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

[Barbarian]

Here's a couple of random minor things not covered by blog posts, and also not covered in the Let's Play - partly because they only made it into the game after the first episodes were recorded.

Since there will be no more dev diaries and I assume the let's play videos won't cover the subject, would you mind giving us some info on how will the nimble rework go?

You mentioned the perk was being changed on some steam thread, and that together with the new armor attachment system, light armored builds would become more viable.

 

[Kalarion]

150 days is not really the "super late game" I was arguing about.

I get that, I used 150 as a starting point simply because by then you should have at least 3+ bros bumping up against level 20. Which is when the pain starts to hit on deaths.

...GD look at all those goodies! Time to fire up the game

 

[Vilain Joueur]

What the fuck? If it turns out I'm this bad at the game after all this time I'm going to consider suicide. Ancient Dead are my most avoided fight specifically because their Legionaries and Honor Guards absolutely wreck my armored bros in 2-3 turns (and cripple the shit out of them because of how much of their damage can armor pierce). How are yall dealing with this, aside from just gritting your teeth and hoping you can smash through enough pikers with your hammerbros before they drop everyone?

First, try to move back one tile at the start of the fight and stretch your front line as much as possible (to flank the enemy). With good use of Wait Turn, it will give your mercenaries an opportunity to attack two times in a row. This repositioning also sometimes forces Pikes to come in front. Then, I suggest you use a combination of Greatswords for Split and reach weapons to kill the Pikes first (the Shieldbearers are just there to waste your time and Fatigue). Honor Guards are much more dangerous than Legionaries and against them you really need high burst damage.

I'm torn on this. It's not necessarily about encounter difficulty per se (I can absolutely still complete good-paying missions even after losing 3-5 veterans) as it is... momentum difficulty? When I'm at 150+ days and I lose a good amount of bros in a bad fight, the thought of bringing another set all the way up to vet levels is just soul killing to me. It is one of the few things that can pull me back into a full-on popamole-retard reloading cycle (I had to train myself quite harshly to get out of this specific habit in the first place, so it's particularly depressing to me). So for Eyestabber 's point.

OTOH I recently started heavily hiring the elite recruit tiers (hedge knight, ret swordmaster/soldier, adv noble etc) and I've noticed that not only do they start out with fantastically improved stats (I "knew" this simply from reading the thread, but I hadn't experienced it before), they also seem to have better level up stat bonuses, even with low star counts. This may ease my (admittedly pathetic) angst over time (when I say recently started I mean that quite literally. Over 400 hours played, just started heavily recruiting high-tiers a couple days ago :D). So for VJ's point.

I agree, it's very frustrating to lose experienced recruits. It's actually harder for me to see a level 11 character die than to dismiss a level 30. Now, I mostly play short one crisis campaigns. So, in a way I spare myself the anger of seeing mercenaries I've invested a lot of time in die.

Honestly to me the main problems with the game are (1) turn speed, (2) dealing with retreating and (3) some of the fudging that goes on to give the AI a leg up.

You can more or less solve (1) with Cheat Engine speedhack. Hopefully, (2) will be fixed with the DLC. And (3), well, I don't know !

Replacing guys like these is a massive pain in the ass. 100+ days of grinding just to get back to what you were before, assuming no further losses are taken.

One or two epic deaths at the Black Monolith are understandable, but the uber late game is a constant game of Russian roulette against your piggy banks.

Yes, it can be quite tiring to train recruits over and over. But the ultra late game is not really balanced right now and pretty much lacks any particular content. Things should get more interesting with the new Legendary Locations.

The mercenary you showed us has an extremely low Melee Defense for his level. Orc Warriors have a Melee Skill of 70 and Honor Guards of 75 so they will hit him a lot. Fortunately he has very good Melee Skill so he can pretty much guarantee Reach Advantage stacks. And with the kind of armor he has, he can sustain a lot of damage. Though it doesn't seem like you picked Indomitable for him which is usually recommended when you don't use Shields and Quick Hands (and even then). Anyway, I don't see dying him soon! And you also have Rotation if anything unlucky happens.

By the way, how do I 'brofist' my bros back ?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Look at all this glorious loot. Only 12 days until another playthrough.

 

[Reinhardt]

They don't look very happy.

 

[Dr Skeleton]

• The Escort Caravan contract has been reworked to give you the approximate time it would take the caravan to travel to the destination (e.g. 2 days), to have the number of skulls indicate the number of days it takes, to also allow payment per head of any attacker you slay, and to only go between settlements connected by road. Also, time goes faster than before.

Good changes but caravan contracts would also benefit from either a higher up-front payment or freezing the wages until the contract ends. When playing on hard, the beginning of the game is very tight with money and I sometimes can't take a caravan contract because it will take a couple of days to complete and it might result in mercs leaving mid-contract. The best solution would be to have the caravan pay you a % of the money each day (for example: 20% up front, 10% at the end of each day, the rest upon completion) but that's probably a little to complex for a minor problem like this.

 

[RNGsus]

Look at all this glorious loot. Only 12 days until another playthrough.

The men need some beer in their diet.

 

[Teut Busnet]

By the way, how do I 'brofist' my bros back ?

You'll have to wait a year or donate some coins to the Codex.

 

[rapsdjff]

If this DLC pays off to Overhype more then best payed contract in BB, bunch of people pay it, play it, love it and crave moar will there be moar?

If I've learned one thing, then it's never to say never.

Does this mean that normal AI generated caravans will only use roads too?

Afaik that's the case already.

Since there will be no more dev diaries and I assume the let's play videos won't cover the subject, would you mind giving us some info on how will the nimble rework go?

You mentioned the perk was being changed on some steam thread, and that together with the new armor attachment system, light armored builds would become more viable.

The Nimble perk is one of the few things left with the DLC which aren't quite where we want them to be yet. I can't tell you how it'll work exactly, because we're still tinkering with it. The general idea, however, is to have it provide consistent and reliable defense for light/medium armor characters, and be an equal to Battleforged for a different set of character builds. The current live version only provides a chance for damage reduction, which makes using nimble characters too much of a gamble.

On the other side of the fence, Battleforged was changed to have its damage reduction based on the current total armor value, and no longer the maximum total armor value. In effect, Battleforged is as strong as it was before at the start of combat, but loses in effectiveness as armor gets more damaged. This applies to any opponents using the perk, too, of course.

Good changes but caravan contracts would also benefit from either a higher up-front payment or freezing the wages until the contract ends. When playing on hard, the beginning of the game is very tight with money and I sometimes can't take a caravan contract because it will take a couple of days to complete and it might result in mercs leaving mid-contract. The best solution would be to have the caravan pay you a % of the money each day (for example: 20% up front, 10% at the end of each day, the rest upon completion) but that's probably a little to complex for a minor problem like this.

At least now you'll know exactly what amount of money you'll need to be covered for the duration of the contract, can haggle for more payment in advance, and then make an informed decision on whether it'll work out for you or not.

 

[Vilain Joueur]

You'll have to wait a year or donate some coins to the Codex.

I see! Thanks, Teut!
Do they accept Nachzehrers' teeth?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

Does this mean that normal AI generated caravans will only use roads too?

Afaik that's the case already.

There's no roads on sliver between Grunforst and Farnheim, caravans have to brave plains crossing.

Spoiler

 

[rapsdjff]

Oh, supply caravans. Yes, they now also go only between settlements connected by roads.

 

[Eyestabber]

Oh, supply caravans. Yes, they now also go only between settlements connected by roads.

Let us preorder, man!

 

[RNGsus]

Oh, supply caravans. Yes, they now also go only between settlements connected by roads.

Let us preorder, man!

lol where's the road?

 

[rapsdjff]

Let us preorder, man!

We've been advised not to have preorders, as not to compromise our chance of climbing the trending / top seller list at release day and thereby gaining some visibility. It's not as if the DLC is a big download you'd want to preload, so there'd be little benefit for you in preordering anyway.

Also, 608 hours ​

 

[Eyestabber]

We've been advised not to have preorders, as not to compromise our chance of climbing the trending / top seller list at release day and thereby gaining some visibility. It's not as if the DLC is a big download you'd want to preload, so there'd be little benefit for you in preordering anyway.

Also, 608 hours ​

Oh, I didn't know that. If it leads to more people playing Battle Brothers, I'm 100% ok with that. Also:

The Nimble perk is one of the few things left with the DLC which aren't quite where we want them to be yet. I can't tell you how it'll work exactly, because we're still tinkering with it. The general idea, however, is to have it provide consistent and reliable defense for light/medium armor characters, and be an equal to Battleforged for a different set of character builds. The current live version only provides a chance for damage reduction, which makes using nimble characters too much of a gamble.

On the other side of the fence, Battleforged was changed to have its damage reduction based on the current total armor value, and no longer the maximum total armor value. In effect, Battleforged is as strong as it was before at the start of combat, but loses in effectiveness as armor gets more damaged. This applies to any opponents using the perk, too, of course.

The Nimble perk sticks out in the game because it kinda runs counter to other premisses of the game IMO. Nimble relates to a lightly armored character, which exists in every medieval setting game, but its reasons for existing vary as follows:

a) Light armor is simply armor for people that are prohibited from using better stuff. It's straight up inferior to heavy armor, but that's not really a problem because their users are compensated some other way. Eg: Leather armor for thieves in Baldur's Gate
b) Light armor is actually "cheap armor". That works more on strategy games and less in RPGs. Eg: the Dismounted Feudal Knights of Medieval 2 are heavily armored while Town Militia are lightly armored. The "balance" lies on economics.
c) Light armor is an archetype of its own aka the "Nimble fighter", that guy that dodges blows and is super fast and somehow wins fights through agility and reflexes rather than brute force. In theory this archetype needs to be "balanced" against the heavy archetype and is as good as the "heavy" all things considered

But here lies the big problem: Battle Brothers is a bit of a hybrid and "light armor" is both b and c in this game. It can't be "a" because there is no prohibition from using heavier armor in the game, which is why most people's late game company is a bunch of fully armored juggernauts. Simply because the longer the game goes on, the more money you have and if the only reason not to use heavy armor is the cost then, well...that reason goes out the window the moment you can afford it. So how does the "light guy" fit into all of this? You can't really consider him as an early game build because the key perk for this build (Nimble) has super high requirements. I only ever managed to use nimble types after the mid point, when I have at least one piece of magicool "light-to-medium" armor. I really feel like the "Nimble-Duelist" build in BB is not something you hope for, but rather something you adapt into based off the gear and recruits you get.

I really don't have a solution or even a suggestion here. I'm not sure I like the nerf to Battleforged, because making heavy and light armor closer to each other in power might just disregard the fact that heavy armor in this game requires a much larger investment of both Gold and the Fatigue stat than light. So it should be more powerful, but to what extent...? Eh...personally? I would've just left light armor as a step into the progression towards heavier armor and answered criticism with "yeah, nobody in medieval times wore light armor because they wanted to, but rather because they couldn't afford full plate. Can you afford a full plate squad? Good for you! It's supposed to be better".

 

[Barbarian]

The Nimble perk is one of the few things left with the DLC which aren't quite where we want them to be yet. I can't tell you how it'll work exactly, because we're still tinkering with it. The general idea, however, is to have it provide consistent and reliable defense for light/medium armor characters, and be an equal to Battleforged for a different set of character builds. The current live version only provides a chance for damage reduction, which makes using nimble characters too much of a gamble.

On the other side of the fence, Battleforged was changed to have its damage reduction based on the current total armor value, and no longer the maximum total armor value. In effect, Battleforged is as strong as it was before at the start of combat, but loses in effectiveness as armor gets more damaged. This applies to any opponents using the perk, too, of course.

I'm not sure I like the nerf to Battleforged, because making heavy and light armor closer to each other in power might just disregard the fact that heavy armor in this game requires a much larger investment of both Gold and the Fatigue stat than light. So it should be more powerful, but to what extent...? Eh...personally? I would've just left light armor as a step into the progression towards heavier armor and answered criticism with "yeah, nobody in medieval times wore light armor because they wanted to, but rather because they couldn't afford full plate. Can you afford a full plate squad? Good for you! It's supposed to be better".

But that is simply not entirely true. See the example of the lightly clad scottish rebels successfully using the "schiltron" and clever use of terrain to beat the heavily equipped english in several battles, or the catalan company wreaking havok in greece beating both the byzantines, turks and franks several times. Ditto for the mobile mongols being invincible against european heavy cavalry and infantry whenever they faced off. Unlike in the current live version of battle bros, using heavy armor wasn't always the most effective fighting strategy, that is why so many successfull medieval fighting cultures didn't develop things like full helms or kite shields.

It all depends on context, but light infantry should have more mobility and be less fatigued in battle(both things which somewhat are already in the game). A trained warrior using lightweight equipment should also certainly be much harder to pin down than some knight on foot carrying several kilograms of metal over his body, and that is certainly what the current workings of "nimble" don't properly represent. I hope the devs find a good solution for it, but both types of playstyle should be viable and have pros and cons.

What is really unrealistic in the context of melee warfare are the "duelist" builds(a frontliner without a shield and carrying a one-handed weapon was not something common or practical), but a lighly armored merc using shield and weapons isn't unrealistic and should be an option in the game. If such a build becomes possible to make without being easily killable, the high initiative and extra fatigue should be worthwhile benefits to try it,

 

[rapsdjff]

The Nimble perk sticks out in the game because it kinda runs counter to other premisses of the game IMO. Nimble relates to a lightly armored character, which exists in every medieval setting game, but its reasons for existing vary as follows:

a) Light armor is simply armor for people that are prohibited from using better stuff. It's straight up inferior to heavy armor, but that's not really a problem because their users are compensated some other way. Eg: Leather armor for thieves in Baldur's Gate
b) Light armor is actually "cheap armor". That works more on strategy games and less in RPGs. Eg: the Dismounted Feudal Knights of Medieval 2 are heavily armored while Town Militia are lightly armored. The "balance" lies on economics.
c) Light armor is an archetype of its own aka the "Nimble fighter", that guy that dodges blows and is super fast and somehow wins fights through agility and reflexes rather than brute force. In theory this archetype needs to be "balanced" against the heavy archetype and is as good as the "heavy" all things considered

But here lies the big problem: Battle Brothers is a bit of a hybrid and "light armor" is both b and c in this game. It can't be "a" because there is no prohibition from using heavier armor in the game, which is why most people's late game company is a bunch of fully armored juggernauts. Simply because the longer the game goes on, the more money you have and if the only reason not to use heavy armor is the cost then, well...that reason goes out the window the moment you can afford it. So how does the "light guy" fit into all of this? You can't really consider him as an early game build because the key perk for this build (Nimble) has super high requirements. I only ever managed to use nimble types after the mid point, when I have at least one piece of magicool "light-to-medium" armor. I really feel like the "Nimble-Duelist" build in BB is not something you hope for, but rather something you adapt into based off the gear and recruits you get.

I really don't have a solution or even a suggestion here. I'm not sure I like the nerf to Battleforged, because making heavy and light armor closer to each other in power might just disregard the fact that heavy armor in this game requires a much larger investment of both Gold and the Fatigue stat than light. So it should be more powerful, but to what extent...? Eh...personally? I would've just left light armor as a step into the progression towards heavier armor and answered criticism with "yeah, nobody in medieval times wore light armor because they wanted to, but rather because they couldn't afford full plate. Can you afford a full plate squad? Good for you! It's supposed to be better".

By saying that the goal is to have Nimble be an equal to Battleforged, I mean that it should be an equally viable pick in general, but not as good a choice for every role or playstyle, and vice versa. Right now, Nimble is mostly a niche pick, whereas Battleforged is viable for most characters. The solution, imo, isn't to bring light and heavy armor closer together on the same metric of power, but rather to make light and heavy armor feel more different, similar to how weapons in the game fill different roles without one type being necessarily better than the other. Heavy armor being the better defensive option against some enemies is fine, but going the light/medium armor route should open up some advantage over other enemies and allow you to spend attribute points saved on fatigue elsewhere, and not just be plain worse because you lack the necessary survivability.

As for the economic side of things, light armor progression used to stop pretty early, whereas you'd continue to upgrade to and spend money on better heavy armor for longer. That's going to change somewhat as we're adding a couple of higher tier light armors to the game. This one for example.

 

[Barbarian]

As for the economic side of things, light armor progression used to stop pretty early, whereas you'd continue to upgrade to and spend money on better heavy armor for longer. That's going to change somewhat as we're adding a couple of higher tier light armors to the game. This one for example.

What about a couple of new light helmets? Just adding new high-tier light body armors won't fix it if the helmet selection remains the same. All the ones offering decent protection have a hefty fatigue penalty and the attachment system won't work on helms.

Someone suggested skull caps in "Paul's art thread". Hard leather helmets are also a good call.

 

[Teut Busnet]

I really don't have a solution or even a suggestion here. I'm not sure I like the nerf to Battleforged, because making heavy and light armor closer to each other in power might just disregard the fact that heavy armor in this game requires a much larger investment of both Gold and the Fatigue stat than light. So it should be more powerful, but to what extent...? Eh...personally? I would've just left light armor as a step into the progression towards heavier armor and answered criticism with "yeah, nobody in medieval times wore light armor because they wanted to, but rather because they couldn't afford full plate. Can you afford a full plate squad? Good for you! It's supposed to be better".

Quoted for emphasis. Please don't go the 'everything has to be viable' route. That only leads to disasters like Skyrim or PoE. I get that you want more variety and that's great, but I'd rather have an unused - or removed - perk than seeing Bros in Gambeson dual wielding whips becoming a viable option.

Btw, are the stats on the new traits final? I watched your videos, and 'Huge' (a shoutout to the President, no doubt) gives + 10 damage, but also - 5 to both defenses. That seems a bit too negative for a giant dude in 'medieval' warfare.

 

[Alienman]

Haven't played for a while now, but doesn't heavy armor have a big fatigue penalty?

 

[Eyestabber]

YES, that's what I meant. I think that's a solid take and might just "solve" the Nimble issue. By branching a bit and having light armor options for larger portions of the game, I think you'll succeed in making Light a viable option rather than "everybody goes Heavy...until I find one of those wolfskins or something".

 

[Mr. Pink]

I'd like to ask the devs how their AI works and what kind of algorithms they're using as an amateur that wants a similar game (turn based tactics where you don't get to choose the order that units move). Is it all just search trees? How far does your AI look into advance? Any notable scripted behavior (like undead knights protecting necromancers)?

edit: just found out about this blog post. part 2 when??

 

[rapsdjff]

What about a couple of new light helmets? Just adding new high-tier light body armors won't fix it if the helmet selection remains the same. All the ones offering decent protection have a hefty fatigue penalty and the attachment system won't work on helms.

Someone suggested skull caps in "Paul's art thread". Hard leather helmets are also a good call.

There's two new high-tier medium/light helmets, the 'Barbute' and the 'Sallet'.

There's also the Zweihander's Helmet, lootable from noble troops, which has an above-average armor-to-fatigue ratio and falls somewhere inbetween light and medium.

I'd like to ask the devs how their AI works and what kind of algorithms they're using as an amateur that wants a similar game (turn based tactics where you don't get to choose the order that units move). Is it all just search trees? How far does your AI look into advance? Any notable scripted behavior (like undead knights protecting necromancers)?

edit: just found out about this blog post. part 2 when??

There's never been a part 2, because although it was written in a way as to address a general audience, the general audience wasn't really that interested and wanted to know more about other things instead, and understandably so. Were your questions answered with that blog post?

 

[Infinitron]