Johel3007

[Johel3007]

I gave the “sergeant” perk to my three polearms dudes, since they’ll always be close to at least 2 frontline dudes each.
I am thinking about giving the “rally the troop” perk to my captain, just for fun.

[Johel3007]

Direwolves are easy to deal with in open terrain.

If they don’t reach you on first turn, just spearwall and they’ll mindlessly bump against it.

If they do reach, switch to axes. And focus on ONE direwolf at a time with the polearms.
They have a weak resolve so killing a few is usually enough to scare the rest… who then die when trying to retreat.

[Johel3007]

Your feelings are proof that the dev team did a good job !! :p

And yes, these little scumbags are hillariously annoying and I love it !!
The nets aren’t too bad but they can really mess up the initial assault.
The spiky balls are mostly harmless but that’s always nasty.
Those polearms HURT and that got to make you careful.

But the top of the cake are the archers.
Most of the time, they poison your dudes and just RUN AWAY.
But when you do catch them, they are surprisingly good in melee.

As for the wolfriders, they are great because, unlike other enemies, they actually look like they are SMART, what with their high movement score allowing them to go around your battleline to hit the flank… and then get away once your dudes finally redeploy to deal with the threat.

At low-level, they are the bane of your new recruits. But after the 6th or 7th level, they just crash and die on the shieldwall.

Do not change anything about them !! :)

[Johel3007]

I usually go with :

Pathfinder : because it makes tactical moves easier. Not having to waste turns climbing is unvaluable and so is wrongfooting the enemy in a swamp.
Gifted : because a +4 to melee defense, at low level, is great and does a lot to improve survival rates.
Colossus : again, survival is much more important at low level than sheer performance.

That’s the three basics for any new guy, so he can keep up with the rest of the company.

From there, it depends.

Shield Expert :
My main battleline is shields and spears, backed by polearms on second line, with the captain (and sole surviving of the three founder) using a sword and shield to roll the enemy’s flank.
Once the battle really start (or against orcs), they switch to axes and shields.
Having good shields made the difference between life and death more than once.
If the new guy is meant to integrate the main battleline (and most are, since most casualties come from there), he goes shield expert.

Axe Mastery :
The go-to for the main battleline. You split shields faster and therefor kill enemies faster, which means less injuries to your dudes. Also, less fatigue allows for more agressive play.

Sword Mastery :
Only my captain has it. And that’s because he is the only one with a sword.

Sergeant :
Mainly a RP thing but I take it for the three polearm dudes, as they can easily move along the line.

Battle Forged :
Increased armor is always good.

[Johel3007]

As many players will attest, most battles in this game have to be fought in thight formation, less your dudes get swarmed by enemies and die very quickly.
The problem with the phalanx is that it can degenerate in a slow meat grinder and, once the melee is fully engaged, it only take 2 dead guys for the whole line to collapse as the enemy rolls it from the flank.
I had that problem a lot when I started the game, especially against the undeads who just kept reanimating and slowly tearing appart my line as my dudes got tired and their equipment broke while not managing to kill undeads faster than they could reanimate.

Recently, it changed as I started a new campaign with one of my dudes having a pitchfork as his starting weapon…

While amusing, my first reflex was to prepare to dump that peasant’s improvised weapon and replace it with a proper spear + shield so he might survive his first battle at least. But something stayed my hand and I thought “what the hell, let’s try it. Could be fun…”
And looking more closely to the weapon, I saw it could be fun : the pitchfork had a range of 2 tiles, meaning the peasant didn’t even have to get into melee and risk its skin. I had seen that capacity with the billhook already but had never found enough billhooks to think about including the weapon into my battle tactic and the one time I had tried it, the dude had been killed by an arrow…
This time, the pitchfork was being used without any ambition. I just expected its wielder to die a gruesome death and confirm my first impression.

But then, he did marvel in the first battle, hidding like a coward behind the rest of the guys and even killing something !!
Finding 2 pikes (which look cool with their red furry bit) after was a stroke of luck. I also recruited a dude with javelins, which I had never used either so far and decided to roll with it, going so far as buying more javelins for another new recruit, going by the same “You’re a prototype, son. Prepare to die.” mentality as I had with the pitchfork dude.
Soon, I had a band of 9 : 2 pikemen, 2 javeliners with shields (and hatchets as backup), 2 “heavyhitters” with maces + shields and the best armors I could afford, 2 spearmen with spears + shields… and a Bowman. I had never had much luck with them but they are handy to shoot opposing archers when your other dudes are too tired and banged up (or simply still in melee) to act.
The combo worked marvel, with two lines :
A) spearmen and heavies, the spearmen using the spearwall when they could and then just holding while the heavies smash armors and endure very well on their own.
B) the javeliners on the side of the second line, using their javelins to wound the approching enemies before rushing with their hatchet and holding the (slightly curved) line as the ennemies close in and try the encircle.
C) on the center of the second line (and eventually in the center of the half circle), the pikemen, hacking at enemies they have the most chances to hit. The damage they do is enormous and it’s often enough to one-shot a lightly armored enemy.

As it allows to deliver up to 6 hits on single opponent every round, some enemies don’t even have the chance to do a single hit before dying.

I eventually increased the ranks to 12 dudes, adding 1 “billhooker” and 2 more spearmen, as I saw that I needed more bodies to extend my first line. I still make mistakes and lose A LOT of spearmen, mainly because they are lightly armored compared to the macemen but have to endure the same punishment but there’s no way around it : they need their fatigue to keep that spearwall up to prevent encirclement of the line.
I haven’t lost a single pikemen so far. The javeliners endure too and so do the macemen and the bowman. The main issue is that the tactic is a bit static, as I realized against a bunch of bandits that had 3 bowmen and weren’t in a hurry to close in. It also dépends A LOT on your ability to spot a good terrain and reach it in good order before the enemy can close in melee. But once the half-circle is formed and ready, it’s impossible to break. You might have to step back sometimes when a spearman dies but the worst losses I had so far are 3 dudes in one battle, all low-level spearmen.

To sum it up : get at least 2 pikemen in your band, they are more than worth it.

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