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

[Kaivokz]

Early on, stack kite shields

How do you get enough kite shields early on

From killing small groups of raiders or groups of thugs + a raider/a few raiders. By early I mean the first 50 days or so, not your first few fights. Once you have nimble bros and/or battle forged bros in 300/300 armor, crossbows aren’t really a problem anymore—at least not a one or two hit KO problem.

edit- on armor, early on you can get armor from fallen heroes or brigand leaders and put a +30/40 durability attachment to get close to 300 body armor for your battle forged bros. It isn’t the best armor (especially decayed coats because of big fat cost), but if you have someone with really high fat or iron lungs that you know you are going to make battle forged instead of nimble, I think it’s worth it until you can get better suits. To manage leader RNG mid game you can purchase armor from armorers or hunt mercenary groups from cities where you don’t care about your rep to get better armors.

 

[tindrli]

any news? any expansions or dllc incoming?

 

[Brancaleone]

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

But Battle Brothers does seem to have some issues with its RNG, in the sense that it tends to clump together the same results far more than it should. It is especially noticeable with the rarest backgrounds and their skills: for example, you get no historians at all for 50 days (fair enough, it is an uncommon background), but then all of a sudden you get two or three in several cities and settlements each, and they all have for example the same amount of stars in ranged attack and resolve, or they all have the shortsighted trait. And that in my experience happens really a lot.

 

[Darth Canoli]

any news? any expansions or dllc incoming?

Latest Legends build was updated to Nexusmods a month ago.
There's already some new beta builds, Druid have been revamped and someone is preparing a new origin involving magic and witchcraft, i'll probably launch it again when it's released.

 

[Kaivokz]

But Battle Brothers does seem to have some issues with its RNG, in the sense that it tends to clump together the same results far more than it should.

This is exactly what happens when people have a distorted view of probability.

It’s like this: You’re playing dice with your friends and on your shot you keep rolling 4’s.

Is the dice rigged? Doesn’t seem like it; no one else is rolling a disproportionate amount of 4’s.

Are you cursed? Nah, you just happened to roll clusters of 4’s; that’s what happens when something is random.

Randomness doesn’t mean a complete lack of order or pattern, but when you tell someone something is random, they will exaggerate any semblance of order or pattern.

Take a look at Ramsey numbers: https://math.mit.edu/~apost/courses/18.204_2018/ramsey-numbers.pdf
The human mind can easily fit patterns onto random data because we are designed to see patterns in the world.

That said, backgrounds in battle brothers aren’t totally random; they are influenced by the location. I’ve never noticed a bunch of the same background with the same trait appearing in any town.

edit- the newer Fire Emblem games even misrepresent probability to the user because people are so bad at intuiting it. https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/
Yeah it’s unlikely to miss an 80% hit chance 6 times in a row, but it’s not that unlikely. You have a ~99.994% (1 - 0.2^6) chance to hit at least one of them—a ~0.006% chance to miss all of them, but that’s still not even one in a million, napkin math says it’s one in sixteen thousand or so. Hardly so unlucky as to expect it to never happen or to think you should go out and buy some lottery tickets.

We should be teaching kids probability alongside geometry and arithmetic; not only would it help most people understand games, it would make them less easily manipulated by statistics and probabilities if they actually had some idea of what a probability is.

 

[Serus]

I'll add one thing to the above. You have, in one average campaign, literally tens of thousands of various rolls (combat and otherwise). If someone plays the game for hundreds of hours, it's hundreds of thousands. Some "strange" results happening isn't strange. Like being hit or hitting at 5% odds a few times in a row more than once in a campaign. I've seen lately in my game a situation when enemy hit at 5% twice in a row and then i missed twice in a row at 95% - in the same round of combat. If that caused a good brother to die i would rage - but it wouldn't mean that somethings wrong with the game' rng.

 

[Drew]

edit- the newer Fire Emblem games even misrepresent probability to the user because people are so bad at intuiting it. https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/

Pretty sure the nu-xcom games also misrepresent your chance to hit odds to be lower than they actually are because people see 95% chance to hit and assume they'll never miss

 

[Brancaleone]

But Battle Brothers does seem to have some issues with its RNG, in the sense that it tends to clump together the same results far more than it should.

This is exactly what happens when people have a distorted view of probability.

It’s like this: You’re playing dice with your friends and on your shot you keep rolling 4’s.

Is the dice rigged? Doesn’t seem like it; no one else is rolling a disproportionate amount of 4’s.

Are you cursed? Nah, you just happened to roll clusters of 4’s; that’s what happens when something is random.

Randomness doesn’t mean a complete lack of order or pattern, but when you tell someone something is random, they will exaggerate any semblance of order or pattern.

Take a look at Ramsey numbers: https://math.mit.edu/~apost/courses/18.204_2018/ramsey-numbers.pdf
The human mind can easily fit patterns onto random data because we are designed to see patterns in the world.

That said, backgrounds in battle brothers aren’t totally random; they are influenced by the location. I’ve never noticed a bunch of the same background with the same trait appearing in any town.

edit- the newer Fire Emblem games even misrepresent probability to the user because people are so bad at intuiting it. https://serenesforest.net/general/true-hit/
Yeah it’s unlikely to miss an 80% hit chance 6 times in a row, but it’s not that unlikely. You have a ~99.994% (1 - 0.2^6) chance to hit at least one of them—a ~0.006% chance to miss all of them, but that’s still not even one in a million, napkin math says it’s one in sixteen thousand or so. Hardly so unlucky as to expect it to never happen or to think you should go out and buy some lottery tickets.

We should be teaching kids probability alongside geometry and arithmetic; not only would it help most people understand games, it would make them less easily manipulated by statistics and probabilities if they actually had some idea of what a probability is.

No, this is what happens when people have some problems with reading comprehension.

I'm not talking about rolling four 5% in a row here, I'm talking about something else.

Since I am a serial restarter, I have hundreds of short to medium playthroughs over the past few years. I cycle all settlements several times for the first 50-60 days, fishing for specific backgrounds. And in each one of my playthroughs (actually, several times in each playthrough), the same thing happens: I am looking for, say , a graverobber, and I find none for tens and tens of days. Then, all of a sudden, a certain day graverobbers pop up in several settlements, with often more than one in cities, and they tend to have either the same trait, or almost the same star configuration. It is so frequent that I base my recruiting strategy on this (I play pseudo iron-man and when I get a recruit I don't like, I fire it and try for a new one). Let's say I'm looking for a witch-hunter and I've found none for several weeks: when I finally find one, I know that I have to cycle all settlements because they will be popping up all over. And if the first one I hire has bad lungs, I know I have to trial all the subsequent ones, because quite a few will have the same trait. Same with the star configuration.

Did you know that computer RNG's are not really random, and there are quite a few types of them, with different characteristics (and judging by the results, Battle Brothers does not employ one of the best ones)? I guess they should teach that kids in schools as well.

 

[Drew]

Did you know that computer RNG's are not really random, and there are quite a few types of them, with different characteristics (and judging by the results, Battle Brothers does not employ one of the best ones)? I guess they should teach that kids in schools as well.

They don't even need to teach it to you. For any big, common language (like one you'd use in a commercial enterprise like making a video game) someone has already written a library including a bunch of ways to generate random numbers, and detailed which ones to use when and how they actually work.

 

[Kaivokz]

(1) Recruits don’t have equal chances of spawning everywhere at every time. You will find witch hunters when there is a witch burning. You will find hedge knights around forest keeps. I’m assuming you know this, but I figured I’d point it out. I don’t actually know the math behind it, but it’s possible that certain unseen events (as in not like witch burnings) deterministically alter recruitment pools. eg undead strongholds nearby might raise odds of gravediggers (that’s just a made up example).

(2) I’m sure battle bros uses pseudo-random numbers, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with what you’re suggesting—which is that you think battle bros has a programmed or defective (consistent) tendency to “clump” certain results or events together across multiple seeds. The evidence you’re giving is totally compatible with random outcomes and you’ve made it clear that you’re looking for a pattern—they have “almost the same” star layouts... in other words, they don’t have the same star layouts.

 

[Brancaleone]

(1) Recruits don’t have equal chances of spawning everywhere at every time. You will find witch hunters when there is a witch burning. You will find hedge knights around forest keeps. I’m assuming you know this, but I figured I’d point it out. I don’t actually know the math behind it, but it’s possible that certain unseen events (as in not like witch burnings) deterministically alter recruitment pools. eg undead strongholds nearby might raise odds of gravediggers (that’s just a made up example).

(2) I’m sure battle bros uses pseudo-random numbers, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with what you’re suggesting—which is that you think battle bros has a programmed or defective (consistent) tendency to “clump” certain results or events together across multiple seeds. The evidence you’re giving is totally compatible with random outcomes and you’ve made it clear that you’re looking for a pattern—they have “almost the same” star layouts... in other words, they don’t have the same star layouts.

They have usually two identical sets of stars, and the third one in the same attribute, but with a different amount of stars, which is why I said almost. This configuration as well is recurrent, and, of course, the trait is identical.

So if, for example:

1) no historians for 50 days
2) on day 51, 8-9 historians appear in the map, with 2 or 3 in each big city
3) half of the historians have clubfooted
4) they also have two stars in ranged attacks, one star in health, and one to three stars in initiative

is totally compatible with random outcomes, considering that it happens every playthrough (I'm talking up to 60-70 days, not 500 days playthrough), and sometimes two or three times per playthrough (each time with a different background, one that was missing from the map up to a certain point) well, what can I say.

I understand that this kind of thing is noticeable only if you play in the rather convoluted way I do, but once you start to pay attention to which background is missing from the map and how are the recruits with that background once they suddenly appear all over the map, it's quite evident. Next time you play, give it a glance, you'll see immediately what I mean.
It's not a huge issue, it just leaves the annoying sensation that I'm gaming the system when I go recruiting.

 

[Serus]

RIP my latest company. I entered a ruin, for some reason I thought there were only ancient auxiliares there, turned out there were necrosavats too. Wasn't paying attention. Tried to retreat but the auxiliares had mostly spears and wouldn't lets me go... Only five bros survived the battle. All the named ones, - the ones that are good to keep and are given names by me - died. Only some trash remained. Decided to retire, it was still early in the game, in the 30s days iirc.
Lessons:
1. Pay more attention, if there are still some unidentified enemies when you are not sure what you face, identify the type of monster before engaging.
2 Trading start on a decent map really brings sizeable profits. The main downside for me was not the slower renown gain but that you don't start with a ranged brother. I had difficulty to even find a crossbow/thrower one with 85+matt at level 11.
3. I have troubles with transitioning from "only chase small group of bandits to dagger them for their equipment" to the next stage.
4. Expert difficulty IS more difficult than veteran - duh. I found (on day ~15) an undead location practically on the outskirts of a town with necromancer + a fallen hero + ton of armored zombies. Of curse it's easy to retreat so i didn't have any problem there. I'm pretty sure i never saw a group as strong as that one, at that date and place, on veteran. Need to be cautious.

 

[Kaivokz]

Necrosavants make a noise when the battle starts (and I think on their turns too, or maybe only on their turns) if you play with sound on.

Lots of nets help to take down your first few camps if you're by coastal cities, especially if you can find a brigand leader.

I started up a game to give you an example of how I would transition from brigands to camps.

Spoiler

Light green is where I would go first. Norre is a noble city (no contracts) and Norreholm is too far away from where I want to be. I started in the far north, but I don't like to fight barbarians until my men have a bit of experience so I'll play upper-mid map at the start. Dark green circles are cities where I would try to build rep. Blue circles are where I would use mountains to scout terrain (e.g. if I pass the blue circle just north of dire woods during the day, I would scout out the forest south). So my plan would be to move along the light green line and take any brigand contracts I can, hopefully by the time I got to Hagermoos I would feel strong enough (maybe day 5-7) to explore the wilderness (camps scale to what day you're on, so if you're fighting camps at day 5 they'll be weaker than day 30). If so, I'd take the path to the left, hitting both mountains at the circles to try to find camps. Bolasted is circled in dark green because it is the only large city where I can build rep on this half of the map, so it is where I will sell most of my goods. If I felt like I need more levels/loot, I'd look for easy contracts in Finsterwalde and then maybe take the right blue line. The main problems here would be: monsters roaming the woods; don't want to fight a group of webnechkts larger than my band size early on (or even later on, though once you get a bunch of 2h'ers it's not as much of a problem), and a lack of brigand contracts due to monster/missing villager contracts. If I felt really bad about my company I'd probably head east from Finsterwalde on the road and explore the eastern cities (but I still want to make western cities my base, because that's where the fog of war is) or head south (not pictured) and try to make something work down there. Edit- I forgot to say, early game in the middle of the map, most camps will be either undead or brigands, so I'd collect weapons that are good against those types. Cleavers and slashing weapons for weidergangers, maces for skeletons, flails and daggers for brigands.

Camps do respawn, so once you're into the phase of exploring the widlerness, you can run an already explored channel just to make money and get loot.

This isn't a great seed (I don't like starting in the north or lots of forests and mountains), but that's my general strategy for moving from daggering brigands to taking on camps. Pick some base villages and a large city to sell in, plot out a course, and take on as many camps as you can before returning to civilization. I like to be searching out camps by day 15 (getting in as many fights and contracts as you can in those first few weeks makes a big difference), but if it takes you longer it isn't a big deal.

 

[Serus]

I plan to start another game, probably a standard but this time southern start. I'll be fighting brigands and monsters in the name of Allah Gilder (or whomever). However the map generation is making me crazy. I don't wan't too much, a map that isn't covered 3/4 with mountains and swamps. And one that doesn't have southern cities on the coast without ports. They can be in the desert (it is "Blazing Deserts" not "Blazing Beaches" after all) but if they are sitting on the coast i want ports. No need for specific stuff like northern port or many trade goods or whatever. More than 1 workshop/hunter cabin would be nice but i can always take the scavenger and recruiter so not absolutely needed. In short - a visually pleasing map, and not in the Alps or Himalaya kind of visuals. It seems to be almost impossible for me. When I get those cities with ports/deep in desert - there are tons of mountains and vice versa. I wish there would be some more toggles for map generation. Also i suspect those lack of ports in the 3 cities is some sort of oversight and not intended. There are other weirdness with southern cities like only two being generated or one being generated without any connection to the rest, lacking both road and port.
I know, it is my "autism" that gets better of me.

Edit:
Found my seed using this
https://wlirareddit.github.io/bb_calculator/seed_search_lw.html
Used only one option "southern arena port", not because i need one but because it eliminates one southern city from the equation making it much easier.

 

[Brancaleone]

Also i suspect those lack of ports in the 3 cities is some sort of oversight and not intended.

It might be intentional in order to prevent the player from getting rich too easily by trading (southern goods command quite a big premium in settlements farther north, and especially while you still have few brothers, the low sea travel fares and instant travel back and forth allow for some really nice profit). I know that whenever I get a map with at least one normal settlement and one southern city with harbour, I'm already summoning my inner Reinhardt

 

[Takamori]

Finished a Lone Wolf run, went through 3 crisis Noble War, Undead and Orc. Got more aware of mechanics, decided to start a new one but this time my lone wolf I'm going to build him axe+adrenaline given he has a fuckton of fatigue. Though not so sure about my perks
http://www.bbplanner.xyz/?perks=DgIgIBKS
I really like gifted but I'm starting to think that Lone Wolf would be better for this situation.

 

[Serus]

Why Lone Wolf again?
Gifted on a character that has so high stats to begin with? One that you will play into the late game (obviously)? A waste of perk in my opinion. I'd take Quick Hands - with a longaxe in bags you can always attack an enemy two tiles away, very useful. I take quick hands on every two handed axe/mace/hammer user, one of the better perk in general. In short - anything but gifted. Indomitable, Rotation are also worth considering instead.

 

[Takamori]

Why Lone Wolf again?
Gifted on a character that has so high stats to begin with? One that you will play into the late game (obviously)? A waste of perk in my opinion. I'd take Quick Hands - with a longaxe in bags you can always attack an enemy two tiles away, very useful. I take quick hands on every two handed axe/mace/hammer user, one of the better perk in general. In short - anything but gifted. Indomitable, Rotation are also worth considering instead.

I got tired of the map not the squad itself and wasn't so happy with my LW weapon choice that was a sword, so decided to reroll a LW. I thought about gifted to maximize my chance to swing my axe against max targets and to have maximum usage of adrenaline before using recover but not so far away from the rest of the band in case I have to expel some enemies away from the weaker units of whoever try to flank the archers.Indomitable is a interesting option against orcs.

 

[Kaivokz]

Serus I was going to say the same thing about quick hands. I think the only way I wouldn't take quick hands is if you dropped berserk, had a high fat. + iron lungs bro and wanted to spam adrenaline. Quick hands is just too valuable on a 2h bro with berserk; with planning you can almost guarantee two attacks a turn. It's like adrenaline but better.

I'd also consider dropping reach advantage for indom or even pathfinder, but if your strategy is to try to have your axe bro be fully surrounded and then adrenaline into round swing, I can see why you take it.

 

[Takamori]

Curious about nimble dodge builds, how much starting initiative would be interesting for a bro to get this build? Also besides initiative which stats I should invest besides Primary offensive stats? Should I drop into fat or given that I will wear light armor invest into HP or Primary Defensive stats?

 

[Kaivokz]

I'd say for late game nimble you want to have around 90-100 HP and above average resolve because you will be taking more HP damage than a battleforged bro (ergo more resolve checks). Still want to put points into fatigue; I like my nimble bros to be around 90 fat. with 15 fat. armor.

In general, I'd advise getting a good m.def bro for nimble rather than going dodge unless you're going specifically for a fencing build or maybe a riposte build. A 3 m.def roll gives more m.def than 5 initiative and doesn't degrade over the course of combat. Dodge gives r.def as well, which can be nice for avoiding early salvos of arrows, but it's nothing a kite shield can't handle vs. goblins (you don't need maximum damage vs them anyway, avoiding their poison and other annoyances is more important) or brigands (who shouldn't be a threat vs a well equipped company). Most dangerous enemies are melee. The biggest cons vs. dodge imo are that it basically requires two perk points (dodge + relentless) and that it degrades over the course of combat. Unless you stack both initiative and m.def in longer fights you're going to be worse than a standard m.def bro.

On fencing initiative:

Lunge works by applying a damage multiplier based on the bro's current initiative. at 89 initiative, lunge will do the base damage of the weapon. Below 89 initiative, you'll incur a damage penalty vs using slash. Above 89 initiative, damage will be increased. The maximum multiplier is 2x and this cap is reached at 175 initiative.

(https://battlebrothers.fandom.com/wiki/Fencing_Sword)
So take that into consideration.

These are two nimble frontline bros I'm using right now:

Spoiler

The first is a duelist and pretty much kicks everything's ass. The second is a high resolve fearsome build designed for decapitating orcs and brigands (in hindsight fearsome + cleaver isn't a good idea as I'm pretty sure fearsome only affects the hit target and cleavers want to decapitate things--fearsome mace or hammer would be better--and yeah I have a level 16 gravedigger with 83 m.atk, but it works!).

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

FUCK HEXES!!!! FUCK THEM SO MUCHHHH!

Had a nice company going on Expert/Expert/Ironman, Day 30 or so, traveling down a road, somehow this Hexe group with one Hexe and one unhold barrels out of the woods, I figure I got a headstart on them, try to run away, but these bitches catch up to me and start combat. I never fought a Hexe yet, so I figure ok... let's how bad it gets...

Before I can even do anything, bitch charms my best guy, right in the middle of the entire group. So now everybody is locked down and I can't run away. I try to move them toward her, one guy escapes, another gets almost one shot by the charmed asshole. Unhold starts beating the shit out of everyone, I finally manage to get some guys around the bitch, kill her, but didn't realize that also kills the charmed dude. By this point, one guy got killed by the charmed dude, the charmed dude got killed by me kiling the hexe bitch, and unhold killed another. That's half of my starter company. Retired in rage...

 

[Takamori]

Monster in general require prep going blind is a recipe for wipe, I had a total wipe out at my first hexe too if it makes feel you better.
But next time have some 3-4 archers prep to spam arrows on her, have your sarge with high resolve to boost all your squad resolve to avoid getting charmed and pay attention if any of your squadies got hexed if im not mistaken she doesn't hexe in the first turn.

Ah if there is a tavern in the town you are doing hexe contract if you dont feel so sure about it, knock everyone drunk +25% resolve.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Ok, now I am 100% sure that Battle Brothers uses some "fake" trending RNG system on the back-end, at least on Expert difficulty. I kinda had a gut feeling about this before, based on my experiences, but this game I had now crystalized the idea. Another Expert/Ironman run, got all my guys to levels 3/4, 9 guys go on a single skull difficulty mission to clear out a crypt. Run into 6 natzerburgers, 5 normal ones, one mid-feasted.

So, 9 level 3-4 guys against 6 natzenburgers, single skull difficulty, only one mid-feasted natzenburger. Most of my front line has metal armor and metal helmets, and spears. Crossbowman and pitchforks in the back. This should be a walk in the park, as a matter of fact, I fought a 9 natzenburger group just before then, and handily defeated them with only losing 1 level 1 guy.

I get wiped, and lose the Ironman game. But it's not that, it's how it happened. You had to see it. I started pretty well, and killed some of them, but then, it's as if a switch was flipped mid fight. Suddenly my guys cannot hit at all, even though all the % shown are very high, and the enemy is not only hitting every single time, but hitting for massive damage, one or two-shotting guys left and right. Keep in mind, my front line has very beefy guys with maxed defense, and shields and mostly metal armor and helmets. And they are all suddenly going down like grass.

You see, I've done a lot of stuff to manage the RNG. I've gotten perks to increase hitpoints and decrate head damage, and lessen effect of injuries. I've maximized defense stat with shields, recrited guys with good defensive stats in general. There is just no way in hell a low level enemy like natzenburgers could go on a run like that, where it's essentially the equivalent of rolling 20 in DnD time after time after time. Now if it happened in one game, ok, rare freak probability, but based on my experience in BB, it happens every single game, at least on Expert. Every game, there is some fight where suddenly the enemy cannot miss, and you cannot hit, like it's scripted.

It reminds me of the AI in Pro Evolution Soccer games, if anyone played those. Good games overall, much better than FIFA Soccer, but the AI is scripted to go on these runs. Suddenly your guys are helpless, and each scrub is running around like Messi for the AI, and they score goals no matter what you do.

 

[Serus]

Calm down Porky, the burgers are very dangerous, they don't look like it (except the biggest ones) but they are. Even at higher level a big group with big or many medium ones can be deadly. Also level 3 is extremely early, it IS a rng fest at that stage. I try to avoid everything other than thugs/cutthroats if possible at such low level.
Why would you play (torture yourself?) playing on hardest of the hard settings even if you still familiarise yourself with the game. Expert/expert is for people who are already bored with anything else because they mastered the game. May i suggest veteran/veteran/ironman instead?

Having said that, i'm playing on expert/ironman (but veteran economy). It is painful despite me knowing relatively well the game. I have to struggle both for cash and in combat. I lost several brothers including 2 that i planned to bring to late game. I wasn't very lucky with recruits, i found a decent banner man (squire) and a nimble tank. Other than that, i'm struggling, especially with bf two handers front line candidates - the best one i had died. I have some who will get 75-80 matt at level 11. In other words, not good. In other news got my first famed item - at a cost of a brother. It means i'm having the experience fun as i would expect on expert ironman difficulty.
The fun part is, that despite some rng extravaganza, i feel that most of the deaths could have been avoided with more cautious play and if i stopped from time to time to analyse the battle instead of rushing it.

In short, such is mercenary life. It is hard and often short but from time there are taverns, booze and whores.

Spoiler

There is no RNG conspiracy.