Parrhesia and Integrity's Guide to Surviving Wesnoth

[BrightBow]

I was wondering if Li'sar no longer having sprites for carrying the Scepter may indicate that the story had been changed. But evidently that's not the case.

Konrad does still have sprites for carrying the Scepter, but that makes sense since he still uses his old sprites.

Edited June 8, 2019 by BrightBow

[Parrhesia]

11 hours ago, Dayni said:

Is this on the lowest difficulty?

74 hours sounds like a horrible experience no matter how low the difficulty.

Nah, always medium. Now, almost always, one of the dials that difficulty will change is to give you more or less time... but not in this map!! You always have 24 turns.

[Parrhesia]

MEMOIRS 2: Absolutely, this reference will be known by everyone

Spoiler

Note Delfador's lovely red pennant flag.

... Which is to say we can now train bowmen, which is welcome. Derrin's intelligent / quick, which is perfect. His mates, Gar and Feorth, are resilient / intelligent, which is knight material.

Here's the entire map. Urthaka-Tan is in the top left. He has 200 gold to start with, so it would be imprudent for me to spend too much.

Derrin Hynch warns of the lax security in this land.

But to no avail! Our good honest civilians are murdered in the street by immigrant gangs.

i
may have put this guy in a bit of a Spot.

I recruit pretty haphazardly, but bring back two nearly-promoted spearmen and an actually-promoted wizard.

Bring back the biff!

(Disclaimer: I only have a vague grasp on what the policies of the Australian Justice Party actually are. In fairness, the Australian Justice Party also has a vague grasp on what the policies of the Australian Justice Party actually are.)

We drop a horse, but promote a sword.

We're holding our own in the night, hold most of the map, and they're out of gold. We can sweep this home in the day.

I always love the little surprise lines on peoples' defensive frames.

Cocoon one-rounds a cunt. Lowkey, I wish Delfador had even slightly different sprites, but you can always tell him apart by the crown on his orb.

Lowkey? Spearmen are a very, very good unit.

Wesnoth is very, very good at teaching you to respect day and night. When you are lawful and they are chaotic, you press in the day and you hold back at night, axiomatically.

And now we have every village, so we can now wait it out as long as we need. Well, as long as we win before turn 24, anyway.

Which is handy because this fat bitch does not want to move.

Delfador pings the boss and promotes from 6-move neutral mage to 6-move leadership red mage.

Even think of leaving my employ and I will fuck you up.

Derrin, you are four points from promoting, and one of your homies just did. You are coming with us; it is not optional.

A fair map, but the next one really has to not be such transparent filler.

 

[BrightBow]

I don't mind an ordinary unit being the leader. Now unfortunately Delfador does have a unique class which just so happens to share all it's sprites with the Mage line. So now that he has Leadership, I fear things may get a little confusing.

[Punished Dayni]

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

anyway, in news of campaigns i'm not flagrantly cheating on

At least you acknowledge that Black Eye's campaign might as well try to give you a black eye.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

the screen rumbles

It's almost like the cave's trying to tell them something.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

I...

...needed that....?

Just add it to the pile.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

I don't remember if I showcased it back when we fought her, but Li'sar has the interesting property of giving units around her first strike.

Vantage All.

I wish it were more relevant.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

The goblin/dwarf matchup is, uh, hilariously stacked.

This kind of thing is why goblins annoy me in this game.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

Resting Delf in the back gives us our first sense, as promised. So we know it's somewhere down the north branch, and that little one sex to the right is just another front.

It's interesting how different it is in its randomness.

I played one with no keeps directly in my path.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

The other branch has no enemies, but does have a fissure.

It's hilarious how big these can get.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

My plan comes to fruition on the right. One guardsman, endless shit enemies, tier 3 leadership and healing behind him, and a green fighter in case i need to swap and let him heal. Kalenz is there because it's too much work to move him. These five units will not move until the end of the map.

I see you found a way to occupy Konrad.

I also had him involved with killing goblins.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

Part of why I really like this map is it feels like proper spelunking. It's a map you need dwarves for; only some of your previous units are useful, but you've had a few maps to build a dwarven core in more forgiving maps where you could rely on your veterans. You don't know going into it quite what you're getting into. The fissures add a good sense of pressure, even though they won't ever block off a passage entirely - the walls are always safe. Exploring the branches that don't have the Scepter could do with a little more reward, but that's pretty minor criticism considering everything else this map nails - and, actually, spoilers, the left branch gets bogged down and I end up finding the Scepter down a different one. @Parrhesia, I just realized this map is just the evolved Road North, holy shit.

Okay, so my suspicion about the wall was right.

Can units die from being by the fissures though? I never confirmed that for myself.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

I don't think we've had them. They're ulfserkers, except with 7x4 instead of 4x4 and a pile of extra health.

Even more RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

Anyway, Ugg fades our noble Scepter finder. The map's one casualty..................

RIP brave dwarf.

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

Here's the map as we discovered it. Took a pretty breezy pace, finished in half the turns.

That's pretty thorough.

I was not so thorough, but I also didn't really have a keep in the direct pathway to the sceptre and so just kept charging on.

(There was a enemy very close to the starting point however and another in the same open cavern I went through for the sceptre, but it was as easy as just distracting them while keeping Li'sar moving)

15 hours ago, Integrity said:

My other criticism of Scepter is that it's a bit easy - while the difficulty scales up as you probe deeper (which is really good design), it's never especially threatening besides scattered ogres and trolls, and you have terrain advantage.

Like I said, I got the really easy time and the northern half of the map had no actual threat while the ones I did face were mostly in the south.

10 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

Delfador pings the boss and promotes from 6-move neutral mage to 6-move leadership red mage.

It's leadership and 32 at least, he could have been Malik.

[Integrity]

9 minutes ago, Dayni said:

Can units die from being by the fissures though? I never confirmed that for myself.

yup, if a fissure expands into a hex with a unit it will absolutely eat the unit

[Punished Dayni]

1 minute ago, Integrity said:

yup, if a fissure expands into a hex with a unit it will absolutely eat the unit

Well that confirms what I was afraid would happen.

It really doesn't help that you can't tell when fissures will expand either.

[Integrity]

you can't, but you know they only expand a hex at a time, so the edge of a fissure becomes emergency/maneuvering terrain that you really don't want to risk stopping in, but which is there if the worst happens. it's reasonably good game design.

[Integrity]

hey

 

[Parrhesia]

MEMOIRS 3: Your envenomed knives succour me

Spoiler

Christ, another Loys / Northerners 1v1??

Okay, not quite.

Straightforward enough, though. Like before, the enemy has 200 gold; like before, that means I'll try and keep to recruiting two keeps worth. Leo has none.

The fresh wizard literally spawned with the name 'Aether'. It's perfect.

Oh no!

Derrin Hynch's boiling blood can only be sated with the execution of petty knife gangers.

I more or less sacrifice Aether, meaningful name or not.

Night pushes... suck, a lot, but the alternative is losing ground. We need to secure kills, or they'll just keep poisoning us. It's never going to be pretty, though.

Hey, look, Leo recruited someone. Mate, white magi cost 40. Walk before you run.

The push sucks deeply and more people are going to die. I just hope it's the injured bowman and spearman.

Actually, the bowman makes it, dodging all six shots. The spearman ain't so lucky, picked off by the assassin's knife. A very risky play, but I guess it paid off.

I... don't know why that guy was special and the other two deaths weren't, because one of the dead horsemen was a recall. Another horseman follows suit, picked off by an archer.

With all our guys poisoned, we need to bring an end to this. Cascade is probably going to become a white mage, at this rate. Any unintelligent promoted magi absolutely will.

The plan works, and this guy's charmed life continues.

Okay, so that's his escort handled, but what to do about the--

Ah. Yeah. That'd do it. Well, more precisely, it has a 51% chance to do it.

The odds were in my favour !!

I love so much that this is just the life-and-death struggle of 'Delfador tries job-hunting'.

Well, you didn't say he was a king, but...

I could've played that better. Quite a lot better. Probably. But waiting around more would've been disastrous, with poison working against us and no realistic hope of getting the villages to turn a profit. The map was mediocre, and I'm just happy it's over.

 

[BrightBow]

The idea seems to be to hold out until Leollyn can build up his forces with his high base income. But I suppose running them straight over works too.

[euklyd]

i'm not sure i've ever encountered a map where the real optimal strategy was "dig in until the allied AI can carry you" 

[Punished Dayni]

15 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

Okay, not quite.

I wonder what he meant.

19 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

The fresh wizard literally spawned with the name 'Aether'. It's perfect.

Would he activate it by smashing an orc in the face with his staff, then spinning it in the air and shooting magic at them?

19 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

The odds were in my favour !!

GET

WRECKED

SCRUB

19 hours ago, Parrhesia said:

I love so much that this is just the life-and-death struggle of 'Delfador tries job-hunting'.

That sounds like a campaign that's on the bloody nose.

11 hours ago, euklyd said:

i'm not sure i've ever encountered a map where the real optimal strategy was "dig in until the allied AI can carry you" 

I bet it'd use reinforcements.

Just, wow, a ton of reinforcements.

[Parrhesia]

WESNOTH 4 + 5: A very tangible defence map that refuses to be buried

Spoiler

GWUH

Wesnoth does a... not amazing job of conveying cities, really.

Hey, it's that guy Ike killed!

And even in life he's a wordy fuck.

The cavalryman art is great, but does kinda leave this envoy the odd one out.

He leaves immediately after saying this.

oh god

'Syllables of power' or not, this is wayyyy above Delfadork's pay grade right now.

Well,

oh I guess we go

"Orcs?"
"Worse. Hicks."

What? Fuck no.

Oh, no, a couple squads of bandits to throw themselves on our swords. I tremble in fear. Like before, each has 100 gold for 200 total - so consistent! We have 28 turns to get to the signpost, which takes Delfador seven turns to walk unimpeded, but we're absolutely going to kill the bandit en route. The rogue's too far off the beaten track, though.

Now that Lionel's rolling with us, we get heavy infantrymen and cavalrymen added to our recruit list. I kind of love Lionel's design - I appreciate that he's fat, which is sure as hell going to be ironic when he's a skeleton in a century or so, but his weird cloth headdress thing is weird-looking when he's otherwise a general in full armour. Still, he's a general who's clearly Seen Some Shit. He's fearless / strong, which, again, will come in handy when he spends the rest of his years in a cave somewhere.

Two keeps should really be enough. Memoirs is small-scale, thus far.

Okay, so things are pretty simple. Two turns, hold out here; then kill everyone and push east.

While getting in some snipes, along the way.

The longbow misses all six shots he winds up taking. Classic Hynch.

You will notice the newfound absence of brigands. We've killed seven with no losses.

If you insist, sir.

Even missing both jousts, we secure the kill.

Weirdly enough, the two guys found squatting in a pond at dawn don't live much longer, either. We're now up to ten unanswered kills.

Time to acquire, then secure, our investment here. Blue's capped a handful of southwestern villages, and it's high time to reclaim them.

Light infantry in terrain are countered by magic. Light infantry on flat ground are countered by anything. And the daytime just makes the slaughter easier.

fuck you--

Anyway, we do eventually clean out the southwestern thief. Factionless units can uncapture and heal, even if they can't actually capture villages.

Much better. The west is ours.

Fun poacher fact: swamps count as effective cover.
Fun magic fact: doesn't give a shit.

Alright, Harold. Time to die.

And take this lackey with you. He's actually the last to die, after a stand-off with the swordsman that lasted about three turns.

And... with literally no fanfare, we're done. Decent map, but a cakewalk, and filler besides. This campaign, thus far, has been nothing but...

BONUS: I MISTIMED COPY-PASTING AS A GYAZO STARTED TO LOAD AND LOST MY ENTIRE NEXT UPDATE, NOT THE SCREENSHOTS BUT, SO HERE THEY ARE

Adding insult to injury, I finished at the end of turn 5, but the wincon only fired at the start of turn 6, burning six more gold. Note how this starts with being able to spend 200 gold to skip the blatant filler map, only to end with fighting a filler map that siphons away 200 gold regardless. This campaign is kind of giving me the shits.

 

[BrightBow]

Well, paying that money only removes one of the two enemy players.

Edited June 13, 2019 by BrightBow

[Integrity]

a map without commentary context is baffling

[Integrity]

i have to one-up him

 

Spoiler

The Scepter actually is pretty strong, equal to the strongest wizard in our party.

 

We're done with the caves now, and onto the pointedly-named A Choice Must Be Made. Buckle up for Text.

 

True fact: it took me quite a while to not read this as pronounced lon-gleer.

I hope you're not tired yet.

WHEW

 

Alright, Delfador isn't entirely right - one can absolutely choose to go down the river, and it's definitely a challenge map with its own rewards (but I know it's been patched since I did it, so...). The route split that happens here is based on which boss you kill, or if you move a merman to the far east of the river.

 

If you go north and kill the orc, you get a snow map and then you have a fight at the border of the elf lands. The snow map has a 15x4 (!) flaming sword that your main lords, elf fighter line dudes, or Paladins can equip. I dunno who'd get this, really. Meatshield, probably.

 

If you go south and kill the death knight, you go into a swamp map and then have the same elf land fight. The swamp map has a permanent armor that gives one unit 50% blade and 40% pierce/impact damage. This would 100% go on the berzerker.

 

If you go east and listen to Kalenz getting really tilted at you for ignoring him, you get a weird, unique river map against drakes, and then a cave map. The river map gives you a loyal tier 1 Sergeant, who is fully capable of promoting all the way to becoming a tier 4 General with Leadership, as well as a third storm trident. The cave map gives you a book that lets the unit move freely in forests, gives them 70% defense in forests, and lets them hide in forests. This would also go on the berzerker.

I have no idea which route I'm keeping as canon, so I'm going to do the run such that I set up all three win conditions on the same turn. Easy.

 

The general recruitment strategy is going to be to produce three waves. First, Specter Squadron will immediately push northeast through the snowy corridor to the orc boss.

 

Second, the dwarvish lords will lead a cadre of wizards towards the undead. Third, in a few turns but I'll forget about it, my remaining dwarves will set up in the near north to fight the orcish chaff.

 

Chocobones make a regrettable reappearance, but our first engagement point is at sundown, so baiting him is ideal.

 

He trades really badly, and the undead assume the time-honored column formation of battle.

 

Thank you, next.

 

Up north, the orcs are progressing straight south, ignoring Specter Squadron.

 

The archer trades hard into Li'sar, but gets vaporized by the Scepter. That's why I've got dwarves.

 

A snapshot of the north to show just how sneak attack-ey the Specter movement is gonna be. Those blue guys have to swing right at some point - they can't cross the river - so they'll either crash into Specter during the daytime, or crash into the dwarf line coming up.

 

Undead trading during any phase with Moremirmu at any range is a bad idea.

 

Thanks to some spectacularly poor shots from my mermen, Laura attains her ultimate form!

 

behold

 

Slyphs pick up a kind of dumb helmet, but they fly, have 60 health, and upgrade to 10x5 magical arcane damage at range. Plus, if you need a slow, there's not much better than five chances to land it.

 

You guys said I'd need elf fighters.

 

Hah.

 

The mid-north is ready to collide. I reshuffled the forces a bit to get some flexibility - the elf horseman is also lurking off to the right.

 

The far north has contact.

 

So it turns out that column of guys was.... everyone green could muster?

 

they are both out of money

 

Anyway, the mid-north explodes, with the wolf rider running away from Specter. Understandable, really.

 

That's a good way to start the counter.

 

After the attacks, I end turn and don't calculate range right and the berzerker bodies two guys. Ouch.

 

Second night phase, so turn 9? 10? and the first win condition is ready.

 

Specter Actual fails in his duty.

 

It takes Specter One all three shots to finish the job, and he eats the counter, but he promotes off it so no big.

 

It's definitely worth being a little wary of the death knight in the dark, but the second win condition is basically secured. All it would take is a dwarf to the face next round, or Moremirmu in a house.

 

Brunsy tanks a lot on his 70% cover, but the mid-north is looking pretty fine.

 

Two from three at 30%, nice one bud.

 

One from one at 30%. This is a good phase!

 

Oh, it's cathartic to see assassins just dropping.

 

Kaboom. This is starting to look like I rigged it, but I'm mostly cutting out the misses.

 

Next phase, and we'll make the south official.

 

And cut down the last relevant blue guy. Nobody's in range except the death knight. End turn!

 

Jerk.

 

Blue's final straggler is pinned down. 2/2 hits from the gunners would have obliterated him, but alas.

 

fucking lmao

 

Southern win condition is secured. One to go.

 

Specter is closing in along with one dwarf who disengaged from the mid-north.

 

if you insist, i guess

 

North win condition is secure. That's all three. Technically this isn't a guarantee, but the gunner is also in position to thump 28x1 at 80% into him.

 

bonus since i'll forget, knocking off the death knight will get our fire wizard her final form:

 

call it if there's a particular order you guys want to see them in

Edited June 13, 2019 by Integrity

[BrightBow]

In Konrad's hands, the Scepter is actually even stronger. 18x4 compared to Li'sar's 14x4.

Of course Li'sar has the advantage of not being shackled to recruitment duties. It seems to me as if people generally think that she is the better pick.

Edited June 13, 2019 by BrightBow

[Integrity]

truth be told it's less that konrad is shackled to recruiting dudes and more that li'sar kind of sucks, so it's making two pretty good units instead of a multiphase god

[BrightBow]

Maybe she is better these days. Her old version may have been made of wet tissues but she has actual damage resistance now, while Konrad just gets the standard issue 20% arcane for Loyalists. Her melee attack also deals more damage. I'd say having a ranged option is the only thing Konrad truly has over her.

Edited June 13, 2019 by BrightBow

[euklyd]

i feel like her old version having rogue-type evasion more than made up for her defenses, statistically? i don't remember if they changed her hp as well, though

[Integrity]

she used to have -30% blade and -20% impact/pierce mitigation, but 60% defense on flat and 70% on literally any cover and skirmisher (!) instead of initiative. same hp, same attack. all they did was rebalance her to make her less streaky (which is good for a unit who games you over if she dies). weirdly, i had originally posited that the rework was also done to fit the new art better, but it was done a patch before the new art.

at tier 3, though, she gained +10 health, having originally gone from 48 to 52 on promotion lmao

 

anyway i come to you with The Map, Chapter Two

 

 

i kind of pan around the map willy-nilly to talk about things but if you really want to see the raw action of Black Eye Map Two i uploaded a second copy just for you

Spoiler

 

 

[Parrhesia]

MEMOIRS 6: Isengard Strikes Back

Spoiler

Yo, tree-bitch, our entire fucking army deals nothing but blade, arcane and fire damage. Get out of our way or get the full Darnassus experience.

My jowly friend is right.

This is going to be a slaughter. We're only going to need one keep for this, which is handy, because we're at 102 (-7) after this.

Wose shamans exist, apparently! They still get skullfucked by fire.

Is this supposed to be a fight?

Oh no, this WOSE ambushed my SWORDSMAN, forcing me to take an exceptionally favourable engagement. Keep in mind that woodlands are only favourable cover to woses to the extent of being 40%, rather than 20%.

The funny thing about this mission is that despite getting here 12 turns early - Delfador can hit home any time! - there's no early finish bonus, so we're actively incentivised to kill everything on the island and take all his shit.

And body-block with Delfador.

We're getting nine gold a turn like this, and a handful of experience. Hey, speaking of, Delfador's just three XP off promotion.

OK lmao

(i actually had to go back and load to get a screenshot of the attack, because Delfador missed all four shots.)

Oh, shit, after being hit his funds rejuvenate to spit out more experi- I mean, guys, at us.

Delfador is now starting to diverge from archmage, a little. 3 more HP (before resilient), 1 less staff damage per strike, +4 heal, +1 move, leadership.

When you kill woses with fire, they get a different death animation, ashing up instead of falling over.

Like this.

Cocoon promotes, so I decide to call her Moth.

And one last bit of 'convincing' before finally moving Delfador onto the fort.

Aha! Not only is it now diplomacy time, but Fabian Delphador's promotion means he changes into his Sick Duds.

At this stage, my man, what are his alternatives?

*Thump*, explains the narration.

And then almost everything goes dark...

Sorry about your elder race, my dude!

(I'm not sorry.)

 

[Integrity]

wait

 

what?

[BrightBow]

"Why won't our dry wood put out that fire?!"

And Delfador can heal in this campaign? When did he forget how to do that?

Edited June 15, 2019 by BrightBow