The Battle for Wesnoth Wiki - User contributions [en]

SpellingMistakes

2015-09-14T03:16:35Z

RJaguar3: /* Northern Rebirth */ +1 from The Pursuit

Available Music

2015-02-07T04:26:39Z

RJaguar3: /* Core Music */ Aubry-Carlson's "Northerners" was replaced by Stephen Rozanc's version

A list of music tracks written for the Battle for Wesnoth.

If you find an incorrect link, or see that something is missing from this page or filed incorrectly, please fix it! We need your help to maintain this wiki :).

== Core Music ==

These tracks are included in the official Battle for Wesnoth distribution, and are automatically available to any user-made scenario or campaign. To listen to them, find the data/core/music subfolder of your Wesnoth folder, and open the files with a player capable of decoding [http://www.vorbis.com/ Ogg Vorbis] files. For information on where to find your Wesnoth directory, see [[EditingWesnoth]]. For information on how to play .ogg files, visit http://www.vorbis.com/. The [https://github.com/wesnoth/wesnoth/tree/master/data/core/music Wesnoth repository at GitHub] also contains the latest version of these files.

{|
|-
!style="text-align:left;"| Title
!style="text-align:left;"| Length
!style="text-align:left;"| Author
!style="text-align:left;"| File
|-
| Battle Epic || 1:14 || Doug Kaufman || battle-epic.ogg
|-
| Battle Music || 5:18 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || battle.ogg
|-
| Breaking the Chains || 3:35 || Mattias Westlund || breaking_the_chains.ogg
|-
| Casualties of War || 5:25 || Tyler Johnson || casualties_of_war
|-
| Defeat || 0:08 || Timothy Pinkham || defeat.ogg
|-
| Defeat || 0:14 || Ryan Reilly || defeat2.ogg
|-
| Elf Land || 0:26 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || elf-land.ogg
|-
| Elvish Theme || 3:25 || Doug Kaufman || elvish-theme.ogg
|-
| Frantic || 1:24 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || frantic.ogg
|-
| Heroes' Rite || 3:39 || Doug Kaufman || heroes_rite.ogg
|-
| Into the Shadows || 3:25 || Tyler Johnson || into-the-shaodws.ogg
|-
| Journey's End || 3:44 || Mattias Westlund || journeys_end.ogg
|-
| Knalgan Theme || 9:17 || Ryan Reilly || knalgan_theme.ogg
|-
| Legends of the North || 2:43 || Mattias Westlund || legends_of_the_north.ogg
|-
| Love Theme || 1:35 || Ryan Reilly || love_theme.ogg
|-
| Loyalists || 2:59 || Joseph G. Toscano (Zhaytee) || loyalists.ogg
|-
| Main Theme || 0:51 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || main_menu.ogg
|-
| Northerners || 3:27 || Stephen Rozanc || northerners.ogg
|-
| Nunc Dimittis || 3:50 || Jeremy Nicoll || nunc_dimittis.ogg
|-
| Over the Northern Mountains || 3:33 || Mattias Westlund || northern_mountains.ogg
|-
| Revelation || 1:17 || Joseph G. Toscano (Zhaytee) || revelation.ogg
|-
| Sad || 0:28 || Tyler Johnson || sad.ogg
|-
| Siege of Laurelmor || 4:22 || Doug Kaufman || siege_of_laurelmor.ogg
|-
| Still Another Wanderer || 4:22 || Timothy Pinkham || wanderer.ogg
|-
| Suspense || 5:20 || Ryan Reilly || suspense.ogg
|-
| The City Falls || 4:06 || Doug Kaufman || the_city_falls.ogg
|-
| The Dangerous Symphony || 5:26 || Gianmarco Leone || the_dangerous_symphony.ogg
|-
| The Deep Path || 3:37 || Gianmarco Leone || the_deep_path.ogg
|-
| The King is Dead || 3:41 || Mattias Westlund || the_king_is_dead.ogg
|-
| The Knolls of Doldesh || 6:49 || Timothy Pinkham || knolls.ogg
|-
| Transience || 0:48 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || transience.ogg
|-
| Traveling Minstrels || 3:35 || Mattias Westlund || traveling_minstrels.ogg
|-
| Underground || 1:52 || Aleksi Aubry-Carlson || underground.ogg
|-
| Vengeful Pursuit || 6:00 || Jeremy Nicoll || vengeful.ogg
|-
| Victory || 0:05 || Timothy Pinkham || victory.ogg
|-
| Victory || 0:21 || Ryan Reilly || victory2.ogg
|}

== Available Music for Campaign Authors ==

These tracks have not been accepted for mainline inclusion, but campaign authors are free to include them in their campaigns. As they are not part of the official Battle for Wesnoth distribution, campaign authors will need to include the .ogg files in their campaign package.

; "Burin the Lost Theme" by [PA]NotUncleDave ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19605 forum thread]) 0'32"
: http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/lzce/Burin-the-Lost ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/lzce-Burin%20the%20Lost.mp3 mirror] | [http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/lzce-Burin%20the%20Lost.ogg ogg])

; "Reminisce" by Jeremy Nicoll ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17246 forum thread]) 3'45"
: http://gnexp.com/songs/reminisce.ogg ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/reminisce.ogg mirror])

; (Untitled) by Doug Kaufman ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17580 forum thread]) 1'14"
: http://www.box.net/shared/yopoe1hvh2 ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/doug_kaufman-music%20score.mp3 mirror] | [http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/doug_kaufman-music%20score.ogg ogg])

; "War Song" by hiro hito ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=17379 forum thread]) 6'27"
: http://download.tuxfamily.org/hirosound/tribal_war_song.mp3 ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/tribal_war_song.mp3 mirror] | [http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/tribal_war_song.ogg ogg])

; jeanbrut ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18835 forum thread])
: http://o.militon.free.fr/Morceaux/DragonVert1.mp3 4'01" ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/DragonVert1.mp3 mirror] | [http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/DragonVert1.ogg ogg])
: http://o.militon.free.fr/Morceaux/DragonVert2.mp3 2'57" ([http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/DragonVert2.mp3 mirror] | [http://download.tuxfamily.org/wesnothmusic/extras/DragonVert2.ogg ogg])

; "Battle Cry" by ancestral ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=24778#p347244 forum thread]) 4'28"
: http://www.mproud.com/music/battlecry.m4a ([http://www.mproud.com/music/battlecry.band source] | [http://www.mproud.com/music/battlecry.ogg ogg])

There are also several music packs on the add-on server of other music you can use in your UMC content.

== Other Potential Contributions ==

These were indicated by the author to be potential contributions to the Battle for Wesnoth, but their use has not been explicitly allowed and they have not yet been released under the GPL. The authors of these pieces may agree to release them under the GPL if someone has a use for them. In this case, try to contact the author directly.

; barisium ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19536 forum thread])
: http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/urih/Maabad16

; bluerc ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19136 forum thread])
: http://neuron.fei.tuke.sk/~rockai/mp3/DruhaPiesenPreKatarinu.mp3

; Tlogner ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18364 forum thread])
: http://benyates.info/high%20seas%20for%20wesnoth.mp3
: http://benyates.info/forgottenwoods.mp3

== Works in Progress ==

These pieces are still being worked on, or have not been declared as finished. The author may welcome constructive criticism and would most likely welcome encouragement or praise. If you intend to use these in a campaign, it would be polite to let the author know of your intention, as they might not wish for their work to be used until it is complete.

This list is unlikely to be regularly updated. The best place to check out the music that is currently being developed for Wesnoth is the [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewforum.php?f=14 Music development forum]

; Joseph G. Toscano (Zhaytee) ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16105 forum thread])
: http://zhaymusic.com/music/mp3/gpl/zhaytee-wesnoth_fanfare.mp3
: http://zhaymusic.com/music/mp3/gpl/zhaytee-wesnoth_lovetheme.mp3
: http://zhaymusic.com/music/mp3/gpl/zhaytee-wesnoth_newtruths.mp3
: http://zhaymusic.com/music/mp3/gpl/zhaytee-wesnoth_tragedy.mp3

; "Tragedy" by Ryan Reilly (Rain) ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19600 forum thread])
: http://www.allacrost.org/staff/user/rain/WesnothTragedy5.mp3

; "Flight of the Drakes" by [PA]NotUncleDave ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19362 forum thread])
: http://www.tindeck.com/audio/my/azxe/Flight-of-the-Drakes

; "Sing" by Marcus Rasseli ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20002 forum thread])
: http://www.4shared.com/file/41165228/3f6c6fd2/sinf1_up2.html

; "Snowfall" by Jeremy Nicoll ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=18311 forum thread])
: http://www.gnexp.com/songs/snowfall.mp3

; "Orc Theme" by Aleksi Aubry-Carlson ([http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6162 forum thread])
: http://aleksi.free.fr/Wesnoth/Gameplay%2006.ogg

[[Category:Music]]

SpellingMistakes

2014-10-05T05:27:32Z

RJaguar3: /* Liberty */ not an error

SpellingMistakes

2014-02-28T04:56:20Z

RJaguar3: note mistakes that have been fixed in git

SpellingMistakes

2013-12-01T01:33:07Z

RJaguar3: /* Help */ Mountains has a sentence with spelling and grammar errors

This page is meant to be a list of spelling mistakes in campaigns and other translatable texts in the en_US development version of the game.

Note: The house style of Wesnoth uses a good many words and constructions that are archaic, poetic, or dialectal. If you speak modern English as a second language you may incorrectly read these as errors. Please see [[NotSpellingMistakes]] for a list of things you will encounter that may look like spelling or usage errors but are not. Note that the mainline campaigns are now using correct typography, including sexed quotes and en and em dashes. These will appear as three byte sequences if you are not using a viewer that supports UTF-8.

==Mainline Campaigns==

===An Orcish Incursion===

===Dead Water===

===Delfador’s Memoirs===
* "Yes, close by the southeast wall of our fort across '''the the''' Ford. But they are jealous of their privileges and hold aloof from us." scenario 12_Terror_at_the_Ford_of_Parthyn.cfg:418
* "He is a like a blazing fire". Seems strange to me, however English is not my native language. I would have writen "He is like a blazing fire" or maybe "He is alike a blazing fire" ? scenario 14_Shadows.cfg:304
* "I will send Dudpon, instead with most of my army", I would move the comma : "I will send Dudpon instead, with most of my army" 16_Dark_Sky_Over_Weldyn.cfg:71
* "Defeat all enemies" is using in three scenarios but, at least in one of them (Terror at the Ford of Parthyn) you only need to defeat all enemy '''leaders'''

===Descent into Darkness===

===Eastern Invasion===

===Heir to the Throne===

===Liberty===

===Northern Rebirth===

===Sceptre of Fire===

===Son of the Black Eye===
In the first scenario Vrag is saying: ''There is a huge human army marching on us! They can’t be more then one or two days march from here.'' Should be '''''than'''''.

===The Hammer of Thursagan===

===The Legend of Wesmere===
"At last I have '''found, you alive and well'''! We need you back at once! The orcs have attacked the humans."
(data/campaigns/Legend_of_Wesmere/scenarios/chapter4/13_News_from_the_Front.cfg:165)

The comma should be moved one word ahead, after 'you'.

===The Rise of Wesnoth===

===The South Guard===

03_A_Desperate_Errand NORMAL difficulty. When you kill off the bandits it says "I hope that’s the last of the bandits! How many more of these foul undead must we fight?" but there are no undead at this difficulty. Perhaps it could be changed to "foul creatures" or perhaps some weak undead could be added to the scenario.

===Two Brothers===

There seems to be a discrepancy in the dates given in the four scenarios:

Scenario 1: 12 V, 363 YW
 
Scenario 2: 16 V, 363 YW
 
Scenario 3: 19 '''IV''', 363 YW
 
Scenario 4: 27 V, 363 YW

Should the date in scenario 3 be "19 '''V''', 363 YW"?

(Note that the date appears twice in scenario 3.)

===Under the Burning Suns===

* Scenario 10: "They sent this second sun, who you call Naia, hurling through the sky so that there was only a few hours of dark each night." suggest change to "hurtling".

* Scenario 10: "Eloh’s reach is long and her vengeance is terrible." suggest change to "Yechnagoth" because at this point they know the real villain and Eloh's good name has been cleared.

* Scenario 10: "their power failed and the mountain crashed down onto the humans capital" - suggest change to "humans’ capital".

==Wesnoth Game==

===Editor===

===Help===

"Undead", 1st paragraph: "An undead creature does not require the constant attention of the necromancer to command and sustain, but can work autonomously according to the commands of it's master." should be changed to "...of '''its''' master."
"Mountains", 1st paragraph, last sentence: "Both dwarves and trolls re native to mountainous terrain, and have a very easiy time getting around." should have "re" changed to "are", no comma before "and", and "easiy" to "easy".

===Tutorial===

===Manual===

===Manpages===

===Units===

===1.11 Announcement===

One line of the development release line says this: "which might include quite many bugs."

"Quite many" is not proper grammar. It should instead read: "which might include many bugs."

===Other (unit descriptions, ...)===

===Multiplayer maps===

===Translation code bugs===

==Unofficial campaigns==

===Invasion from the Unknown===

DelfadorsMemoirs

2013-06-08T14:50:21Z

RJaguar3: /* Showdown in the Northern Swamp */ rewrite to the current objectives

==Story==

This campaign follows the adventures of Delfador, beginning from him leaving home as a newly qualified journeyman mage,
and leading up to him helping to bring peace to Wesnoth. It is set a couple of generations earlier than "Heir to the
Throne".

==Development==

Original developer: email to Josh Parsons, jp30 AT st-and.ac.uk.
Thread is at http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1293.

More recently, the campaign has been picked up and improved by 'tapik' - see [[CampaignDelfadorsMemoirs]].

==Campaign Strategy==

This section gives some advice on long-term strategy in this campaign.

''NOTE: plot spoilers''. In this campaign, you work with 6 different armies: your starting loyalist army, an undead army in the underworld, Kalenz and Chantal's elven armies, a dwarf army, and a loyalist army from Parthyn. Which armies are on the recall list varies from scenario to scenario. To an extent that means that long-term strategy doesn't matter, because you keep being given a clean slate; conversely, if you are short of vital units, you might have to go back 10 levels to fix it.

As the campaign progresses, money will become scarce and you'll recall ever smaller armies; don't spread experience among too many units, but strive to build a small core of elite troops. Useful long term strategies are:

* loyalists:
** '''mages''': for your starting loyalist army, mages are important. '''Get 2 white mages as early as you can'''. You face a lot of assassins in the early levels, and from level 7 onward there are a lot of undead. You'll have little use for red mages, one really is enough.
** '''heavy infantry''': not that useful, despite the numbers of undead. Too many of the levels are big wide open spaces, or have difficult terrain where your HI will founder, or you are given holy water or dwarves and so have better options. Nonetheless it is worth recruiting some HI in levels that do suit them, because you lose the ability to recruit them at some points but can still recall them.
** '''horsemen''': now these are useful - the early levels suit them well and you can employ them in numbers. Later you'll be mostly facing undead: paladins will be excellent, but it will be hard to level up any more knights. Make your paladins while you're still facing orcs, you'll hardly be able to make more than three (and probably employ only two).
* elves: standard mixture of elves is fine (although there are many undead, you get holy water to deal with them), except:
** '''sorcerors''': you get a druid free, and will want a second, but perhaps more importantly you want plenty of sorcerors as these are good against the sort of undead that you don't want to melee even with holy water (spectres).
* Delfador: perhaps the most important long run strategy in this campaign is to get Delfador to level 3 early, and near to reaching level 4 by the end of the loyalist levels (1-8). Delfador has to fight one level essentially on his own, and it helps a lot if he is at or near level 4 (the free heal from the level-up would be useful during that level).

==Walkthrough==

You should be familiar with the basics in [[WesnothManual]] -- this is a walkthrough, not an exposition of basic game mechanics.

Each scenario has an individual forum thread where you can provide feedback to the authors. You can find these [http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=22&t=25554 here]. Feedback is useful as it helps the developers improve the campaign in future versions; and the posts by other players may contain advice or pointers beyond those in this walkthrough.

===Overture===

Just an introduction - sit back and enjoy the show.

===This Valley Belongs to Me===

Objectives: kill Grogor-Tuk, the enemy leader.

This one is tricky for a first scenario, so play patiently. The enemy has a lot of gold and sends a steady stream of units your way for the first day. In the south/centre is the easy bit - defend the river. Use your mage of light here to back up a few horsemen/spearmen to fend off the attackers.

The tricky bit is to the north - wolf riders cross the river to the north and come down through the woods. Some spearmen and mages in the woods works here, and there's a village in the woods to the north to anchor your defence on. Wolf riders don't benefit as much as your units do on the wooded tiles. Aim to give plenty of XP to at least one mage, so you can level him up here or early at the next level.

===The Road to Weldyn===

Objectives: kill Urthaka-Tan, the enemy leader.

You want quite a few horsemen here; it's a good opportunity to get lots of horsemen on your recall list (they are cheaper to recall than recruit later on). There are enough villages to fund recruiting or recalling 9 units and still have positive income throughout. You want at least half of your units to be horsemen: if you do the enemy will have lots of archers who are easy prey in these open fields. You start with an archer and gain the ability to recruit more here. Often you can avoid fighting in the first night altogether, strike hard during the second day and the scenario is already won.

This level is dead easy to win because the enemy has a small keep, so his forces arrive spread out and not supporting each other. Use the day/night cycle; at night just fall back and, particularly on the first night, use the line of woods and castle tiles just west of your start. Your horsemen can go and take villages and make it back to fight at dawn on day 2. In the day, crush them with the horsemen and mages. You want to level up mages and horsemen.

Once you have crushed the enemy army, take the remaining villages and milk for XP - the early exit bonus is only +15/turn, and you should be able to get +14/turn while prolonging the level. You are heading for knights (for paladins later) and white mages, as per [[#Campaign_Strategy]].

===Leollyn===

Objectives: kill Hagha-Tan, and keep Leollyn alive.

You can usually ignore the ally; the enemy sends a few units down that way, but the L3 mage and his L2 mage recruits are well able to handle them.

You want to recall at least one and preferably two white mages (there will be lots of assassins), and a horseman near leveling up. The rest of your recruit should be a mix of bowmen and spearmen, including one or two level 2 ones. March up to the ford to the north-west and build a defensive position for the night; keep the front line together with as few units as you can, as most will end up poisoned each turn; cycle them out and replace with others. Once day breaks, hopefully you have enough decent units left to mop up the enemy's first wave; your horseman is ideal to pick off any strong enemy units standing in the water. When you handled most wolves, red mages (Delfador and other) are good frontline units against assassins and archers as they won't use their ranged attack against them.

Hopefully you can push over the river by afternoon on the second day and lure out the enemy leader. You want to finish this one early, turn 10-12, to get a big enough bonus for the next scenario, as it seems impossible with minimum starting gold.

===Council in Weldyn===

Just story.

===Swamps of Illuven===

Objectives: Delfador must reach signpost in north-east before time runs out.

Spoiler: The protection charge is always 80% of your gold, and gets rid of the north-west enemy (the one not in the way of getting to the signpost). The other enemy player (the one blocking the signpost) gets a small gold bonus. So, you are losing 80% of your gold to get rid of around 40% of the enemy gold; hence, it's normally best to refuse to pay. At Easy, the deal is even worse, as the net effect is only about -25% of the enemy gold. Additionally, there is a gold bonus available if you don't pay and do defeat the NW enemy. It is not noted in the "Objectives"; instead, a treasure chest is shown on the map. Remember to take it.

Option 1, refusing to pay: If you don't pay the charge, you get to recruit a big army, get more XP, and finish quicker. You should be able to hold the central island while pushing a force from there to take out the NW leader. A balanced force would consist of couple of horsemen, 2 white mages, a couple of level 2s, a couple of level 1 mages (which are pretty good against footpads and poachers as they ignore their high defense ratings), and the rest spearmen as fodder to form your defensive line. It is vital to use Lionel's level-3 leadership to help your level-1 units fight better.

Option 2, paying the charge: The level is playable paying the charge if you are coming in with ~250 gold or more. Although it gives the AI a big lead in gold, you have halved the recruit rate for the AIs and ensured that they are all on the far side of the level; the AI's forces don't concentrate so well and your small force can evade them at night. You may prefer this route if you prefer a challenging small-army scouting battle rather than a big army battle. You can win by starting with as little as two raw recruit Spearman and a recalled horseman, if you take some villages so that you can recall some more units later.

===Night in the Swamp===

Objective: survive 12 turns.

It is hard to get an early exit bonus here, and you don't need it, so just take the opportunity to level up some units. Grab some heavy infantry and mages, and perhaps a knight - see [[#Campaign Strategy]].

You can put a generator out of action by landing any level 2 or better mage on it; the level will end when there are no skeletons left. At easy, it appears that there is only one generator - you can storm it and get an early exit bonus if you find the next level easier that way, but I think leveling up units is more useful here.

===Ur-Thorodor===

Objectives: get Delfador into the wose castle. No early exit bonus.

The main hazard here is the gryphons - they will attack as you cross the water. Be careful with Lionel and Delfador; you may need to use fodder to lure the gryphons and then blast them. Recall a red mage, a good damage sink (a knight will do), a healer, and perhaps another mage and a fodder unit. Cross straight away, and don't get bogged down on the other side - blast a hole with your mages and get Delfador into the castle asap. You are not likely to win a long fight. Remember that Lionel's leadership helps mages too.

===Houses of the Dead===

Objective: find the Staff and get Delfador to the north signpost within 64 turns.

Explore to your north-west first - there is one village in that direction. To your north is an impassable barrier behind those mountains, so next turn back and work around the level anti-clockwise. No need to climb through the mountains: if you stick to the "road" you won't miss anything. If you pay attention to what you're told, you'll learn about a secret passage that *will* make life easier. But this scenario is pretty straightforward either way.

The friends you find will try to help, but usually throw their, uh, existences away against the skeletons quite quickly; at least they serve as distraction. Any survivors will be available for recall on the next level, one even for free -- but that's not much of a benefit, so don't worry too much.

Don't exit until turn 64, as there is no early exit bonus but you should have a good income. Waiting gives you more gold for the next scenario (1.8.0).

===The Gate Between Worlds===

* Objectives: kill Iliah-Malal
* Starting units: Delfador and a surviving Ghost, Ghoul or advancement from the previous scenario

You get to recruit Ghosts and Ghouls here, your allies of the last level. Money should be no problem.

Players have used two options with success:

Option 1, attack with Ghouls. Backed by Delfador's leadership, ghouls can actually do a lot of damage. But he can't be everywhere, and anyway the ghouls will probably perish quickly. That's alright, as long as you manage to poison most enemies. There's not enough villages for your opponent to heal his army, and if you give battle on your shore of the swamp they won't get anywhere quickly. Ghosts can then finish the poisoned enemies.

Option 2, leader assassination with Ghosts. Send 8 Ghosts around the flanks of the enemy to converge on Iliah-Malal, surrounding and killing him, albeit slowly. Send a Ghoul-heavy force supported by Delfador and a couple of Ghosts up the middle to distract the majority of the enemy forces. Delfador should be cautious; he is only there to distract, and the Dark Adepts and Thugs pack enough of a punch to kill him if you are not careful.

Note: You will be able to recall this undead force in a later scenario, but this may not be very useful, so you don't have to worry about leveling up units for later levels. [glandis: Somewhere in 1.9.x, recalling at least one undead became vital in that later scenario. I found having two shadows really useful.]
===Wasteland===

Objectives: kill Tish Golub

Straightforward scenario, albeit the enemy can recruit L2 units and you have only raw Elven recruits. The walk north to the Elven castle is simple. Most of the fighting takes place in the woods that you can see to your west, so elven archers are good here. Also grab a scout to steal all your ally's villages, otherwise she will keep recruiting L2 units and stealing your XP. Definitely recruit 1 or 2 shamans, as you would like to have a sorcerer early in the next level.

===Terror at the Ford of Parthyn===

Objectives: defeat both the orc and undead leaders.

'''Conservative strategy:'''
As soon as you spot the ford guard, it will come under your control. Using a scout, you can get there in time for the humans to man the walls. Actually, the walls are one huge keep, so Delfador can recruit directly into the fortifications and fill the gaps. You should be able to fend off the first wave of attackers, the more so as the baddies will conveniently arrive at daybreak. The mages, on the other hand, won't get across the river until the fun is mostly over; recall your own healers. You should leave two mages on the other shore anyway, in order to deal with any ghosts that try to get at the villages down there.

'''Play-it-safe strategy:'''
Abandon the northern shore; run to the south castle (without recruiting at all) and play defensive through the first wave of enemies. The orcs and undead are hostile to each other, so this gives them ample opportunity to fight amongst themselves. ''Needs investigation and comments.''

[Hipparchos] This is definitely the easiest way to play it. Run Delfador and Chantal straight south and pick up the north castle defenders as a bodyguard as you head for the south castle. You'll get a few hits as you retreat but nothing serious, as long as you keep Chantal well guarded. Use Niktor to wake the mages and put the White Mages initially in the center of the castle to heal the wall defenders (but be prepared to move them to the walls). When Delfador gets to the south castle, have him recall any L2 and L3 elves to fill any remaining wall spots. Don't over-recruit because you won't have anywhere to put them. I also put a few strong units and a mage in the villages just southeast of the castle to deal with the ambushers who will pop up there.

Basically what happens is the orcs from the west and undead from the east will meet at the north castle and have a massive battle, which you cannot see because of the fog of war. The undead will win this battle and send the surviving remnants of their army straggling across the ford, 2 or 3 per turn, where they will be decimated by your mages on the walls. The draugs look dangerous but are no match for an arch mage. Patience is the key: just sit tight and kill what comes across.

By dawn on turn 16 the undead stragglers will be done for. Send your army back across the ford and split it into two groups, one northwest to kill the orcish warlord (who might be beset by a spectre) and one east to kill the Death Knight. You will pick up the village defenders when you re-take the north castle. Make sure you put at least one red mage and one white mage with each group, and you're home free. I played this strategy and didn't lose a single unit.

'''Aggressive strategy:'''
Recruit/Recall an army and send them west to deal with the orcs; only one scout should head south and find the guards, which should then retreat to the sourthern castle. The downside is that this approach will lead to more night-time engagements; dont try this if you don't have several lvl-2 elves to begin with. The benefit is that you'll get more experience on the units that need it most: your elves and the human mages. The latter will stay with your host, and often be automatically recalled for free.

You will find that some villages in the north of the map contain ambushes. Two villages near the ford contain allied troops; releasing these early would be a big help to defending the south castle.

===The Return of Trouble===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

This level has a no-breathing-room start - the east enemy is almost on top of you and has as much gold as you (at Great Mage). The mountains and starting camp are poor terrain for you as that terrain is better for orcs; cross your forces into the woods opposite where you have advantages in defence and movement.

Although you can recruit "raw" L2 units here, don't feel you need to recruit too many of them; the large number of enemy L2s attacking mean that it is hard to keep units in the front line alive, and so recruiting good numbers of units matters here. Recruiting a few druids and captains and recruiting L1 units for the bulk of the army works well.

The ally spends his forces quickly and his leader will die early, but you aren't required to keep him alive, so don't worry about him; when he dies it is even an advantage as it stops encouraging the orcs to go through the woods south of your position.

At lower skills, aim to knock out the east enemy early. His right flank is open but rests on the mountains, which is bad terrain for you - if you try to go around that way he can easily shift forces to meet you. Instead you can approach close to his keep through the woods; this, his left flank, usually isn't open but the AI isn't smart about keeping a proper line here. At Great Mage, you may not have the forces to spare to take him out (if you can even make an opening - he has plenty of units); instead slow him with a shaman when he pops out of his keep to attack and block him from getting back to recruit. Note: With the right recruits it is possible to snipe the east leader on the second turn (but rather difficult and low probability).

You should aim to maintain a line along the north part of the woods; the main line is down the west side of the woods for a few tiles and this is where Kalenz should be; and a line back east inside the wood for your left flank, to catch enemy units coming at you through the woods. Hold out in the woods for 2 days and the storm will eventually subside; you will probably have heavy losses but your survivors should all be L3 or close to it by the end. You can then seize villages and take out the enemy commanders.

===Shadows===

Objectives: defeat all enemy leaders.

You start with your Kalenz force, and get back your Delfador force during the scenario (he arrives in the SE). Grab all three holy waters near the start, but you should then move all your elven forces in one direction, head west to take out the west lich. The forest slows up most of the undead and so means that the undead converging from the other two camps won't catch you before you overwhelm and eliminate the enemy leader that you target. Because you are facing some L1 and L2 troops here, don't feel that you need to give the holy water to L3 units - a mix of L1 and L2 units is ideal and they should level all the way to L3 during the level. Recall any Elven sorcerers or shaman with good XP, and shaman are good extra recruits at the start, again to level to sorcerers.

Once you have knocked out the NW leader, your elven force should head south to take out the south leader, and Delfador's force can head north to take out the NE leader. Lots of the undead forces will spend the whole level floundering around in the north woods around your start camp, chasing but never catching you up.

===Save the King===

Objectives: kill Zorlan, and (at Mage and above) kill all the enemy leaders; and keep Garard alive until that is done.

You don't have to worry about Garard - even at Great Mage, he is more than strong enough to defeat the two southern enemies and his forces significantly help defeat Zorlan (1.8.0). You get a big automatic recall of your white mages, Chantal, and a shock trooper and Kalenz; that's plenty to win with, but recruit some new elves as it gives you some units to give XP to, fodder to face the trolls with, and they are handy to take out the SW enemy faster (at Mage and above). An elven sorcerer is a good recall, but 1 is enough.

Zorlan should be simple; some of his units tangle with Garard's units in the river, so you should meet little opposition getting to his camp - which can be easily crushed with your mages. The onset of trolls at around first watch is the only dangerous moment, but once they have attacked, your mages and high level units can wipe them out mostly in one round. Then send Delfador and a couple of other units to take out the troll leader, and send some elves south with Kalenz to help Garard clean up and then take out the SW leader. Garard usually kills the SE leader by himself.

===Dark Sky Over Weldyn===

Just story.

===A New Ally===

Objectives: kill Gruv-Malal; keep Ulrek and Relgorn alive.

Recruit and recall some mages - get a few L1s and you should be able to level up a couple by the end of the level. Move to Ulrek's keep - provided you have some units there by second watch, there is no danger of him being defeated. The dwarves wear down the undead and your mages get to clean up and take the XP.

===The Portal of Doom===

Objectives: close the portal and get your units out via the mine shaft where you start.

Heavy-infantry are too slow on the ice. Similarly it is best to recall quick mages. Your main force should be dwarf warriors, with a few white mages or quick mages to weaken enemy units and to deal with nightgaunts and the like. A knight (even better, a paladin) would also be useful here, due to the speed and for finishing off enemy units when the dwarves can't reach.

Don't worry about the villages to the north - Illah-Malal appears on day 2 at the north castle, so scouting units sent north would probably get killed. You can defend at your camp to defeat the first wave of undead, then march over the ice to close the portal; the northern undead will come to you. You will finish with deep negative gold but it doesn't matter.

===Showdown in the Northern Swamp===

* Objectives: kill all enemy leaders.
* Other: must kill Illah-Malal with an undead unit, or, in the highly unlikely event the player started with no undead units, Delfador. (In previous versions, a bug caused the restriction to be that only Delfador could kill Illah-Malal.)

There is lots of holy water at the start, and you might struggle to have enough units to give it to. You get control of Lionel on turn 3 (plus a castle of rubbish L1 recruits), so you don't have to take villages off of him. I suggest give Lionel and Kalenz a holy water each and the third to a good L2 melee unit or knight. Your other 4 recalls could be 2 white mages, a steelclad and a paladin (or a knight close to leveling - as it is an open level).

A good strategy here is to strike straight north and seize the south end of the bridge. The NE necromancer recruits a lot of dark adepts, and you will have to run a long way during the night to outrun them if you don't bottle them up at the crossing. Once you hold the bridge, a good melee unit and a white mage, plus some of the ally's archers, can easily hold off the NE forces. The NW enemies attack during the first night, and the main tricky bit is dealing with the nightgaunts and spectres here - just keep L2 and L3 melee units in the front line to meet the attack, then clean up with your mages. The SW enemy's units are slower and arrive on day 2; so by moving to the bridge, you've split the enemy attack and can crush each in turn.

===Prince of Wesnoth===

Objectives: kill an enemy commander.

Do not attempt to cross into the central woods; it seems like a tempting spot to fight from, but you will struggle to maximise your recruitment and still get all your units across into it, because the southern enemy camp is close to your line of advance. Instead, abandon all your villages and the rest of the level to the enemy and just defend the SW corner. Elves along the edge of the woods should be able to hold out and wear through the enemy. The number of L2 units, and the mages that the enemy recruit, mean that you will take casualties; but you will be killing a lot and scoring plenty of XP. A general mix of level 1, 2 and 3 units works well here; use the best units to hold tiles that can be attacked from several directions, which will deter the enemy from attacking them.

Once the initial wave of enemies is spent, mop up and proceed swiftly through the central woods and jump into an enemy camp to kill the general. You don't have to have much gold for the next level, but will want high-level units, so take time here to level some up if you don't have enough.

====Alternative Strategy====
crus4a8e: I used the following on V1.8.5 (hard) with minimum starting gold of 100. While I had a though struggle using the strategy described above, doing the following worked nicely and was quite a fun way of playing this scenario, too.

Recall the following units: 4 Avengers or Rangers, 2 Shydes. (Remember: Avengers/Rangers are invisible in the woods which comes in very handy in this scenario.)

Kalenz and the 2 Shydes stay in the western woods. Start moving them up to the northern part of the woods in the beginning and then back down south. Basically their job is not to get killed. ;-) So only attack single enemies and retreat whenever you are under serious attack.

The Avengers cross over into the central woods right away. Whenever only one or at most two enemy units are in reach, they attack or flag villages to become visible and lure individual enemy units into the woods. This also distracts most of the main enemy forces and stops them from attacking Kalenz.

Doing this for about 10 to 15 turns wears down the enemy forces quite easily. When only a few enemy units are left, move your 4 Avenger/Ranger units into the keep of either one enemy leader. You should be able to finish him off in 1 or at most 2 turns.

===Clash at the Manor===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander; prevent any enemies escaping via the roads.

As there are two roads and two signposts, you need to watch both routes. You can break your forces in two or just send one unit to keep an eye on the other route. If you wait at the edge of your forest, almost all the forces should come to you (Dragoons and Cavalry will try to escape instead), and you'll have the terrain advantage. Just be ready to counter anyone trying to make a run for it. You start with Chantal, and a second druid or shyde would be a good idea so that you have a healer and someone to entangle any royal guards. The rest of your recalls should be top melee units (e.g., champions and avengers.) After the assault is broken, the mopping up operation is just to kill the sitting duck leader.

The second phase of the level is a search; just visit all the tiles outside the cave area north of the mansion.

[Thrash: I don't think just sending a single unit to cover one route will work. If enemy sends a couple riders that way, you won't catch them.]

===Face of the Enemy===

Objectives: kill the enemy commander.

Last level, so you don't have to worry about losses or leveling up; recall some sorcerers and a decent melee unit to take the holy water. The enemy recruits few units, so you don't have to cover all the passageways; just advance as a group by the shortest route to the keep, and keep side passages covered (the enemy sometimes uses nightgaunts to ambush and slip in through any gaps). Beware of putting Delfador in front, as the enemy can use Banebows like walking corpses for suicide attacks against him.

This scenario is too easy up to at least 1.8.4, so just play conservatively and coast to victory.

== Old Version ==

Before its inclusion as a mainline campaign, Delfador's Memoirs was distributed as a separate add-on.

=== Installation notes ===

Delfador's Memoirs is distributed as a tarball (.tar.gz), containing all sources for the campaign.
The tarball is built with automake. To install, unpack it, change into the directory delfadors-memoirs-(version) and
run (as root) "./configure && make && make install"

If you can't install DM this way, then you may install download and install it from the campaign server (you will need wesnoth 0.8.5 or a current CVS version to do this).

=== Download ===

Version 0.1: (3 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.7
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/memoirs-0.1.tar.gz

Version 0.2: (7 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth = 0.7.9
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.2.zip

Version 0.3: (9 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11 (=0.7.11 for the tarball)
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.3.zip

Version 0.4: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.7.11, <= 0.8.3
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.tar.gz
* http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.4.zip

Version 0.5: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.tar.gz

Version 0.5.1: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.4, <= 0.8.7
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.1.tar.gz

Version 0.5.2: (10 playable scenarios) requires wesnoth >= 0.8.9
* http://weka.ucdavis.edu/~jp30/delfadors_memoirs-0.5.2.tar.gz

== See Also ==

* [[Mainline Campaigns]]

[[Category:Campaigns - Walkthroughs]]

WML for Complete Beginners

2012-12-03T06:15:17Z

RJaguar3: better grammar

'''Template for future "WML for Complete Beginners" tutorial'''

'''Note: this is a work in progress.'''
-------------

TODO:

1. Move the "objectives" section and make it a subsection of the "events" section, since objectives are defined within a prestart event.
2. Add to the numbers definition that numbers can include decimal point values (and reference the fact that WML will remove any unnecessary 0's when it performs the calculations or accesses the numerical value in question)

-------------

==Introduction==

Hey there!

Now I'm guessing that, if you're reading this, you already know what The Battle for Wesnoth is. If you don't, I suggest finding before you read this tutorial.

Some people may wonder about the purpose of this tutorial. "We already have almost every aspect of WML covered in the [[ReferenceWML]] section," these people might say. But the information contained in the WML reference section is just that: a reference. Not a tutorial. This page aims to introduce complete beginners to WML without their having to sift for days through "references" until WML finally begins to vuagely make some sort of sense.

===Who This Tutorial is For===
The specific demographic for which this tutorial is intended is users with no previous programming knowledge. This tutorial does assume that you have a certain level of competence in basic computer skills and concepts, such as opening and editing text files, and being able to follow folder paths and locate specific directories. In this tutorial you will learn the fundamentals of WML by building a short single-player campaign from the ground up.

===What Tools You Will Need===

Programming in WML requires only one tool: a basic text editor. You don't need a fancy word processor to program WML (in fact, it is recommended that you ''avoid'' using those fancy word processors); a simple program like Windows Notepad or Mac OS X TextEdit will work just fine. For Linux, there is a very nice text editing application called Kate that actually comes with syntax highlighting for WML.

Obviously, you will also need The Battle for Wesnoth installed on your computer.

===So What Exactly is WML?===

WML is an acronym for the "Wesnoth Markup Language", a custom scripting language that The Battle For Wesnoth uses to allow players to create and modify content without being required to learn a much more complex language like Lua or C++. Now I'm going to say this here and now: don't think you can learn WML overnight. Although WML is relatively easy to learn, it will take a certain amount of effort, time and dedication on your part to fully understand the ins and outs of the language.

==Chapter 1: Syntax==

First things first; let's go over the ''syntax'' of WML.

For those of you who might not know what the "syntax" of a language is, think of it as a set of rules for how WML needs to be written in order for the game to understand it. This concept may sound a bit confusing, but whether you realize it or not you have been using the concept of syntax your entire life! Think of the structure of a sentence in English: "I like jelly and cheese sandwiches." That sentence uses a certain set of rules, or ''syntax'' in order to make sense to people who hear or read it. If you said instead, "Like cheese I and sandwiches jelly", that would make no sense, and no one would understand what you were saying. Likewise, if you said "I like cheese sandwiches and jelly", that would change the entire meaning of the sentence!

Just like the syntax of the English language, WML syntax also requires proper capitalization, spelling, grammar and punctuation in order for others to understand what you're saying or writing. For example, if you decided to ignore the syntax of the English language and wrote something like this: "won day mary and i had went to seen the elefant at the zoo it's trunc was reely long", chances are people would not understand much of what you wrote. On the other hand, if you used the correct syntax and wrote: "One day Mary and I went to see the elephant at the zoo. Its trunk was really long!", people can easily understand what you wrote because it is written in the syntax they recognize and understand. Just as English-reading people would be unable to understand something were it not written in the correct English syntax, the Battle for Wesnoth game is unable to read any WML that is not written in the correct WML syntax.

So now let's go over the basics of WML syntax. Later on you will be gradually introduced to more complex WML syntax, but for now we'll just go over the basic stuff, enough to get you started.

===Basic Components: Tags and Attributes===

WML, as one can infer from the meaning of the acronym, is a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markup_language markup language]. This means that the syntax of the entire language consists of two fundamental elements: tags and attributes.

====Tags====
:A tag is a string of lowercase text encapsulated by two square brackets, one at either end. This is an example of a "campaign" tag:
[campaign]

:Tags can only contain alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers) and underscores "_". Notice I said earlier that "a tag is a string of ''lowercase'' text". This is a fundamental aspect of the WML syntax: all tags are always written in lowercase letters. If you try using capital letters (even just one), the WML engine won't be able to understand what tag you're trying to use and will give you an error when it tries to read the incorrect tag.

:As with most markup languages, in WML tags are always used in pairs: one opening tag and one closing tag. Think of the opening tag and the closing tag like the covers of a book: when you open the front cover, you know you're at the beginning. When you reach the back cover, you know you're done reading the book. Likewise, when the WML engine finds an opening tag, it realizes it's at the beginning of a task. When it reaches the closing tag, it realizes it has finished the task.

:Closing tags are exactly the same as opening tags except for one key component: closing tags always have a forward slash "/" immediately after the first square bracket. This forward slash tells the WML engine that this tag is a closing tag and not another opening tag. Here is an example of the closing "campaign" tag:
[/campaign]

:The opening and closing tag together are referred to as a "tagset". A tagset always contains exactly two tags: the opening tag and the closing tag. So the "campaign" tagset would look like this:
[campaign]
[/campaign]

:So now we know how the WML engine knows where the beginning and end of a task are, and what syntax to use when writing them. These are the basics of tags. Later on we'll go over the more complicated aspects of tags; for now though, make sure you understand the concepts introduced here. Before we move on to the next section, let's review the points we've learned in this section about tags:

::*A tag is a string of lowercase text encapsulated by two square brackets, one at either end.
::*A closing tag is exactly the same as an opening tag except for the forward slash immediately following the first square bracket.
::*The opening tag and the closing tag together are called the tagset.
::*A tagset consists of exactly two tags: the opening tag and the closing tag.

:So now we know how to tell the WML engine where the beginning and the end of a task are, but what about actually making it do the task? This is where attributes come in.

====Attributes====

:Attributes consist of two principal elements: ''keys'' and ''values'', and are written like so:
key=value

:The basic function of attributes is to store information that is needed by the WML engine. The ''key'' of the attribute specifies what kind of information is stored, and the ''value'' of the attribute is the actual data that is stored. All text to the left of the equals sign "=" is considered to be the key, and all text to the right of the equals sign is considered to be the value of the key.

:This may sound rather confusing, so let's illustrate by a practical example:

:Let's say you wanted your friend to go to the grocery store and pick you up a loaf of bread. Would you say to him, "Go"? Of course not! He wouldn't understand what you wanted him to do, which means you'd have no bread for dinner. Likewise, if you only write a tagset, that's equivalent to telling the WML engine to "do", but that's not enough. You will need to be more specific about exactly what the WML engine should do. If your friend were a human WML engine and you wanted him to go to the grocery store to get some bread, you might give him this code to read (''note'': this code isn't actually real WML, it is "pseudocode", i.e. made up code for the purpose of illustration. If I ever use pseudocode during this tutorial I will tell you that it is pseudocode before you read the example, like I am doing now.):
[go]
where=grocery_store
get=bread
[/go]

:Tags tell the WML engine what kind of task to do, but without attributes to specify ''exactly'' what to do, the WML engine won't be able to do anything because you haven't given it enough specific information. This is just like if you told your friend to "Go": he'd understand that you want him to go somewhere, but he'd be unable to perform the task because he doesn't know where to go or what to do when he gets there.

:*'''Keys'''
::Keys are sequences of lowercase alphabetic characters that tell the game what kind of information it is dealing with when it reads the attribute. Keys are case-sensetive (i.e., you can't use capital letters) and must be spelled correctly.

:*'''Values'''

::WML keys deal with one and only one type of data, called ''strings''. A string is simply a sequence of ASCII characters that can include pretty much any character on your keyboard. Strings may be divided into two categories: Standard and Numerical.

::'''1. Standard Strings'''

::A standard string is simply a sequence of ASCII characters that is neither a numerical nor a translatable string. For example, this is a standard string:
x
::as is this:
blue

::If a standard string includes whitespaces, it must be enclosed within double quotes:
"Everything in these double quotes is a single string. This is the number one: 1. Hooray! :) We are now coming to the end of this string."

::Everything within the double quotes (including the colon and parenthesis emoticon) is considered to one long string by the game.

::Sometimes you will want to mark a standard string as translatable so that it can be translated into other languages. The only difference between a translatable sting and a non-transatable is that translatable strings are marked so that translators know that they need to translate that string, and non-translatable strings are not marked, so the translators know that they don't translate those strings.

::To mark a string as translatable, you simply put an underscore in front of the string, before the first double quote that marks the beginning of the string. Example of a translatable string:

_ "This is a translatable string."

::If the WML engine does not find an underscore in front of the string, it will assume the string is non-translatable.

::Although not strictly necessary, it is considered good syntax to include a space before and after the underscore that marks a string as translatable. For instance, if we were to assign the translatable string "Hello World!" to this key, it would be considered good syntax to write
key= _ "Hello World!"
::rather than
key=_"Hello World!"
::although the game considers both to be equivalent, and will therefore recognize both as translatable strings.

::'''2. Numerical Strings'''

::Numerical strings, obviously, are strings that contain only numbers, decimal points, or minus signs "-". If a string contains anything other than numbers, decimal points and/or a minus sign, the string becomes a standard string instead of a numerical one. Numerical strings can be either a single numeric character like this:
2
::a sequence of numeric characters, like this:
230001

::or floating-point values (that's just a fancy way of saying that they can contain decimal points), like these two examples:
2.6
395667.49382345

::or negative numbers, like these examples:
-49
-594.932

::For all intents and purposes, you can treat numerical strings just as you would numbers in real life. You can add, divide, and otherwise mathematically employ them in mathematical computations (we'll go over this in-depth in chapter X). Just remember that if you include any characters other than numbers, decimal points, or minus signs, the string will cease to be a numeric string and will become a standard string, which means you won't be able to use it in mathematical calculations.

::Directory paths are simply special strings that tell the game where to find a specific file or folder. Here is an example of a directory path:
{data/add-ons/my_first_campaign}
This directory path tells the game where the folder "my_first_campaign" is located.

===More About Tags===

So now you should understand the basics about tags and attributes. As I promised earlier, we will now discuss some of the more involved aspects of tags.

====Nested Tags: Parents and Children====

:A fundamental aspect of markup languages is that you can use tagsets inside other tagsets. Tagsets located inside other tagsets are called nested tagsets. In the example below, the "side" tagset is nested inside the "scenario" tagset:

[scenario]
[side]
[/side]
[/scenario]

:When referring to nested tagsets, the tagset located inside the other is called the ''child'' tagset, and the tagset that encloses the child tagset is known ast he ''parent'' tagset. To illustrate with pseudocode:

[parent]
[child]
[/child]
[/parent]

:Tagsets that are not child tagsets of any other tagsets are called ''toplevel'' tagsets. In this next example, the [scenario] tagset is a toplevel tagset, because it is not the child tagset of any other tagset. The [event] tagset is the child tagset of [scenario], because it is located inside the [scenario] tagset. The tagset [event] is also the parent tagset of the [message] tagset, because the [message] tagset is located inside the [event] tagset. That means that since [event] is the parent of [message], [message] is the child tagset of [event].

[scenario]
[event]
[message]
[/message]
[/event]
[/scenario]

====Indentation and Levels====

:You may have noticed that in the examples above, the child tagsets are indented four spaces further to the right than are their parent tagsets. Why is this? It's because proper indentation (although not technically required by the WML engine) makes you code a lot easier to read and maintain. It's like writing an outline for a school paper, where you would write something like this:

I.
A.
B.
C.
II.
A.
1.
2.
B.
C.

:Indentation makes it much easier to see whether tagset is the child or parent of other tagsets. The amount of indentation before a tagset determines in what level that tagset is located. If the tagset is a toplevel tagset (i.e. has no spaces in front of it because it is not the child of any other tagset), that tagset is located at level one. Tagsets with an indentation of four spaces in front of them are located in level 2, because they are the children of the toplevel (level 1) tagset. Tagsets that are children of level 2 tagsets are called level 3 tagsets (and are indented 12 spaces), tagsets inside level 3 tagsets are called level 4 tagsets (and are indented 16 spaces), etc. As a general rule, all the attributes of a tagset, along with any child tagsets of that tagset, are indented one level deeper than that tagset. To illustrate in pseudocode:

[toplevel_tagset]
level_2_attribute=value
[level_2_tagset]
level_3_attribute=value
[level 3 tagset]
level_4_attribute=value
[/level 3 tagset]
[/level_2_tagset]
[/toplevel_tagset]

:Indenting tagsets and attributes into levels like this makes it much easier for you (and others) to read, fix and maintain your code. It is strongly recommended that you indent exactly four spaces for each new level, although you can also use tabs instead of hitting the space key 4 times, if you'd prefer.

==Chapter 2: The Userdata Directory and the Campaign Folder==

So now that you understand the basic syntax of WML, it's time to learn where The Battle for Wesnoth stores files so that we can begin creating our campaign.

===The Userdata Directory===

There are two main directories that Wesnoth creates on your computer. The '''installation directory''' contains all the files for the core game. The '''userdata directory''' stores all your personal Wesnoth data, which includes your installed add-ons, your settings and preferences, and your saved games. The userdata directory is where we will store your work throughout this tutorial.

The location of your userdata directory differs depending on your operating system, and in the case of Microsoft Windows, the version of your operating system. Refer to the following table to determine where your userdata directory is located:

{| border="1"
!Windows XP
|~/My Documents/My Games/Wesnoth 1.10/
|-
!Windows Vista and above
|~/Documents/My Games/Wesnoth 1.10/
|-
!Mac OS X
|~/Library/Application Support/Wesnoth 1.10/
|-
!Linux
|~/.local/share/wesnoth/1.10/
|}

Now navigate to your userdata folder. Provided that you have already run the Wesnoth application at least once before, you should see a total of five folders ("cache", "data", "editor", "persist", and "saves") in this directory, along with two files ("preferences" and "save_index.gz"). If you see all seven of these, everything is good. If you do not see all seven, try running the Wesnoth application. If that does not work, try restarting your computer. If neither of these steps work, reinstall Wesnoth.

Of the seven objects contained in the userdata folder, you will only ever need to directly interact with two: the "data" folder and the "editor" folder.

====The data folder====

:The data folder is where all installed add-ons are kept. This is where we will be building our campaign, when we get to that. If you have previously installed any Wesnoth add-ons, they should show up in this folder.

====The editor folder====

:The editor folder is where all maps created with the in-game map editor are stored. If you have ever created and saved a map in-game, you should see the map file in this directory.

===The Campaign Folder===

Like I told you earlier, all add-ons are installed in the data folder inside the userdata directory. That means that your campaign will also be located inside the data folder. If you're not already there, enter the data folder now.

Next, create a new folder inside the data folder. Name this new folder "my_first_campaign" exactly as I wrote it here (but don't include the quotation marks). Make sure you spelled it right, that you didn't accidentally capitalize any letters and that you included the underscores between the words in the folder name, because if you don't your campaign won't work when you try to play it.

Now enter the "my_first_campaign" folder and create seven new folders. Name these folders "images", "macros", "maps", "scenarios", "translations", "units" and "utils" (again, make sure you spelled everything right, that you didn't accidentally capitalize anything, and that you didn't include the quotation marks).

All campaigns share this common folder structure.

==Chapter 3: The _main.cfg==

Note: this page borrows heavily from the [[BuildingCampaignsTheCampaignFile]] page.

So we've created a campaign folder, but as of yet the game doesn't even know this new folder exists. In order for the game to find the folder, we have to create a special file called "_main.cfg" that tells the game where to find all of your campaign's data. Without this file, the game won't be able to find your campaign when it starts up, and consequently you won't be able to play your campaign.

So let's get started creating a "_main.cfg" file so that the game can find your campaign.

Navigate to your campaign folder, if you aren't already there. Now create a new text file and name it "_main.cfg" (just like that, including the underscore but without the quotes). Now you have created a file called "_main.cfg", but we're not done yet. Right now the file is empty, so the game still won't be able to locate your campaign yet. But fear not, all you have to do is write some specific WML inside the "_main.cfg" file and the game will be able to find your campaign just fine.

===The Text Domain===

Open the "_main.cfg" file in your text editor if you haven't already. and add the following tagset:

[textdomain]
[/textdomain]

This tagset which specifies where the game should look for translations to the strings in the campaign (at this stage you probably won't have any translations, but it's a common practice to add a text domain just in case you get translations later on). The textdomain tag specifies a name for the textdomain, which is what is used in the [campaign] tag, and is used in campaign scenarios to connect the strings with translations.

Inside the [textdomain] tag, include the attributes '''name''' and '''path''' (don't assign values to them just yet, we'll do that in a moment):

[textdomain]
name=
path=
[/textdomain]

*'''The "name" Attribute'''
The attribute '''name''' specifies the name of the text domain you are creating. The textdomain name should be unique, and start with 'wesnoth-', to ensure that it does not conflict with other textdomains that might be specified on a given system. Let's name our text domain "my_first_campaign". Don't forget to start it with "wesnoth-". Now the contents of your _main.cfg file should look exactly like this:

[textdomain]
name="wesnoth-my_first_campaign"
path=
[/textdomain]

*'''The "path" Attribute'''
The attribute '''path''' specifies a path to the directory where the compiled translation files will be stored. This should be a file inside the campaign directory. Right now our translations folder is empty, but if you ever get translations for your campaign, this is the folder in which they would go. Let's assign the "translations" folder directory path, which should be "data/add-ons/my_first_campaign/translations", to this attribute. Your _main.cfg should now look like this:

[textdomain]
name="wesnoth-my_first_campaign"
path="data/add-ons/my_first_campaign/translations"
[/textdomain]

===Defining the Campaign===

And now we're going to add the [campaign] tagset. Yes, it's our old friend, the [campaign] tagset, from Chapter 1.

[campaign]
[/campaign]

Next, inside the [campaign] tagset, include the following line:

#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign

This tells the game that the text strings in this file belong to the text domain you just defined above

Next we need to give the attributes '''id''','''name''','''abbrev''','''icon''','''image''','''first_scenario''','''description''','''difficulties''', and '''difficulty_descriptions'''. Don't assign any values to these attributes yet, we'll do that in a moment. For now, just make sure that you have all of these attributes in between the campaign tags, like so (the exact order of the attributes doesn't matter, but it is recommended that you follow the order given below to make things easier for yourself when following this tutorial):

[campaign]
#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign
id=
name=
abbrev=
define=
icon=
image=
first_scenario=
description=
difficulties=
difficulty_descriptions=
[/campaign]

Now let's go over the attributes one by one and give them their values. I'll give you a specific value to assign to each attribute, and then I'll explain why we use that particular value.

*'''The "id" Attribute'''
:The unique identifier of your campaign. The value of an "id" attribute can only contain lowercase alphanumeric characters and underscores. We are going to give this attribute the value "my_first_campaign", like so:
id=my_first_campaign

*'''The "name" Attribute'''
:The name of your campaign. This translatable string is the name that will show up in the in-game campaign menu, where you can select which campaign you want to play. Let's give it the value "My First Campaign". Since we want this string to be translatable, don't forget to include the translation mark (the underscore) in front of the first double quote.
name= _ "My First Campaign"

*'''The "abbrev" Attribute'''
:This attribute defines a campaign abbreviation that will be used as a prefix for the names of save files from that campaign. It should generally consist of the acronym of the campaign's name (i.e., the first letter of each of the words in the campaign's name, capitalized).

*'''The "define" Attribute'''
This attribute creates a key that lets the game know when a user has selected to play a scenario from your campaign.

*'''The "icon" Attribute'''
The image that will be displayed next to the name of your campaign in the in-game campaign selection menu. Since we need the game to locate a specific file, we [...]

*'''The "image" Attribute'''
This defines the image that will appear under your campaign's description when your campaign is selected in the in-game campaign selection menu.

*'''The "first_scenario" Attribute'''

*'''The "description" Attribute'''

*'''The "difficulties" Attribute'''

*'''The "difficulty_descriptions" Attribute'''

[campaign]
#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign
id=my_first_campaign
name= _ "My First Campaign"
abbrev= _ "MFC"
define=CAMPAIGN_MY_FIRST_CAMPAIGN
icon=
image=
first_scenario=my_first_scenario
description= _ "This is my first campaign."
difficulties=EASY
difficulty_descriptions=
[/campaign]

===The Preprocessor===
(discuss preprocessor directives, binary path, directory inclusion, etc.)

====Preprocessor Directives====

====The Binary Path====
The binary path is used to tell the game to include a certain directory in the userdata folder whenever it searches for a file. For instance, if you had a custom image in your campaign called "my_face.png", whenever the game finds a reference to that file in a scenario (e.g., you want to display that image at one of the story screens in a scenario), it will first search the core gamedata directories, then it will search any folders included in the binary path. If it cannot find the file in either the gamedata directory or in any of the directories specified in the binary path, then it will give you an error.

You will only need to include a binary path if your campaign contains custom images, sounds or music that is not included in mainline Wesnoth. If you do not have any custom images, sounds or music, then you should not include a binary path. Since we will be including some custom images in our campaign, we are going to need to include a binary path.

To create a binary path, use the following syntax:
[binary_path]
path=data/add-ons/my_first_campaign
[/binary_path]
This tells the game to search the specified userdata directory whenever it cannot locate a certain file in the gamedata directory. Note that the value of the "path" key must always begin with "data/add-ons/" followed by the name of your campaign folder.

====Directory Inclusion====

(The final _main.cfg should end up looking something like this:)

[textdomain]
name="wesnoth-my_first_campaign"
path="data/add-ons/my_first_campaign/translations"
[/textdomain]

#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign

[campaign]
#wesnoth-My_First_Campaign
id=my_first_campaign
name= _ "My First Campaign"
abbrev= _ "MFC"
define=CAMPAIGN_MY_FIRST_CAMPAIGN
#need icon and image (take from core files, don't include external files for sake of simplicity)
icon=
image=
first_scenario=my_first_scenario
description= _ "This is my first campaign."
difficulties=EASY
difficulty_descriptions={MENU_IMG_TXT2 units/undead/shadow-s-attack-4.png _"Easy" _""}
[/campaign]

#ifdef CAMPAIGN_MY_FIRST_CAMPAIGN

[binary_path]
path=data/add-ons/my_first_campaign
[/binary_path]

{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/macros}
{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/utils}

{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/scenarios}
#endif

(note: no units yet, save that for the adding custom units section)

==Chapter 4: Creating Your First Scenario==

Now that you have your _main.cfg file, it's time to create your first scenario.

===Creating the Scenario Map===

All scenarios require a map in order to work. Open the Battle for Wesnoth application. On the mainmenu, you should see an option labeled "Map Editor". Click this option and wait for the editor to load.

By default, Wesnoth creates a blank map with the dimensions 44 x 33 (43 wide and 33 tall). These dimensions will work fine for our purposes, so we won't change them. Hover your cursor over the map and look at the center of the upper edge of the Battle for Wesnoth application window. You should see two numbers separated by a comma.

(screenshot)

These numbers are the X and Y coordinates of the hex over which your cursor is currently hovering. If you move your cursor to another hex, the coordinates will change to show the new location of your cursor. This is a fast and convenient way to locate coordinates on the map.

So we have a map, but let's face it: it's rather dull and uninteresting. Time to add some new terrain. Locate the terrain palette (the area at the far right of your Battle for Wesnoth window that displays the terrains you can use in the editor).

(screenshot)

Towards the top of this window, you should see the terrain category selection buttons. From here you can change what category of terrain is displayed in the terrain palette.

(screenshot)

First, let's add a castle for the leader of the player's side to recruit from in the first scenario. Click on the "castle" terrain category button.

(screenshot of the castle terrain category button)

===Creating the Scenario .cfg File===

Create a new text file in the "scenarios" folder inside your campaign folder. Name this new text file "my_first_scenario.cfg". Open the "my_first_scenario.cfg" file in your text editor, if you haven't already. Since it is a new file, it should be completely empty right now. It won't be when we're done with it, however!

====The Toplevel Tagset and Attributes====

First, on the very first line of the file, tell the game what text domain this file belongs to. In case you forgot, the text domain for this campaign is " wesnoth-my_first_campaign". So you would write:

#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign

Now let's add the [scenario] tagset:

[scenario]
[/scenario]

The [scenario] tagset is a toplevel tagset (i.e., it is not the child of any other tagset) and tells the game where the scenario begins and where it ends. All the information for your scenario goes within this tagset.

Next, inside the [scenario] tagset, include the following keys (don't forget to indent 4 spaces before each key):
id=
next_scenario=
name=
map_data=
turns=

Now the contents of the "my_first_scenario.cfg" file should look like this:
#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign
[scenario]
id=
next_scenario=
name=
map_data=
turns=
[/scenario]

We have provided keys for these attributes, so now it's time to assign them their values.

*'''The "id" Key'''

:Assign the value "my_first_scenario" to the "id" key, like so:
id=my_first_scenario
:Do you remember the value we assigned to the "first_scenario" key in the "_main.cfg" file? If you followed the instructions given in this tutorial, the value of that key should be "my_first_scenario". It is absolutely imperative that the value of the "first_scenario" key and the "id" key of the first scenario are exactly the same. If you misspelled either of them, introduced an incorrect capitalization into either of them, or made a typo of any kind in either of them, the game will return an error message when it tries to load the scenario. This is because the value of the "first_scenario" key refers to the id of your first scenario. If there is no scenario with an "id" key whose value exactly matches the value of the "first_scenario" key in the "_main.cfg", the game won't be able to find the first scenario and will tell you so by giving you an error message when you try to play your campaign.

*'''The "next_scenario" Key'''

:We are going to assign the value "null" to the "next_scenario" key. Example:
next_scenario=null
:The "next_scenario" key is a close cousin of the "first_scenario" key found in the "_main.cfg" file. Just as the "first_scenario" tells the game to look for a scenario with an id key whose value matches the value of the the "first_scenario" key, the "next_scenario" key tells the game which scenario to load after the player completes the current scenario. Just like with the "first_scenario" key, make sure the value of the "next_scenario" key exactly matches the id of the next scenario (including underscores, capitalization, spelling, etc.), otherwise you'll get an error message. If there is no next scenario, you would assign the value "null" to the "next_scenario" key, as we did here. This means that when the player completes the current scenario, the game knows that there is no next scenario to go to, and the campaign will end.

*'''The "name" Key'''

:For this attribute, we are going to give it this translatable string:
_ "My First Scenario."
As you should recall from our previous discussion about translatable strings, the value we give should be enclosed in double quotes and should have a whitespace, an underscore, and then another whitespace immediately before the first double quote. So now your "name" attribute should look like this:
name= _ "My First Scenario"
:Technically, the name of the scenario doesn't have to resemble the scenario's id at all. But it's a good idea to have the scenario id and the scenario name be as similar as possible to avoid any confusion later on.

*'''The "map_data" Key

:For this key, we are going to assign the value "{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/maps/my_first_map.map}". Map filepaths must always be within surrounded by double quotes, otherwise error messages will occur. Now it should look like this:
map_data="{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/maps/my_first_map.map}"

*'''The "turns" Key'''

:We are going to assign the number "30" to this key:

turns=30

:This attribute specifies how many turns the player will have to complete the scenario. If the player does not complete the scenario objective before the turns run out, then the player will lose the scenario. Since we have assigned the value "30" to this key, that means that if the player hasn't won the scenario by the end of thirty turns, he or she will lose.

Now that we have assigned values to all our keys, the entire contents of the "my_first_scenario.cfg" file should now look like this:
#textdomain wesnoth-my_first_campaign
[scenario]
id=my_first_scenario
next_scenario=null
name=_"My First Scenario."
map_data="{~add-ons/my_first_campaign/maps/my_first_map.map}"
turns=30
[/scenario]

====Defining Sides====

In any scenario, you will always need at least one side (the player's), and usually at least one other side as well. For this scenario, we need to define two sides: the player's side and the enemy's side.

Let's start with the player's side. In order to define a side, we need to include the [side] tagset as a child of the [scenario] tagset.

(...)

==Chapter 5: Events==

Let's walk through an average morning. When your alarm clock goes off, you wake up. You go downstairs and put some bread in the toaster for breakfast. When the toaster pops, you butter the toast and eat it. When you have eaten breakfast, you go outside and wait for the schoolbus to arrive. When the bus arrives, you get on it. When it stops at your destination, you get off of the bus.

Notice that you do everything “when” something else happens. These are all “events”. The alarm going off caused you to wake up. The toaster popping causes you to butter the toast and eat it. Finishing breakfast go outside. The bus stopping causes you to get on or off. These are all like events in WML.

The syntax for writing an event goes like this:
[event]
name=name_of_the_event
#do something
[event]

There are quite a few events available to you in WML. Of these, the most commonly used are the ''prestart'' event, the ''start'' event, and the ''moveto'' event.

====Common Events====

Now, I'm not going to supply you with an exhaustive list of every kind of predefined event and what each does, that's what the [[EventWML]] page is for. I will, however, provide you with a list of the most frequently used predefined events and what they do, since we will be using these events in our campaign scenarios later on.

(list these events: prestart, start, moveto, time over, die, last breath)

====Objectives====

==Chapter 6: Building and Including a Custom Unit==

Sometimes campaign authors only use mainline units in their campaigns. Other times, however, they may want to include a custom unit that isn't found in default Wesnoth. Thankfully, including a custom unit is quite easy.

===Creating Your Custom Unit's .cfg File===

===Including the Custom Unit In Your Campaign===

==Chapter 7: Introduction to Variables==

Now it's time to learn about “variables”. Variables contain things. They're a lot like boxes that you'd use when moving to a new home. You put things in the boxes, and then you label them so that you can find the right things when unpacking later.

Like attributes, every variable has a name and a value. The name of the variable is like the label on the box, and the variable's value is the thing that the variable (or box) contains.

For instance, you might put all of your dishes in a box and label it “dishes”. Similarly you might create a variable named “my_name” and put your name inside of it. Then if you wanted to find your name later, you could look in the variable called “my_name”.

===Creating Variables===
To create a variable, the following syntax is used:
[set_variable]
name=variable_name
value=variable_value
[/set_variable]

This creates a variable and assigns a name and value to it.

===Referencing Variables===

If you have ever taken basic algebra, you should know what substitution is. If you haven't, don't worry, I'll explain it.

Substitution basically allows you to substitute one thing for another thing, as long as both of those things are declared equal. For instance, let's say that x=7. Since they have been declared equal, if you were told to solve this problem:
x-3=
what would you do? Well, since x is equal to seven, you can just replace x with 7, which gives you:
7-3=
From there, it's easy to solve this problem.

What you just did was called substitution. You substituted 7 for x in the problem.

Returning the idea of the dishes stored in the box labeled "dishes". If your mother pointed at the box containing the dishes and said "get out the contents of the box labeled dishes", you understand that she wants you to get out the dishes from the box labeled "dishes", so you'd get out the dishes and give them to her. Now suppose you had a WML variable named "dishes_box" and the value of that variable was "dishes". If you tell the game that you want it to get the value of the variable named "dishes_box", it would give you the value "dishes". So what exactly do we need to do in order to tell the game to get the value of the "dishes_box" variable? This is where substitution comes in.

Suppose you wanted to have the narrator give a message telling the player the value of the variable "dishes_box". Here's how you would tell the game to do that in WML:

[message]
speaker=narrator
message= _ "The value of the dishes_box variable is: $dishes_box"
[/message]

By preceding the name of a variable with a dollar sign "$" you are telling the game that you want to substitute the value of that variable. So in-game the narrator would say, "The value of the dishes_box variable is: dishes"

Suppose you decided change the value of the "dishes_box" variable to "empty". Now the narrator will say in-game, "The value of the dishes_box variable is: empty"

===Manipulating Variables===

===Clearing Variables===
Whenever you know for sure that you won't need a variable any more, it's considered good programming practice to delete that variable, or ''clear'' it. This effectively tells the game that the variable in question isn't needed any more, so the game deletes that variable. If you don't clear variables once you no longer need them, they can accumulate over time and slow down the performance of both the game and the player's computer.

In order to clear a variable, use the following syntax:

#whatever the syntax is goes here, NOT THE MACRO, we want the user to be able to clear variables without relying on the macro (maybe mention the macro as a side note anyway?)

==Chapter 8: Array, and Container Variables==

So far we have only discussed ''scalar variables'', i.e. variables that have only one value at any given time. Believe it or not, there are types of variables than can store more than one value simultaneously, or even other variables.

===Array Variables===

===Container Variables===

Container variables are variables that contain other variables within themselves. Returning to the metaphor of boxes, let's say you had three small boxes, labeled "Apples", "Oranges", and "Pears", respectively. Instead of having to carry around three smaller boxes, wouldn't it be much easier if we could just put them all in one large box labeled "fruit"? Well, with container variables, you can!

Container variables are not restricted to containing scalar variables, however. They can also store array variables.

==Chapter 9: Macros==

Have you ever needed to perform a task where you did the exact same thing several times? For instance, maybe you work at a cafe and you have three customers who want the exact same item: a (...)

There are also instances in programming where you need the computer to perform the exact same task multiple times. But each time you need the computer to perform that same task again, you would have to write the same code again. There would be a lot of repetitious code, and it would take forever to write. Wouldn't it be great if we could do that task multiple times without having to result to writing the code out multiple times? Well, with macros, you can.

You can think of macros as a special kind of variable. Just like you can store a long sentence in a variable and substitute it in several messages later on so that you don't have to write out the sentence several times, you can store WML code in a macro and simply call the macro wherever you would have to write all the code contained in the macro. When the scenario is loaded, the preprocessor will automatically substitute the code contained in the macro wherever the macro is called, for the duration of that scenario.

This can be a confusing topic, so let's illustrate with some actual WML examples. Here we have the noble leader and the hard-of-hearing stooge trying to formulate their battle plan at the start of the scenario:

[event]
name=start
[message]
speaker=Leader
message= _ "What do you think our plan should be, Stooge?"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Leader
message= _ "I said, what do you think our battle plan should be?"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Leader
message= _ "WHAT DO YOU THINK OUR BATTLE PLAN SHOULD BE?!"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
[message]
speaker=Leader
message= _ "Grrr..."
[/message]
[/event]

Notice how each time the leader says something, Stooge says the exact same thing: "WHAT?" Rather than having to write
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
three times, let's stick the code in a macro named "STOOGE_REPLY". Create a new text document in the "macros" folder inside your campaign folder. Name it "my_macros.cfg". Now open the file in a text editor (if you haven't already) and enter the following code:

#define STOOGE_REPLY
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
#enddef

Now save the file. Hooray, you have just created your first macro! Now go to the scenarios folder and open the "my_first_campaign"

===The Parts of a Macro===

Macros consist of three elements: the macro preprocessor directives, the macro symbol, and the macro body.

====The Macro Preprocessor Directives====
The macro preprocessor directives consist of the strings "#define" and "enddef". They tell the game where the macro begins and ends. Just like the preprocessor directives in the "_main.cfg" file, the macro preprocessor directives must be entirely lowercase and be spelled correctly.

====The Macro Symbol====
The macro's symbol is the string of uppercase characters following the opening preprocessor directive that identifies the macro. Think of it as the macro's id. Symbols can only include alphanumeric characters and underscores, and should be capitalized throughout. In the case of the example above, the macro symbol would be:
STOOGE_REPLY

====The Macro Body====
The macro body is the code that is contained in the macro. Everything between the preprocessor directives (with the exception of the macro symbol) is considered by the game to be the macro body. In this case, the macro body is:
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]

====Calling A Macro====
Now that we have created our macro and understand what it does and what its respective parts are, let's return to our scenario and scroll to the start event that contains the dialogue between the leader and the stooge. Replace each instance of this code:
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]
with the following line:
{STOOGE_REPLY}

Basically, this tells the game that whenever it comes across an instance of this line:
{STOOGE_REPLY}
it should substitute the following code in place of that line:
[message]
speaker=Stooge
message= _ "WHAT?"
[/message]

===Macro Arguments===

==Chapter 10: Introduction to Logic==

===If This, Then That===

Suppose you went to the grocery store to get some food. You park you car in the parking lot and begin to walk towards the store, when suddenly you realize that you can't remember if you shut the car door or not after you got out. You turn around to see if the car door is open...

...and then what?

Well, if the car door is open, you know that you ''did'' forget to close it, so you go over and close it before you go into the grocery store. If the car door isn't open, there's no need for you to do anything, so you keep walking towards the store.

This kind of logic (called ''conditional'' logic) evaluates a condition and determines a reaction based on the state of that condition. In the example above, the condition is whether or not the car door is open. If it is open, then you go over and close it. If it isn't open, then you continue walking towards the store.

In WML you have a number of logical operations available to assess and react to conditions. The first one we will go over is the if/then operation. The syntax of this operations is:

[if]
(condition)
[then]
(do something)
[/then]
[/if]

===Else===

With the if clause, if the condition is true then we do something. But what if the condition isn't true? Well, in the examples above the WML engine doesn't have anything to do if the condition isn't true, so it just keeps running and doesn't do anything. However, it is possible to make the game perform a task if the condition isn't true, which is done by using the tagset [else]. The syntax is:

[if]
(condition]
[then]
(do something)
[/then]
[else]
(do something else)
[/else]
[/if]

Returning to the example of the car door, suppose that, before you turn around to check to see whether the door is open or not, you decide to go over and close the door if it is open, and if it isn't then you'll do a backflip to celebrate your genius before continuing your journey across the parking lot to the grocery store. In pseudocode:
[if]
the car door is open
[then]
go over and shut it
[/then]
[else]
do a backflip
[/else]
[/if]

==Chapter 11: More Logic: Cases and Loops==

===Cases===

Suppose you had a scenario in which the player must pick a flower by moving a unit to the coordinates 14,30 in order to win. But that's not all: the flower can only be picked after turn 10 and before turn 20 (so the flower can only be picked between turns 11 and 20). If the player tries to pick the flower before turn 11, the game tells him that the flower hasn't bloomed yet and that he or she needs to wait a while longer. If the player tries to pick the flower after turn 20, the game will display a message telling him or her that he or she waited too long, and now the flower is dead. How would you go about implementing this in WML?

Well, you could write something like this:

[event]
name=moveto
first_time_only=no
[filter]
side=1
[/filter]
[if]
[variable]
name=turn_number
less_than_equal_to=10
[/variable]
[then]
[message]
speaker=narrator
message= _ "The flower hasn't bloomed yet. Try coming back later."
[/message]
[/then]
[/if]

[if]
[variable]
name=turn_number
greater_than=20
[/variable]
[then]
[message]
speaker=narrator
message= _ "You waited too long: the flower is dead now."
[/message]
[/then]
[/if]

[if]
[variable]
name=turn_number
greater_than=10
[/variable]
[and]
[variable]
name=turn_count
less_than_equal_to=20
[/variable]
[/and]
[then]
[message]
speaker=narrator
message= _ "You pick the flower."
[/message]
[/then]
[/if]

[/event]

but this is extremely lengthy and tedious to write and maintain. Wouldn't it be awesome if we had some simpler way to test multiple conditions without having to create an entire [if] codeblock for each condition?

Well, actually, there is an easier way to test for multiple conditions without having to wade through a quagmire of if codeblocks. This is done via the switch/case codeblock, which tests the value of a variable for multiple conditions, and determines the action performed as a result of that evaluation. The syntax of the switch/case codeblock goes thusly:

[switch]
name=variable_name
[case]
value=first_value
#do something
[/case]
[case]
value=second_value
#do something
[/case]
[case]
value=third_value
#do something
[/case]
[else]
#do something
[/else]
[/switch]

===Loops===

I was a very messy child, much to the distress of my mother, who was the epitome of cleanliness and couldn't for the life of her understand how she could have raised such an untidy child as me. Occasionally she'd work up enough courage to venture into the land of chaos that was my room, and then she'd tell me not leave my room until it was picked up.

Okay, intimate family analogies aside, pay attention to how my mother told me to clean up my room: I was not to leave my room until it was clean. Whether or not the room was clean was the condition on which my permission to leave my room depended. So each time I put something away (which, more often then not, I did by stuffing the item under the bed), I would have to check to see that condition was met. If the room wasn't clean, then my mother's condition wasn't met and I had to keep cleaning. If the room was clean, then my mother's condition was met and I was free to leave my room.

Talk about basic parts of loops, variations of loops (do/while, etc.)

==Conclusion: Where to Go From Here==

As long and involved as this tutorial was, it barely scratches the surface of WML. You can't call yourself a WML expert just yet, but the hardest part for you — finding a starting point — is now over. You now know how to create a simple campaign, and you know many of the features WML has to offer.

One of the best ways to learn more WML (and one of the only ways before this tutorial ;) ) is to study the WML code of other add-ons. You can also research any tags you're not familiar with on the [http://wiki.wesnoth.org/ReferenceWML WML Reference], which is a complete reference to pretty much every element of WML.

If you run into any problems that you can't solve by looking at other people's code or by studying the wiki, post a message in the [http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewforum.php?f=21 WML Workshop forum]. The resident WML gurus will be happy to help you out if you ask politely.

You've been given the tools and the materials. Now go out and build something amazing!

ThemeWML

2012-09-15T19:23:03Z

RJaguar3: fix typos, errors

{{WML Tags}}
== The toplevel [theme] tag ==

Themes are used both for the wesnoth game and the wesnoth editor.
Themes allow flexible configuration of how everything is laid out on-screen.

The only keys in '''[theme]''' are '''name''', which is the name of the theme, and the optional '''hidden''' key (defaults to '''no'''), which hides a theme from the user in Preferences, allowing to hide e.g. cutscene user interface themes that shouldn't be used in regular gameplay.

The only tag in '''[theme]''' is '''[[ThemeSystem|[resolution]]]''', but each theme can have multiple [resolution] tags.
The [resolution] tags are scanned until the first one which is of the same or lower resolution than is currently being used is found, and this is used as our theme.
This allows us to define themes to work differently on different resolutions,
and will allow us to support both high and low resolutions elegantly.

The following keys and tags are recognized for [resolution]:

* '''width''', '''height''': dimensions in pixels

All subtags of [resolution] use the following keys:
* '''rect''': defines the rectangle to display on. Parts of a ''rect=a,b,c,d'' clause may be:
** number : absolute positions
** ''='' : same value as the same field in reference rect (alignment with reference)
** +number or -number : for a and b, add this value to reference's c and d respectively (spacing from reference)
; for c and d, add this value to self's a and b (specify by width and height)
** =+number or =-number : add this value to same field in reference rect (eg. consider reference as a container box)
* '''xanchor''', '''yanchor''': control the behavior of how this rectangle changes as the resolution changes.
** '''left''': its distance from the left side of the screen always remain the same, while changes in the resolution will change its size by the same amount (top for the y axis).
** '''right''': its size always remain the same, as well as its distance to the right side of the screen (bottom for the y axis).
** '''fixed''': its co-ordinates in that axis remain constant
** '''proportional''': its co-ordinates multiplied by the ratio of the resolution being used to the canonical resolution.

== [main_map] ==

defines where the main game display (i.e. all the hexagons and units) is displayed.

== [main_map_border] ==
Defines the border of the main map area. It has the following keys.

* '''border_size''': the size of the border, the value should be between 0.0 and 0.5. The images which are used by default are sized for 0.5. If the border gets smaller the images still need the same size. They're simply cut off at the right spot.
* '''background_image''': the filename of the image to use as background.
* '''tile_image''': the filename of the image to use for the _off^_usr tile. The image in the minimal can't be controlled only the image in the main map. This image must be in the terrain directory and a png image. When specifying the image the 'terrain/' prefix and '.png' suffix _must_ be ommitted.
* '''corner_image_top_left''': filename for the image in the top left corner.
* '''corner_image_bottom_left''': filename for the image in the top left corner.
* '''corner_image_top_right_odd''': filename for the image in the top right corner, if the x value of the corner is odd. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''corner_image_top_right_even''': filename for the image in the top right corner, if the x value of the corner is even. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''corner_image_bottom_right_odd''': filename for the image in the bottom right corner, if the x value of the corner is odd. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''corner_image_bottom_right_even''': filename for the image in the bottom right corner, if the x value of the corner is even. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''border_image_left''': filename for the image at the left border.
* '''border_image_right''': filename for the image at the right border.
* '''border_image_top_odd''': filename for the image at the top border, if the x value of the tile is odd. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''border_image_top_even''': filename for the image at the top border, if the x value of the tile is even. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''border_image_bottom_odd''': filename for the image at the bottom border, if the x value of the tile is odd. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).
* '''border_image_bottom_even''': filename for the image at the bottom border, if the x value of the tile is even. This x value is the value seen in game (and thus not in the source).

== [mini_map] ==

Determines where the mini map is displayed

== [panel] ==

Displays an image as a panel on-screen.
* '''image''': the image used for the panel

== [label] ==

Displays a text label on screen.
* '''prefix''': a string that will be printed before the text in all languages
* '''text''': a text string id to be displayed
* '''postfix''': a string that will be printed after the text in all languages
* '''icon''': an image that will be displayed instead of the text if it is available
* '''font_size''': the size of font to use for the label

== [menu] ==

* '''title''': the id of the string to write on the button
* '''title_literal''': a string that will be displayed "as is" in all language after the title
* '''image''': the image to use if available
* '''is_context_menu''': if set to true this menu will not be placed, but displayed on a right click
* '''items''': comma separated list of actions to put in the menu. if there is only one action, it will be executed immediately and no menu will be displayed
** '''cycle''': move to next movable unit
** '''endunitturn''': consume this unit's move and cycle to the next one
** '''leader''': center on the leader
** '''undo''': undo last action
** '''redo''': redo undone action
** '''zoomin''': zoom the map in
** '''zoomout''': zoom the map out
** '''zoomdefault''': return to default zoom
** '''fullscreen''': switch fulscreen mode
** '''accelerated''': switch turbo mode
** '''resistance''': show resistance table of current unit
** '''terraintable''': show terrain table of current unit
** '''describeunit''': show unit description
** '''renameunit''': change unit name
** '''save''': save the game
** '''recruit''': recruit a unit
** '''repeatrecruit''': repeat last recruitement
** '''recall''': recall a unit from previous scenario
** '''endturn''': end current turn
** '''togglegrid''': toggle grid display
** '''statustable''': show status table
** '''mute''': mute all sounds
** '''speak''': send message to other players
** '''createunit''': debug create a unit on the map
** '''preferences''': open preference dialog
** '''objectives''': show objective window
** '''unitlist''': list units
** '''statistics''': show game statistics
** '''quit''': quit the game
** '''labelterrain''': label current location
** '''clearlabels''': clear all labels on map
** '''showenemymoves''': show grids reachable by the enemy
** '''bestenemymoves''': show grids reachable by the enemy with no zone of control
** '''editnewmap''': editor only start a new map
** '''editloadmap''': editor only loads an existing map
** '''editsavemap''': editor only saves the current map
** '''editsaveas''': editor only saves the current map, let you choose a filename
** '''editsetstartpos''': editor only set a starting position for a team
** '''editfloodfill''': editor only flood the map with a terrain
** '''toggleshroud''': toggle the "moving removes shroud" behaviour
** '''updateshroud''': removes all possible shroud
** '''AUTOSAVES''': expands to a list of all Auto-Save games prior to this one

== [status] ==

This tag describes the Status Table.
This tag contains many other tags, which determine where other game statistics, such as the current turn, and a description of selected units go.
For instance, the [time_of_day] tag will determine where the time of day image goes.
Each subtag of [status] can contain the following attributes

** '''font_size''': the size of font to use for the status
** '''rect''': the rectangle as for the main_map attribute
** '''xanchor''': the x-wise anchoring as for the main_map attribute
** '''yanchor''': the y-wise anchoring as for the main_map attribute
** '''prefix''': the string to display before the actual status, this is the string id for internationalisation
** '''prefix_literal''': a string to put after the prefix, but before the label for all languages.
** '''postfix_literal''': a string to put after the status
** '''postfix''': the string to display after the postfix_literal, this is the string id for internationalisation

the following tags are recognized for [status]:
* '''[unit_description]''': the user description of the current unit. Note: this tag is now obsolete
* '''[unit_name]''': the user description of the current unit
* '''[unit_type]''': the type of the current unit
* '''[unit_race]''': the race of the current unit
* '''[unit_level]''': the level of the current unit
* '''[unit_side]''': the side of the current unit (flag)
* '''[unit_traits]''': the traits of the current unit
* '''[unit_status]''': the status of the current unit
* '''[unit_alignment]''': the alignment of the current unit
* '''[unit_abilities]''': the abilities of the current unit
* '''[unit_hp]''': the HP of the current unit
* '''[unit_xp]''': the XP of the current unit
* '''[unit_moves]''': the moves remaining for the current unit
* '''[unit_weapons]''': the attacks of the current unit
* '''[unit_image]''': the icon for the current unit
* '''[unit_profile]''': the portait for the current unit
* '''[unit_advancement_options]''': the advancement(s) of the current unit appear in the tooltip of this element
* '''[time_of_day]''': the time of day on the current location
* '''[turn]''': the turn number and turn remaining
* '''[gold]''': the gold remaining
* '''[villages]''': the number of villages owned
* '''[num_units]''': the number of units owned
* '''[upkeep]''': the money needed to keep your units every turn
* '''[expenses]''': the money lost each turn when you don't have enough income
* '''[income]''': the income per turn (can be positive)
* '''[terrain]''': the text description of the current terrain
* '''[position]''': the current terrain's position
* '''[side_playing]''': the current playing side (flag)
* '''[observers]''': the current observers

== See Also ==

* [[ThemeSystem]]
* [[ReferenceWML]]

[[Category: WML Reference]]

GameConfigWML

2012-06-30T05:44:44Z

RJaguar3: /* The [game_config] tag */ add missing apostrophe in syntax

{{WML Tags}}
== The [game_config] tag ==

This tag is a top level WML tag which can only be used once because
it defines basic settings that are used everywhere in the game.
In official versions of Wesnoth it is in ''game_config.cfg''; values used there are labeled 'standard'.

The following keys are recognised
* '''base_income''': (standard 2) how much your leader earns without any villages
* '''village_income''': (standard 1) how much your leader earns for each village you control
* '''poison_amount''': (standard 8) the amount of damage poison deals to a unit
* '''rest_heal_amount''': (standard 2) how much HP a unit gains each turn it rests
* '''recall_cost''': (standard 20) how much it costs to recall a unit; this cost is independent of level.
* '''kill_experience''': (standard 8) killing a unit with ''level=X'' will give ''X''*''kill_experience'' experience to the killing unit. However, if a unit has ''level=0'', it will still give half of ''X'' experience.

* '''icon''': (standard 'wesnoth-icon.png') the game icon file
* '''title''': (standard 'misc/title.png') the title screen image
* '''logo''': (standard 'misc/logo.png') the wesnoth logo which will be put over the title image
* '''default_defeat_music''': (standard 'defeat.ogg,defeat2.ogg') default list of music tracks that are chosen to play on player's defeat; this can be overriden per-scenario
* '''default_victory_music''': (standard 'victory.ogg,victory2.ogg') default list of music tracks that are chosen to play on player's victory; this can be overriden per-scenario
* '''title_music''': (standard 'main_menu.ogg') the music to play at the title screen
* '''logo_x''': (standard 292) the x position of the logo on the title screen
* '''logo_y''': (standard 120) the y position of the logo on the title screen
* '''buttons_x''': (standard 760) the x position of the buttons on the title screen
* '''buttons_y''': (standard 330) the y position of the buttons on the title screen
* '''buttons_padding''': (standard 20) space between buttons, and border in main menu
* '''tip_x''': (standard 100) space between the button panel left edge and the tip-of-the-day panel right edge
* '''tip_y''': (standard 500) not used (the bottom right corner of the tip-of-the-day panel is pegged to align with the bottom of the button panel)
* '''tip_width''': (standard 495) max width in pixels of the tip-of-the-day panel. The width will actually adjust to be the smallest size necessary to fit the text. Once the max width is reached, if text must flow onto multiple lines, then the height will also automatically adjust.
* '''tip_padding''': (standard 20) space between the edge of the tip-of-the-day panel and an imaginary bounding box containing the text inside the panel

* '''map_image''': (standard 'maps/wesnoth.png') the background image for the "About" screen
* '''sidebar_image''': (standard 'misc/rightside.png') border of window when displaying unit statistics
* '''sidebar_image_bottom''': (standard 'misc/rightside-bottom.png') border of image when displaying unit statistics
* '''energy_image''': (standard 'misc/bar-energy.png') the images used to display hp/xp bars.
* '''moved_ball_image''': (standard 'misc/ball-moved.png') the orb image to add on top of the hp bar for player's moved units; see 'Orbs', [[WesnothManual]]
* '''unmoved_ball_image''': (standard 'misc/ball-unmoved.png') like '''moved_ball_image''', but for player's unmoved units
* '''partmoved_ball_image''': (standard 'misc/ball-partmoved.png') like '''moved_energy_image''', but for player's partially moved units
* '''flag_image''': (standard 'image/flag'terrain/flag-1.png:150,terrain/flag-2.png:150,terrain/flag-3.png:150,terrain/flag-4.png:150') the default flag animation to mark captured villages (if no custom flag is defined in the [side] tag). By example, this animation has 4 frames of 150ms each. An automatic side-coloring is applied.
* '''flag_icon_image''': (standard 'flags/flag-icon.png') the default flag icon to indicate the side playing in the statusbar (if no custom flag_icon is defined in the [side] tag). An automatic side-coloring is applied.

* '''cross_image''': (standard 'misc/cross.png') the cross image displayed on the map at start of scenarios; see [[IntroWML]]
* '''dot_image''': (standard 'misc/dot.png') the dot image used to draw a path on the map before scenarios

* '''footprint_left_nw''', '''footprint_left_n''', '''footprint_right_nw''', '''footprint_right_n''': images used to display the path that a unit would take to the tile the cursor is on.
The first image of each key is used for tiles which would take only 1 movement point for the selected unit to move onto;
the second for ones which would take more.
The 'n' and 'nw' designations distinguish between tiles which are moved from orthogonally and diagonally in the same way as described in '''[missile_frame]''', [[AnimationWML]].
The 'left' and 'right' designations are used alternately throughout the path;
however, the standard values are the same for 'left' and 'right'.

* '''terrain_mask_image''': (standard 'terrain/alphamask.png') used to give a hex-shape from a rectangular image.
* '''grid_image''': (standard 'terrain/grid.png') the image used by the grid option
* '''unreachable_image''': (standard 'terrain/darken.png') the stripes mask used to show unreachable locations

* '''missile_n_image''': (standard 'projectiles/missile-n.png') orthogonal missile image to use if none is specified; see ''image'', '''[missile_frame]''', [[AnimationWML]]
* '''missile_ne_image''': (standard 'projectiles/missile-ne.png') diagonal missile image to use if none is specified; see ''image_diagonal'', '''[missile_frame]''', [[AnimationWML]]
* '''observer_image''': (standard 'misc/eye.png') the image to use for observer in multi-player games. (The eye in the upper right hand corner.)
* '''download_campaign_image''': (standard no image) the icon for the "Download more Campaigns" campaign menu option.

== See Also ==

* [[ReferenceWML]]

[[Category: WML Reference]]

AdvancedTactics

2012-06-28T07:15:22Z

RJaguar3: /* Broad Opening Strategy Categories */ sp

{{AdvancedTactics/Translations}}
{|align="right"
|-
|__TOC__
|}
This page assumes that the reader has read [[GettingStarted]] and is familiar with the [[WesnothManual]].
It assumes you have played enough games to be familiar with the system,
and know how to push units around, and are now looking for insight in how to
outthink the AI or a human opponent.
Some tactics are only useful in specific circumstances and would be foolish at other times.
Pick and choose those that fit your particular style.
Do you overwhelm your opponent with sheer numbers, or a few well-chosen
high-level units? Do you prefer to "roleplay" one race?
Do you want to play many scenarios, or replay one over and over until you achieve the perfect game?

=== Strategy ===

==== Strategy Before Tactics ====
Tactics relate to move-by-move decisions relating to the units on the map. When tactics are not related to a sound strategy, they may be sometimes overcome by a weaker or less tactically advanced force which is better able to craft such a strategy.

In general, before you begin a scenario or battle, you should survey the map. The following considerations are important:

* Areas where your forces can/cannot move quickly
* Areas where your forces have defensive advantages
* Areas where your opponents' forces can/cannot move quickly
* Areas where your opponent has a defensive advantage.
* Size of the map (larger maps stress scouting and mobility while smaller maps stress close fighting more.

Often maps will have areas where opposing forces will have to cross slow terrain (such as a river) and be vulnerable except for small channels (such as a bridge or a ford), Because it is difficult to mount an attack across these choke points, they can be controlled with fewer units while the rest of the army is elsewhere. Once you have a full flow plan relating to where you want to hold the enemy and where you want to overrun, you can proceed to the next step.

==== Broad Opening Strategy Categories ====

Depending on the size of the map, the distance between you and your nearest opponent, and mobility considerations you may want to decide to open make your initial opening stress a specific competency of your force. In general these can be divided into the following categories:

* Scouting Game. In this case, one recruits a large number of scouts in order to control as many villages as possible as soon as possible. This works best in large maps where the distance to the nearest opponent is quite large. Scout games tend to end up being large army games where all sides amass substantial numbers of units.
* Formation Game. In this case one recruits slower moving heavier fighters followed by more mobile forces. The goal here is to have a line which can withstand an initial attack solidly and then have other, swifter forces enter the battle to overrun the enemy. For example, a line of spearmen could have horsemen behind them, so that the horsemen get to attack enemy troops which have already been wounded in the fight with the front-line. This is a specialized form of leap-frogging (see below) where the relief troops actually expect to break through the opponent's line. This is most effective on small maps or where the distance to the nearest opponent is small.
* Vanguard Game. This strategy is somewhere between the above strategies. In this case, heavy, fast moving troops are recruited first (for example a combination of knights and horsemen or dragoons and cavalry). These forces advance rapidly and then hold an area long enough for heavier infantry to arrive. The original vanguard can then retreat to heal if necessary. This is most effective on mid size maps.

=== Tactics ===

==== Fight unfair ====
From Sun Tzu to "Shock and Awe", military writers have stressed that
one must not enter into a conflict unless substantially stronger
than your enemy. In Wesnoth, this means
* more units
* better (stronger, higher level) units, and
* superior healing ability in your second line.

In general, a good rule to follow is 3-1. If you can fight with three times the power, you can overrun your opponent quickly. A smaller numerical advantage can allow you to create focused points where that ratio exists.

Napoleon was especially skilled at manoeuvring his forces so as to gain an
advantage even when outnumbered. By attacking his enemy in the centre, he broke
their lines and divided the enemy forces in two. Then, a small detachment
fortified their position and held off one flank, while Napoleon's main
force attacked the now outnumbered other half. After reducing the
first half, the main force would rejoin the flank-holders and destroy the
remaining half. (This strategy is known as "defeat in detail".)

To implement this in Wesnoth, leave a few units with many hit points
in favourable terrain on one flank, while the majority of your force
attacks on a different front.
For example, two red and one white mage, or three paladins.
By combining healers and the healing effect of villages,
a small force can hold off superior numbers for a very long time.

==== Feints ====
You can misdirect the AI (and a surprising number of human opponents)
by sending a few units towards an objective like an enemy leader, village,
or bridge. They will overreact and position their units badly.
Similarly, you can send fast units behind the enemy lines to capture villages.
Do not attempt to hold them; instead move onto the next while the enemy diverts
front line troops or reinforcements.
Flying units are particularly adept at this since they ignore terrain.
Sometimes a feint can turn into your main offensive as well,
if the enemy calls a bluff and ignores your feinting units.

Against human opponents, remember to guard against this kind of tactic. If you see an enemy mounting an attack that doesn't seem to make sense, then it's likely to be a diversion. This doesn't mean that you should ignore it, however - instead, try to counter and contain the attacking force until your opponent's plan becomes clearer, but do not use your entire army - you might wipe out several enemy units, but that won't help you if another detachment corners your leader without support.

==== Bounding (or leap frog) ====
Every strategist throughout history warns to "keep a reserve".
In Wesnoth, this means that you must not attack with all your units.
Instead, hold back units to exploit holes caused by your initial attacks.
Or, you might need to move a fresh unit with many hit points to the
front line so they can 'take a beating' and hold your lines.

In modern times, the "reserve" concept has been expanded as follows.
Divide your main force into two groups, and attack with the first
while holding the second back. When the first group is chewed up,
withdraw it to healers or villages, while you attack with the second group.
This approach allows you to distribute experience more evenly among your units,
particularly useful in a longer campaign.
However, if you need the higher-level units, selecting which units deliver a fatal blow levels units faster.
This way, you are less likely to lose units with higher exp,
resulting in more units succeeding in levelling up.

Do not use high level units, and definitely not your commander,
to guard the healers or villages, as the enemy might focus on them instead,
and attack the wounded seeking aid.

Sometimes, if it is a favourable time of day, you can quickly achieve victory
with an all-out assault. If the enemy is clearly weaker than you, or the conditions are right, this can be an effective
strategy. Most of the time, however, commanders are advised to use other, more elegant strategies.

==== Small and strong ====
Develop a small core group of high level units. Recall a strike force
for one or two turns, then move off in a tight pack.
Most should be level 2, with a few level 3 units to hold the flanks or
commit in the 2-3 most decisive rounds.
With this strategy, you'll need fewer villages to provide income,
and thus be less distracted with acquiring them.

Remember to recruit level 1 units to absorb the enemy's first attacks,
as well as for feints and holding unimportant villages.
Allow those that survive to finish off dying enemy units to replace
any of your core group that make the final sacrifice.
In other words, since some of your levelled units are expected to die,
you need to level up new units to replace them.

==== Advanceable vs Non-advanceable Units ====
In general you want as much experience to go to advanceable units as possible. However, units which are no longer capable of advancing further can be of great help in specific circumstances including:

* Holding strategic terrain while the bulk of the army is elsewhere.
* Softening up opponents before they can be taken out by other, advanceable forces.
* Skirmisher units, advancible or not, are extremely useful for attacking choke points because they can help break up an opposing army quickly.
* Rescuing vulnerable but important troops (shamans, white mages, etc) from overwhelming opposition.

==== Hit Point Conservation ====
Hit points are a units only non-renewable resource.
Choose the attack which causes your unit the least damage,
not deals out the most to the enemy.
For example, assume you are attacking a unit that does 6-3 close combat,
and has no range attack.
Your unit has a 4-4 close combat and a 3-3 range attack.
Consider the tactical situation carefully.
Do you need to kill the unit this turn?
Is it on a village or next to a healer?
Do not automatically accept the computer's recommendation
(it is simply the attack likely to do the most
damage, regardless of how much you take!).

Remember, when a unit levels up, it regenerates its full HP allowance and heals.

Finally, attacking an enemy leader, especially in a castle,
is an expensive proposition, even if you use magical attacks.
Expect to lose units while wearing down its hit points.

==== Using the Level-Up ====
When mopping up at the end of a scenario, try to balance the experience so that several units are close to their next level. It is better to start the next scenario with lower-level units that are about to level than with those same units at a higher level. This way, you save 1 gold for every turn between recalling a unit and when it levels up. You can also use these units (along with some level-1 fodder) as the first assault with the promise that they will regenerate full hit points and become stronger attackers when they do level-up. Using the power of the level-up to its full potential can significantly improve your odds of finishing scenarios quickly and without having any units die.

All units, even those at their max level, heal now when they reach their full experience. However, an At Max Level Advancement (AMLA) usually only provides +3 hitpoints and a heal; not nearly as useful as a regular level up. This is why it is usually better to give experience to your lower-level units.

==== The Spearhead Principle - a dangerous gamble ====
A blunt stick is unlikely to penetrate any defense whatsoever - its power is spread across too wide an area. But a sharpened spear can break through defences far more easily, because its energy is all focused onto a single point. This also applies on a strategic level - in most, though not all, circumstances, it is more useful to inflict massive damage on a small part of the enemy line, rather than spreading your forces thinly to attack every point at once.

This can take much more planning than is immediately obvious - study the battlefield and the enemy's deployment well before attempting a 'spearhead' maneuver. Then, when the light is about to become favourable for you (or bad for your enemy, if your troops are neutral), attack fast, moving as many hard-hitting troops as possible into the smallest possible area (this is a variation on Napoleon's 'defeat in detail' strategy, outlined above). Look carefully at the terrain, and decide on an area to focus on.

If you have the manpower, you should try to surround this entire area with light, fast, expendable troops - they don't need to fight, but you should try to have a complete Zone-of-Control net around your chosen theater of battle. Your objective is then very simple - you are attempting to wipe out every enemy unit in that area, before the light changes. Do not let any enemy escape, they will heal in a village and come back into the fight. When the light starts to change, or earlier if you have already broken the enemy, move your entire force together (except for the scouts), along the enemy line to destroy one flank of their army. Use your scouts to harass and contain units on the other flank, try to keep them in one place until your main force can reach them and overwhelm them.

With sound tactics and moderate luck, you should now have destroyed most of the enemy force, with few losses of your own. Several units are likely to advance while doing this - these troops, and any that are close to advancing, should then be used to hunt down and kill the enemy leader and whatever forces he or she has left.

Be aware, however, that this is a risky strategy - if you are unlucky, poorly-prepared, or your enemy mounts a strong counterattack, it is likely that your troops will be bogged down and slowly wiped out - or, even worse, confined by scouts, while your enemy's main force simply marches around them to kill your leader. This kind of tactic can win you a game in a few turns - but it can lose it just as easily, if not executed well.

=== Weapon specialties ===
==== Backstab ====
{{Quote|
|quote="Thieves are deft of foot, and elusive, making them difficult to hit. Being skilled at backstabbing, thieves do double damage when attacking an enemy that has an ally of the thief on its opposite side. Being of chaotic disposition, thieves fight better at night than during the day."
|source=Thief description
|}}

Assassins, Nightgaunts, Rogues, Shadows and Thieves can backstab.
A Thief costs 13 gold and has base attack of 4-3. But with a backstab,
it does an impressive 8-3, the equivalent of most Level 2 units.
Backstabbing at night with a Strong Thief does 12-3.
After 24 Experience Points, they level up to a Rogue doing 6-3 base...

You don't have to ''attack'' with another unit to get the backstab
bonus -- there just needs to be a unit on the opposite side of the enemy.
The ally can even move after the backstab, if it didn't use up its moves
by moving into the enemy's Zone of Control this turn.
Thieves work well in pairs against weak or unsupported units.
They can surround a unit and attack it turn after turn.

It's often effective to use units with backstab in pairs, so that each
provides the bonus to the other. This is especially effective with
Shadows, due to their good movement rate. Keep one or two such pairs
around your flanks to ambush lone scouts and village-stealers.

==== Slow ====
Shamans, being slow, weak, and of limited firepower, need to be
used carefully, but don't dismiss their offensive ability.
Their Slow attack can cripple strong enemy units by effectively halving their damage.

Of course this tactic is even more useful for your higher-level units:
Druids, Shydes, the Sorceress line, and Goblin Pillagers, because they can more reliably slow the enemy unit and are more likely to survive a counterattack (especially from additional unslowed units).

You can also keep a unit that slows the enemy in your attack force, to slow down
a wounded enemy unit that wishes to escape, or to cripple their attacks at the
beginning of your attack, then proceed to use fighters that will take less damage
from the halved attacks.

==== Healing and Curing ====
Move your healers in pairs so that you retain the
freedom to use them in combat when appropriate without having to retire
to a village afterward.
Remember the difference between healing and curing, put your better healers
where they will be more needed.

Don't forget that with a Curing unit nearby, you needn't fear poison.
An assassin's darts are only a serious threat if they can poison an unsupported unit.
Your Druid or White Mage will cure the poison before it has time to work,
(However, they cannot remove damage from a unit on the same turn they cure
poison from that unit). and they can cure poison from ''every'' adjacent unit -
irrespective of damage they have to heal.

==== Poison ====

When using poisonous units (Ghouls, Orcish Assassins, Assassins), your goal should be to distribute their poison attack among as many units as possible, rather than concentrating on a single enemy. Units that are already poisoned should be a low priority for your other units' attacks as well, unless they can score a kill.

Don't underestimate the usage of poison against regenerating units, or units in a village or next to a curer. While the healing will remove the poison, it does so in lieu of healing hit points. Repeated poisonings can prevent these (often tough or hard-to-hit) units from recovering while your other units whittle them down.

Against units with high defense or high evasion, poison can help a lot to weaken them, since you just have to hit them once, then they will take damage (until healed) every turn, no matter how many times you hit them or how much damage they take from your attacks. After they are weak, just a lucky hit could kill them.

It also helps if lawful units are poisoned at the end of an attack during the night by chaotic units. It is risky to chase chaotic units with poisoned lawful units during the day, which could force them to retire and lose their chance to attack during their most favorable time of the day.

==== Swarm ====

When a unit's attack is listed as "swarm", the number of attacks per round is based on its current fraction of maximum health. That is to say, if a unit with swarm is at 3/4 health, it will only do 3/4 of its maximum attacks. This does not affect the damage of each attack.

If you are the owner of such a unit then keeping it in good health should be your top priority. If you are facing a swarmer, the best idea is to poison it and then avoid it as they are usually high level monsters. As of 1.1.1 using "slow" on these units is very effective as it halves their movement speed, making avoiding them while the poison works easier. Once they are at low health, move in for the kill.

(From the manual - Henkutsu_tama)

=== Recruiting ===

Remember that your commander may recruit units when standing on ''any'' Keep tile,
not only the one you start on. If you have two enemies, where one is some
distance beyond the other (like in 'The Siege of Elensefar'), you recruit enough
units to take out the first enemy Commander (and possibly hold off the second
enemy's front troops), then you move onto the slain Commander's Keep, and
recruit the units you need to take out the remaining opposition.
This saves you money in the long run, and keeps your Commander closer
to the action so he may level up sooner.

If there are several enemies with significant difference in their strength
of arms, first concentrate on the weakest, or else the one with the
highest income potential.
Move your Commander along with your troops, and after you have wiped
this enemy out, use their Castle as your new base.
This has the added benefit of protecting your Commander, often a target
of enemy troops, so you don't need to recruit units only for protecting him,
while your main force is engaged somewhere else.
In the end, this will save you lots of gold.
Such tactics are essential on maps with many opponents,
for example against the AI on multiplayer map 'Dwarven Doors'.

==== Plan placement of units ====
Place recruited and recalled units manually.
Choose the best castle tile for a unit to be placed by clicking on the
tile before recruiting or recalling.
This way you can often capture villages a turn earlier,
or move units to critical map squares before your opponent.

For maps with narrow passages leading out of the castle
(like Bay of Pearls or some of the random underground maps in
Heir to the Throne), recruit or recall pairs of slow and fast units.
Both units in such a pair will then be able to use their maximum
movement without impeding each other. So recruit an Elvish Fighter
together with a Horseman, or even an Elvish Fighter with an Elvish Archer.

==== Unit Choice ====
* Some units, such as Orcish Grunts or Horseman, have no ranged attack. Take advantage of this by using units that are skilled in both melee and ranged, such as Elvish Rangers, so that your opponent will be helpless when you are attacking, and you will not be at a disadvantage when you defend. The same goes for units with no melee attack, such as Dark Adepts.
* When a battle is raging, use fast-moving units (your scouts) to distract the enemy by sneaking past enemy troops and conquering enemy villages, cutting off their gold supply or sometimes forcing them to split up their armies.
* If a battle occurs at a river or some other narrow pass, it can be beneficial to use skirmishing units such as Duelists to easily cross the river and surround your opponent or use airborne units like Gryphons to use the river squares without being at a great disadvantage.
* If you need to cross a large body of shallow water, mountains, cave floor, or other difficult terrain, use units whose moves are divisible by their movement on such terrain so moves don't go to waste. For example, if a unit takes three moves to get through one water tile, make sure it has three, six, or nine movement. Recalling 'quick' units can help ensure you've chosen the right ones. If you recall a unit with five movement points, they will only be able to move one hex per turn in terrain that requires three movement points, while a similar unit with six movement points can move two hexes per turn.
* Units such as Elvish Fighters that are cheap to produce in mass and that have both decent melee and ranged attacks can often be good for holding your front lines, since they will cause harm to their opponents no matter what they are. A front line of horsemen, on the other hand, is not good for holding a position, for they are costly, fall quickly to enemy archers, and probably will never be able to strike back.

=== Know the Battlefield ===

==== Reconnaissance - Know the Map ====
While attack is influenced by the time of day, defense is affected
by terrain. First find all the castles and note the different kinds
of terrain immediately surrounding them. If you're playing under
Shroud, send out two or three scouts to locate the castles.
This is also often worth it on Fog of War, because you learn
what faction your enemy is (if you don't know already) and
how defended their castle is. Expect to recruit more when they die.
The knowledge they provide is worth more than their cost.

==== Survey - Know the Terrain ====
Take an overall look at the size of each terrain type and note which
are the most important.
This affects what units to select and their overall effectiveness.
Then examine whether the main terrain is evenly
distributed, scattered, or in a few large areas.
Note what terrain you want to avoid and why.
Mountains and deep water are bad for all but a few unit types.
These act as walls which the opponents can use to trap you:
of course, you can do likewise to your opponents. If you have
saved some of your starting gold, you can also decide which units will
be better for reinforcements based off a more common terrain.

==== Transport - Know the Pathways ====
Try to link advantageous terrain areas together in your mind
from where your units are (your castle at start of play)
to opposing ''and'' friendly castles. Use villages scattered between
you and the target to influence the route to take, especially if you
can't recruit any healing units.
Decide which terrain is most favourable for your units and
less favourable for the enemy.
If your goal is to reach an object or hex, then do the same for that.

If one route proves difficult, switch to another. Get to know
which routes work best for different units and locate meeting
places to regroup units.
Try to keep the opponents guessing what you're going to do next.
By using several adjacent routes to a target, the opponents
will have a tougher time stopping your advance.
In some cases it is easier to send a main group directly towards
the target and use fast units to circle around behind.

==== Features - Know the Traps ====
Note carefully where favourable terrain on either side of
unfavourable reach their closest point. These are defense positions
for you to ambush approaching opponents (with or without a thief) and
provide protection for friendly units. Sometimes the terrain forms
passages for units to pass through quickly. Check whether it takes
fewer turns to move around slow terrain than through it.
In slow terrain, it is tougher to encircle units and immobilise them,
so drive them toward better suited terrain (using ZoC, see elsewhere)
and encircle there.

==== Distance - Watch the Time ====
Use caution when setting up your front line and advancing immediately, as often the time of day will be exactly in its least advantageous point right when you meet your enemies. If you wait a few turns just passing the time by capturing nearby villages and meet the enemy at First Watch/Dawn, respectively, you can cut down the majority of the enemy's army before they can do anything about it. Also, if you find yourself in a evenly matched or losing position during your worst part of the day it can be ideal to fall back to villages or simply hold tight without attacking the enemy, as you want the battle to progress as slowly as possible during this part of the day. (Note: If you have units that can attack at no risk [mages to trolls, for example] don't waste their actions, keep on fighting no matter what.)

==== Intelligence (part one) - Know your Enemy====
Remember to check the hit points, movement and attacks of all enemies, before rushing into combat. It's also a good idea to check the description of each new type of enemy unit, before attacking. Some units have unusual resistances, defense values or movement costs - do not assume that every unit is exactly what it looks like. This is particularly important if you are facing enemies of several different races, the classic example being Drakes and Saurians - Drakes are very tough, but have poor defense and are vulnerable to cold and piercing weapons, so you might reasonably recruit an army of archers and cold-using magicians, with a few high-powered attacks. But Saurians are much faster and very fragile, with excellent defense in almost any terrain - so you might find yourself wishing for fast cavalry to pursue them, and units with a high number of attacks to guarantee at least a few hits. The same applies to any other enemy - make sure you know exactly what you're dealing with, before entering battle.

==== Intelligence (part two) - Know Yourself====
Always be aware of what forces are available to you. Whenever you gain the ability to recruit a new unit, read the description and look carefully at its stats. If you find yourself using only two or three types of units (a perfectly good strategy, if it works), it is easy to forget that there are others available to you. When you meet an enemy which your existing troops are poorly-equipped to fight, you should (almost) always have something that will be effective - the key is to know what, and to use it at the right time and in the right way. An extension of this, is to become familiar with the individual units that you have recruited (especially in a campaign) - the system of traits means that there can be a lot of variation, even between units of the same type and these different units should be assigned different roles. Strong, resilient units are good for front-line fighting or defending strongpoints, while quick units are better used as scouts or to outflank the enemy (especially quick mounted troops, since most units will not be able to force them into a fight). Intelligent units should be sent wherever they are needed, but it is often best to keep them away from heavy fighting (firstly, because they need less experience to advance, which means they do not need to kill as many enemies, and second, because they give you a better chance of getting a higher level unit - but only if they survive.)

=== Zone of Control (ZoC) ===

The Zone Of Control allows you to build artificial barriers at will.
With it, you can reduce the likelyhood that a weaker, injured unit will
be killed, by reducing the number or kind of enemies that can reach it.
It is hard to measure who has Movement Control because it depends
on where the units are positioned more than how many there are.
Although this is a tactical device, it is more strategically
significant than tactical because Zone of Control applies before
and after encounters, rather than during. Establishing and maintaining
good Zones of Control gives you better mobility and control over most other
aspects of the game, even against stronger units less well positioned.

Your units influence space beyond the hex they're standing on.
The total area of influence includes the hexes adjacent to the units
and ''this'' is the Zone Of Control. When strong opposing units
approach your weaker ones, pay particular attention to the ZoC
and terrain types. Combine the ZoC of your units to form a solid barrier.
Your goal is to rearrange your units such that the opponent's attack
occurs where your units are well positioned defensively and at the worst
time of day for opposing units.
Check that none of your units can be attacked by more than two enemy units
''and'' that no enemy unit can pass between them.
In this case, you spread your units out, extending your ZoC and forcing
the enemy to select one or more targets.

In most cases, the opponent will target one unit. You should
ensure that each of your units is within the ZoC of at least two others.
So when the enemy hits one unit, you can close in (encircle, encircle...)
until reinforcements arrive. It is often as important to hold a ZoC
as it is a village or passage.

While ZoC isn't very important against slow moving units, it is
very effective against fast ones, such as horsemen, bats, ghosts,
and wolf riders. The approach to handling these is assign two or
three of your fastest units, target one long range opposing unit
and spread yours out defensively between its target (usually villages)
and itself in a semi-circle or line. Move these units toward the enemy
so that it has increasingly less space to move. When it is within your ZoC,
encircle and kill. Move on to the next long range unit and repeat.

After the first round (when everyone has recruited), all the units are
grouped, so try to create a ZoC against all of the long range units
as quickly as you can. In this way you can prevent them from
spreading out, while you systematically encircle and kill each one.
Since the opponent won't have occupied enough villages, there is a
good chance all you'll have left are short range units to deal with.

Under FoW and Shroud, it is impossible to know what the opponent has
recruited, but it is good practice to check your ZoC around your villages
so you are not surprised by a sudden invasion. Early on, long range
units are used to occupy villages, so the sooner you engage them,
the less villages they can possess. Creating a ZoC quickly around
unoccupied villages allows you to possess them at your leisure and keep them.

Another use in ZoC is deciding when and where battles will be fought.
If the opponent moves into your ZoC, but positioned near unfavourable
attack terrain, you have several choices. Either attack anyway,
which is mostly bad, wait for the opponent to attack on its next turn,
which gives it the choice of target, or move your units out of its ZoC
to favourable terrain. You can check how far forward the units can move
and place guard units to maintain your ZoC and centralise the others
behind and protecting the guards. This forces the opponent to commit
and gives you time to prepare a tactical counter-attack. Keep your
guards guarding! If the ZoC crumbles your units will be overwhelmed.

The ZoC is effective when wounded units need to pass through hostile areas.
Rather than closing in, form a large circle around the wounded presenting
a much wider perimeter.
This makes it harder for opposing units to attack all yours and allows you
to keep healthy units within the ZoC and leap-frog when needed.

On approaching an opponent's castle, ZoC can be critical to your success.
In some scenarios events are triggered when you occupy hexes directly next
to a castle hex. Make sure the approaching units keep their distance from the
castle, but within their ZoC. When assembled, move directly on to the castle.

For skirmishing units who ignore ZoC, you have little choice but to build a solid
wall of units. Alternatively, you may make a ZoC to block the typical units and
prepare a welcoming party for the skirmishers.

In a campaign scenario, where the objective is to move a unit to a certain point
on the map (often specified by a signpost) you can use more unimportant units
and ZoC by placing them a space or two away from your leader and a space apart
from each other, since in battle units can quite suddenly die, and you don't want
that one to be your leader.

==== Encirclement ====
The encircling tactic by two units is very powerful, particularly against long range units. By placing two units on either side, you limit the opposing unit to 1 hex move in any direction. When the unit sidesteps in the following turn, you can re-encircle.
This means you can hold the unit until reinforcements arrive and then adopt a
leap-frog approach against very strong units.

=== Retreating ===

Sometimes the battle doesn't go your way. Either you battle to the last unit, or
retreat. The purpose of retreating is to regroup your units more effectively and
give them time to heal. Retreating can be organised with a reverse leap-frog
approach, where you give ground, encouraging the opponent to push forward.
Now your healers are in front and moving toward better terrain
where you can make a final stand.

Being prepared for, and knowing when to retreat, is also important.
Too often a player tries to retreat, but has no reinforcements to halt the retreat.
Try to leave a "safe zone" on a flank, protected by ZoC, where you can pull back.

The real problem with retreating is putting distance between your units and the
opponents. If they can move faster than yours, you may have to setup a ZoC to
last long enough for you to get your slow units to safety. Invisibility units
are the best because they cannot be seen and will take the opponent valuable
turns to find them. Once the group is safe, they can slip away unnoticed.
Sometimes sending out a unit or two as a kamikaze works to slow them down -
if the exp they gain matters less to them than saving more of your units does to you.

====Day-night cycle retreat====

Usually on a 1vs1 map there is some space between your villages and your opponents villages. Depending on the map and speed of your units, the distance is 1-2 turns.

The idea of retreating starts with your own attack. You are stronger during your preferred time of day, so you march forward and your opponent retreats (lets take aside the matchups where both factions have the same preferences).

As drakes, you normally start marching at dawn. You move into the free area, your enemies retreat. First day is the critical turn. Ideally you should be able to attack the enemy's villages now. Maybe your party is not complete because of some slower units and you are therefore not strong enough yet (that is what your opponent hopes for and will try to arrange). If so, you've only got one turn for your attack, else it is two turns. At dusk you pull back your units.

Starting from the enemies villages, he will need at least one turn (dusk) to cross the free area, maybe two until he can start his attack. Nevertheless you might have to decide if you keep the village or let him take it for one or two turns. It usually depends on how sure you can be that the unit holding the village will survive. If the enemy's got magic, chances are normally low. In that case you should leave the village open, otherwise your unit will die without having an advantage.

However, if you play this a little smart, it will only be one village in question and only for one or at most two turns. Remember, that 1 turn costs you a net loss of 4 gold per lost village (2 less for you and 2 more for your enemy). But 4 gold is a lot less than a lost unit.

When dawn comes, you get the village back. If the enemy is stupid enough to stay you will crush him into pieces during the day cycles.

Even if you don't want to attack it is essential to occupy the space between villages in order to delay the enemy when his preferred time comes.

<noinclude>=== See Also ===

* [[GettingStarted]]
* [[WesnothManual]]
* [[PlayingOrcs]]
* [[How to play Undead]]
* [[BestForumStrategies]]
* [[CampaignStrategies]]
* [[Advanced Tactics (Russian)]]
* [[Advanced Tactics (French)]]
* [http://wesnoth.fsf.hu/?q=node/164 Haladó taktikák (Hungarian)]
* [[Advanced Tactics (Simplified Chinese)]]
</noinclude>

[[Category:Playing Wesnoth]]

SpellingMistakes

2012-06-28T06:17:28Z

RJaguar3: add grammar error in Undead help page