Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

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marcnn
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Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by marcnn »

I really like Wesnoth on hard! But now I have real trouble to win The Siege of Elensefar. I attached the replay. Can you see any obvious blunders here, something obviously wrong? I feel as though I was missing a turn or two.

As you can see from the replay, the main idea is: my striking force is not strong enough to face the ork army in the field, they should be kept in the forests. So I want to lure the main ork force out of the island and flank the island with powerful cavalry to kill the leader.
Then withdraw the forces and slaughter the remaining orcs on my side of the river, fight off the big undead force, counter and haste to the undead fortress.

Thanks
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Velensk
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Velensk »

Just looking at your replay, it seems like your overall gold level is pretty low for this mission. Try to focus on finishing the level before it as rapidly as possible to get the largest early finish bonus.

I don't happen to have a replay of this scenario handy but I'll quickly play my way up to it and provide one. I'll edit this post when I have it.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
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Inky
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Inky »

Hm well the main mistake in your replay is that you were too passive with the southern force (hiding in the forests) and let the orcs run around unchecked in the south, which takes a lot of time to deal with and causes you to run out of turns. It's better to hold them off at the river crossing (merman can help with this). My strategy is to hold off both the main orc and undead armies at the southern river crossing and then (around turn 15) storm the orcish city and then rush to the undead leader.

When you get close to the undead leader he'll recruit some more units so it will take a few turns to deal with these. (It is also possible to lure the undead leader out and kill him with charging units right after he recruits, but this isn't an ideal strategy since it relies on luck.)

Some other comments
-Your starting gold (170) is really low; it's better to have over 200 starting gold. I'm guessing you came from Muff Malal's Peninsula (since you don't have any of the loyals from Isle of the Damned) so you should be able to easily get higher carryover. Maybe you didn't kill Muff Malal for the early finish bonus? Killing him isn't that hard so it may help to go back and replay scenario 5.

-Konrad is only level 1 with 10 XP! It's recommended to level him in earlier scenarios which are much less dangerous (a perfect easy leveling opportunity is scenario 3 Isle of Alduin); ideally he should be almost level 3 by the time you get to Elensefar.

-In general Elvish Scouts aren't a good unit choice since they're expensive and do terrible damage; an archer or fighter would have been better use of the gold.

-You waited until turn 16 (!) to recall the loyal mage Elrian; he doesn't cost any upkeep so you could have recalled him on Turn 1 and used him for free for all those extra turns.

-Storming the orcish city with only a few units on Turn 8 was a mistake since basically the outrider and loyal thieves died for nothing; it would have been better for these units to be reinforcing the southern units instead, and only trigger the thieves when things in the city are reasonably under control.

-There were various small mistakes throughout, like not moving a wounded unit next to a healer/onto a village when you could have, and taking unnecessary risks.

I tried using a saved game from your replay but the saves wouldn't work for some reason, so here's my replay (from my scouts/loyals playthrough) instead:
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wesnoth 1.12.4/hard
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taptap
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by taptap »

I took the challenge... played with your save (generated a turn 1 save from the replay, but I can't make my own replay, it always shows up as your replay - can someone explain this?), I failed to be sure, but I held up well enough to demonstrate how it can be done with a little more gold - if only the replay worked. If you want someone to show you a winner from your start (if it is possible), you should post a start of scenario save.

1) You need gold.
2) You need more experience on Konrad. Having L3 units while Konrad is L1 is inexcusable. Konrad is a free unit you always get, so you want him as strong as possible. And he gives leadership.
3) In my own games I sneak a scout or two past the town over the island to capture villages, otherwise I play defensively mainly around the forest northwest of the initial keep. I let the thieves show me the secret path (and join me).
Last edited by taptap on September 18th, 2016, 10:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Velensk
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Velensk »

This is my take on it from a fresh replay.

I honestly played pretty sloppily throughout and was pretty reckless with my loyal (if I was planning to play the rest of the campaign I'd give it a second try) but this should give you an idea of how easy this one can be if you reach it with more resources.
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"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
marcnn
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by marcnn »

Thanks a lot.

I started Muff Mafal's Peninsula with 208 gold and finished it in turn 19/21.
In the Bay of Pearls I killed the second leader in the turn last but one, didn't get the magic trident from the top left corner of the map. A huge mistake?
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Sudipta
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Sudipta »

marcnn wrote:Thanks a lot.

I started Muff Mafal's Peninsula with 208 gold and finished it in turn 19/21.
In the Bay of Pearls I killed the second leader in the turn last but one, didn't get the magic trident from the top left corner of the map. A huge mistake?
Nah, if u have already finished it then move on, one storm trident wont make much difference in this campaign. Or you could just reload from the middle of the scenario and send someone to get the trident if u really want to have it. Personally i think HttT is the easiest of the large mainline campaigns and even on the hardest difficulty it wasnt much of a challenge.
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Playing Wesnoth since 2010, still there is so much left to play
Velensk
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Velensk »

Personally, I would go back and redo it but not so that you can get the storm trident but so that you can get all that gold back. The faster you finish missions, the more gold you get and the easier it gets to finish missions quickly. Turn 19/21 on Muff Mal's is also pretty slow.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
marcnn
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by marcnn »

Thanks.

I went back to the Isle of Alduin, got a really big gold bonus. Then I started The Bay of Pearls with 310 gold, finished in turn 19/21 with gold carryover of 67.

A bad result even for the hard difficulty level, isn't it?

Attaching my replay.
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taptap
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by taptap »

marcnn wrote:Thanks.

I went back to the Isle of Alduin, got a really big gold bonus. Then I started The Bay of Pearls with 310 gold, finished in turn 19/21 with gold carryover of 67.

A bad result even for the hard difficulty level, isn't it?

Attaching my replay.
You don't have to finish each scenario very early. Important is to arrive in Elensefar with sufficient gold and an experienced leader, you can assure this in the next scenario. One thing though: look at the elvish fighter called Unor. He did not make a single attack, cost 14 and over say 16 turns 16 gold upkeep, i.e. 30 gold = 12 gold carryover. And his colleagues Fad (elvish fighter) and Yseldra (mage) did nothing as well. Altogether removing approximately 30+30+36 gold from your final results (incl. assumed income reduction by upkeep), for a net reduced final result of almost 100 or 40 carryover gold. Over half the "cost" is due to upkeep. In other words, when you did exceptionally good earlier, don't spend all your gold in the next scenario unless it is a scenario that really requires it.
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Velensk
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by Velensk »

The above hits one of the main points on the head but as another note you played very defensively. Note how early on you retreat from a single wolf with no backup. If that wolf hit all three strikes it couldn't have killed any of your units. There was no reason why you couldn't have pressed forward rapidly to get more villages sooner, killed the wolf without taking significant retaliation, healed up any scratches you'd have taken and come out richer.

There were a couple other points where you choose a defensive posture unnecessarily. It's worth noting that it isn't always a bad thing to lose units. I suppose if you want to role-play it makes a bit of sense to try to converse as much of your force as possible but practically losing units is fine so long as you won't need them later and it won't slow you down.
--Of course, in this case, it was the sea battle that took you longer so moving faster on the land wouldn't have helped you unless you could see that would be the case and started some land units wading across early.
"There are two kinds of old men in the world. The kind who didn't go to war and who say that they should have lived fast died young and left a handsome corpse and the old men who did go to war and who say that there is no such thing as a handsome corpse."
nikita1996
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by nikita1996 »

Your problems:
1. This scenario is really hard, so you need more high level units. You must recall more level 2 units in the beginning.
2. Your king should reach the central castle in Elensefar as soon as possible. You should kill the orcish king as quickly as possible. Please put your forces both near the central bridge and the eastern bridge, so then you can defeat the first wave of the orcs quicker. I reached Elensefar in turn 5 and killed the orcish king in turn 6. The later you reach Elensefar, the more orcs will be recurited.
3. You should fight more actively. Maybe standing aside the river is better than standing on the border of the forest because you can kill the enemies faster when they're in the river.
4. After reaching Elensefar, you must recurit some units that can defeat the undead efficiently, such as mages, thugs, outlaws, etc.. From then on, you should recurit in the city of Elensefar, not in the southern castle.
5. Have some high-movability units so you can take villages quickly.
6. The thieves that helps you in the city of Elensefar have an important ability: backstab. So, after they comes out, you should surround the orcish king at once and attack it. You don't have to wait until the king comes out of the castle.

In general, this is one of the most difficult scenario in this campaign, or maybe in all the campaigns. Even you have great strategy, you have to sacrifice a lot. In my replay, I sacrificed 15 units totally in this scenario, including 7 lv 2 units and one lv 3 unit.

Hope these will help you. In fact, you played really well. ^^
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amanII
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Re: Winning The Siege of Elensefar on hard

Post by amanII »

well this scenario is much easier if you played isle of the damned
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