The Invasion of Kalimdor Enhanced

[Mr.Tic]

The campaign feels quite fresh and I prefer it to vanilla. What some see as overcluttering of units and upgrades, others see as additional possibilities - different tactics and army compositions. I'm one of the latter, enjoying the diversity of units.

Balance of units is quite an issue:

-Grunts are too strong after all the upgrades, and are the best fighting units, overshadowing all other melee units. For example, the Advanced units all become obsolete, except maybe the Veteran, for the aura.

-Same thing happens with unit abilities, so that many become useless when coupled with the fact we can only micro so many units at a time and many abilities aren't auto-cast. Example: the late game Warlock caster's Mana suck and Troll's Decay.

-Hotkeys! Hotkeys are a big problem here: Shaman's shock attack (idk the name.. it does 125 dmg to a unit) is completely useless because it has the "S" hotkey, same as the Stop command. There are other abilities with the same problem.

-The double personality hero: excelent idea! What bothers me about him is that whenever he swaps personalities, he is removed from the control group. I don't know how this works, so I won't ask you to fix it. Unless you know of an easy way to do it? This is just what annoyed me personally, but I rather have that hero than not

- BUG: Heart of Azure, if picked up by Gan, will not trigger the bridge and you'll be stuck.

These are the issues that struck me the most. If you ever get around to polish the campaign, you'd have to adress the balance - like changing unit costs, stats or whatever you can think of. Hotkey issues are just very irritating, making abilities un-useable makes good content go to waste. Hope you get to play-test it and see for yourself lol

It's a nice campaign and will stay on my play list for some time, so thank you for that!

 

[nv4]

Decided to finish all 4 of your enhanced campaigns, so here's that. Played on nightmare.
Enhancements are virtually entirely combat-related, which is disappointing, but understandable, since doing more than that (like expanding the quest with Gerard's book in teozamait's campaign) would be way more difficult. Added high-level creeps are mostly fine, though I don't like how in most cases it's just 1 such creep without any weaker creeps or any extra decorations. Feels rather dull.
Overall, difficulty is fine, except for chapter 4 - difficulty on hard is overtuned, resources are rather few, landscape is disadvantageous for smaller armies (and player's army is smaller, since resources are fewer), and both elven AIs even attack at the same. So trying to play the intended way (build a base, and then army) is too tedious. On the other hand, omitting the base building and just going for grunts + pillage allows for easy victory, as AIs do nothing as long as you don't build anything outside starting zone.
1 thing that I'd point out specifically is Gan\Nag - while not exactly "story-fitting" I find the double personality mechanic interesting and the character itself is entertaining, albeit a bit underpowered gameplay-wise. So I think it was a good addition to the campaign.
Overall, I wouldn't consider this campaign as a replacement for the original one, but rather a combat-oriented alternative for those who wanted more bloody action in the original campaign.

And now, the disappointing aspects.
Balance is completely off. Grunt with full upgrades is by far the strongest non-caster unit. He costs 2 food less and fewer gold\lumber than taurens, yet is more durable and deals more damage. And considering the food cost difference, I'd say 1 grunt is worth 2 taurens, judging by power per unit of food. And other units are even more weak in comparison. So yeah, grunts are totally overpowered here.
On the other hand, "veterans" feel like a complete joke. If anything, veterans should be as strong as grunts, and grunts as strong as veterans.
Now, why do I emphasize grunts being non-casters? Well, because even with their impressive stats they're outshined by outland warlocks. They have literal oneshot vs units below lvl 5, it has low cooldown and low mana cost. So basically a bunch of warlocks can oneshot whole armies. And this spell even restores full health to them. With that spell on hand, I don't even see the purpose of Chaotic Copy. Like, why would I want to transform into someone, especially keeping warlock's relatively low health pool, when I can just oneshot everybody?
Now, you could say "don't like it - don't use it", but the problem is that overall difficulty seems to be "balanced" around these overpowered units. So completing this campaign without overrelying on heroes or grunts + outland warlocks is pretty much impossible. I'm speaking about nightmare difficulty only, of course, but since enhancements are entirely combat-related, I don't even see a reason to play on non-nightmare.

Original campaigns have a few questionale things, removing or altering which is good thing. Like those orc watchtowers belonging to centaurs in chapter 2.
Unfortunately, this campaign also commits a crime of removing some good things from original campaigns. For example, mushroom circles in chapter 4 and "mirrored" mushroom circles in chapter 5. Watchtowers in chapter 2 don't make sense, because centaurs are nomads and need no permanent defensive installations at some uninhabited mountain passage; and they're trained "mounted" archers, like ancient mongolians, so sitting at one place is the opposite of what they're trained to do. So considering these things, removing watchtowers was a good decision, I'd even say it was one actual non-combat-related enhancement.
But mushroom circles? There's nothing wrong with them, they totally fit their places. So what's the logic to remove them? Just for the sake of placing high-level creeps there? But then why not make those creeps as high-level ghosts, basicaly enhancing original ghosts that spawn at those mushroom circles? Besides, in chapter 5 there wasn't even enhanced creeps there, mushroom circles were disabled and that's just it.

Or what's the point of alterting the terrain in chapter 6, so that there's ground passage to blue base? The whole point of getting wyverns here and zeppelins in chapter 3 was to get to the cave, because there's no way to get there other than to fly over the cliffs. So removing those cliffs here makes the narrative design of the chapter illogical - it defeats the whole point of prior quests.

Or why would you replace Skeleton Lord in chapter 7? The Revenant doesn't fit the decorations here. Skeleton Lord had its throne and even its royal court, and without changing the decorations revenant simply doesn't fit here, looks out of place. It's like taking a piece from one puzzle and replacing it with a piece from another puzzle - even it physically fits, it will clearly look out of place.
And an even more ironic thing about it, is that there is new miniboss (Skull) here, and he's a... Yep, skeleton. Why not just buff the original Skeleton Lord and add Revenant Captain instead of Skull? Would make way more sense, and feature new content without ruining the original one.

And of course there are some bugs and minor issues. For example, Troll Headhunter's Nerve Strike - icon should like like passive one (without borders), or Shaman's overlapping hotkeys.

 

[AkarinKana]

This is a great game. But IDK why mine crashes on chapter 6 T-T

 

[Ravager16829]

This is a great game. But IDK why mine crashes on chapter 6 T-T

Are you playing on the older versions (preferably 1.26). This is a common bug that some people encountered it beforehand.

The only workaround is by installing 1.27b or higher by using this method, then reinstall the campaign.

 

[Bigger worse]

Hello,man.Can i traslate it into chinese?

 

[soviet_00]

Hello,man.Can i traslate it into chinese?

yupp

 

[Shellshock]

Changed my rating to 5/5

I've just replaying all 4 custom campaigns. Been having tons of fun. I'm gonna change all my ratings to 5/5 tbh. Considering how much I replay them its well deserved.

Couple things if people wanna know.

In Mission 8-

- Controlling Jaina's forces might actually make the game easier. After a while the top left Fel Orc Base stops attacking so you only have to deal with Infernals. Jaina's Food Limit is 100 so better to utilize her army for support over actual firepower.

- The strongest unit is the Champion Grunt. Its actually insane how strong this unit is. And it should be tbh. Grunts are very powerful and completly suited to the main bulk of your army.

- There is some issue with the mana with units restarting back to 0. Doesn't effect Heroes but does Affect spellcasters.

- The Tauren is your main hero. Give him the best items. Including the annhilation orb and the Potion.

Mission 6

- I somehow completly missed this but you can use the Outland warlock to control and Human worker and create a townhall. You need to do this a few times.

- DOES NOT WORK WITH FEL ORCS

- Elite Grunts I believe still edge out against the Taurens. But only barely.

Mission 5

- You can kill Cenarious with Grom excluisvely

- You can kill Cenarious without drinking the Demon Blood. However its not but sheer force alone. Divine Armor units get a massive health regeneration bonus and none of your units are strong enough to do decent damage. There's also thorns armor that makes things complicated. The best way is to upgrade nerve strike and use an army of 24 Troll headhunters to stun lock Cenarius. Then just use various bonus damage units to give an extra push.

 

[Exarch Lightcarol]

Gameplay: The use of different colored fonts is really a means for many authors to make their work appear richer. BUT: I would prefer not to have dark fonts, as that reduces legibility tremendously.
Map 2: Why remove centaur watchtowers? It makes the Warsong reinforcement catapults seem meaningless. There should be plenty of models to use for replacements if you think the orc version seems weird.