Wargasm

[Wargasm]

I sort of agree with a lot of the above. But I think that it is already (with all its flaws) the best game ever. I’ve never been so addicted to a game before. I’ve played thousands of hours on it, partly because it’s so brilliant and partly because it’s so frustrating …

I would like more perks and no limit to the number accumulated and fewer restrictions on which you can choose and a more rapid gain of experience points …

But I don’t want it to be a linear-progressive arms race where you have to stockpile the heaviest armour and most massive weapons to stay alive … I want to find unorthodox ways to beat the system and prevail with light arms and lots of skill and cunning and some good fortune … I want there to be many ways of skinning a cat (or a direwolf) …

[Wargasm]

If you have ammunition, any quiver in anyone’s possession (including backup slots) will get filled.

So long as you have some decent melee defence and at least enough protection against the odd lucky hit, you shouldn’t be too afraid of getting stunned by the initial orc onslaught (at least if many/most of them are fairly lightly armed). The stun on contact doesn’t actually do any damage to armour or hit points (if you have the Dodge perk, it remains intact after being stunned and you still have an extra +10-15 defence that makes a hit reasonably unlikely while you’re stunned, especially since the orcs aren’t that accurate). If the orcs are a mix of lightly/heavily armed ones, you can deliberately make contact with the lighter ones that move first, and then the heavy ones will get stuck behind and can be attacked with crossbows and/or pikes.

One of the best strategies against both orcs and goblins (though not so much the orc parties with lots of heavily armed warriors or warlords) is to have some members with Bags&Belts, Quick Hands, 60+ ranged skill and more than one crossbow. Against orcs they can wait for the advance behind melee fighters and then shoot twice from close range, usually hitting home and doing a lot of damage to hit points, so that the melee fighters then have more modest work to do. Against goblins they can move forward and shoot at the ambushers from close range, usually killing or severely injuring at least one or two of them in the first round, so that then (even if one or two people get poisoned) the goblins won’t have enough firepower to stop your advance. The crossbowmen are especially effective if they have high initiative and the Dodge perk, and repeatedly shooting fresh bows at the start of battle (instead of reloading) means that their initiative (and bonus defence) remains high and that they get to act early. It can be much more difficult, however, if it’s awkward terrain that favours the goblins and they have an overseer or shaman …

[Wargasm]

Danubian wrote:

-Ghosts or w/e they are called. These things are now difficult, problem is, they do their mind attacks that cause fear (or at least they did last time i fought them several versions ago). If you have high resolve or you pick that skill that makes you immune to these attacks you can handle them easily. They are hard to hit, but they are basically 1 hit kills.

I always avoided Lost Souls after first encountering them. Then, recently, I encountered them by accident, shortly after having recruited a witchfinder who was supposed to have +20 Resolve in the face of mind control attacks …

The result? The witchfinder shat his pants and fled at first contact, but everyone else in my party held their ground and killed them fairly easily …

[Wargasm]

This seems to happen only if (a) the character’s base hair colour is red and you (b) cycle through the hair and/or beard styles until you come to a bald/shaved one, and then (c) continue through the hair/beard styles to the next one that isn’t bald/shaved. At that point, the hair/beard colour switches to brown.

[Wargasm]

I actually think Shield Bash is a very good perk – just not quite as very good as many of the other Utility ones.

The Knock Back skill already has a +25% chance to hit (the best odds of any attack) but doesn’t do any damage and is highly fatiguing. With the perk, the absolute fatigue is reduced considerably and the relative fatigue vs the enemy more or less overturned. Also, any hit does damage, not much, but the high hit chance means that it can be done regularly while wearing the enemy down, diminishing their morale, putting them into hazardous positions from where they can be attacked with more lethal weapons etc.

[Wargasm]

The zombies weren’t from the battle against Hoggart. That had already been won, but with very few crowns and resources remaining. So I accepted a mission to attack some graveyard, and (instead of the anticipated horde of zombies in rags, along with a few in semi-destroyed armour) I found myself up against a mass of them almost all in fully intact armour, so that my weapons began to break etc. In other words, at Deadly difficulty, you have much fewer crowns but you need to spend more crowns on more lethal and more durable weapons, because most of the enemies you face (and they tend to be lurking everywhere) are very heavily armed.

If I hadn’t needed to recruit 3 more men to fulfill the opening contract, I could have easily won the battle against the 5 or 6 thugs, and then I’d have had some crowns spare and wouldn’t have needed to hurriedly accept another contract.

But could 3 decent troops beat that horde of zombies? Yes, probably – provided they were all in armour similar to the zombies’, and had shields and sufficiently lethal and durable weapons.

[Wargasm]

I think most the things I thought of have already been mentioned somewhere above. But still:

— SLINGS of various kinds
— Goblins would probably sling something like the hardened, spiked outer shells of chestnuts (http://www.chestnutsonline.com/chestnutsinburr%20copy.JPG)
— Bags of STONES for throwing at the enemy (these could just be automatically collected, and be almost useless against any type of protective clothing, but modestly damaging against naked flesh)
— Or larger ROCKS for hurling at the enemy from height
— QUARTERSTAFFS, as per Robin Hood and Little John doing battle on the bridge
— RECTANGULAR/DIAMOND SHIELDS with at least +20 melee and ranged defence (similar in shape to those used by the Celts or Romans … I’m sure someone somewhere must have used a shield of similar shape at some point in the Middle Ages)
— Skillfully crafted wooden/stone WAR-CLUBS (reinforced with pieces of metal) that have lots of sharp “teeth” as well as producing blunt force (see some fine examples here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C6_pSEPbO8 … obviously not medieval, but it’s perfectly conceivable that some of the fantasy beings could make/use them, and that they could have passed into circulation among humans)
— A HAND-AND-A-HALF SWORD similar to the warbrand that can be borne in one hand and thus used with the Nimble perk
— POLEAXES
— A short, thick, pointy DAGGER-SWORD (thicker towards the hilt) that does damage similar to a sword but that can also be used to Puncture armour
— Metal GLOVES that quadruple the damage when throwing and landing a punch
— Metal GREAVES that can be used to kick the enemy
— POISONS to put on the tips of arrows/bolts
— FIRE to put on the tips of arrows/bolts

[Wargasm]

Yeah. It’s not actually killing Hoggart that’s hard. What is hard is fulfilling the obligations of the opening contract (hire at least 3 more men and buy weapons and armour) without the “armour” being little more than rags and the weapons not being sufficiently durable to take on the much more heavily armed opponents that you often find yourself having to take on early at Deadly. If there was no requirement to recruit a certain number of men, you could just buy decent weapons and armour for your 3 starting troops and use only them to kill Hoggart (and then they’d get a nice load of experience points to start with, as well, instead of having to share them with some also-rans that you probably didn’t really want).

[Wargasm]

On the plus side, though, destroying armour does result in a more rapid gain of experience points … so possibly a strategy combining Knock Out, Puncture and Destroy Armour (and decapitate)?

Actually, when I first thought of the stun strategy, my aim was to win with just the cheapest and/or lightest equipment, and indeed I tried to combine Knock Out with Puncture (which didn’t seem to work that well for long, since the overall increased chance to hit was just 5%, so that enemies with good defence skills couldn’t be hit often enough before we were fatigued and injured). Also, you don’t gain experience points and perks as rapidly with this “Smash and Stab” strategy.

When I thought of all the perks and skills needed to optimize the strategy, I thought that they’d need lots of max fatigue to keep using Knock Out, and lots of melee skill to be sure of getting in some hits against tough opponents, and lots of melee and ranged defence skills to compensate for the excessive cost of forming a shieldwall …

Obviously Push the Advantage and Fast Adaptation (on Tier 1 of the Offensive Tree at the time) were ideal perks, but Fast Adaptation is now on Tier 2, and there are perks on Tier 2 of all the trees that would optimize the strategy:

— Brawny and Weaponmaster and Battle Flow from Tier 2 the Utility Tree (in addition to Bags & Belts, Quick Hands, Pathfinder and Shield Bash from Tier 1)
— Ideally you’d also want a Rallier and an Inspiring Presence from Tier 3 to replenish everyone’s energy and give everyone an attack and defence bonus at the start of battle
— Nimble from Tier 2 of the Defence Tree, as well as Hold Out (now moved to Tier 2) so that the Confident bonus is increased to 10 for all skills
— Dodge from Tier 1 of the Defence Tree (along with Hold Out) can massively increase the doubled melee defence score from Nimble, so that you then have less need of armour and defensive movements
— Berserk (and now also Fast Adaptation) from Tier 2 of the Offensive Tree

I have noticed the utility of high initiative for making sure you get the chance to knock out opponents before they have the chance to hit you, and for getting more opportunities to strike a stunned foe. However, max fatigue is also very important for the strategy, and making use of it with skills, weapons and armour takes initiative down and causes it to drop more rapidly.

So, my current thinking is that, if a recruit has high max fatigue but average/low initiative, concentrate them mainly on the Utility Tree (in addition to the necessary Offensive Perk) and then gradually the initiative will go back up (and be more sustained in battle) thanks to the Tier 2 Utility perks. Or, if a recruit has high initiative but average/low max fatigue, concentrate them mainly on the Defence Tree to make them into nimble dodgers that don’t need lots of heavy/costly defensive equipment/moves and that therefore have enough energy to use Knock Out on a regular basis (or these could be the ones armed with pikes).

[Wargasm]

Ah well. This time I managed to kill him at dawn on day 4, with a full band of just-about-properly-armed men, all of whom survived with minimal injury. We even got some swords, shields, gambesons and silver plates as loot, and it was the “useless” beggar (35 crowns, no shield and just a green tunic but useful melee and defence skills) who hacked off Hoggart’s head at the end (scorning to waste time splitting the shield first).

[Wargasm]

They are tough if your company is young with few/no members who’ve levelled up and gained perks. But, basically, the typical bandit shield reduces the chance to hit by 15%, or by 30% when a shieldwall is formed (it’ll be more if several bandits are in shieldwall together and/or if they are on high ground). Additionally, all Bandit Raiders (unlike Thugs) have a generic 10 melee defence that drops the chance to hit by a further 10%. This doesn’t seem like much, but it can mean that the chance to hit drops from 55% (e.g. striking at a shield-less Bandit Thug with an axe) to 15% (striking at a Bandit Raider in a shieldwall with the same weapon).

A good solution to the above problem is: (a) recruit some guys with decently high max fatigue; (b) give them large hand axes and shields, and a back-up weapon that has an extra +10/20% hit chance (e.g. spears or swords or scramasaxes); (c) use the first turn(s) to smash bandit shields with axes; (d) switch to the more accurate and less fatiguing weapons once the shields are gone; (e) patiently stab and slash away at the bandits’ hit points, and form a shieldwall if their high melee skill gets past your basal shield defence for significant damage.

If some of your guys have high melee skill and max fatigue, you might keep hold of the axes and skip steps (d) and (e). Alternatively, you might give them spiked flails, which ignore the 15% basal shield defence but not the additional 15% defence from a shieldwall (i.e. a Bandit Raider in shieldwall will have only +15% shield defence and +25% total defence against a flail, not +30% and +45%). Flails are quite fatiguing to strike with, and cannot split shields, but their disregard of the basal shield defence means that an accurate mercenary will get some good, damaging hits in (without needing to waste energy on Split Shield) if he keeps striking away (even if each individual hit chance is still only 25-40%).

All of the above strategies are more effective with the following perks:

— Bags & Belts (more reserve items and no fatigue cost)
— Quick Hands (arm with a hand axe only when you need it to smash a shield, and keep initiative higher and fatigue lower the rest of the time)
— Sundering Strikes (light weapons with a higher hit chance can cut through armour more efficiently)
— Dodge (effective if a mercenary has decently high basal initiative and already has some of the Utility perks that reduce fatigue and thus sustain initiative, since this means that you can forego fatiguing defence skills early in battle and keep fatigue low so that you can still form a shieldwall later on if you get hit and need extra protection
— Any of the level 2 Utility perks that further reduce fatigue

[Wargasm]

Definitely seems like a bug. Just agreed a patrol contract without signing it, and then travelled to what would have been the first stop. The same contract showed up at that locale, and so I signed it there and, as soon as I exited the town, I was informed that the first part of the patrol was complete!

[Wargasm]

I’ve still seen this the last couple of days, on the .17 version, with characters who have the Fat trait.

[Wargasm]

All three of those actually sound more like they should just be regular skills available for anyone bearing the weapon (like Spearwall, which isn’t a perk). But perhaps, just as there’s a Shield Bash perk that makes the shield-based Knock Back skill more effective, there should also be a Pikewall or Pikezone perk that makes the Spearwall skill more effective (i.e. less fatigue) if using a spear, and that also extends the skill to two tiles (so that a Pikewall can be formed if armed with a pike), as well as making the pike-based Knock Back skill more effective (i.e. less fatigue to the user and some to each enemy struck). If a Trip skill was also unlocked, it would need to be restricted to contexts in which only one non-fleeing enemy is present within the weapon’s zone of action (just as Spearwall is only active so long as there is not another enemy already within the zone). Obviously, a Trip skill would only work with billhooks, not regular pikes, and Pikewall might only work with regular pikes and not billhooks (just like the pike-based Knock Back skill at present – although it’s always seemed odd to me that the billhook can’t be used for the same purpose) …

There are already some weapon-specific perks … it’s just that they’re not that enticing compared to other perks. For example, Crusher (extra 50% damage to shields) is one of the least sexy perks, since you still end up needing to use just as much fatigue and action points to break the typical shield when using a hand axe, and the smaller hatchets just go from needing 16 action points (and 80 fatigue) to needing 12 action points (and 60 fatigue) – still too inefficient. Crusher is intended to be the offensive equivalent of Deflect (50% less damage to shields), but Deflect actually halves damage, whereas Crusher doesn’t double damage. If you had Crusher and were armed with a hand axe, and your enemy had Deflect and was armed with the typical large round shield, the shield damage done would be 3 (i.e. Deflect does more than cancel out Crusher). However, even Deflect isn’t so sexy a perk, since you can just choose Bags & Belts from the Utility tree and carry a back-up shield with no fatigue cost (in addition to so much more).

One really cool skill-specific perk I’d like to see is something along the lines of Precision Strikes (extra 10-15% chance to hit with certain attacks that usually have 10-15% deducted from their chance to hit – i.e. Puncture, Decapitate and Destroy Armour … probably not Round Swing as well, since that gets covered by Bloody Harvest). But maybe I should make a new post about this …

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