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

[Infinitron]

Hmmm, the devs have been doing some community event stuff: https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/3002177675802692156/

Monthly Challenge #1: The Band of Knights-Errant
Good day everyone! I'd like to welcome you to our brand new Monthly Challenges, a community thing I've wanted to do for some time now. Battle Brothers is almost literally an endless game -- you can play it for hundreds and thousands of hours without running out of things to do. Even so, at some moments some players might feel they are running out of challenges or ideas -- or might want to experiment with the limits of the game. That's why I thought of this idea. Roughly once per month, I will post here an open challenge. It can be a specific battle (for which I would share an edited savefile that you can download and use) or an idea for roleplaying a new campaign, like this one. Some will be harder than others, but there is no winning or losing these challenges -- it's just for fun (and, at most, bragging rights if it's something particularly difficult).

Just to be transparent, the devs aren't designing these challenges, so any problems in balancing or difficulty or whatever are absolutely on me -- and nothing I write here is canon or a hint of future official content. Also, I want to thank @Turtle225, @JCSato and @Abel, who have very kindly given me feedback and/or created tools to help me design this stuff.

All this said, let's start with the first challenge, something fun and light for you to play over this Christmas -- let's play Knight-Errant! I invite you to post your optional rules, headcannon and stories from your run in this same thread.

Monthly Challenge: the Knights of the Valiant Order

Where you play as a band of knight-errands, set on a quest to protect the innocent and smite Evil wherever it can be found

Rules

Economic Difficulty: Expert (knowing you are of noble origin, vendors will try to squeeze extra coin from you)
Starting Funds: High (you are noble after all!)
Combat Difficulty: we recommend Expert for a more exciting challenge, but up to you!

Starting bros: 3 adventurous nobles (you can download a save here[we.tl], pr BB-Edit the initial bros yourself if you prefer to use your own seed. I picked the seed for this one from this thread).
The Round Table: You can only hire highborn backgrounds (Adventurous Nobles, Disowned Nobles, Bastards, Hedge Knights), plus Squires, Minstrels and Historians (for singing their mighty deeds) and Monks (for the wellbeing of their souls).
Chivalric code: Your goal is to protect the innocent and weak. You cannot accept raiding contracts nor take part in quarrels between nobles (no escorting spies or plundering other nobles’ lands). In the event of a Noble War, you can only take part in defending peasants against nobles’ armies.
Not in this for the money. You cannot haggle for better pay when accepting a contract. You do need money for your adventures, but you’re not in this to get rich but for honor and glory, and knights are supposed to be generous.

Looking for an extra challenge? If you want a harder version of this roleplay, follow the Commandments of Chivalry: on top of defending the weak and innocent, once engaged in combat you cannot flee from an enemy (as it would be dishonorable), and if a Holy War begins, you have to fight for the North. You can also make Fortified Mind a compulsory perk (because your knights have to be the bravest and noblest of all) and forbid Ranged weapons (because it's dishonorable to attack an enemy from afar instead of facing them in single combat).

How do you “win” this scenario? You can play this just as any other origin and retire whenever you feel you’ve “beaten” the game. However, thematically you shouldn’t retire before reaching at least one of these conditions:

Reaching “Legendary” renown (you got the everlasting glory you were searching –
now you can go back home as a hero)
Beating at least one of the hardest legendary locations (you wanted to defeat Evil, after all – what better way than clearing the Black Monolith, the Sunken Library or the Goblin City!)

Background

As a highborn, you’ve lived a life of luxury and comfort, destined by birthright to rule over the lesser men. You spent your childhood mastering the blade in the training hall, and your youth commanding your father’s troops in campaigns of conquest. But you always dreamed of more: of a higher cause than the petty squabbles of the nobility; of honor and glory, like the stories of the knights of old. After being severely injured on the battlefield facing another noble’s scion, just like you, you came back home and decided enough was enough. You convinced three of your childhood friends, sons of other noble houses, to join you with promises of everlasting glory. You left your rooms in the middle of the night, grabbed whatever gear you could raid from the armory, saddled your horse up, and set to the roads to become knight-errands, protect the weak and the innocent, and fight against the many Evils that beset the land.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/3113645835772327510/

Monthly Challenge #2: The Rogue Noble House
When you enter the old lord's chamber, you find him leaning out the windows, wide open despite the fierce cold. The man looks at the hills like if he was trying to pierce the night with his eyes.

"I'm glad you're finally here, sellsword. Close the door behind you -- walls have ears these days." You follow his command and walk closer to the fire, burning too low to be of any use against the wind. "You know how it is among us the highborn -- we might get into a scrap every now and then, burn a few farms or kill some poor devils standing in the way... But at the end of the day, no serious harm is done”. You refrain from pointing out that the peasants who get massacred in their “scraps” would probably disagree with that. “When it’s all said and done, we know it’s us against the world. There are manners in war. Rules. Traditions.” The old lord sighs. “Or there used to be.”

“One of the Noble houses have… gone rogue. Apparently, they have decided these long-standing traditions do not apply to them. They have convinced the Northern savages to fight for them. They have allied with the Southerners and their false god. Even the greenskins are now on their side, for goodness’ sake! They are set to destroy all the Noble houses and unite all the lands under a sole banner.”

His voice quivers in suppressed rage and fear. It’s obvious that in his mind, this is just not just wrong -- it’s plainly unthinkable. You wonder how no one else has tried it before – you don’t believe for a second it’s out of principles, so you wonder if nobles are really that naïf or it’s just no one could talk their traditional enemies into working for them.

It takes a moment for the lord to put himself together, and when he continues, his voice is almost a whisper. “They want to conquer the whole continent, sellsword. Our troops couldn’t stop them. Now I hear word from other nobles that they are considering if they should join the winning side while they still can and pledge fealty to avoid utter destruction. But my spies have discovered something. They are escorting ambassadors back to their lands. We can plant evidence to make them think they have been betrayed. Their alliance is as powerful as it is fragile. Kill these ambassadors and their escorts, sellsword, and you’ll save us. You’ll save everyone.”

As if you cared whose is the banner that flies on the lords’ castles. As if it made any difference at all for the people who toil in their lands. You tell the old noble that salvation doesn’t come cheap, but he promises a fortune, even land and titles for your men. Looks like the Battle Brothers have a new mission…

Welcome to our new community challenge! This time it's not a custom Origin, but a series of battles. If you don't know what we're talking about, you can take a look at the previous one: https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/discussions/0/3002177675802692156/. Since we are discussing if noble armies need a buff, I thought it would be fun to fight a noble army with some... additions.

Now, a warning: these battles are not designed to be balanced, just to offer a challenge that you can't find in the "normal" game. I'm not a game designer and I've not exactly run tests to make sure they are balanced or whatever. I'm sure they will seem unfair or unwinnable to some (or most) of you -- I'm hoping, though, that at least you have some fun with these weird combinations of enemies and the unexpected synergies that will probably appear.

That said, another warning: I want to make clear that the devs are not involved in designing this in any way. Any fault you find is mine.

Huge thanks to @Abel for writing the mod that allowed me to create these scenarios, and to @JCSato for the immense patience he's had to help me learn how to do this (I couldn't code my way out of a cardboard box).

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE CHALLENGE

1. Download ModHook: https://www.nexusmods.com/battlebrothers/mods/42?tab=files&file_id=2417

2. Drop the ModHook zip in the Battle Brothers /data folder (typically C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Battle Brothers\data), without unzipping it

3. Download this: https://we.tl/t-ep2Jwb5uJL

4. Go to your /data/ folder and create a folder /script/!mods_preload. The path should be something like this: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Battle Brothers\data\scripts\!mods_preload

5. Pick the .nut of the battle you want to fight, drop it in the /!mods_preload folder you have created, and rename it to santoTool.nut

6. Open the game and load the savefile you want to play with. Press CTRL + G, then B. As soon as you unpause the game, the enemy party will appear in front of you and attack you.

I have not experienced any problems, but I strongly recommend keeping a backup of your savefiles just in case.

I encourage you to experiment with different party compositions and equipment -- BB-Edit is your friend!

If within a few days we realize they are too difficult (or too easy), I'll follow your suggestions and edit them again. I hope you have fun!

 

[Teut Busnet]

Specialist > Hybrid, in 9 out of 10 cases. And even when you've got that one god tier hybridbro, argument could be made that you'd have benefited more from another specialist.

I strongly disagree.

What does the 'specialist' have that the 'hybrid' doesn't? 'Bullseye', 'Executioner', 'Fast Adaptation'? Not great perks.

Against what enemies does it make you better? Those you can wipe the floor with anyway.

The armor destruction/ignoring capabilities of throwing weapons however make hybrids very versatile and extremely effective against Chosen and Ancient Undead - fights in which a specialist is useless.

 

[Kaivokz]

I think one of the reasons I am enjoying this game so much is that you really do need to accept that some bros will die or go down. If you break formation to try to save a bro who got unlucky or a new recruit who is isn’t skilled enough yet, you’ll almost certainly lose more bros in the process.

My E/E ironman run is going great. Having a dagger and a wooden stick on everyone’s belt is very useful.

Fought my first hexen (and then a couple more after). Have a good bannerman so most bros resisted charm, but if a dangerous bro gets charmed... everyone around him pulls out wooden sticks to stun him, while the rest of the company moves toward the hexen. Almost lost my good archer to the first hexen, since he was hexed and I shot her with my other archer (took him down to 10hp)—I didn’t expect one arrow to do quite that much damage, and the hex share damage seems to bypass armor—but the arrow killed the hexen so it worked out.

Unholds are easy now where they used to be game enders.

I’ve got a huge (+10% melee damage) berserking pikeman with 75 some melee skill at level 7 who can down two enemies on most turns. Once I get some good bros with enough m. skill and endurance, I’m excited to try some 2h builds. Have about 7k gold stored (even as monster hunters with expert economy—though I did kill two packs of 20 nachez-whatevers and got enough monster parts to make ~2k gold) so I’ll probably start hiring some militia or squires to build as mid game 2h’s and more defensive shield bros.

 

[vazha]

Specialist > Hybrid, in 9 out of 10 cases. And even when you've got that one god tier hybridbro, argument could be made that you'd have benefited more from another specialist.

I strongly disagree.

What does the 'specialist' have that the 'hybrid' doesn't? 'Bullseye', 'Executioner', 'Fast Adaptation'? Not great perks.

Against what enemies does it make you better? Those you can wipe the floor with anyway.

The armor destruction/ignoring capabilities of throwing weapons however make hybrids very versatile and extremely effective against Chosen and Ancient Undead - fights in which a specialist is useless.

Sure, let's discuss. Specialist ranger (bowman) is an elite unit used for sniping priority targets (witches, necroes, shamaneros, them annoying hero types) half across the map. You do need them at their absolute best to perform as intended. Both bull's eye and adaptation help them excel at their task.

As for hybrid throwing shenanigans against chosen and the lot - I think you are deceived by being pleasantly surprised that they do their job, against your expectations if you will. When compared, an average hybrobro will do always worse against toughies than an average two-handed bro would. God tier hybrids with poison are very good against the ridiculous arena foes that the tournament pits you against, but that's about it. If allowed I'd still take a duelist / fencerbro for gimmicky schtick.

Not to say hybrids cant work / are shit, they are just suboptimal when compared to specialists.

 

[Darth Canoli]

The armor destruction/ignoring capabilities of throwing weapons however make hybrids very versatile and extremely effective against Chosen and Ancient Undead - fights in which a specialist is useless.

And useless/weaker against everyone else...
I guess it depends on your playstyle, my 2H army has no need of hybrids, all they need is some good long range support against Goblins/Master Archers/Hexen/Bannermen/Crossbowmen, some debuff (overwhelm) or wounding machine before the impact otherwise.
And killing the ones trying to flee or picking some isolated targets.

Sure, let's discuss. Specialist ranger (bowman) is an elite unit used for sniping priority targets (witches, necroes, them annoying hero types) half across the map. You do need them at their absolute best to perform as intended. Both bull's eye and adaptation help them excel at their task.

As for hybrid throwing shenanigans against chosen and the lot - I think you are deceived by being pleasantly surprised that they do their job. When compared, an average hybrobro will do always worse against toughies than an average two-handed bro would. God tier hybrids with poison are very good against the ridiculous arena foes that the tournament pits you against, but that's about it. If allowed I'd still take a duelist / fencerbro for gimmicky schtick.

Not to say hybrids cant work / are shit, they are just suboptimal against specialists.

I always go full 2H in the arena, except if i have found a suitable candidate for fencing (aka god tier initiative + very good Melee + good fat).
The fencer build isn't a gimmick, with a named 2H fencing sword, he can kill an unhold in two hits. (This involves some Legends damage perks)

 

[vazha]

The fencer build isn't a gimmick, with a named 2H fencing sword, he can kill an unhold in two hits. (This involves some Legends damage perks)

I honestly wouldn't know, never played Legends. In vanilla I prefer shamshir duelists to fencers, don't even recall why, haven't played for a while. Maybe to duel enemy swordmasters and maim them. Probably also has to do with me not willing to be arsed with fencer move micromanaging.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I honestly wouldn't know, never played Legends. In vanilla I prefer shamshir duelists to fencers, don't even recall why, haven't played for a while. Maybe to duel enemy swordmasters and maim them. Probably also has to do with me not willing to be arsed with fencer move micromanaging.

I find the classic swordmaster build kind of dull.
It's also way weaker because you rely on high defense and riposte and we both know RNG will fuck you sideways any chance it gets.

A fencer, on the other hand is a highly offensive and tactical unit, that's one reason why i like it but it's also probably the best damage dealer, outside of the Legends Berserker with all its damage perks.
By the way, i found out fencing damage bonus is capped at 200 initiative. There is some perks to improve init in legends and also a couple of crafts like a +15 ini necklace, i was quite disappointed about it.

Good news is the wizard's magic missile damage (also relying on initiative) isn't.

 

[Serus]

I just started playing BB after several years of pause. I got bored of Kingmaker. I have 300+ hours on steam but it was BB without any dlc. I have to relearn half of the thing so i started a game on easy settings, no ironman. Good to learn and experiment but for the next game i plan to play veteran/ironman. This was the difficulty i was able to play successfully a few years back. Any one has a nice seed to share? Starting stats don't matter but the map itself does. Something fast to move on, with good roads and ports and low amount of mountains/swamps.
BTW, this is a fantastic game, i remember why i played it for several months few years ago. It's even better now with more diversity of enemies and weapons. Only the map is sadly mostly the same. However, is it me or the game is way harder now? My first encounter with, what's their name - alps? A disaster. Barbarians, a seemingly easy fight - won but two brothers lost. Etc.

 

[Kaivokz]

Decided to bench my expert/expert ironman run for now. My bros have fallen behind the power curve. Green skin invasion and I have fought a few big orc/goblin battles but lost a couple bros each time; half my front line bros still in 110 chainmail. I think I got unlucky though; the first two bandit leaders I fought gave me their armor, but then no other leaders dropped armor/helm for me. I had a fight with two bandit leaders at once and I managed to have both of their helms and armor at 100% durability... nothing dropped.

Also learned a painful lesson: attacked a bandit camp with many marksmen with one of my 2h in the front line. He got put into a hole like 5 levels down from the camp and immediately knocked unconscious by crossbowmen. (He was the only one in a hole, too, and the only person in the front line without a shield.) Only lost an eye thankfully, but was a hard battle.

Another thing I learned from the wiki, which is very counterintuitive, is that accepting 1 or 2 skull contracts to exterminate a camp removes the chance for named items. Better to get the location, decline the contract and wipe out the camp yourself for a chance at a named item. Also, the further from cities and bigger the camp, the higher the chance of a named item.

After work today I think I will start another e/e ironman run—once I am outfitted in bandit raider gear (maybe between day 20-30), then expeditions out to destroy camps and get better loot. That way I won’t fall behind by day 60 or so.

 

[Tigranes]

I've long wanted to play full on Cultbros but always end up doing gladiators or lone wolf. I like the death & replenishment but I usually run with a tight pack of bros I know well. What's the fun way to approach a cult playthrough to get the most out of it? Is it about trying to recruit as many cultists as possible, or have a few lead meatbags/sacrificial lambs around?

 

[Strange Fellow]

When I tried a cultist playthrough, the very first sacrifice event of the campaign caused a mass walkout among my non-cultist bros, which ended up costing me about two thirds of my squad at the time, so if you're going to hire unbelievers you shouldn't make long-term plans for them, and definitely don't pay good money for them. Probably a good idea to keep at least one or two around, though, just to get the events to trigger. As for cultist hires, I'd say take on any and all you find. They're rare enough that even if you hoover them all up it'll take a long time to get to 12+ men.
I have no idea what strategy works out best in the late game, since I found the cultist start to be underwhelming and never took it very far. It's pretty hard too, since cultists have shitty stats.

 

[Sarissofoi]

If you have Sand DLC you can just buy slaves indebted.
They can't leave.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I've long wanted to play full on Cultbros but always end up doing gladiators or lone wolf. I like the death & replenishment but I usually run with a tight pack of bros I know well. What's the fun way to approach a cult playthrough to get the most out of it? Is it about trying to recruit as many cultists as possible, or have a few lead meatbags/sacrificial lambs around?

A few sacrificial lambs is good but loosing half your crew after a sacrifice is also a possibility (didn't know about the indebted, good info).
The best way to enjoy a cultist run, in my opinion is to play it with the Legends mod.
After each sacrifice, you camp right away to increase the overall morale a bit and prevent resignations, then, you find some easy fights and a tavern, camp again and soon enough you get a decent morale again.

 

[Serus]

Wasn't that other bros, even of better origins if dumb, can be converted to cultist? Just asking.

 

[Sarissofoi]

They can but its pure RNG roulette.
So you better pray that right event fire up.

 

[normie]

why would you torture yourself with expert economy

 

[Serus]

Expert economy might be "fun" on gladiator start, i checked once out of curiosity, the 3 starting bros all cost 50/head.

BB really became more difficult now compared to 3 years ago. I have 12 bros with brigand raiders stuff (armour 110 and better) and fucking goblins wreck my company. They used to be annoying, yes but not outright deadly under normal circumstances. This or i suck at this game. Need to rethink the tactics.

 

[Kaivokz]

why would you torture yourself with expert economy

Expert economy isn't too hard if you make good choices on the strategic layer.

• Sell in big cities
  
• Buy in small cities (bonus if you can find a small city with a workshop so you can buy cheap tools from them)
• Build up renown asap; contracts will reward more gold

I don't consider myself very good at the game yet, but on expert/expert I can build up 5k reserves by day 25 even with a mediocre seed. Hunting down brigand raiders and selling their tier 2 weapons makes a lot of money early.

 

[Serus]

Why make reserve? Buy some retinue that will fast pay up for himself.

 

[Kaivokz]

Sure, I’m just saying you can make a lot of money even with unoptimized play on expert economy.

 

[Darth Canoli]

In before you realise you can "spawn" named weapons with caravan runs and it's way too expensive for you...

5K is nothing, you can't even buy some of the regular weapons for 5K...

 

[Reinhardt]

buy some of the regular weapons

Why would you?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Why would you?

Because almost nobody uses a "split" 2H axe or the best 2H hammer.
And if you don't, good bros hiring prices are 5K+, in Legends, some camp upgrades cost 10K and there's even one or two at 20K i believe (crafting and enchanting).

Training also cost a lot if you prefer to invest in leveling up your good bros faster or rather the meatbags with a terrible early game build that are going to protect the good bros.

Sometimes, i don't know what to do with my geld, i get some good caravan runs towards some juicy citadels and then, you know, everything works right and i'm broke (aka less than 20K gold) again...

 

[Kalarion]

why would you torture yourself with expert economy

Expert economy isn't too hard if you make good choices on the strategic layer.

• Sell in big cities
  
• Buy in small cities (bonus if you can find a small city with a workshop so you can buy cheap tools from them)
• Build up renown asap; contracts will reward more gold

I don't consider myself very good at the game yet, but on expert/expert I can build up 5k reserves by day 25 even with a mediocre seed. Hunting down brigand raiders and selling their tier 2 weapons makes a lot of money early.

I don't think normie 's argument is that Expert economy is too hard, I think he's saying it's too grindy/padded with no good justification for it. You're doing the same thing on Expert that you would on Normal/Veteran, it just takes 3x longer.

Right now that probably doesn't mean much to you, but once you've gotten 200+ hours (don't laugh... if you get as hooked as we are it'll happen without you even noticing :D) into the game things like that become extraordinarily aggravating. At 1,000+ hours you start turning into Sarissofoi .

 

[Serus]

That's why i mentioned gladiator start. As i understand it, money management should be a challenge there, at least in early game. Hardly a challenge on easy. Otherwise, on all other starts, i tend to agree.