Ryan

[Ryan]

Could this post be stickied to encourage use of the Wiki?

[Ryan]

I just recruited a Witch Hunter with a cross bow and after a few battles he’s now got the “quick hands” so as to be able to switch between crossbow and melee weapons. This allowed me to charge into combat and shoot from 0 range. The to-hit chance was pretty high and I wrecked the enemies armour pretty badly. Before finish his turn I switch to shield with my remaining AP to allow me to have my shield out, if not up, for his turn.
I’m sure this would work pretty well against Werewolves too (none of which i’ve run into yet, perhaps for want of exploring off road no doubt). Javalins would surely work well too, since werewolves are weakly armoured.
So far though, I think the key to this game is the utility tree for melee fighters. Upgrades in this order:
TEIR 1
Student (to gain additional XP right from the start)
Quick Hands (most important skill ever!)
Pathfinder (although its not as important as the others i’m sure being able to move one more hex in rough terrain and up hills without penalty has come in handy without me knowing it)
TEIR 2
Fear (breaking enemies and getting free hits is 2nd most imporant skill IMHO)
After this i’m not sure what the best (long term) melee build is as if you’ve been dumping points into Resolve then i’m sure the Captain skill has benefit. I’ve certainly tried the Footwork skill but have never remebered to use it. I therefore think background skills like Brawny and Weaponmaster or Battleflow must be better. Certainly, Battlefow must be worth while for the tail end of an engagement when you can loose men to unlucky hits if a particular enemy won’t just go down. Therefore, the skills that allow you to maintain/regain fatigue must ensure survivability as it allow you to finish enemies off with fatuguing attacks, or keep sheild wall up for one last turn until the enemy gets swamped.
TEIR 3
I’ve taken one skill on my leader, and the other on my 2ic, and dumping points in resolve must surely pay off when I need to Rally my party to reduce fatigue.
I think i’m at the point in the game now where I’ve milked the bandits for enough XP that my part is set to meet real tough Orcs and monsters.
Promise i’ll go find some werewolves to put my money where my mouth is in my next session…
PS, my party:
(all have quick hands, spears, axes and swords, and the archers all have offense skills. Main archer has just got the ‘close combat’ and ‘in the zone’ skill and a shit ton of fatugue built up, so should absolutely machine gun any werewolves from over peoples shoulders, even if the werewolves do make it straight into base contact in turn 1)
PPS, admittedly, I am playing on easy…

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[Ryan]

Haven’t met the big red armoured Orc yet, no. Soon hopefully (he’s so dead!).

Was just thinking why werewolves are so horrible at the moment. From what i’ve seen of them in LP videos they just jump out of the FOW in one mass on turn 1, whereas in the demo they came often came at you individually almost. This was almost scarier as your men would often be spread out and vulnerable the wrong moment – a bit like how Vampires tend to attack. I really liked the way the werewolves would run off if injured. Seems broken though that they come back to be slaughtered – surely they should exit the map or hide until a battle-timer expires.

Are werewolves afraid of fire? Having your party able to equip torches would be a nice way of warding them off. I suppose you would have to introduce a mechanic in the game that requires you say to move from your deployment zone to the other ‘board edge’, probably through a defile or forest, so as to give the werewolves some chance to catch you unawares.

Right now, i’m predicting that If you can survive turn one and turtle (perhaps by sacrificing a couple of men) AND if you are lucky enough with the terrain then werewolves are just a weaker version of Orcs (no charge skill, no area of effect weapons, low AP).

[Ryan]

PsenBattle wrote:

Hey Drew,
they can be very pesky. Be careful around forests as they tend to stick to the dark woods in the southwestern areas of the map.
Apart from that here are a few helpful hints from forum user Ryan:

Use Spear wall. Use shield and terrain to make you hard to
hit. Use sword and riposte skill to return more missed
blows than you could otherwise deal yourself. Terrain
advantage will give to-hit bonus for riposte. Once in
melee, concentrate on one opponent until his death
causes others to break, then hit with free attacks when
routing from melee.

On top of that armor helps a lot as they can attack often but dont have a very high armor effectiveness. Nevertheless they are always terryfying opponents

Claws have low AP eh? Will have to add that to my table…

It is odd; i’m on my second significant playthrough and i’ve not really fought anything but Orcs and Bandits yet.

(one 5 minute campaign consisted of getting jumped by a suprise group of 4 vampires and 3 fallen heroes right out of the gate…)

My first try was using spear rabble but my company never really got off the ground due to high turn over sapping my cash reserves and lack of achievable missions being offered. At one point I had several unarmed brothers on my rota who had to wait for weapons to be dropped in battle before they could meaningfully take part! Desertion of likeable characters caused me to abandon that game before I could really consider reviewing my ideas from the demo/LetsPlays.

My next play through went for quality rather than quantity, and having some heavy ‘rocks’ really helped in the first few battles – felt much more predicatable. Now, almost all my brothers EACH have a spear, an axe and a backup sword, plus helmets, armour and lots of utility perks, making it pretty easy ATM as I can freely swap to the right weapon for each enemy sub-type. I intend to go hunt down some werewolves to put my men to a proper test. Overall though, I think if you come up against werewolves it come down to luck of the map, more than anything.

[Ryan]

Crusader Kings 2 has a similar character creation DLC. It does seem to lead to min-max’ing (lots of advice online about being inbred being worth it to free up points for something useful, like being really tall…).

If not that, then something as simple as Oregon Trail’s 3 ‘class’ system (banker has high starting cash, but poor life skills, IIRC).

On my second play through I totally went down Sarissofoi’s “Noble Adventurer” route by buying a Knight in the first town, then a Squire, and then only hiring expensive militia, deserters and hunters.

I would have much preferred to have selected at least the Knight and Squire characters at start up, rather than having 3 rubbish starting brothers whose faces didn’t fit in the company I wanted to create.

Although I have had some great fun in CK2 when randomly picking a character, then RP’ing him/her regardless of what would otherwise be my prefernce, and then RP’ing whichever successor, but it is also nice to have some control over what you’ll be getting, to an extent. In CK2 i might somehow justify to myself sending my first son away to be tutorred by someones with good stats in the hope he won’t turn out TOO much like ‘me’!

It would also be nice to accept a massive starting malus to be able to lvl up at least one of your brothers to become more of a leader or figurehead (or Sargent if you want to consider your command role as being more remote [like the lieutenant in Aliens!]) or simply be able to mark him as such (say with a militia style armband?) without having him buffed in any way.

Although I do appreciate what GOD wrote about the banner/name/regiment perhaps being the more important identity. I think I’m more in favour of the company having a physical leader which you then RP. If ‘you’ get killed you just RP as the second in command. To me, not having a character to represent me in game feels a bit odd, and forced.

[Ryan]

Just the screenshot of the table. I know some people will just look at the post a think “No preview? Can’t be bothered clicking, bye!” (although same could be said about spreadsheets, in open office format too!)

EDIT:

Oh, look, figured it out myself!

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[Ryan]

@Mods

Can’t seem to get the img tag to get the Jpeg to show a preview, or get the link tag to work.

Little help?

[Ryan]

Tomme,

(thanks for the Lets Play BTW)

Just seems there should be more of a use for such a ubiquitous weapon.

Sarissofoi

I think you’re right about needing to have the right skills to use it, but perhaps some recruits should come with one skill, linked to their background. That way, your cheap ‘escaped murder’ would come with sack cloth and a knife, poor stats but otherwise be good-to-go right out of the box (in at least one situation, otherwise he’s just an orc speed hump).

Malthus

Yes, as i’d like to see the game playable as a lightly armed group of footmen as much as a heavy group of men-at-arms (that are afraid of riding).

[Ryan]

Why not have “back”, “belt” and “bag” slots?

That way, were you to start equipped with, say a hatchet and round shield, you could drop the hatchet to your belt, and switch your shield with your two handed ‘great axe’ or similar, from you back. The shield would then be on your back. Not sure how plausible carrying a ‘great axe’ or shield would be on your back, outside of the movies, without seriously effecting your ability to fight (well) but certainly keeping one weapon in a dedicated ‘slot’, like a knife in a belt scabbard, and a main weapon, like an axes, hanging from a belt would be sensible would it not?

Would stop people being able to carry two ‘un-holsetered’ weapons, so to speak.

The inventory perk would effectively be like allowing you to carry a brace of pistols, or a wear a funky extra shoulder/thigh/ankle holster!

[Ryan]

no to using villagers as incendiary pigs.

I’ll have to wait for Warhammer Total War for this then…

+1 for branching quest, and well, everything in this thread so far!

Especially loving the idea of minor map locations so we can watch the slow spread of the ‘big enemy’ and see the end-game approaching. Would be terrifying if all the farms were spawning zombies but were perhaps the only place for you battered company to rest for the night / scavange food from on a long journey to bring the news back to a town that the ‘big enemy’ were coming.

[Author]

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