RVallant

[RVallant]

^I’d suppose it’s for armour-ignoring enemies, but yeah I find the use of Colossus somewhat ‘meh’.

[RVallant]

I get OHKO decaps all the time when fighting Orcs, which is why I avoid them. But so far all my experiences of fighting Orcs have been early game with high-tier cloth and low-tier metal helms.

[RVallant]

Rap wrote:

I didn’t say we’d remove the random element on levelup. We will, however, change the way those stat gains are determined in order to eliminate an exploit with saving and loading the game repeatedly, and for that matter to allow for a cancel button on the levelup screen.

Has tying in stat growth to background been considered or would that be too risky insofar as it would cause players to elect for a select group of backgrounds? Hmm.

[RVallant]

Sky wrote:

It seems logical, maybe even the right thing. Unfortunately that will disturb the current undead battle flow and will need further compensation to the undead side. Like increasing they numbers further, or making them stronger. If it would be implemented now the balance could fall imo.

Not necessarily. Even with medium numbers of undead, there is fatigue management to consider and any player holding up a wall may very well elect not to break that wall in order to cut off a head, particularly if it means moving forward/moving one or two brothers into a melee. There would still be a risk/reward element, especially if the ‘kill’ requires 2-4AP.

[RVallant]

For me, Melee/Range (whatever primary weapon) and Fatigue are the two absolute must haves.

You need fatigue, especially if piling on the armour and bigger, beefier weapons.

[RVallant]

My early strategy is to build the ‘core’ forces. I pick backgrounds that don’t have fatigue penalties, so I look for Farmhands, Lumberjacks, Hunters anything that can hold a sword the right end up without being exhausted.

I aim for a squad of;

3 Spears, 2 Axes, 2 Maces/Warhammer, 2 Swords, 3 Archers/Crossbows.

The absolute priority is Spearmen though, the idea is to have a wrap-around battle line, spear in the middle and on the flanks with the axes, maces and swords ready to deal damage as needed. I sometimes pull the swords deep ‘behind’ the spears on the flanks because I like to try and keep them somewhat mobile enough to take out anything that loses its armour. Axes deal with shields asap, Maces wear out the armour along with the spearmen who spearwall anything and everything or forces the enemy to split into pockets that I can overlap with the swordsmen (in theory!)

Priority for armour and shields go to the Spears at first as losing a good spear-user is an absolute pain in the butt as the game progresses as rookie spear users tend to be a weak link in the line. I think I can make that strategy a lot more effective once Deployment is introduced, at the moment its luck of the draw whether I get my line set up in time for battle (absolutely no chance against Werewolves who just blitz into the bloody line).

Money is the priority so I usually take a caravan contract right out of the gate, if they are available! These usually give some nice coin for reasonable fights, but sometimes you’re looking at an instant game over tbh, my last ‘failed’ game had my mercs do a caravan contract for almost 1,500 crowns. The trek was huge(!) We fought off two bandit groups, an undead group and then a pack of werewolves and finally literally two steps away from the destination a hunting party of fully grown Orcs went to town on us. No chance! I reckon the caravan guards knew so too as they kinda just let my men get ground to mincemeat before they bothered half-heartedly poking at an Orc! Yeah I could have ran away at that point but… After all those battles it seemed a shamed to give up right at the destination point. :(

I don’t bother with delivery quests, they don’t offer enough to bother with. I’ll take up scouting missions sometimes depending on the terrain and I’ll do raze missions versus bandits, but I’ll abandon them if they send me to an Orc stronghold (learnt that lesson in my first ever game, OHKO head lopping? No thanks!)

A tip for those engrossed in the battle system; Rest, and rest often. I chain missions so often I once ended up fighting a bandit camp with a team half-wounded and with tattered armour. We won, but it was stupid and I didn’t realise we ran out of repair tools, so that was pretty dumb. Ironically, on the way to the castle to get repair tools I got hunted down by werewolves, so yay!

[RVallant]

Spears at the moment are my go to weapons. The +20% to hit in a game where you will miss plenty of 80%+ hits is pretty much necessary early on and throughout when you need things dropping quickly.

Swords are good too, +10% hit is nice, riposte is good vs Wolves and anything with broken armour is going down reasonably quickly with swords. I was experimenting with the Military Cleaver and was wondering why the hit % was so low! Didn’t realise it doesn’t get the sword bonus. Decapitate is just brilliant as a high-risk ‘oh crap, gotta kill the idiot before he wipes me out’. Misses often, but when it does work… -I had it work on a bandit leader, that was fun, everyone ran away pronto!

While I like Axes they miss far too often, shield break is useful tho… Maces are my armour destroyers when they can get around in time, stun when it hits can be a life-saver.

I’m not liking ranged weapons. Very hit and miss, I’m not a fan of all-rounders as I’d rather have my archers as specialist archers, but finding someone with a decent range stat is bordering impossible. My latest game was interesting, 15 days not one hunter or poacher showed up for recruitment, so I went without archers and had an easier time of things(!) That might change when goblins turn up.

Have stayed away from 2H weapons so far… I think early on they’re asking for trouble and since I build around survivability I haven’t had much chance to build a spare recruit into a 2H role, especially when people die. Training replacements becomes too important as does repairing armour that kills the finances enough that it isn’t cost-effective for me to try them out, other than 2 tile reach weapons though, thems the bees knees with a good shield-line.

[RVallant]

Grudgebringers.

+5 points for anyone who knows where that comes from.

[RVallant]

Bandits are easy, just a standard line formation will deal with them.

Undead I enjoy fighting, tons and tons of them and we just hack them down. Haven’t had the higher levelled ones yet though.

Werewolves are easy as well, solid shield wall/spear wall and riposte. Cut them down and keep that defence up.

Orcs? Ugh, I’ve not had fun with them as I’ve had them thrown at me in the early game quite often now, particularly in missions. Luck of the RNG I suppose. I can usually do ok at the start, block them in, stop them charging, stab them a thousand times, but once they decide to their OHKO Off with their heads attack that’s it, game over.

[RVallant]

Shield bash should do stun damage imo, to represent the opponent falling back and having to recompose themselves for another attack. Alternatively a defence penalty for 1-2 turns (or to expire on the second action basically) as they have to rebalance their defensive positioning.

If that is too overpowered then having a failed shield bash cause you to get the defensive penalty might be a negative to ensure that people don’t go out bashing willy-nilly, it could represent a shield bash being withstood, causing the ‘basher’ to fall back / be disoriented / lose balance and require them to adjust. Pointedly, I think it would also need to cancel any pre-applied shield wall.

I think that would be a viable, if risky method of breaking down that last guardian or pest that you’ve surrounded but won’t let his defences down whilst being extremely punishing is misused at the wrong time.

[RVallant]

I was hoping to see more 1H type defences available, but my ideas were already covered by Evade/Dodge and Riposte.

Basically something like ‘Defensive fighter’ – When fighting without a shield, the battle brother switches into a more conservative stance ready to deflect melee blows with his primary weapon. Gain +xx% melee defence, but no ranged defence.

Sort of to highlight a fighter who relies on his weapon to defend and not his dodging or evading ability… Sort of like a counter-puncher type of character, but I can’t think of a way to implement that without infringing on riposte. Oh and the lack of range defence is on point, I can’t imagine someone blocking with consistency with a weapon vs an arrow tbh.

[RVallant]

I dunno, I don’t go by the %’s anymore and simply go the route of high fatigue characters in order to offset the finicky chances. If I see an 75-80+ chance to hit, I go defensive expecting it to miss. I’m in awe when it does hit at times!

Usually in other games a 75-80% hit seems to be a hit the majority of times, this one seems the opposite way. That may be just the perception of things though. Nothing gets me grumbling than missing an 80% hit and then being sniped by a quick shot archer from 7 tiles away when I’m hiding in a bush. Crack shot indeed.

[RVallant]

I’m in agreement with the pro-customisation guys.

I don’t think it’s going to have a too much of an impact on the early game, where equipment is key and you’ll still have your heads lopped off if the RNG decides to throw a party of fully grown Orcs at you in the first mission after the ‘tutorial’ (as I’ve experienced in two out of my three games so far!)

I did find it odd when I saw that my ‘shield-brothers’ were a Miller, a fisherman and a bumbling idiot all whom didn’t know the pointy end of a sword or spear. Personally, I think that the founding members should at least be reasonably competent at fighting going by the introduction history. I guess the simplest way to deal with that is to change to the introduction a tad to remove mention of them being previous shield-brothers, particularly if we’re planning to throw in a weak street beggar and a chubby mason.

I also agree with the idea of having the PC be in the background when stuff like blacksmiths are made available. I wouldn’t mind seeing perks and stuff for the PC either, maybe things that can be selected after total completions of missions that can add flavour to the mercenary band, either in the way its run or the way it fights. Penalties or bonuses to recruitment, types of contracts (like a specialisation) or even bonuses to methods of fighting (shieldwall turtles, or fast mobile scouters) but that’s just a bare idea.

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