Teslarod

[Teslarod]

After some major tweaking with my builds and a test run Crossbows are a main factor I have to consider in every single build. My Archers and Polearms all take Colossus, Battle Forged and Anticipation just to minimize the odds of getting 2 shot by Arbalesters later on.

Found a workable solution (see the thread Ranged Balancing) and am doing very well so far. Crossbows could actually use a rework or a buff. I remember the glory days of Crossbow swapping, shooting 3 Bolts on the first turn. Wouldn’t even be all that broken with all the Undead, Orcs, Goblins and Noble House troops around.
Maybe Crossbows should still do half damage if stopped by a shield and be 1/3 less common.

[Teslarod]

First of all those test results are odd. Even a Brother with 1000 Ranged Defense should get hit by 5% of all shots, so there is that.
Also the observation of “the shield never eats the arrow” probably results from that as well. You get an animation for the arrow hitting the shield instead of a miss quite often when trying to shoot “through” someone with a shield. Its probably just that the 15-30 Ranged Defense for the shield don’t matter against the 1000 the Brother already has.

I can confirm that if you target someone behind someone with a shield, the shield eats the hit quite often. Shooting center mass into a bunch of enemies seems to check 2 things.
1. If the intended shot is a hit.
2.1 If it is, the game checks if it is still a hit against the guy who causes the shooter to suffer from 75% “interception penalty”.
2.1.1 If your BS roll is high enough to get a clean hit on the guy intercepting you will get a hit on him
2.1.2 If your BS roll is high enough to hit but not high enough to account for shield defense bonus, you will get a hit on the shield.
2.2 The shot doesn’t hit and scatters
2.2.1 The shot scatters to an empty field and nothing happens
2.2.2 The shot scatters to an occupied field and hits automatically

This makes a lot of sense as it means you can reliably hit more often by aiming center mass into a group of opponents without shields.
The best way to make a shot go away is by “catching” it with a shield.

From these observations I came up with the following and run it successfully on Expert Ironman.
Fighting against opponents who hang back to shoot you:

Frontline put exactly zero points Ranged defense and gets Heavy Armour, Battle Forged as well as Kite Shields – they want to get “hit” as much as possible. Goal is to catch as many arrows as possible with the shield’s Range Defense bonus.
Second line (Archers, Polearms) skills Ranged Defense and Anticipation.
The front line then puts up a Shieldwall to get to 50+ Ranged Defense with adjacency bonus. Anything other than Mercenaries and Master Archers is down to 5% hit chance a
Crossbows camping in the back aren’t able to shoot back with their 6 tile range. So if your opponent camps in the back his Crossbows are of no concern for now. Bows without Bow Mastery can only hit your Frontline and get mostly caught in your Shieldwall. The occasional freak miss hitting someone will happen anyway but rarely.

Be aware of high ground – if you can, take it. If an opponent with multiple Crossbows has a height advantage against you, I’d strongly consider retreating and reengaging. Even a significantly weaker opponent gets scary with high ground.

After setting up go for exposed targets without shields. Use Aimed Shot to make those Arrows count. Creating a breach to shoot the opposing Crossbows/Archers has priority.
Fair warning, fighting like this makes the game a lot more manageable until you have higher levels and better armour, but it takes ages. Its a real challenge on your patience to maneuver to high ground and then Shieldwall/Skip turn with 9 Brothers just to shoot 3 arrows a turn. But its fairly safe and completely worth it if you have a tough fight ahead.

[Teslarod]

From playing a couple hundred hours of Expert Ironman the results are a bit surprising but very clear.
A dedicated Archer needs 3 things
1. Defensive perks and stats, so he’ll actually live to see LVL 6+. Getting killed by the first couple Necrosavants or 2 lucky Crossbows will happen even despite that.
2. secondary utility, so he won’t be useless against Ancient Undead.
3. Damage Output.

The mortality rates of my archers are insane. 10+ Wolfriders, Necrosavants are bad enough. But what they really die to most often are just regular Bandit Marksmen and Goblin Archers. Archers don’t wear shields and are mostly limited to light armour and helmets, so they are easy targets unless you get them to 40+ ranged defense. Stats are mostly Range Attack, Range Defense and Fatigue, if you get a +1 for either Attack or Defense take the best roll out of Melee Attack, Hitpoints and Resolve. Perks:
Tier1 I’m always taking Colossus since it puts you from 2-3 clean arrow/crossbow hits away from death to 3-4 right away.
Tier2 is Gifted to get the extra Ranged Attack, Ranged Defense and Fatigue.
Tier3 goes to Anticipation, now your guy can comfortably outshoot Bandits.
Tier4 is Bowmastery for Fatigue management and to outshoot/match Bandits in Range
Tier5 Footwork to get away from Melee

Note: Necrosavants will still kill those guys in 3 hits and there is nothing you can do about it other than to hide them in the middle of your formation.

From there its up to what you prefer, you now have an Archer that won’t just be doomed to die sooner or later and 5 more available Perks to build from.
My personal favorite is Quick Hands, Axe mastery, Killing Frenzy, Berserk and Fearsome/Headhunter. I prefer my Archers with Long Axes and Axe Mastery so they can really speed up getting rid of Nobles, Ancient Undead, Bandit Raiders and Orcs even without any melee skill after running out of Ammo.

On Expert you run into 5+ Bandit Marksmen with Longbows and Crossbows or even more Goblin Archers on a regular basis. The only way to get through that more or less unscathed is either running 12 guys with 400+ combined armour and Battleforged straight into melee or simply putting up a shield wall and outshooting them until they decide to charge you. The game gets really hard if you try to run into someone sitting back having more archers than you, even more if the terrain isn’t in your favor. Never again am I fighting 20+ Goblins in a swamp.

[Teslarod]

Second that.

When running away, baiting Geists, getting to higher ground or using any kind of maneuvers in general this would be a huge quality of life improvement.
It just takes ages to wait for even just 10 enemies to finish what they are doing, if your plan involves running around for 3 turns.

Later in the game with 20-40 opponents, retreating and maneuvers alike turn in to a chore.

[Teslarod]

Agreed with Sarissofoi. The Banner is a necessary evil at this point. Would be nice if it had an upgrade later in the game or a very noticeable active skill.
Like a 100% chance to rally fleeing allies with 10-20% drop of per tile distance rolled in or instead of the existing one.

[Teslarod]

Yeah on Expert Ironman you’re running a tight ship and there is so much that can go wrong, you might survive one bad fight if you’re in good shape. But if you’re barely scraping by already (which is the case half the time early on) and get ambushed or a bad surprise at a location you’re in deep trouble instantly.

I’m not even running much of a 2nd line anymore, your own mid tier archers are great, but target priority for enemy archers kills them sooner or later. Even with someone in front of them the sheer volume of fire will sooner or later kill anyone not wearing 200+ of body and helmet armour. Some random group of bandits with 3 or more Crossbows has good odds to straight up kill someone in the first 50 days or so anyway.
Not saying its impossible or too hard, but there is a problem with Ranged Brothers in general. They take quite a while to get useful, aren’t all that useful against a lot of targets and will probably die sooner or later two a headshot or two with a heavy crossbow.
Necrosavants, Wolfriders, mass or skilled enemy archers will occasionally kill one of them straight away and they aren’t easily replaced where you could just slap some armour on a new “fighty” background to replace a melee combatant.
3+ Archers with Warbows sitting on highground wreak some serious havoc if you have them against Orks or Humans. Getting them to that point can be a serious issue though, and they still don’t contribute much in night fights, against either of the undead or massed heavily armoured opponents like Orc Warriors.
Moral is tedious with Gheists being able to scare your 60+ resolve veterans shitless through 20-40 of Zombies without a way to reach them. There is an effective way to deal with them – running away so the Gheists chase you out of position and can be pummeled. But this takes like forever and then some.
Goblins are still utter bullshit and take forever to get rid of with a lot of injuries and unsatisfactory rewards. Grinding a week in game time to upgrade one piece of armour at a time while avoiding losses, ignoring potential new recruits, avoiding expensive recruits like the plague, until you can make sure they don’t just die in a ditch as soon as someone with a bit of armour piercing weaponry shows up.

The first 50 days are a real challenge, then you get your guys to LVL8 (%based damage reduction perk), have a frontline in good shape to start simply running down Goblins and Bandits before their archers can do serious work. Finally 2 handers come into the equation to serve as force multipliers (High tier armour, Reach advantage and %based damage reduction perk to eat Bolts, 2H Axe hits from Hedgeknights/Mercenaries/Warlords/Knights). Your backline has the necessary Perks to take a hit or to escape combat with an angry Orc Warlord and you’ll have some breathing room in your reserves to cycle in guys with permanent injuries or brothers that simply got benched for their stats.

Damn this game is fun, but Christ it took a few tries to make it far enough.

A few things that are completely unsatisfying at the moment – rare Item drop rates, haven’t seen a single named Item outside of shops for the last 150 days of early/midgame, thats a real bummer – even more so since I wasn’t even close to be able to afford one by buying it so far. Actually apart from right at the start of them game, all my money goes into
1. Tools & Food
2. Affordable backgrounds to get a full company going
3. The best armour I can afford
4. Combat backgrounds
5. no clue never had this much money

My best playthroughs are fueled by slight exploits. Get to day 30 or so, pick the weakest faction on the map, breaking contracts/events that cause hostility until they are attackable. Hunt their Caravans for easy 1.5k+ all over the map without much repercussion than the occasional lost caravan contract.

Cities. It seems like 4/5 contracts a city will give you are caravan contracts or deliveries. Which sucks because you really want to have them on slightly better terms.

Contracts in early game in combination with Map composition. I have some serious issues with a lot of Maps, simply because there is a Motte and a Fortress in between two settlements. Unless I’m already set up to gain contracts from nobles, both locations are more or less worthless. If those locations could provide a limited variation of early game contracts (I’d even be happy about caravan or delivery contracts if that means the cities get more other stuff) that aren’t related to faction reputation but can be used to make money that would be really great.

Tools. Holy crap. Expert wouldn’t be such a damned struggle if you could just sustain a basic level of combat preparation early game without investing at least half your income in tools. Not being able to repair your stuff is what kills your guys early on, keeps you from upgrading your already expensive gear and a single stack can be as expensive as your next contract reward or more if the village is currently suffering from ambushed trade routes. Its not like you can choose not to buy them since you’ve probably bought all available tools on your last location anyway. Their availability isn’t all that great either. Expense based more on equipment quality/points of durability replenished would go a long way to take the difficulty early on down a notch without affecting the game mechanics or mid-/lategame.

Generally speaking, awesome game, time to start over to get after trying to beat some mercenaries way too early again.

[Teslarod]

Is… is that a dungeon? Or well, guess I’d settle for a mineshaft.

While I certainly disagree that every other fantasy battle needs to be in a hole in the ground a prisonbreak or a bandits raiding a mine contract would be cool for an alternative map.

[Teslarod]

Oh well I just wrote an essay over on the Feedback Forum…. guess the last part should have gone here.

Things I would really like to see in the final game:

1.Earning acces to some locations, just marching into a fortress and buying the best gear around could be unlocked by difficult tasks to make it more rewarding to get your hands on Plate Armour.

2.Some way to save a “destroyed armour”, every Undead basically is already equipped with “destroyed armour”, its just something that feels a bit off.

3.Maps. I don’t have any problem with them being expensive, vague and them not revealing the exact location. I just want to be able to find the real lategame stuff somehow. There should be someone who has seen the friggin goblin capital from afar somewhere.

4.Some more variety in quests, 1vs1 “knight” tournaments (like the tjosting event just as an actual fight), the below mentioned siege and bounty hunting come to mind

5.Siege events/maps for attacked villages and towns (they tend to take a while, so maybe even breaking a siege/reconquering as a quest?), maybe even including siege weapons and destroyable gates.

6.Fog of war on the worldmap to be aware of current vision range.

7.As well as some “caravan indicator” because lets face it caravan quests are good as they are but we all try to explore a bit along the way and accidentially went a bit to far a few times.

8.Visual highlighing for locations, important names, rewards and cardinal directions in quests.

9.Cavalry, really, limit them but please make it possible, Wolfriders are in the game after all.

10.Please consider 2 assigned leaders. One real Leader that levels leadership skills along levels and one 2nd in command with a more…. direct approach to keep moral up.

11.More levels and classes already starting at certain levels. Thus a Caravanhand can be as good as a Hedge Knight but will need considerably longer because the Hedge Knights already starts at lvl 15 while the Caravan Hand is a lvl 5.

This game is already very enjoyable and isn’t even close to its full potential yet.
Keep up the good work!
Keep up the good work!

[Teslarod]

Look at all those typos that will never be fixed….
It seems I can only edit once?

Juggernaut – Weapon: 2Hand Sword/Named 2Hand Axe, Armour: as heavy as possible while leaving >60 Fatigue open
Quantity – 1
Preferred Class – Hedge Knight, Wildman ~ your best Soldier high HP, high Fatigue, high Melee Defense
Stats – Melee Defense, HP till 100, Melee Offense, Fatigue,
Skills – Colossus, Battle Forged, Fast Adaption, Sundering Strikes, Bloody Harvest, Berserk, Full Force, Killing Frenzy, Hold Out, Fortified Mind

This guy is kind of the Problem Child. He wants to be in the front lines, yet he’s the only one there who gets hit. You definetely want Killing Frenzy so getting more defensive perks is out of the question. Only Solution is to keep him in the center of your formation and get him out of trouble with Rotation if necessary. When you’re a bit careful the reward is quite something. AoE attacks that tend to oneshot everything smaller than a Fallen Hero or Ork Warrior in its path following the first kill. Turning the numbers in your favour and finishing wounded tougher enemies is what this guy is good at. Fortified Mind is the Key skill to keep him alive late in the game. I lost more than one high level Juggernaut to the debuff from a single lost Soul while trying to fight a couple fallen Heroes. Retreatig isn’t an option for him, while every one else has on the fron’t won’t get hit by most retreat attacks even while fleeing, this guy will. Additionally Fortified Mind mentions something mentioned about Mind Control and I really don’t wan’t a big cleave in my Supports and Crossbowmen.

Support – Weapon: Billhook, Armour: Medium /Kite Shield + Noble Sword in Backpack
Quantity – 2
Preferred Class – Retired Soldier, Squire, Deserter… anyone with good Melee Skill but not good enough at anything else.
Stats – Melee Skill, Melee Defense, Hitpoints till 100, Fatigue
Skills – Colossus, Fast Adaptation, Sundering Strikes, Executioner, Full Force, Berserk, Killing Frenzy, Battle Forged, Hold Out, Rotation

These guys provide backup behind the lines to anyone in need or give you the advantage in a bottleneck. Since they have decent Melee defense they carry a Shield in their backpacks and can rotate to save fleeing or heavily wounded people from danger. They hit hard plus once they get a kill even harder and while stationary even twice. Early on Jagged Pikes are a good replacement for Billhooks. They don’t need quite as good (and expensive) armour as your frontline guys which helps until very very late in the game.

Crossbowman – Weapon: 2 Crossbows 2 Spiked Impaler + Heater Shield, Armour: Mail Hauberk
Quantity – 2
Preferred Class – Hunter
Stats – Hitpoints, Fatigue, Ranged Skill
Skills – Fast Adaption, Sundering Strikes, Executioner, Berserk, Quick Hands, Bags and Belts, Hold Out, Close Combat Archer, Killing Frenzy, Head Hunter

Since the change to armour piercing crossbows are the way to go. They always start loaded so even without Quickhands you can shoot for 2AP swap to another crossbow for 4AP and shoot again for 2 more. With Bags and Belts and 4 Crossbows you can do that for 2 turns in a row. With Berserk and Killing Frenzy you get 2 shots and if you manage to kill someone (which is very likely) you’ll get a 3rd shot with +50% damage. With a bit of luck 2 Crossbowmen can reliably kill 3 or more (5-6 has happened on occasions) weaker targets on turn 1 against Ghouls, Werewolves, Humans and Goblins. They also work pretty well against Orcs, especially Berserkers and can put some early damage on Vampires or Armour versus the Undead.
Worthy of note is that loaded crossbows can be fired in melee, quite devastating combined with Close Combat Archer and Killing Frenzy. 2 +50%/100% damage shots with very high hitchances can take care of many things that would cause serious trouble for a bow wielder.
Always keep in mind that your bolts are as dangerous for your own guys as they are for the enemy. Many of my near deaths where caused by my own crossbowmen scattering and hitting friendlies for 3/4 of their HP. The same clutch shots also saved a lot of lives, always remember that crossbows are a two edged sword.
Last but not least is the Spiked Impaler. You can get those special crossbows from goblin “chiefs”. They only get +10% to hit instead of +20% but do more damage and also get 1 tile knockback upon a hit. This can save a life but can also push a target out of range which should explain why I mix regular crossbows with Spiked Impalers.

Tactics:

General stuff:
Swords seem like the clear superior choice to me throughout the game. Only 10 fatigue per hit, +10% hitchance and decent basedamage are just too good to pass. While Later on I also use Fighting Axes and Warhammers on occasion there is nothing that beats a Falchion/orc-, goblin equivalent at this point. By the way why is the “Greenskin Falchion” superior (more durability and less fatigue to carry) to the Human one? Noble swords have carried me through the Warlords Fortress, the Black Monolith and the Raider’s Stronghold(?) haven’t had the luck to find the big goblin location yet found lots and lots of “Even” Undead locations in the Eastern Wastelands and Northern Thundra. So far the Undead take the cake for the most dangerous encounter, Souls + Vampires + Fallen Heroes + Necromances are a Pain to get under control within a sea Skeleton/-guards.

Bandits:
Bandits teach you the ropes early on, they sport very similar equipment and make painfully clear that the cow is a peasant compared to the mighty crossbow at some point. Probably the easiest faction to handle but definetely needed to get some early weapons and thus start to equip your men for tougher opponents. There are very few special tactics needed. Charging their archers/crossbowmen with someone who can take a hit to make them retreat instead of shooting and hopefully to catch them in melee early on seems a good idea if they don’t outnumber you or the ranged guys aren’t close to the main shieldwall. Something I’ve noticed is that you should get a feeling for when you are about to rout bandits and set up to catch the ones trying to retreat/release the hounds.

Goblins:
Oh how I loathed them early on… now I never sell my first bunch of Feral Shields and replace them with Kite Shields in time. Wounded or very squishy units with shitty armour tend to retreat out of range, everyone else gets a shield and slowly starts the 2 tile shieldwall advance. Nets and Poision are a real problem early on though. Once you have access to more Brothers at around lvl 5 and armour with 100+ hitpoints on everyone Goblins fall back in line and get a lot more manageable. I tend to fight goblins at day only. They don’t seem to get the limited range humans get at night and it feels as if seeing them + having Crossbowmen available + full shieldwall defenses are more valueable than potentially worse ranged hitchances for their archers. Dogs really take a beating against goblins its usually not worth to take the riskof losing a dog just to catch a few of their archers. The Shaman’s curse/roots combined with poision is an evil combination.

Orcs:
Early on their Head Splitter axes are devastating. 1 hitting basic Shields is scary and expensive. So I tend to focus those with axes first and hope the ones with Choppers don’t hit me through Shieldwall. it seems early Heater/Kite Shields are very valuable against orcs. For some reason I didn’t run in any encounters with Orc Warriors before I was ready to handle them, especially the early Swordmaster was very very helpful as he can 1vs2 the Warlord and one of his buddies without a problem. From an earlier run I can affirm you that early Orc Warriors + Warlord are a very good reason to make use of the retreat feature, I got absolutely destroyed in just a couple turns.

Undead:
They are the kind of the worst but also the best race. The Lategame encounters tend to be the most challanging, mostly because of random frontliners trying to flee thanks to Lost Souls debuffing. I don’t quite understand how they work yet. My leader with Captain perk and 94 Resolve was right next to a guy with 46 base Resolve yet all it took was one scream for him to flee.
Opened Massgrave and other similar locations that just tend to throw 30something Zombies and Ghouls at you are kinda underwhelming. There is barely any decent loot or challenge to except from those locations as they currently are. I guess the introduction of a “Zombielord” and other things are meant to adress this “problem”

Werewolves:
Scary very early on. Still scary in numbers once the game progresses. Sadly pretty much irrelevant around the magical lvl 5-6 for half of your Battle Brothers mostly because of them fleeing after a couple are killed. Could use an Alphawolf with a howl ability to boost Morale but thats a bit too similar to the Orc Warlord I guess. Very much looking forward what you’re going to add to the beasts in the future.

General problems:
AI units with Swords tends to use Shieldwall/Riposte instead hitting twice, which makes things very manageable. If lets say Orcs and Fallen Heroes would prefer to just go for face more often instead of using Shieldwall or Riposte they would be more of a threat. On the other hand its the opposite for AI units with axes, they are trying to get through my shields which is the most effective thing they could do. Probelm is that this kind of behaviour also applies for Orc Youngs with Handaxes and for units with trowing weapons (apart from goblins) that barely put a dent into a good shield. I’d suggest either to get rid of the shield damage for throwing weapons or increasing it, same goes for the smaller axes.

As fun as “unhittable” Swordmasters and Swoard and Board fighters with 60 defense+ are, they kinda break the game. I also dislike the idea that a Shieldless guy can be better protected against blows than one with shield, even taking the Shieldwall skill into account. Nimble also gets rid of the dangers of a broken Shield. I’d suggest revisiting the min/max hitchances. Maybe cap it at 25% minimum hit chance instead of 5% and change shieldwall to half the hitchance instead of a flat bonus to defense.

Crossbow swapping is something I’d like to keep (well maybe not 4 of them… but oh well I’d take it as it is). It takes a considerable amount of time to reload and just swapping to a loaded one is in fact quite a bit faster. Thanks to how it currently is Crossbowmen can keep up with the melee fighers and support them perfectly in the crucial first 2 turns.

Ranged units should keep their range at night, it doesn’t make any sense. Obviously there should be massive debuffs or ranged units should be unable to shoot beyond their own visual range at night. Anyway it would be nice to have flaming arrows/bolts and carryable torches to get dayvision at night. A Nightvision trait for Undead and Goblins to ignore most or all of the negative effects for ranged units would be perfectly fine (and maybe as a random trait for Battle Brothers).

Here some questions:
What exactly does Taunt actually do?
Are goblins and skeletons supposed to have “nightvision” for their ranged weapons? They clearly fire at full range at night, no clue if the accuracy debuff affects them though.

And a Bug:
I noticed the Jagged Pike doesn’t get 2 tiles range at night, could be a problem with vision range as the guy was wearing a Full Helmet with -3 vison, It probably counted as “couldn’t see” even though other squadmembers had eyes on the target.

Things I would really like to see in the final game:

Earning Acces to some locations, just marching into a Fortress and buying the best gear around could be unlocked by difficult tasks to make it more rewarding to get the best gear.

Some way to save a “destroyed armour”, every Undead basically is already equipped with “destroyed armour”, its just something that feels a bit off.

Maps, I don’t have any problem with them being expensive, vague and them not revealing the exact location. I just want to be able to find the real lategame stuff somehow. There should be someone who has seen the friggin goblin capital from afar somewhere.

Some more variety in Quests, 1vs1 “Knight” Tournaments (like the tjosting event just as an actual fight) and Bounty hunting come to mind

Siege events/maps for attacked villages and towns, maybe even including siege weapons and destroyable gates.

Fog of war on the worldmap to be aware of current vision range.

As well as some “caravan indicator” because lets face it Caravan quests are good as they are but we all try to explore a bit along the way and accidentially went a bit to far a few times.

Visual highlighing for locations, important names, rewards and cardinal directions in quests.

Cavalry, really, limit them but please make it possible, Wolfriders are in the game after all.

Please consider 2 assigned Leaders. One real Leader that levels Leadership skills along levels and one 2nd in Command with a more…. direct approach to keep moral up.

More Levels and classes already starting at certain levels. Thus a Caravanhand can be as good as a Hedge Knight but will need considerably longer because the Hedge Knights already starts at lvl 15 while the Caravan Hand is a lvl 5.

Oh and as a note I’m German too. Gute Arbeit Jungs *clapclapclap*

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