Rather late reply but there is a wiki which explains basic game/combat mechanics and enemy types and capabilities, which functions as a rough unofficial ‘manual’ of sorts. It doesn’t really tell you what to do and what to fight, but as you’ve stated that’s not what you’re looking for, it should serve just fine. Indeed part of the charm of the game (at least for me) is figuring out battlefield tactics vs different opponents and devising a viable approach to managing men and resources.
Of course there are also external links on the wiki to some guides if ultimately interested.
I generally give it to men who have good Fatigue. 25 Fatigue per use is heavy, but definitely a good skill to have to rescue men from an unexpected unlucky spate of hits. IMHO the man ‘kept in reserve’ should also be active to optimize damage output every round. Having a 2-tile reach weapon helps in that regard and being able to put up a shield fast via Quick Hands once swapped to the front, may enable him to take a little less damage.
I like discovering the new enemy types and being surprised, but maybe the wiki would be useful to look up things like injury effects. The mechanics themselves seem pretty straight forward. I’m still early in. I didn’t play this at all today, choosing some Civ VI and Gloomhaven.
The motley crew of brothers struggled for weeks. The company seem to be always staring at potential financial disaster, with funds hovering around 1-2K.
It took really long doing small jobs, first they were the 400gp paying ones, then later 600gp paying ones. The long climb back up was patience testing.
And dangerous, 2 of the vets who could actually kill stuff ended up with permanent injuries. Our chief archer got 2 of them! Ended up with a debilating 50% reduction to his fatigue.
But we trudged on.
With experience and levels under their belt, the men started to hit and kill things for a start. But the turning point came when the team of 9 hit level 5 and above.
We started taking on 1000+gp jobs sometimes facing up to 20 Nachezers. But the experience of the men and smart footwork helped demolish groups like these. Even the once feared raiders who raided towns and villages are just target practice for our brothers.
It is day 87. We just hired 2 new promising recruits (Militia and Squire) and is resting on a pile of 10k in gold. 3 of our top men are level 9 with the rest lagging behind around 5-7 variously.
But rumours are floating that a dark and forbidding event will soon happen.
The captain looks at the mails the 11 men are wearing and is wondering how in the world will he afford to get the scales that are need to survive in the coming dark…
Fortunately, 50 days in at beginner difficulty, I’m not being thrown at 20 nachezers. But I did have my best archer’s eye shot out. I paid him off so he could live out his remaining years in retirement. Maybe it’s for the best. At least he’ll die in his own bed as an old man.
You, my dear captain, are far more generous man than me. =)
Sounds like you’re having a successful game cicobuff.I’m only around 3 days in so I have a long time before I see the big event - or I may never see it if all my guys die.
It’s still too early to tell. If the event hit and the dudes are still in low mid-tier equipment, unless it’s the noble war, the game will probably get impossible.
I think my priority will be to train up some seriously skilled brothers. It’ll be hard as Ironman mode precludes save scrumming to examine recruits. The 10K gets burned up really fast just “interviewing” the better backgrounds.
Oh! Fortune smiled and it’s a Noble War! That means that I’ll be able to survive and hopefully stab my way into some nice armour!
Edit: It’s day 112.
The band avoided the war of the nobles, sure that a 3000gp paying job is beyond their pay grade.
And attempted to complete an ambition of theirs from a long time ago. They spied an enemy camp with raiders and marksmen and a leader and decided to evict them from the makeshift headquarters from which they base their operations from.
The battle was evenly balanced. The brothers withstood a withering barrage of bolts and arrows and closed into the ranks of the raiders. Our archer was almost killed, with less than 5 health remaining. So was the squire who was in the backrow.
But the steely resolve of the brothers held and decimated their ranks. We focused on their helmless compatriots first, killing them and demoralizing them, by focusing on the weakest members and killing them, we routed the more heavily armored soldiers. Seeing your men collapse around you is never good for morale, and even their leader started running. The mop up was a massacre.
But fortune’s favour was really upon us when we found a treasure in the fields of the fallen!
An amazing piece of armour! Who shall have it? The seniors draw lots…
Proudly wearing the Dragon’s Hide, the brother strutted around. Envious eyes turned upon our team even as the men basked in the admiration of the villagers.
It must have been the hubris that brought upon what came next.
We were walking on the roads when 3 groups of raiders surrounded us! Engaging the 1st group injured us more than usual. A lucky shot almost killed our archer, who seem to invite death just by breathing…
With his 4th permanent injury… he looks a horrible mess…
It is a testament to his will to survive that he can go through such punishment and still remain a useful member of our team!
But after clearing the 1st battle, we are still looking at 2 more groups of ambushers!
The captain ordered everyone hurt into reserves and ordered retreats… thus preserving the team.
With heavily injured members, there was no way the team could have limped off the map and survived. But the healthy teammates were able to make a dash to the edge of the battlefield and the brothers lived to fight another day.
Sounds like a close call - nice job holding it together!
I’ve got to remember to do this the next time I get into trouble instead of smashing my keyboard, throwing my mouse across the room, and reloading a saved game.
A found this journal on my way to Tiefenhaven. In it were the tales of Ulfert the Dog, Hagen, Berthold, Rabe, Reimund the Runner, and one other whose name was smudged out. Apparently they thought they were pretty tough because they survived a battle when the others fell. They got it into their head that they should become a band of mercenaries. They had some early success tracking down and killing the leader of the gang who killed their comrades.
When they cleared a graveyard of some zombies, they were sure they made the right career choice. Things started going a little worse from there. This dog started following them and they thought it would make a great pet, so they fed it some scraps. Ulfert the Dog msut have felt a certain kinship because he was careless and let the beast split his had, requiring almost a week to heal. The dog ran off.
After searching the steppes for a fabled sword, they stumbled into a tomb with 18 Wiedergangers and a necromancer. They troupe had to run off.
So, they figured they would go back to hunting bandits for paltry fees. 4 brigand thugs and 2 raiders. Easy peasy lemon squeezy they wrote. This is the last entry, and this journal was covered in dried blood, so my guess is that was their last adventure.
While I like the battle system, and the text that pops up from time to time, there are things I don’t like. I’m not sure if I’m missing something or not but I didn’t have a clue that these bandits were any more difficult than the last ones. This is good for immersion sake, but not so good for the sake of fun for me. Part of it was that I had some early poor dice rolls on my attacks, which let them get the upper hand. But there was no indication these guys would give me a difficult time after I beat the last bandits easily.
The raiders are a bump up from the Thugs because of the perks and stats they can have. Will be dangerous if you dont have some levels under your belt. And due to that RNG plays a much bigger part.
Edit: Want to encourage you to keep trying. Getting a feel for what match up is survivable makes a big difference.
Yeah, there is a progression for most types of enemies.
Brigands and bandits aren’t so bad. A bunch of raiders can be bad for business.
There isn’t any way to tell who is badass or not though, right? Maybe if they are wearing armor you can tell they have good equipment. When you hover over them you can see their health and armor bars, etc…, but there aren’t any numbers associated with them to compare to your own. Don’t you need to essentially loose and learn from it? (or take a beating and then try to retreat - where you may get crushed with attacks of opportunity?
You can pause and hover over the site or enemy groups. A tooltip will show up depending on whether you have “scouted” the enemy (it’s an automatic resolution), and you’ll be able to see what you are facing. Applies to both mission sites and wandering groups.
Edit: I do agree that it’s annoying that we have to die before we realise how powerful the enemies are. The first time I encountered Orc Warriors, and when my most damaging guy plink off a pathetic amount off their armour, I went like “Oh I’m in the deep end…”
Edit2: Another thing that is interesting. Typically, there are weapons that exists as hard counters to some of the troop types we encounter. Experimenting and making those tactics work is very rewarding. That “eureka” factor.
As also mentioned by other forumers, many enemies in the game come in a few tiers. Mousing over each enemy will tell you what it is and when it will take its turn.
For melee Brigands, the first tier are the Thugs with tier 1 weapons (hatchet, militia spear, bludgeon, etc), mostly cloth or light leather armor, usually shieldless or with a buckler, with stats of an average new recruit (MSk 50, MDef 0, RDef 0, hp 55) and are easy pickings from day 1.
The second tier are the Raiders (probably the commonest foe in the game) with tier 2 weapons (handaxe, boar spear, morning star, etc), clad in padded leather (80) up to basic mail (115) and decent headgear (i.e.nasal helms), use wood and kite shields and have the stats of an experienced fighter (MSk 70, RSk 55, MDef 10, RDef 10, hp 75). They can prove challenging to deal with as they are a good deal harder to hit and their armor allows them to take quite a few blows from tier 1 weapons.
Without any additional hit bonuses (from weapons, surrounding, etc), an early recruit with 55 Melee Skill would only have a 30% chance of hitting a shielded raider (or 15% if he shieldwalls); a pretty grim figure, which is why Melee Skill is pretty much a premium stat and perks which improve hit chance are frequently decent picks. Use terrain to your advantage whenever possible, use delay to surround before striking and aim for a shielded frontline with decent armor (padded leather is typically quite cheap if drops are poor) to mitigate incoming damage. A backline with reach weapons (even basic ones like pitchforks) helps focus damage more efficiently.
The third tier are the Leaders, Hedge Knights and Swordmasters. These are even tougher and come with even higher stats and many perks, but there are usually only 1-2 in enemy parties in the early and mid game.
All stats can be found in the wiki and are based off combat log observations. Would also encourage having a look at Combat and Game Mechanics for a better understanding of the details.