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

[Replicante]

Two QoL improvements that the game could use: Autopause on leaving cities (Time management, for christ sakes) And also an option to lock items in inventory so you dont sell them accidentally. So I dont have to waste lots of time selling my stuff when buying back price isnt parallel and Im just one right click away from messing up. People also like to use different sets and such : D. For the Love of God.

 

[Modron]

Auto-pause after leaving cities is something they could probably implement in a second do go and ask them. I asked them forever ago during the early days of BB's early access to implement an auto-pause after combat and they did that quite quickly.

 

[Murk]

Second crisis (noble war) ended, and I'm now sitting on a bunch of knight gear. Problem, it's the stupid 3-fish house instead of the dope red-gold house. I opted to pick which house I joined based on who was biggest and had access to best cities, should have picked based on how swagged out the loot would have been.

Oh well.

Also, made a fancy pants nimble duelist fencing sword master and it's actually prettttty sick for cleaning up back lines since lunge basically gives you 1 free move + normal attack. I may opt for quick pockets + dagger mastery to let him shank through more armored enemies as well.

Still have issues with Schrats, but everything else goes down pretty easily unless you fall into a total trap like 10+ alps or enough Hexes to turn over half your bros on each other.

 

[Murk]

how many archers in general everybody use? 3 or 4? or more?

4 at most times, often shopping to replace them with good hunter backgrounds where possible (currently mine are starting bro, hunter, poacher with 3 stars in ranged, and witchhunter for extra events and also cuz good ranged) and archers amazing all through. Disregard Prime Junta.

Give them nimble and give them light armor + sallet, and they have great survivability too. I like to stack overwhelm on them as well for a ranged debuff on enemies.

 

[vazha]

Nah, he's right. one archer is all thats needed. lets do some analysis shall we? mid-late game every single elite enemy and their granny are doing well against arrows. Ancient dead? obviously. gobbos? good luck skirmishing them during the day and you ve only got one night helmet. orcs? against berserkers, sure, but fielding a 4 archer team against an army of orc warriors is asking for bumrape. beasts? pincushioning an unhold might be fun, yeah, but what happens when there s 7 or 10 of them? same old bumrape. bows against schrats? considering you need to split their shield first thus requiring your melee bros be in at least two tile range of your target, the use of bows seems questionable. Same with drakes. in short, archers are for niche target sniping. fill those archer vacancies with dedicated polearm users instead for epic sweeps from the back row. Also pierce injuries are weakest, so might want to consider that too

 

[Strange Fellow]

Rubbish. Being able to consistently pick off archers and back line polearm-wielders is vital in fights against well equipped humans, and against melee-heavy opposition like orcs or Nachrchzchrczerers you get to shower the enemy lines with bolts and arrows for two whole turns while they're busy making their way towards you.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Five Archers in the backline is my standard lineup vs Gobbos, Noble Houses, Bandits, 'Normal Undead' (Wiedergangers,Heroes,Geists, Necromancer) and even Unholds.

Against Orcs - the more Warriors, the less Archers, usually 2-3 to snipe Berserkers, primarily the ones with Mansplitters and Chains.

Of course not many (if I have enough Bros) against the Legions or Necrosavants.

 

[Jimmious]

Archers are extremely valuable in certain scenarios (goblins, enemy archers, necromancers, necrosavants, zombies come to mind) but less useful in battles vs well armored enemies.
Personally I never go without at least 2 of them. Especially late game with Overwhelm they can consistently debuff the enemies and drop their morale from injuries and kills early on

 

[Sarissofoi]

You people all are wrong.
Everyone knows that true patrician choice is ZERO archers and full melee combat oriented team.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

My early experimentation with 4 crossbows at front didn't end too well.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I'm going to have my first fight against sharts schrats today. I've loaded up on two handed and one handed axes, and my guys are lvl 6/5 a couple are lvl 4. How are my chances? Also, should I drop ranged characters completely because of the kind of damage they would do?

did you survived?

I only managed to play it just now. The result:

Spoiler

I need to level up some more. Declining this contract for now...

The two permanent injuries are "weakened heart" (-30% HP) and "traumatized" (didn't check what it does)

 

[Soulstones]

My early experimentation with 4 crossbows at front didn't end too well.

Whats the point? Reaching their backline with it? Doesnt make sense since its protected by the frontline.
Experiment with 9 throwing spears in your frontline, if you can afford it...

Has anyone tested the spetum spearwall? Does it work at 2 tiles? I was too lazy to try...

 

[Teut Busnet]

My early experimentation with 4 crossbows at front didn't end too well.

Whats the point? Reaching their backline with it? Doesnt make sense since its protected by the frontline.
Experiment with 9 throwing spears in your frontline, if you can afford it...

Has anyone tested the spetum spearwall? Does it work at 2 tiles? I was too lazy to try...

Nope, sadly has only a reach of one tile spearwalling, putting the weapon in a bit of an awkward spot.

I'm disappointed and not sure why you wouldn't just use a regular spear or a better polearm.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

My early experimentation with 4 crossbows at front didn't end too well.

Whats the point? Reaching their backline with it? Doesnt make sense since its protected by the frontline.
Experiment with 9 throwing spears in your frontline, if you can afford it...

Has anyone tested the spetum spearwall? Does it work at 2 tiles? I was too lazy to try...

It was just throwaway company.
I wanted to see if frontline with crossbows protected by spearwall was somehow viable.

It wasn't. Got eaten by direwolves.

 

[Tigranes]

I keep around 2 bows 2 xbows, but dont always use them. in early/mid game they are invaluable. Later they suffer, but even up to say the first invasion, the big fight haf me up against 15 fromtline and 15 billmen who can shred you if you arent careful. Between fast adaptation and the shoot cover perk you can snipe quite a few as they move around.

I tend to give all archers tridents and later polearms as well. Ultimately it might be better to have 12 meleebros but I like the variety.

 

[Agame]

Does anyone use throwing axes, javelins etc? They seem pretty bad but then having your entire front line able to do range could be good? Do throwing weapons use range or melee skill for hit chance?

On a related note I really hate the nets in this game, outside of the roman coliseum how often were nets actually used in ancient/medieval warfare? And yea I know its a 'fantasy' game but they still seem stupid...

 

[Tigranes]

Maybe they would historically have used more nets if they were fighting goblins and orcs.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Does anyone use throwing axes, javelins etc? They seem pretty bad but then having your entire front line able to do range could be good? Do throwing weapons use range or melee skill for hit chance?

On a related note I really hate the nets in this game, outside of the roman coliseum how often were nets actually used in ancient/medieval warfare? And yea I know its a 'fantasy' game but they still seem stupid...

Throwing weapons use 'Ranged' skill. The problem with them - still - is you'll need 'Quick Hands', 'Bags and Belts' and 'Duelist' (+ the weapon mastery, of course) to make them good. And even then they'll be outperformed by a good archer.

If you still use 'Quickhands' for your 2H Bros anyway - so they can use the silly shield swap - I guess you can try to give them a bundle of javelins or that one big anti-shield spear, but don't waste points on 'Ranged Attack' and create Hybrids. Not worth it.

 

[Murk]

It's not at all a bad idea to have your archers transition over to polearms (in part to compensate for likely lower melee skill), but their ability to cause morale damage and put overwhelm is amazing. Nevermind just outright snipping units and softening up stuff as it comes to you.

Obviously don't use them against enemies like Schrats or Alps, but they are otherwise great against any basic humanoids -- and even goblins, my own archers can snipe ambushers while indomitable units tank at front.

I don't think it's a no-brain decision, but they are often plenty useful. If you reach super lategame where you can afford to have premium bros everywhere, replacing hunters with sellswords can result in plenty of "do it all" type units as well -- though I don't know if you'd ever want to pursue a game into 1+ year territory necessarily -- by then you should have multiple crises under your belt and have reached most of your goals, not to mention getting bored of the map seed.

I want to make dagger ninjas work but the damage output seems really bad, the one good trade-off being heavily armored units go down about as fast. I wonder if I can make one an injury-causing machine through a combination of duelist + crippling blows.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Second attempt went better: 2 Schrachts

Spoiler

 

[Tigranes]

That's a great result. Any special tricks?

2-handers might be key to actually being able to bring down the shield every single turn, encouraging it to regrow it isntead of attacking you.

Do we know if the tree attack has same THC for all 3 squares? I suppose it must be, like Split & Swing?

 

[Whiskeyjack]

Second attempt went better: 2 Schrachts

Spoiler

Not a bad perm wound either.

 

[vazha]

Yep, second best. Sometimes initiative is a double edged sword. Also I dont think I ve ever seen Schrats miss a turn and regrow the shield instead. Once i bash it open, open it stays.

 

[Disgruntled]

Welp, i thought id gotten better since the dlc but i still cant stick to ironman without occasionally tab/close savescumming. A bad map spawn, a string of misses, crazy powerful mob and your otherwise careful run gets destroyed and dozens of hours are lost.
I wouldnt mind keeping it honest if BB didnt completely fuck you over with the scaling curve. If you lose your best bros its a downward spiral that just delays the inevitable. Reloading whenever i want is still worse though

Spoiler

Not sure if this woman was a witch or not.. davkul doesnt seem to mind when we're fighting hexen

 

[Tigranes]

Dozens of hours aren't "lost", I have fond memories of ironman runs that go horribly wrong after a couple of bad luck events and crash and burn.

I play without ironman at the moment, but with only very occasional reloads, and it suits me at the moment