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hruzaParticipant
There are fights you shouldn’t fight even in the late game.
That said…
You can lead enemy group to a really tough camp (or group), to help you with the fight -let two enemy groups thin each other. You have to be however sure that two are hostile to each other. During crisis goblins and orcs are allies as are zombies (including nachzehrers) and skeletons. To have enemy spawn in the actual fight, you first go to the enemy camp location with other enemy group following you. Stay on the top of the camp until enemy following closes, then right before he can attack you, click to attack enemy camp. If you do it right, those that follow you will spawn in the fight too. Once on the battle map, retreat safe distance and let two enemies fight each other, then finish those that remain.Don’t ever bring enemy with high initiative and AP to such fight, they will reach your line before you have a chance to back out and you will end up fighting both groups yourself. Once I led group of direwolves in to the fight with orcs. I ended up with one brother dead and hat to retreat.
Also don’t lead too weak enemy in to the fight with strong enemy. Stronger will kill the weaker group without getting much damage and will get boost in morale for doing so, making them only much tougher.
hruzaParticipantIt also works for 2-handed weapon users as each hit from a split/swing etc will add a stack of head hunter. I guess the main question is if you can find the spare perk points, really.
If I am not mistaken, 2H weapons (except polearms and longaxes) hit both head and body at the same time, so increasing head hit chance with them is pointless.
Not sure how their area attacks work however.
hruzaParticipantNo. It only applies to HP, not helmet.
Basic crit +50% affects hp damage only, but I don’t know how 1h axe additional +50% bonus works (and it’s interaction with Steel Brow).
Thanks for clarifying that.
hruzaParticipantGenerally I agree pretty much with what you sad so just few things coming to my mind in response to your points:
1. Some enemies are just being asked to be head-shotted. Up until you reach lategame, plenty of enemies wear little to no headgear. The weasel guy in the tutorial oddly is one of them – don’t think I’ve ever seen him wear head armor. In the late game though, only Sergeant, Berserkers and geists come to mind. All are very deadly though, geists die in one hit anyway.
This is true of course, however by the time you develop head hitting specialist, most of these “early” targets case to be the issue, therefore I am not sure if cost in time, perks and money invested in such a guy are worth it. Developing specialist and babysitting him only to find his talent to be actually counterproductive (since he will be actually worst against targets with armor then your other guys) in most cases by the time he reaches full maturity is dubious.
2. Nazghoul thingies never have armor. Hitting the head is always better. Werewolf armor is arguably weak enough to make the same reasoning.
This is true, unfortunately in both these cases spearwall is more effective in dealing with them then hitting their heads. At last most of the time.
3. Sort of related, flails and axes are generally useful for the Ancient dead’s frontline troops. They have shield wall every turn, have infinite stamina and maybe even have shield expert. However, their shields are shockingly fragile for late-game troops so one greataxe specialist smash always breaks it. You’re meant to either break the shields, use flails to ignore the shield defense. I think it’s probably better to use reach weapons/greatswords to hit the priority targets behind them though.
True, but then again, you don’t want to distribute hits over their head and body. So flail yes, but you want it to hit body, not head.
4. Duelist builds. I wonder how much damage we’re looking at for an axe head hit from a duelist? What if the brother has the brute perk? The idea is to kill the enemy under the armor before the armor breaks, so head hits may be always welcome. Alternatively, 2H weapon may kill before armor is destroyed if you keep getting head hits with a brute, particularly 2H hammer.
Duelist and crossbow expert are the only cases where I tend to think that increasing head hit chance might actually be useful. Although I have doubts even here, since in lot of the cases, perhaps majority you are using more then one brother to attack one enemy. Unless they are both duelists or crossbowman, you might loos some effectivity since all other brothers will still be chipping through his body armor.
One more specialist I tend to think increasing head hit chance might be useful would be dagger specialist using special attack which bypasses armor. Yet again, daggers themselves doesn’t give bonus to hit the head so you wouldn’t get as much out of it as with flails.
Btw.: many if not all 1tile range 2H weapons hit both head and body during attack, so I ques increasing hit chance with them is pointless. Or?
hruzaParticipantIn most of the fights you can see composition of the enemy force before battle. No need to flee. On the occasions when you don’t know enemy composition, there are some where you can reasonably predict it. Like for example during retrieving idol from burial site you are likely to meet undead. Another giveaway are names of the locations (again, when there is mention of burial expect undead) and banners. Different enemies use distinct stiles of their banners.
As for the rest, I found out that my “standard” composition works in most cases and I don’t need to reequip too much against particular enemy. Your force should be fairly universal. I like to reequip my front line with spears for spearwall spamming when facing direwolves and nachzehrers but otherwise I don’t swap gear too much other then swapping kite shields on my front rank when I expect enemy to have lot of ranged.
hruzaParticipantIs that huge sparthan bronze shield?
It’s not huge, it’s rather modest in size compared to many other shields, like Roman scutum. And it’s actually wooden with sheet of bronze as a coating.
There no shield of that kind in the game
There are several shields in the game that are larger and heavier then that. Obvious one is Orc metal shield. But there are also ancient dead shields which are actually Romano-Celtic-Germanic shields and there are several large or/and heavy unique shields like pavise shield and metal heater shield.
or in medieval warfare.
Plenty.
I do not see any contradiction here. So what is your point?
My point is that defensive ability in the game is not passive stance. Exact opposite of what you say.
And also have 2 friends by sides. And so on. Yes. Everyone is equal busy(except for the flanks, of course). Does this make things more complicated? Yes. Does game have proper mechanic for this? No. That what i’m talking about.
Game have proper mechanic for this. Standing in the battle makes your defense more difficult because you face more then one threat …hence higher chance of the enemy to land attack on you in the game.
I really confused that i’m forced to write this again. There is my point and you dont say anything about that.
Why should I write anything about that? Yes, enemy have to react to the attack. So what?
There question not really about length,
It is. Longer your weapon, longer it’s reach. As simple as that.
because for this goal, you always need to have angle for proper attack. You cant just push it throught first line’s shoulder horizontally, because that actually involve first line(and you most likely lost your huge pike, thanks to huge lever). And again, some diagram, just for you:
Your picture have nothing to do with reality. First of all because you don’t strike over the head of soldiers in the front rank, you strike between them.
Second of all because pike is not held in the middle like you have drawn, therefore there is no “massive leverage.”
And, by the way, there are no renaissance pikes in medieval, you now? Because it’s has very specific use, and dont very suitable for footman skirmish. Also, i think that you merge footman and cavalry gear.
No, there are medieval pikes in medieval.
Because it’s has very specific use, and dont very suitable for footman skirmish. Also, i think that you merge footman and cavalry gear.
??? Pike IS PURE foot weapon. It have nothing to do with cavalry gear.
hruzaParticipant10kg shields??? Really?? Sorry, but that just not viable thing, not for footman.
Yes really. Although that’s somewhere on the upper end of the extreme of course and was given as a example. Average Greek aspis shield weighted about 7-8 kg.
Biggest one-handed bastard swords ~1,5kg max, spears about ~1kg, that is average milk packaging, and you dont need to hold this up all the time, just place it on shield/clamp with elbow/etc.
You do need to hold it if you are facing enemy attack. Even if you are just threatening him with you stance, your spear needs to be in position to strike.
Btw: “spear wall” and “shield wall” are bit of a contradiction because in literature they are used to describe the same thing. Which is (relatively) tight linear formation made of warriors with shields and at last some of them using spears, which practically all ancient armies did. Spear was main battlefield weapon safe few exceptions. In real life shield/spear wall is not ability or stance, it’s description of formation. And pretty ambiguous at that.
Therefore again, you can’t take that ability in the game too literary.
Even ridiculusly long renessance pikes may be just supported by the ground, like on your photo.
That position on the photo is actually for receiving cavalry charge and is pretty uncomfortable and tiring. Soldier have to kneel slightly to the front, with back foot resting on a pike but to hold it firmly in the ground while right arm is on a sword hilt ready to unsheathe it in case pike brakes from impact of enemy horsemen manages to get through pike points.
In foot engagement those pikes would be held horizontally above your shoulders, roughly at the height of your face.
Of course on wall-on-wall combatant faces 3 opponents. Idea is – everybody faces 3 opponents, if you get attacked by 1+2 neighboring guys, you defended not only by yourself, but also by 2 neighboring friends. Reread where i write about “free opponnents”.
Idea is that standing in a formation facing enemy formation makes you more vulnerable then when facing single opponent in a duel. Yes, your buddies next to you can parry attacks against you, but they face 3 guys themselves. Everybody is more vulnerable because attack can come from more then one opponent and direction.
When i say about miss hits, i mean completly miss. When you placing blow, you tired yourself releasing something energy, and opponent(if not completly evade) must deal with that energy, not just ignore it – also get tired from parry, and, if not have shield or sword, suffer big damage to weapon.
Nothing suggest that enemy does nothing. There’s even skill involved which is called melee defense and if my memory does not fool me, there is even little animation in combat where enemy icon moves slightly during “miss”.
If you watch video I posted you actually see that most of the attacks do miss. But you also see that combatants does not stand passively on the spot.
Really?? I couldn’t hit just through first line, you should avoid it. I make some diagram, just for you:
Pikes were actually between 3-8 meters in length. Guy on your diagram would be perfectly safe. 2.5 meters is length of average spear.
hruzaParticipantI very much like concept of this game, but, if game pretend to be somewhat realistic, i see some issues there. So…
The issues you have are called “abstraction”. It’s like complaining about knight in chess being able to move only 2 tiles strait and one left or right when in reality knight can move in any direction.
Tactically this game is very elaborate chess.
Dumb thing number one:
Defensive abilities(shieldwall, spearwall, etc) cost AP and Fatigue. Furthermore, that cost even more than a strikes. How i can get tired just from hold my weapon and shield up? And even if so how it can be double, or even triple(!) more tiring than placing blows?First of all, using abilities in game have to have some cost, otherwise you would be using them all the time. What cost do you suggest instead?
Second, holding weapon and shield actually does fatigue, especially holding it in a combat ready position. Roman shield could weight up to 10kg. Some other shields are even heavier. Try holding 10kg with one hand in front of you about where your shield would be in expectation of attack. Try to hold 2.5m pole from hard wood above your head at the same time.
And third, you shouldn’t take names of these abilities literally. Or do you know how to make spear wall and shield wall all by yourself? Shieldwall in real life is locking shield with your other comrades in formation, same with the spear wall. You can’t create shieldwall and spearwall all by yourself. Not unless you have more then two hands.
My understanding of the shieldwall and spearwall abilities is that these are positions which utilize shield or spear defensively in the battle with emphasis to provide better protection compared to just holding shield and spear in front of you. That is, these are active, not passive positions. Hence they cost fatigue. As for why they cost more fatigue then normal attack, I believe it’s because they are continuous activity rather then just one time stab. You are able to react to several opponents while using them, as opposed to just single enemy with normal attack. hence increased cost.
Dumb thing number two:
Weak effects from encirclement. By itself, works pretty strange in situation “wall-on-wall”, when everybody face two opponents and,thus, everybody get encircled and debuffs, that very dumb.No, they actually makes perfect sense. If you have ever reenacted medieval foot battle, or watched one, you would realize that combatants don’t deal with just opponents they are facing, they can receive and deal attacks also to the guy left and right. And if enemy is using some sort of longer reach weapon from his back lines, then that something you are exposed to as well.
So single combatant in a battle line faces at minimum 3 opponents. Game mechanic is correct.
Dark age re-enactment with commentary
Dumb thing number three:
Miss hits, especially in “wall-on-wall” situation. Imagine that, to miss hit on a human size target right before you, you should be incredibly dumb. If you place a blow on a guy, that guy must parry(and suffer fatigue), or evade(and step away on free space). So, if you not have any free space to evade, not have a shield or a sword, you probably get hit, or at least your weapon get significant damage.Again, had you watched or participated in a reenactment, you would realize that fighting does not involve mindlessly stabbing or poking in the general direction of your opponent. You are attacking specific weak points on your opponent, form specific angles, because he is not standing in front of you not minding your blows. He is first of all positioning himself the way that it is as hard for you to land a hit on him as possible. This in the most basic form means that he is maintaining safe distance from you and your weapon. He will be also actively parrying your attacks with his weapon and shield, if he have one.
Therefore “miss” in the game does not mean that you have failed to hit “man size target in front of you” as you imagine. It means most of the time that enemy have foiled your attack.
And no, your weapon won’t get significant damage. If it would, you are using crappy weapon unsuited for battle.
Dumb thing number four:
No any pre-battle phase. Come on, that obvious. Your squad spawn at random landscape in a just 1-2 turn reach, with no any space or time for tactical movement.
How that work on ironman? Oh…Pre-battle is your formation/inventory screen. Yes, it’s fairly limited, but alternative would be to spend 10 turns in every single battle just to position yourself and your enemy.
Dumb thing number five:
Polearms hits second line through first. Seriously, how its work?This how:
hruzaParticipantIf I understand you right, those necros were not part of the quest. They were simply roaming around while you were heading to the location of the quest (otherwise they would not follow you on the world map).
You could as well run in to them while doing anything else in the game.
As for not able to evade …you can always hit retreat button once in the battle. Yes, you would get your mercs injured repeatedly since they would catch you again, but those injuries does not stack, it takes the same time to heal single injury as it take to heal five injuries (approximately).
So only issue would be loose of the morale and it would be race to find some allied party before your mercs start deserting you.
It’s not automatic game over. Even if you would loose most or all the mercs it would not be automatic game over unless you have no spare equipment and no money at all. You can almost always recover.
Gambling? Yes, luck plays role in this game, but more often it’s your own decisions that matter. You seems to insist in your post that game should be somehow fair and balanced. I disagree. It’s an open world sandbox game, fact that you can run in to enemy which is well beyond your ability is something I consider good, not bad design. Fact that enemies can overpower you IS fair. Because you can also overpower them. Would you complain on the fact that you as a player took on group of 4 enemy tugs in rags and clubs with your party of 12 veterans? I don’t think so.
hruzaParticipantYes, but only in that it makes chance to hit target more probable in general. It does not increase chance to hit head specifically, which is probably what you are asking for.
hruzaParticipantI understand why thinking that xbow is slower that is why we gave him 1 shot per turn compared to bow is ok, but 2 shots have almost same hit chance and the problem is that picking right perks 2 shots gives archer insane boost.
It does not. Fast shot have 0% bonus and -4% penalty over each tile of distance.
Crossbow have +15% bonus and -3% penalty over each tile of distance.
Crossbow will always be more accurate and it only gets worst over distance. At 6 tiles it’s -24% for fast shot from bow and only -3% from crossbow.
Plus fast shot is -10% damage.
For example:
Overwhelm will allow you with 1 archer to debuff enemies so hard (2 shots are more than 1)
Berserk will allow you to make another shot after kill, crossbowman wont be able to do it coz of 7 ap reload (or you will make 1 shot but next turn you will make reload shot and thats all, no AP for reload)
Fearsome – (coz in total 2 shots on medium distance have higer chance to hit than 1 shot from xbow)
Fast Adaption – can compensate your accuracy at low levels and again 1 xbow shot miss +8%, 2 arrows +16% chance to hit enemy on next turn.Take Headhunter and Killing Frenzy for crossbow and watch enemies in armor die in one shot.
And don’t forget Bow Mastery that gives you in total +2 range over xbow
You know that having even 10% chance to hit that nasty back-line must kill enemy is much better than having 0 chance to shoot at it at all.Shooting at the backliner with 10% when there is target in front of him with 60% chance is waste of your archer, because on average you can kill backliner faster simply by first killing the guy in front of him then the nasty backliner.
And one more huge + of bow is that you can make a move and shot at least 1 arrow and it won’t affect your next turns and with xbow you can retreat only once, coz on next round you will do reload and after it shooting (In this case i really recommend for game devs to make xbow shooting 4 ap and reload 4ap, for much better balance)
You can retreat 2 tiles and shoot weak inaccurate shoot from a bow, while you can retreat 3 tiles and shot accurate powerful shot with high armor piercing from crossbow. Yes, you cant move again next turn with crossbow if you want to shoot again but then it’s still 3 tiles and 2 accurate powerful shots with crossbow versus 4 tiles and two weak inaccurate shoots from a bow over long run.
Both bows and crossbows have their weak and strong points. In general one is not superior to other. What makes one superior to other is situation. If you need distance and enemy is not heavily armored, bow is better. If you need to take down powerful melee units in lot’s of armor, you can’t beat crossbow. Which is why it is best to have both in your party.
hruzaParticipantOne thing I have realized is that some of “amazing” shots at your back line guys are actually misses on your front guys. It can happen to player ranged as well, it’s just that players normally don’t target front guys with shields. Front guys without shields are not hard to hit so not many misses there. AI on the other hand targets shielded guys regularly because they still have higher chance to hit then guys behind.
hruzaParticipantI did not mean that they all have exactly the same power. There of course are differences in between bow and bow and crossbow and crossbow. They come in different powers. However historically they all caped about the same power. And that power is limited by what human muscle can draw. You can have bow or crossbow only as strong as archer pulling it is.
Now it’s true that crossbows, with exception of the lightest ones are not pulled by hand. In basic form crossbow is fixed to the ground with the feet and string is pulled up. Unlike bow, this involves muscles of essentially whole body to get involved. This can be further enhanced by using things like belt hooks, goats-foots, spanning hooks and windlasses. Therefore crossbows have usually much higher “draw weights” (which is measurement of how much power it requires to draw them). This makes many people claim that crossbows were more powerful then bows. The thing is, crossbows have much shorter limbs and much shorter draw lengths -which means that they propel bolts on shorter distance. As a result they’re not as effective in transferring energy as bows are. Therefore when it comes to effective power output, bows and crossbows comes about equal in general.
hruzaParticipantso correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m pretty sure he plays on Veteran/Expert possibly with Iron Man on.
Yes, Iron Man on Veteran.
hruzaParticipantI think on expert the ranged is more unbalanced (@hruza u gave statistics, would love to know if that was beginner/veteran/expert)
Veteran. However as much as I know, difficulty does not alter combat mechanic in no way, it just affect strategic level (money and stuff).
when in the early to mid game you go up against 2-4 ranged more consistently, with crossbows and some rng they can decimate your brothers without an ability to react (i.e. with 1 ranged, a crossbow hit to head allows you to move away and protect him from ranged, vs. 2-4 ranged you sometimes don’t have time to react and instead have 4 ranged shots on your guy, giving no time to make a decision to “save” ur pawn).
I do go against 2-4 ranged. However:
a, it is extremely rare for them to be all equipped with tier 2 xbows and bows. Usualy it’s 50/50 mix (on average).b, hitting your guy 2 times in a turn is extremely unlikely too, unless you have exposed your guy. If you keep your brothers, especially more vulnerable ones cowered, chance is very small. Yes, it still can happen, RNG can be bitch, but then you can take two hits to the head from axe in the same turn too.
When I go against enemy group which have that many ranged units, I adapt my tactics and equipment. If you fight battle why enemy have ranged units the same way as when he does not, then it will have consequences.
As a minimum, your whole front line should have kite shields. Unless you fight in the forest and you intend to use natural cover. Then in the battle itself, brothers without shields should always when possible be positioned in a such way, that they are protected from fire.
You can’t influence RNG roll directly, but you can make it less likely to roll against you, especially more times in a row.
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