Wargasm

[Wargasm]

RusBear wrote:

1000 h +
Agree 100%. The biggest sad that in that moment( 11 level) when you can real start to get some results from your “building” you almost loose the ingame interests to do it. Stay only your own RPG motive.
Late game is not ready? yes but i think we need some more variants to upgrade max level fighters. I don’t hope that will be more perks now – to much work for balance, but it could be some special jobs, events, able to buy own donkey at least )

Yes. That’s exactly it. Until level 11, the talented brothers in the band are like precious ornaments to me. Then, shortly after they get to level 11, I start to lose interest in them and eventually try to kill them off so that I can spend the amassed excess of crowns on swordmasters, sellswords and hedge knights (plus some wildmen and hunters). I don’t completely lose interest in the campaign after the initial core reaches level 11, but I play differently and more intermittently and focus on seeking out exciting risk/reward battles that (even if victorious) would’ve ruined the company in its early days when there weren’t enough crowns and equipment to rebuild. I select the troops to take part in each battle, and their equipment, according to how hard/easy the opponent is. I might send off most of the veterans to fight orc warlords with only modest armour, so that there will surely be some casualties. Or I send a small group of newbies off to fight a horde of raiders/marksmen, with just a couple of veterans as security.

That’s the problem: the most exciting battles to fight are the bloody, tense ones where several brothers are surrounded and hanging on to a few hit points, but then an adjacent enemy is decapitated and the other enemies try to flee and get slaughtered before they can deal the finishing blow. But fighting these battles conflicts with the other most engrossing aspect of the game: dedicating lots of time and care to creating unique builds. It’s so exciting at the start of the game, when lots of people are getting new perks on a regular basis. Then, around the mid-point of the build, when each perk takes more time, you become cautious with the talented/lucky ones that have come through the opening ordeals.

I wish that the difficulty levels were graded according to the skill and prevalence of the enemies faced, as opposed to the scarcity of crowns, and I wish that you could gain experience points and level-ups more rapidly and select more perks (which would then be necessary to deal with more skilled opponents). That way, you could create experimental builds more rapidly without eventually losing interest in your veterans, but you’d still be more willing to risk lives because of the relative quickness of building up replacements. It’s more satisfying to build recruits from scratch, rather than recruiting level 4/5s, but it takes too long.

I also wish that there were some tougher bandits or other humans to fight in the later parts of the game, since humans are the most interesting opponents to fight, and they can be fought in many different ways. But with orc warriors there’s no use in any fancy manoeuvres; you simply must have lots of heavy armour (even though they only hit you on odd occasions) and you must focus everything on smashing through their mass of armour and hit points (which takes ages, even though they’re easy to hit). It’s monotonous and only gets exciting if several people are nearly killed but then finish off the orcs just before they bleed to death.

Resolve? In the olde days, all you needed to do was give someone Inspiring Presence, and then everyone else would be confident without doing anything. Now, all you need to do is give someone Rally the Troops, and then they just blow a trumpet in the first round of battle and most people reach confident morale without doing anything (inspired by the valour of this chap who hangs about at the back and never leads by example). I want a rallier who engages in melee and is more inspiring as more enemies are slain, but I also know that that way (the fun way) is “strategically unsound”.

Formerly, wavering morale meant -5 for all attack/defence skills. Now, it means -10%, which often means close to -5 from the actual value. When I first saw -10%, however, I thought it meant -10 from the actual value (and +10 to the actual value when confident), and thought it would be more worthwhile to worry about resolve. Maybe the risks/rewards of morale shifts should be greater, to make it more important.

In the olde days, you could get people to have ludicrously high melee defence without a shield, so that they could mostly do without a mass of armour. Now, it’s very hard to get it above 50-60 and such characters can still get hit lots of times in succession, meaning that (especially with the new risk of debilitating injuries) a mass of armour is a survival necessity (which in turn means that you have to select certain perks and sacrifice others). There needs to be a medium between those two states.

In the olde days, you could make most characters into unrealistic all-rounders who (without using any action points) could put away their sword and shield and arm themselves with a crossbow or a massive pike (which, till then, had been hidden away in some bag). Now, you almost need to specialize everyone or else it won’t be possible to fully realize their potential in any area. I do think the new perk tree is a big improvement, but I wish there was a way to make some realistic all-rounders.

The new perk tree does make throwing characters more viable than before, since (a) the mastery perk increases the damage done at closer range, and (b) the throwing weapons are one-handed weapons and therefore an additional 25% of damage can potentially ignore armour with the new Duelist perk (so that a javelin thrown from a 2-tile range will then do damage very similar to that of a crossbow). The only problem is that such characters will need to be close to the melee at all times and will be vulnerable to archers, and so will need lots of armour and ranged defence and max fatigue and … basically, it only just about becomes viable as you close in on level 11.

Weapon specialisms? I can never find much reason to specialize in cleavers, since they are only a little more damaging and only a little more effective against armour compared to swords, but they are less accurate and more fatiguing to carry and use. Against more lightly armoured opponents, the greater accuracy of swords will result in more hits to compensate for the greater eventual damage per hit done by cleavers. Against heavily armoured opponents, the greater accuracy of swords will result in the armour being worked through just as quickly. The only remaining difference is that, with mastery, swords are so light that it’s almost impossible to run out of energy to attack twice per turn, and sword mastery is also compatible with using some two-handed variants. You’d only choose cleavers over swords for someone with very high melee skill and plentiful max fatigue, but for that someone you’d also choose hammers or axes or maces over cleavers (or you’d choose flails for the thrill of one-shotting bandits in bandanas).

It would make sense if there were additional weapon mastery perks covering (a) all 2-tile weapons and (b) all 1-tile 2-handers. Then (e.g.) you could choose (b) and use a greatsword or greataxe or greathammer (but not 1-handed or 2-tile variants), or you could choose sword/axe/hammer mastery and use 1- or 2-handed variants of the specific type, or you could choose (a) and have less fatigue from all 2-tile skills (but without the hit/damage bonuses from the more specific masteries).

[Wargasm]

I’ve played nearly 2000 hours and I agree: one of the most addictive elements is the potential to develop a great variety of alternate builds, and one of the most frustrating things is that only a few narrow builds allow you to prevail long-term against all-comers. The most frustrating thing is that some quirky and counter-intuitive builds would work once the core of the company was close to level 11, but the chances of it getting there to start with (without “cheating” or without excessive evasion of challenging foes) are exceedingly remote.

[Wargasm]

What exactly does Ironman mode prevent you from doing? Going by what I’ve heard, it doesn’t stop you from reloading to the moment before a battle for which you hadn’t selected the appropriate equipment or lineup, or in which the RNG gods entered into a conspiracy pact against you (and that’s the only “cheating” I do anyway) …

[Wargasm]

Awesome. But damn; I wish I’d known all this time …

[Wargasm]

Here’s a practical in-battle screenshot of what I’m getting at.

Attachments:

1. 

   Desired_Path_of_Movement.jpg
   

[Wargasm]

I’ve actually got a two-handed flail that has two heads. It certainly looks cool; but, having played about with it a bit, I find myself agreeing with those who dispute whether flails were ever a serious weapon of war …

[Wargasm]

Having seen it again many more times, it’s definitely not character-specific; it can happen to any of them.

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In the earlier part of games, I never want to commit most mercenaries to a particular weapon, and (even if I do think a particular weapon would be ideal for one of them) the ideal weapon is often not yet available in high-grade form, whereas other weapons that aren’t quite so fitting may be available in abundance at good/high grades.

[Wargasm]

You do get unique weapons and armours in towns with the relevant industry from time to time, but the armours are rarer than the weapons.

You will be led by tavern rumours on odd occasions, but the tavern will probably need to be in a town that’s near to a large area of wilderness.

Sometimes you get an event where an old man tries to sell you a map. Once, I bought it and it turned out to be useless. Another time, I had a thief in my party and I was given the option to get the thief to steal the map, and we got some loot including a rare item.

Basically, the further into the wild you go, the more likely you’ll get something rare, but you do occasionally get rare things from the most innocuous contexts.

[Wargasm]

Attached log from another reproduction. It seems to happen just to the character Humbert, and only in the first round of combat. He’s a superstitious wildman who starts combat at confident morale and has a missing nose.

Attachments:

1. 2016-10-11_Wait-Turn_Greyed_at_Start_of_Turn.zip

[Wargasm]

I was wondering the same thing. I don’t recall seeing any injuries done to undead. I suppose injuries to them would not make much sense, since most injuries affect the soft tissues and innards that they don’t even possess. If you can carry a shield and swing a weapon without any muscles or sinews or organs or circulatory system, I suppose the mere cracking of a segment of bone should also not affect performance, since the performance doesn’t depend on the usual laws of physiology.

[Wargasm]

Yeah … I recruited a bargain wildman with some wonderful traits to enhance his basal wonderfulness, and he even had a rare talent for ranged defence … so I gave him some scale armour and a heater shield, and sent him off into battle against goblins, and he didn’t get shot by arrows and ran them down and trapped a couple of ambushers who were at a height disadvantage … and the bastards punctured him three times and he was dead …

I had a thief with very high initiative as well as high defence skills (and 3-star melee attack talent), and I gave in to temptation and gave him Dodge to make him less likely to die before progressing to awesomeness, but now that his melee defence is over 50 and he’s wearing heavy armour (and still has a Dodge bonus higher than +10, even though I’ve never leveled his initiative up), it’s still not uncommon for him to get scratched quite early in battle and immediately lose the Dodge bonus … but he survives without it, and now I wish I’d spent the perk elsewhere …

The only instance in which it seems worthwhile to raise initiative is when some bowman has a 3-star talent for it and doesn’t have much talent for other things that would be more useful. Then you might as well use it so that he can go first and be less likely to get caught in melee or get shot in an archery duel (and still have high initiative once wearing some decent armour).

[Wargasm]

I agree it would make sense if hit points contributed to increasing damage dealt and reducing damage received. But think what that would do to orc warriors and warlords?

I don’t agree that hit points are currently useless, although they certainly aren’t adequate by themselves, and being hard to hit and wearing lots of armour are indeed more important (but neither of these, alone or in combination, can make you invincible).

I’m pretty sure that more HP = reduced chance of getting crippled. Also, it’s no longer possible to have such high melee defence as to be semi-immortal (e.g. guys with a melee defence of 50-60 can still get hit several times in succession sometimes, and guys wearing heavy armour and forming a shieldwall with a heater can still get punctured by ambusher bastards’ curved daggers). If nothing else, HPs are still important as a safeguard against these things and can’t be ignored entirely.

Same for resolve: it’s not the most important stat, and useless on its own, but a safeguard for when HP are damaged and useful against a few specific enemies and also useful for getting everyone to confident morale with attack skills increased by some 6-8.

A build where you concentrated primarily on increasing everyone’s resolve and hit points would not be good for prevailing long-term against all comers, but it would at least make for some exciting battles where you’ve been pommeled but are still up for it and are able to shift the momentum in your favour.

[Wargasm]

Yes. I once faced a bandit leader called Blood-Beard who didn’t have a beard. Should’ve raised a bug, I guess …

Still: would it not be possible for caravan guards/hands to be generated for an entire journey, instead of for each individual fight on the same journey?

[Wargasm]

I don’t think levelling up melee attack and melee defence every time is great when you’re only getting +1 or +2. If they don’t have a talent for it, I either (a) give them a sword/spear/pike so that they don’t need it to be so high or (b) give them an axe so that they can concentrate on smashing shields to lower the enemies’ defences. Then add in the Backstabber perk for everyone and their practical melee skill will be high enough when it matters.

Max fatigue is often very important, especially early on. Even still, once the game gets on and you have more resources, you can just give someone as much heavy armour etc. as possible and a weapon mastery that allows them to keep using basic attacks without building up fatigue, so that they don’t need much more max fatigue from then on.

Adrenaline doesn’t cause you to sacrifice the current turn, since it costs no action points. I was initially experimenting with Adrenaline+Recover, but I rarely used Recover, since that does require the sacrifice of a turn. I had a wildman with the Strong trait whose max fatigue was still over 100 with a hauberk, a metal+mail helm and a kite shield, and that was without the Brawny perk (which, in hindsight, I should’ve given him instead of Recover, since then his max fatigue would’ve been over 100 in scale armour). Adrenaline was most effective when lots of people used it en masse in melee in the 1st/2nd round of battle. The only trouble is that you need to choose it over other perks that are important early on.

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