Reply To: [suggestion] Clearly unbalanced enemies
As promised here’s those screen shots of the fight. It was vs a challenging orc encampment. I attacked and retreated 4 times before I got terrain I wanted to use. The hill has 3 access points: a broad south, a narrow west and narrow north. The north and west approaches are so close that they could be defended by one force. The clincher was a small hill to the east, impassable to the enemy so I could stick my crossbowmen up there and harass the orcs everywhere.
As you can see, I split my force and sent my two handers south because I believed their billhooks could be used to great effect. I then used my dogs and spearwall to force the AI to take the long way around, some enemies even had to go all the way to the west. All the while my crossbowmen took a heavy toll on the enemy. My first targets were axemen without shields and then with shields. I also stuck two of my crossbowmen into the backs of the northern shieldmen so they couldn’t be knocked back by the orcs.
The next image shows the utterly massive toll my crossbowmen took upon the enemy. Look at the number of blot-fletched bodies, including the orc chieftain in the south. I was delaying the orcs so much that one of my boar spears broke. And again in the south, my heavily armored 2-hander is only holding a goblin net. This is to raise his initiative so that he can go before the orc warrior and kill him to give my medium armor 2-hander a chance to step into the second line with a billhook because he has taken a hit.
And here the enemy are routing but I don’t intend to allow their escape. Including using a goblin net to hobble an orc warrior and allow my crossbowmen to finish him from a safe distance. Everything else gets beaten senseless with blunt weapons.
And the results screen. Only 2 of my guys were even hit. The crossbowmen were the ones who did the killing and my 2-handers were for explosive offensive killing, racking up their damage in 1 or 2 turns. My rally leader is the heavily armored crossbowman. He also carries 1 spare crossbow, a sword, a warhammer and a shield. It makes him super flexible and capable of shooting off bolts as needed. But if I need him for the rally ability he still has those 2 shots at a cost of only 10 fatigue and can engage in combat like that from anywhere on the battlefield which allows him to be centered in the middle of my men.
The enemy composition was as follows
24 total
1 chieftain
7 warriors
5 berserkers
11 young
My current company build is
4 crossbowmen, 3 of which are 2 handers and 1 is a sword and buckler fighter
1 rally leader in heavy armor. I’ve found that judicious use of rally means I only need it 1 or 2 times per fight. Very rarely do I use it a third time
3 defense/utility shield tanks each with a spare shield, spear, mace, warhammer and orcish axe
1 heavy armor 2-hander beserker
1 initiative-based medium armor 2-hander
2 axemen with shields, 6 offensive and 4 defensive perks, they are my wallbreakers, meant to smash an enemy defense to bits so the rest can exploit. They also carry daggers just in case I see a bandit wearing armor that I want to have.
I also keep a lot of dogs in my inventory as I use them as cannon fodder more often than not.