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

[Horvatii]

What the hell is
this.m.ChanceDecapitate = 0;
this.m.ChanceDisembowel = 0;
this.m.ChanceSmash = 50;

Smash? Disembowel? wat...

 

[hivemind]

type of fatalities depends on weapon type

 

[Harthwain]

The finishers. Decapitate means your head comes off when you die. Disembowel will end with you being gutted. Smash is probably the one where your skull is caved in.

 

[Horvatii]

Gee, I thought that it matters. Decap stops rising but the others?

Secondary skill effects are hard to parse, have to be added by hand... wont do
https://easyupload.io/jpebrx

 

[jungl]

ye the game economy is even more dumb now. The cartographer can roll in thousands of easy cash while the recruiter who costs more can't do his fucking job and tell you whether a recruit can swing a sword or not.

I stopped playing week ago after taking a serpent hunting contract and also aggroed hyenas. I love how they team up instead of fighting each other no wonder black panther died RIP

https://youtu.be/lvGmFMOxflQ

 

[Harthwain]

Gee, I thought that it matters. Decap stops rising but the others?

I am not sure if smashing someone's head is enough to prevent rising from the dead. Disembowel won't stop it. Other than that they are just different-looking corpse arrangement for visual variety.

 

[RNGsus]

Decap doesn't stop them, you have to kill the necromancer.

 

[hivemind]

Decap does stop resurrections unless its a fallen hero.

 

[Harthwain]

Decap doesn't stop them, you have to kill the necromancer.

It stops them when there is no necromancer around.

 

[Theodora]

hey Magnat what do you think of Blazing Deserts now that you're outta jail?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

hey Magnat what do you think of Blazing Deserts now that you're outta jail?

Haven't played it yet, but its additions seem neat.

 

[Andronovo]

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.

 

[thesheeep]

It looks like it's going to be a long, hard slog of getting good 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.

Honestly, there's not really a way to get much better at game start.
Your bros just suck too much and with limited amounts of brothers in your band as well as enemies, there just aren't many strategies available.

IMO, the only thing you CAN do is stop relying on crap weapons at the start. E.g. most range weapons are just plain useless unless wielded by someone with good ranged stats - which you won't have at the beginning (maybe with the poachers origin exception).
At some point, you just learn to give everyone shield + spear until they had a few levelups.
Spear/shieldwall can carry you through most of the early game (if you avoid undead).

But even with that, the start of the game is just too hard if you don't pick the highest starting gold. I always end up savescumming a lot as I just don't want to restart all the time until I get lucky enough to survive the first bunch of days.
And then gradually reduce it and start accepting losses when it no longer ruins me or would cause me to lose too much time on building up new recruits.

The biggest problem really is the recruit system.
How anyone can play without the mod that clearly shows recruit stats is beyond me. The default recruit system is just plain dumb, even when you spend the tryout money, you only learn some mostly irrelevant traits but not even where the recruits stars are.
At the very least, tryout should show stars and the two or three best stats.

Also, recruits should start at higher levels as your band average level rises (or maybe with an option to buy them at a higher price for a higher level) - there is no challenge in levelling up a fresh recruit (just carry him to battles while keeping him safe), it merely wastes lots of time.

On a different topic:
Is it just me or are improved dog armors (from wolf skin) pretty much useless?
I couldn't really tell a difference between a normal dog armor and the improved variant. I was so happy to finally have something that would make my doggos usable without being in extreme danger all the time - only to find out they still die just as quickly in a few hits (or one lucky hit).
On one hand, I get it. They are dogs. But why even bother with improving armor if it doesn't do anything?

 

[Tigranes]

Early game when you're not yet used to the game can be brutal, and there's nothing wrong with savescumming a bit as you find your feet.

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.

 

[thesheeep]

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.

I seriously doubt there are any other ways that work as reliably.
Not carrying shield = more dead bros.
Not keeping enemies at bay = more dead bros.
What keeps enemies at bay? Spears. And some two-handers, but that = no shields.

Of course, I say that, and yet the most fun I ever had with the game was a 100% two-handed-no-ranged mercenary band

 

[oscar]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[hivemind]

There is also a +15% melee attack bonus when using a spear (and +10% melee attack bonus when using a sword).

 

[Biscotti]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Biscotti]

For people supposedly living on shooting deer in a forest, they are pretty bad shots at the start.

A classic case of X-COMitis.

 

[Darth Canoli]

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.