Battle Brothers Hits Early Access

I always pick high initiative archers and get the dodge skill, it helps quite a bit early game.

I’m somewhat disenchanted with dodge. When I first read it I was amazed, as it seemed like a whole bunch of free defense. Then I realized that armor penalties decrease initiative (and thus dodge). Then I later realized that fatigue heavily penalizes initiative, which means that after the first few rounds of combat dodge does basically nothing once people are all fatigued.

Fatigue management has been my biggest problem in the late game. The higher tier weapons and armor are all real nice but man are they heavy. One of my favorite guys at the moment is the one who was the trait that gives him +5 fatigue recovery per turn. That’s a huge boon as it means that he’s pretty much always guaranteed to be able to swing twice a turn no matter how long the fight drags on.

Yes but that’s why i try that my archers have more than 100 initiative after armor, so thats atleast 15 ranged/melee defence. Dedicated archers benefit more since using a polearm decreases your initiative.

My archers tend to fatigue out badly though. Well, the two with warbows do, I guess the crossbow is fatigue friendly. My two best archers have berserk so sometimes get a third attack per round with their warbow. By round 4 or so of the fight this leaves them pretty buried in fatigue, so their initiative suffers.

Would a smaller band of 6-8 mercenaries be viable? Would the experience be greater so they would be more powerful?

I wouldn’t think so. Even fielding the full 12 I get outnumbered sometimes in later missions. With only 6-8 brothers I’d be afraid of being swarmed under. Even really unskilled or weak enemies will tear you up if they start stacking up the surround bonuses.

The min 5% chance to hit really wrecks any plans to rely very much on a small team.

Fielding a larger team with reserves for rotating out injured brothers is the only feasible way to handle the RNG (no matter how much you minimize it).

It’s one of the reasons why I think Hold Out is a necessary perk to keep combat effectiveness, because that stray crossbow bolt WILL penetrate your defenses. It’s a matter of time.

As time goes by, bumping up hit points is a must after some time when the mandatory melee and range skills hit 80+ and your defences and resolve values are satisfactory. The higher hit points allows the brothers to take the stray shots without crippling injuries.

I’m at day 80+ in my current map and realized that it’s extremely badly placed. The only armor shop is at a very inconvenient place and there is only 1 temple and 1 training hall in the whole map, and they are not in cities…

How often do you guys reroll maps?

Only 1 temple? What difficulty level? I think there’s 4 in my old game.

The game was a Normal, I mean Beginner Ironman map. The Veteran economy is just pure brutal as I prefer a more relaxed pacing.

I’m trying to get a Veteran Ironman map with decent harbor placements now. That helps a huge amount later.

Wow I had no idea stuff I like that was randomized.

I have a Beginner Ironman map that I spent hours generating that has 6 harbors!
I quickly duplicated that save file. It will make for a very relaxing run I think.

This is the map. The 6 harbors allows extremely fast travel and to cycle to towns later when you have got a decent team going.

You can basically just visit the harbors and travel between them following rumors in taverns.

I’m attaching the save file (Day 1, just finished the tutorial battle) for download also if you care for an easy stress-less romp at beginner level, it’s iron-man mode though (because the developers say it’s the way to play it). I wish they’ll implement a map-seed function so that we can keep those good maps for play.

The save file for those who want it.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0_NvbJqCD1kMktvamxlRU9HeW8/view?usp=sharing

@wumpus The max picture upload size is only 1M? Seems really small.

@stusser changed it to 2MB, as a compromise from the 3MB default I originally suggested.

Ooops @stusser I just noticed you changed file attachment size but not image size, so I normalized those for you, both are 2MB.

How much does using the boats cost? I’m around day 50ish in my first beginner campaign and haven’t used boat travel yet. I just assumed it would be expensive I guess!

I just lost my first couple level 5 guys. So heartbreaking seeing their heads go flying off and knowing there wasn’t really anything you could do to prevent it. Really loving the game though, great stuff.

The cost of boats depends mainly on how many people you have. When travelling far, it is always better to go by boats. Overland travel uses up both provisions and salaries. Boats are instantaneous and dont cost anything except the fare.

To avoid getting owned. Gradually upgrade the armor of the brothers.
Vs low tier stuff like Thugs, 55++ armors are good.
Vs raiders, 80 - 100+ armors are good.
Vs young orcs, goblin skirmishers, 100-140 and so on…
Each tier of enemy requires the next tier of armor to stay safe. Same with the weapons. Slowly upgrade the weapons you have.

Early on. I think we should focus on acquiring good armor, the weapons drop from enemies. You can do the mace-stun lock then dagger on highly armored units. Kill the trash mobs then surround, stun lock with your 2 best melees with maces and then surround and stab him for the armor!

Later when we have lots of cash, we can then hire the core guys we would like to keep.

In my latest run I’m discovering that 4-5 bowmen with 70++ range attack helps ALOT, I can normally take on groups without injuries when I have these guys raining death on the enemies.

A lot. An awful lot. The worldgen is the weakest part of the game currently. I sure hope they continue to work on that. I suggested that the devs create a ton of worlds and then pick the best seeds and save them as scenarios you can select in-game from a menu. I’ve seen other games do that. This way you’d be guaranteed to get a good, balanced map layout to play. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

Yep. To elaborate on that a bit, I would advise getting your bothers up to mail shirts (armor 105-115), kite shields, and nasal helmets (armor 140ish?) just on loot. Bandit raiders will drop that stuff frequently enough that there’s no need to buy it. The same goes for weapons, you can get good weapons from bandits no problems with some patience. The exceptions I’ve noticed is that two-handed weapons beyond basic pitchfork/pike stuff is pretty rare for bandits, and bows above hunting bow/crossbow are rare. I have gotten a couple billhooks and longaxes, a warbrand, and one heavy crossbow out of loot but I’m 105 days into my game. I’ve never gotten any armor heavier than mail shirt, and no really good helmets.

Stuff I’ve had to spend real money on:

  1. Greatswords. Fun weapon, hits really hard.
  2. Heavy Armor. Scale and closed helmets baby! It’s a must for greatsword users, along with the perks that make heavy armor more manageable. With no shield they get hit a lot.
  3. Warbows. Love em, turns my skilled archers into killing machines against lightly armored foes.
  4. Two handed hammer. Still haven’t used this baby because I bought it for a specific merc and he died in the next battle before he ever equipped it.

Ahh thanks.

Dang.

Did this game get significantly harder upon release?

I’ve logged a lot of hours in EA and was consistently doing well on Veteran/Ironman. After a short break until they released 1.0 I started up a game at Beginner/Ironman. My six bros had completed the Hoggart the Weasel quest and were searching for a contract when they were jumped by five brigands that were heavily armored and armed (pikes, morning stars, swords). My guys with their rookie spears and pick axes didn’t stand a chance. Party wipe.

Maybe it was just a random bad start, but I hadn’t gotten wiped like that so early in a game before even on Veteran. Is this a common experience now?

Not that I mean to complain, more like I best re-calibrate my expectations.

“Boys, keep off the moors. Stick to the roads, and the best of luck.”

Yeah, I think it certainly got harder than it was before the big update. Veteran is pretty tough now. Expert, or whatever the highest difficulty setting is called, is batshit insane.