LOLOLOLOLOL
I worked hard today helping parents out so will have to wait for another day to dig in as I’m wiped. Artwork sure looked nice in previews!
I am having fun with the Lone Wolf hedge knight start. Really tough to get a company going!
For @jpinard, here is a pic after I successfully beat some barbarians and one of their number joined me:
So, he cost nothing to hire, he’s already level 3, his base armor is close to leather, and his base stats are excellent. This occurred on day 9 of my game.
OMG that’s incredible! I can go an extended game not find a guy like that.
His joining me was a scripted event, part of the mission, but I’m not sure if his stats are pre-set or quasi-random.
This new expansion is great. I rarely get far in this game, so having all these different starts is wonderful.
My hedge knight died alone within a few days, after struggling to find brothers that could survive alongside him. My three barbarians quickly became one, who had to flee two or three ambushes before finally reaching a town that would trade with him. Money made from selling his ill-gotten spoils was enough to start a pretty good company that accumulated a small amount of renown before getting killed in some mishap or another. My poachers may have been the shortest lived company. Or maybe that was the cultists. Finally, I’m making a pretty good run with the company I knew I should have started with. My band of peasants have an awesome banner, mostly respectable equipment and 2 or 3 levels of experience. They have been blessed with a remarkable run of bloodless missions. One of the few fights was with direwolves that decimated a handful of them.
Yeah the game seems considerably harder than I remember it.
Poacher start, dead on day 2.
Regular company start (not Hoggart) dead on day 3.
And I am on easy start, high funds, easy combat…:O
I have hundreds and hundreds of hours and I still play all easy (except vet combat). If I did ironman I’d certainly do all Easy lol.
They did say they improved the AI. I notice raiders without archers also hang back to use their throwing weapons.
Going to be brutal to newcomers to the game.
EEK. The AI did NOT need to be any smarter than it already was. Good thing Battle Brothers AI is not running Skynet or we’d all be dead.
I’m on day 33 with the Lone Wolf start, sitting on a ok amount of funds (6k) with an assortment of raiders weapons and armour. beginner/beginner/high funds start.
The Hedge Knight is extremely powerful. But low funds forced me to lean heavily on defensive perks on the new recruits. The rag-tags company and the lack of DPS is really starting to show. I have 9 in th team and is looking to start replacing the recruits.
Also, the lack of ranged archers on the current map also makes life difficult. But it may not really matter since I have only 12 slots, the archers will need to be crossbow hybrids.
Getting a hang of the Lone Wolf start, it’s not that difficult if you are willing to play extremely conservative. But that means a slow start.
A good Hedge Knight (there is a seed on the Steam forum that gives 72 base MA!) can really carry you far and sets up a endgame toon so it kinda saves time in the long run if you build him right.
Edit: I’ll probably start a new campaign with either another Lone Wolf (vet/vet/high funds) as it’ll probably make farming raiders easier and thus have a faster start due to the higher tier enemies appearing faster.
The Poachers start is also extremely attractive for the scouting and faster travel times!
Tried a few of the new starts. The variety is nice. Maybe I just got unlucky but every one of my outings resulted in everyone dying almost immediately.
I’m also trying a Lone Wolf start. I’ve done 5 or 6 contracts and am up to 6 men total but 4 of them are injured because I couldn’t afford decent equipment. Two have permanent injuries. I have about 500 gold and am about to embark on a brigand camp contract. I do not expect it will go well.
Lolololol
Well, I got through it, though I lost 2 of the injured men. The other 2 injured ones died on the very next contract so I was down to just two then, the lone wolf and a miller that was my first hire and my only decent tank. I hired 2 more winos and beggars and survived a brigand camp contract in good shape, though.
My problem is now I can’t seem to find any more cheap labor around the parts I’m working in. It’s tough because the enemy always fields more men than I do. I have no archer at all and no real prospects of finding one.
Doing another vet/vet/high funds Lone Wolf start.
The map is a slog, with huge number of mountains and swamps. It’s day 30 and I have only 6 bros with about 2k funds in reserve. The battles are getting tougher. I was unable to get a single archer going…
I hate maps heavy with mountains and swamps. I skip them.
I started a new Lone Wolf campaign using this seed since the map I was on in my original game had a terrible seed and my lone wolf was nothing great. The lone wolf in my new game is much better and it has made a big difference through my first 8 days.
I have 6 bros now with fairly good equipment for this early in the game and contracts have been completed without injury for the most part. Money has been tight but I’ve been lucky with that a few times. Most recently I was about to attack a bandit camp with 50 gold in my pockets to fulfill a local contract when I was attacked by a band of northmen. Not only did I beat them without any injuries they dropped some treasure loot that sold for a goodly amount and several pieces of nice armor and some weapons. That got me over the hump.
I swear I’ll never find this game playable. I love everything about it in concept, but I apparently don’t understand how it’s supposed to be played or something.
Building guys feels mostly pointless and guides on builds end up with like 20 different positions… in a 12 man team. Great? I’m just so frustrated because I know I’m missing something and no amount of research has gotten me anywhere.
I’ll confess that I’ve given up on playing it “as intended” and now just play it using the Battle Brothers Edit program to edit my recruits to my liking. I try to restrain myself from making every guy an uber soldier but I do allow myself strategic control of the placement of stars and shifting starting statistics around, as well as adjusting their traits.
I think it’s intended to be an emergent rogue-like storytelling game of trying to survive (or in rare cases win) a play-through, building up your stupidly-flawed dudes, making bad choices based on low information, losing dudes you sunk much effort into and “creating a narrative” as you go.
I get that but as a paying customer I also say “F that”. I want a tactical combat game with a sane power curve and the ability to level up and customize my guys to meet the challenge. I also on a purely psychological level hate losing my little dudes. So I cheat. YMMV.