Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Where are my Griffons?

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Rusty Russell wrote: On Mon, 2006-02-20 at 03:21 +0000, Scott Klempner wrote: Brendan, The newly hatched gryphons are just babies. They can't be ridden into combat until they get bigger. If you keep playing, perhaps enough time will pass, and the young gryphons will be big enough to carry a person. Good luck! Hmm, perhaps that should be reinforced: I found it confusing, too. Maybe someone should mention them at Ford or something. Possibly only those used to older versions of the campaign are confused tho... Indeed, previously I was using them at the ford, and for Mountain Pass.  Now I only get 'em once I'm in the Dwarven realm, when they aren't even useful.  Did someone decide that Griffons kick too much ass on the earlier levels or something?  I didn't see them as a big deal.  I am far, far more concerned with leveling up my army, developing an ideal recruitment strategy.  New, expensive creatures don't get used until they demonstrate merit.  They would have been nice on Mountain Pass, but I got by ok with 6 scouts instead. I currently subscribe to the "raging expensive horde" school of fighting.  Whenever I do the "minimalist experienced troops" approach, my experienced guys get killed, and that pisses me off.  So I throw peons out there to weaken the enemy, soak up the damage, and give my more experienced guys the actual kills.  If some of the peons survive to reach Level 2, great.  I've now got a Level 3 Konrad, 2 Elvish Marshals, and more Elvish Heroes than I know what to do with.  That's 'cuz earlier, I used hordes of fighters to lay siege to Elensefar.  I've got wading into rivers and dying down to an art.  German and Soviet officers in punishment battalions would be proud of me.  :-)  Later, at the Dwarven Doors, I decided it was time to spend my huge bank account on leveling all the fighters that survived.  So, silly numbers of Heroes roaming around now.  How can you be heroic when you're part of a mill? I try to leave my Level 3 guys out of play, because they're expensive to maintain and there's no further benefit to leveling them.  But sometimes I just want to knock the shit out of enemy resistance, so I send in the Grand Knights.  Half the time when I do that, I finish early and make big money, so it works out.  If not, oh well, I can always do a "scout spread" to replenish my exhausted funds. Oh, BTW, as far as I'm concerned, Wesnoth kinda won the Independent Games Festival.  That is, I got more addicted to it than Wildlife Tycoon: Venture Africa, the entry I voted for grand prize winner.  Your game is not innovative, but it is good.  You might consider entering the IGF and aiming for the Technical Excellence award, which does not depend upon innovation.  Particularly if your multiplayer network stuff is strong; I don't care for multiplayer anything, but it does tend to impress judges in the T.E. category if it's solid.  I am mostly impressed by the level design.  I haven't ventured out of Heir To The Throne yet, because I got to The Scepter Of Fire and found it impossible.  So I started over and have been obsessed with leveling up.  I figure I couldn't do Scepter because my army wasn't kickass enough.  In particular, no powerful dwarves. Cheers, Brandon Van Every