The game you were thinking of was called Masters of Magic, and it was awesome. Someone needs to remake that game asap. Battle for Wesnoth is not really like any of them, but a lot of fun non the less.
glee:
Wesnoth seems to take certain aspects from rts games, roleplaying games and wargames. Unlike a lot of rtses though, you don’t get more powerful by building technologies, but by getting experience for your units. Sometimes you have choices as to how to level up a unit as well.
Wesnoth has a kind of egalitarian approach in that even the best units are only maybe 3-5 times better, as opposed to more rpg style games where you can really advance units to absurd extents.
Its a very spatial game, since units can’t stack, and your ability to reach spots and attack in sufficient force at the right time is crucial.
Wesnoth reminds me a little bit of a fantasy version of the Operational Art of War, which was one of my favorite games (especially the Europe Aflame scenario), and had a similar hex based, turn based manuevering system (except there was a lot more detail than Wesnoth, things like supply, early turn ending, multi-phase turns and so on.)
But the hex aspects are similar in that you want to get that three on one encounter as often as you can, and flanking is still useful although not as useful in Wesnoth.
Airk:
I tried a first attempt in the valley of death, and got crushed staying in the center. I was considering holding on with a lot of merfolk fighters in the center, but after your comments, I’m reconsidering that idea. I’ve got some level 2 mages, but I will have to look into what I need to do to take that.
Wesnoth definitely has its roots in many a hex based wargame. Those things go back a looong way, I think.
Oh, and for those pining for something like Master of Magic, it might be worth keeping an eye on Elemental: War of Magic, which sounds like it’s trying to be something of a spiritual successor to MoM. No idea when it’s coming out though, I haven’t been following the project all that closely.
I thought about trying that method, but then I realized that Wraiths don’t really suffer any sort of defense penalty for water, so the moat around the keep isn’t as effective as it otherwise might be. It’s probably possible to hold out in the middle, but it would be hurty. I usually find that engaging in and around the hills in the Southwest has worked best for me.
Whew, I beat Valley of Death in my second attempt, but it was a nailbiter, and I lost some units in the last few turns that I wish I hadn’t.
I moved northwest towards the purple camp and the holy symbol, fended off the purple enemies, and arranged my guys and then got attacked by a huge wave of corpses and ghosts.
I very carefully arranged my moves and attacks to try not to lose my most important units (including the ones that would lose me the scenario of course.)
It was an odd battle, huge firepower against a nonstop wave of enemies. Both Delfador and Kalenz were down to low health at one point, and I lost a couple level 1 mages and a newly levelled up hero. But I hung on to make it to the turn limit.
I did gain some advancements to my mages and fighters. I’ve got an Elvish captain now. But the really cool part is now I have an Archmage. I also have a second white mage. I wasn’t able to use my first white mage in battle much cause I had low hp units away from the hordes and I needed to get their hp up, so I used the white mage mostly for that.
Overall it was a tough but fun survival scenario.
Sounds like a good run! I usually don’t hurt for healing units, because I love all the Elvish Shaman upgrades to death and so take some pains to get some druids on the field in a hurry. (Elvish Shyde is soooo nice.). It doesn’t hurt that it seems like 90% of my elvish shamans are intelligent. x.x
I have found I have a problem. I don’t like seeing my units die, even little level 1 dudes. I can deal with it in games like Rome: Total War, where the armies come by the thousands, but not when I’ve got one little guy here and there.
I didn’t have that problem with the main campaign, but playing Under the Burning Suns it really hit me. “OH NOES, YET ANOTHER SURVIVOR FROM OUR VILLAGE IS DEAD!”
Try playing some “multiplayer” skirmishes against the CPU. For some reason, I find those carry less emotional weight.
Anyone else tried the SurvivalXtreme mod? Its a lot of fun and gives more of a RPG style Wesnoth. I tried it in 1.4 and it seems to be even better in 1.6
I play it in hotseat and pick a group of units to fight the hordes, and its a lot like a dnd campaign or something. Taking out bosses, dealing with overwhelming hordes, healing and getting more powerful. Dwarven Thunderers are probably one of the best units for the mod because they start which such high damage and its easy to increase their hits in SurvivalXtreme. My level 3 Thunderer has 180 hps and something like 50/12 Magical attack and still can’t take on the bosses alone. I’ve got a master bowman with one heck of a ranged attack also and a melee guy (my other two died earlier, a Mage of Light and a Grand Knight).
Its fun cause there are so many different ways to enhance your units. New weapons, new special abilities, resistances, movement speeds and terrain movement speeds, weapon abilities, HP and of course extra hits and extra damage.
I know it’s a resurrection of a zombie thread (which is appropriate given the amount of undead in the game), but I just recently started playing Battle of Wesnoth because, well, I’m way behind the times.
So far, I’m enjoying it immensely. It reminds me of one of my favorite all time games, Warsong, on the Sega Genesis.
But I just hit my first big bump. I’m doing one of the first campaigns, and everything is going well, I get through the levels after a couple replays. Then I hit “Siege of Elensfar” and everything goes to shit. I tried it a few times with cannon fodder Lvl. 1’s like usual, and got whipped to shreds. I tried it with all my juiced up guys, and still didn’t have a chance. I’m worried because there seems to be only two options, neither of which appeals to me much. Either I need to replay all the earlier levels to near perfection and juice up a bunch of characters and gain a bunch of money, or I’m missing something vital in all my attempts.
I’m worried that the game requires you to replay levels, not until you win them, or do well, but until you play nearly perfect and build up your gold/your team to a point where you need to be so juiced up to even stand a chance on the harder levels.
Is that what this game is? I’m loving the game so far, and the sense of accomplishment when I do succeed on a level is really nice, but I’m worried that I’ll have to spend so much time replaying levels and reloading saves, so I can have enough high powered people and money to just survive these hard levels. If so, I’m not sure I’m all that interested in continuing.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Unless there’s been big changes since I played it a year or two back, doing well was enough for me to finish the whole thing. I had to restart some scenarios a few times but they were all definitely doable. That’s for the main campaign - the optional ones tended to be harder and I quit a few of them in frustration. A friend of mine who is slightly worse tactician struggled more with the main campaign but if I remember correctly even he finished it in the end.
Siege of Elensfear is extremely hard.
I don’t really remember enough about it to help now, but yea, Seige of Elensfear is much harder then most of the rest of the game. And indeed, looking at the thread, I was apparently stuck on it back when this thread was current. Post #34 has Airk giving me some advice on the matter.
I finally got through it, but only after getting some online advice. Tough scenario. It’s still a very intriguing, but quite time consuming, game.
Inspired by this thread I downloaded this and had a go. It’s a lot of fun. The play mechanics reminds me a bit of Panzer General and the game itself is very similar to an old mobile game Ancient Empires, with the occupying of villages for income, mix of units (including aquatic units) and so on. I’ve only scratched the surface so far though.
Anyway, thanks for bringing this one to my attention.
It’s a very good game as long as you understand/appreciate what it is (a direct spinoff of tabletop hex based wargaming). Pretty much every complaint I’ve ever heard anyone level at it has been along the lines “I don’t like <fundamental game design decision>” (usually compounded by “I don’t really understand <fundamental game design decision> or its impact on how I should play.”).
Glad you’re enjoying it. This thread has actually inspired me to go and play it again, because they are ALWAYS updating stuff.
So I’ve started tootling around with this game, and it’s as close to a successor game to the original Ogre Battle as anything I’ve seen (and I’ve been looking since 1994 for that).
The graphics are very 1998, but the mechanics seem solid enough for some serious playability. I can’t wait for the weekend when I can sink more than an hour or two into it.
I’ve never played Ogre Battle, but I am liking the game alot. There are one or two scenarios where I had to go back and level up and gain money to get through, but by and large it’s a really fun game. Add in that there are numerous campaigns, online mulitplayer (and against AI), and it’s free, I think it’s great.
The price is definitely right for me too. After two evenings playing I’m nearly finished The Southern Guard campaign, and that’s one of the shortest of the dozen or so campaigns included in the install (I went with 1.10.5 rather than the still in development 1.11). Rabid completionist that I am it’ll keep me going for quite a while I’d say.
As for the graphics - I’ve still got the open source remake of *Panzer General * installed with its circa 1988 graphics. Battle for Westnoth is a sumptious marvel by comparison. It’s not quite as pretty as Heroes of Might and Magic III though.
Wesnoth is almost constantly updating its graphics. Going back to look at older versions, you can REALLY see the improvement.