How to get good?

[Taito]

Hallo Community,

like the header of the topic said I want to know how to get good. At this point nothing that i tried helped to achieve much in that regard. I watched youtube let’s play’s, read guides on steam and tips on this forum. Please help me out!

I played beginner to learn the basics of the game. 180 days in on ironman: I lost only 3 guys in the whole campaign, had more than 100k to spare, did beat the war and some groups with more than 30 guys without problems. After that I gave veteran a try and was crushed after 7 days. 5 restarts later the best I could achieve was 60 days in before i got beaten.

The problem’s I can’t seem to find a solution are:

1. Somehow there are no bandit thugs anymore. Even on the first missions i get several raiders, that have way better gear than my guys. Even if I fight to the best of my ability I almost always lose at least 1 guy every few days. Every fight is a fight that threatens to destroy the entire group. I don’t know how to train anymore.
How do you train without losing (to many) brothers?

2. I don’t know which contracts are worth doing anymore, besides caravan missions, which are almost never worth it at the start. For example in one quest my band of mercenary’s was asked to deliver a package for 580 crowns. I was attacked by another band of mercenary’s that had a knight with a warbrand that single handedly killed 6 of my bro’s. Before I did this quest i delivered several packages for almost the same amount of money without problems. Neither the skulls nor the money seem to be sufficient help to decide which contract is good and which isn’t.
How to distinguish crap contracts from good contracts?

3. In beginner I tried to use different weapons for different enemy’s. Suddenly in veteran this doesn’t work that good anymore. Like said hedge knight. I did attack with maces to stun him and tire him out. But this guy had godly stamina and melee defense, after more than 5 hits with the mace he was still not half way fatigued. It is the same against raiders. Speer’s and swords for increased hit chance and shields for defense do not amount to much if, like some raiders, they have flails or polearms that kill a lightly armored bro in one turn. And there are bandit marksman that also cripple my bro’s right of the bat. Flails do still short work with ancient undead and speerwall works fine against werewolfs and widergangers, but those raiders ….
How do you defeat raiders with lightly armored guy’s at the start?

4. At the start it seems to do me no good to hire more than 6 guys. It seems to me that the game gets more difficult the more members you have and also if you get better gear. I can’t cope with the game difficulty because I don’t know how it scales.
Does anybody know how the difficulty scales?

5. Most of the times, when I pick a fight, it goes as planned. But sometimes the enemies all have exceptionally good gear for their class and / or the terrain favor’s them greatly and if they are also quicker than my bro’s than sometimes my bro’s get engaged or shoot at before I can retreat.
How do you know reliably which fights you can pick and which you have to avoid?

Best regards,
Taito

[McKing]

1. I kind of agree, the thugs stop showing up a bit too soon. My advice would be to shield up and wise up. Always target the poleweapons users, then the 2handers. Make good use of your poleweapons, they have pretty good damage, and i give them to my most skilled fighters in the beginning. If your frontline is weak, focus on holding the enemy for the backline to punish. Losing someone at the beginning is pretty common, even if you have a good strategy. Sometimes shit happens, the enemy does critical damage… I focus on buying armor at the start, trying to give more durability to my brothers. And SHIELDS, don’t forget the shields. I start using the 2hander, but sparingly – keep him back for a bit, then hit hard before he can be crippled.

2. Bad luck. I prefer 1-skull quests to raze bases, or to hunt down what is terrorizing a village/town.

3. You were doing it correctly, it’s good to have a different range of weapons to choose from – different shields too. But against heavy armor, i prefer hammers and axes. I, personally, think maces are a little shitty – not enough armor damage to me, and that was their main function in real life. What i said before, focus on the most dangerous guys – that includes the flailman when you have lousy headgear.

4. Actually, that might be your biggest problem IMO. I focus on getting a LOT of guys. I even recruit cripples. You know why? Meatshields, cannon fodder – every army needs it. Even if they can’t hit anything, they soak up damage that would be done to your good brothers. The enemy chooses the target he has the biggest chance of hitting. Give them their targets, then make them pay for it. Numerical advantage also helps in surrounding enemies, and you can use the lousy brothers to break their shields, if you have axes to spare. 100% hit change for Split Shield. Abuse it. I try to buy a little bit of gear whenever there is something cheap – damaged sometimes – and i have spare cash. I always begin the upgrades by the armor – weapons i mainly take from the enemy.

5. RNJesus. You can retreat or try to make the enemy chase you. Combat is unpredictable and punishing in real life, and so it is in Battle Brothers. Have that shitty brothers to attract arrows, bolts and thrown weapons. Accept the losses, they are unavoidable sometimes. I’ve lost many a promising recruit. I always have new recruits, sometimes they succeed, most times they die horribly. Mostly, they are the ones that bite the dust when things go sour. Ah, the fine life of a mercenary! Which combat to avoid? I really hate the damned goblins, and fights against enemies with ranged superiority can be really painful.

With practice, you will improve, and will stop making some silly mistakes that you end up paying dearly for.
Best of luck

[RusBear]

4. Main game difficult + company day + strength (quantity and quality) of your party.

[genyl]

Hi,

I play at ironman expert but I guess my advice will work in veteran

TS:DR

Use very few (or none) ranged and fight brigands at night (archers get penalty at shooting during the nigh)

1. The game has a steep change of difficulty every time a new enemy appears: raiders, legionaries/orc warriors, warlords etc. In expert raiders appear right from the start. I try to avoid raiders until I have improved a bit more. Direwolves, wiedergangers and nachzehrers are ideal. You have to try to get to 12 brothers as soon as possible with cheapish backgrounds. I look for farmhands (they may also come with a polearm), a tailor (
to craft the direwolf armor), apprentices, fisherman etc Equip every frontliner with a shield, get a lot of backliners with polearms. The strategy is for the
front line to hold (spear wall, shieldwall) while the back kills it. In the beginning polearms, spears and flails(because you get the best flail weapon soon) are very good, however these weapons are bad in end game so don’t specialize in them (maybe 1 flail but absolutely no spears)

2. I always take 1 skull contracts and keep a constant flow of them minimizing downtime (a delivery contract without fights is perfect while you repair/heal).
The money offered in the contract will tell you how difficult it is.
You may risk a 2 skull contract if the enemy is easy, basically terrorize the city is the easiest as it will usually be direwolves. Escort caravans is the only contract I don’t do because I can’t choose to avoid the combat and because sometimes you get attacked twice. Only if it is a short route I may take it because you will attacked only once then

3 There are plenty of things you can do to get more efficient. some pointers:

– Weapon selection: It seems all weapons are balanced but in reality some are better than others. In the beginning you want everybody with a shield
and polearms doing the damage but my final band composition is: 1 sergeant, 1 polearm, 3 shields (mostly maces), 1 duelist, 6 2-handers. Once you get
decent defense/armor you can put your best armor in your best guy, equip a 2 hander and see him destroy the enemy. Archers/Crossbows in my opinion are meh.
They are ineffective against armored(bows) or unarmored(crossbows) and they offer NEGATIVE utility (you have to keep them in the back and protect them). Every
frontline that you have adds surround bonus and covers your flank. Fighting without archers also allows you to always fight at night against archers (
avoid escorts missions for this reason as you can’t choose the time) and laugh at wolfriders/necrosavants/orc warriors backlines attacks
– Trading: you should find a good trade goods producer and maximize relations with it and a nearby city to maximize profits. Always trade, it is free money.
– Scavenging: You should try to get enemy armor from the start. Armored wiedergangers are great because they are easy and carry decent armor, then brigands
and specially brigands leader have good armor. You can risk a combat with a low count mercenary company with a hedge knight. In my current game I killed
one 6 men company and got a 300 armor from the knight. To distract the knight I use a shield holder tanking him shieldwalling all the time(don’t attack to
keep stamina)
To scavenge effectively you can use flails (go for the head) or ideally daggers (puncture ignores armor), kill everybody else and then surround the knight with all your brothers for a Jon Snow moment. Still it is normal to lose people againts a hedge knight for this reason I don’t fight them normally :D
– Armor: prioritize buying strong armor. In the beg I go for the 210 one, then the 230 with -28 fatigue is great too. Don’t buy weapons, you usually get them from the enemy
– Perks: My first perks are student, colossus, rotation&shield spec(only for shield holders) or gifted/killing frenzy(2 handers), brawny, weapon specialization, battle forged, underdog/backstabber
– Cannon fodder: Keep your rock stars alive and use expendable backgrounds/stats as front line. It is usually better to put your best men in a flank to completely destroy it while the other flank just tries to gain time surviving

5 As mention avoid raiders (and later orc warriors/legionaries) until you are well trained. It comes with experience but always go on the conservative side. The difficulty keeps increasing but it is always better to have slow progression than to lose a brother and suffer a severe fallback

[Namespace]

1. I hire 12 people as soon as possible, cheap ones. My talented guys I put in the backline and give them a pitchfork or better, if I find a decent polearm early. Check the military settlements with Blast Furnaces / Ore Smelters for cheap armor/weapons from the regular market. Sometimes you will find a 40% repaired billhook for 700 crowns. A good polearm like that will carry you throught he early game.

Fight roaming troops for loot and XP. It is much easier to fight 7 thugs + 2-3 raiders than just raiders. Avoid brigand marksmen/fight them only during the night.
Put your new recruits in the backline with a polearm until they get enough melee defense to go in the frontlines. Also give them heavy armor, if you can. Fallen Hero armor is pretty great for the start, even if it drops them down to 40 fatigue or so, with a polearm he will hardly ever get tired and because of the heavy armor he will also survive marksmen.

2. I stop doing delivery quests at around day 30 because mercs will show up to take my stuff. Early I think the best contracts are tracking down thieves, clear a cemetary. Obtain some relic from plains – forests, snow etc can be hard because you can’t always retreat against skeletons since they have pathfinder and you might not. Usually skeleton contracts are not that hard until necrosavants or legionaires show up.
You can ofc also take on brigand encampments but they are usually more difficult than roaming parties, early spawned camps and thieves contracts.
Try to explore the world a bit and take easy encampments for extra loot and gear. Dagger armored wiedergangers for their armor.

3. This is a tricky one. There are many ways to go about this, but most important is probably to have 12 men. Take marksmen at night.
I would take 6-7 frontliners with shields and 5-6 backliners with ranged weapons or polearms or both.
Prioritize targets. Focus raiders without shield first, especially hard hitting weapons like 2-handers and double gripped military pick, axe, flail.
Usually you want to shoot them before they come close, otherwise engage and stun them, burst them with polearms etc. If you are in a 1v2 or more engagement, use shieldwall!
Try and use the morale mechanics and surround bonuses to your advantage – raiders become much easier if there are thugs with them you can kill fast and trigger morale checks on the raiders.

4. Rus Baer answered that. I think it is mostly affected by the days passed and less by your roster. You should definitely try to get 12 guys as soon as possible and keep buying cheap recruits until you get talented brothers.

5. Take Marksmen at night. If it’s a cemetary contract and you don’t know the exact composition, take the fight at night (if you fight brigands).
Get a falcon (hawk?) for one of your companions to scout out the enemy composition. If you see necrosavants/geists/necromancers you can react or retreat.
Orcs and Goblins are dangerous and should be avoided until you know you can beat them. Never take a fresh recruit against goblins as they will very likely kill him with arrows.

[hruza]

First rule to become successful in Battle Brothers: Know when to fight and when to run. You’re running business -mercenary company. Act accordingly. When you face enemy you can’t beat, retreat. When facing impossible contract, cancel it. Penalties for canceling contract are usually very light. Knowing to asses level of danger enemy pose to you is part of the experience gained by playing the game.

That said there are few tricks you can do to overcome stronger enemy. You can for example lead enemy in to allied group. When attacking strong outpost, you can try finding roaming enemy group and leading it in to enemy outpost you want to attack. Let two groups fight each other then destroy those who remain. Be careful however, two groups have to be hostile to each other for trick to work, otherwise they will gang on you. Also don’t lead too weak enemy in to fight with much stronger enemy. Strong enemy will defeat weak one without sweat and will gain morale instead. Also don’t use direwolves for this, they are too fast and have too high initiative so in the battle they will reach you before you can back away to let two enemies fight.

Second rule, you have to accept that you can and will loose from time to time. There’s no way to avoid it. Keep spare armors and weapons and try to have few brothers in reserve with some experience (rotate them between battles). Keep financial reserve.

As for your questions:

1. I did not experience such thing. Early game single skull missions usually throw at you either thugs, mix of thugs with few raiders or if enemy is composed of raiders only, they are inferior in size.

Game seems to factor size of your company in to difficulty scaling. Don’t try to over-expand too fast early on, make sure that you can outfit every new recruit with decent gear. At the beginning this means 30+ armor and helm and a shield. Thick tunics, aketons, that sort of stuff.

2. If interrupted during delivery mission, you are being given option to surrender the package. You have to consider if 500 bucks is worth fighting well equipped and trained enemy. In the beginning of the game, probably not.

Generally speaking, single skull missions are safe to take. But there’s always element of randomness involved so be prepared to abort and retreat.

Good contract is one involving good pay and little risk. You can’t know exactly what are you going to face until you face it. Again, don’t hesitate to abort or cancel mission if pay is not worth the risk. If risk involves loosing several brothers, pay is likely not worth it.

3. With greater numbers. If you don’t have numbers, don’t fight them. You should use early encounters with raiders as a source of improved armor. Fight them only if you are at the advantage and try to isolate one with best armor by killing everybody else first, surrounding him and stabbing to death with daggers. Les damaged armor is,
higher the chance to appear in the loot screen. Buy yourself few nets to incapacitate dangerous foes. Have few flails in company with competent brothers. Many raiders don’t carry helmets, bash their heads to kill them without damaging their armor.

As for hedge knights, don’t ever contemplate engaging one at the beginning of the game.

4. Don’t know exactly, but size of your band, level of brothers and their equipment matters most. There might be other factors, like game days passed and your renown.

5. Experience.

That said, unless you’re get ambushed, you have always time to retreat from human opponents. They have the same movement speed as you and distance at the beginning of the fight is such, that they can’t reach you in just one turn. So unless you do something stupid, you can retreat to the edge.

However you don’t have to be at the edge in order to retreat. You can hit retreat button at any point of the battle. Brothers not on the edge will just get injured. They won’t get killed even if engaged in combat.

Consider buying falcon and give it to one of the back line guys with high initiative. He will help you reveal enemies at the start of the combat so you can decide if to fight or retreat.

When facing roaming groups of the enemies, pay attention to the icon they have. It always shows the highest level and most dangerous character in group. You can asses enemy strength even in cases when tool tip don’t reveal that information (direvolves, nachzehrers).

[hruza]

McKing wrote:

4. Actually, that might be your biggest problem IMO. I focus on getting a LOT of guys. I even recruit cripples. You know why? Meatshields, cannon fodder – every army needs it.

This does not have to be the case. I don’t use meatshields and do fine. Problem with meatshields is that early game, most contract won’t pay you the price of recruiting, feeding, paying and equipping even the cheapest of the conscripts.

[hruza]

genyl wrote:

Use very few (or none) ranged and fight brigands at night (archers get penalty at shooting during the nigh)

Don’t forget that ranged defense get proportionately same penalty during night as ranged attack, so disadvantage of ranged at night isn’t that large. Ranged are still dangerous, especially against targets who rely on ranged defense. So don’t underestimate enemy ranged just because you fight at night.

genyl wrote:

spears and flails(because you get the best flail weapon soon) are very good, however these weapons are bad in end game so don’t specialize in them (maybe 1 flail but absolutely no spears)

Not really true. Spears can still be used late game effectively. The top tier spears have decent armor damage and high level spear specialists are good at creating mobile obstacles with spearwall to channel enemy, protect against flanking and such. Their bonus attack chance is very useful against enemies with high defense and low health/armor like geists. And you can increase effectivity of spear with duelist.

[hruza]

Namespace wrote:

1. I hire 12 people as soon as possible, cheap ones. My talented guys I put in the backline and give them a pitchfork or better, if I find a decent polearm early.

Game difficulty scales with size of your company so this isn’t the best strategy. You will have low skill, badly equipped brothers facing proportionate number of the enemies. You should avoid most useless backgrounds and you shouldn’t recruit new brothers if you can’t give them decent equipment.

[McKing]

A cripple costs 30 bucks. Not really punishing to lose one.

And i might have sounded a bit harsh, i never throw my men away. Some are just a little more… expendable than others. If i have to lose someone, i don’t hesitate. My casualties aren’t that high, though, specially after having mostly level 4s.

[hruza]

McKing wrote:

A cripple costs 30 bucks. Not really punishing to lose one.

He also costs food and daily payment. And unless you intend to send him in to combat with bald head and rags, you have to figure in cost of the armor which you are likely to loose when he goes down.

You may still get profit in certain quests but:

-early game is strife against the time with you being on the verge of bankruptcy and every coin counts.

-if you are implementing meatshield tactics in any systematic way, you likely need more then one meatshield in battle. Loosing 3 cripples gone hurt.

-every meatshield in your party jeopardizes your combat ability against the enemy who scales with size of your squad. With limit on size, he occupies place in your squad instead of a somebody who can actually be effective and help you win the fight.

If you use meatshield tactics occasionally, depending on conditions, it can be fine. But as a meaningful tactics for beginner player who struggles with the game -it’s recipe for bankruptcy and disaster.

[genyl]

hruza wrote:

genyl wrote:

Use very few (or none) ranged and fight brigands at night (archers get penalty at shooting during the nigh)

Don’t forget that ranged defense get proportionately same penalty during night as ranged attack, so disadvantage of ranged at night isn’t that large. Ranged are still dangerous, especially against targets who rely on ranged defense. So don’t underestimate enemy ranged just because you fight at night.

genyl wrote:

spears and flails(because you get the best flail weapon soon) are very good, however these weapons are bad in end game so don’t specialize in them (maybe 1 flail but absolutely no spears)

Not really true. Spears can still be used late game effectively. The top tier spears have decent armor damage and high level spear specialists are good at creating mobile obstacles with spearwall to channel enemy, protect against flanking and such. Their bonus attack chance is very useful against enemies with high defense and low health/armor like geists. And you can increase effectivity of spear with duelist.

Usually ranged defense is lower than enemy’s skill so you gain. Still true you should still advance behind your shields

They can indeed be effective but in my experience they are sub par. Maybe one to cover the flank but they seem to run out of fatigue/get overwhelm soon and I’m talking about fights with 40+ enemies. Which difficulty are you talking about? have you beaten the crisis in that difficulty using how many spears? I may give it another try if you have done so

[Taito]

Hallo hruza, Namespace, genyl, RusBear, McKing,

thank you for your tips!

1. Most of the time I gave polearms to my most talented, but at this point weak, recruits. This wasn’t the best of approaches as it seems. Worked in beginner but in veteran you just can’t afford to miss to much of the polearm- damage- output. So I will try to give my best guys the polearms and to abuse the 100% hitchance of the shieldsplit like McKing proposed.

2. To clarify the band of mercenary’s attacked me around day 40 and I could not see that they have a hedge knight. They also had some wardogs, which made retreat somewhat difficult. In that battle I isolated the knight with a mace user and killed the rest without losing a single brother. This took 5 rounds then my maceman run out of steam and got gutted by two hits from the knight. After that I did surround him and he killed 5 more of my band until at last he was beaten. In the future I just won’t do these quest’s anymore after day 30 like Namespace suggested.

To hunt down what terrorizes villages is also my favorite quest and werwolfs and nachzehrers are by far the easiest enemies at the start. So I try to do as much of those contracts as possible. But most of the time there are just not enough of those juicy contracts and because of that I have to do other contracts. I avoid caravan escort contracts like the pest, to be attacked several times for a meager pay, no thank’s!

3. In the future I will try to lure group’s to fight each other more, like genyl suggested. Maybe this will make raiding encampments easier.
Trading I do actually quite a lot. I buy gems, amber, salt, lumber … at about market value and sell them in cities that paid way more for them. With the mapseed I currently try to make a veteran run at least this works quite well.

About the composition of my band: In the start usually everybody gets a shield and a onehanded weapon. Later on some brothers will get polearms and one or two get ranged weapons. I quite liked to have at least two archers in my company with overwhelm so suppress certain enemy’s in some battles and otherwise switch them out for other brothers. In this run I will just use 1 ranged unit or no ranged unit in case the ranged starting bro bites the dust.

What perks I give my bro’s depends mainly on their talents and stats. If one is a good for nothing he gets defense perks like colossus, steel brow, shield expert, underdog and rotate. On the other hand I use certain builds, that suited my playstyle until now. I have them listed in a PDF in the attachment. I would be quite interested how other players build there characters!

4. If what RusBear stated is true than there are two viable ways to proceed. Firstly the quantity approach – to hire lots of brothers and use some of them as cheap meatshields while preserving the rest like McKing, genyland Namespace broceed (pun intended). And secondly the quality approach – hire only good guys that you can equip with decent stuff and train them to have superior skill like hruza does it. Usually I tried a balanced approach and this didn’t work, so I will try both extremes instead and report the results.

5. In future encounters I will use falcons and scout out the enemies like hruza does. Never really considered them worth it because at the beginning 700 bucks for a falcon is a lot of money. The icon of the group came to my attention quite early but I didn’t know that it shows always the most dangerous character of the group. In the next playthrough I will pay more attention to them.

Best regards,
Taito

Attachments:

1. 

   Battle-Brother-Builds.pdf
   

[Taito]

Forgot one thing: most of the inspiration for my buidls I got from the steamuser calmnesss13 and his “Battle Brothers Perk Guide”. Just to give credit where credit is due.

[hruza]

Taito wrote:

1. Most of the time I gave polearms to my most talented, but at this point weak, recruits. This wasn’t the best of approaches as it seems. Worked in beginner but in veteran you just can’t afford to miss to much of the polearm- damage- output. So I will try to give my best guys the polearms and to abuse the 100% hitchance of the shieldsplit like McKing proposed.

I give polearms almost exclusively to ranged hybrids in my backline. I don’t run dedicated polearm guys. Sometimes I give polearm to one of the new recruits in later stages of the game but you have to be careful with that when you are against enemy with ranged as he is likely without ranged defense and thus primary target for enemy bows and crossbows. I prefer to keep talented recruits in reserve and rotate them in to the easier fights until they get few levels.

Works fine for me so far.

Taito wrote:

To hunt down what terrorizes villages is also my favorite quest and werwolfs and nachzehrers are by far the easiest enemies at the start. So I try to do as much of those contracts as possible.

Problem with these two is that they give small experience and little loot. In early game, I actually like raider type missions because they are my primary source of 2. tier weapons and 100 durability armors. To get these weapons and armors by buying them would be major pain in the ass as I would struggle to earn enough money while raiders are walking armory.

My usual approach which works for me so far is to recruit 8 squad (including starting brothers) for a fight with Hogart, all equipped with 30-40 class armors and headgear, at last 2 spears and as many shields as I can find. Farmhands, brawlers, daytalers, fisherman, butchers, builders are my picks but I won’t shine away from ratcatcher, apprentice, mason, messenger or vagabond either. However I avoid backgrounds with negative bonuses like cripples, beggars, tailors and so on. If I stumble across cheap poacher, I might consider recruiting him. I buy few knives as well and give it to the best melee fighters to let me strip enemies of those armors I need.

In fight against Hogart, I aim at getting Hogarts armor. Depending on how AI plays, this is quit doable and armor goes to my starting 2H guy. And yes, I do use 2H at the beginning.

After the battle I take a look at the map and try to find region with many civilian settlements close by, with at last one major trade resourse in a small settlement and at last one large city where it can be sold. In ideal case at last one small settlement should have workshop for cheap tools and herbalist grove for cheap meds. I will then made that region my main base of operations for beginning and mid game, running missions around and trading there. Always try to make local mission before buying and selling since it always results in better prices.

Once I know where I will operate I try to raise my squad to 12 while keeping equipping them with 40-50 class armors, helmets and shields. All salvaged from enemies (thug class). I also try to hire second ranged guy. Usually poacher or bowyer but I do keep eye on a talented guy from other backgrounds (40+ ranged attack and 2 or 3 stars will do).

Once that is done, I try to hire few brothers in to reserve while upgrading my armors in the front row to raider class gear (+-100 armor and helmets). As for weapons I tend to run 7 front liners with shields, 2 spears at the flanks, 2 flails, one mace and 2 swords. Mace and flails goes to those with best melee attack. In back row I have 1x 2H and 4 ranged/polearm hybrids. I prefer pikes at the early-mid game due to their hit chance bonus, but I like to have at last 1 long axe for breaking shields. All my non ranged get daggers for armor stripping.

At this point I try to replace really bad brothers with more decent ones and I try to find at last one more future 2H user -that means somebody with ability to reach 85+ attack, 25+ defence, 120+ fatigue and 50+ resolve. I also try to find 1 or two candidates for sergeant. I prefer to use my sergeants as a shield frontliners. I give them banner only during fights against geists.

At the same time I try to raise 10,000 gold as a permanent reserve. Anytime I get more, I buy 200 class armor and helmet for one of my front liners. This seems to be point where many new players tend to make a mistake. Once they equip their squad with top raider class gear (100 armors 2nd tier weapons), they think they are good to go. That’s not the case. You need better armor and few better weapons if you want to regularly take on larger raider groups, goblins and orcs. Otherwise you’ll be constantly loosing brother or two per fight and struggling to move forward. You need to level your brothers to level 7+ (to get battle forged which is probably the most essential perk in this game for heavy melee builds in mid to late game).

Once I get at last 4 200+ armors and helmets in the front row, I start raiding ruins for famed weapons and armors and look for bandit leaders and hedge knights to get higher tier armors and weapons. Having 2x 2H guys with 80+ attack, 300+ armor, battle forged and some good 2H weapons is going to carry you long way in the middle part of the game (great sword is likely the most versatile but you want 2H hammers if greenskins invade). At this point all my melee brothers have dagger and some ranged hybrids have nets to help strip those more dangerous foes of their goodies.

Also fallen heroes are good source of early heavy armors. With their low action points they are somehow less dangerous and while their armors are sub par to their normal equivalents, they still can provide you with very good protection until you can afford something better. Don’t sell their shields either, while they are inferior to kite shields, they are superior to round shields. And it won’t hurt as much when some orc breaks one.

At this point you should be in the mid game, have 2 high level 2H guys in 250-350 armors. Next thing you want to is start hiring more expensive backgrounds, replacing the more useless of your mercs, increasing number of your 2H guys, perhaps adding one or two duelists, finding especially talented ranged character to have him sniping out enemy ranged (he should be able to reach 90+ ranged attack by level 11 and have at last 20 ranged defense). Mid game is also when first crisis kicks out and unless it’s noble war which you can essentially sit out without interfering, you gone face increased challenge as you need to actively prevent settlements to be overrun otherwise your world will shrink.

If greenskins invade, you want to have orc and goblin trophy (from chalenges) and 2 good 2H hammer guys.

If undead invade, you gone need one or two good sergeants and undead trophy.

Taito wrote:

5. In future encounters I will use falcons and scout out the enemies like hruza does. Never really considered them worth it because at the beginning 700 bucks for a falcon is a lot of money.

Falcons indeed seems like a expensive investment at the beginning of the game and buying one shouldn’t be your first priority. But they are one time investment so you may look for one for a good price (small castles are best bets) once you can afford it.

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