survived to day 80 without single man dying, then one battle crushed me

[coocoodas]

I’ve been playing veteran ironman with no death or even permanent injuries to day 80. I’ve been beating 3 skulls contract without much troubles.

I took 3 skulls contract on day 80 and it came with a new type of orcs called warrior orcs I’ve never encountered before. 5 of the 10 orcs were warriors.

I retreated in fights that seemed unwinnable, but in this fight before I had a chance 2 warrior orcs offed my archer in 1 turn after close quarter engagement. I held high ground which suddenly turned to my advantage because warrior orcs broke through my defense and knocked my brothers off to a lower ground and forced engagement in that position. For the first time in 40 battles in this campaign, holding the high ground was a costly mistake. Raging hard, I fought on and lost 2 more and retreated just before I lost 4th; 3 warrior orcs remained.

I wanted a revenge and I immediately engaged back with changed weapon configurations with my 9 remaining, injured brothers and managed to kill 3, but lost another 2.

I received 3000 crowns for the work, 3200 was spent to heal and pay remaining 7 brothers.

I’m utterly devastated at the moment. I don’t usually look at guides because I Find it more fun figuring a game out myself but I simply didn’t expect difficulty spike with orc warriors. I encounter different types of new enemies such as undead savants, level 3 nach-thingy, orc berserkers before and managed to learn their strengths and in dire situations retreat before I lost someone.

I feel my current run is completely ruined, and trying to muster up courage to start another one. How do you guys who play ironman, well, play the game? I’m not asking in terms of tactics(I wanna figure it out myself) but as in mindset and rule of thumbs.

Up to this horrible defeat I’d been taking temp injuries whenever I was about to lose a brother. This time it just happened too quick for me to decide, and my level 8 archer had died in 1 turn. I was like “wait… what the… nooo!” Maybe I should have retreated the moment I saw them breaking my defense line. I am going to hold onto the save but I’m not sure if I can survive with 5 of my veteran members lost and a crisis starting.

[hruza]

How could your archer die in first round? It takes at last 2 turns for orcs to get to your line. Young ones tend to arrive first so they delay contact with warriors usually further. And it would take another turn for warrior to break through your lines to get to your archers.

Did you charge your line forward to get the high ground?

Anyway, engaging 5 orc warriors on day 80 isn’t good idea, unless you’re well equipped, have very good brothers and you are already familiar with orc warriors and what they can do. That means 300 armors, 2H weapons, ideally including few 2H warhamers, couple of billhooks and few nets. And your brothers should have 80+ melee attack and 20+ melee defense with high end perks. At last most of them. That way you could expect to win that fight without loosing somebody. Anything less and it’s up to some luck.

Loosing like this is however part of the game and why it is so much fun. It’s part of the challenge. Most of us got owned when we first encountered orc warriors. Just like when we have encountered other high end enemies. Every enemy in the game uses specific fighting stile and have specific strengths and weaknesses. Nothing can prepare you for such first time encounter.

[coocoodas]

Archer didn’t die in 1st turn; it died in 1 enemy turn after we were engaged in a close quarter combat.

hruza wrote:

How could your archer die in first round? It takes at last 2 turns for orcs to get to your line. Young ones tend to arrive first so they delay contact with warriors usually further. And it would take another turn for warrior to break through your lines to get to your archers.

Did you charge your line forward to get the high ground?

Anyway, engaging 5 orc warriors on day 80 isn’t good idea, unless you’re well equipped, have very good brothers and you are already familiar with orc warriors and what they can do. That means 300 armors, 2H weapons, ideally including few 2H warhamers, couple of billhooks and few nets. And your brothers should have 80+ melee attack and 20+ melee defense with high end perks. At last most of them. That way you could expect to win that fight without loosing somebody. Anything less and it’s up to some luck.

Loosing like this is however part of the game and why it is so much fun. It’s part of the challenge. Most of us got owned when we first encountered orc warriors. Just like when we have encountered other high end enemies. Every enemy in the game uses specific fighting stile and have specific strengths and weaknesses. Nothing can prepare you for such first time encounter.

Archer didn’t die in 1st turn; it died in 1 enemy turn after we were engaged in a close quarter combat.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, orc warrior are a tough nut to crack when you have no idea what they can do…

You don’t have to start over, though.
Recruit a couple of cheap new borthers, train them up fighting lower risk contracts/enemies (one skull stuff and bandits). After about a week or two you should be fine again.

The lesson is: don’t get cocky
If something new and unexpected happens, be cautious and ready to run.

[mrbunnyban]

I’m a big advocate of not playing iron man until you’ve encountersed every type of enemy and have devised strategies how to deal with them.

…that’s not the advise you wanted to hear I’m sure, but that’s all I got. Sorry!

—
In case you were interested, here are some anti-orc warrior tactics. I just realised after writing it that you’re not asking for it so just ignore it if you don’t want it.

Orc warriors have knockback attacks, yes. but they do not have footwork. So if your archers have footwork and the orc warriors are still engaged to a friendly after the knockback, you can easily save the archer. The orc will very likely do it AGAIN, but now you’re wasting the orc’s time. Footwork only costs 3 AP after all, so you can take a lot of effective actions.

Indomitable perk stops knockback attacks completely. Knockbacks will NOT work if the orc cannot push your guy into a space further away from him. So positioning matters. For example, I had a fight being ambushed in the forest and made it so there was no space to be knocked back into. At the very least, you can see which of your archers are vulnerable to being exposed after a frontliner is knocked back, and which ones are not.

[Danubian]

Yeah ahah, youll think you have the game figured out, and then youll run into Orc Warriors and they will make you rethink your entire group build :P

Thats just how they are. You can either completely build up a group to handle them, or you can avoid them.

[RusBear]

i will buy DLC when i can play for orcs for full game price )

[Author]

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