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Incline Battle Brothers + Beasts & Exploration, Warriors of the North and Blazing Deserts DLC Thread

oscar

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Aug 30, 2008
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NZ
Spears and shieldwall is a good early game tactic against dummy foes (young orcs and zombies) but spears are a waste on anyone with more melee than about 60. Flails are probably my favourite mid-game weapons.
 

thesheeep

Arcane
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but spears are a waste on anyone with more melee than about 60. Flails are probably my favourite mid-game weapons.
True. Though I still keep spears on two guys on the flanks to funnel enemies towards the meat grinder in the middle (or at least waste their turns on the flanks).
 

Salvo

Arcane
Joined
Mar 6, 2017
Messages
1,395
Fastest way to get "better" at the game is learning how to get ahead of the difficulty curve by quickly getting armor i.e. surround brigand raiders and leaders and puncture ( knife skill that ignores armor ) them to death when they start trying to flee (don't do this before killing off most of the enemies or you'll get merked)

Also, don't be afraid to sacrifice a mediocre brother to achieve an objective, like getting the aforementioned armor. A 150 durability chestpiece is better than a 200 gold recruit.
 

Harthwain

Magister
Joined
Dec 13, 2019
Messages
4,690
Spear & shield bros forming basically phalanxes were a noob's crutch for me a long time before I figured out other ways to make it in the first few weeks.
Care to share a few tips?

I seriously doubt there are any other ways that work as reliably.
There is also a +15% melee attack bonus when using a spear (and +10% melee attack bonus when using a sword).

Spears and shieldwall is a good early game tactic against dummy foes (young orcs and zombies) but spears are a waste on anyone with more melee than about 60. Flails are probably my favourite mid-game weapons.
Flails are my second favourite weapons. Axes have the first spot.
 

Biscotti

Arbiter
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561
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Belgium
Puncturing down raiders is pretty much essential if you don't want your frontliners to eat shit in every fight. It's important to never pick more than two targets in any fight, and sometimes even just one if the enemy has some particularly nasty loadouts. Just don't be a dumbass and waste 3 turns trying to dagger someone with a shield.

If the economy is bothering you, you could also try the caravan trader start: 10% better buying and selling prices adds up fast if you do a lot of trading, and you start with some trade goods you can usually sell for a hefty profit in the nearest settlement. Slower renown gain is a non factor in my opinion.
Biggest downside is actually not mentioned, which is the fact you start without a ranged bro. I wanna give the poacher start a try for that matter. Having semi competent ranged units has saved my ass so many times, starting with three of them right off the bat sounds like heaven.
 

thesheeep

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These hit bonuses are really not explained well.
Instead of being clearly written on the weapon, they appear on the skills during battle.

At least they appear somewhere, but come on, just write important information like that on the weapon itself.

Biggest downside is actually not mentioned, which is the fact you start without a ranged bro. I wanna give the poacher start a try for that matter. Having semi competent ranged units has saved my ass so many times, starting with three of them right off the bat sounds like heaven.
I am doing that right now.
Start is a nightmare - yes, you do have three good potential ranged bros, but they are really only potentially good not already at the start AND they suck massively in melee.
So you need to recruit a lot of crappy frontliners AND buy their equipment in order to keep your main guys alive.

If you survive that somehow, you do have three good ranged bros in mid-late game, which is valuable.
My hint would be to equip the poachers with long range 2H or spear+shield or throwing/switch melee the first few levels until their ranged stat becomes usable. You do NOT want them to use their bows early on.
For people supposedly living on shooting deer in a forest, they are pretty bad shots at the start.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Spear & shield bros forming basically phalanxes were a noob's crutch for me a long time before I figured out other ways to make it in the first few weeks.
Care to share a few tips?

I'm not the best BB player and no doubt folks here will have better tips. But I might as well stick my neck out so I can be corrected. (I tend to play Veteran, high starting income, semi-ironman.)

Spear & shield, again, is the bread and butter for any bro that isn't particularly great. And there's often an inflection point in terms of how many spearbros you need to maintain a decent front (all that Alexander the Great history I did back in the day coming into use). You can use weak spearbros down one side to encourage enemy to mob the other side with your best bro, for example (let's say, a gladiator with a two-handed weapon).

Because I don't use mods or reload a lot, I tend to build bros to survive early/mid-game rather than the optimal build for later. That can often mean taking some combination of Student, Gifted, Colossus, Rotation, Recover in the first levels for, say, unremarkable bros, to improve their survivability. Such bros may be abandoned later on, but that's when your company can easily afford new and cooler bros.

I am probably in the minority here but I'm a big fan of a couple of backline pitchfork bros in the early game too, because it's an easy way to deal significant melee damage to a focused target while maintaining a spearwall formation and can be viable for defensively useless bros.

Anyway, after a week or so with a few contracts done I'd phase out of that. As others mentioned flails are very nice mid-game, and get past the spearbros' limit of how slow they are in actually killing enemies. Axes I would say are the other to-go to smash up shields and get at the high-value targets. Not really convinced by cleavers / swords in general, while hammers arguably come into their own a little later.

I also tend to stick early game to a patch of the map that I know will be low risk - e.g. three or four closely connected towns that are easy to hop between and are not next to swamps or 'edges' of the map (where more threatening shit roams). On Veteran that usually means I have the luxury of bailing on a contract that will get me fucked. I'll usually focus on human bandit contracts first, like the thief one, and maybe some nachs & webknechts, while avoiding caravans or armoured undead. The arena now also offers a pretty good source of early money.
 

Darth Canoli

Arcane
Joined
Jun 8, 2018
Messages
5,687
Location
Perched on a tree
It looks like it's going to be a long, hard slog of gitting gud for me. After restarting several times, I've come to accept that there's no way I'm going to improve at fighting anything other than basic bitch brigands unless I savescum some. I'll save the ironman playthrough for once I'm actually somewhat decent at the game.

The game is pretty much to pick the right weapons you can afford for each phase.
Spear/shield + polearms behind early on, more varied arsenal later.

But nothing is more fun than a 2H team with some ranged support by mid/late game.
Of course, you'd need the most expensive/best recruits to make it work.
 

Fedora Master

Arcane
Patron
Edgy
Joined
Jun 28, 2017
Messages
27,819
I think cleavers are excellent against early bandits that wear chain shirts but no helmets due to the Decapitation skill.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
spear master race above all
V2uifO3.png

20 acc bonus cannot be argued against, except by enemies with a shield, or bunch of hp (like snakes...)
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Btw, about flails. They have a 30 dmg spread and you have to mass them. But they do work.
But at one point in the game, enemies start to have more head armor than body. So the flail actually start to be counter producive by spreading dmg around...
Happened to me.
 

Strange Fellow

Peculiar
Patron
Joined
Jun 21, 2018
Messages
4,013
Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
Flails are as much about bypassing shields as they are about headshots, which is why they're good in the transition to midgame. They do fall off harder than any other weapon type IMO, but even later on they can be very nice against say a noble house shieldwall or ancient legionaries.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
woah, the flail dmg spreading problem manifests itself already vs 120 head armor
Mk7RFdD.png

and this example is when all hits land, actual flails would spread that shit out and would look even worse
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
later on they can be very nice against say a noble house shieldwall
This is actually the place where flails failed hard for me. The fuckers run around with 300 headarmor. Axes, hammers are the only endgame weapons... +greatsword.
 

Salvo

Arcane
Joined
Mar 6, 2017
Messages
1,395
woah, the flail dmg spreading problem manifests itself already vs 120 head armor
Mk7RFdD.png

and this example is when all hits land, actual flails would spread that shit out and would look even worse

high fat duelist with Brute and Head Hunter canprobably be a decent meme build. Obviously the effort put into making this build is higher than the payoff, when you could simply get a huge + drunkard brother and go to town with 2handers
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Btw, in random notes: in previous DLC the roaming raiders were running from me when I had 12 bros. No matter the equip or level. Now they dont...
Thats like half the reason to get to 12 bros quick...
3 raiders, 4 thugs fucking attacked me just walking to city, the gall!
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
Tooks a picture of a happy beggar that was pulling apart enemy AIs, died in battle, rose again, got Adrenalin to pull enemy AIs even more effectively.
I thought that it was his last battle.
7PkVMd6.png


I was wrong! Jesus aint got shit on him! lul, now he is a company mascot for 4 gold a day
zx1BCDP.png
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
The biggest problem of the game is not grind.
Its this:
G34SZmT.png

This is absolutely fucking infuriating.

edit

Oh and of course the retarded addition of the encemptment means that you HAVE to circle around and guess what? Thats where the game's speed REALLY shines!
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
Battle Bros still gives me the jitters, I physically wince when I see that Noble War pikeman gear up for attack each time.

I really like the addition of the palisades, actually - spices up the battle and really creates situations where a far inferior party can win out or cause plenty of trouble.
 

Murk

Arcane
Joined
Jan 17, 2008
Messages
13,459
Battle Bros still gives me the jitters, I physically wince when I see that Noble War pikeman gear up for attack each time.

I really like the addition of the palisades, actually - spices up the battle and really creates situations where a far inferior party can win out or cause plenty of trouble.

Arbalests have that effect on me. That mechanical release sound makes my eyes dart to anyone who wasn't at full HP.
 
Unwanted

Horvatii

Unwanted
Joined
Dec 15, 2019
Messages
563
spices up the battle
yeah yeah eyah
pulling enemy out of the fort for 8 turns rrrrrreeeeeeeeealy spices the things up!
V88kF0j.jpg

and when they start landing their 10% shots, THEN the spice flows like diarrhea
 

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