Well, I tried the “visit everywhere” as my first ambition. Never doing that again. I couldn’t take like any jobs anywhere because they were all locked behind my renown while I was wandering the world. Before long I was broke and had to take the first job I ran into which got everyone horribly murdered since it was a 2 skull job and we’re fishermen with spears fighting undead legionaires.
Of these enemies I have fought everything but honor guards and priests. I have renown 2500 (Great). and apparently I had either no end game crisis or I missed it as a regular contract and didn’t pay attention?. I am doing 3-skull contracts, both normal and noble house.
My tactic with my team (4 spears&shield, 2 2-handed axes, 2 axe&shield, 4 bow&polearm. Average armor 150 body 115 head) is to stay put throwing arrows until the enemy closes. Formation is spears in the middle, then the axe and shield guys and the double axe guys (sellswords both) on the extremes doing one or two hit kills.
Then just adjust slightly up or down to kill them (archers switched to polearms), but basically it’s Cannae (I go in from the flanks). If goblins with arrows I might have to advance or throw dogs, but I do still stand still until the skirmishers are out and I only advance later, I can eat the arrows.
Every battle plays out exactly the same except for the necrosavants. I never move forward until the main body of the enemy is down. I do think the problem is level design, or the lack of thereof, there’s little intent and variety there, so the range of options the game can throw at you while keeping thing fair is limited (the game can’t do a Thermopylae battle, for example, since if can’t guarantee there will be a chokepoint to throw 40 enemies at once at you).
I’m sure my party is going to get horribly slaughtered soon, since I’m playing Ironman (the 8 necrosvants did kill three guys and took a while to build back from that), but I want to know: Is there further end game content from where I am at? If not, I think I want to try Veteran/Ironman.
I do find cute dogs eat up ancient legionnaires, though (as long as their armor is down).
Something I tried a while ago (not in the latest Beta but I assume it still works) is you can also join a fight in progress and you get credit for all baddies killed whether it was you or the other “good guys”. Way back then I remember I got like 40 heads easily that way. I’m pretty sure that’s why they added the maximum heads because when I did it there was no maximum.
It sounds like something may have glitched in your game and you didn’t get the endgame crisis. Yeah, I’d start over with veteran mode at this point. Maybe pick the Noble’s war or Greenskin invasion for the crisis since it looks like you’ve seen a lot of undead.
You can cancel your current Ambition by right clicking on it.
I am now able to hire Hedge Knights. But they come at level 4. Does this mean I have no control over their beginning perks? That kinda sucks…
I haven’t hired any hedged knights, but when you get somebody else at higher level than one (most sellswords are level 2 or three) you get to do the leveling up yourself. They just come with the XP points.
Thanks! Nice to know!
I can now hire feeling more at peace.
Sure, but at that point it was already hopeless. It just seems like a really bad ambition to ever pick. Getting 12 men makes you stronger, even if they’re all crap dudes. Roaming the world makes you weaker and takes longer. Maybe it’s a “hard mode” kind of choice, but it doesn’t feel right.
I think it’s very situational. I took it when it was offered but only because I’d already visited all but two towns on the map. So, I took it and was able to visits the two towns and complete the Ambition in only about a day. So, there are times when it’s very good to take but I agree that if you haven’t explored much of the map when it’s offered, you should avoid taking it and come back to it later.
I got an ambition to win the war against the orcs. Is that the end game crisis?
Most assuredly.
I am having technical problems and emailed their support address yesterday. I got a personal reply within three hours. When that fix didn’t quite solve things, I got a second reply within one hour. Not sure how big their team is, but that’s very impressive.
The entire team is just 3 people. PR guy, programmer, and artist. That’s it. They outsourced the music. They are very, very impressive.
I sure hope they continue to do more with it. There is so much more they can do with the game. I mean, just endless amounts of interesting things!
But doing that ambition won’t lock you away from contracts, the only contracts locked by default are the noble ones that you need 1040 renown to be able to do them. Ambition only gives you more renown and morale boosts, i did that contract while vitisiting every town and doing contracts on each of them (this was ironman veteran).
It specifically said my renown was too low for the quest and it wasn’t a noble quest. And it said it in nearly every single town I went to. I was frantically going from town to town praying for contracts and well over half the time there either wasn’t one or it was locked and the hover text said I didn’t have enough renown for it. And it was just a regular quest not a noble quest with it’s heraldry or whatever (which I did plenty of on the previous run).
Eventually I had to take a 2 skull contract or go bankrupt with no contracts within a day of where I was and everyone was brutally killed by undead I had no hope of beating with my 7 terribly equipped dudes.
I normally take the ambitions like this:
- Get a friendly status with town (quite easy, hang around the beginning villages) 2x level 1 quests in same city will complete it.
- Get 12 on roster. This one easy also. Hire all the 100+ recruits. Reach 12. Complete ambition then dismiss them.
This should open up the map and allow lots of quests. - Then Get 2000. For the banner.
- Get Rally the troops perk.
Doing side quests on the side.
This will open up the nobles.
I’m playing on easiest. If the map is kind, you’ll be able to open up the nobles by day 8.
Are you sure it wasn’t a big town or fortress? Those can’t be taken unless you are a pro. Maybe im wrong tho but i never had that happen and in my last run i did friendly town and then the visit every settlemente ambition and never had problems taking contracts in small towns.
I usually take the 12 men, but I thought I’d try the exploring one thinking it would be fine because I could just take jobs and caravans to places. I was horrifically wrong it turned out.
I might try the friendly status one next time, though the issue I forsee there is running out of jobs in there isn’t a cluster of like 3-4 towns really close to each other or the like.
I realize now the person replying to my support emails was the programmer, Kristof Schmidt. Very nice.
And now it runs fine! Looking forward to diving in…