hruza

[hruza]

That terrain allows spacing perfectly well. With or without pathfinding. Pathfinding would just make it more trivial. It’s true that you made that more difficult by putting your mace guy where he is, which you shouldn’t to begin with. If you would have put him to his low left, you would have no problems there. But even that position would be doable, because you need just one guy awake. Leave spearman where he is and put swordman one tile apart from spearman. As long as swordman stays awake, he can wake up spearman who can wake up mace guy.

Of course you had spread your men all around the map, and since there are more Albs then one, they can sleep all of your guys with rest of your team unable to help. But that was mistake in my opinion. You shouldn’t spread in to groups small enough for Albs on map to put to a sleep.

I do agree with you that sleep spell should not affect characters which aren’t technically adjacent, like when they are on two height levels apart. It just doesn’t make logical sense. But it doesn’t lead to unsolvable odds you claim it does. In terrain with movement penalties, you simply will move more slowly and keep your guys 1 tile apart, not two -unless you have Pathfinding that is, that’s all. Plus you have to be more careful and planing more thoroughly at the choke points, if there are some. Btw, this issue affects only mountain terrain, forests and swamps are mostly flat anyway.

As for fighting 10 Albs, unless you have some high resolve guys, you shouldn’t fight at all. In no terrain. They will likely put your whole team to sleep before you get your move. If you have that resolve, then terrain does not matter. It will just take more time. This is not the game were you’re supposed to accept every fight. There are many situations where you can’t realistically win.

It’s really simple, without Pathfinder in difficult terrain you need to keep your guys 1 tile apart instead of 2. And consider your movements bit more carefully. Moreover as end of your battle demonstrates, it’s not that you aren’t allowed room for few mistakes as Alb nightmare attack is not an instant kill.

[hruza]

There is no “wake spell” or “counterspell”. There is an action to wake up adjacent character. Characters on 2 levels of height difference or above are not adjacent, even if they share seemingly adjacent tiles.

That said, I think for that very same reason sleep spell should not affect characters on 2 levels of height difference or above, it seems like a oversight on the part of developers.

As for your screenshot, your positioning is extremely poor and what ever damage you take, it’s well deserved. You shouldn’t place your characters next to each other in that fight. They should always end between 1-2 tiles apart. That way one enemy can put asleep only one of your characters, and your characters can always wake up one another. That way you are 100% safe as long as at last one of your characters is awake at the start of your turn.

Albs are quit easy once you understand how they operate. The critical part is to survive first turn when you are grouped together. Spreading during pre-positioning on the world map helps with that to some extend.

It also seems that high resolve can resist sleep spell, although I am not sure about it. In case it does, having a sergeant with high resolve should give you upper hand.

[hruza]

Game balance. To go beyond 11 levels, developers would have to create, test and balance new perks and design enemies and other challenges to match those levelled player controlled characters. That would cost time and money (of the developers). Besides, it’s point of no end effort. Let’s say they would do it and extend content to say lv. 20. Next day you would come complaining that you can’t progress beyond that.

There is always going to be some limit. Lv 11 is as good as any.

[hruza]

On second tough, he might have being under curse and got killed by the damage hexe received and I did not notice because battle ended. Now I am not sure any more.

[hruza]

I find text of the names of the regions to be hard to read sometimes as text is rather faint and underlying map colour can make it very hard to see. Especially on while, mountainous regions. It wasn’t problem before because there was very little reason to read these texts. However now with the new missions that send you to named regions, this became a problem.

So yes, something to make regions better defined would help. May be on maximal zoom, the text and/or borders can me made to stand out (adjust contrast of the text colour and/or it’s size with the zoom level). Something like that.

[hruza]

Unacceptable wrote:

3. “Try out” is useless.

It’s not. Try out is not meant to be abused for every recruit, it’s meant mostly for those expensive backgrounds to prevent you from hiring hedge knight level 3 in early game as you finally managed to put together enough funds …only to find out that he has a wooden leg. Moreover it’s completely optional, you don’t need to use it if you don’t like to.

It’s also useful for late game if you hunt for particular traits. Like Iron Lungs.

[hruza]

Bounty hunters are not the same as mercenaries. Bounty hunters encounters are scripted semi-random events which have nothing to do with AI mercenary companies. As for your question, yes mercenary companies do help with crisis. They fight hostiles just like militia and great houses troops. They also get hired by the great houses (indicated on the tooltip).

[hruza]

Btw, Lindwurms leave tracks similar to Direwolves or Nachzehrers. However they are VERY small, as if single Direwolf left them. Therefore if you come across very faint pawn like footprints, you might got your Lindwurms.

[hruza]

Lindwurms are VERY rare. You can’t expect to run in to one in just 2 days. You can play for 100 days and not seeing one.

[hruza]

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Enemy forces overwhelming (I think that’s a status effect, so as to avoid confusion – outnumbering) you is not a disadvantage, it’s far worse; it’s hopeless at times.

That depends on what enemy you face and what is level and equipment of your company. Being outnumbered by bunch of thugs at the beginning of the game is not the same thing as being outnumbered by them in the later stages of the game.

Remember, you can always back out of the fight, most of the time even without getting your men injured. Evaluate your enemy at the start of the combat and if you thing he’s too strong, retreat. You aren’t expected to win every fight.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I don’t think my choices in tactical positioning do anything other than some hits to the opponent forces, which most likely miss either way.

Positioning is important. Terrain can play huge role, unless you fight on a open plain. It’s however up to you to use it. How you place your brothers is also important.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I can not even use the axeman (who, now, is my spearman) properly, whose sole purpose is to break down shields. Instead, he misses 6 out of 8 attacks.

Breaking down shields is mostly waste of time. It’s common beginners mistake. You are wasting your turn and enemy will hit harder because 1H weapon held in both hands have 25% damage bonus. There are situations when it’s viable tactics but generally you want to reliably hit them over their shields. At the beginning of the game when your brothers have low melee skill, use flails. They ignore shield.

That starting 2H axe is a death trap. Change it to 1H+shield as soon as you can afford to. 2H weapons are very good and you’ll be fielding lot of them later in the game, but they require high skills and heavy armor to work.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Random terrain is a huge turn off for me. Your allied forces are spawned in god-knows-where, but the enemy forces have the benefits of deploying properly, as you’d expect how two parties would engage.

Allies will always deploy alongside of you when they are reinforcing you (you have engaged enemy first). When you reinforce them (they engaged first) then they spawn on one of the sides of the map depending how many parties are involved.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Defending and then counter-attacking is useful. And then there’s times where this one enemy dodges all three attacks. (On ground terrain).

And then there’s times when this one brother of your dodges all three attacks. Success in attacks depends on your skill, enemy skill, equipment and a random factor.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I can’t feel the enemy morale breaking even when there’s a few of them left. Those engaged in combat will not try to flee

Morale does not depend on how many of them are left. However intelligent enemies (humans, goblins, orcs…) will usually try to flee when there are only one or two left.

Certain events force morale check on a character (AI or yours). Getting damaging hits and receiving injuries, seeing allies get killed or fleeing and few other things (making one enemy flee can cause chain rout). However characters with high resolve have better chance to resist these checks and maintain morale. Different types of enemies have different resolve and some (undead) are completely fear resistant and will newer break and flee.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

instead acting aggressively and attacking your weakest warrior.

Finally game with decent AI.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

That’s it so far. I am not used to challenging games as I don’t play them, however I purposely turned on the easiest difficulty for that reason. I can’t walk away without casualties if I don’t outnumber the enemy by at least 1-2 men. I’m really desperate when they actually have more numbers. This is more of a “How can I actually make the game fun and not frustrating” like thread.

Check some let’s plays for inspiration on how to play at the beginning of the game. Here is short let’s play made by the developers which is sort of a tutorial. It’s bit old and does not include all DLCs and patches but is still generally valid as far as gameplay stile is concerned:

[hruza]

Picking the fight is always important, as game scales with your company. But bringing right equipment in to the fight is important as well.

[hruza]

Camps do reset, although I am not sure over how long period. They will also change over time and so camp with few young orcs might have orc warriors if you come back later in the game.

[hruza]

Glad you’re doing well and enjoying game :)

As for fights with gheists, 4-5 tiles may or may not be enough. It’s already quit far for effect of banner and rally ability. You want maximum 3 tiles in ideal case. Of course that’s not always possible. That’s why second sergeant can help here. I tend to always have one spare sergeant in “learning” in case my main one dies. That comes handy for those fights against gheists.

Difficulty of the missions is somehow random. I had both more and less difficult missions for their rating in stars. Either developers did that on purpose or it’s simply case of computer code being unable to properly combine all the attributes to calculate proper difficulty for you. there are just too many things to take in to consideration.

In either way, it keeps player being vigilant so I like that it’s random to some degree. Makes things bit more unpredictable and fun.

Direvolves certainly are not allied to raiders. It’s just that enemy AI seems to be programed to go after weakest target it see. Which in that case was probably you, that’s why both groups went after you and did not engage each other. However if battle would start, they would be hostile to each other on the battle map. Problem is, Direvolves are really not something you want in a multifight due to reasons I have mentioned before.

[hruza]

As much as I know, only Nachzehrers are allied with Wiedergangers, but all other factions are hostile to each other. Don’t take me for word on it however.

That of course changes during greenskin and undead invasions when Goblins/Orcs or Wiedergangers/Ancients unite.

There might be exceptions in certain quests, for example when you encounter thugs meeting necromancer.

I am not aware of Direwolves being allied to anybody. However Direwolves are one faction which you absolutely don’t want to have in the multi side fight. The purpose of those fights is to let others fight while you wait it out, then finish what remains. This means that you want to retreat at the beginning of the battle in a way that will lead two enemy groups in to each other. Or most of them at last. Problem with Direvolves is that they have high initiative and lot of AP and many of them will reach your line at the beginning of the first turn, thus not letting you to retreat. Same is true for Goblin wolfriders. So avoid combining fights with these.

But otherwise I have lot of good experience with making two enemy groups fight out. I was able to clear locations which would have being impossible otherwise.

As for gheists:
You need sergeant with about 100 resolve.
Your front line should have 45-50 resolve or more.
Your backline should have about 40 resolve at last.
Effect of standard and rally ability depends on range, so you want to essentially turtle around your sergeant. Don’t spread out.
Having second sergeant is not essential but can be very useful.
You should select dedicated guy with high melee attack and give him spear to serve as a gheist killer. Give him undead necklace if you have it already. If not, get it asap.

If you don’t have those things, don’t bother to fight gheists. They’ll destroy you.

[hruza]

Once you have archers or crossbowmen with good ranged attack (85/90+) Bullseye will make a difference between say 25% chance to hit and 50% (against obscured target). That difference is very useful when sniping enemy ranged troops, necromancers and other similar targets which are dangerous but tend to hang back and hide.

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