[suggestion] Clearly unbalanced enemies

[Danubian]

Sorry i edited my post about those undead, missed your reply.

[Meeky]

Well, concerning Fallen Heroes: I think it’s because the Undead aren’t nearly as aggressive as the orcs typically. You’ll see armies of orcs rushing at villages pretty quickly, but the undead seem to bide their time more and play the waiting game before they start moving in. That’s my experience.

That said, Fallen Heroes also aren’t as deadly to me as Orc Warriors. The main strength of Fallen Heroes is they have no fatigue. They have good stats, but coupled with that they have absolutely no fatigue whatsoever. So, when you fight them, you need to kill them fast, before they can wear your Battle Brothers down by just having more energy than you.

And my armies tend to be very much focused around hitting the enemy hard and fast. As I said before, my favorite army setups involve two-handed weaponry in bulk. I can keep a couple tough guys in front (nimble tanks or shieldbearers) while having pikemen stab from the back, or while having a two-handed swordsman perform a wide sweep or cut before stepping back once the dudes adjacent to him are dead. They’ll wear out fairly quickly, but they’ll kill quickly, too; and I have a captain/commander behind them blowing his horn every turn to keep them hale and hearty.

So, for me, Fallen Warriors aren’t that much of a problem. At least, they aren’t a problem until you starting factoring in the enemy having a necromancer or two, ghosts, and overwhelming numbers. Those kind of fights are terrifying problems.

[Rexmundi]

Meeky wrote:

Well, concerning Fallen Heroes: I think it’s because the Undead aren’t nearly as aggressive as the orcs typically. You’ll see armies of orcs rushing at villages pretty quickly, but the undead seem to bide their time more and play the waiting game before they start moving in. That’s my experience.

That said, Fallen Heroes also aren’t as deadly to me as Orc Warriors. The main strength of Fallen Heroes is they have no fatigue. They have good stats, but coupled with that they have absolutely no fatigue whatsoever. So, when you fight them, you need to kill them fast, before they can wear your Battle Brothers down by just having more energy than you.

And my armies tend to be very much focused around hitting the enemy hard and fast. As I said before, my favorite army setups involve two-handed weaponry in bulk. I can keep a couple tough guys in front (nimble tanks or shieldbearers) while having pikemen stab from the back, or while having a two-handed swordsman perform a wide sweep or cut before stepping back once the dudes adjacent to him are dead. They’ll wear out fairly quickly, but they’ll kill quickly, too; and I have a captain/commander behind them blowing his horn every turn to keep them hale and hearty.

So, for me, Fallen Warriors aren’t that much of a problem. At least, they aren’t a problem until you starting factoring in the enemy having a necromancer or two, ghosts, and overwhelming numbers. Those kind of fights are terrifying problems.

It is quite easy to get unlimited fatigue yourself. Just have two brothers with high resolve and take turns spamming the refill fatigue skill. Keep the other brothers in a circle around them and you can fight indefinitely.

[Rexmundi]

Meeky wrote:

A note of caution, though: in my experience, you can’t shield bash orc warriors off of high ground. I’ve tried it extensively and it never seems to work. I think they’re just too darned heavy to shove around. Young orcs and I think berserkers are a different story.

Orcs are immune to shield bash. If you select the skill and hover over or select the orc the game says that they are immune to shield bashing.

Not quite sure if it was only the warriors or also the other orcs.

[Danubian]

Im fairly sure that Orc Warlords and Orc Warriors are immune to shield attack, im also fairly sure that Young Orcs arent, and i dont know about berskers but i think theyre not either because i dont remember having any problems with them.

[Anonymous]

None of the enemies are OP. They all have several weaknesses and it’s up to the player to exploit them.

Crossbows beat bows, hands down. They hit harder than an aimed shot, cost 5 less fatigue including reload, costs only 5 stamina if you don’t reload, have +20% to hit, and can be fast swapped via Quick Hands for 2 shots or even 3 with the Berserk skill. And using a goblin crossbow gives neat tactical options with its knock-back ability. Crossbows wreck everything except Lost Souls and skeletons.

Goblins – fight them at night, with tower shields, in the forest, or from atop a hill. Use brush to hide your melee and pounce. Take your time and send 2-3 brothers along the outside of the map and attack from the rear at the same time you release your dogs. If you see a goblin with a net, try to kill him before he can throw the net, those nets are incredibly useful against orc warriors.

Orcs – Their ranged capabilities suck so they HAVE to come to you. Pick your ground and fight or just fall back to the edge of the map and retreat to fight them on another map. Use spearwall to give your ranged brothers 2-4 turns to shoot up the soft berserkers or young. Your highest priority targets should be any orc with an axe so they don’t have time to break your shields (use goblin nets to pin axe carrying orc warriors and buy more shooting time). Carry extra shields. When the melee combat is joined, move your ranged brothers into the backs of your men. They’ll have decent enough shots but more importantly the orcs won’t be able to knock your frontliners out of position.

Undead – You only need 1 or 2 brothers with the mind shield vs Lost Souls. Target enemy 2-handers and battle axe wielders. Then make excessive use of shield wall and stamina recovery (front line rotation, the battle horn, doing nothing). The undead are really dumb so have them try to chew on your toughest brothers while the rest of your men swarm the edges. These fights are less about combat skill and more about stamina management.

Bandits – Have fun, they are all different and can surprise you.

[Danubian]

Anonymous wrote:

None of the enemies are OP. They all have several weaknesses and it’s up to the player to exploit them.

Show me a battle where you killed 10+ Orc Warriors. Screenshot, video, anything.

Anonymous wrote:

Crossbows beat bows, hands down. They hit harder than an aimed shot, cost 5 less fatigue including reload, costs only 5 stamina if you don’t reload, have +20% to hit, and can be fast swapped via Quick Hands for 2 shots or even 3 with the Berserk skill. And using a goblin crossbow gives neat tactical options with its knock-back ability. Crossbows wreck everything except Lost Souls and skeletons.

But they dont beat bows once you have level 10+ archers with 70+ archery who can hit twice per turn with normal shot. At least not according to my experiments. In any case if you have 6 crossbows youre not going to kill a single Orc Warrior before it gets to your first line. And thats an indication that an enemy is not balanced.

Anonymous wrote:

Orcs – Their ranged capabilities suck so they HAVE to come to you. Pick your ground and fight or just fall back to the edge of the map and retreat to fight them on another map. Use spearwall to give your ranged brothers 2-4 turns to shoot up the soft berserkers or young. Your highest priority targets should be any orc with an axe so they don’t have time to break your shields (use goblin nets to pin axe carrying orc warriors and buy more shooting time). Carry extra shields. When the melee combat is joined, move your ranged brothers into the backs of your men. They’ll have decent enough shots but more importantly the orcs won’t be able to knock your frontliners out of position.

Again next time you fight 10+ Orc Warriors take a screenshot or better yet make a video, i would really like to see how you fight those totally-not-OP enemies with spearwall and crossbows.

[Meeky]

It is quite easy to get unlimited fatigue yourself. Just have two brothers with high resolve and take turns spamming the refill fatigue skill. Keep the other brothers in a circle around them and you can fight indefinitely.

It’s not quite unlimited fatigue, especially if your army uses Perfect Focus a lot. My Brothers usually do.

Note that in previous patches I would have agreed with you without question.

Going back to my previous example, I’ll probably have pikemen and archers and guys with greatswords all with Perfect Focus. I’ll have a couple of guys blowing horns if I go that route, yeah… But the problem is having two hornblowers standing next to each other won’t actually benefit the team as much as it did in previous patches.

Previously, your two hornblowers could blow in the same turn, grant their benefits in the same turn, and refresh each other pretty consistently. Now, though, as you’re limited to only one horn toot per round (every character can only be affected once), you’re far more limited in how much fatigue you can regain, and a guy that blows his horn can’t get the benefits of a horn toot that round.

Factor in how Perfect Focus works. For one turn, I can make sure that everything around me is laid to waste. Archers with Perfect Focus + the perk that regains fatigue upon killing an enemy, pikemen and swordsmen that are Farmers, Wildmen, Hedge Knights laying smackdowns all around… but after that round of righteous fury, their energy is spent, with very little fatigue left. You blow the horn and they should regain enough fatigue to keep fighting another round, sure, but a few turns later both my hornblowers are out of breath and need to take some time to recover. And woe betide me if I need to swap out one of the frontliners with one of my hornblowers thanks to a near-fatal injury, or worse, a fatality.

It’s not the same as having unlimited fatigue.

Again, undead are typically easy for me to fight, but if there’s a whole, huge mess of undead – overhwelming numbers with Fallen Heroes and Ghosts and Necromancers and anyone I happen to lose in that fight risen as a zombie – well… I could very easily lose a few men, or lose the fight if I make mistakes.

Show me a battle where you killed 10+ Orc Warriors. Screenshot, video, anything.

So, once the next big patch comes out, I’m looking at making a Let’s Play or similar series for Battle Brothers. I’m in a bad situation to record right now, but by then I should have some relative peace and quiet. It will be a no reloads game, so I’ll be careful and afraid in the early and mid game, but tackling a really powerful orc camp is on the list of things to do.

When I do, I’d actually love to get feedback, especially if I use tactics that seem unwise or the like. My level-up schemes aren’t perfect, I know that. But I’ve beaten odds like that before, as I mentioned earlier.

[Danubian]

Make sure you link it here please once you make it.

[Jaffai]

This is ranged brother for you, who can take down orc warriors.

[RusBear]

As I wrote earlier – the party of level 11 with normal backgrounds, proper buildup (and diverse – and that’s good) and normal gear – could easily defeat the most powerful opponents. The issue is that for the early and middle stages of the game Orcs Warriors – a mortal enemy. 5-6 orc warriors smear your party level 4-5 for a few rounds without a chance. It’s all clear and the dispute itself is only in the way that some say “I won”, while others say – “it is impossible”. Perhaps, they were just different levels of troops :). However, it should be noted this time, and here I agree with the author topic – no enemy except Orc Warrior and enemies – with a crossbow does not depend so much on the merciless randomness in the game. I had a case when an orc warrior one surrounded by three of my brothers stood at a low level – I had 6 misses streak to him with a chance to 60+. But he answered 4 times hit in the head and almost killed two of my 11 brothers leveled in excellent armor to perk cancellation critical blow to the head and perk on umeshenny damage through armor. These are the things I’m really annoyed. rand is good for gameplay … maybe, but he should also be a part of the balance sheet and not a moment when all your tactical moves and the right pumping fly to hell

[Harasdar]

I think it is not how about killing orcs or how hard they are it is more like that one orc just shouldn’t kill a fully developed and equipped with one single blow. It is really frustrating, at least for me, if I fight orcs and all is going really well, killing them with ease and than there is that one damn blow killing one of my men. I can live with loses if they were killed because I placed them wrong or just did another mistake, but unable to do anything is really frustrating. I like hard to beat games but those should be fair. One hitting orcs are not a good game element at least in my opinion.

[Meeky]

The issue is that for the early and middle stages of the game Orcs Warriors – a mortal enemy. 5-6 orc warriors smear your party level 4-5 for a few rounds without a chance. It’s all clear and the dispute itself is only in the way that some say “I won”, while others say – “it is impossible”. Perhaps, they were just different levels of troops :).

I think this is pretty spot on. It doesn’t apply to all the arguments, but it’s definitely true. I play carefully around orcs until I’m confident in the abilities of my army… at least, that’s the case until I get offered a sum of money I can’t refuse.

I had a case when an orc warrior one surrounded by three of my brothers stood at a low level – I had 6 misses streak to him with a chance to 60+. But he answered 4 times hit in the head and almost killed two of my 11 brothers leveled in excellent armor to perk cancellation critical blow to the head and perk on umeshenny damage through armor.

That’s part of the randomness of the game, as you mention later in your post. It can swing in your favor, too. I’ve had an archer with a 5% chance to hit ghosts kill 3 in one turn thanks to perfect Focus, and an archer with only two shots kill 2 ghosts. It’s all about how the dice roll.

I’m going to draw a comparison to another video game: Battle for Wesnoth. Like Battle Brothers, it’s a turn-based strategy game with RPG elements. Battle for Wesnoth is incredibly similar in the cases of hits vs. misses; either you hit an enemy or you miss them and that’s that, and there’s no such thing as a 100% chance to hit. Ergo, there have been times during that game when I had a 90% chance to hit an enemy, had 4 attacks in that round, and the enemy had to hit me three times in a row (out of three attacks) with a 20% chance to kill me… and in that melee engagement, my guy with the hugely greater chances of winning would die. Bad RNG? Yeah, but that’s just how random numbers work. They’re random. But the big thing is: while that was bad for me, I was able to turn the tide despite the loss of one of my best units and win the battle, albeit no longer having that fellow in my retinue did hurt.

Battle Brothers is very similar. Yeah, bad luck can happen, but if you’re planning the battle right, you can mitigate the effect of that luck. If you play by saving and loading, you can avoid bad luck altogether, but otherwise… you really just have to learn to roll with the punches.

Some people don’t like that in a game that involves strategy, but I’d argue that it keeps you on edge and adds realism and adds fun. There’s a bit more anticipation that accompanies each move: will your Battle Brother be able to survive that round? Will that darned Goblin Ambusher get another couple of lucky shots off? Will the enemy rush at your seemingly exposed flank, which is a trap, or charge somewhere else?

[Danubian]

RusBear wrote:

As I wrote earlier – the party of level 11 with normal backgrounds, proper buildup (and diverse – and that’s good) and normal gear – could easily defeat the most powerful opponents. The issue is that for the early and middle stages of the game Orcs Warriors – a mortal enemy. 5-6 orc warriors smear your party level 4-5 for a few rounds without a chance. It’s all clear and the dispute itself is only in the way that some say “I won”, while others say – “it is impossible”. Perhaps, they were just different levels of troops :). However, it should be noted this time, and here I agree with the author topic – no enemy except Orc Warrior and enemies – with a crossbow does not depend so much on the merciless randomness in the game. I had a case when an orc warrior one surrounded by three of my brothers stood at a low level – I had 6 misses streak to him with a chance to 60+. But he answered 4 times hit in the head and almost killed two of my 11 brothers leveled in excellent armor to perk cancellation critical blow to the head and perk on umeshenny damage through armor. These are the things I’m really annoyed. rand is good for gameplay … maybe, but he should also be a part of the balance sheet and not a moment when all your tactical moves and the right pumping fly to hell

Personally i have no issues with game randomness. My issue is with the balance where once you are level 10+ there are still enemies (non unique ones) that are insanely difficult to fight, and primarily because they have stupid amounts of armor AND the ability to kill your high level brothers in best possible armors with best possible weapons in just 3 hits (the ability to destroy most shields in 1 hit for example is just broken, it defeats the whole point of a shield).

Like i said many times, i understand that there are people who enjoy brutal difficulty, where you can lose a level 10 brother in 3 hits. And i will repeat: if you want brutal difficulty, use higher game difficulty setting. The base game at the lowest possible difficulty setting should be a lot more casual, without opponents that are stupidly OP and needlessly difficult to defeat. And again im not against game providing opponents that are though, however, those opponents should be reserved for special battles and unique situations, they shouldnt be roaming the map in such insane numbers (i have previously encountered a group of like 8 orc warriors and 7 or 8 berserkers, that battle was insane).

And i still stand by my original point about Goblins. While goblins are not simply OP as Orc Warriors, they are ridiculously annoying to fight. Fights against goblins are huge waste of time, simply because you will spend more time chasing them around the map than actually fighting them. Once youve done that 5 or 10 times, it starts getting really repetitive and boring. And the game doesnt provide any economic or fun way of dealing with Ambushers (weve been through dogs and how they are not a fail safe strategy/magical solution in this regard).

[Danubian]

Jaffai wrote:

This is ranged brother for you, who can take down orc warriors.

On his own or as a member of that party?

[Author]

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