Danubian

[Danubian]

100% agree.

[Danubian]

Im fairly sure that Orc Warlords and Orc Warriors are immune to shield attack, im also fairly sure that Young Orcs arent, and i dont know about berskers but i think theyre not either because i dont remember having any problems with them.

[Danubian]

I would rather let a goblin ambusher get away than risk losing either ~100 worth or ~260 worth dog. I dont have a problem with ambushers that decide to stick around and shoot. Those i catch and murder. Its those that are more than 10 tiles away that start running away. I rarely release dogs on those because they frequently simply kill them by the time i get there (remember it takes turns to reach them, and then it takes turns to be able to actually fight them, and even then you might miss them, and meanwhile they have 2 attacks per turn and they frequently hit dogs (armored dogs are like 3-4 hits killed?)).

[Danubian]

Yes jesus christ when i get dragged into battles that some human party initiates. Takes like 2 minutes+ for every turn to pass just watching other characters move around.

One of the reasons i absolutely hate fighting Goblins. Those damned ambushers make me waste soooooooo much time chasing them around…

[Danubian]

Sorry i edited my post about those undead, missed your reply.

[Danubian]

Next time you fight 30 Orc Warriors and Berserkers please take a screenshot, or better yet make a video, i would really like to see that.

And yes, sure, there are multiple ways of playing the game – if you wish to avoid fighting certain enemies / being utterly powerless against them.

Just take archers for example. Make a dedicated archer, and you got yourself a pretty useful character, until you run into Vampires and Orc Warriors. Then it becomes almost useless, and pretty much needs melee and utility skills (swapping weapons) to be of any use / have any hope of living. And although Vampires are an annoyance, they are survivable. Orc Warriors en masse are just OP.

Edit: how come for example i never see anyone complain about, say, those undead fully armored guys, Fallen Heroes i believe they are called?

[Danubian]

Stupid forum decided to log me out as i was posting reply, so 20 mins of typing went poof. Wonderful.

Sekata wrote:

I appreciate your point of view Danubian, and i’m glad you’ve provided both screen shots and fair critique. I understand that you want the game to feel balanced, and frankly I somewhat agree with your assessment of the goblins to some degree. However, I don’t really share your hatred of the orcs, or your opinion that massive balance changes on the orcs need to occur. Granted, as a matter of full disclosure, I would not, under any circumstances run into a battle against 10 orc warriors. If I saw that coming at me, I would laugh hysterically, and “nope” right on in the opposite direction. I wouldn’t have the game any other way frankly.
The game world is one where your mercenary band of mortal human fighters are battling against incredible odds. Losing soldiers is a part of the game, which is why there is a loading tip that clearly states “expect to lose some men”, and even one that says “if the odds are against you, retreat to fight another day”. Unless you’ve got a band of fully upgraded soldiers that are specced to deal effectively with most situations, many battles rated even or above become a question of “how many soldiers will i lose”.

Game designs that centers around ROLE PLAYING characters, which means getting player (emotionally) invested and also spending time improving these characters (experience and equipment) sort of doesnt work well with the concept that you are supposed to lose these characters all the time.

The in game warning about being ready to lose them is fine. At first when you start the game and have no equipment or experience. Obtaining experience and best possible attainable equipment (non unique obviously) and losing brothers just because is a horrible game design (specially in an RPG). And i really hope thats not the BB devs design philosophy. And for one simple reason. Im sure that there are people who would LOVE to play BB under such balance rules that any enemy in game can 1 hit kill your brothers. But those players are very few, a niche within a niche. So catering to tastes of maybe 2 out 100 people is a very bad idea, specially if it turns away those 98 people entirely. In other words i dont want to take anything away from you. You like the game as it is, i say fine. Thats what you have highest difficulty level setting for. Im arguing about easiest difficulty setting which should provide a more casual gameplay experience.
Im willing to bet you that 98/100 players will quit battle and reload autosave upon losing a fully equipped level 8+ brother in a battle. I do it. Every single time. Losing them just isnt satisfying or fun.

Sekata wrote:

It’s a matter of you against insane odds, but the game does allow you to heavily swing those odds in your favor. It’s pretty easy to wait for small squads to come out of a camp, and pick them off one at a time. After a while of taking out smaller parties belonging to a single camp, the rating of the camp itself will fall, and your odds against it will improve pretty substantially. Battle Brothers as a game encourages picking battles carefully, especially early on, and that doesn’t entirely change when you’re the big bamf on the map. Frankly, I think the design is a fairly realistic approach, and I really appreciate the devs for it. Force the odds in your favor by attacking smaller squads, and if you find yourself faced with deadly, or even a fair battle, just don’t fight it. One of the most hilarious points from the Art of War says don’t fight battles you aren’t sure you can win, or “don’t fight fair battles”. It’s a waste of resources and soldiers if it can be avoided. This game forces you to keep that in mind, and i’m not sure that it’s unintentional on part of the devs.

I agree completely with you. Thats part of the BB charm. Its just the way things are set right now, it tends to be brutally difficult. Setting up certain characters in certain ways does not give you a role playing advantage, it is absolutely necessary to survive. And that is a balancing problem. Game can be made interesting and challenging without every decision being a 1 or 0 situation where one is survival and other is doom. Again im all for giving people challenge if thats what they want. Thats what difficulty settings are for.

Sekata wrote:

As for fights, deny your enemies the high ground. Shield bash them away from high positions and take the ground for yourself. I kind of doubt that the orc in that screenshot had the ap to both move to his position on the high ground and then break both of your shields. It’s one orc young, but his location puts both of your brothers in that shot in a pretty awful position. I would be curious to know how he got into that position in the first place. Was it unavoidable? Did your character’s have deflect? How about heater shields?

The orc on the hill moved there in the first turn. I was forced with two choices. Getting right next to it, and pushing it away the next turn. Or getting 1 field away from it, and then getting charged and stunned for 1 turn. I opted for first choice. Since it played before me (iirc) it got to attack me the next turn before i could push it away. Under normal circumstances that wouldnt be any problem because i would just take that damage and push it away.
Of course the point here is not a tactical analysis of that battle (whether it had the high ground or not).

The problem is the fact that it managed to kill 2 shields in 1 turn.

^ that is a balancing problem as it destroys the whole purpose of a shield. (btw i have had a unique named shield also destroyed by an Orc in a single hit before)

Sekata wrote:

Train up your archers before fighting tougher bands of orcs. A single archer with focus can very easily waste an incoming berserker, or at the least, nerf his damage if you happen to have the debilitate perk. As for the crossbows, damage can be strongly hit or miss. Some crossbow shots will yield a disappointing amount of damage. On the other side of the same coin, I’ve seen armored orcs take a sizeable chunk of health damage from a single crossbow shot. I’ve also seen crossbow headshots outright kill orc warriors that had most of their health left. You aren’t going to see the full range of the crossbow’s capability in a single battle waged to get a single screenshot. For that matter, what level was your archer in that shot? To be fair, a low damage shot can even happen to level 11 brothers, but i would still like to know.

This is what i do.

My archer in that screenshot was around level 3-4 with more than 60 archery (i save game/reloaded when i started that game until i picked up characters with properties i wanted).

Note that at level 11 they dont do any different damages with crossbows. In fact i would argue that bows are much better than crossbows as now with ~75 archery skill they tend to hit almost always twice. And crossbow really mostly does that amount of damage. Unless it scores a head shot? Which any other weapon can do as well?

Sekata wrote:

In a battle where there are no berserkers, then you should prioritize by weapon type. The orc that destroyed your shields had an axe, and he should be one of the first enemies that you take out of the fight for exactly that reason.

Prioritizing weapons is fine. An Orc destroying 2 shields with 1 hit each is not fine. Thats stupidly broken/out of balance.

Sekata wrote:

Between the weapon, shield, and perk variations, there is a pretty nice variety of ways to plan for battles with orcs. In a very serious way, single battles are won in bb before the fight even starts. I’ll concede your goblin issue. It’s absolutely 0 fun chasing enemies around the map, especially since dogs aren’t all that intelligent, and don’t run for the archer units if there are melee units nearby. Other than that though, I very much like the game as it is. It’s not that I’ve come to accept broken design as you’ve implied. That statement assumes quite a bit about willingness on my part to put up with bullshi*t and that’s just not the case. We don’t know each other, so don’t assume that i’m prone to rolling over for bad design choices just because I disagree with you about something. There are plenty of things that I would very much like changed in BB, but orc balance is not one of them. I just think that the difficulty of the orcs, and the necessity of using every single advantage that the player has to come out on top is an intended part of the game’s fabric. I could be wrong, and I’ll concede that immediately if the devs decide to correct me.

As they are right now, beating Orc Warriors doesnt require planning or strategy. It requires you to start the game, save game/reload until you are able to recruit absolutely optimal set up of brothers, level them up to around level 10, equip them with 200 body and 200 helmet armor, get the best weapons, and even then you can beat them only if there are no more than 10 of them. I will admit that 68 hours into the game i have no clue how i would beat more than 10 Orc Warriors (im not even 100% sure i could beat 10 with my current level 11 group).

Orc Warriors need to:

a.) be nerfed
b.) implemented differently
c.) redesigned

a.) = pretty straight forward process. Pick one attribute, and focus on it. If they are supposed to be tough to kill, then nerf their damage, remove their mobility and so on. So in other words make them excel in one thing, and then suck at everything else.

b.) = instead of them showing up en masse in some groups and in some on map camps, have them appear only in the absolutely end game content encounters. Also limit their numbers in map roaming encounters to no more than a couple (fighting 3+ of them at like level 5 is impossible). Also groups that have them should not be “puny”. They are the most powerful enemy in game?

c.) = take the entire Orc faction, and introduce new Orc units and new Orc weapons. Each Orc unit would be a gradual improvement over the last one. And they would also get gradually better and better weapons. What this would allow is for players to have variety. Various Orc groups could be comprised out of different mixes of Orc units, and this would also remove the necessity for Orc Warriors to be seen in regular on-map groups. Limit their numbers and have them appear only in most important battles on top. Note that im not saying that new Orc types should be weak or anything, im just saying give them variety and make them less powerful than Orc Warriors. Those just arent fun to fight.

Sekata wrote:

I do think that the fatigue of orc warriors can be toned down a bit. Pushing aside your units while wearing all of that heavy armor should be a bit more costly than it is for them at the moment, but that’s about it. To be fair, I may well have tunnel vision. I’ve put more than 120 hours into the game and perhaps (JUST MAYBE) i’ve grown tolerant of some questionable things. I’ll admit that much. The fact that I’m perfectly willing to call BS on pretty much all of the spawning system, location diversity, and the frequency of bandidt marksmen spawning with crossbows, tells me that i might not have complete olfactory fatigue on bullsh*t. The orcs are the only remaining challenge after you get decent equipment and five brothers to level 11. I’d like them to remain that way.

After having spent 2 days fighting Orcs Warriors i can tell you this much.

The only thing that stopping them from being Brutally overpowered (opposed to just OP) is their fatigue. Their armors and weapons tend to fill up their max fatigue after about 4 or 5 rounds, so the more they walk, the better. With nimble melee build *IF* my melee fighters manage not to get brutalized during first ~3 melee rounds in a fight VS Orc Warriors, Orc Warriors will usually max out fatigue, and from there on they will *mostly* have only enough fatigue to attack once / turn. And thats great because they tend to spend about 1/3 of their moves pushing my bros (more they push less they can attack), 1/3 using the shield defense thingie (specially if surrounded) and only 1/3 attacking (dealing damage).
The biggest problem i have is when there is so many of them (usually 6+) that i cant face each one with more than 2 brothers. Thats where it gets tricky to beat them & survive.

[Danubian]

Im currently running with 7 archers, and since all of them have archery around 70, i dont have problems with misses so much. What bothers me is the fact that i need to go back to the capital city and fortress every 20 minutes to restock on arrows (since i have 24000 gold its not so much a financial problem as it is logistics).

[Danubian]

Crossbow vs Orc Warrior.

Maybe if i had ~20 brothers with crossbows?

Just how much body armor do they have? 400+?

[Danubian]

All ideas sound good to me :)

[Danubian]

Im trying out a new build with 6 archers designed to murder bandits in order to level up and obtain moneyz, so that it can later become what Jaffai described above (nimble fighters designed to kill orc warriors).

[Danubian]

Sekata wrote:

The thing battle brothers lacks is transparency more than anything else. An even band of orcs will be a lot worse than an even band of bandits. At most the label is wrong, but the balance is fine.

No what the game lacks is balance.

It needs more gradual transformation of enemies within each faction.

Sekata wrote:

1. Orcs are supposed to be physically stronger than humans. Orc young will hit harder than a normal battle brother, and an orc berserker can pretty easily kill all but the most prepared of your brothers. As a trade off, berserkers don’t wear armor, and are pretty easily to riddle with arrows before they close distance. Learn the strengths of your targets.

Orcs can be made physically stronger than humans AND still not be able to 2 hit kill a heavily armored brother. Is that too difficult to do? Because im fairly certain its not. For example they could rebalance the armors or weapon stats so that armors play a bigger role and actually provide something to the player. You know its not really that outlandish to ask the developers to make armors do what armors are supposed to do: keep people alive. If i spend 10 hours leveling up and equipping my brothers with best items in game, i expect them to obtain a bit more survivability than they used to have at level 1 with 30 armor.

Im in a fight against about 15 Orcs. About half are Orc Warriors and about half are Berserkers. I have 3 archers. So how am i supposed to get rid of Berserkers before they close in? I can take out 2, 3, maybe 4 if im lucky. If i make half of my team archers, i might pick off Berserkers, but then Orc Warriors will slaugher me. Even with crossbows you can stop them at range in large battles. You will have to take them on in melee.

In any case if you have to make such drastic decisions just to beat a single opponent – thats usually an indications that something is out of balance.

There are many different ways to make Orcs unique, without making them overpowering at the same time. Look at those undead zombie thingies. Those fights are brilliantly fun and entertaining, nobody is complaining about those. Or bandits.

Sekata wrote:

2. As for goblins, the solution has already been mentioned in this post. If you go after the little buggers at night time with one or two war dogs in tow, the fights can be ridiculously easy, especially with kite shields.

Nope. The solution hasnt been mentioned because i dont think people read what the problem is. Or maybe i didnt explain it well enough. So ill try again. Unlike Orcs, that are clearly brokenly OP and out of balance, the Goblins are not OP or out of balance. The only problem with them is that they are tedious, annoying and boring to fight. First of all just for the record lets differentiate some things. Goblin parties consist out of melee fighters and Ambushers. Melee fighters are unique and do their own thing (throw nets and bola thingies) and i have no problems with them, fighting them is a straightforward process thats fun. The problem are Ambushers and their hit and run tactics. And not so much their damage or their brutal strength – because in both cases they are just meh – but because they have a tendency to run around. This running around is forcing me to chase them around the map, and that part is BORING. I will spend 2x more time just moving around the map trying to catch them than i do fighting their melee fighters. And thats a problem. Youre making me waste my time. Its neither challenging nor fun its just tedious. And yes, i do have and use dogs. And no dogs are not a magical solution for goblins. If you release dogs before melee fighters are dead, since dogs are very smart they will just run straight into them and get slaughtered. And if you release dogs after melee fighters are dead, Ambushers will already have started to fall back and that means probably between 5 and 10 additional turns of chasing after them. Sure you think “wow theyre smart” first time you see their tactic. Sure youre amused first 5 times chasing after them. But after 10 times it just becomes repetitious and boring. A simple waste of time that doesnt add to the “fun” factor of playing a game.

Sekata wrote:

If anything battle brothers needs a manual filled with tips about enemies and strategies. For the most part, there is a strategy for dealing with most enemies in the game pretty easily if you know their strengths and weaknesses. The part that I find most brutal is the ambush system, where the game spawns an insane amount of enemy bands around your company to keep you from getting to an objective.

Diversity is fun, having to change your entire team just to be able to survive a single enemy type is not fun (specially when youre a higher level). Its another indication that something is out of balance.

Sekata wrote:

Other than that, the game is pretty balanced. The superior physical nature of the orcs and the skirmish tactics of the goblins is what makes the factions distinct. Changing the composition too much would water down the experience and make certain encounters far too easy.

The current abilities Orcs have dont make them distinct, it makes them stupidly OP.
The current tactics Goblins use dont make them distinct, it makes fighting them a needless effort of micromanagement and an utter unfun waste of time.

Sekata wrote:

Take some time to learn more about the game. I had the same complaints you did before I learned how to play.

I have pretty much figured out how to play the game – after 3 level 10 parties. The difference between you and i, is that you simply accepted poorly balanced things, got yourself familiarized with them and youre comfortable with the way things are. Whereas i wish to have them improved and dont want to simply settle for how things are because i know they could be done in a better and more fun way.

Ill give you an example.

You will repeat again that Orcs are physically stronger than humans, and i will tell you that this is poor game design/complete lack of balance. Just in case i will explain what that screenshot shows. Thats one Young Orc destroying 2 shields with a single hit in a single game turn on easiest difficulty level. There is no RPG game where you will see that. But at the same time i dont wish to take that away from you, if thats how you want to play BB. Just use the highest difficulty setting and have fun.

Sekata wrote:

As for the skeletons and the orc warriors, weapons have different stats that make them better or worse against certain enemy types. Skeletons don’t have vitals, and so arrows don’t do a whole lot of damage. Use smashing weapons.

Sure, i figured that arrows are only partly good against skelies (you can still kill their armor and pick off necromancers, they die in like 2 arrows which is great). Didnt have problem with any other type of weapons though, swords, morning stars etc all works just fine (also they often die in just 1 hit).

Sekata wrote:

As for the orc warriors, use crossbows (which have a higher armor penetration stat) and weapons that crush armor. Most of your complaints come from a gap in knowledge. There’s a lot to learn in BB, and no way to learn it but trial and error.

I would love to see you take on 10 Orc Warriors with 12 brothers around level 5. I cant do it at level 10 with 3 dedicated archers (who can switch between bows and crossbows). If i put more crossbows, i have fewer melees, who then get rushed and overwhelmed. Nope, we do have a balance problem. Sure make Orcs more powerful than humans, just dont make them that powerful.

[Danubian]

I only ever ran into a single 7000 fort i could beat, and mostly because it had very few heavily armored orcs (i think only 4 in fact), it was “Puny”. Those forts that say Deadly or Impossible i dont think i could survive without 300+ armors on all brothers.

Also is it just me or are bows pretty much useless on Skeletons and Orc Warriors? I seem to do only like 3-5% of HP damage even on Skeletons without any armor, and when i hit Orc Warriors i only seem to do like 3 pixels worth of armor damage, its so little it almost makes me wanna cry.

[Danubian]

PsenBattle wrote:

Agathocles wrote:

especially with the new factions. Will they bring items specific to them?

I would absolutely love to do this. We are discussing to add some more weapon and armor variants to have a real visual and stylistic difference between the factions.
Before we get to that though we have to concentrate all ressources on the worldmap and the faction/contract system itself. When we implemented that we can get to the bonus eye candy
It wouldnt make any sense to focus on the details before we tackled the real big issues.

Thats wonderful. IMO Orcs really need some new weapons asap. My main beef with them is that even the Young Orcs can carry very powerful high damage dealing weapons, and the heads of my bros fly all over the place.

[Danubian]

Looks like ill have to do some experimenting. That dagger thing sounds weird.

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