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

[Baptismbyfire]

Been playing it on Switch. Playing on the computer is much much more enjoyable due to ease of control, but the port is decent and the lag ain't bad except when you zoom out too much on the overall map, and it becomes impossible to control or see anything accurately. The developers promise to fix what they can over the next month, and I think it's a good buy for those who must play it in bed or want to support the developers.

 

[Old Hans]

Yes, self-imposed ironman battlebros scenario is perfectly viable

self imposed ironman is living a lie. Every victory would ring hollow and the little voice in your head wont stop saying "you are a disgrace to the real ironmen of legend"

 

[Serus]

Changing subject from the boring iron man. For the first time i have a holy war. Holy shit! I once before fought assassins, but they were only 2 with some large but lame nomad group. Annoying but not too dangerous. Now I've met them grouped with hand cannone users and it sucks (in a good way i guess). I was SO close to losing two brothers. They chew through my 300+ armour in no time. Not that i'm complaining, it's just that i find it surprising that 30+ orcs, warriors + berserkers + youngs + a warlord is less of a threat than 3 assassins + 2 or 3 gunmen + ~10 conscripts. Granted, fighting orks is helped by the fact that one dog can tank a warlord for several turns (true story) and the warlord can be dealt in various other ways as well. The orc young and berserker starts to panic once they see a little blood. Warriors are tough in defence but aren't very accurate, they aren't hard to tank until you kill or rout berserkers/youngs. Assassins (+gunmen) on the other hand...

On a different note a small "bug". Other have probably noticed it. Dogs when unleashed attack with a passion... the mortar ignoring fleeing enemies. They think it's a bone or what?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Have you tried the World Economy option in Legends?

Is it a new feature?
Didn't check in months.

 

[Jrpgfan]

Been playing it on Switch. Playing on the computer is much much more enjoyable due to ease of control, but the port is decent and the lag ain't bad except when you zoom out too much on the overall map, and it becomes impossible to control or see anything accurately. The developers promise to fix what they can over the next month, and I think it's a good buy for those who must play it in bed or want to support the developers.

It's playable but I was expecting a better port. Lots of annoying issues. The most critical I've found so far is the overworld pathfinding. Sometimes the party goes to the opposite direction of your destination when it's closer to the water and gets stuck in there. That happens with the NPCs aswell(once I found 3 city state militias stuck in the water close to the city).

The crashes stopped for me but I've experienced a lot of them in the first hour. They should try to do something about it too because it leaves a really bad first impression.

 

[Sarissofoi]

>restarting old campaign
>who are all these people?
>get into fight
>get some dudes killed
>lost will to play
>no will enough to start new one
Such is life

 

[Takamori]

Any word on new dlc plans? Or have the devs moved on?

Probably on hold since they ported to Switch recently and have to offer proper support to not get fucked in the ass by Nintendo.


About to do my first Orc Warlord Orc Crisis Contract, first campaign at Iron Man that managed to reach so far. Hope my bros are good enough to deal with that.

 

[Kaivokz]

About to do my first Orc Warlord Orc Crisis Contract, first campaign at Iron Man that managed to reach so far. Hope my bros are good enough to deal with that.

Not sure how many orc warriors you've fought before, but:
Be careful of your back line, orc warriors will double push to get to vulnerable targets.
Bring hammers if you can. 2h swords and maces are also good.
Duelist with hammer or mace can break even orc warlords through HP damage.
Bring extra shields on tanks if you can and bring high durability shields. Warlords never come with shields and have an axe w/ axe mastery 75% of the time, so they can tear through your shield bros easily if they don't have a backup.

My best strategy has been to focus down the warlord rather than trying to tank him like you might other dangerous targets (bandits, unholds, etc.). He's not that tough compared to a warrior; a few good hits from a 2h or an armor ignore duelist will have him wounded and soon dead so you can break the morale of the rest of the camp at your leisure. edit- Oh, and bringing 2h'ers with swift hands... nothing better than luring an orc warrior into a charge that leaves him surrounded by 5 bros, all of whom can swap to a 2h hammer or mace...

 

[Takamori]

About to do my first Orc Warlord Orc Crisis Contract, first campaign at Iron Man that managed to reach so far. Hope my bros are good enough to deal with that.

Not sure how many orc warriors you've fought before, but:
Be careful of your back line, orc warriors will double push to get to vulnerable targets.
Bring hammers if you can. 2h swords and maces are also good.
Duelist with hammer or mace can break even orc warlords through HP damage.
Bring extra shields on tanks if you can and bring high durability shields. Warlords never come with shields and have an axe w/ axe mastery 75% of the time, so they can tear through your shield bros easily if they don't have a backup.

My best strategy has been to focus down the warlord rather than trying to tank him like you might other dangerous targets (bandits, unholds, etc.). He's not that tough compared to a warrior; a few good hits from a 2h or an armor ignore duelist will have him wounded and soon dead so you can break the morale of the rest of the camp at your leisure. edit- Oh, and bringing 2h'ers with swift hands... nothing better than luring an orc warrior into a charge that leaves him surrounded by 5 bros, all of whom can swap to a 2h hammer or mace...

My company did it! We killed the Warboss with 2 casualities.
Then when I went to pick my reward, I got ambushed by 10 fucking Barbarian Chosen, killed 5 and only five survived. Decided to retire and start a lone wolf campaign

At least got a good end for my few soldiers

 

[Serus]

That's it! The third fatso lost weigh! All three are alive but they are all non-fat now. Time to retire this company. I'm at the third crisis and my core bros are at level 15-17, day is over 200, all my heavy bros are equipped with famed armour and helms, two great shields too, not many good weapons but there are a few. Everyone deserve a rest and retirement in a town with good tavern and a barber. We'll drink for the ones who gave their lives for the company. Mostly very early game against thugs/brigands/nomads and similar scum. There is one however who has well over 100 days/battles/kills "crushed by a lindwurm" (how the hell that happened?) and someone "cleaved by necrosavant" (those can be very dangerous combined with other undead). And one poor soul with one day, one battle, zero kills who "bled to death". We'll drink for him too if anyone remembers his name! Shame that the ones that were dismissed with more than one day of service aren't listed.

This start/map is very nice, good for a timed run - you play until the three fatsos are dead (like gladiator start) OR they all lose weight. Map, as i wrote earlier, is also quite interesting. Time to start a new, probably last campaign for now. This time expert (ironman). Possibly veteran economy. I'm just not sure what start to take. I am tempted by the militia one but i fear it will get to tedious to play those small no-risk battles. I'd try gladiators but i don't like the idea of not having reserve bros. If someone plays non-ironman sure but otherwise? On the other hand three gladiator's abilities seems to be interesting. Any ideas? Which other starts codexers found fun?

 

[Serus]

About to do my first Orc Warlord Orc Crisis Contract, first campaign at Iron Man that managed to reach so far. Hope my bros are good enough to deal with that.

Not sure how many orc warriors you've fought before, but:
Be careful of your back line, orc warriors will double push to get to vulnerable targets.
Bring hammers if you can. 2h swords and maces are also good.
Duelist with hammer or mace can break even orc warlords through HP damage.
Bring extra shields on tanks if you can and bring high durability shields. Warlords never come with shields and have an axe w/ axe mastery 75% of the time, so they can tear through your shield bros easily if they don't have a backup.

My best strategy has been to focus down the warlord rather than trying to tank him like you might other dangerous targets (bandits, unholds, etc.). He's not that tough compared to a warrior; a few good hits from a 2h or an armor ignore duelist will have him wounded and soon dead so you can break the morale of the rest of the camp at your leisure. edit- Oh, and bringing 2h'ers with swift hands... nothing better than luring an orc warrior into a charge that leaves him surrounded by 5 bros, all of whom can swap to a 2h hammer or mace...

Any single and armed opponent is easy to tank. Whip for one. Orcs, including a warlord have mediocre aim, that gives options too. As to shields, you can pack reserve shields, even a warlord needs (i think, haven't tested it) 3 turns to destroy a single sipar shield. Pack a backup and you will have enough time. On the other hand your option of killing him first must work too - obviously. I just prefer to deal/ignore him and the warriors until i dispose or panic of berserkers and most youngs. Orcs aren't complicated, just big and stupid (and warriors are well armoured). Assassins + gunners on the other hand...
That gave me an idea. Are living-tree shield regenerating when IN your bags? If so you could tank indefinitely (not counting fatigue) if you have shield mastery. Basically you'd regenerate 40 points of durability each turn, with shield mastery that's effectively 80 - swapping the two shields all the time. That's more than any axe can damage in one turn even with axe mastery.

 

[Darth Canoli]

My company did it! We killed the Warboss with 2 casualities.
Then when I went to pick my reward, I got ambushed by 10 fucking Barbarian Chosen, killed 5 and only five survived. Decided to retire and start a lone wolf campaign

At least got a good end for my few soldiers

It looks extremely wide, you're probably using a weird resolution.
Or you just wanted them to look like dwarves.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Do you guys think the developers intentionally made the RNG (especially on harder difficulties) unfair, in order to prolong game longevity? If RNG was fair, there would be decent ways to manage risk, and it wouldn't take that long to beat the game on hardest difficulty and do everything, but the way it is, seems like Expert Ironman runs always end with some bullshit, and even though that initially pisses players off, many tend to come back and play for thousands of hours (kinda like desperate gamblers).

 

[Harthwain]

Do you guys think the developers intentionally made the RNG (especially on harder difficulties) unfair, in order to prolong game longevity?

Ah, the timeless question. One I have seen in any game featuring the RNG. Literally. Any. Game. The answer remains always the same: no. Entropy doesn't scale to your level. There is no secret conspiracy to make players suck. Git gud. No pressure.

 

[Kaivokz]

I think they made it intentionally possible to lose veterans, but I haven’t had games completely end due to RNG except very early on—I think that’s the point; you have to shift your mindset away from perfect victories and accept losses sometimes. I have restarted games because I felt it would be too monotonous to rebuild my company after a hard loss (4-5 bros left and no reserves), but that had happened less as I learned more about the game.

I think that’s why lone wolf iron man is 3 skull difficulty when some people think it’s an easier background; having no bros to rotate, no ability to build up reserves, means losing 2-3 or more veterans in a series of bad luck is much more impactful and maybe game ending, or at least player-morale-breaking.

Now that I’ve played quite a bit of expert ironman, I can confidently say that Battle Brothers is way harder if you try to approach it like a normal tactics game—you really need to play the strategic layer correctly and pick proper fights; if you are careful you should never be in a battle where losing 2-3 bros to RNG means complete defeat.

So, I think it was intentional to make losing bros somewhat likely even with good playing, but not to make runs completely end—and that serves at least two purposes: it makes the world feel realistic and it plays to the recruitment gambling mini-game. When you get a high quality recruit you want to protect him at all costs until he reaches his potential, and you want to have a few of these building up in case you lose an important bro.

edit- I also think that design is what makes battle bros so successful. Your bros are your most important resource to manage—if you can trade a refugee for a suit for chain mail on day 2, that’s a win. If you can trade a leveled up but middling bro for a famed weapon on day 20, that’s a win. Etc. It’s all about knowing when to accept losses, what good trades are, knowing who you will likely lose and for what gain, etc. I spend probably half my game time on the overworld map thinking about who to fight and where to go, at least for the first 100 days, and I think that is why I haven’t lost an expert ironman run since my first few attempts (mostly due to lack of knowledge about enemies).

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I don't need to git gud, I beat Veteran/Ironman after like 70 hours, got some deep Expert/Ironman runs at less than 100 hours, but it's quite likely there is some weird RNG stuff happening. For example, enemy types vary tremendously in terms of stats/danger. I constantly kept running into same enemies during my runs that generally should not have been an issue for my party at the time, but in some cases, they would just rip through stuff in ways that did not seem feasible with regular RNG.

 

[Takamori]

It looks extremely wide, you're probably using a weird resolution.
Or you just wanted them to look like dwarves.

Its all normal here 1920x1080 resolution.

As for Lone Wolf BG I think its meant to be a meatgrinder where you are forced to pick recruits really carefully and in case you manage to have bad luck and running low on funds to shape up then to at least endure a series of missions until you have enough funds for another round of recruitment.

 

[Harthwain]

I constantly kept running into same enemies during my runs that generally should not have been an issue for my party at the time, but in some cases, they would just rip through stuff in ways that did not seem feasible with regular RNG.

You mean that the Random Number Generator generates random numbers, and in some cases these numbers are streaks - instead of "regular RNG" - that happen screw you? Been there, seen that. Throw a coin and you will get patterns, including streaks. It's not necessarily the streaks that kill you though: it could be the sequence of events.

In Blood Bowl you can get 1 a few times in a row, but usually you will get 1 two times (when trying to dodge out, for example), and then you will roll something like 5 and 6, meaning you will break your own armor and your turn ends. Then the opponents acts, decides to hit one of your players and rolls a hit, then YOU roll high, meaning the opponents breaks the armor of yet another guy and injures him. You are two players down, so you will get less opportunities and more difficulties (less assists, less chances to hit, etc.) and it will all go downhill from there. As you can see, you don't need to rolls terribly all the time to get really screwed.

After the game you can go to the match results and you will see that all rolls will be even (or even-ish), meaning you aren't as statistically unlucky as you think you are.

You could say "But, Harthwain, you are talking about Blood Bowl! This is BATTLE BROTHERS!" (insert "This is SPARTA!" tone when reading it). Yes, indeed, but the underlying mechanic remains the same.

Here you have answer from one of the developers, Rap.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, but the point of a correctly designed tactical rpg system is that after a while, increasing stats/skills/equipment levels smooth the RNG out for lower level enemies. So yes, a bandit brigand can RNG his way through your entire ragtag group of level 2s. But he should not be able to do this when you are have well equipped level 5s. But in BB, that still tends to happen pretty routinely. Which is why I am wondering about whether or not they might have some "funny" math on the back-end.

 

[Darth Canoli]

There's some wonky RNG involved but the morale system makes a bad streak weight even more early on because the enemies get confident while your guys gets wavering or worse morale.

On the other hand, when your team reach lvl 5+, the morale system start to work for you instead of against you and later you can exploit it.

 

[Takamori]

I love the thrill of RNG. As much you can complain about the famous bullshit arrow shoving a hole in your bro skull, at the same time when that happens on your side you probably cheer and probably tell the enemy that got fucked by to get fucked.
BB follow the rules of Darkest Dungeon, you prepare yourself to mitigate at best the RNG bullshit, but it doesn't mean you are immune to RNG.

Now of course you are free to not enjoy it, hate it etc. But to say the system is broken is a bit far fetched.

 

[Serus]

I don't need to git gud, I beat Veteran/Ironman after like 70 hours, got some deep Expert/Ironman runs at less than 100 hours, but it's quite likely there is some weird RNG stuff happening. For example, enemy types vary tremendously in terms of stats/danger. I constantly kept running into same enemies during my runs that generally should not have been an issue for my party at the time, but in some cases, they would just rip through stuff in ways that did not seem feasible with regular RNG.

No.

 

[Kaivokz]

So yes, a bandit brigand can RNG his way through your entire ragtag group of level 2s. But he should not be able to do this when you are have well equipped level 5s. But in BB, that still tends to happen pretty routinely. Which is why I am wondering about whether or not they might have some "funny" math on the back-end.

Battle Bros has this exact kind of RNG mitigation, but at level 7 not level 5.

No bro with nimble and 70+ hp should be getting one or even two shot in the head by a brigand crossbow. Early on, stack kite shields on your frontliners if facing many marksmen on a hill, even if they are 2h battle forged bros. Move in with a shield out and then swap and wreck the front line.

If there is anything "funny" it's probably unrealistic decision making by AI on expert. By that I mean if there is a target who has low ranged defense, every crossbowman who can shoot at him will do so, which just means any bro with low defense and the possibility of being one shot is going to be repeatedly thrown against RNG. It's your job as captain to stop that. (In a "real life" version of a battle bro's battle, the 5 archers on the opposing team won't be able to 1 by 1 take turns shooting at your single guy, who they know they mathematically have the highest chance to hit--this discrepancy breaks our sense of realism and I think is responsible for some of the "FUNKY RNG!" claims people make against TB games).

 

[Tigranes]

The greatest problem with probabilistic technologies is that people will never understand probability.

 

[Drew]

Early on, stack kite shields

How do you get enough kite shields early on