Hobbes

[Hobbes]

Oh I love a challenge, don’t get me wrong, but I think the goblins are -too well organised-, if that makes sense. Skirmishers are all decked out with bolas AND melee weapons AND shields. I got jumped by an ambush party loaded with ghille suits and all kinds of horrors, these are goblins who are really out to kick ass, like, end game goblins on day 5. That seems a bit unbalanced. It might be that you need to set up the equivalent of “Orc Young” for the early days so bands don’t get arbitrarily wiped out to begin with.

[Hobbes]

If goblins have any weakness, I’m having trouble finding it, they seem -exceptionally- well prepared for most things. Goblins are amazingly well organised as a military, I’m wondering now why the castles don’t pay for platoons of the damned things themselves *exhales*

Definitely need to be adjusted for the early game, because right now at least they’re absolutely insane for starting parties, a group marked as “Even” is in no way survivable. “Even” should mean a 50:50 chance to win, not a 50:50 chance to retreat with one survivor *grin*

[Hobbes]

If the accuracy of thrown weapons is determined strictly by range, this may go some way to explaining the absolutely absurd accuracy the goblins have with their bolas, seriously, they have a hit rate in the upper 70’s with those things at the outer edge of that range during daytime, but they won’t use them at all during night (I’m guessing this is because the AI knows the chance to hit and therefore assumes it’s a waste of time).

[Hobbes]

Further testing with the goblins definitely implies they’re too well “prepared” as an OpFor. They seem to have answers for most things and the AI -knows- this. My immediate advice would be to reduce their throwing weapons numbers down a bit so we don’t get Battle Brothers focus fired down into paste from skirmisher groups (because at the lower levels that’s what you run into and they’re absolutely horrific).

I like the idea that they enforce a more combined arms approach but if the only solid solution is “Lots of archers” that more or less enforces a one note fix to one army, and then you wind up carrying a lot of inventory around to deal with different types of force composite. That might be fine for the late game, but not so much for the early game.

[Hobbes]

Goblins definitely need a balance pass, giving the bulk of the skirmishers those spiked bolas is a major issue, it means the AI tends to hang back and bait you into moving up, the problem is in doing so you give them the first attack, they then focus down two or three of your brothers with the bolas and before you know it the field looks very unpleasant. Can be hard countered by spamming mass archers but that setup is not viable for any other opposing force.

Most other fights are winnable, even if tough, but goblins are way, way out there. Seriously wacky balance issues indeed, once you do get into fight range, they’re not quite so bad, but the problem is they’ve usually halved your force by then with thrown weapons and the like. Not really a good option. Suggest limiting goblins with bolas to no more than 1/5-1/4 of their army makeup. It’s unlikely the player would have that many throwers, so the AI shouldn’t be stacking that many either.

The new art does look fantastic, so that’s a major plus.

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