Money, more brothers, or better equipment?

[icemelon]

Hi there!!

I’ve played a lot of hours, but to be honest, I’m not very good at playing the game. Sometimes I got screwed by the world (random shit happens, you know) but other times I misplay my game.

I have a doubt, since a lot of time ago. What do you think is better to progress, spending money in hiring more battle brothers for the company, or spending the money to equip the existing mercs?

Do you think it’s better a lot of ’em not so well equipped, or less man but better gear?

Thanks for your answers!

[Namespace]

Well you need to balance it out.

Getting 12 guys is very important. 15 are probably better so you can change out some guys that get wounded.

As for how to invest: I am playing on expert so my funds are always lacking. I buy maybe 2-3 Leather armors (red ones). They sometimes come somewhat damaged so they are cheaper and help with the early game. I also try to get hoggarts armor at the start with dagger or reinforced wooden flail.
Then try to get to 8-10 guys and buy some pitchforks, knives. The reason for this is so you can surround raiders that are fleeing and dagger their armor.

Basically I engage a single raider with a guy with shield and tank him until I killed the rest, then surround him which in almost all cases sends him fleeing as long as they don’t have a leader. Edit: Pitchforks help with the rest of the enemies here. You can also use your archers to block his movement if you don’t have enough guys.
Flails also are amazing to get fully repaired raider armors.
This is how I get worn mail shirts for all my guys.

If I get to ~2k crowns I usually rush the ambition for battle standard since it’s very strong early and morale boost is still great.
After that I either buy 1-2 Hunters to make more passable archers and then invest almost exclusively into armor. I try to get at most 2-3 normal mail hauberks, then start buying reinforced ones (210dur) until I have 2-4 and then invest into some (cheap) scale armor. Take caravan escorts to settlements with armorer to get better prices on armor. “Well Supplied” status also increases chance for named gear I believe. Almost always have one of those when I do escort quest – but that is for later game when all my guys have decent-ish armor.

Once my frontline wears at least Hauberks I start buying Warbows for my archers. They are 100% worth the investment. If you ever see a good named bow at a bowyer’s shop you should buy it if you have enough funds.

After that I start to increase my safety buffer 5k crowns to at least 20k crowns, the more the better. Some named armors cost 40-50k crowns so you need a lot in reserve. Also since you now don’t suffer deaths from retreat anymore having that amount of cash will ensure you can treat your wounds in ~2 days if you visit a temple. During this time I buy cheap recruits with military background like raiders, adventurous nobles and sellswords. I don’t ever buy bastards, disowned nobles, retired soldiers or swordmasters because of their trash fatigue or resolve.
Once I get a literal ton of crowns to spare I start buying hedge knights because of their enormous potential if they get some talents.

This works for me quite well. I have to say I pretty much only take brawlers and farmhands at the start because of their high base HP and fatigue so they can wear the bought armor and hardly ever die.

You didn’t ask for this but I want to show off my new baby :) It wrecks everything

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[Namespace]

icemelon wrote:

Do you think it’s better a lot of ’em not so well equipped, or less man but better gear?

Sorry for long comment and I forgot to answer directly to this.
I think it’s best to get to 12 as soon as possible provided you have at least some sort of armor and weapons/shields for them. Even if they just stand in the back for the first rounds you can use them to surround breaking enemies or use them to run down archers once the rest is engaged.

[icemelon]

Thanks for your answers!! I’m not sure why, but I always find myself near bankrupt. After a contract, I have to spend the money in tools, medicines, heal wounds etc… Or replacing the fallen brothers, so, I’m stuck in some kind of circle where my mercs don’t evolve or get better equipment because I don’t have enough money.

I’ll follow your tips on my game, and let’s see how I deal with it.

[hruza]

I think the answer is balance. If you buy more brothers but put them in to the fight underequiped, they are just going to die. Decent armor is important to have less bumpy start in this game. My recommendation would be to recruit new brother only if you can give him some sort of armor, head protection and shield. Shield is absolute must if your brother is melee (unless he is pike). For head and body protection I tend to buy something with 30-40 durability. Aketon or Open Leather Cap would be my choice for head and Thick Tunic for body, but I settle for Hood/Cowl and Leather Tunic too. That’s about 150 crowns. Given early game recruits costs about 100-250, you need about 300-400 per recruit (not counting weapon and shield).

I tend to go for 8 brothers right at the start, before battle with Hogart. Then I tend to work on bringing them up to the above standard at last. Then I recruit new brothers as funds allow.

I too recommend what namespace said. Battle salvaged armor is my main way to upgrade my equipment to higher standard. To get armor as a loot after battle, it shouldn’t have being destroyed during battle. Many bandits comes with light head protection, or outright without. In such cases flail types of weapons works very well with their special attack. They hit exposed head and they leave armor intact. Knives and Daggers are the other option with their special attack which bypass armor and deals direct damage only. I tend to buy few knives right at the beginning of the game and make sure at last few brothers have them in bags. Getting farm hand recruit with flail is great too at the beginning and recruits with nets are also welcome since nets help to immobilize your target, giving your brothers time to knife victim in to the death.

Just don’t press too much with “armor hunting”, early combat is deadly and it’s not worth to put your brothers to unnecessary risk just to get that armor suit. Cost of the recruit and any equipment which might get lost (usually his armor) usually outweighs price of armor you can obtain. Using special attacks cost lot of fatigue and switching weapons cost AP, so do it only when tactically convenient or when you have gained upper hand in combat already. The safes way is to surround last enemy standing. If he is not fleeing already, bring club or two to keep him stunned and stab him with your other brothers to death. Beware however that there is some small random chance that armor will not appear in the loot anyway. It’s fairly small in my experience, but it happens from time to time.

[Namespace]

@icemelon so you have money problems… do you always repair raider weapons before you sell them? This is vital in getting the most out of your loot. It’s only viable on t2 weapons or so, no point in repairing a hatchet or shortbow but you will make good profit on flails, arming swords etc.
I recommend to get colossus on your first few recruits so they don’t receive as many wounds/die as easily. It works very well on backgrounds with a lot of HP like farmhands, daytalers and brawlers.
If I get a guy and he recieves a wound in his first fight I usually instantly dismiss him unless he has some decent talents because hiring a new grunt is usually cheaper than healing his wounds.

[Convert.ToMinor]

I prefer to hold 8-10 men with good armor and weapons. I almost never hire cheapest mercenaries (except brawlers, they can be really good).
And actually I’m doing pretty good on expert difficulty. So I think this is a matter of your playing style. If I understand correctly, it’s called extensive (quantity>quality) and intensive (quantity<quality) growth, both options can be effective.

[icemelon]

@Namespace I never repair before selling. Should I? It’s worth the money you earn against the tools you use to repair them?

I’m to looking for a sustained grow of my company, both in equipment and man, but after a bad battle… haha

[GlyphGryph]

More brothers makes the game harder, but you’ll want them eventually. Armor is super important, but so damned expensive – still, purchasing some reinforced mail hauberks is incredibly if you have brothers that can manage to wear them.

I would say the best use of money early game is filling out missing armor, and then buying better brothers – let you subpar brothers go!

[hruza]

icemelon wrote:

@namespace I never repair before selling. Should I? It’s worth the money you earn against the tools you use to repair them?

Depends. Cheap, low level equipment and armor? No. Higher tiers stuff? Yes, if you can get enough tools for a fair price, which is not always the case.

Math behind is simple: It takes 1 tool to repair 15 points of durability of the item. Given you can buy 20 tools (or is it 25?) for about 200-250 crowns, it means that 1 tool costs +-10 crowns. Which means that repairing 15 points of durability also costs about 10 crowns.

Generally it is worth repairing only expensive stuff with not very high durability. Mostly tier 3 and higher. In some cases tier 2. Be careful about armor, since high tier armor have very high durability and therefore it’s very expensive to repair. And you have to consider “market price” of an item, not it’s nominal value. So it also depends where are you located, is that settlement near you hostile village or friendly metropolis, because that will influence selling price. Sure, you don’t have to sell in the village, you can travel to the friendly metropolis across the map. But you need to pay wages and your mercs will consume food. So is it worth it? Perhaps it is better to sell it in the village strait away and free equipment slots in you inventory for the quest village is offering. But then perhaps quest is to deliver cargo to friendly metropolis, so you can as well haul that looted equipment with you, repairing it along the way.

To sum it up, it’s situational. I saw many people claim that you should always repair everything, save the most basic stuff. That’s plain wrong. Do math, if you know at what price you can sell item to determine if you can make profit in the first place and then consider your situation and circumstances. May be you have to leave some loot after the next battle because equipment you are repairing is taking free slots. May be tools you spend repairing those items will be missed after the next battle to repair equipment you are actually using and you will have to travel half way across the map to buy more. Also don’t take in to consideration just final price of the fully repaired item, you need to consider how much would missing durability increase it. It does not make sense to use 2 tools worth 20 crowns to repair 20% damage of the the item which you then sell for 40 crowns, if you can sell it at 32 at 80% of durability. By repairing it, you would actually loose 12 crowns. In other words you need to know for how much is 1 point of the durability of the item worth on the market versus how much it costs to repair it.

I am also unsure how game handles repairing last points of durability up to max. 1 tool repairs 15 durability points, but may be it takes just 5 to restore item to max health. Does game still spend 1 full tool or does it internally keep record of the fractions? Likely not. It will likely spend whole tool and you need to take it in to consideration, because those last few points to max are gone be very expensive to repair.

For clarification, by durability I mean one of the weapon stats, not % of “health”. You can see both actual durability and max durability in info screen.

My advice is to repair only really expensive stuff, and then only if it is substantially damaged, because more damaged it is, less of a issue cost of the last chunk of the durability will be.

icemelon wrote:

I’m to looking for a sustained grow of my company, both in equipment and man, but after a bad battle… haha

You seems to get higher prices for contracts once your reputation grows higher. Relations to settlement might influence it as well. So as you keep doing quests, your pay will eventually increase overall.

[hruza]

Just to give example of what I was talking above:

I have a pike at 60%, it’s durability is 39/64. I need 25 points = 2 tools to repair it. Equals about 20 crowns (if I got a good price on tools).
I can sell fully repaired pike in the neutral citadel for 160 crowns or I can sell one at 60% for 97.
Means investing 20 crowns to repair it would allow me to sell it for 63 crowns more.
63 – 20 = 43 crowns of profit.
However if you would have to buy tools at say 350 crowns, profit would have being much lower.

Now question is, is it worth to keep that pike occupy space in my inventory until the next time I visit larger town or castle where prices are good?

I also have leather lamellar armor at 77% (74/95) which I can sell for 41 crowns. It would sell for 53 fully repaired. Difference is 12 crowns.
I need to repair 21 durability with 2 tools costing me 20 crowns.
12 – 20 = -8 or 8 crowns of loss.

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