I think Brawny impacts fatigue if I am not mistaken. Fatigue very important if combat lasts several rounds.
I think there is a spec that can use initiative to increase fatigue as well. I have had a lot of success in the early going not upping health or hit, but upping Fatigue and Resolve each time, and then using the third for something else.
What is this thing about “first late game crisis”? I’m now on a mission that says “winning the game for undead scourge”. Does this mean there will be other late game crisis if I want to continue playing?
I’ve never made it to the first, but when you pick the late game crisis, it mentions that the one you pick will be the first to happen, with a different random one occurring after.
You can essentially declare victory after your first late game crisis is over, or you can keep on, depending on how you feel.
The brawny perk reduces the fatigue penalty from wearing armor and helmet by 30%. I find it essential for any merc that needs heavy armor.
The Pathfinder perk, according to the wiki “Action Point costs for movement on all terrain is reduced by -1 to a minimum of 2 Action Points per tile, and Fatigue cost is reduced to half. Changing height levels also has no additional Action Point cost anymore” may be what you want.
Hope all don’t mind, I have yet another question of something I don’t understand. I’ve now listened to some YouTube perk guide vids at night for falling asleep time, and him and many others keep talking about their “duelist” builds that are the primary front-line killers. But the problem I see is to use that perk you can’t have a shield which then makes them extremely vulnerable to be hit. I also didn’t really see them using quick hands for them but I could have missed it. So are they just swapping the shield on and off constantly to maximize damage?
Some of the super-advanced techniques, like making use of duelist, seem beyond me. Likewise with that guide that talks about using guys in a “martyr” role.
It all depends on your play style, but I find a basic mix of sword/shield, some 2H, some ranged works well for me.
In my current game, I just won the first end game crisis, a war between noble houses and my setup is:
6 Sword/Shield
2 Two Handed Weapons
1 Polearm
3 Archers
First row is arranged like this:
Shield, Shield, Two-hander, Shield, Polearm, Shield, Two-hander, Shield, Shield
My two hands in the off-cent positions often get opportunities to use their multi-target attacks and the polearm has good options due to reach. The core of my force are the sword and board guys holding the enemy in place, and I have 3 archers looking for shots on un-shielded enemies and enemy ranged.
Also my two end shield guys carry armored war dogs and will loose them if there’s a clean shot to enemy ranged or enemy support.
Basically, my old 2-handed flankers have been moved inside where they get better targets and I use stout shield guys with dogs for the flanker role.
YMMV
Boy, this is the 1st game in a very long time I am tempted to track the dice rolls, I think they hate me ;)
I agree, I think that guide is better just viewed as thoughts on strategy. Some of his categories you have to get just the right combination of stars and attributes, and you don’t really get that a lot.
The tanking concept helped me a great deal though. I also use flanker concepts. I like a lot of bowmen, ready to switch to pole arms as well.
EDIT: oh and the concept that new guys to the party are pretty expendable was helpful as well. They have to be around for a while before you make friends.
I agree. Getting recruits with the right attributes to follow those templates is nearly impossible. I treat it as more of a loose guide.
Me too, except I like to equip them with longaxes so they can break shields from the back line once the enemy closes. That’s really helpful for taking on ancient auxiliaries in particular.
I like using my two-hander wreakers as flankers and equip them with wardogs. I just took out a necromancer doing that in my current game.
I’ve lost 6 guys now and 5 of the 6 were new guys. The other was one of my founding brothers so that one hurt. But, I didn’t want to give up that greatsword he gave his life to get.
One of the most useful brothers I have is a level 6 hybrid with spear specialization. That specialization is really handy. His spearwall has saved my bacon on several occasions.
Yesterday, I found a set of unique armor in a brigand camp. The 340 armor rating on it is by far the best I have. I gave it to my greatsword wreaker and he is pretty unstoppable now.
Fascinating. I’m glad there’s not a need for “one way to play to win”.
Which 2 handed weapons do you prefer? I find it hard to use the axe special ability as by the time my guy has enough people around him his armor is in trouble. I’m surprised you don’t use spears at all. I like to use them as flank protectors but they don’t do a lot of damage.
One person said they thought mace was the best weapon in the game. In my current game, my mace guy seems to do the least amount of damage and I only use him mainly for the stun so he often just seems meh to me. I wonder if I should just do all maces, and flails (with spearmen for spearwall support) early in my next game to try and maximize farming equipment?
Big question though @sharpe how in the world do you take out a group of ancient legionnaire skeletons? I had a mission (ironically just 2-star but was going to yield $5,000 gold), and tried it 10x in different ways and I could not kill more than a couple before getting wiped. Their setup was 7 front-line skeletons with ancient armor, shields, and swords, then 6 of those horrible, nasty powerful pikemen with once again, the ancient armor in the rear.
@coldsteel and everyone here. You all prefer bowman over crossbowman? I keep waffling between them so right now I… well I had 2 crossbowman and 2 bowman. But then my nice bowyer got shot in the head and lost an eye, so he’s now too awful to shoot range. I think I’m going to start a new game with a map seed that has nice trading so I can do more moneymaking in addition to combat. I like trading a lot and find it exciting lol.
BTW I would LOVE to see screenshots of your guy’s builds! The more the better.
I like greatswords and longaxes. The greataxe is not very useful at all in my opinion and I avoid it like the plague. Longaxes are better because they break shields and do great damage from 2 hexes away. Much less risky to use and easy to obtain as loot.
Spears and falchions are great to give your starting troops because of hit bonuses but later on spears are not that useful in most cases. Spears are quite situational. Spearwall is fantastic against beasts and undead because they mindlessly attack it over and over. Humans, greater undead, and greenskins are much smarter and they won’t do the job in those fights. I keep a bunch of boar spears in my inventory and pull them out just for the appropriate fights. I do have one dedicated spearman. With the right skills they can be effective.
They’re both good and have different strengths. Bows have greater range and can shoot twice but aren’t as good against armor. Crossbows wreck armor and have a to-hit chance bonus so I give them to my ranged guys early on when they don’t have high ranged skills. Right now I’m running two crossbows and one bow.
Interesting. My Bowman are all bows all the time. I find xbows too situational. Nice against heavy armor but the reload time really kills the shot output. I much prefer to just have my archers picking off enemy archers or light targets so my guys with heavy armor and weapons can crack the enemy tanks.
One thing I love to do is get a high stamina dagger expert with the dagger skill and crippling strikes. A few armor piercing shots inflicting wounds will defang an enemy tank fast.
I’ve played around with a lot of the specialist templates. They are really only super useful in the late game with the right mix of equipment and skills and talents. With the late game funds though it’s often possible for a savescummer ( aka me ) to find a really good hedge knight or swordmaster. I tend to buy those as a 13th+ team member and develop them. Once they get good I retire one of my decent-but-not-great Bros to the reserve. That kind of strategy is only really applicable if one is going to play past the first crisis though.
Jointed, perhaps people were saying hammers not maces? B/c hammers are the answer to your legionnaire problem. For 2H I like greats word, 2 handed hammer and long axe. For 1H I like hammer, flail and dagger
I almost forgot to ask. Which end-game crisis do you all like? I went with Noble War for my new game but am concerned one house will dominate too much and take some of the fun out of the conflict as one house has 8 cities and the others just a few.
@Sharpe nope he definitely said maces lol.
I’ve done them all, Noble crisis is my fave. The big war battles with you + friendly troops vs enemy troops + mercs are a blast. Good loot from them too.
Undead or Greenskin crisis can be fun, but they tend to burn down the world too which is annoying.
I like the noble crises best as well. It makes the most sense to do as your first crisis, also, to get all that sweet gear.
On the issues of weapons, it is true that maces are probably the best “all around” 1 Handed weapon: good base damage, good damage versus armor, good armor penetration. They are good against pretty much all foes. However, they are the jack of all trades, master of none.
There are better weapons for every specialist role IMO. Versus armored foes, hammers are best. Against shielded foes, axes. Against unarmored foes, cleavers and swords. The kopesh in particular is a nasty weapon in the hands of a cleaver specialist: good versus armor and the bleed damage builds up. And for looting, daggers are best (for puncture to preserve armor and helmet) with flails being second (to strike the head and preserve armor.)
So if you don’t pick a Mastery, and you want viability against all foes, Maces are a good choice. However, the tougher battles require more specialization IMO.
Ohhh this is good to know. What great descriptions. Thanks!
Maces also stun which is big when going against certain mobile foes like necrosavants.
I really like the noble crisis as well. It’s by far my favorite.
Don’t forget to mention Stun, removes the target’s zones of control and gives you time to whallop on him. Of course the switching skill is useful in these cases as well, but stun helps you hit the rear elements.