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

[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.

 

[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.

 

[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.

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 .

Haha, that makes sense... I do have 100 hours now in the last 3 weeks or so, but I'm still enjoying the expert economy challenge and haven't found it too grindy yet. I'm still in the learning phase despite playing so much, though, so I'm not bee-lining optimum builds and farming premiere stat distributions bros.

 

[Reinhardt]

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 .

At 2000 you will learn to trade.

 

[Serus]

Damn, less than 400h here so I still need 1,6k hours until I learn to trade. Ok, i'll do a few hours today.

About retinue. I have a map with 3 workshops total. Two of the three are in one town. Unless i missed one but i don't think so. I only realised that 50 days into the game. The scavenger is a life saver. I had to sack the negotiator who didn't pay for himself at the time. For the latter, he adds 10-20% to a contract's pay. Once you do contracts >1000 gold he might add several hundreds on one. He isn't terrible but not great either, I won't use him in future campaigns. Recruiter is good, the important part are tons of additional recruits in each town. Finally some real choice in that regard. I will have the fourth slot open soon and i'm thinking who to hire. The bounty hunter seems tasty but how good is he in practice?

 

[Infinitron]

http://battlebrothersgame.com/switch-release-date/

SWITCH RELEASE DATE

Finally, it’s time to reveal the release date for the Nintendo Switch version of Battle Brothers:

Battle Brothers will release on the Switch on March 11th 2021

Pre-orders are available now with 15% off

Available here: Nintendo Store

For a long time now you guys have written to us how you’d love to play Battle Brothers on your Switch and take your campaign on the road. Both the game and the community have grown a lot over the past couple of years, and lots of people have been patiently waiting for the Switch port to complete. Being able to play a hardcore tactical turn-based game with lots of replayability wherever you are? It’s finally possible!

That’s right! Now you are able to lead your own mercenary company through the perils of a gritty, low-power, medieval fantasy world even while traveling. You get to decide where to go, whom to hire or to fight from the comfort of a relaxing couch. And it is your choice what contracts to take and how to train and equip your men in a procedurally generated open world campaign whether you’re commuting or flying ten thousand feet in the air. You get to play with all the content and features of the PC version, and you’ll have access to all the DLC!

To bring Battle Brothers to the Switch in the best way possible, we’ve partnered with Ukiyo Publishing. With over a decade in industry experience, they’ve made sure that it is just as enjoyable an experience on the Switch as it is on the PC. We’re happy to say that they really outdid themselves with creating an intuitive, fast and effective control scheme for the Switch version that just works and is effortless to use.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A tablet version would rock, but let's do a port for a device no one uses.