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.

Alternative Strategy

The above strategy did not work for me despite of several attempts. Whenever I recruited only 5 HI or tried to send 2 HI southwards to capture villages I got slaughtered around turns 10 to 12 by the latest. (Played with V 1.4.5 on medium difficulty) Thus below I describe an alternative strategy which worked rather painlessly for me.

Remark: In V 1.4.5 all of the villages surrounding the player's keep are already flagged at the start. Only in the very south (south of the river) are a couple of unflagged villages.

Recruit one keep full of HI in turn 1 (no mage, as there is little use in it in this scenario and we are short of money). In turn 2, move the HI to build a straight line northeast and east of your castle (the line should be inside the castle walls whereever possible to use its high defence rating but other than that as straight as possible to only allow two enemy units at a time to attack any of your HI). Then wait about 2 to 3 turns until the enemy forces start to attack and you have enough money to recruit about another 3 HI. Use them to reinforce your line.

Then just hold out the enemy attack during night time; only rotate wounded units if possible, but do not counter-attack. At dawn start your counter-attack without worrying to much about keeping the original line intact. Instead try to level 2 or 3 HI to Shock Troopers. The enemy forces quickly cease to be any danger to your forces.

Also around turn 12 the white mage re-arrives and points out a trap door you should use. The trap door is located near your castle and clearly visible unless any unit stands on it. So if you do not see it right away, just move your units around a little.

Position your leader near the trap door so he can reach it in one turn. As it is almost impossible to finish with more than 100 gold (which is the minimum starting gold of the next level), use the remaining turns to level as many units as possible and only move your leader onto the trap door in the very last turn.

Using this strategy I finished with 2 shock troopers and several well-levelled HI. Also your leader and the white mage should have gained a little experience.

Escape Tunnel

Remark: The following applies to V 1.4.5 medium difficulty.

Don't bother recalling HI, they go too slow in caves. Go for a group of mostly mages, and a couple of spearmen. (One keep of units in total should easily be enough.)

Move your units to the east until you encounter trolls and reach a crossroads. A couple of dwarfts will kindly become your allies and keep off the trolls for a few turns. Send a quick spearman to the north where he can pick up a grail of holy water (unlike in other campaigns this holy water is permanent!). As soon as you have got the holy water start to move all your units south without bothering about the trolls or the undead which appear after a number of turns from the direction of your keep.

The undead, trolls and dwarves will all fight each other, so after having moved all your units south position one healthy spearman at the end of the cave leading south (so only one unit a turn can attack him) and position the white mage right behind him to heal it every turn. These two units should easily keep of the enemies following you until the end of the scenario. Move Gweddry to the northeast accompanied by a mage and a spearman (to fight individual trolls coming your way).

Before moving Gweddry to the end of the cave (which ends the level) send the mage to the east past the funny signpost warning you of the troll hole. In the cave the mages discovers a chest containing a troll treasure amounting to 200 gold.

Following this strategy you should earn a decent early finish bonus plus the 200 extra gold, so you finish with well over 300 gold.

Remark: Giving Gweddry the holy amulet (instead of a spearman) 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 a good part of the work. Recall a number of shock troopers, a white mage and the spearman who picked up the holy water in one of the previous scenarios. I addition recruit one mage.

Then send Gweddry to the holy water in the south west accompanied by the mage. The spearman and the white mage go straight southwards and help Owaec with the undead. Your shock troopers go to the east and surround one of the villages over there without flagging it. (As they are quite slow-moving, having them already over there saves you time later on.) Once Gweddry picked up the holy water, send him and the mage to finish off the undead leader together with your spearman. (Note: Your spearman is very effective against the undead and will likely level up.) 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.

Send your your entire force up on the eastern side of the map flagging one village a turn and fighting the bandits. Once you come across the village where the bandid leader hides, concentrate your attacks on him as the bandits are quite strong.

Note: 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.

Also 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

This is a fairly tough level (played in V 1.4.5 on medium difficulty) which took several attempts to get through. In V 1.4.5 you have 16 turns (unlike 12 as in earlier versions) and can choose between going north to attack the orc leader or going north-east to attack the undead leader.

One option is going north on the very east side of the map trying to fight your enemies from solid ground and mountains while they stand on sand ground with weak defense. As your troops move very slowly on this terrain, you will likely take some heavy losses however, as your enemies keep surrounding you. Also this will presumably take too many turns to reach the orc leader in time.

Thus the preferred choice is to recall a couple of shock troopers and white mages and move them on the path to the north-east in a thigh formation towards the undead leader. Once you survived the first enemy onslaught without loosing units, the rest of this scenario becomes rather easy as the remaining enemies come one by one. Make sure to keep on moving fast to the north-east to reach the undead leader before turns run out.

Diverging Campaign Path

Undead Crossing

Fighting the undead in this scenario is not the actual problem as they are quite weak. Recall a keep full of shock troopers, white mages and the spearman with the holy water (who has likely levelled up by now). Use your faster units to capture the villages in the south-east and move your shock troopers directly to the river crossing.

Once you fought of the bats and skeletons (which the above units should handle quite easily), the undead leader summons two cattlefish which appear in the water between the two crossings. Be very careful where to position your troops as the cattlefish have a very nasty melee attack. Fight them with a pair of shock troopers accompanied by Gweddry (to give them leadership) and a white mage for healing.

Make sure you leave your units enough time to cross the river and kill the undead leader before turns run out.

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.

Whenever I tried to attack the ogres or surround them or using any other intuitive strategy, I always ended up getting my white mage killed by turn 3 at the latest.

Thus try the following which makes keeping all 4 ogres on the green very easy (although I still do not understand why the AI behaves as it does...): Move the white mage and the horseman to the very north outside the moving range of the ogres. Position Gweddry on one of the hills in the west just inside their moving range. For the first two turns the ogres hardly move. Then they start to attack Gweddry which he should be able to withstand. By turn 5 when Gweddry's health starts to where down, the scenario is over already whith all four ogres still on the green and all of your units alive.

It is unclear to me however, what the benefit of all four ogres surviving is tough.

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 is a very easy and fun level as all parties in the scenario (i.e. elves, orcs, drawves, and yourself) decide to fight each other instead of forming aliances. Thus you can use this level to gain some experience for your units, pick up another permanent holy water (in the north, roughly in the middle between the dwarf and the orc keep) e.g. by a shock trooper, and as the actual ogre training camp (see below).

Recall a keep full of shock troopers and send them straight to the north as they are very slow moving. Then recall one or two white mages and recruit about two to four young ogres. Send all of your units straight north to kill the dwarf leader who unwisely sends all his troops for the orcs right at the start and then misses the money to recruit any more troops to defend his keep.

By the time I reached the dwarf leader, the orcs had already killed the elvish leader, so there was two down and only one to go. Use the young ogres on the mountains in the north to fight the remaining dwarves whilst levelling up to ogres.

By the time you killed the dwarf leader, there should be hardly any enemy troops left, so go straight towards the orc leader and earn a decent early finish bonus. And don't forget to pick up the holy water on the way.

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. One successful strategy is to delay moving from your keep for 5-6 turns. Let the other factions weaken each other before you move off. (Although that reduces your early finish bonus, so do not do this if your troops are strong enough.)

By the end of the scenario you should have one or two ogres which comes in quite handy in the next scenarios.

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

Formerly, this was easy because Mal-Ravanal was too confident and let himself be exposed. Now, it seems that the creator tried to balance it, but it just became even easier. Mal-Ravanal's forces are ridiculously passive; they hardly dare to attack you. Just charge straight at them and you should be able to easily obliterate every one of the six liches and necromancers, along with the assorted lower units that appear. After that, destroy the ancient lich. You'll need at least two magi of light, and preferrably two great mages.

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).