Couldn’t disagree more, though its coming from a different perspective. For some background i’ve been playing the game on and off for roughly over a year now, have switched to Ironman after a few successful runs. The thing about Battle Brothers is that the more experienced a player you become, the more you realize which fights can be taken and the faster you’ll get to a point where your company is strong and capable of beating most foes in the game. If my company can enter a sea of tents or a big barbarian camp by day 90 and exit victorious on the other side with only some bruises to show for it, what is there to do after the first crisis?
Legendary locations (with the exception of the Ijirok, who offers a balanced ratio of risk and reward both in the Ice cave and in the hunting grounds) are there mostly to test your company strength since by that point you’ll be much stronger than any other enemy that can be fought with the exception of huge Chosen, ancient dead or nomad camps. During and after that, all other battles will be downright banal because you’ve outscaled the game long ago if you can do the Monolith or Library. The appeal of BB is the combat and how the systems outside of it tie into battles. Before you get to the stage of the campaign where your company is so strong that every encounter that isn’t Chosen or Necrosavants consists of mindless clicking on foes until they die, every weapon category has its place. Flawed brothers can still turn out to be beneficial, every mechanic and battle has a lot of weight to it because there is actual risk of death and a wipe. Every victory feels significant since not only are your men getting stronger, you’re also making progress equipment and finance wise. You’re always moving forward and recovering from past failures. In the extreme lategame (or really the postgame since the game is won after the first crisis) this all goes away and champions are your main burst of excitement in the grind to obscene amounts of power that is nearly without consequence.
On the topic of endgame crisies, the two nonhuman ones are kind of a let down. The old, old dev blogs on this very site mention how in the latter one might encounter goblin shamans supporting orc warriors, but this does not seem to ever happen ingame even on expert. I assume it was toned down during testing because that would absolutely wipe new players like its nothing, but it would be nice to still have an option that happen for people who aren’t interested in +100 day runs and would instead do more fresh starts after winning (and considering the stats on steam, this is the majority of players anyhow).
That’s my request, patch in more things to tweak during starting a new game for a greater degree of customization, there’s a lot of empty space there anyhow and its the way to handle this that would make everyone happy. Have one option that makes the crisises happen maybe a tad slower, but have them be aptly apocalyptic. Make the difficult parties occasionally consist of Necrosavants with Geist support, the aforementioned shamans with warriors, Honor guard with a necromancer or two to resurrect them contentiously, and so on. There’s enough enemy types for both unified factions to make this work and create interesting mixes.
