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TheBeardyCleaver
Jan 9, 2019

The Lord Bude posted:

I find it’s best to get the sergeant first; (like others have said, you can just hire someone with survivor; but if you end up getting the Surgeon first you can just use any random beggar) but you tend to want to replace the sergeant once you’ve got a full 12/16 on the field - it’s not worth it just to be leveling up one guy at a time as you tend to do late game.

Other than that; I really like having the kid; the surgeon, the blacksmith and the bounty hunter. The last slot that you free up after you fire the drill sergeant can be whatever - get the cook for max healing or one of the ones that boosts your income in some way like the cartographer.

The recruiter can be useful if you’re playing an origin with special hiring needs like cultists.

I forgot about the bounty hunter! Finest man in the troupe that one. Surgeon is nice for injuries i suppose, though if I really need him, something has gone a bit wrong. I keep a couple of Iron Will potions around for gnarly ones, but I did without a surgeon in my Gladiator run just fine.


Qubee posted:

I've installed a mod that breaks archers, which is frustrating, but I can't figure out which one causes it. Whenever they stand near dead bodies, the game thinks they're in combat.
Does everything work if you remove all the mods?

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
The surgeon isn’t just for getting guys to cheat death; he also increases healing speed of regular injuries; I guess it’s a matter of do you prefer to heal injuries faster or recover health faster if you’re choosing between surgeon or cook. I usually prefer the former. Also the surgeon is better in gladiator and lone wolf companies because you can’t just swap out injured bros with reservists.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




TheBeardyCleaver posted:

Does everything work if you remove all the mods?

Found the culprit, a post on nexusmods complained of the same issue. Removed the mod and we're all good now. I installed a mod that shows whether it's worth it to repair stuff before selling but that didn't work, which is a shame. I also wish the armourer / weaponsmith allowed you to quick repair gear your bros were wearing. Sometimes I'm in a rush and don't have time to wait for normal repairing.

I gave one of my polearm guys berserk and killing spree(?), he's an absolute beast now. I'll target low health people and he'll murder them, then get a free 4AP and bonus 25% damage to wreck the next dude in line. My guys are really coming together but I'm having an absolute bitch of a time finding new worthwhile recruits and not having them die in their first 3 battles. Do they get xp regardless of whether or not they get kills, or do they only get xp for contributing?

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Qubee posted:

Found the culprit, a post on nexusmods complained of the same issue. Removed the mod and we're all good now. I installed a mod that shows whether it's worth it to repair stuff before selling but that didn't work, which is a shame. I also wish the armourer / weaponsmith allowed you to quick repair gear your bros were wearing. Sometimes I'm in a rush and don't have time to wait for normal repairing.

I gave one of my polearm guys berserk and killing spree(?), he's an absolute beast now. I'll target low health people and he'll murder them, then get a free 4AP and bonus 25% damage to wreck the next dude in line. My guys are really coming together but I'm having an absolute bitch of a time finding new worthwhile recruits and not having them die in their first 3 battles. Do they get xp regardless of whether or not they get kills, or do they only get xp for contributing?

Everybody in combat gets XP for kills (with a few weird edge case exceptions like if your guy is eaten by a nachzehrer and the final action of combat is to kill that nachzehrer then the bro who was in its stomach doesn't get any XP). The way it works is that whenever you kill something, the bro who landed the final hit gets a fixed percentage of the XP for the kill, and the rest of it is divided evenly across everyone in combat. So you'll level up a little faster if you're the one landing all the killing blows, but everyone will level up eventually.

TheBeardyCleaver
Jan 9, 2019

The Lord Bude posted:

Also the surgeon is better in gladiator and lone wolf companies because you can’t just swap out injured bros with reservists.

I just gave them drugs :350: I was seriously considering getting one, but I always had some miracle cures or potions about, and by that time they weren't getting much in the way of injuries outside of massive battles. Most had pretty good health numbers with more nimblers than bettleforgers, doing long wanders, so a cook to keep the massive pantry in order was what I went for. Along with scouting, tracking, cartography, and bounty hunting, the surgeon did not get to come.

TheBeardyCleaver fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Dec 8, 2020

Qubee
May 31, 2013




vyelkin posted:

Everybody in combat gets XP for kills (with a few weird edge case exceptions like if your guy is eaten by a nachzehrer and the final action of combat is to kill that nachzehrer then the bro who was in its stomach doesn't get any XP). The way it works is that whenever you kill something, the bro who landed the final hit gets a fixed percentage of the XP for the kill, and the rest of it is divided evenly across everyone in combat. So you'll level up a little faster if you're the one landing all the killing blows, but everyone will level up eventually.

Cheers. And thanks for clarifying that nachs actually eat dudes, I got confused as hell when I killed a Nach and out popped one of my guys covered in something that looked like white webs. I guess it was spit. I didn't even notice him get eaten lol

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thx for the input on the retuine. I think I can now see who I want to get. And big ups for the survivor=sarge strat. Feeling a little daft that I didn't think of that one myself :v:

Qubee posted:

I also wish the armourer / weaponsmith allowed you to quick repair gear your bros were wearing. Sometimes I'm in a rush and don't have time to wait for normal repairing.
You can actually quick-repair stuff with alt+right click when you're at an armor/weaponsmith in town. The stuff just has to be in your inventory and it's obviously more expensive

Qubee posted:

My guys are really coming together but I'm having an absolute bitch of a time finding new worthwhile recruits and not having them die in their first 3 battles.
Give new hires a pike and stick them in the back if you can. It's safe and they'll have an easier time getting hits because pikes have +10% cth and their targets often have other brothers next to them which also increases cth.

For recruits/general advice I'm just gonna quote a previous post of mine

Tin Tim posted:

Imo you want to quickly transition into trying to level a few core bros with good potential in body and combat stats to carry you through the early game. These guys will eventually get ditched during the midgame but you want to quickly be able to take on raiders for the gear drops and those will kill crappy fodder bros too fast. You can use knives/daggers to kill someone with the puncture attack without doing damage to their armor and get it as loot. This works best when you fully surround a panicked enemy since they can't run or attack anymore. Otherwise it can be a dangerous task early on because you'll need to hit a few stabs for a kill. But it pays to get into the mental habit of trying to isolate someone with good gear to maybe dagger them during or at the end of the fight. Flails are also very good early because bandits and raiders often will have no head armor. Killing them with the secondary flail attack also leaves their body armor intact as loot since it targets the head. Grinding raiders for their gear is pretty much basic 101 early game.

The bros that will let you do that are farmers(used to be better all purpose, now mainly tanks), lumberjacks, brawlers, militia men, and butchers for instance. There are more simple backgrounds that can lead to good stats but those are at the top of my head. You want to be selective here and look for melee skill close to or above 60. Bros with melee at 50-55(without 2 or 3 stars) will be locked to using spears/swords forever to get hits in. Having stars in fatigue, hp, mattack/def or resolve is what you want on your early core. Though resolve is the fringe stat since you can run with 40 ish when fighting humans and having stars here only means that you need to invest fewer points to hit the benchmark of 45-50. I call those bros "early line" and their job is to use a shield+1h weapon and to get good at fighting raiders asap.

Here's the perk flow for them(updated for the new dlc)

Student
Colossus
Gifted
Rotate
Recover
Underdog
Battleforged
Pathfinder
Brawny
Mace or Axe spec+shield expert

The brunt of my early company is made up of theses dudes and they get me the money&gear I need to transition into the midgame where I then look for better recruits to lvl and replace my early hires one by one.

One more important tip is to have 2-3 decent archers in your early company to balance out the numerical advantage human enemies have against you or to counter their archers once yours have some skill. Also enemies will not advance towards you if they have archers and you don't and that sucks since you have to take hits while closing with them. Hunters have the best archer potential on average but are also kinda expensive. Looking for poachers or bowyers early on is fine enough but you can also find potential in some other cheap backgrounds. My 2nd archer in my current campaign was a caravan hand with 2 stars in ranged att and one star in ranged def and he's still around post day 150

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:18 on Dec 8, 2020

Donkringel
Apr 22, 2008

Qubee posted:

Found the culprit, a post on nexusmods complained of the same issue. Removed the mod and we're all good now. I installed a mod that shows whether it's worth it to repair stuff before selling but that didn't work, which is a shame. I also wish the armourer / weaponsmith allowed you to quick repair gear your bros were wearing. Sometimes I'm in a rush and don't have time to wait for normal repairing.

I gave one of my polearm guys berserk and killing spree(?), he's an absolute beast now. I'll target low health people and he'll murder them, then get a free 4AP and bonus 25% damage to wreck the next dude in line. My guys are really coming together but I'm having an absolute bitch of a time finding new worthwhile recruits and not having them die in their first 3 battles. Do they get xp regardless of whether or not they get kills, or do they only get xp for contributing?

In regards to a mod showing if it is worth repairing or not, there is an autoloot mod that swaps out cheaper items with more expensive items automatically. In addition it also puts a repair flag on items that are worth repairing (although it is more conservative, it won't flag all the items I normally would). That mod is incredible and one of the best ones imo.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
My rule of thumb for repairs is repair weapons before selling; don’t repair armour.

Veryslightlymad
Jun 3, 2007

I fight with
my brain
and with an
underlying
hatred of the
Erebonian
Noble Faction
That feature should really be built into the Blacksmith camp follower.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

What's the best way to fight alps? I guess you want to be naked and have swords/spears for the +cth? Beyond that I can never figure out how to properly exploit their movement patterns

Moonshine Rhyme
Mar 26, 2010

Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate

Tin Tim posted:

What's the best way to fight alps? I guess you want to be naked and have swords/spears for the +cth? Beyond that I can never figure out how to properly exploit their movement patterns

Keep your brothers together and smash them with pole arms and two hand weapons

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

The Lord Bude posted:

I find it’s best to get the sergeant first; (like others have said, you can just hire someone with survivor; but if you end up getting the Surgeon first you can just use any random beggar) but you tend to want to replace the sergeant once you’ve got a full 12/16 on the field - it’s not worth it just to be leveling up one guy at a time as you tend to do late game.

Other than that; I really like having the kid; the surgeon, the blacksmith and the bounty hunter. The last slot that you free up after you fire the drill sergeant can be whatever - get the cook for max healing or one of the ones that boosts your income in some way like the cartographer.

The recruiter can be useful if you’re playing an origin with special hiring needs like cultists.

Gonna quote my friend's facebook rant about punctuation at you because you have no idea how the gently caress to use a semi-colon :eng101:

quote:

Here are some writing tips you can use at work or at home. If you want to use a dash, don't. If you want to use a semicolon, don't. If you want to use a colon, don't.
Always use a full stop instead, and just write your sentences in such a way that it works.
Semicolons and dashes are a very, very rare treat. Don't be a glutton. If you haven't practiced abstinence, you don't deserve them. Not even once a year on your birthday or anniversary. Keep your writing pure.
As for colons, you shouldn't ever touch them. They are always the wrong choice. Just say no.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Wafflecopper posted:

Gonna quote my friend's facebook rant about punctuation at you because you have no idea how the gently caress to use a semi-colon :eng101:

Your friend sounds like an idiot. Although considering the extent to which Americans have mangled the English language; perhaps that garbage is actually convention over there?

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

The Lord Bude posted:

Your friend sounds like an idiot. Although considering the extent to which Americans have mangled the English language; perhaps that garbage is actually convention over there?

We're both New Zealanders

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Wafflecopper posted:

We're both New Zealanders

Well that explains a lot.

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Dec 9, 2020

TheBeardyCleaver
Jan 9, 2019

Tin Tim posted:

What's the best way to fight alps? I guess you want to be naked and have swords/spears for the +cth? Beyond that I can never figure out how to properly exploit their movement patterns

I keep the guys in a circular formation, banner up, high resolve guys to the front since they take less damage from nightmare attacks. I don't attack for the first few rounds, using them to get into good position, since if you hit one all of the bastards will pop right in around the outmost guys. Banner guy should stay in the centre to buff everyone and toot the horn to wake anyone up. It's tempting to have him chase alps down, since he's mostly immune due to resolve, but make sure to keep formation.

Ranged guys with Owl trait is pretty great, but a decent thrower can usually hit them often enough.
Other than that i just give the guys polearms, since that needs the least amount of movement. Having to step right up mucks with formation to a bothersome degree, but if you have some 90 resolve 2H with pathfinder and all, he can just go do whatever the gently caress he wants :black101:

With a band of low resolve peasants though, it's always a hard time, and someone is likely to die screaming against more than 4.

Edit: It's often worth waiting with someone that doesn't have a shot, instead of moving, as someone else is likely to hit an alp, and then they might pop up around the guy that waited.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
Rally the troops will wake sleeping men. Also the more resolve a bro has the less damage they take from the Alp.

TheBeardyCleaver
Jan 9, 2019

The Lord Bude posted:

Rally the troops will wake sleeping men. Also the more resolve a bro has the less damage they take from the Alp.

Thank you for the TL;DR of my post :v:

Walh Hara
May 11, 2012

Wafflecopper posted:

Gonna quote my friend's facebook rant about punctuation at you because you have no idea how the gently caress to use a semi-colon :eng101:

You should give your friend a copy of Dreyer's English.

Slightly more on topic: I'm looking forward to The Iron Oath, hopefully it can scratch the same itch.

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Thanks for the input! For some reason I didn't really think about going with reach weapons against them. Probably because I use them so rarely once I'm out of the early game. Will give it a try when I find the next alp contract

The Lord Bude posted:

Also the more resolve a bro has the less damage they take from the Alp.
That is something I did not know about :monocle:

Also I've found my drill sarge. A houndmaster with "lucky" as his nick was hired, stripped and thrown in front of some direwolves. His nick actually turned out to be true because he only lost a finger

Tin Tim fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Dec 9, 2020

Veryslightlymad
Jun 3, 2007

I fight with
my brain
and with an
underlying
hatred of the
Erebonian
Noble Faction

TheBeardyCleaver posted:

Edit: It's often worth waiting with someone that doesn't have a shot, instead of moving, as someone else is likely to hit an alp, and then they might pop up around the guy that waited.

This is a big one. If nothing else, just wait.

Take pole arms and throwers.

If a guy can't reach an alp, he should wake up a friend. This should be a thing even if he still has the ability to wait--- his friend doesn't have that luxury.

Never move more than two spaces.

Anyone experiment with dogs and Alps? I could see them going either way, but I always forget they exist. (Poor resolve, but fast and can give your human people time to get their poo poo together.)

Tin Tim
Jun 4, 2012

Live by the pun - Die by the pun

Veryslightlymad posted:

This is a big one. If nothing else, just wait.
Yeah I'm deffo guilty of rushing after alps too often and getting bros to the brink of death that way :v:

Also I just wanna say how incredibly nice it is to have a sarge and not lose mood on your bench. I always hated to juggle my bros in and out while I'm leveling replacements for my midgame crew

Qubee
May 31, 2013




Wouldn't it be nice to save specific loadouts for each bro? Cause it's a mighty ballache when you're going into an Alp fight, for example. Removing all their armour and swapping it out for polearms, then forgetting who gets what after the fight and having to meticulously sift and sort through the armour to give it back to the rightful owners.

Come across some Alps? I'll just load my naked men loadouts for each of my bros. Fight over, immediately run into Unholds? Net loadout with shields. It'd be refreshing. Or mass designation to quickly loadout your whole troop.

Moonshine Rhyme
Mar 26, 2010

Hate Hate Hate Hate Hate
I am far too lazy to bother with taking their armor off, but I also don't play above veteran and generally don't take alp fights until late game anyway

Qubee
May 31, 2013




I really hate Ifrits. Even if you focus fire the small ones, there's a high chance they just meld back into a larger version. Trying to bait throws to separate the small ones kinda works but also fucks my backline up.

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?
i like ifrits, just wish they dropped better loot. Usually they just fling small ones at my tanks and then my polearms bash them to death. Just a battle of attrition thats usually in your favour.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
I’ve never bothered to have bros fight alps naked. Honestly you very rarely encounter them unless you go looking and they aren’t that hard these days.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




I'm in the mid-game (I think?) having just fought my first noble war battle. I lost a dude, save scummed a bunch of times. But now I'm starting to realize a lot of my guys suck, in terms of stats and the perks I chose. It was my first game so I didn't really know what I was doing. Is this a lost cause, or can I let these guys slowly die off and just hire new recruits and level them properly? I have an extremely hard time when I come against Nomads because they dodge everything. Only way I can beat them easily is to wipe out the ones who don't wield shields and then surround them piecemeal. I also had that issue x10 with the Noble war, since a vast majority of their army is shielded so I just take a tonne of damage due to attrition and my 2 handers are useless against shields.

I've never had a situation where a vast majority of my strongest guys die. I've only ever lost one or two tough guys which means getting replacements isn't too bad, and then I just fight a few easy encounters and my recruits are level 4 or 5 which means they're no longer totally useless. I don't know what my best option is here. I kinda want to restart and do it over properly, but I also don't want to slog through the early game being broke. Is it a viable strategy to just mass replenish (kill 3 or 4 off and replace) my dudes?

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
Both options work fine. As long as you aren’t replacing too many at a time it shouldn’t be an issue. After the crisis you should have a decent chunk of cash; and at that stage in the game you can pretty much take it easy and progress at your leisure.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




I'm in way over my head with this crisis. I took on a contract offering 5400 gold, which should have been a huge red flag seeing as contracts worth 1500 are usually tough but doable. I thought I'd have allies to back me up, but they're just sending me around like errand boys. Fair enough. I get a caravan raid task, which consists of 25 units (footmen, billmen, arbalests). My ragtag group can't handle this at all. I'm not quite sure why the AI gets such overwhelming odds against you, when you can only field 12 men. I've tried it multiple ways but I just can't beat those odds. I might just cancel the contract and go gently caress about in the North or South to get money back and build my guys up.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
There will come a point where if you know what you’re doing and you’re appropriately geared that fight would be trivial. My current cultist run is on day 85ish on expert and I’m 50% confident I could take a 25 man noble army without losing anyone. My day 500ish peasant army could probably do it with barely an injury.

People often recommend new players choose the noble war for their first crisis on the basis that they can avoid taking sides if they don’t feel ready but I firmly believe it’s a trap - most newer players aren’t ready for those sorts of fights and it can put you into ugly situations. Choosing undead as your first is by far the way to go IMO.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




Since it's my first playthrough, I've got no idea on the type of timescale I should be expecting. I'm on day ~150ish and feel like I'm not where I should be, but seeing that you have a 500 day old peasant army, I realise I need to slow down and tell myself there's plenty more time to get my guys where they need to be. I think I'll start being more liberal with retreats and not taking fights I'm not as confident as possible in.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Qubee posted:

Since it's my first playthrough, I've got no idea on the type of timescale I should be expecting. I'm on day ~150ish and feel like I'm not where I should be, but seeing that you have a 500 day old peasant army, I realise I need to slow down and tell myself there's plenty more time to get my guys where they need to be. I think I'll start being more liberal with retreats and not taking fights I'm not as confident as possible in.

Oh wait; you’re on day 150? I thought you were in your first crisis or something. You shouldn’t be having difficulty taking out 25 billmen/footmen/arbalesters etc on day 150. You’re well behind the curve. The good thing is that the difficulty scaling should be more or less maxed out now - aside from the legendary locations - so the only place you can go from here is up.

If you want; post your bros and their stats and gear.

The Lord Bude fucked around with this message at 12:57 on Dec 10, 2020

TheBeardyCleaver
Jan 9, 2019
After the first crisis the difficulty does not ramp up all that much. Yes, there are some gnarly groups running about, but with a retinue scout and tracker those can be avoided, and you can still find bandits and easier stuff that you can actually kill. Replacing your less than stellar guys with better ones is what I see as a core mechanic and is good experience in creating builds that fit your roster. You also have more reputation, thus getting paid more, and have more leeway in the coffers for absorbing losses if things go to poo poo. The hardest part of the entire game is the first 20 days IMO. Even if all but 3 of your guys die off, you're still in a better place than the normal start.

I say play the current band until you have a decent idea for something else you want to do, perhaps with a different start. Or you know, you get them all killed :v:

Restarting for the perfect run is a pretty big trap in itself.

Blueshirt
Sep 27, 2020

by Jeffrey of YOSPOS
I feel like Lord Bude's posts should all come with a disclaimer explaining that he's the product of 10,000 hours of mathematically perfect min-max savescummery and the lowliest of his Brothers can solo the Monolith.

The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE

Blueshirt posted:

I feel like Lord Bude's posts should all come with a disclaimer explaining that he's the product of 10,000 hours of mathematically perfect min-max savescummery and the lowliest of his Brothers can solo the Monolith.

That's a bit of an exaggeration.

vyelkin
Jan 2, 2011

Qubee posted:

I'm in way over my head with this crisis. I took on a contract offering 5400 gold, which should have been a huge red flag seeing as contracts worth 1500 are usually tough but doable. I thought I'd have allies to back me up, but they're just sending me around like errand boys. Fair enough. I get a caravan raid task, which consists of 25 units (footmen, billmen, arbalests). My ragtag group can't handle this at all. I'm not quite sure why the AI gets such overwhelming odds against you, when you can only field 12 men. I've tried it multiple ways but I just can't beat those odds. I might just cancel the contract and go gently caress about in the North or South to get money back and build my guys up.

The AI gets overwhelming odds because once you're good at the game, in a lategame company with good bros and good gear one of your guys is easily worth 2-3 enemies. Human players generally don't like playing against enemies that are as good as they are (it can be very frustrating to come up against even one enemy that is just as dodgy or just as tanky as one of your own bros, let alone an entire company of them), so the game compensates by ramping up the number of enemies you face but keeping most enemies at a level lower than a lategame bro.

As for noble companies, they're an interesting challenge that you need to tackle differently from most other enemy groups, like bandits or orcs. To fight a noble company, the problem you face is that they're very specialized. They have tanks (footmen) up front with shields, whose main job is to stand there and shieldwall, and they have damage dealers who stand behind the lines (billmen, arbalesters) whose main job is to kill you. You need a way to do one of two things: either 1) break the shieldwall so you can get at the damage dealers faster, or 2) kill the damage dealers behind the shieldwall. There are multiple ways to do each one.

You can break the shieldwall with some specialized weapons. You can use axes to literally break their shields, but I don't recommend this. It takes a long time because footmen are shield experts who take reduced shield damage--but, for a company with low MAtk, this might be the best option anyway. Better options for a lategame company are to either stun the footmen with maces, which breaks their shieldwall for a turn and lets you focus on taking out the stunned footman, or to just have bros with high enough MAtk that they can hit fairly often even through the shieldwall. Another option is to use high-damage ranged weapons, like throwing weapons, because footmen will generally have lower ranged defence than melee defence.

You can kill the damage dealers a few ways. I think some people like to try and flank around the footmen with a few bros, but I find this doesn't work very well because you tend to be outnumbered which means there are usually enough footmen to cut off your flankers. Generally the way to do it is with ranged and reach weapons instead. Bows, crossbows, guns, and throwing weapons can bypass the shieldwall to do damage directly to the damage dealers. Some good two-handed weapons have a 2-tile AOE attack that lets you hit a footman and a damage dealer behind them at the same time (this is specifically greatswords and bardiches). A bro who uses a polearm in the frontline can hit damage dealers directly, going through the shieldwall to get there. And someone with a whip can hit them even from your own backline thanks to the 3-tile range. They can disarm dangerous ones and do bleed damage to ones whose armour has been taken out.

Noble armies are really tough the first few times you fight them, because if you're anything like me you try to just bash your way through the shields because so far that's what has worked against bandits, only to find that footmen are way more durable and you get attrititoned to death by the polearms and crossbows coming from their backline. But once you get the hang of building a lategame company that has access to the weapons and tactics that are effective against noble armies, they get much less dangerous.

Qubee
May 31, 2013




Advice has been really helpful. vyelkin, your breakdown of the different strengths in a noble army lit a bulb up above my head. I've been focusing far too much on the drat footmen because they immobilise me and it frustrates me, but they're just the distraction. I can't believe I tunnel visioned so hard, because now that you mentioned the backliners (with long reach weapons), it's painfully obvious that every save scummed battle had them being the big damage dealers and killers. The footmen barely did anything other than trap my guys in place while I pointlessly wailed at them. It was the assholes with polearms that were destroying my guys or crippling them with horrible -40% MAtk debuffs. I also never thought to use my 2H longsword guy that way with split to primarily hit the guys in the 2nd row. I always just send them off on the flanks and try to pin down some soft guys without shields, but it invariably ends up with them getting sandwiched by a bunch of shield guys and then dying to archers or polearms.

Is the Noble War not the crisis? Or does more happen after I get given the first contract to help end the war. I'm just going to avoid it for now and go back to hunting down raiders and stuff. I'm barely even competent when it comes to taking out 4 Unholds (that's the most I've managed and I got through it by the skin of my teeth). Hexes are easy, Alps are sorta easy? I haven't tried them now that I have a bannerman. The big raiding parties are fun and strike a balance between tough but easy, I like wading into their soft armour units and just decimating them and causing mass routes.

I'll post my guys tomorrow when I hop on again, I think I royally hosed their perks up. I gave my strongest 2H Longsword guy dodge, and his fatigue gets capped at 70 because his armour is so heavy lol, he'll also have so much downtime due to fatigue where the only thing he can do is single strike because I don't have the recover perk. Most I can do is get off one or two sweeps before I'm just stuck striking targets. Also a bunch of perks I gave strong guys that are useless in higher levels (the +10% to hit chance, extra damage to crippled enemies and the 33% buff to causing crippling wounds), and now I realise I should only really give those perks to guys I don't expect to keep round long enough to make it to the later levels. I should have saved perk points for the more important stuff. My weapon choice was also a bit whack, I gave everyone either swords or spears but I realise now that I should be carrying extra weapons in bag slots to adapt on the fly. Plus the Noble armies made me realise I need stuff like maces and hammers to really deal damage through their armour. I also haven't bothered with many classes other than shieldbros, polearm bros and 2H bros, I'm going to try and add in a few netters to immobilize enemy footmen so I can easily break through them and get to the soft underbelly of their army, and some hybrid throwing axes / 2H guys or whatever works best with throwing axe classes. Cheers for all the help, and god drat is this game addicting. I'd love to do an ironman run but I really can't deal with random RNG that just wrecks a battle brother I'm really attached to. I've got a bunch of guys from the previous battle that technically died but were revived by the surgeon and have gnarly permanent disabilities, so I'm planning on slowly submitting them to the meatgrinder to make way for fresh recruits. I'm not paying them upwards of 800 gold each to relieve them, I'd rather just have them go out in a blaze of glory. If I were richer though, I'd love to send them off to retirement and imagine them happily living on a farm with their missing eyes, torn ears and broken noses lol

Oh and one of my original 3 guys became a drunkard because he'd seen too many friends die. That was heartbreaking when he was describing how the only time the screams, mental images and cries stop is when he's deep in his cups.

Qubee fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Dec 10, 2020

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The Lord Bude
May 23, 2007

ASK ME ABOUT MY SHITTY, BOUGIE INTERIOR DECORATING ADVICE
The noble war is one of the choices you can have for the crisis - when you start a new game you can either choose a specific option or have it be random. After the first crisis new ones will occur at reasonably fixed intervals, chosen randomly from the pool of whichever ones haven’t happened yet. After you’ve seen them all, they’ll keep happening at a similar rate but chosen completely at random. The first crisis usually
Starts around day 80ish.

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