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[Trif]

And for all the reasons that the devs say it wont work. Half of these sound like they just didnt want to bother. They said ranged units caused too many bugs so they got rid of it. Thats just a matter of changing the code so it doesnt have bugs. I wont say they were lazy, but "didn't want to bother" sounds about right.

IN short, I think this could have been a much better game, as it is it's rather simple. My 2 bits.

Well, the core design principle is KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). Here's the main dev explaining some of his thought process:

The idea of KISS is that the feature must be easy enough to program that before the programmer starts working on it, they have a very clear and strong understanding of how they're going to make it work. Not a 'yes I can do this but it is kinda complicated'. Rather they should be thinking 'this is so stupid and simple that it's really really easy for me to do'. So I decided on a simple rule for the game: a feature would be added only if I knew immediately how to implement it. I wouldn't make vague promises to myself about features that would be later added, but which I had no idea how to do.

KISS is probably the main reason why Wesnoth is such a great success as an open source project.
Personally, I think it's also a very good game because it's so simple. Focusing on a single aspect of a genre (in this case unit management) and polishing it to perfection is a great way of designing games.

[Facekillz058]

Alright, I'm downloading this now. Gonna give it a try before I discount it as another strategy game i'll suck at.

[scrdest]

Alright, I'm downloading this now. Gonna give it a try before I discount it as another strategy game i'll suck at.

You could probably think of it as a turn-based combat RPG except with more units.

[Haspen]

Alright, I'm downloading this now. Gonna give it a try before I discount it as another strategy game i'll suck at.

You could probably think of it as a turn-based combat RPG except with more units.

Personally reminds me of hex-based Fire Emblem with more unit management than anything else.

[Facekillz058]

Alright, gave the game a go, and I guess it's okay.
I managed to get up to the 4th level so far and the only thing that's really bothering me at this point is how units level up.
I mean, it's a cool enough system, I suppose, but 90% of the time my units die before getting to level 2, they get to level 2 and die almost instantly after, or nobody levels up ever because the only way to kill anything without taking significant damage in return is to swamp them with 10 units.

[EuchreJack]

I gotta ask though, has anyone played the dwarf campaign lately? I hit the end of it last time with a whoooole bunch of the... whatever they are. Lots of armor, no attack guys, and white mages, with a handful of offense. The mission was an 8-hour slog because I just couldn't do enough damage to kill anything before the AI shuffled around everything it had in the choke point and I was poking fresh units with toothpicks.

I've been in similar situations with Dwarves.  You've got to promote at least a few as Berserkers.

Alright, gave the game a go, and I guess it's okay.
I managed to get up to the 4th level so far and the only thing that's really bothering me at this point is how units level up.
I mean, it's a cool enough system, I suppose, but 90% of the time my units die before getting to level 2, they get to level 2 and die almost instantly after, or nobody levels up ever because the only way to kill anything without taking significant damage in return is to swamp them with 10 units.

Well, everyone in Wesnoth tends to be a glass cannon, lol.  You've just got to make sure the same units always get the finishing blow, and remember that level 2 units really aren't any more durable than level 1.  Level 3 is where the asskicking begins.

[MonkeyHead]

If your faction has them, a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio of healers to combat units is helpful at keeping troops alive, if arranged sensibly. A few hard and fast rules I play by is to try and force mismatches, using terrain, ranged attacks and damage types to my advantage as often as possible, and to avoid fighting unless things are in my favour - though thats hardly revolutionary advice.

[Darkmere]

If your faction has them, a 1 to 3 or 1 to 4 ratio of healers to combat units is helpful at keeping troops alive, if arranged sensibly. A few hard and fast rules I play by is to try and force mismatches, using terrain, ranged attacks and damage types to my advantage as often as possible, and to avoid fighting unless things are in my favour - though thats hardly revolutionary advice.

This is true and bears expounding. There's a ton of terrain considerations (and day/night concerns!) that affect how individual battles turn out. You always want a terrain advantage and daytime/nighttime advantage to push assaults, based on the race you're playing. All that combined can make a huge difference in unit longevity.

[Haspen]

I almost exclusively play as orcs. Nighttime is best, especially against daytime nations (drakes/loyalists).

Then I just bumrush everything with my ton of grunts and archers

[Tiruin]

HAPMA is one thing I like about Wesnoth, it has some nice scalability that allows mapmakers to use the same set of tiles to represent both a skirmish on a footpath in a forest and a continent-spanning war. And with some very minor tweaking, you can fix the problem of health affecting attack for large-scale.

I really liked out the Bad Moon campaign did this - there was an "overmap" and stuff, it was fun! Running into dudes loaded you into a battle.

To be fair, if you leveled your primary hero (who was the Lieutenant in the first map) into a Commander, no dude would be willing to attack you--you can run across the whole map freely!

However I liked how the Era of Magic (campaign) worked out--turning the usual 2D Wesnoth battlemap into a 3D Realistic map.

Pretty fun, but I always tend to think it's lacking something.

Along which lines :O
I think the same but..there's always a lot of something that's lacking.

[Tiruin]

Alright, gave the game a go, and I guess it's okay.
I managed to get up to the 4th level so far and the only thing that's really bothering me at this point is how units level up.
I mean, it's a cool enough system, I suppose, but 90% of the time my units die before getting to level 2, they get to level 2 and die almost instantly after, or nobody levels up ever because the only way to kill anything without taking significant damage in return is to swamp them with 10 units.

I believe you should check when to attack and retreat, the useability of terrain and whatnot--t'was a simple concept that eluded me until I began to really check the units out.

[Haspen]

Yeah.

Sometimes it's best to camp your units on 60% bonus tile rather than rush enemy whilst on 30% tile. Sometimes it's best to camp and wait until it's better day-time for you rather than rush in wrong conditions.

It's also helpful to check the units' pages; the attacks have different types, for example, bows&arrows are maginificent against the drakes because they suffer big 'vs pierce' penalty, and how many attacks the unit can perform in one 'duel.

You certainly don't want to toss your spearman's javelin at a mage just because he has low hp. On other hand, you would be surprised how well a dwarven 'ulfserker' goes against mages. Especially undead adepts!

[Robsoie]

Bump for Greater Justice !

The new stable version of Battle for Wesnoth has been finally released :
http://www.wesnoth.org/

Release notes :
http://www.wesnoth.org/start/1.12/

[EnigmaticHat]

Most of that seems to be either graphical, or bookkeeping kind of stuff like getting rid of glitches.  But the AI improves looks very promising.  Wesnoth had a "one size fits all" AI that didn't work in a lot of situations.  It wouldn't recruit certain types of units ever, and (most damningly) it had no concept of retreating to match the time of day.  So it essentially couldn't play any multiplayer scenarios.

Hopefully that's gotten better.  I don't want to go away from other games to test it out ATM but it looks interesting.

[Parsely]

Still like Wesnoth. New AI is exciting.