Annihilation

[white-haired-uncle]

This scenario needs some help, particularly as the end of chapter / campaign focus.

1. After clearing out the token enemies, attack QoD. Make sure you miss. This will knock her off her keep, which you will never let her retake (I don't think she even tries). 120 or so base income, 0 spent.
2. Next, get her up against the south wall, surrounded. Now, not only can she not retreat, her spawns end up on the other side of the wall.
3. Her name. Could be a reason for this, could be an oversight.
4. The specials on her sword. The specials on her sword.
5. It usually doesn't take me anywhere near this many turns to take her out, she's pretty much a joke (she doesn't attack, so I just need to make sure any attackers won't die from her retaliation). At level 25, I'm just milking her for XP.
6. And, one turn after submitting the above, I found another. She's not a boss(es). That Elf Overlord is holding Doombringer (disintegrate). So much for milking her.

LotI2-Annihilation-Auto-Save25.gz

[Dugy]

1. The first keep was supposed to be there only to produce units before you are able to attack the leader.
2. If you managed to surround her like that, I suppose you've pretty much won. That wall could be thicker, though.
3. The problem is that her name was omitted somewhere and thus she was assigned an autogenerated name.
4. I don't know what broke here.
5. She doesn't attack? That wasn't supposed to happen, but her spawns were supposed to do more fighting than what you're showing.
6. Looks like I forgot about something.

[white-haired-uncle]

1. The problem is at QoD/Levil's keep. As soon as I see her, I attack (and miss) her, so she moves off her keep which I immediately occupy. She never gets to recruit a single unit. It might make sense to alter evasion such that the unit, if a leader, will not run from a keep.
2. I have her surrounded in a turn or two. Of course, I know how to position my units just right, but any player who was paying a little attention can probably do so as well, and if you just swarm your units down there she'll end up pinned against the wall pretty quickly -- and since she only spawns two units and cannot recruit (and doesn't attack) you are in no danger.
3. I'm wondering if something has changed in the AI. I'm finding it almost impossible to get leaders to attack no matter what their aggression is set to unless the certainty of a kill is about 101%.

In the attached replay, ignoring the fact that E gets in a lucky kill with Doomb, you can see that it's never a real battle.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I suspect when you designed loti (maps) you didn't account for players taking a lot of MP advancements (which I use on E/L heavily). This scenario is a good example. I suspect the idea was that once you sighted her, she'd have at least one turn to recruit, but as long as I sight her with a non-leader, E and L can both attack her on the same turn. And that CM with 16MP (and hit and run!) can hit her all the way from the second keep.

A couple ideas:
a) put in some long horizontal barriers to slow the player down, like:

|-----------------        |
|        -----------------|
|-----------------        |

b) When she is sighted, remove the wall to her south.
c) There are a few unused keeps, and she is known to clone herself. The first one you see could be nothing but an illusion, and when you kill (hit) it, she and two clones appear, one at each castle (on the keep if possible). Which one is really her is random. I'm not sure what all the rules would be, I assume they can all recruit, I don't know what happens when you kill one of them, or her for the first or second time, but it's an idea that might be worth considering. It is an end of chapter battle, so it should be interesting.

LotI2-Annihilation replay 20240519-121045.gz

[Dugy]

I've probably mentioned it before, but I suspect when you designed loti (maps) you didn't account for players taking a lot of MP advancements (which I use on E/L heavily). This scenario is a good example. I suspect the idea was that once you sighted her, she'd have at least one turn to recruit, but as long as I sight her with a non-leader, E and L can both attack her on the same turn. And that CM with 16MP (and hit and run!) can hit her all the way from the second keep.

I was assuming the player would not have units with 16 MP and such. I was assuming she would have time to fully recruit and block you with those units. So yes, especially on higher difficulties, some walls will be needed.

Otherwise, looking at how you're describing it, it seems like the evil Lethalia should get teleported in case she gets swarmed.

Do you want to make changes to it as part of the Make Hard Harder project?

[white-haired-uncle]

I can work on this.

I haven't thought about tweaking hard in part 2. It's less balanced (some scenarios much harder than the rest, not that that's a bad thing IMO) so it's hard to judge, but overall I think it's more reasonable. I'm playing with the changes to E's furious, and it definitely makes a difference -- I'm in Jungle Hell and he still doesn't have fury5 or more precise with sword.

[Dugy]

Aha, so the overall difficulty is better, there are just a few scenarios that are not as hard as one would expect. Feel free to adjust those that feel anticlimactically easy.