Not disagreeing about the game being RNG-heavy. I once lost a very promising guy to a half-dead and out of balance swordsman going for a throat hit which miraculously connected and lost me 40 points.
On the other hand, that would pretty much describe every roguelike out there. It's not like the game is heavy on choices anyway, the only meaningful one seems to be Low vs. High Virtue,
and even then it seems hight Virtue offers you more opportunity to do endgame stuff.
To me, the game is designed like a snowball - once you hit the right spot with numbers and commit to taking a route, you keep getting opportunities to start rolling.
Start raising virtue and the game will throw virtue-raising events at you. Get a nice kill streak and you get a combat skill boost which lets you kill more things and take their things... which leads to more killing.
I finished one playthrough at ~1000 points then got into a 6000 one with the guy getting all the recognition, only to be fucked over in the end by getting no office despite having a mural crown and two pubic crowns.
I'm still new to the game, biggest challenge seems to be figuring out the treshold values for skills. E.g. how much awareness do you really need? What are the good stats for winning the throwing contest? etc.
I realize the game hides the checks on purpose, but it only makes me want to look them up or datamine.
So far it seems that 80 -ish in a stat gives you decent odds, but is by no means a guarantee.
I ran a couple playthroughs and the combat scenes seemed really confusing and sluggish? Felt like I'm clicking a lot of buttons to keep a lot of different numbers healthy while a single fight takes many rounds anyway. Is that just because my guy was shit
Generally speaking, the combat gets less confusing as you figure out what does what. Still, be prepared to do a good deal of eye-rolling. A lot of the options just contribute to the information overload, cause most of the time you're just using the offense/defense slider, recover and swing at torso. And yes, it's mostly about keeping your stance meter 100% (or as low as you can get and still get a good chance for hits).
It's also quite normal to take many turns to drop a guy, unless someone gets terribly (un)lucky or there is a heavy disparity between skills and/or equipment. If a guy is armored and trained (this covers most "boss" fights and veterans), the course of action is usually to tire them out - stay relatively defensively and mostly hit recover and respite while they wear themselves out on all the feints. If you can get away with a hit, try going for an arm or leg - no armor there and it tires them out quicker. Once you have a full circle of stamina worth of advantage,
slowly start going on the offensive and chip away at their arms and legs until dead. Such duels can take ~60 turns.
The other extreme case is when you're facing guys with inferior equipment and skill, this starts happening on your second campaign where you're decently armed and trained and start slaughtering militias. You can try and such fights quickly by waiting for them to stumble (miss and attack and take a good -25+ to stance). You can try and keep them down with feints or shield bash (depends on which odds are better, but a successful charge usually seals the deal by giving you a few free shots with maximum accuracy), then finish them up by striking the head, groin or neck. Results are still random and while theoretically neck shots are the best, sometimes you get better mileage with good old torso hits. This depends on their equipment. If a spot is unarmored, you know where to hit. Read up on the stats on armor to make the right call here. Soft spot strikes can come into play here - usually I'm not seeing much of a difference vs. regular hit, but it seems to be slightly more effective with armor that doesn't fully cover a body part
Try rolling a high quickness on your characters (this gets easier once you finish one decent playthrough cause you can specialize by spending points on character creation), it lets you take two turns in a row more often, and it helps you exploit certain situations better, for example the enemy stumbles, you feint them, get an extra turn and can shield charge to seal the deal.
EDIT:
Seems that I'm hitting a wall. Another playthrough ended with a ~6500 score and doesn't want to budge.
Who do I have to blow to hold some kind of office in the end? Had two civic crowns but apparently there's also Cha + Int check involved.
What's your opinion on the starting stuff you can pick at character creation?
So far I picked the Natural Swordsman thing, was pretty good ended up with 94 sword skill which was good, made a lot of the boss fights a breeze, but still not enough to beat the phalanx. Managed to chop through it, but didn't have enough stamina to kill more than one phalangite afterwards.
I need to check the Shield thing, but the shield skill looks much less useful. It's better to be able to kill things quickly due to turn limits.
When it comes to equipment, I believe one should pick the best sword asap cause it's the only thing that actually makes a difference. Helmets aren't too useful and you can probably buy or loot a better one. Same goes for armor, 1000 points for chainmail is steep and I usually loot all my armors. The 85 point armor looks like it makes barely enough difference to justify the purchase.
I'm also wondering about the stat scores to aim for to see as much content as possible.
Strength - seems to affect damage and bashing, although if your roll low, it does diddly squat. Looks comfortable to have around 55, I usually train it a bit later in the game.
Endurance & Constitution - I always mix these two. Obviously more is better, especially when it comes to HP and stamina. Overall, the physical stats seem to trigger a bunch of +troop opinion events which may help you get good training faster, but on the other hand, it looked like I could raise them by workout somewhat.
Quickness - I usually prioritize this one, plenty of important checks use it (climbing the walls, saving people), it also helps a lot in combat. Had 75+ in a bunch of games and it felt like a good stat to roll for.
Coordination - used in plenty of checks, gives you the soft cap on Javelin skill. I mostly felt fine having this at around 55-60.
Charisma - this one seems to be important. I never go below 60. Lets you gain troop opinion just by fucking around the camp to unlock better sparring. Also used a lot when you become promoted, although I tend to easily max troop/centurion/tribune bars, so not sure what's the good value.
Intellect - also not sure about a good value here. If you're a dumb fuck, it'll fuck you over when you get promoted (won't be able to organize things). Seems to be used a lot during the endgame checks, but isn't too useful early on save for a minor morale boost here and there.
Appears to be used when playing the boardgame at camp. Maybe it can substitute charisma to an extent?
Awareness - I also tend to buff this one. Plenty of good opportunities hidden behind awareness checks. Unfortunately, heavier helmets will crap on your score here. Not sure about a good value here. Been playing with ~70 and I have a feeling I'm not passing checks as often as I wanted to.
