player into using self-regenerating units.

[Lord-Knightmare]

You can ask the SP content dev Yumi/Nemaara about it.

[egallager]

I've got an alternate version of the campaign available as an add-on that I keep hoping to get merged back upstream: https://github.com/cooljeanius/Son_Of_The_Black_Eye_Easy_Edition

[gnombat]

There are many old walkthroughs that praised it, but it's been a long time ago. Right now I am very skeptical if after the AI updates and the like this campaign still plays as intended. On Nightmare, in particular, you are supposed to cheese the levels and the self-destructive AI in order to win.

This campaign was revised quite extensively in Wesnoth 1.12 - in particular, it was made considerably more difficult. Some walkthroughs may be discussing the older version. You may wish to try the campaign in an old version of Wesnoth (version 1.10 or earlier) if you'd like to get a better idea how the scenarios originally worked.