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  • in reply to: Mutilple Alps is too strong #23558
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    There are, I believe, multiple dimensions to the problem.

    1. Alps have very high initiative (on an account of no armor penalties). This means, practically speaking for mid game and late game companies, they always go first. This means that generally speaking your first turn is lost, because you’re too busy waking people up. There’s also not enough room in the formation to keep everybody spread out to limit the number of people slept in a large enough company.

    2. They only appear at night, which is appropriate. The problem with this is that range brothers are practically speaking useless, because they won’t be able to hit Alps very frequently at night. Combined with the fact that Alps have a very, very short detection range on the world map, you won’t be able to swap out the range brothers for melee brothers in time before combat is joined.

    3. The Alp’s action economy is very efficient; they can either sleep twice in one turn, or sleep and move. This is an annoyance to the player, because they’re already hobbled by having to wake people up, which means they’re only moving two spaces at most per turn. Typically one if you’re caught in a swamp. Because of this, very commonly the player has to spend around 20 minutes chasing Alps around the map by cornering them so they can’t run away, and then eventually kill them.

    4. One obvious counter to Alps is the use of dogs to increase the number of targets that the Alps have to sleep (not to mention, you don’t actually care if the dog dies considering dogs are only 300-400 to replace for an armored dog). The design issue with this being that, considering Alp trophies are only basically used for the trinket, a few potions, and dyes, that makes Alp drops essentially worthless, because the trinket slot is being consumed for the dog. Not to mention that the hexe trinket has higher resolve amount than the alp trinket, while hexes are in general much easier to deal with (by virtue of them not having default range resistance). In short, the alp trinket does not really warrant specifically looking for it, and does not provide meaningful resistance to the Alp sleep, compared to adding another target that can lock the Alps down by getting them caught in melee.

    in reply to: Game Stuck while Traveling to Orc Siege #23509
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    Save file sent. Do let me know if there’s anything else I can provide to help with the debugging.

    Avatar photoWanderer
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    @Namespace

    It actually makes it more convenient that not all of the targets get knocked out of range; if you trigger a Berserk, you have to have something to follow up on, or else the Berserk charge gets wasted.

    I do tend to think though if the knockback got buffed for Hammer mastery, then 1H Hammer wouldn’t really have a place, because 2H Hammer would be always more useful for destroying armor than 1H Hammer. When you hit late game, you often have more than one target that you need to strip armor from to start triggering morale checks; 1H Hammer simply doesn’t grind fast enough.

    Avatar photoWanderer
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    2H Hammer and Greatsword are similar, but have striking differences. The Greatsword allows the 2-tile straight line aoe, which is commonly used to hack archers or pikemen. Shatter, on the other hand, has a chance of doing knockback along with the stagger. Which means that, for example, Full-size Nachtzehrers have to waste another turn to devour a person, because they need to spend all of their AP to devour. In most other cases, it wastes AP for the enemy to walk back into the melee; as in they won’t get two attacks off. Also likely: the 3-man queue to trigger Berserk will repopulate again, with a weakened group considering the survivors of the first Shatter walk back in.

    Also: 2H hammers do 1-shot head hits a lot easier than Greatswords (through helmets), simply by virtue of the higher armor bypass.

    in reply to: (Need) Late game strategy help #21599
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    A few things to note that should help wear down Warrior armor:

    You use the young/berserkers as Berserk triggers. Basically, weaken, but don’t kill them with anybody other than your two-handers. This allows your two-handers to get two shatters or swing/splits in one turn, which with a legendary two-handed hammer or greatsword, will evaporate warrior armor, along the 25% damage buff for Killing Spree.

    Frontliners ideally would be in Coat of Plates, or an equivalent legendary. With the bleed weapons they have, getting any bleed is likely to start killing your frontliners.

    If you don’t have the Shield Wall perk on a specific frontliner with a shield, bring a spare shield. Shields will get broken eventually if you have to deal with at least 10 warriors.

    Lastly, something I noticed just recently, which may be because of the Bullseye perk, but you can use bows/crossbows in 2 hex range with no cover penalties.

    in reply to: Things that are so dumb, that makes me sick #21438
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    One thing to keep in mind though about the whole pike versus sword argument: there’s a reason why there were pike squares and not pike lines. If we’re talking about the pikeman in front stabbing a guy behind the first line sword user, chances are there’s a second pikeman behind him to stab anybody that gets close; likely a third guy also for good measure. Which is why charging into pike squares was usually not a good idea, but if you manage to get into sword fighting range, the square was likely to get broken quickly.

    The matter of hitting the second guy behind the first guy is simply a matter of the pike having nowhere else to go, and there’s no sundering of weapons in this game.

    in reply to: Border tile = morale loss. Wonder why? #20613
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    It is more along the lines of camping the borders against an overwhelming enemy, to snipe a few guys, retreat, reload ammunition/swap armor, run back onto the map, and do the process over and over again until the enemy numbers are much more manageable that you don’t need to bother.

    This was always there, it’s just a question of whether the enemies were difficult enough to warrant such tactics.

    But this change wouldn’t affect this strategy of hit and leave map if you were leaving the map anyway. Once you leave the map, the fact that you left the map with breaking morale doesn’t affect your morale when you go into combat again later.

    It will change the strategy a bit; the idea was that you would sit on the edge of the map, and instantly flee the moment an enemy gets his turn and can attack, because fleeing can happen at any point. Now, you have set up one tile away from the edge, so if the enemy catches up to you, you must have Footwork on everybody to trivially escape (from getting caught in melee).

    The other point being that it is now extremely risky to sit on the last tile, due to potentially getting ‘fleeing’ status if two enemies walk up to a low resolve Brother. And thus, the brother wasting his turn walk around getting smacked by the enemies that caused the status, if you weren’t already ready to pull out.

    in reply to: Border tile = morale loss. Wonder why? #20592
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    It is more along the lines of camping the borders against an overwhelming enemy, to snipe a few guys, retreat, reload ammunition/swap armor, run back onto the map, and do the process over and over again until the enemy numbers are much more manageable that you don’t need to bother.

    This was always there, it’s just a question of whether the enemies were difficult enough to warrant such tactics.

    in reply to: Revised Dodge too powerful? #20559
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    Unless you’re consistently getting +1 ranged defense increases, as far as the defense goes, using Initiative at +5 (which translates to basically +1/+2) is worse off than just picking up ranged defense. Dodge and Anticipation interfere with each other as far as choosing bonus points go; ranged fighters typically get ranged attack, max fatigue, and optionally max hp to prevent one-shots from heavy crossbows to the face (through their mail coif). Meaning you really only have one other stat to invest in: defenses, or initiative.

    But sinking points into initiative also boosts initiative, which lends itself into many other benefits (say an overwhelming suppressing fire build. Enemy archers and even polearm users are no longer a problem.)

    Besides, the perk uses your total net initiative, not only the extra points you dedicate to it every level up. You really don’t need to sink many points into initiative in order to greatly benefit from this perk. Equipment choice matters more.

    Problem in general is that towards late game, there will always be more enemy archers than your archers, to the point that unless you went all bows, there’s no way to put an Overwhelm stack on all of them. And if you go archer heavy, you’re basically asking to get surrounded by an enemy that outnumbers you.

    Not to mention that trying to put up lots of Overwhelm stacks via Quick shot builds up Fatigue quickly, making enemy archers out-initative you anyways by virtue of less Fatigue.

    At the end of the day, the question is: do you Crowd Control, or do you just outright kill them? I generally prefer the latter, because my two-handers are better crowd control via Shatter/Split/Swing.

    in reply to: Skeletons are horribly unfun in so many ways #20519
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    I agree that they could use some more tactical diversity but I think that you’re exaggerating a bit when you list problems with them.

    It’s probably just because I’ve got the undead crisis rolled three times in a row now and I’m really tired of not being able to explore any of the interesting alternate team compositions I want because “all skeletons all the time” is constantly in effect.

    Sounds like someone’s been pissing in the graveyard one too many times…

    in reply to: Revised Dodge too powerful? #20518
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    Unless you’re consistently getting +1 ranged defense increases, as far as the defense goes, using Initiative at +5 (which translates to basically +1/+2) is worse off than just picking up ranged defense. Dodge and Anticipation interfere with each other as far as choosing bonus points go; ranged fighters typically get ranged attack, max fatigue, and optionally max hp to prevent one-shots from heavy crossbows to the face (through their mail coif). Meaning you really only have one other stat to invest in: defenses, or initiative.

    in reply to: Skeletons are horribly unfun in so many ways #20477
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    The Ancient Dead require completely different tactics to fighting bandits, orcs, and goblins. While Ancient Legionnaires function very much like Orc Warriors, the armor requirement to effectively fight them is not nearly as high because their swords are basically weaker Arming Swords (that don’t cause bleed, unlike basically all bladed Orc weapons). Other thing is that Legionnaire shields are reasonably breakable for Axe specialists, unlike Warrior shields which are a waste of time to try to break.

    They do a lot more damage than orcs when you consider their ability to focus fire with multiple deep lines (and the fact that unlike the random flailing of orcs, they make damned good use of that ability). They also have higher defenses than orcs, and if you break their shields the damage they deal out individually starts to be competitive (while ignoring the fact that much of their damage will still be coming from the back line.)

    Agreed that they can Focus Fire a single guy. You work around that by using a typical staggered formation, where the Brothers with the best defense (i.e. using Heaters in this case) form the points of the formation, and sponge the pike attacks, where as the rest of the line chew up the Legionnaires that inevitably will try enter the gaps in the formation. Use Rotation to swap out the guys on the points if they’re getting unlucky on the hits.

    Orcs instead (Warriors primarily) will get to your archers one way or another by knocking your wall out of the way, and chop up your archers before you get through their 400 armor.

    in reply to: NPC Collateral Damage Abuse? #20475
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    Got a mail shirt drop from a merc party that I ran some direwolves into last night; I’ll try to reproduce the case tonight and submit a bug report if I can reproduce it.

    in reply to: Skeletons are horribly unfun in so many ways #20472
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    Other thing is that Legionnaire shields are reasonably breakable for Axe specialists, unlike Warrior shields which are a waste of time to try to break.

    Yes, Archers are a lot less effective against the Ancient Dead, but they are not entirely useless when the Legionnaires come around; they still do full damage to armor, so they can still armor-strip the Pikemen. Which make them really easy to get chopped by a Greatsword or Warbrand user (via Split). Also, since the Legionnaires have really low initiative, it’s really easy to stack Overwhelm on them with your Archers. Heck, even full plate users can stack Overwhelm on them.

    My guy with fighting axe makes pretty short work of those shields. Finding a named axe with high shield damage will be a lot more exciting than before now. Also flails are great since they ignore shield defense (20 on a tower shield), but their damage is not that great. Splitting shields and using hammers is probably more efficient.

    As for archers: I still think they are amazing against legionaires. War bows pretty much melt their rather light armor (135-150 ish I believe) and overwhelm helps to keep your shield bros from getting hit by those nasty pikes.

    I believe Legionnaire armor is somewhere between 150-200 (depending on if it is the scale mail or the breastplate). But it is still significantly less than the 400 armor that Orc Warriors get.

    in reply to: Skeletons are horribly unfun in so many ways #20467
    Avatar photoWanderer
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    The Ancient Dead require completely different tactics to fighting bandits, orcs, and goblins. While Ancient Legionnaires function very much like Orc Warriors, the armor requirement to effectively fight them is not nearly as high because their swords are basically weaker Arming Swords (that don’t cause bleed, unlike basically all bladed Orc weapons). Other thing is that Legionnaire shields are reasonably breakable for Axe specialists, unlike Warrior shields which are a waste of time to try to break.

    Yes, Archers are a lot less effective against the Ancient Dead, but they are not entirely useless when the Legionnaires come around; they still do full damage to armor, so they can still armor-strip the Pikemen. Which make them really easy to get chopped by a Greatsword or Warbrand user (via Split). Also, since the Legionnaires have really low initiative, it’s really easy to stack Overwhelm on them with your Archers. Heck, even full plate users can stack Overwhelm on them.

Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 37 total)