I think some of it had to do with Sajuuk appearing

I'm flattered

I'll definitely be watching this thread with interest and will almost definitely play the campaign, as I expect nothing less than perfection

Sajuuk feel free to start your own design blog in this forum, for the new campaign you are building, if you want.

That's not a bad idea, to be honest! Okay, I'll collate what I've done so far and make an initial post (and I'll post about each mission in their own post of that thread).

In true blog form, my posts in this thread are not really organized, just posted chronologically during the development.

This is not going to be a huge campaign. There will be four missions played out on a single map. However, this map will be 'enormous' in size. I had originally thought I'd build two maps, but based on some creative scripting I've dreamed up and the storyline I've written, I don't really see a need for that second map. Rest assured I will make the one map of this campaign something you will want to play. I am now working on the draft of this map.

There is going to be substantial military activity in this campaign, and I must be careful not to let that overshadow the story of the lovers. I believe I can mitigate that by keeping a lot of the military action 'off map' (i.e., scripted events affecting other cities). The An Lushan Rebellion against the Tang triggered a huge loss of life, so that should be modeled as much as possible with scripting.

The other aspect of this campaign is monument building. You'll get to do quite a bit of it.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 06-25-2016 @ 02:03 AM).]

The gallery album of design and playtest screenshots is now available for your viewing, here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/Legend-of-the-Xiong-Lovers

(Warning: these screenshots will contain spoilers.)

I have the first draft of my mission teasers, and they are...

Mission 1 - A Love in a Time of Sorrow - 5 years, from 752 CE to 757 CE.

Mission 2 - Tidings of Courage and Tragedy - 3 years, from 757 CE to 760 CE.

Mission 3 - A Lake of Tears - 7 years, from 760 CE to 767 CE,

Mission 4 - The Lovers Reborn - no time limit, starts in 767 CE.

Like my other campaigns, this one will maintain a strict timeline between missions. I will use my usual "window of opportunity" scripting for winning a mission with a 'survival' goal (i.e., you better trigger the victory screen in the first month after the survival years end or else very, very bad things will happen).

First draft of the Shu map is done, you can see it here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/Legend-of-the-Xiong-Lovers/aaf

I like it aesthetically - big and roomy. I purposely left the mountain tops uncluttered with rocks to allow more locations for monuments and housing blocks. However trees will need to be cleared up there. Now I'll see how it plays.

I've finished scripting mission 1 and will begin alpha testing of it.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 06-25-2016 @ 05:49 PM).]

I completed the first run through of mission 1. The map seems to play well; open and roomy but challenging due to all the trees and streams. I bumped up the starting treasury a little to account for that and adjust play balance.

The scripting is firing nicely and seems to model the instability of the An Lushan rebellion just as I hoped. Prepare for some interesting 'shifting tides of war' on the Empire Map!

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 06-26-2016 @ 07:32 AM).]

I ran into a setback while playtesting mission 2. I was trying to limit the player to only 1 military unit while still have a 'rule 1 city' mission goal. That means the player would need to enlist an ally to successfully conquer the rival city.

That all worked fine, but what I found was that because I was playtesting at 'Very Hard' difficulty, the city that I had just conquered immediately rebelled while my victorious troops were still marching home because the game engine detected no military presence back in my city. Even if I had a martial hero in my city, it still detected it as if no military was there and triggered the rebellion. Grrrrr..

I thought about trying to work around this problem with scripting some 'city status change - rebellion end' events at various times in the latter part of mission 2. However, that event is bugged and can cause some really wonky results if it fires under the right conditions (e.g., it can reverse the vassal status of a player to instead have the rival city be the vassal). The event is too unpredictable so I decided not to use it. Instead, I'm going to have to introduce elite housing in mission 2, which will allow a player to have more military units. I'm not keen on doing this but don't see a viable alternative. I will adjust availability of trade commodities to hamper the player's ability to hyper-evolve a huge military in mission 2.

I also want to tweak the mission goals to provide a more diplomatic challenge. Diplomacy is difficult in times of war. It's hard to maintain alliances when cities are being conquered and re-conquered and the victors are constantly beheading the old city leaders!

I did have some fun battles and put a couple of new screenshots in the playtest album. Guan Di's attack is cool.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 06-26-2016 @ 09:39 AM).]

That all worked fine, but what I found was that because I was playtesting at 'Very Hard' difficulty, the city that I had just conquered immediately rebelled while my victorious troops were still marching home because the game engine detected no military presence back in my city. Even if I had a martial hero in my city, it still detected it as if no military was there and triggered the rebellion. Grrrrr..

In the first iteration of Kaicheng (for my Power of the Tang) campaign, without elite housing, I had to get someone to be an ally and request defensive aid, just so that I could send my own troops to go and conquer something, all to stop the game engine from triggering randomised invasions due to "no troops".

I highly recommend adding some elite housing to the mission. Like you saw in my Kaicheng map, limiting elite housing evolution to Humble Compound is a way of allowing more military (from Lavish Siheyuan's), but not excessive amounts, so that the player has to make sure they build the right military units to do the job and which introduces a challenge in of itself.

You would just have to ensure that the player cannot get access to both Daoism/Buddhism and Confucianism to prevent them evolving higher than Humble Compound. Or you could simply disallow the player from having access to lacquerware to prevent evolution beyond the Lavish Siheyuan.

Am really liking what I'm reading! Sounds like it will be a hair raising campaign to complete!

[This message has been edited by Sajuuk (edited 06-26-2016 @ 10:07 AM).]

My experiment to allow elite housing in mission 2 worked, but too well! I was able to place 6 military units in the first game year of mission 2, and have them almost fully equipped (via Guan Di's blessing). This totally skewed the (military) play balance in the other direction.

So my only option for a workable military play balance was to do something I was desperately trying to avoid - allow the palace to be placed. (I didn't want the palace to be placed until the final mission, for reasons of the storyline, which I prefer to keep secret.) With the palace in play, the player now can place two military units without requiring elite housing. This allows them to complete the 'Rule 1 city' mission goal without triggering a rebellion immediately upon conquering the city.

I also tweaked the scripting quite a bit in mission 2. I was able to make two test runs through it (since it's only a 3-year mission). It seemed to play as I wanted. A player is really going to have to be on their toes to keep up with the diplomatic goals in this campaign.

I also finished a first draft of the scripting for mission 3. I hope to playtest it in the next couple of days. I did decide to rename the last two missions as follows;

M3 - Tears for the Lovers
M4 - The Rebirth of Xu Lin and Tan Fu

I haven't started writing any of the actual campaign or mission texts yet, but I know what I want to write. My problem (as always) will be to condense everything I want to write into the small space allowed on each splash page.

I started writing the actual storyline today. I must say, I haven't had this feeling of immersion in a story for this game since I created "Shaolin Monastery". Good, nostalgic feeling and I'm reminded why I still come back to this game after so many years. I hope you will share this feeling of immersion when you play it.

I completed drafts of the campaign introduction text and mission 1 intro and mission 1 victory text. I made a screenshot of the campaign introduction screen, and you can see it in the teaser album, here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/Legend-of-the-Xiong-Lovers

I finished a good run through mission 3 tonight. I only had to tweak the scripting a little bit. I did need to add 1 year to the time limit of this mission, there is just too much going on to focus solely on completing the monument.

Oh, I also added a screenshot of a big battle to the playtest album.

This campaign features the immortal Queen Mother Xi Wang Mu, for both her abilities in the game and her importance to the storyline. I've enjoyed writing her into the story in a prominent role.

I have completed drafts of mission intro and completion texts for all four missions now. Making good progress.

Today I added some screenshots to the gallery album and put up the news teaser on the Emperor Heaven home page.

I also started the scripting for the last mission, but haven't playtested it yet.

I playtested mission 4 last night. Even with Sun Tzu bolstering my infantry I got overrun by the Tibetans, lol. It was clear I had to lower the invasion sizes a little bit. Tricky to do this while still providing a solid military challenge.

As an FYI, I always design the military play balance while playing at 'Very Hard' difficulty and with only the maximum of 12 military units. Some of you may not know it, but it's possible to use game glitches to place up to 20 military units in a city. However, I won't design a campaign that requires a player to do that.

The other scripting in mission 4 was firing pretty much as I wanted and I only had to tweak a couple of events.

I've also started writing the 'Readme' file that I always include in my campaigns. It's about half done.

I still think this project is on track for a release later this summer.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 07-06-2016 @ 05:26 AM).]

From my own experience (both in the campaign and in my own custom campaigns), invasions can only really be about 20-25 in size for two full forts of infantry in the early years of a mission.

Obviously that depends on the enemy you are facing (no more than 10 in early years if it is a Mongol invasion), but the stronger an enemy force is, the less the size of the invasion force can be for defeating with two forts. Otherwise, two forts with no hero (I assume that an invasion will be defeated without the use of a hero) cannot possibly defeat the invasion and will just be killed off quickly (due to the enemy invasion likely including 2 catapults), resulting in either the player becoming a vassal, triggering invasions from other rivals or losing the game.

If a player can get some elite housing, that allows more forts, so by Year 10 (or later), invasions can be significantly larger and still be defeatable due to all the forts.

Sounds like you are getting a good feel for military play balance, especially the early invasions. I agree with your assessment there.

One big consideration is if you will allow military walls, towers, and gatehouses to be placed by the player. These can really give an edge to a player, since they can (usually) be used to channel the attackers to a set point on the map. Placing a string of towers in a 'gauntlet' formation can be devastating to enemy troops. So if you allow walls and towers, you can increase the size of the scripted enemy invasions (although I wouldn't advise that for early invasions, since a player won't have the population to adequately man a huge tower/gatehouse configuration).

Other important considerations for scripted invasions are aggressiveness and targeting. If you set the enemy aggressiveness to 'Fierce Dragon', they will fight much longer before breaking, causing significantly more casualties to a player's army. Likewise, the 'Armored Turtle' aggressiveness will make the enemy break and retreat sooner.
So sometimes I will script my invasions slightly larger if I know I'll set the enemy to 'Armored Turtle'.

As for the targeting, setting it to 'rampage' will give the player a significant advantage, because it means the enemy units will simply move to attack the closest structure they detect when they arrive at the invasion point on the map. Veteran players know they can sprinkle some 1x1 gates on the map's edges to draw the attention of the rampaging enemy, and more importantly they sprinkle these gates inside their 'gauntlets' of towers. That is just devastating to enemy troops because they are too dumb to avoid the trap, they tarry to knock down the gates while they are being pummeled with an arrow-storm from the towers in the gauntlet. You can see a screenshot of a gauntlet with gates to lure the enemy troops here:

http://emperor.heavengames.com/gallery/album13/aav

The toughest targeting for a player to handle is 'military' because it means the attacking enemy will ignore everything except the player's military forts. They'll move to attack the forts wherever they are on the map. If they succeed in tearing down a fort, all the player's soldiers in that fort instantly fall over dead. Not good.

I will usually set the enemy targeting to 'random'; it seems a good balance and does throw some mystery into each battle.

I see I've digressed a lot here! But back to the campaign: I made map changes so I started replaying it from scratch. I just finished missions 1 and 2 and everything seems good.

I also added two screenshots featuring military units to the campaign teaser album.

[This message has been edited by Gweilo (edited 07-07-2016 @ 09:53 AM).]

Finished my alpha testing and am about to email the pak file to Sajuuk for beta testing.

NOTE: if any of you reading this want to join Sajuuk and participate in the playtest, contact me. I would need your playtesting results within the next week or two, though.

I uploaded several new screenshots to the campaign teaser album, viewable in the Gallery at Emperor Heaven.

Due to all my efforts on my own campaign, I've not yet had a chance to playtest this campaign, but I'll definitely be doing some playtesting (most likely starting later today and continuing over the next few days)

From what I've read in this blog post though, it's definitely going to be a tough one, but I'm sure I'll be able to do it!

My plan is categorize this one as 'Very Hard'. Like many of my custom campaigns, it's designed for advanced players. Over the years I've found the people who are still playing this game are usually at that skill level.

I know you can beat it!

Making progress on the Readme file.

Sorry for the delay, been having a load of PC issues, which have taken up most of my time. Am ordering a new PC soon, so I'll be able to dedicate my time just to this campaign (and obviously making some updates to my own campaign). Should have the feedback (and news feed post) over by end of week

To start off with, I play all missions at Hard. So this feedback is based on exclusively that difficulty setting.

So I tested the first mission and honestly... this is way too hard and really only marketed at very advanced players. A casual player such as myself cannot possibly hope to complete a mission like this, unless they played at just 10% speed to put everything into place without time ticking past.

Here's my thoughts:
* Far too much happens, far too quickly. There isn't enough time to set up a city and get some workers before you get bombarded in requests and invasions. Most of my time was spent juggling priorities to make buildings work and evolve the housing to reach the housing target, which took out all the fun of actually playing the campaign the way it was intended.
** Saying that, you can get a military up and running within a year or so (without needing Guan Di), but that's about all.
* Whether intentional or a bug, the game did not immediately end when the 5 years were up. Instead, all that happened was that the game continued beyond that point and just added negative numbers, causing all sorts of very odd things to begin happening. These included impossible invasions from Chang-an and Lop Nor and random earthquakes.
* There is almost no way to make any money. The only export I was able to set up in any reasonable amount of time was tea and that made me very little money.
* I liked the changing trade routes, but felt that it made trying to reach an ally almost impossible. One city should be an ally in the last 6 months, in case a player hasn't gotten an ally during the course of the mission.
* The random gift of 1 silk bolt should be removed or increased to make it usable as a homage gift. Otherwise, it is just useless clutter that does not help the player whatsoever, as they cannot do anything with it, and this will almost certainly annoy people when they find that they have to waste 6 workers on a warehouse to hold a useless item. Increasing this gift to be at least 3 silk bolts would be better, because then it will serve as a low level homage gift.

In my opinion, the mission needs to start 2-3 years "before" all the heavy stuff begins. This will give the player more time to actually prepare and get some workers and prepare for the monument. Even with Xi Wang Mu (who I struggled heavily to get into the city), I could not complete the monument, because I could not get enough workers, as most of the workers were used trying to actually increase the population.

From my own perspective, when I approach a mission, I prioritise certain goals. Since this mission has a time limit, I knew that I would have to complete it within the time provided. The first goal I prioritised was the housing goal. Second was an ally. Monuments are always last on the list for me, because then I can build them without having instability problems. The time limit makes it impossible to focus on anything other than the monument and a military, as the first few events can be ignored due to gifts.

I may try again, with the knowledge of what happens, but the player needs some time to prepare.

It's getting late here now, so I can't try again until tomorrow, but I'll have one further go. If I still can't complete mission 1, I'll have to likely step back from trying to playtest or I'll just end up getting frustrated.

[This message has been edited by Sajuuk (edited 07-13-2016 @ 04:35 PM).]

A new day, so I attempted the mission again. This time I was a bit more successful, but this campaign is unwinnable at Hard, because I was just about to win, only for scripted events to ruin all my hard work by destroying my city.

Once again, the game bugged and continued the mission despite me not meeting the goals for the "Survive 5 years" goal, so I just quit at soon as Chang-an said they wanted to invade me, because I knew the game would not permit mission victory due to it. I'm pretty sure the game is supposed to "auto-fail" if the time limit passes and the goals aren't met, but clearly it is bugged, so either the time limits need to be extended (and keeping it "survival") (which would require the tweaking of events), or the mission should become a "complete mission in X years" so that the mission can be won earlier to avoid the glitches.

I would strongly recommend increasing the amount of time needed to complete the first mission for any instances where the player has not reached the goals by that point. The events that trigger after passing the time limit should be made to trigger exactly after the time has passed and not before it: I suspect that the event to trigger impossible invasions are being set to happen before the time limit has expired, completely glitching the game (as it is probably wanting the player to defeat the invasion before ending the mission).

There is pretty much no way this campaign can be won, due to the impossibility of Mission 1. I can only suspect that Gwelio won it, simply because he already knew what the events were. Even with future knowledge, it is unwinnable in its current state.

Players need more time to reach some of the goals, and events should never be triggered that results in the player's efforts being wasted for nothing. I had some earthquakes just before Chang-an's unbeatable invasion, which pretty much destroyed everything. Given the mission is a forced period of time, earthquakes should not be scripted during that period to avoid the game putting the earthquake in a disadvantageous area: this issue wouldn't be a problem if the mission was a "complete mission in X years", rather than a "wait X years".

Until some changes are made to this first mission to give the player more time to try and reach the goals, I cannot continue playtesting this campaign. Two attempts with the same outcome means there is no point in me attempting it again, as the outcome will just be the same, and I don't feel like frustrating myself with the events.

As a bit of a positive, I very much liked this map. I was able to build a nice city and got everything the way I wanted it. However, the player should have a 1-2 year grace period at the beginning to give them time to build the basics. As for the end of the mission, there should be at least a one year grace period: this will allow the game to conclude the mission correctly, without going into negative numbers, and may give the player just enough time to get an ally/housing goal/monument completed.

From reading the comments, it sounds like the other missions are fine, presumably because the player is continuing an existing city so they don't have to mess around building things.

[This message has been edited by Sajuuk (edited 07-14-2016 @ 07:00 AM).]