TheEasternInvasion

This is a discussion of The Eastern Invasion, the campaign featuring Gweddry General of Wesnoth.

NOTE: Eastern Invasion is still undergoing both balancing and plot changes, so these descriptions might not be applicable to later versions of the campaign

Perhaps this will provide grounds for trenchant criticism from more experienced and abler players. These descriptions are aimed at the "medium" difficulty level (as "easy" lets you get away with sloppiness and "hard" is for people who are comfortable with Advanced Tactics). Please improve these and add your own for later levels.

Warning: spoilers ahead!

Scenarios

The Outpost

It is probably best to recruit 5 heavy infantry and 1 mage on this scenario. The heavy infantry can flag the villages surrounding you by turn 3, turn 2 if they're quick, and the mage can flag the northern forest village on turn 2 if quick.

Sending 2 HI(heavy infantry) south, to the revenants, is a good idea because you can usually get both of them a 2nd level kill without having either die. The other ones should stand and fight against the enemies coming at you from the north and east. Use the HI most of time, and use the mage when they are in forest and it can get a killing blow. By the end of the scenario, you should have 2-3 shock troopers and 1 half-advanced mage.

It is sometimes a good idea to recruit another mage on turn 10 or so, since you will probably end the scenario with less than 100 gold anyway, so you save money by buying in advance. (mathematically this does make sense). Also, you can get them about 10 experience along the way.

Escape Tunnel

Don't bother recalling HI, they go too slow in caves. Go for a group of mostly mages, and a couple of spearmen. If a spearmen or mage is quick, have it get the holy water (unlike in other campaigns this holy water is permanent). Use it and Dacyn against the undead, and use the mages against the trolls. Since you have allies they shouldn't die. Send Gweddry with a (hopefully) quick mage southeast to avoid the trolls and go to the finish. Send the mage to get the gold, and get Gweddry to the end of the tunnel for a victory.

Giving Gweddry the holy amulet here allows him to level very quickly, which is important, since he can advance to Grand Marshal. This gives benefits in other ways on a number of later scenarios as well, such as the River Crossing, where you can get an easy 1st turn kill against the undead leader and take his castle. Note that the leader is very hard to kill anyway.

An Unexpected Appearance

What you do in this scenario depends on which way you want to go. Going east is harder, but brings you more reward, such as the chance to go to Mal-Ravanal's Capital, which gives you the opportunity to get extra experience (a lot for whoever survives) and a free Paladin and several Knights.

Obviously, first kill Mal-Tar. To do this, shoot him with Dacyn and attack him with Gweddry's melee. It probably won't kill him the first turn, so second turn kill the vampire bat he recruits with Dacyn and finish Mal-Tar off with Gweddry.

Then, recall 2 shock troopers and 1 half-advanced heavy infantry on the side of the castle you are going (so if you are attacking eastward, recall them on the 3 eastern castle hexes). This gives them a headstart in that direction. Dacyn might be wounded, so send him to a village. Don't worry, he can fend for himself, since the bats usually arrive one at a time and he can kill one per turn.

Recall any mages with a lot of XP and the spearman you gave the holy water in the previous scenario, then go whichever way you are going. You might want to recruit one throw-away cavalryman to go north, since he gives you income and draws away enemies that otherwise would attack your main force from behind.

Diverging Campaign Path

Elven Alliance

The Orc's warning about the assassin is overrated; Volas can probably take care of it himself, although you might want to leave ONE unit near him to make sure.

Recruit / recall a wide assortment of units, mostly mages, spearmen and cavalry. Send mages and spearmen up to fight the opponent, send cavalry down as scouts. Any heavy infantry should go up to fight also; they will probably arrive late, and be good for reinforcements when the first troops are wounded.

Align the troops in the forest, so that the enemy will be on grass; this gives you a tactical advantage. Use Dacyn to heal those who need it most - those on the corners, and any mages who are on the front lines.

There is a village at {20,8} that can prove tactically very useful, because the elves usually fight somewhere near it. The elves are defeated most of the time, and the orcs claim this village; it is crucial to kill the orc on this village and take it over with a resilient spearman, or a HI.

Once you have gotten past turn 6, it will be day, and the orcs will be very easy to defeat. When the assassin appears on turn 7, ignore it unless you have a cavalryman still down there. In that case, use it to fight the assassin. Keep pressing up. By turn 9, the orcish leader should be dead.

The Undead Border Patrol

This scenario also depends on which way you want to go. If going NW, it is fairly straightforward. The enemy is relatively weak. Do the same as in Unexpected Appearance - recruit 2 suicide cavalrymen to distract the bats. One will probably get enough XP to be worth recalling.

I would use mostly heavy infantry and spearmen with holy water on this level, because mages will only get a +10% to hit from magical. However, as in most scenarios against undead, white mages are very useful.

Try to get the opponent to fight you from the sand. This gives you something like a 70% CTH. >)

(CTH = Chance To Hit).

Mal-Ravanal's Capital

Only reachable from The Undead Border Patrol scenario, but you might also skip it and go directly to Northern Outpost.

This is a very challenging scenario. I started with only 100 gold, so I recalled one Mage, two Shock Troopers, one Heavy Infantry, and my holy Halberdier. I defended the starting castle for about 10 turns until the Revenants had made their way over to me. Upon killing several of them, I freed some imprisoned Knights and a Paladin. I moved my forces to kill the Death Knight, and then split my forces. I sent one group to attack Mal-Ravanal and the other to kill the Necromancer in the NW corner.

By turn 30, my Eastern assault force was in postion to attack Mal-Ravanal. However, when I attacked him, he teleported my troops back to the starting castle, so I wasn't able to defeat him. When I was ready, I killed the NW Necromancer and progressed to The Northern Outpost.

As of 1.0.2 it's the Bone Shooters that must be killed to release knights. On the first kill you will get a Paladin as well as the Knight. These seem to all appear around the same village. Maybe they group around the Paladin. Each unit pops in with full moves. If you can use some of them to kill other Bone Shooters, you end up with a substantial cavalry force very quickly.

On easy at least, in 1.0.2, my opponents summoned no Bone Shooters, only Revenants. It took a while for them to arrive, and I could have killed the NW Necromancer, but I waited it out. I still got paladins and knights for killing Revenants. (vfb)

The reason to go here is to acquire a loyal cavalry force of one Paladin and four Knights. To do this kill four Revenants or Bone Shooters. The first kill gets you a Paladin and a Knight. Each succeeding kill gets you one more Knight. They all appear in or around the village southeast of your castle. To end the scenario, have your cavalry force kill the southwest Necromancer while holding your castle from the assault. This can be done by turn 14 giving you a sizeable bonus. You might send expendable cavalrymen north and southeast to distract the enemies, but it won't do much.

The Northern Outpost

Reachable both from The Undead Border Patrol and the Elven Alliance scenarios.

There are two enemies in this scenario that you must defeat - the undead and the outlaws.The undead are fairly straightforward to defeat, and in any case Owaec usually does most of the work. Just aid him with a few well-placed shock troopers (1-2 should do). That was the easy part.

The main challenge is the criminals. They appear randomly in the villages you flag (one of the villages has assasin that is outlaw leader), but not in those Owaec flags. So don't worry about him uncovering enemies for you. Since when you capture a village the outlaws surround it, you should surround each village before you capture it, so the enemy surrounds you. This makes it so they can't gang up on one of your units with more than 3 people. Also, when you capture a village, try to kill as many enemies as you can before they get a turn.

A Cavalry force (such as the one acquired in Mal-Ravanal's Capital) makes short work of the bandits. Lower level units have trouble against the Bandits, especially at night. Slower moving units also have a disadvantage in searching the villages.

In addition, an amulet is located three turns southwest of the starting castle (for Gweddry) A good strategy is to have him get it and go help with the undead.

Note that from this scenario on you can recruit horsemen. You might want to level up a paladin or two, for fast mobile undead removal services (and quick leader assasination).

/* governor */ Just a note: I had the misfortune of taking a group of men to a village where 5or6 enemies appeared. After taking heavy damage, I retreated my char (low on hitpoints) out of the village. When I recaptured the village the same group of enemies reappeared. Since AI enemies seem to prefer recapturing villages this can allow you to obtain easy experience for weak units a few times.

Two Paths

There is a choice to be made here, whether you want to fight the undead or the orcs. The orcs will be harder to defeat, because their leader is level 3, but it might pay off later to kill him. It depends on how large an army you have by now. If you can't take the orcs, you should recall what holy and impact units you do have and attack the undead. You should set up a barrier so that the orcs can't attack your white mages and such. The orcs like to use assassins, so you might need a white mage to help support the barrier, or just put a HI on a village. The orcs might go for him, not around him.

If you want to go for the orcs, remember, there are only 12 turns, so you have to go straight north. I used lots of level 2 and 3 mages I had from the previous maps, then sent the 2 strongest west to fight off the (very weak) undead creatures, while everything else went north, killing the orc warlord just in time at turn 12.

Diverging Campaign Path

Undead Crossing

Nicknameless person thinks that this is easier choice, because you're facing lich. Lich is turned to undead so it's weak to fire, impact and holy attacks, unlike Necromancer. Just get all those units with holy water, recruit lots of heavy infantry and mages, get everyone over river, to the east coast of island the lich is at. Wait there until it's daytime, and then simply CHARGE!!!

The Crossing

I had only 100 gold, so recruited some units and went straight north from turn one on. The fighting in the water was quite hard, with some orcs coming down from the north. The un-dead only appeared when I was in the middle of the river, so no encounter with them, and the ogre's helped get rid of the orcs on the north side. (Allefant)

If you have Holy Gweddry, you can (sometimes) get a 1st turn kill on the 1st undead leader, scarf up all the villages, and return to kill the 2nd undead forces before their leader can recruit anything. If you don't, the second undead leader will recruit lots of level two units. The orcs will start out across the river, but usually most of them turn back to fight the ogre reinforcements. Waiting till their first wave hits your shore and wiping them out in the water will probably leave you just enough time to cross the river and find there are only 2 or 3 enemy units left besides the leaders.

Make sure to cover your rear flank with some expendable troops (such as Heavy Infantry) as the undead can move more quickly through the water than your units.

Another strategy is to go straight into the water after killing the first undead leader using the deep water in the middle of the path to seperate the orc forces. You go to the right with Gweddry and Owaec and some support troops while letting the ogres kill many of the orcs in your way. Knights and a Paladin can hold off the orcs enough to get across while the undead behind you are not an issue.

Note: Owaec can move only one hex a turn in the water.

Training the Ogres

This can be a confusing scenario to understand. Basically, you are fighting the ogres while also trying not to let them reach the rocky borders where they will "escape" (or disappear). Understand how the AI works and that units will attack the weakest units who are closest to levelling.

I made it 5 turns with 2 ogres remaining by killing two of them right at the start with Gweddry, then letting the other two chase Dacyn and Owaec.

(what did you do about the remaining minus one ogres in version 1.1.11? Also, I find that when there are only two, they try their utmost to escape)

Note: Whether or not to use ogres is a matter of playing style. Once they level up, Ogres are quite a tough unit that deals middling damage, but unfortunately can't advance beyond level 2. Their upside is that they move at normal speed on hills and cave floor, which makes them your most mobile unit in at least one scenario (Captured). And as they are of neutral alignment, they can sometimes be handy to have around at nighttime.

Xenophobia

This one was pretty easy. I recruited as much as I could, then went straight west to the elves, since they looked weakest. Then from there I went north, letting Owaec grab the holy water. When I arrived at the orc castle, orcs and dwarfs had almost killed each other - so I went with a huge army to the dwarven castle and finished around turn 25. (Allefant)

Another strategy is to go for the dwarves first. They start out by sending my of their troops to fight the orcs, leaving their leader unguarded. When you kill him, start going west. When you get to the orcs, they and the elves should have reduced their numbers drastically, allowing you a relatively easy victory. Then, head south for the elvish leader, who will probably not have much to recruit. Although it is forest, a few mages will make sure a little bad luck doesn't hurt you.

The main strategy in this scenario is staying out of the fighting as much as possible, picking off the weaker sides, and in general letting your enemies kill themselves.

There was a bug in this scenario [really just a typo in the event] that was causing the holy amulet on square 20, 12 to actually be trigered when you move onto sqare 12, 2. This is fixed as of 1.0.2.

Lake Vrug

A dragon and a gryphon caught me by surprise, but I had way over-recruited so both were slain on sight. Later some trolls attacked along the way, which I chased to get some XP. On this scenario, don't recruit too much, since there aren't many enemies.

This scenario is fairly straightforward. You start in the south and need to move your leaders north across a bridge and to the west to the end of the path. As mentioned above, there isn't much need to recruit heavily: some heavy infantry to block attackers and some mages to kill trolls. To save on gold, recruit a horseman or two and send them west right before the river--there's a path there leading through some Gryphon villages.

You will run into some gryphon, a dragon, and a handful of trolls across the river. Keep a cadre of heavy infantry and mages to tackle them while you send your leaders to the west. Be careful of the gryphons' mobility and ability to swing around troops' zones of control and deliver the final blow to some injured troops.

If you'd like you can follow the path through the mountains to the northeast where there may be a few more trolls to hack up.

Captured

You start out by running up a tunnel to find some of your companions. If you go back down that way or you will have to face some extremely mean trolls in the narrow tunnel. Instead, follow the tunnel to the north and west and face a few bats as you proceed. At the end of that tunnel, you will enter a throne room where there is a leader and some enemy troops.

Upon entering the throne room, a group of your wounded troops will appear in a cavern called the "Torture Room" to the east. They will face a number of assassins and trolls as they leave the Torture Room moving west.

Victory occurs when Gweddry moves through the exit in the southwest corner, but there is no early finish bonus. You can flag numerous villages in a cavern called "The City," a cavern southwest of the Torture Room while killing orcs for the full 40 turns. Note: Most of the orcs are level two and three units.

The current version (gotten with the Debian package for Wesnoth 1.0) has a holy necklace on this level, at coordinates x=12, y=2. Grab it to kill undead better.

Evacuation

In version 0.9.1, this one seems to be a bit unbalanced (i.e., too easy). I recalled all my strong units because of the messages that you have to move everyone you want to keep south and then destroy the bridge. But instead, I could kill all three enemy leaders in just a few turns and no losses (I had only level 2 and 3 units). First I moved my whole army to the eastern Orc, then to the southern, then to the Troll, and was done in 6 turns. That way I didn't have to blow up the bridge (which isn't worth seeing - I expected a big explosion, but the bridge just disappeared) and could keep all recruits, not just the ones I recalled.

It seems that in 1.0, the scenario is a bit more balanced. In fact many players find this frustratingly difficult--you will lose troops you've spent the whole game trying to deveop.

Some strategies suggest taking out one or two of the leaders, but many end up losing too many troops and having an unprotected rear while crossing the bridge. In the end, spend the first round recruiting fodder, the second for recalling the troops you want to keep, and the rest sending fodder out and trying to get across the damn bridge.

You will need quite a bit of gold to complete this scenario, as you won't be able to hold enough villages to sustain your upkeep. You might consider replaying the previous scenario--look for the City to the south--to acquire over 400 gold to enter this scenario.

Note that troops left on the bridge when the engineer reaches the signposts will also be retained.

[Garion] In 1.0, I recruited a lot of Cavalry for fodder, spacing them 1 hex apart to establish a ZOC corridor from my castle to the bridge. They got chewed up very quickly, but they bought me enough time to get out. Use a few Shock Troopers to guard your rear against the Blue enemy; they're too slow to escape anyway. Remember to recall your slowest units closest to the bridge, to minimize the time they spend in transit. I was able to evacuate 2 Holy Cavaliers, 2 Paladins, a Great Mage, the three heroes, a quick Iron Mauler, 2 White Mages, and a Mage of Light.

[Vladevil] In 1.2.6 what worked best for me was recruiting only fodder for 2 turns, then running away with all the main characters. I let Owaec and the mage first and Gweddry last since he can take some hits. All in all I was finished on the 6th turn without losing any valuable troops.

[IoN] I find that Gryphons are most promising as fodder. They eat into your funds, true, but they can take some hits and fight back satisfactorily. In this way, I managed to get all my troops that I wished to save across with quite a bit of time to spare. On the other hand, I tend to minimize in campaigns, leveling up only as many high-level units as I think I'll need.

The Drowned Plains

The Skeletal Dragon will be found in or near the castle. In getting there, there is a chance the undead (three units mostly level two and an occasional level three) will spring out of the ground near the unit you just moved. Therefore less units are better. Advanced mages and paladins work well here. The villages will get you either 20 gold or two peasants to help you.

Also note that the Skeletal Dragon has lowered resistance against impact (but not holy, and strong resistance against everything else). The dragon is just wandering around, and won't attack or go for you until you get near it, so make sure you have a powerful enough force ready to kill it before you move within range of it.

[Bartimaeus] Or you could just sacrifice the peasants that you might find in some of the villages. Get them to charge into unknown territory, reveal the enemy and get your stronger units to obliterate them next turn.

Approaching Weldyn

This scenario is fairly easy, and should only take 6-8 units. The first turn, recall any mounted holy units you may have (paladins, or any other who have picked up an amulet), and some advanced mages. Don't get heavy infantry, they are too slow, and a rush strategy is most appropriate. Rush the Dark Sorcerer closest to you; since he only recruits level 1 units, he should be easy to defeat. If you are good, he will be dead around turn 5. Then, just run south with Gweddry, and defeat against any undead coming at you from the west with your other units. Since the other two enemies are more powerful than the one you killed, and Konrad II acts, well, stupid, they might start beating him. So, send some of your quicker units (the mounted ones) to help him out. Just make sure the undead archers don't kill them.

The Council

Only plot in this. You see the inside of the castle.

Weldyn Under Attack

Luckily, you have a lot of allies, but they tend to act rather stupid, and their units are level 2 while the enemies' are level 3. So, they will serve as distractions, but won't win the battle for you. The southeastern enemy is strongest; save him for last. Your allies don't even try to attack or defend against the southeastern enemy; the field is clear between them and you. Set up a defensive wall of a few level one units (mages and heavy infantry are good) to hold them off, then send your high-level mages and cavalry to destroy the other two liches. Once that's done, your forces can converge on the last one to wipe him out.

Diverging Campaign Path

The Duel

Get ready to face an assorted set of one ancient lich, 6 liches and necromancers, plus some lower units.

3 great mages and 3 mages of light can do the trick, just go for Mal-Ravanal at daylight. Seemed much too easy (version 0.9.1 + 1.0, medium difficulty). He is really dumb (or cocky), blindly rushing forward. Even suiciding on a white mage isn't beneath him.

If you ever gave a red mage an amulet and leveled him up, a holy great mage can kill Mal-Ravanal in two hits. A strong Iron Mauler with an amulet and leadership (Grand Marshal) can even take him out in one hit. But if you plan on Iron Mauling your way through, keep in mind that they are vulnerable to cold ! Thus the best units here are without a doubt cavaliers outfitted with an amulet. If you don't have or want amulets, I guess some paladins could be used too.

Weldyn Besieged

I had hoped for a big final battle like in Heir of the Throne - but instead I could assassinate Mal-Ravanal in just 5 turns. Apparently, the later scenarios in "Eastern Invasion" aren't balanced yet (version 0.9.1 here, medium difficulty).