We just want our throne back Wesnoth SG 2

[Ranamar]

I would divide our forces into three groups:

- A large force going straight north, which will mostly fight the NW leader and his troops
- A large force going northeast into the woods in the center of the map, which will mostly fight the NE leader and his troops
- A small force in the south grabbing lots of villages and then turning north to help fight the NE leader

Let's give these groups names... and tentative rosters

TF West: Delfador and our Sorceress lead the charge, being so far ahead... joining them will be the Paladin (because it's slightly faster for him than navigating those hills...) and the majority of our L1 units, as well as the Elvish Captains. The NW leader has a keep surrounded by ice, and ice means that mages will actually have a worse to-hit onto it than conventional forces.

TF East: That pretty much leaves Konrad, Kalenz, and our casters. I might want to divert a fighter or two this way... Eventually, we could lean on the Riders, but not for a bit. Essentially, this entire group is L2 with the exception of a single mage and any fighters we grab.

TF South: Two Elvish Riders, as mentioned; will join up with TF East

T4: Mostly just moving forward... TF East and TF West will separate soon because TF East will go through the southern of the two passes through the mountains.

T5:
TF West and TF East differentiate themselves somewhat...

I decide that, at 31/40 exp, one of the fighters should be sent with Konrad because he'll be leveling soon. TF East is still badly undermanned compared to TF West, tbh, and I'm thinking I may send one of the shamans with them, too. (TF West has more total + of healing, but a lower maximum rate. TF East has, at present, only one healer.)


TF West is in blue (will be engaging Blue) and TF East is in green for similar reasons. That lonely shaman may well get transferred to TF East, although the one waaay in the west is least able to get a benefit out of the Elvish Captains having 3-2 for both melee and ranged attacks. (The other ones both are Strong.) It depends what I think I can get away with in the next turn.

T6:
I managed to get an Ogre kill with one of the Shamans!
With that particular Shaman, that's half its leveling budget in one shot! Also, it turns out that a 25% boost of 3 damage is, in fact, rounded up to 1 damage, for a total of 4. Handy, that...

I also got a wolf rider kill with the archer on the hill over in the left of the T5 picture. Unfortunately, the above-expectation accuracy in the west corresponded to below-average accuracy in the east. A leadership-boosted red mage, Konrad's bow, and the Druid's (non-boosted) thorns were not sufficient to kill a wolf rider. If the Red Mage had hit all his attacks instead of only two of them, there wouldn't have been a wolf left for the others to miss.

Also, you'll see it in the next picture, but it first dawned on me here... Holy cow, Green recruited a lot of Wolf Riders.

Your position...


Theater West is circled in blue. It seems pretty well in hand. Theater East is circled in green. It is ... less well in hand, it seems.
The unit circled in orange I'd like to send with TF West on the assumption that TF South can link up with TF East. It's only there because I didn't want a wolf in that village this turn. (Same targets, but not in a village, as it is...) Unfortunately, there are already wolves racing south to block of TF South. TBH, we have just barely few enough troops that I feel like I'm shorting TF West if I've got enough for TF East and feel like I'm shorting TF East if I've got what I want to put in TF West. Such is life.

Unfortunately, TF East can't really afford to sit around and do holding actions, as Green holds the majority of the villages. He's out of money currently, but he has enough income per turn to get one or two new units every turn despite that. On the other hand, if TF East can hold, TF West might be able to choke out or even destroy Blue, at which point we can turn their combined attentions to killing Green. We do have a big chunk of turns, after all.

[haphazard1]

Yeah, you guys are certainly gutsy to play the game without reloads for poor combat rolls. I tend to play every scenario on the hardest difficulty- they aren't very fun or epic on anything less- but I also play Wesnoth like "Save Scum, The Game". I don't reload every combat to achieve optimum results or anything quite *that* cheap, but I've found that a lot of the more difficult scenarios force you to have a certain amount of combat luck to succeed, and when your Grand Knight fails a critical leader assassination and then gets annihilated on the counter-attack at incredibly low odds, well I don't see any shame in reloading the turn :P

I have similar feelings when playing personal games, and will reload major disasters when on the highest difficulty. Or I will just play the medium difficulty setting, which is usually quite winnable even with occasional bad luck.

For the SG I have been keeping it official, no reloads -- and playing much, much more cautiously than I would in a personal game.

The dwarven gunslinger guys are a perfect demonstration of my issues with the combat system- I've reloaded many a mission because most or all of my gunners missed their shots and key units subsequently died.

Yes, I dislike the dwarf gunner line of units because of that -- they are just too "all or nothing" for my taste. Give me lesser damage but more chances so I have decent odds of inflicting at least some injury on the enemy.

I really enjoy Wesnoth, but the luck-dependent combat, occasionally luck-based missions ("will the allied leader I have to keep alive randomly run out of his keep and suicide himself this round?"), and the unpredictable and occasionally deranged spikes and drops in difficultly between missions does make for a mildly maddening experience

Totally agree on the allied leader thing -- these are the worst kinds of missions, because you can be utterly screwed by factors outside your control. If I am supposed to keep this person alive, give me control so I can least know it was my own fault if he dies stupidly.

The random luck and the uneven difficulty are the things I like least about Wesnoth. A more deterministic damage system would make the game much more enjoyable, although a lot of tactics would need to change.

An additional dislike: the artificial difficulty of fighting undead with blade/pierce units if you have elves or lawful humans. What, these trained warriors can't find some trees to make some improvised clubs?

Anyway, my favorite unit from HttT is the Paladin. Fast, healing, reasonably high health, two useful types of damage and the ability to one-shot a large number of units. No ranged attack, but that would be overkill In general my favorite units are the Wrath line, with bats being a very close second. Wraiths have like all the advantages of Paladins, except they can heal themselves instead of other units, they're more difficult to kill and they have a ranged attack. They get destroyed by arcane attacks, but they're also great for picking off most arcane users in melee.

Paladins are very cool units. They just tend to get massacred by ranged attacks too often for them to be at the top of my favorites list. They need all those HP to survive, and then spend tons of time tucked away safe somewhere healing.

I haven't done much with wraiths, other than the one loyal one you get in Northern Rebirth. I haven't played the necromancer campaign yet -- do you get to use them in that one?

Least favorite unit of any campaign is the Merman warrior. Slow, useful only on at best maybe a third of the maps, mediocre attack that constantly misses. Their final upgrade options are pretty good though. Thieves also kind of suck.

I have a soft spot for mermen, and enjoy fighting with them. Not sure why, as your points about usefulness on most maps is very true. But they are actually quite good on maps with a lot of swamp -- I got great results from them on the optional map with the Void Armor when I played this campaign solo. And the priestess units are excellent -- they are essentially water-based white mages/mages of light.

I agree on thieves, they just aren't very good. We have three in this campaign, from the Siege of Elensefar map, and I mostly just don't use them even though they are loyal. I would trade a max-level assassin for a standard footpad in a second, just far more useful.

Favorite unit - probably the Shyde. Lots of mobility, nice healing, and magical attacks. Oh, and Slowing is awesome for helping manage luck; gimping the enemy nasty so he *can't* kill my units in a round instead of merely *shouldn't*.

Shydes are pretty awesome. And slowing attacks in general are very powerful, especially against bosses or level 3 units. The unit sent in to attack with the slow may pay heavily, though.

[Amelia]

You not only get to use wraiths in the necromancer campaign, you're practically FORCED to use them. They excel almost everywhere, have good drain attacks, are hard to use, have insane resistances, and assassinate leaders perfectly. Oh, and let's not forget about the shadow line, which do 15-3 at night, and can ignore ZoC. Oh, and that's a level 2 unit.

My favorite unit from HttT is definitely the

Dwarf Lord.

They hit like bricks, defend like tanks, move through difficult terrain with ease, and have two types of attacks to destroy orcs/undeads. Oh, and they can respond with range.

Excluding the dwarves, i had a team of 4 elvish sorceresses (level 4 spellcasting shaman line). Those were slaughtering everyone, from orcs to undeads to humans, but it came at a huge cost. They slaughtered my economy as well =(. But they're still one of my favorite units.

Least favorite unit in HttT is the thief. They die like pancakes, can hardly do damage, don't even have the skirmisher to avoid ZoC... Oh, and a fully leveled thief can just die suddenly to lucky hits.

Favorite unit overall would be the Saurian Ambusher? Saurian melee line, level 3. Fast, skirmisher, can take hits, can evade a lot of hits, and do reliable damage. Easy to obtain and survive as well.

Worse favorite unit would be the naga line. Horrible units. Worse than merman. (hint: roar of the woses add-on campaign focuses on Saurians and Nagas, and you get a single loyal naga. The whole campaign is actually about keeping that said naga alive, because it dies so easily, and you lose when it dies).

[antisocialmunky]

The best unit IMO is the Dwarven Lord.
My favorite unit in the Shyde because it flies around healing and being hard to kill.
The worst unit IMO is walking dead.

[haphazard1]

Looks good, Ranamar.

We are a few units short of what would be nice to have, especially on a map this large. And the wolf riders' high mobility does not help. But at least they are only wolf riders, and not stronger units. I think task force east (and TF south) will need to mostly fight a holding action until we smash the blue forces in the northwest and can send some support. Green certainly seems to be the stronger enemy economically.

You not only get to use wraiths in the necromancer campaign, you're practically FORCED to use them. They excel almost everywhere, have good drain attacks, are hard to use, have insane resistances, and assassinate leaders perfectly. Oh, and let's not forget about the shadow line, which do 15-3 at night, and can ignore ZoC. Oh, and that's a level 2 unit.

I will have to give that campaign a try, sounds like fun. But those attributes for a level 2 unit reminds me of another of my Wesnoth peeves: "evil" units getting ridiculous attributes. Take the orc assassin as an example: melee attack, ranged attack, marksmen, poison -- all for a level 1 unit!

My favorite unit from HttT is definitely the

Dwarf Lord.

They hit like bricks, defend like tanks, move through difficult terrain with ease, and have two types of attacks to destroy orcs/undeads. Oh, and they can respond with range.

I agree that these guys are great. In our first Wesnoth SG (Northern Rebirth campaign) we had a bunch of them and they were incredible. The lower level forms (steelclads and whatever the level 1 is called) are also quite good for their levels.

Excluding the dwarves, i had a team of 4 elvish sorceresses (level 4 spellcasting shaman line). Those were slaughtering everyone, from orcs to undeads to humans, but it came at a huge cost. They slaughtered my economy as well =(. But they're still one of my favorite units.

I had something similar in my personal play through HttT with 3 great mages. Fantastic units, but not being loyal they crushed my income whenever I used them. Lots of fun to blast everything in sight, though.

Least favorite unit in HttT is the thief. They die like pancakes, can hardly do damage, don't even have the skirmisher to avoid ZoC... Oh, and a fully leveled thief can just die suddenly to lucky hits.

Hmmm, the thieves we have in this campaign are skirmishers, or at least I thought they were. Will have to recheck that. Still pretty pathetic units, as they are so fragile that actually using skirmisher to send them into enemy lines is a near-guaranteed death sentence. And they do so little damage it is hardly worth sending them anyway.

Favorite unit overall would be the Saurian Ambusher? Saurian melee line, level 3. Fast, skirmisher, can take hits, can evade a lot of hits, and do reliable damage. Easy to obtain and survive as well.

Worse favorite unit would be the naga line. Horrible units. Worse than merman. (hint: roar of the woses add-on campaign focuses on Saurians and Nagas, and you get a single loyal naga. The whole campaign is actually about keeping that said naga alive, because it dies so easily, and you lose when it dies).

Another campaign I will need to check out. I have only encountered saurians as enemies, and only a couple times. One map in The South Guard, and it seems like one other I can't recall.

[Amelia]

Yeah there is a lack of drake campaigns, which is a shame as drakes are really fun units to play with.

Thieves don't get skirmisher till level 2. My thieves died before they even gained 5 exp, let alone level 2...

Edit: Wraiths are really strong... till you meet mage units. Then they cry and go home for mama. But since the orcs have 0 mage units, they're practically kings for a long time.

[haphazard1]

Yeah they are a lack of drake campaigns, which is a shame as drakes are really fun units to play with.

There is a sizable drake component to the Northern Rebirth campaign...but during SG1 our loyal drake was killed and that entire aspect never happened.

Thieves don't get skirmisher till level 2. My thieves died before they even gained 5 exp, let alone level 2...

OK, that would explain it. One of the three loyal thieves in this campaign starts at level 2, so I probably saw that and thought it applied to all of them.

Level 1 thieves are so fragile. I have not found any use for them. They are loyal, so maybe use them as village grabbers? And if they get killed by something, nothing valuable is lost.

[Ranamar]

There is a sizable drake component to the Northern Rebirth campaign...but during SG1 our loyal drake was killed and that entire aspect never happened.

I played NR on the easiest setting a long time ago. Yeah, the Drake component of that campaign is a lot of fun.

Speaking of which, I think my favorite unit might be the Drake Flameheart. It's got leadership, so you get a boost to the surrounding units, and, at the same time, there is a reason beyond the leadership ability to promote a Drake Burner to Drake Flare instead of Fire Drake. (It gets more swipes with its sword, so strong is better on Flares than Fire Drakes...) Also, it's beefy as all hell (like all drakes) and has an excellent ranged attack, being a Burner upgrade.

Drakes are certainly my favorite race, aside from the fact that they don't have healers. (I desperately need healers the way I play... and it's hard to level the MP-faction Saurian ones, too...)

[Mardoc]

I should be able to play tonight. Looks like solid progress and a nice report, Ranamar. I'm hopeful that all the mages/archers in task force green can nuke the wolves good and make the choices easier .

[Bobchillingworth]

More thread semi-derailment! :

Edit: Wraiths are really strong... till you meet mage units. Then they cry and go home for mama. But since the orcs have 0 mage units, they're practically kings for a long time.

In the "Descent" campaign, I actually had great luck using Wraith-line units against mages. As long as you can get the first strike in, their draining melee attack will do severe damage to any squishy spellcaster, and will usually refill most or all of your health. Just make sure to use swarming attacks, and Wraith can trump most enemies in the game. Goblin pillagers mess them up badly, though.


I'm playing the Rise of Wesnoth campaign now on hard, and there's one mission where you fight several Drake AI in cramped quarters. It is an absolute bloodbath and incredibly fun. Poachers may seem normally like the most worthless ranged units ever, but holy crap do they tear through those lawful, weak-to-pierce dragons



I've never tried Wesnoth MP before- perhaps we should set up an RB match sometime =)