Having trouble with the difficulty of the game

[N1GHTMAR3]

Hi! I want to mention a few things first, since I don’t want to offend anyone or make this sound bad. So, I’m not much of a thinker even when it comes down to tactical and strategy games, but no, I don’t rush straight into combat and stuff. I abuse (with the full extent of this word) the save and load system to my advantage (savescumming). I have spent no more than 3-4 hours into this particular game. I know that this game is meant to be hard and that this is early game. I am playing on the EASIEST difficulty.

Anyways, I got this game recently and I guess it’s nice. I can’t say anything more than that, because, as mentioned above, I have not fully explored it yet. The genre is something I like, but I’m having HUGE trouble with the difficulty so far. Don’t laugh, please. Yes, this is the EASIEST difficulty. Right now, I have formed a few thoughts about the core mechanics of the combat system. (THOUGHTS, NOT FACTS):

Enemy forces overwhelming (I think that’s a status effect, so as to avoid confusion – outnumbering) you is not a disadvantage, it’s far worse; it’s hopeless at times.

I don’t think my choices in tactical positioning do anything other than some hits to the opponent forces, which most likely miss either way.

I can not even use the axeman (who, now, is my spearman) properly, whose sole purpose is to break down shields. Instead, he misses 6 out of 8 attacks.

Random terrain is a huge turn off for me. Your allied forces are spawned in god-knows-where, but the enemy forces have the benefits of deploying properly, as you’d expect how two parties would engage.

Defending and then counter-attacking is useful. And then there’s times where this one enemy dodges all three attacks. (On ground terrain).

I can’t feel the enemy morale breaking even when there’s a few of them left. Those engaged in combat will not try to flee, instead acting aggressively and attacking your weakest warrior.

That’s it so far. I am not used to challenging games as I don’t play them, however I purposely turned on the easiest difficulty for that reason. I can’t walk away without casualties if I don’t outnumber the enemy by at least 1-2 men. I’m really desperate when they actually have more numbers. This is more of a “How can I actually make the game fun and not frustrating” like thread.

[Sky]

Well, these forums seem to be dead. So yeah, there wont be much answers for your cry of help.

Now about the difficulty. This game is made having loses in mind, it is one of its main points. It is hard to not lose people, especially at the start. You could have noticed that the starting guys and the cheap ones are pretty weak. You better get used to losing men and even if you dont lose them but they get a lot of perma injuries you will have to let em go. What could ease your game is to be cautious.

Try to get 1 skull quests, and even maybe avoid caravan defenses since those are a bit harder. Y
ou should equip your people with shields that is a big boost to defense especially at the start. And not the smallest one, but the bigger round ones. Also consider tactical choises like having people with weapons that reach further for attack and the shielded ones mainly for defense, with some supporting xbow or bowmen.
Always have food, money, medicine.
If you see semo extra cheap guys, get em, even tho they are weak and need equip they still a body to hit which can save a more useful unit potentialy. Dont attack goblins, orcs, brigands, marksmen, they will hurt.
Try not to attack into forests cuz then your people will start at shitty positioning.

Still the main problem is that you are used to games where you always win and save all the people. This is not a game like that. You will lose men, you will flee (by going to the edge of the map and pressing the flee button so they wont get hurt or die) and you will hire more and better dudes equipping with better equip when the money is aviable. That wont save your men tho, just ease it a lil bit. If you want to have it as easy as possible, cheat up some gold and buy the best stuff that the men can wear (fatigue is very important stat). Still they will die, just less frequently. To get to the point where you can be safe, is very hard, you need strong people to begin with (like swordmasters, hedgeknights, etc) which cost a lot, then you need to lvl em which is hard, you need to get them the right talens for the chosen purpose, and you still need the equipment.

Welcome to the Battle Brother.

Tipps for new players
BB Wiki

[Johnsmith24601]

Never get into a fight that you can’t win. How? Have one beggar brother striped totally naked and put all the rest in reserve. The beggar marathon runner can often outrun the enemies. If he can’t, just hit the retreat button and deal with a little injury for just one man. The point of this is that you can always pick which battle to fight. This is especially important in the early game, as you can actually find a lot of contracts that don’t require fighting. For example, if a merchant tells you to “obtain x item at y location”, this usually means that you can just go in with your marathon runner, retreat and then finish the mission.

[hruza]

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Enemy forces overwhelming (I think that’s a status effect, so as to avoid confusion – outnumbering) you is not a disadvantage, it’s far worse; it’s hopeless at times.

That depends on what enemy you face and what is level and equipment of your company. Being outnumbered by bunch of thugs at the beginning of the game is not the same thing as being outnumbered by them in the later stages of the game.

Remember, you can always back out of the fight, most of the time even without getting your men injured. Evaluate your enemy at the start of the combat and if you thing he’s too strong, retreat. You aren’t expected to win every fight.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I don’t think my choices in tactical positioning do anything other than some hits to the opponent forces, which most likely miss either way.

Positioning is important. Terrain can play huge role, unless you fight on a open plain. It’s however up to you to use it. How you place your brothers is also important.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I can not even use the axeman (who, now, is my spearman) properly, whose sole purpose is to break down shields. Instead, he misses 6 out of 8 attacks.

Breaking down shields is mostly waste of time. It’s common beginners mistake. You are wasting your turn and enemy will hit harder because 1H weapon held in both hands have 25% damage bonus. There are situations when it’s viable tactics but generally you want to reliably hit them over their shields. At the beginning of the game when your brothers have low melee skill, use flails. They ignore shield.

That starting 2H axe is a death trap. Change it to 1H+shield as soon as you can afford to. 2H weapons are very good and you’ll be fielding lot of them later in the game, but they require high skills and heavy armor to work.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Random terrain is a huge turn off for me. Your allied forces are spawned in god-knows-where, but the enemy forces have the benefits of deploying properly, as you’d expect how two parties would engage.

Allies will always deploy alongside of you when they are reinforcing you (you have engaged enemy first). When you reinforce them (they engaged first) then they spawn on one of the sides of the map depending how many parties are involved.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

Defending and then counter-attacking is useful. And then there’s times where this one enemy dodges all three attacks. (On ground terrain).

And then there’s times when this one brother of your dodges all three attacks. Success in attacks depends on your skill, enemy skill, equipment and a random factor.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

I can’t feel the enemy morale breaking even when there’s a few of them left. Those engaged in combat will not try to flee

Morale does not depend on how many of them are left. However intelligent enemies (humans, goblins, orcs…) will usually try to flee when there are only one or two left.

Certain events force morale check on a character (AI or yours). Getting damaging hits and receiving injuries, seeing allies get killed or fleeing and few other things (making one enemy flee can cause chain rout). However characters with high resolve have better chance to resist these checks and maintain morale. Different types of enemies have different resolve and some (undead) are completely fear resistant and will newer break and flee.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

instead acting aggressively and attacking your weakest warrior.

Finally game with decent AI.

N1GHTMAR3 wrote:

That’s it so far. I am not used to challenging games as I don’t play them, however I purposely turned on the easiest difficulty for that reason. I can’t walk away without casualties if I don’t outnumber the enemy by at least 1-2 men. I’m really desperate when they actually have more numbers. This is more of a “How can I actually make the game fun and not frustrating” like thread.

Check some let’s plays for inspiration on how to play at the beginning of the game. Here is short let’s play made by the developers which is sort of a tutorial. It’s bit old and does not include all DLCs and patches but is still generally valid as far as gameplay stile is concerned:

[luzarius]

I’m also playing on beginner difficulty and after the weasel fight I keep dying. An easier difficulty would be greatly appreciated. I tried buying the best armor or recruiting as many guys as I can, but no matter what I keep dying and losing all my men by the third contract. Often times, I can’t even find any contracts that aren’t skulls.

[Sarissofoi]

Some advice.
Buying the best armor is not always the best option because then you lack funds for other things.
Hire some cheap soldiers. Farmers, brawlers are one of the best early choices.
Equip them well(but cheaply – cloth is enough but sometimes you can spot damaged armor on market that you can buy cheap and then repair).
On begging and early the most cost efficient combo is cheap cloth/leather armor plus CAP(helmets are rather costly but heck even hat is better than nothing). Any form of head protection is essential as hits to the head will mostly kill or maim your soldier if he not wear any. It is even more important than having a armor because it come with bonus(+50%) dmg. Which often lead to one shooting your guys even with weak low tier weapons.
>so any man need a cap
>and some cheap armor
Forget two handed weapons – with low defense skill and no armor and perks you will get hit often and they are not reliable hitters as you will miss often with low attack skill.
So early the best combo is shield plus one handed weapon. Shield is obvious it increase defense directly and block enemy hits increasing survival of your troops. It also comes with two great skills – one that increase defense even more and second that allow you push enemy around and is great utility skill.
>So Cap, armor and shield for your frontline troops. With it they should survive longer.
Don’t forget that putting your troops on high ground offer advantage both in defense and in offense against enemy on lower ground. Its 10% both to defense and attack chance so early its really important. positioning is the key both for defense and offense.
Surrounding enemy not only grant better chance to hit him(+5% chance to hit per ally – but this work for enemy too) but also can trigger morale checks and lower enemy morale or even make them panic and run.
Early most of your troops should consist of shieldmen.
Now offense. For your frontline troops spear, sword or flail is the best early.
>spear is great because basic attack come with +20 chance to hit and its pretty reliable weapon even damage is not impressive, don’t worry it hit often and if you concentrate attacks enemy will die fast, it also have ability Spearwall that offer more crowd control mostly by denying enemy movement(so good to protect your flanks or denied enemy access to your weaker troops) or make enemy move get hit making him bleed and waste his Action points
>swords are pretty decent weapons that have solid damage(better than spear) and +10 chance to hit on basic attacks
>flails normal attack ignore enemy shields basic defense bonus which make your troops hit more often against enemy with shields(although spear is still more reliable against them) and also offer special attack that hit enemy head ONLY(which is great because early enemy often not wear any head protection – or weak one and you can often one-two hit them plus if you don’t destroy their armor you have chance to loot it)
With these weapons you can reliable hit enemy.
I recommend spears as they are cheap and reliable weapon with lot of utility.
Your main damage should come from a backrow – a either xbowmen or pikeman. The polearms have 2tile range so you can use it from safety and also it allow you to concentrate your attacks. It also have solid damage and accuracy bonus but is not cheap so early even pitchfork is fine.

So:
>recruit farmers and brawlers
>equip them with cheap head protection and armor and SHIELDS
>have one or two brother with polearms or ranged(preferably xbows as they are more accurate early) to support your initial xbow bro
take high ground when you can
>tie enemy with your shieldmen
>then concentrate attacks where you have advantage and defend(by raising shields) where enemy have
>kill enemy units in place where you can advantage and then use them to crush rest

[Danubian]

Unfortunately this game is highly unforgiving and this is something ive been complaining about for ages.

Basically the best advice i can give you is to keep playing even if you keep failing until you figure out a meta that works.

Basically my advice to you is to focus on several things:
-early on focus on fighting humans, bandits to be precise, and focus on hunting down bandit thugs. Avoid fighting bandit raiders as they will wreck you early and into mid game (before you have a full party and leveled up brothers).
-experiment with meta and find out what works for you: i personally use 2 lines of 6 characters each; first line is shield + one handed weapon, where i focus on fatigue, melee and melee defense (so getting talents in that, melee def in particular is critical) with life and resolve being fillers in case i get low rolls on important stuff. For second i line i prefer to have characters that have about 60 melee and 60 ranged with the rest usually going into other things, such as life (they wont have shields, and arrows/bolts are deadly). The idea is that the first line tanks and second line shoots or switches to pikes and then stabs people from behind.
-spears are essentially a noob trap, and so are two handed axes; youre not supposed to be using that stuff (spears are fine very early game, axes only work if you have good melee skill, otherwise you wont hit anything, ever). Spears have very low damage and their special attack might appear good, but its not really, if you rely on it too much, it will fail you against tougher enemies (they will shield wall and simply drop into you). Early on when youre fighting unarmored enemies (bandit thugs) use swords; as you go up in skill and start getting 60+ melee guys i advise you to go into axes; i find axes to be the best all around weapons, specially for tanking characters. Aside from axes cleavers (military cleaver) seem to be pretty good too.
-bows vs crossbows – very high ranged skill bow can be deadly because you will essentially fire 2 times per turn, but bows will be utterly useless vs heavily armored enemies, such as orc warriors and skeletons, and up to couple of versions ago, vampires (they would brutalize ranged chars). Crossbows fire once per turn but can actually damaged armored opponents, with same problems as bows being there: undead are practically immune (except a few enemies) and vampires are a problem. So i suggest you focus on either one, but dont focus chars 100% of in. Hire people who have 50 in ranged with some talents, so that you can get it to 60 or 70, but at the same time develop the chars for melee, as you will need them to use 2 handed 2 range weapons when you fight big stuff (orc warriors!!!111). These guys also need higher life as they will stand there without a shield and catch enemy fire all the time.

Couple of notes for the end. This game offers a bunch of enemies that belong to different groups and are grouped in such a way that you need to know exactly what youre doing and toward what youre building your company. Some weapons (like ranged) might work brilliantly on bandits, which is early game, but you will need to go into mid or late game, and then face, for example, orc warriors which are practically immune to it (or skeletons). So you cant focus on one thing just because it works now and hope it will work forever because it wont. This is why i suggest that you build a frontline with high melee defense (shields + 1 handed weapon) capable of fighting anything (i prefer axes). And then a second line that can support them in different scenarios. I am still unable to build a company that can tackle everything, although i am pretty close now; the only thing that gives me headache now are undead with ghosts because you need exceptional resolve and some feats to be able to counter them (things you wont really need for 90% of the game otherwise).

So start small, make a crew that can farm bandits, start with thugs and then go into raiders; hoard money and items (raiders use ~110 armors and up to 140ish helmets, which are decent mid game entry gear) and start replacing your early members which will probably have bad stats and talents for those with expensive backgrounds (my favorites used to be raiders because they would get 50+ ranged and melee, meaning they would make perfect skirmisher that unloads 2 crossbow blots into your face before switching to melee).

[n000b51]

Some excellent advices to start here.
Thanks you all.

[Author]

Posts