hruza

[hruza]

Did you recover from your disaster? I have just got owned while attacking bandit camp. 11 brothers out of 12 did not make it out, including last remaining companion, all my archers and standard bearer. I have also lost one unique artifact and crypt cleaver. One more brother deserted right after battle. Now I am sitting with 3 remaining brothers in a tavern getting drunk. At last I still have some spare equipment and decent war chest.

I ques I should have to look at it from the brighter side, time to start recruiting those more expensive backgrounds.

RIP all the fallen brothers.

[hruza]

mrbunnyban wrote:

Ghouls, orcs, magic… the setting in BB is hardly historical!

Swords, spears, shields, noble houses, witch hunters peasants, castles, knights, monks…

From homepage of the game:

Features
– Manage a medieval mercenary company in a procedurally generated open world.
…

That’s the very first one in the list. “Medieval” is name of the historical period.

Btw, ghouls, orcs and magic are all part or based on European medieval folklore. As are vampires, werewolves, undead and so on. Today most of us don’t believe in existence of these things and beings but for medieval people they were very part of their life.

mrbunnyban wrote:

And talking about simulation or lack-there of

I newer said this game is simulation. That’s not what I meant. I said it is based in the Medieval setting. Being fantasy and being based on something does not exclude each other.

mrbunnyban wrote:

there is no penalty for not sleeping every day because it would be boring to wait for your bros to sleep everyday.

That’s called abstraction.

mrbunnyban wrote:

There is no penalty for not getting a balanced diet. You cannot really survive on only grain everyday, but the game doesn’t care. Managing the diet of your company is not the focus of the game.

My mercs sure complained about monotonous diet, I got event in my very first play through. I have never found out if there is some negative effect about it because I tried to diversify food since.

mrbunnyban wrote:

I think what you are trying to say is something like the possible danger of encountering something you absolutely cannot fight in the early game ADDS to the excitement and how it adds to the flavor of the game experience and makes your victories feel sweeter. Horrible things happening to you through no fault of your own is something you’d expect in a game of the harsh life of a mercenary company. Or something like that. Hrm. I think I can accept that.

Exactly. Glad we understand each other after all :) Challenge is big part of this game and why it is so good.

[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.

[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]

mrbunnyban wrote:

It’s a game, not a simulation. ;)

It’s a game set in the historical setting.

[hruza]

Forests are bad, always makes me twitchy when traveling through one :) Which bye the way reflects well on the historical accuracy of the game because back in the time, people feared deep forests.

[hruza]

Btw.: where did it happen, in what part of the map? Further you venture away from roads and settlements, the more dangerous “wildlife” you can meet.

[hruza]

Little later period (Renaissance) but I can still highly recommend it: Captain Alatriste
There is even very good film based on it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAcrIr84OdQ

[hruza]

Sekata wrote:

@hruzaI’m familiar with formation, it’s one of the most basic aspects of the game. Being ambushed (engaged by a bandit/hostile party) in the swamp or forest completely overrides any pre-configured formation you have. Instead the map generates brothers and attackers in a random scatter around the donkey carts.

Didn’t have caravan ambush under such conditions yet, so I won’t comment on that. However In normal attacks on caravan, when you start formed with guard and cart behind you, they will form in to line with you if you give them room. At first I thought that they do nothing but cover behind my back. But then on one occasion I have moved my brothers to the side and back in order to duel it with enemy archers first. To my surprise caravan guards steeped forward and formed center of the battle line where my brothers originally stood -roughly where my second line originally was. AI in this game is one of the best I saw. Kudos to those who codded it.

Sekata wrote:

@hruzaMy question is why is a party of necrosavants with such high world map speed randomly generated at all in the mid-game? There are very few enemies that can outrun you sure. But there’s not a damn thing that can outrun a necrosavant, let alone 5.

As I said, sometimes you run out of luck.

Sekata wrote:

@hruzaLosses are inevitable. I can live with that. I’m just not convinced that certain aspects of the game are fine tuned well enough that all loses are adequately earned.

Sometimes it’s not you who did mistake, you have simply rolled relay bad RNG score. So far my impression is that game scales well with player. Fact that you sometimes can run in to something well about your level is good design in my opinion (for this game), because it keep tension and that means fun. And is realistic. How many times did you run in to 5 roaming necrosavants so far? As long as they are exception, I wouldn’t consider it broken. After all, it’s not the game end even if you loose all 12 of your brothers.

Besides, there is “fail safe button” in every battle. It just comes with penalty. But compared to loosing all you brothers, I consider it light. I fell it to be almost cheating therefore so far I refrained from using it (making it sort of houserule), even if it meant loosing some brothers.

I am not trying to dismiss your valid opinion, just giving you my point of view.

[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.

[hruza]

As for caravan guards not helping, they do help, but they seems to be programed to stay close to cart and protect it. If you place your brothers to their sides, they will fight. They will even form in to battle line with your brothers. You can preset your brothers in a formation screen at the flanks during escort mission so you don’t need to waste AP during combat.

As for beginning of the game being difficult – I love that game doesn’t hold you by the hand. You have band of low level brothers with crappy equipment, most everything out there is supposed to be dangerous and to be avoided. You have to pick your fights. You also have to know when to run or retreat. Btw.: if you retreat from battle, brothers which are at the edge of the map, on the tiles with white flag will not get hurt. In most cases it is possible to retreat your brothers to the edge. There are very few enemies which can outrun you.

Of course sometimes you will run out of the luck. Well that’s part of the game and what makes it so fun. Losses are inevitable fact in this game. Early game when you struggle to establish your party is one of the best part of the game.

[Author]

Posts