[Campaign] Warhammer: Eternal Strife

[Nightmare2077]

Warhammer: Eternal Strife. Act I ^[BETA]
By Nightmare
>Melee, Main version
Now on Discord! Join in >>> here <<<

Campaign Info:
This is a work-in-progress version of Act I of the campaign for my Warhammer: Eternal Strife mod. As of summer 2016, 5 chapters are done. Act I will consists of 13 chapters (+prologue) with 6 parallel plotlines. All chapters are available from the start for your convenience, although you are expected to play in order.
I have also attached the Campaign Guide in .pdf; this guide has gameplay tips, walkthrough, screenshots and additional plot-related information.

If you are not yet familiar with it, please check out the Altered Melee, on which this campaign is based.

Breif chapter description:
NOTE: for details, please see the Campaign Guide in .pdf
1. Snowy northern wastes. You play as Warriors of Chaos, defeating a hostile northmen tribe.
2. Jungles of Lustria. As Lizardmen, you defend a sacred temple against a Skaven invasion.
3. Rainy autumn evening in Empire. Brave and competent capitan of a small village's guard Stephan von Muttner doing his duty to his Fatherland.
4. Darklands, the realm of Orcs and Goblins. Defeat the rival greenskin tribes.
5. Dark Elven raid on a remote human-populated archipelago. The events turn when High Elves are sighted.

Features:
I have to admit that I put a lot of effort (some might say even too much of it ) in making and beta-testing these first chapters of the campaign, so I can vouch for them being without any non-minor bugs and interesting to play (pardon my bragging tone). This is especially true for later missions.
One of main features is Warhammer Quiz system which works in the following way: you can find up to 3 Warhammer Quizbooks in any given chapter; after every third chapter, you are offered to take a Quiz, containing questions about WH:FB universe. Right answers are rewarded by minor bonuses, which depend on the number of Quizbooks you found.
In addition to Quiz Books, every chapter has one hidden Easter Egg. I don't expect many of you to find them, but see if you can!

Screenshots:

Screenshots

1-On Track

1-On Track

1-On Track

2-Ongoing War

2-Ongoing War

3-Daily Routine

3-Daily Routine

3-Daily Routine

4-(QuizBooks)

4-(QuizBooks)

4-A Call to Answer

4-A Call to Answer

4-A Call to Answer

5-Gronkjaer Isles

5-Gronkjaer Isles

Campaign-specific credits:

Credits

Hive resources: Blood Raven, Lord_T, Uncle Fester, viiva
Music: Zero Endorphine (Unrein, 1998) by Oomph!

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions or you find any bugs, please contact me here or anywhere else!
Thanks and have fun everyone!

 

[Arad MNK]

Cool! Also, I'm in need of screenshots

 

[Deleted member 242951]

YAY !! Another campaign. Keep adding more content to the thread and dont abandon it plzzz.

 

[Krouchnoufnouf]

Looks awesome but more screenshots will be cool !

 

[Theoden of KoMe]

Im a fan of Warhammer series.I have also played you altered melee maps.I will download the campaign file and play and inform you of my option.Keep working mate!!

 

[Nightmare2077]

Thanks to everyone showing interest in my project! I've uploaded the screenshots. And don't you worry, I'm not quitting this project, even if it talkes half-a-decade to finish it!.. well unless I get a life or some such horror ;D

 

[Leo Akastenix]

Do u need A.I? I can help with cmapaign ais

 

[cleavinghammer]

First mission:
Gold mine quest text is the same as the main quest;
Killing three barracks is enough for victory.
Staff of Change should read "random critter" instead of sheep (and maybe include chaos spawns among the list of units).
Make Warriors bigger, or at least easier to separate from Marauders.

Second mission:
Chameleons have poison, Skirmishers don't.
Jungle serpents have the Giant rat tooltip.
Chieftain's summon spell is for lizards.
Spawning Pools have no icon.
You should use the naga responses instead of humans and blood elf.
The Infested Townhall doesn't need to be destroyed to win. Also, I really feel Skavens having a human building (in Lustria no less) is weird. Perhaps you could use the Starcraft version (especially in a campaign): capturing a human town hall giving access to special units.

Third mission:
Stephan has no hero glow.
Im Glessishritt- wha? Translation please?
Bachmann died with 1:14 left to go.

 

[Nightmare2077]

cleavinghammer, big thanks for reporting bugs and voicing suggestions. I will gladly fix/implement the stuff you pointed out (well, most of it anyway ).
Regarding buildings>victory in missions 1&2, the trigger actually checks how many buildings are remaining, doesn't matter which ones; therefore it's enough to destroy most of the base.
As for 3rd mission, Im Gleichschritt, Soldaten (=march, soldiers) and one other line by Bachmann (Meine Wunden=My wounds) are in German; although Games-Workshop don't explicitly assign this language to the imperials, it's blatantly obvious that the Empire "is" Germany. The fact that mission ended with 1:14 timer is most likely due to two knights near Bachmann being killed (the quest explicitly says 'The knights protecting Bachmann must survive').

Leo Akastenix, thanks for your offer, but as of now I am content with how my GUI-trigger AI is working. It's (very) simple yet effective, I don't think I require much more at the moment. So I feel your efforts are best placed elsewhere, but again thanks for the offer.

 

[sarumanthecursed]

this looks really good gonna play it now

 

[cleavinghammer]

In that case there should be a message warning that the knights are under attack.

Also, the German for Captain has a K (Capitan is Spanish).

 

[Leo Akastenix]

You should at least add hero glow, its really easy.. theres a tutorial on hive all abt that

 

[cleavinghammer]

Fourth mission: you should set the enemy to mine 1 gold instead of 10, there's barely anything left after you take the base over. A specific number of units to kill would be good too.
You can't build past 100 food.

You should have the quiz books tell you how many there are per level, I only found seven.

 

[Nightmare2077]

There are 3 books on each level, no exceptions. I have it written right here in the first post; in the campaign admittedly no, I thought that player would assume that 9 QB per 3 missions = 3 QB per each one.

Too little gold in chapter 4? The mines are set to 2500 when you capture them, unless they have over 2500 (nothing happens then), so it can't be THAT little.
Might I ask on what difficulty are you playing? If hard, then yes, it IS supposed to be (very) pressing, that's precisely the point: you can't afford to lose time because while you do, your precious gold-to-be-mined is wasted.

 

[cleavinghammer]

Fifth mission: Not sure about Enslave, to me it'd work better as a passive (for example if the Corsair gets the killing blow) or autocast (whenever the target's HP is low enough).

Overall: A good start, but you could put more music in.

 

[Leo Akastenix]

So.. any news??

 

[Nightmare2077]

So.. any news??

You'll have to specify that...
As I've said in post #9, I don't think I need help with AI, but thanks for the offer.
As for your suggestion to add hero glow – thanks for that, it simply didn't occur to me. I of course know how to do it, even more so I have done it in the past for many heroes in my altered melee. Once I update the campaign, I will surely implement that.

 

[Mechanical Man]

Are they meant to be played in order?

 

[Uklabokalala]

I love Warhammer Fantasy! I'm looking forward to this!

 

[Nightmare2077]

Are they meant to be played in order?

To quote the description: Act I will consists of 13 chapters (+prologue) with 6 parallel plotlines. All chapters are available from the start for your convenience, although you are expected to play in order. In other words, plot-wise it's irrelevant at this point (5 chapters) in which order you play; plots introduced in these early chapters will only continue later, namely starting chapter 7. However, order does matter for the purpose of collecting quiz-books and easter eggs; although it can be argued that this is a non-essential part of the campaign that is only meant to add flavor, and can therefore be neglected.


Uklabokalala, I'm glad to hear of your excitement! Please feel free to share any thoughts/comments/suggestions/bug-reports as you play through!

 

[Mechanical Man]

Well, I played the chapters of how interesting I found the races. That is, chaos, empire and dark elves.

Chaos chapter:
not bad map design, but terrain is meh, also you could find some better models than tinting bandits so dark.

Empire chapter:
Terrain here isn't even that bad, but I got stuck in the part to find a cure, the timer is too tight, maybe you who knows the map can do in time, but otherwise is almost impossible. I can't tell much, because I didn't make much progress, also it seemed to run from goblins the best idea. I hoped more Empire styled units though (for example, I did that handgunner basing off mark of chaos game)

Dark elf chapter:
Here the terrain is exceptionally bad and the geography makes little sense. You basically made a labyrinth with blizzard cliff shores, with almost no tile variations and too many trees, narrow sea passages and to reach your second part you need to go up and down, sweeping every corner. The race design is innovative, but it becomes annoying in the end with peasants losing health. Overall the mission becomes too difficult as you are attacked from air having no anti air (ranged) units and fend off the attacker from the sea. After you deplete your initial resource supply is very hard to go back because of constant harrassing and peasant carry too little resources.

Overall, It would be nice if you could improve the terrain and I expected using more custom stuff (for dark elf stuff you can look at 67chrome's map), for lizardmen at least use draconians, not murlocs, for chaos marauders maybe you could find some bandit skin instead of just tinting the skin. And maybe rework some of dark elf techtree, at least in that map.

 

[Nightmare2077]

Chaos chapter:
not bad map design, but terrain is meh, also you could find some better models than tinting bandits so dark.

Yeah, I know my terrain kinda sucks, especially in some parts like this first mission; it is even worse (probably only slightly, though) than that of Blizzard. I can only say in my defense that my philosophy was always that terrain is ultimately useless, as it by and large is irrelevant for gameplay. That being said, I should probably dedicate some hours to improving it, but now it is not a priority (making new missions is).
Bandits are fine in my mind, though not perfect of course.

Empire chapter:
Terrain here isn't even that bad, but I got stuck in the part to find a cure, the timer is too tight, maybe you who knows the map can do in time, but otherwise is almost impossible. I can't tell much, because I didn't make much progress, also it seemed to run from goblins the best idea. I hoped more Empire styled units though (for example, I did that handgunner basing off mark of chaos game)

Not being able to finish the mission? May I ask on what difficulty are you playing? If hard, than yeah, it is supposed to be hard, i.e. almost impossible to complete without saving-loading. By the way, that's almost the entire mission, once you reach a healer, the chapter ends.
As for imperial units, there are no handgunners for a reason of this being set in a poor rural province. I do have imperial rifleman in my mod, though I must admit I use this guy

Dark elf chapter:
Here the terrain is exceptionally bad and the geography makes little sense. You basically made a labyrinth with blizzard cliff shores, with almost no tile variations and too many trees, narrow sea passages and to reach your second part you need to go up and down, sweeping every corner. The race design is innovative, but it becomes annoying in the end with peasants losing health. Overall the mission becomes too difficult as you are attacked from air having no anti air (ranged) units and fend off the attacker from the sea. After you deplete your initial resource supply is very hard to go back because of constant harrassing and peasant carry too little resources.

From the point of view of aesthetics – the mission might be an ugly one, I can agree with that. However, for me, the gameplay will always take precedence over the looks.
As for difficulty – I must again ask about your level. If you play on hard - than yeah, you're basically screwed, unless you know exactly what to do! Practicing in melee or reading the .pdf guide should help with that. Alternatively, just reduce difficulty.

lizardmen at least use draconians, not murlocs

Nono, skinks look just like murlocs, I'm fine here!


Huge thanks for your feedback. I will definitely consider all of your suggestions!

 

[Mechanical Man]

Yeah, I know my terrain kinda sucks, especially in some parts like this first mission; it is even worse (probably only slightly, though) than that of Blizzard. I can only say in my defense that my philosophy was always that terrain is ultimately useless, as it by and large is irrelevant for gameplay. That being said, I should probably dedicate some hours to improving it, but now it is not a priority (making new missions is).
Bandits are fine in my mind, though not perfect of course.

Terrain is actually very important in campaigns. Only cases were is irrelevant is certain abstract games, even dota must have a decent terrain to appeal to players. In singleplayer is this even more focused, where player has time to look around and admire the landscape. Interestingly enough I liked terrain in 1st map more than in others. For the bandit I thought of some skin, like this http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/skins-552/runicsoldiers-blp-254772/ However it may hurt melee map if size is too much increased.

Not being able to finish the mission? May I ask on what difficulty are you playing? If hard, than yeah, it is supposed to be hard, i.e. almost impossible to complete without saving-loading. By the way, that's almost the entire mission, once you reach a healer, the chapter ends.
As for imperial units, there are no handgunners for a reason of this being set in a poor rural province. I do have imperial rifleman in my mod, though I must admit I use this guy

I don't remember setting any difficulty, the map itself wasn't that hard than it was the timer, which was very short and potions bought you negligible amount of time (less than you require to go to nearest town and bring it back), basically if you had no potions with yourself, this option was useless. If it ends by finding a healer, the map has too much unused terrain.
And if there are no handgunners, at least there could be crossbowmen, peasant archers belong more to Bretonnia

From the point of view of aesthetics – the mission might be an ugly one, I can agree with that. However, for me, the gameplay will always take precedence over the looks.
As for difficulty – I must again ask about your level. If you play on hard - than yeah, you're basically screwed, unless you know exactly what to do! Practicing in melee or reading the .pdf guide should help with that. Alternatively, just reduce difficulty.

Nono, skinks look just like murlocs, I'm fine here!
]

Hard part of dark elven mission is that for food you need those huge ass buildings (which aren't even cheap), at the beginning you are even pop locked because of lack of these buildings, so first thing is to build these lumber mill houses. Towers are meh, also air units can just fire at dreadship, you can't move towers nearer. It really hurts having no ranged units in this map. Ships die in seconds against air and they are expensive, because they can be shipped only along useless units, which further hurts your food economy.

In lizard map you play only with skinks, no real lizardmen?

 

[Nightmare2077]

Terrain is actually very important in campaigns. Only cases were is irrelevant is certain abstract games, even dota must have a decent terrain to appeal to players. In singleplayer is this even more focused, where player has time to look around and admire the landscape. Interestingly enough I liked terrain in 1st map more than in others.

I think it's a question of personal preferences. I see your point, but my subjective opinion is different. Perhaps you are "right" in that the majority of players would agree with you; I don't know and honestly – even that wouldn't change my mind either. Apologies for the incoming wall of text (and an english one at that)), but I feel like this is a productive discussion, so off I go.
When you come to see a film, what do you look for? Sure beautiful and realistic special effects are nice. Good computer graphics and makeup, so that fantastic characters look like dragons/zombies rather than winged-dogs and hobos who had their catchup spilled, is important. Well-executed jump-cuts and nice camera-angles are enjoyable to look at. But! at the end of the day, you simply don't care about stuff like that! Interesting plot twists, consistent characters, good humour and moral of the story is what one really values!
This analogy isn't perfect, War3 isn't a movie. Let me take a real example, from my very own map if I may. In 5th chapter, I came up with an idea of a synergetic ability between the protaganist Dark Elf Capitan and his ship. When he's on board, the Frigate recieves extra improvements, based on the abilities Carver knows; ship-tuning of a sort I felt very proud of myself once I came up with the idea and implemented it. Let's say it took me 5 hours to get it done. I could've spent these 5 hours to make the terrain more appealing. Now I ask, how much did the Carver-onboard-ability add to the map, and how much would have 5-hours worth of terraining add? To me, the answer is screamingly obvious (even if I change the figure from 5 hours of terrain to 25; I might start doubting at 50 though).
Maybe someone would disagree. Maybe some would say that I should do both. It all comes down to priorities, not just in modding, but in life as a whole (10 more hours spent on terrain = 10 less fewer hours of hanging out with friends). I acknowledge that this is subjective, and I maintain my opinion unchanged. Put very crudely – я художник, я так вижу (I'm the painter here – that's the way I see it).


Again apologies for lots of text; now onto other topics:
Regarding the new skin for bandits – I actually thought about using these Runic skins. Not in melee, but in campaign (in melee my policy is to not override any existing skins). Thanks for the suggestion, I will likely give it a try.

Regarding difficulty – you must have played on Normal. It is a bit sad that you had troubles, this indicates that I might really have overdone. I will consider making the maps easier, through the points you address or otherwise (I actually already reduced the DEL Storage cost, these maps are just a bit outdated). But my advice would be, try saving-loading more! I think it's OK that on Normal difficulty players save-load once in a while (the beginning of the find-healer quest is an obvious point to save, no?).

Regarding Skinks – Skinks are proper lizardmen, they are just not warriors of the race. Saurus Warriors (+Saurus Hero) do arrive after 20 minutes and are trainable for the rest of the mission. It is actually said in the opening conversation that they are expecting the reinforcement of Saurus, while having only Skinks.
Regarding Archers/Handgunners – imperials do use bows along with other missile weapons, this is by no means exclusive to Bretonia. Here my use of archers is of no coincidence – they underscore the poverty of these half-lost villages.

Once again, huge thanks for sharing your thoughts, it is always appreciated!

 

[Leo Akastenix]

Just finished it.. all on hard.

The Orc chapter was a real test. I was going to attack the final orcs(dont want spoliers)and they attacked mr with boar boys! I got mad, spammed Orc Boyz and Orc Shamans and spammed Gorkllfix it on those boars and cut them down! Tben i raided that base with spammned army and won. About that chapter, i feel that the Goblin axe is too imba.. won easily because i use Mordrog to attack the goblins and i killed them way fast! I think its a litt imba.. but the fight to obtain it may be hard


About the Dark Elf cahpter. Is it me or when i enslave women humans they just died. The armada was too big also, try scale it down a bit, i managed to hold them off and the aftermath was the Dreadship almost dead. I think they should be scaled down.

 

[Nightmare2077]

Just finished it.. all on hard.

The Orc chapter was a real test. I was going to attack the final orcs(dont want spoliers)and they attacked mr with boar boys! I got mad, spammed Orc Boyz and Orc Shamans and spammed Gorkllfix it on those boars and cut them down! Tben i raided that base with spammned army and won. About that chapter, i feel that the Goblin axe is too imba.. won easily because i use Mordrog to attack the goblins and i killed them way fast! I think its a litt imba.. but the fight to obtain it may be hard


About the Dark Elf cahpter. Is it me or when i enslave women humans they just died. The armada was too big also, try scale it down a bit, i managed to hold them off and the aftermath was the Dreadship almost dead. I think they should be scaled down.

All on hard, well done sir! Can you share more comments? Were the missions perhaps too challenging (annoying even)? Was the .pdf guide helpful/interesting? Anything else in particular you want to mention, good or bad?

Regarding your comments, yeah the Axe is strong but hard as hell to get - those Slayers are freaking mean As far as I remember, the only way I beat the mission myself was by sniping off enemy gold-miners with Nasty Skulkers; did you resort to such strategy, or could you do it fair-and-square?
I actually recently replayed mission 5 on hard, and also deemed areal armada to be too big. I reduced it by one GEagle (not updated here), so well spotted!

I also thought about making Quizbooks and Easter Eggs less hidden. How much did you manage to find?

 

[Leo Akastenix]

I am not a warhammer fan.. but id do know warhammer a litt.. but.. i got all quzzies wrong!

I used this strategy.. Oerhelm'em(Orc accent, Overwhelm them!) Although i play an old warhammer map time to time.

 

[Broxx]

Hey very cool campaign ! I didin't play the melee map so i've discovered the factions mechanics in live, and i found them pretty cool ! Particulary the dark elves one, very interesting !

Also, it was hard. I got no problem with empire and chaos, but i had to retry one time for lizardmen (i went south east after reaching the temple to keep exploring, then a thousands of rats stormed my base and weakened me, making me lose 5min before the saurus arrival). But very cool mission, even if another skins that murlocs could be more immersive (loved the saurus ones though)

For orcs, it was pretty hard, the ennemies attack almost every 2min, and with very big armies. Also, the lack of cold was a big problem all the mission, thanks the green gobs don't attack you. Brown's first attack destroyed me lol, and i had to finish with a cheat to see the ending.

For dark elves, i liked how the map worked, raiding little isles was fun, until you actually make a base. Yellow attacked too soon imo, i wasn't prepared, and that flying armada was the cherry on the cake lol, had to finish with cheat to see the ending too.

But overall i loved it ! Very immersive, and i actually liked the terrain (especialy chaos and orcish ones), would have liked another skin for skinks though (yeah lizardmen are my favorite race )

When do you think you'll release the full campaing ? (or at least news missions)

(Btw i made this account just for this, good job really)

 

[Nightmare2077]

Thanks for your comment!
I assume that on normal difficulty people will save-load a couple of times, so yeah, they aren't too easy.
I'll see what I can do with skin for skinks, although I'm not sure I'll find much room for improvement. But I do I try to tweak skins where appropriate.

I plan to make 2 new chapters by the end of 2016 (wish I had more time – got a lot of real-life stuff going on in next months). Three Acts will each consist of around 13 chapters (that's ~40 chapters in total). I hope I can later find the pace to make at least 8-10 chapters/year, so it will be done completely in like 5 years (curiously enough, that figure doesn't scare me: I am unyielding in my determinism to do it).

 

[Broxx]

Thank you for your answer, and good luck for the work that awaits !

 

[clockwork2]

Hey dude I should let you know, on this site is a pretty badass chaos warrior model. You can consider using that for your campaign, after all. FOR KAY-OSS!!!

 

[Nightmare2077]

Hey dude I should let you know, on this site is a pretty badass chaos warrior model. You can consider using that for your campaign, after all. FOR KAY-OSS!!!

If you mean this dude, I already use him. Weirdly enough, I didn't catch him on a screenshot, if that's what gave you the idea.
And thanks for showing interest in my project. Be sure to let me know what you think of it if and when you get around to playing it!

 

[clockwork2]

Sure man!

 

[Nightmare2077]

I've updated the campaign, but no new chapters added (they are being worked on and are unfortunately not ready yet. There are many miscellaneous changes but they are too trivial to document.

(dl count before update = 327)

 

[clockwork2]

:3

 

[Mechanical Man]

And info what is updated exactly, a changelog?

 

[KILLCIDE]

Re-opened on OPs request.

 

[Nightmare2077]

Hello everyone! As of September 2018, the campaign still consists of 5 Chapter, which were last updated ('tweaked' even) two years ago. My work on the campaign is on hold, but not abandoned. In these last two years I've been working on creating new races and updating the melee maps.
In fact exactly two years ago I was in the process of making the 6th WEL vs BOC chapter, but it turned out to be somewhat unplayable the way I imagined it, and therefore required partial remaking. That got me sad and I returned to making races only.
I've been thinking and refining the campaign's plotline in those 2 years. The work on it will surely continue, but not in the nearest future. Rather, I plan to first release Tomb Kings followed later by Bretonnia and also Dogs of War, which would almost literally leave me out of work except for campaign.

All of the above doesn't in any way devalue the work I've done 3-4 years ago. Barring these chapters being less aesthetically-appealing (read: using fewer custom models), it's a diligently-done, proper part of my project/mod.

 

[djsailbeat]

what about dark iron dwarf faction

 

[Nightmare2077]

what about dark iron dwarf faction

I presume you mean Chaos Dwarfs.
They'll be a subfraction in Dogs of War - having ~5 units and 1 hero.
I have plans for their involvement in the Chaos Campaign.

 

[djsailbeat]

yes i meant chaos dwarf but there remind me of dark iron dwarf ragonros is like hashut and both like fire both evil (more ciool than normal dwarf)

while warhamemr chaos dwar f look like jews while warcraft dont

but yeah


also chaos dwarf roster is more than 5 units like it has centurion and but maybe your right most of it armies hob goblions and greenskin slaves like black orcs