Mike

[Mike]

Hello,

welcome to the community :)
Good call on the need for archers – from my experience having solid shooting is crucial. It allows you to get rid of key targets (necromancers, crossbows, standard bearers) fast and helps to soften up the enemy as he approaches your line. My standard setup is:

4 specialized archers (middle of the 2nd line)
2 “flankers” crossbow/melee hybrids (on both sides of second line)

Archers are focused on maximum damage at range and double as polearm users when tactically preferable (read: when they’ve already killed everyone who’s not in melee with the 1st line). They use bows (backup quiver or 2 in your bags in absolutely mandatory) and 2h-reach weapons: pike at first as they need boost to melee accuracy, then switch to longaxe (best unarmored HP damage, shield breaking). If I know I’m facing heavily armored opponents in next battle (say, orc warriors) I change their equipment to crossbows and billhooks. They wear closed mail coif (or any named helmet that doesn’t limit vision… you can get away with a -1 vision if you roll Eagle Eye trait) and Mail Shirt-grade armor (130-150 armor). In the endgame it’s prudent to give them Steel Brow and better chest armor to avoid embarrasing 1-shots from crossbows.

Do note that after some recent changes it’s quite safe to shoot directly from behind your brother’s back at someone who is fighting him in melee, so it’s theoretically possible to go full-on range combat and forego melee completely. I just don’t think it’s worth it as polearms offer great support and flexibility (especially when fighting skeletons. On the topic of skeletons remember that unlike dem bones their armor is not resistant to ranged attacks).

Stat-wise I focus on ranged skill (obvious), fatigue (you get a silly amount of shots with Berserk and need endurance to support that) and ranged defense (never let them stay in melee), in that order. Initiative (for faster movement and possibly Dodge bonus) and melee skill (for actually hitting something with a polearm) are nice secondary stats when you’re hit with bad rolls on the main ones (in general never pick up a roll of 1, and pick a “secondary” roll of 3 over a “primary” of 2).
In order to make them effective you need them to come from a decent background (poacher/hunter are a good start, sellsword is optimal) and have as least 2 stars in ranged skill (you want them to hit at least 80 in that).

Perk-wise it’s all about pumping out the hurt, and in a hurry. My absolute mainstays are:

1. Bow Mastery – essential for out-sniping goblins and other rangers
2. Berserk – you’ll be getting a lot of kills later on as with decent skill you can easily pick the softest targets
3. Killing Frenzy – great synergy with above for a snowball effect
4. Crippling Strikes – for softening up scary targets (*cough* orc warriors *cough*) that you can’t reliably kill before they reach your line. The injuries are rather random and range from “mildly annoying” to “absolutely crippling” but either way they stack and add up quickly
5. Fearsome – absolutely amazing when facing tightly-packed living targets (sadly useless against undead) – their whole formation can scatter before they even close the distance between your lines
6. Fast Adaptation – for dueling with other archers and gaining something even from missed attacks
7. Quick Hands – mandatory for using a 2-hander effectively as otherwise you waste a whole turn while switching weapons
8. Footwork – with focus on ranged combat/defense and light armor you are dead meat in melee, if anyone puts you there (that damned orc warriors again) you need to get out ASAP

The rest is not as crucial and more debatable IMO, here’s my opinion:

1. Bullseye – used to be OP and pretty much mandatory, now it’s not really crucial – the bonus is rather small and with smart targeting/waiting not needed all that often
2. Steel Brow – a potential life-saver, but with a good build and defenvise perks (see below) headshots are very unlikely to occur at all. You gotta ask yourself one question: do I feel lucky?
3. Anticipation/Dodge – mostly taken so you can avoid getting sniped on turn 1, their usefulness depends on how fast you can take out the opposing rangers, and what are your stats. If you have at least 20-30 base (as in, not factoring any equipment in) ranged defense and a decent amount of both HP and armor Anticipation is sexier; if your ranged def is lacking but you’ve got around a 100 initiative at the start of each battle Dodge will serve you better. Never take both at once, you need those perk points elsewhere
4. Crossbow Mastery – crossbows are really good regardless of the perk, and it doesn’t add anything special (unlike the bow mastery). Take it if you’re going for the “war” endgame crisis or plan to hunt tin cans on a regular basis
5. Head Hunter – can get you a spectacular 1-shot-kill but also hinder you when the previously undamaged helmet stops a shot that would otherwise kill an armorless enemy. I skip it on my latest builds
6. Pathfinder – potentially useful for getting to an advantageous position, loses value if you mostly stay put – a matter of your preferred tactic. I skip it
7. Bags and Belts – currently rather weak, at any rate not much needed – at the beginning 20 arrows will last you entire fight, later on when you run out you can just switch to a polearm (you kill important targets hanging out in the back first). Skip it hard.
8. Executioner – nice synergy with Crippling Strikes is undeniable but 20% is just not worth a perk point when competing options are so much better. Viable if you wanna go full “glass cannon” mode
9. Axe Mastery – a potentially nice addition if you use a poleaxe often, but your melee-oriented bros have ways of dealing with shields, so just stick to what you do best – turning enemies into pincushions. Skip.
10. Polearm Mastery – come hell and high water, I’ll still skip it hard. Hell, I skip it on dedicated polearm users, that’s how useless that perk is.

I’ll come back later to elaborate on “flankers” and ranged combat tactics. Hope the above helps you already.

[Mike]

mrbunnyban wrote:

it encourages players to throw away brothers who have no talent and have poor stat gain rolls in the primary stats they want

Yeah, well… that’s pretty much the whole point, innit? Main focus of the game is creating an effective fighting force, why would you keep a short-sighted clumsy oaf? I mean, you could do it as a kind of a self-imposed challenge, but it doesn;t make much sense gameplay-wise.

mrbunnyban wrote:

makes me pretty sad for the early farmhands and fishermen I hire who have become veterans as they need to be discarded

No reason why a talented bro of a decent background can’t stay with you until endgame. A good farmhand can make a better fighter than a weak brawler, it’s all about who gets more favour from the RNG.

mrbunnyban wrote:

My fantasy of building a band of professional mercs from a band of brothers with humble beginnings is ruined.

A bit too heavy on the drama for my taste. The game is far from impossible to play with suboptimal backgrounds and builds, if you have a dream that you wish to pursue by all means do so, just accept that you will have a harder time doing so than someone who plays the game as intended.

[Mike]

Not a bad idea in itself but I think that changing the number of units on the field would shake the carefully-crafted balance too much.

I guess that an “easy way out” of the “losing a man problem” would be to change the banner from a weapon to an accessory to be carried in the slot like the sergeant’s sash… Or maybe strip it of it’s combat stats and make it occupy the shield slot, allowing a bro to use a 1-handed weapon along with it? Might be a solution as well…

Though I’d much rather see the banner buffed to make a valuable mainstay 2H weapon instead.

[Mike]

Thanks for the tip but AFAIK the save file contains all the information about the game and its’ settings, so you can’t use this method to play on the same map but with a different company and on a different difficulty/game setting.

Or am I missing something?

[Mike]

Ioci wrote:

what about our bannerguy wave the banner then make one of the brother super confidence?

I just imagined the bannerman pointing to one of our bros and shouting:

Oi, Sven! My lad, don’t you look prettier than a sunshine today! What a handsome face! And those broad shoulders, aren’t you the fancy of any lady from here to Sandheim! Better hurry up and slaughter those arseholes real quick-like if you wanna get to taste them sweet bosoms before the sunset!
…
…
…
<SQUAD MORALE RESTORED!> :D

Ioci wrote:

the new version of rally the troop is nerfed that it wont get any of our guy’s moral higher than steady

indeed it is nerfed like so. all the more reason to buff the standard! :)

[Mike]

Ioci wrote:

MY GUESS:
2. renown will affect the world map difficulty.

no.

Rap wrote:

Renown (…) has no bearing on contract difficulty other than that.

directly or indirectly, one would assume.

Guessing is really quite pointless right now unless someone can provide us with some hard data.

[Mike]

Wargasm wrote:

it ought to be possible to avoid the ambition (…)

I disagree. At the beginning you always have a couple different ambitions to choose from, if you’re left with only the “battle standard” one it means you’re far enough into the game that 2.5k really shouldn’t be a problem. Unless you’re playing on the top difficulty, but then it’s meant to be punishingly hard.

Ioci wrote:

how about give the battle standard the ability that those goblin overseers have?

I don’t think it would really fit – the overseers lash their subordinates, so it’s “inspiring” by pain and fear rather than pride or honor – fitting for the green sneaky gitz or soviet comissars, but not a mercenary band that’s supposed to be connected by ties of friendship and mutual respect.

[Mike]

The tradeoff of the skull seems rather steep to me. The only feasible user of the item would be a Fearsome 2H axe/sword user who actually aims to be surrounded… and then he really NEEDS to get any bonus morale he can get, both for increased survivability and morale malus/fleeing avoidance.

So the skull is essentially counter-productive to itself.

I guess it would be ok for a “Dastard” character, as he would suffer no further penalty from the item… but then again I avoid this trait like a plague

[Mike]

The only way I ever “exploited” the map border was putting my formation with it’s back to it, and only because outside of the dense forest there are no natural barriers that can protect your flanks/back from 30+ enemies that you keep facing later on. I don’t really see this as an exploit because I never run from a started battle unless I’m obviously getting decimated.

I dislike attempts to “balance” a singleplayer game around those few people that abuse some mechanics, because while it often makes life harder for an ordinary players those who want to use bugs/glitches/exploits/outright cheats will ALWAYS do so, there is simply no way you can prevent it.

And to be honest, why shouldn’t they? It’s singleplayer, if somebody wants to spoil his own – and only his own – fun that way nobody else really cares <insert a stale meme here>

[Mike]

McKing wrote:

If we could somehow receive the reward in any place belonging to that noble faction, it would be great.

+1

I’m not sure if it’s more annoying or amusing that when I get a mission from small fort A to clear orcs from around huge city B nobody in the said city seems to care unless I go back to the fort. They even retain the malus from “marauding greenskins”… which I just murdered with maximum prejudice and dismemberment.

[Mike]

Rap, we know you are reading this, so… If we cannot get the answer to our question, can we at least get informed what purpose withholding this information from us serves?

Game has no multi, it’s not like someone is going to exploit this somehow to mess with other players.

[Mike]

gepardowaty wrote:

I have an idea (…)

Oh, that’s hilarious! My poor sides.

Necros currently have:
– best mobility in the game… twice each turn
– ignoring zones of control
– high initiative
– high HP
– HP regen
– Nine Lives
– high attack skill
– high defence skill
– weapon that is good against HP, good against armor and applies a strong stacking bleed
– probably the best AI in the game
– come in numbers and (usually) with support of other undead
– are likely to shrug off both stuns (hi def) and nets (cut free in first move, escape in second), the only two things that could be remotely considered their weakness
– did I mention a frigging teleport… TWICE each turn?

Do kindly elaborate how removing just some of those is akin to nerfing them to the ground, especially in comparison to other end-game threats that don’t have half if their advantages. I’m tingling with anticipation!

gepardowaty wrote:

Why your bro shouldn’t get some vampiric powers

Because a) BB is a low-power, low-fantasy world with straight usage of actual magic restricted to select few enemies and b) if it’s not weak enough to be completely meaningless I can already name 3 builds off the top of my head that would make it completely broken

The only thing I agree on is that they give better rewards, and that’s not a counter to the previous arguments.

[Mike]

Sir Michael Starr wrote:

Necrosavants are ridiculously powerful in their current state.

+1

The old vampires were already powerful, I can’t imagine what was the train of thought behind buffing them even more. “Let’s see how much the players can take before they refuse to play”?

Well sure, you can also give them berserk, warlord scream and ak-47s and some people will still figure out how to beat them just for the heck of it, but I believe most would be less than amused.

At least change their weapon because giving something that does high HP damage, high armor damage AND high bleeding damage is just… not fun, to keep it diplomatic. Especially in the hands of a unit with all the other buffs that they enjoy.

[Mike]

Fotsvamp wrote:

would be quite fun.

For who, exactly? Certainly not for players unable to catch them at all unless they happen to have a crapload of nets on hand.

They work fine as they are, fulfilling their designated tactical role admirably while not being a jack-of-all-trades.

If you keep sticking upgrades to an already good unit you end up with another necrosavant – take a look around the forums and see how many people consider fighting something so brokenly OP to be “fun”…

[Mike]

What you suggest is a complete overhaul of the entire faction, that’s simply not going to happen on the eve of full release, if only for balancing reason.

I also must say that while I like VCs of Warhammer I don’t think they’re adequate copypasta material for BB. Creators are striving to achieve something fresh with the undead (pun unintended) amd I think that’s a good direction.

I agree with 2 of your ideas: throwing axes and injuries. Both makes sense abd would be highly amusing in case of the latter.

[Author]

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