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Sarissofoi wrote:

I think marksman have bow mastery.

Again, he was wearing a Short Bow even with Bow Mastery the maximum range with Quick Shot should be 6.

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RusBear wrote:

AI can “miss” and kill…
1. brother who out of range
2. hiden in bush 1 hp brother
3. 2 hit by magical 5 % in head at nigth when his real % is “minus”

There was literally none of my troops in his range. He should have only been able to fire an aimed shot and not 2 quick shots.

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Agreed.

Please listen already.

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You may not know this: You can always retreat. Even if it is the enemy’s turn.

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mrbunnyban wrote:

Edit: Wait, just to confirm, red shield icon is gone and you receive no penalty to hit the enemy?

Yeah, you can basically use Archers instead of polearm users now.

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Hey!

@Mike nice stuff! Seems like you put a lot of work into that strategy. You should make some youtube videos and explain in detail!

@OP: you will see that everyone builds their archers differently as it is just preference, so here is what I run:
4 dedicated Archers for most battles. Built to overwhelm and never die. No hybrid (not dedicated anyways). The reason for this is that Enemy archers used to be insanely strong a few updates ago, they seem to be weaker now so maybe I am going overkill on the defensive perks.

Absolutely mandatory perks are
1. Bow Mastery and 2. Berserk. Berserk is pretty much the best perk in the game imo, I use it on every single trooper I have. And
3. Footworks. We don’t have enough attribute points to spec heavily into melee defense and this guy is a lifesaver especially against orcs.
the rest is pretty much optional and you can experiment with builds.

Recommended perks are
4. Pathfinder, I also use this on every trooper I have simply becasue otherwise I would be utterly screwed in swamps, forests, snow etc.
5. Anticipation: The best defensive perk against enemy archers provided you have decent base ranged def like 15-30.
6. Recover. Another perk I use on almost all my characters. It is very nice in long battles and helps restore initiative as well.
7. Bullseye doubles your accuracy against people behind cover. Very useful to snipe necromancers and enemy archers and goblin overseers/shamans. Also helps with destroying armor of ancient legionaire pikers. I tried to run without this perk in my current playthrough and ended up taking it around lv6 or 7 anyways because I had such a hard time sniping enemy archers.

The rest is very situational.
I am also using 8. Overwhelm. Very black and white perk. Amazing perk against slow enemies like Wiedergangers, Legionaires, Hedge Knights, Orcs. Maybe also against noble houses – have only had one encounter with them very early where nobody had this perk. Utterly pointless against fast enemies because It doesn’t seem possible to get initiative up high enough to be faster than brigand marksmen, goblins, direwolves.
9. Steel brow I am using because it has been recommended to me by sarissofoi. Helps with not getting literally oneshot by a lucky headshot. Maybe not necessary if you have high HP coupled with named head armor or eagle eye and head armor.
10. Dodge – very strong early game perk and also adds melee defense. Maybe not necessary if your guy will end up with 30-40 ranged defense and 10+ melee def. On my latest recruit with ranged def** I will try and give him nimble or killing frenzy instead.

Some other perks I guess should be discussed:
Killing Frenzy: Great perk for extra damage. I will probably get back to using this once I figure out which other perk to drop for it :)
Fast adaption: great perk for early trash guys, not so good if you get hunters who will end up with 90-105 ranged skill dependent on starting value and talents.
Crippling strikes I have never been a fan of. Usually enemies die fast enough so wounds are just a bonus. Warbows don’t really have enough armor penetration.
Bags and Belts seems kind of weak right now, better on hybrid builds. Quick hands also good on hybrids, not really necessary for pure archers. Gifted is good for grunts without talent but I am not using this perk anymore 3 veteran levels are not much to trade for an extra perk point imo.
Nimble – haven’t tried on archers yet but I imagine it will be better than dodge in the late-game.
Fearsome: It’s a great perk but I simply don’t have enough point left over.
Brawny: have used before and decided to drop it.

Crossbows are great in the early game because they are more accurate. I also like using Spiked Impalers against fully grown ghouls and knock them back to avoid them eating one of my brothers. Ultimately they can use heavy armor but their damage output is just so much lower than Archers so I only use them when levelling new recruits I don’t want to die so they get scale armor and a crossbow and helmet.

Anyways in my current playthrough on Expert Iron man day140 I only lost one archer on day 31 who got 2-shot by a Necrosavant.
Also: Poachers and Bowyer background have not ever yielded a good archer for me. Even a hunter without any talent or sellsword, squire with talents turn out better for me.

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Sarissofoi wrote:

Anyway few more things.

Let player have access to inventory before combat so he can dress up mercs or change formation.
Another things is to give some basic information at last what kind of enemy are hiding in the ruins. Scouting is just to time consuming or risky and losing time or men because you bring spears to skeleton fight is not nice or funny.

This would help so much. I usually always change troops or weapons before I go into battle, so this would only really help me when I sped up and go from city A to B without paying much attention or during caravan quests where I am sometimes simply too slow to hit space in time.
As for spears, I don’t use them anymore at all. Really great for early game and early midgame but aside from that they became pretty pointless in most fights. Simply not enough damage, on top comes this undead being resistant against pointy things. Even my dedicated spearwaller has a sword in his bag for once his wall gets broken and he is sitting 95% of the time in reserve.

Also scouting information would be really great. If I face goblins or bandits I don’t need sarge and can level a new guy instead but since there can also be geists in ruins I usually even run with 2 sarges just as a precaution.

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1) Most I have encountered was around 6 of them. They were not really a threat to my guys in heavy armor and battle forged. Also, if you know you will be facing them, try maces for stun

2) Yeah, this is really annoying. I am playing without late game crisis now becasue of this shit. People have complained about this from the day they announced that. Said it was a terrible idea to have settlements be destroyed. The devs answer was to add non crisis mode so this is what I am playing now.

3) Training hall could have more stuff to do in. Currently I do have the funds to make use of it and it’s not even that expensive. I also make sure that my new recruits get the last-hit on enemies to get them even more xp. Especially leaders and hedge knights that are already fleeing seem to give fairly good xp.

4) Early game they are a bit annoying, currently they don’t really pose a threat anymore. My archers run anticipation with high base def and don’t get targeted. My 2-handers with low ranged def but 300+ armor usually take some hits that don’t even tickle them. I have yet to encounter Master Archers.

5) Idk this swordmaster perk, but yeah. Duelist absolutely needs talent in defense and preferrably 10-20 base defense as well. My guy right now has about 45 melee defense and he is doing quite well, but I also built im to wear heavy armor and not use nimble.
Good duelist is the most difficult brother to acquire imo and doesn’t even seem that strong without a named weapon.

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Sarissofoi wrote:

agree that levels should count into resolve check but on the other hand – why then level resolve at all if you got passive growth?

Well, I’m sure that +1 resolve every level or 2 would not be overpowered. Maybe 1 resolve for every level 2-11 and 1 resolve every 2 levels 12+. Resolve is too important right now imo. A guy with 30 base resolve needs a lot of points to make him decent and not be such a coward. I don’t think I even had a character yet where I felt I could just not level resolve at all. Deserters have become completely useless in my eyes.
I would like to have to level resolve less.

@banner/sarge: I wish they went back and let it boost morale, maybe lower chance to go from steady to confident and change the bonus from 10% to +10 or some other flat bonus. Your ideas work too. I especially like the fatigue recovery idea.

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Is this for real?

So.. how did that fight end?

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Wow 40 ranged defense is nuts! Is that with Dodge bonus? With Anticipation you should never get hit really (5% for enemy archers). Especially if you have some sort of cover.
It’s up to you though. If you already have Dodge and need the perk points somewhere else – with 40 ranged def Anticipation is probably not even needed.

As to how it works, GlyphGryph has it right I believe.

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RusBear wrote:

f/You are satisfied that a veteran of the 20th level who killed 2000 enemies still has RND moral check from a Thug as well as a novice of 1st ?. You are happy then. Personally, I do not like this categorically.

g/Even too OP dodge and what devs have done with the captain-sergeant?
I know you as a person versed in the game and who have a lot of game experience.
Hmm maybe my requirements for the game are too high…

@f: I agree this is kind of stupid. A thug, even 6 thugs are simply no threat to a veteran brother with a 2-hander and heavy armor. Resolve should increase with each level or even battle. If we get 1-2 resolve passively each level it would feel a lot more immersive imo.

@g: I don’t think dodge is all that great. In the early game and on archers its strong but for anyone in heavier armor it’s kind of pointless I think. I miss the old rally the troops, also the old RA.

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GlyphGryph wrote:

Wait… If it scales contract payments, and we know that contract payments are the most reliable way to determine difficulty…

That would imply that renown is in fact the primary driver of difficulty.

“Reliable”.. I really wouldn’t call it that. 2 contracts, one after another. First catch thieves, 2 raider 6 thugs 3 poachers – 2* contract rewarding about 800 crowns. Immediately after I take a 1* contract for about 400 crowns, retrieve relic, so I assumed it would be 8-10 auxiliaries at most. Turned out it was 2 necrosavants, 7 auxiliaries. In woods, so no information about enemy composition – companion archer got 2-shot. If it were 800 for a 1* contract I might have expected a bit more resistance. I should probably also mention that the savants started off with about 50% of their max HP. I would like to know if that is the reason they were being treated as low-tier?

Sometimes, you get a 3* contract for say 1500 crowns against 15 or so enemies, mostly thugs, some raiders, a leader and 2-3 marksmen. At the same time you get a 2* contract for 1k crowns against 10 raiders or so – which is the more difficult fight imo.

The thing about renown scaling rewards but not difficulty makes the whole guessing of what we may encounter a bit inconsistent. If the difficulty is scaling with company level or ingame-days but rewards are unaffected, we get to situations like this: we take a contract one day, it is easy and a few guys get a levelup. We go straight to the next city, take a similar contract with the same rewards, same amount of skulls – it should be just as easy, right? I mean we literally just did the same job 5 minutes ago, however in the meantime difficulty got ramped up and now you may be in trouble.

Anyways the balancing in general seems pretty decent to me right now, just sometimes there are these random occasions where I feel really cheated.

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Yeah it contains a ton of information. I also have no idea how it is encoded – I tried changing company name and stuff like that but could not find a way to do so.
I usually just get a backup from the very start. If I get unlucky and fail during the first 10 days it’s really nice to not have to roll for a new map again.

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This would be great.

You can actually replay your own maps. As soon as you get your first chance to save you can create a backup from your savegame. It should be in /my documents/battle brothers/savegames.

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