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

[Joggerino]

Shaki Thank you so much for that write-up on stats, it's incredibly helpful!

 

[Teut Busnet]

So I've had my eye on this for a while. I'm wondering if there is a campaign with an ending or do you 'write your own tale' and the game can go on essentially forever? The past few games I've been playing are all endless pretty much, I'm in the mood for something more "traditional," with a satisfying arc and conclusion.

And do you stay a mercenary company for the entire game, or can you raise your station in life, and how high?

There are - beside the already mentioned 4 crises - 8 'Legendary Locations' that include a fight (if you have all DLC). I consider a playthrough complete once I've beaten them.

For one of those you can choose the ambition to beat it, which will give you a nice text afterwards - but I don't think that qualifies as a 'satisfying arc and conclusion'. Even the crises often feel a bit incidental and you can ignore them completely if you don't play with 'permanent destruction' of settlements.

 

[k0syak]

Also, if you play long enough (past day ~200 IIRC), the scaling's gonna ensure some of the random fights or larger camps are almost as tough as the legendary locations.

 

[Alter Sack]

So after some time I started a fresh campaign with all dlc.

For unique weapons I started hunting enemy champions.

Are there any nomad champions (marked with skull)?

Until now I haven't encountered any.

Only some Bandit, Goblin, Ancient and Orc champions.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Are there any nomad champions (marked with skull)?

Yes.
And to advocate for Legends once more, there is favorite enemy perks (for each enemy group: southerners, bandits, nobles, nachos, unholds,...) which gives your bro buffs against those enemies (buff increase the more of that specific enemy he kills) and increase their champion spawn rate.

 

[Alter Sack]

Are there any nomad champions (marked with skull)?

Yes.
And to advocate for Legends once more, there is favorite enemy perks (for each enemy group: southerners, bandits, nobles, nachos, unholds,...) which gives your bro buffs against those enemies (buff increase the more of that specific enemy he kills) and increase their champion spawn rate.

Well, I hope I will find one of these bastards in the near future.

Until now only Deathstalker, Executioners and Nomad Leaders.

I play Vanilla at the moment (with all the DLC).

I am pondering starting a Legends campaign but I wonder if the writing of the mod can keep up with the vanilla game.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I am pondering starting a Legends campaign but I wonder if the writing of the mod can keep up with the vanilla game.

I think it does but I only read about 40% of the walls of text so I might be wrong.
At least, I didn't notice any terrible writing.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

 

[Joggerino]

I am into my first crisis, the greenskin invasion. After many deaths I finally have something that looks like a proper mercenary company and can fight reasonably well. First row is mostly talentless cannon fodder spear/shields mixed with absolute units in full mail and double handed high level weapons. Their job is to ruin the day of anyone who comes into the spear wall. Second row also has decent MA guys with 2 range weapons like the polearm who join in on the fun. Also a few rangers who I'm trying to grow into something usefull. Sometimes they hit something. Biggest headache so far are the goblins with their insane ranged skills, I simply have no counter but to rely on shields and rush them.

 

[jungl]

shield bros are useful if they also have really high melee attack as stun bots. Most people do not make their high attack bros into shield ones but the game is practically won if you do cause it disrupts shield walls and causes you to snowball in damage while taking practically none.

 

[Alter Sack]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

I often ignore ranged defense apart for the guys in the back (bowmen or mercenaries with pole arms).

I think fatigue is a bit more important so that the bros can wear heavier armors without getting fatigued.

 

[Harthwain]

Biggest headache so far are the goblins with their insane ranged skills, I simply have no counter but to rely on shields and rush them.

If you can, try engaging them at night.

 

[Shaki]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

I often ignore ranged defense apart for the guys in the back (bowmen or mercenaries with pole arms).

I think fatigue is a bit more important so that the bros can wear heavier armors without getting fatigued.

Ranged defense overall is pretty much useless, since unless you're raising it on every single bro, AI will just target different bros with low ranged defense. Also ranged enemies are rare, and often don't hit hard, so it's wasting points on something that can help in 10% of fights, while gimping yourself for the 90%. Things like goblin archers can just be facetanked in late game since damage they deal is pathetic, battleforged laughs at them, and nimble with decent hp can also tank shitloads of hits. Raising resolve/hp/fat is pretty much always better investment than raising rdef. Also majority of ranged enemies can be made mostly irrelevant by taking the fight at night, with the exception of goblins with shamans, who can grant them night vision.

 

[rojay]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

Generally I have two categories of bros and three more niche cases if the recruit has the right starting stats and/or the rolls work out a certain way.

For frontline bros I prioritize fatigue, melee attack and melee defense. For ranged bros (I usually have 3 total by the time I have a full roster) I just switch ranged attack for melee and initiative for melee defense. In either case, if a bro gets a 1 or 2 on a roll in the stats I prioritize, and there's a weakness somewhere like health or resolve, I'll pump those. Then there's also different priorities for battleforged vs. nimble - wearing light armor sometimes means I can pump initiative over fatigue to get a benefit from dodge.

The edge cases are when I find a bro with both high starting scores in melee attack and ranged attack that I can turn into a nimble hybrid thrower/2 hander; one sarge who gets resolve every level and once in a blue moon I find a bro I can turn into a duelist.

I save scum when I recruit, but I'm not that picky. If a bro has stars and decent scores in relevant areas and at least one positive perk, I'll probably recruit him even if I know he'll probably end up with just "good" stats by level 11.

Take this with a grain of salt, because I'm not very good and I don't play on the highest difficulty settings, but those general guidelines tend to work for me.

 

[Alter Sack]

Biggest headache so far are the goblins with their insane ranged skills, I simply have no counter but to rely on shields and rush them.

If you can, try engaging them at night.

And having some night owl elixir at least for your own bowman doesn't hurt either.

 

[Darth Canoli]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

Resolve is wasted on ranged bros.
The ones needing some are the 2H bros mostly because they're going to be surrounded and you don't want them to get controlled by a hexe or routed by gheists and orcs warlords.
Having one eunuch and a loyal bro to send ahead against hexes can be useful as well.

Ranged bros should have 20-30 ranged defense, because they're usually poorly armored and get targetted a lot by master archers, goblins and enemy champion archers.
If you get insanely high ranged attack + berserk on archers and use fast shoot, archers require a lot of fatigue as well.

Same for 2H fighters with berserk, 90-100 fatigue after armor is necessary.

Initiative is overrated for anything else than archers and duelists.
Aka not as important than attack, defense and fatigue (and enough health, 100 for 2H bros)

 

[Shaki]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

Ranged bros should have 20-30 ranged defense, because they're usually poorly armored and get targetted a lot by master archers, goblins and enemy champion archers.

Waste of points, better to just spend that on HP instead of rdef. Nimble backliner with 100hp can easily facetank 14+ hits from goblins, and 6-7 from even the heaviest hitters like arbalesters. And they'll always have decent chance to miss, especially if you use cover, or hide behind your frontliners, so realistically enemy ranged units would need to do absolutely nothing but focus your one ranged bro for multiple turns, to actually kill him. As long as you're using any nimble frontline, leveling rdef on backliners will just make your nimble fronts magnet for arrows, which you definitely don't want since they'll be also eating melee hits, things like goblin poison fuck them much more, and it's incomparably harder to retreat them if the fall to low hp, than ranged bros. And even if you run only BF frontline, when you're facing arbalesters or other crossbow using enemies, you want them to focus your backline even more, since this shit has a lot of armor pierce and will actually kill BF bros twice as fast as nimbles.

Overall, it's best to completely ignore ranged def on anyone, and pump more useful stats. Nimble frontliners will naturally have a little rdef from dodge, so with backline with no rdef hiden behind frontline, while enemy will try to target backliners, damage will spread out due to cover, and if unlucky archer eats multiple arrows and falls low, you just make him retreat far behind, beyond the enemy range. I don't think I ever leveled rdef, after my first couple of noobie runs 3+ years ago.

 

[k0syak]

I like making a couple of melee-only backliners, they get steel brow, indom and take MA every level and HP/MDEF/FAT depending on rolls. Bonus points if it's a wildman with negative RDEF

 

[rojay]

So far, my leveling strategy has been to put 1 into a bro's main weapons skill and 1 into range and melee defense each, ignoring all other stats - unless it's a range character in which case they get initiative and resolve. How retarded is this? It's been serving me well.

Ranged bros should have 20-30 ranged defense, because they're usually poorly armored and get targetted a lot by master archers, goblins and enemy champion archers.
If you get insanely high ranged attack + berserk on archers and use fast shoot, archers require a lot of fatigue as well.

Sometimes I'll put points into rdef on a hybrid thrower because I use them on the flanks and they tend to be fragile. But I mainly do that so they won't be targeted. Could be a mod you're playing with changes the AI to be more vicious, or could be because I'm not playing on the highest difficulty, but I can usually find a better place to put points than ranged defense.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Waste of points, better to just spend that on HP instead of rdef. Nimble backliner with 100hp can easily facetank 14+ hits from goblins, and 6-7 from even the heaviest hitters like arbalesters. And they'll always have decent chance to miss, especially if you use cover, or hide behind your frontliners, so realistically enemy ranged units would need to do absolutely nothing but focus your one ranged bro for multiple turns, to actually kill him. As long as you're using any nimble frontline, leveling rdef on backliners will just make your nimble fronts magnet for arrows, which you definitely don't want since they'll be also eating melee hits, things like goblin poison fuck them much more, and it's incomparably harder to retreat them if the fall to low hp, than ranged bros. And even if you run only BF frontline, when you're facing arbalesters or other crossbow using enemies, you want them to focus your backline even more, since this shit has a lot of armor pierce and will actually kill BF bros twice as fast as nimbles.

Overall, it's best to completely ignore ranged def on anyone, and pump more useful stats. Nimble frontliners will naturally have a little rdef from dodge, so with backline with no rdef hiden behind frontline, while enemy will try to target backliners, damage will spread out due to cover, and if unlucky archer eats multiple arrows and falls low, you just make him retreat far behind, beyond the enemy range. I don't think I ever leveled rdef, after my first couple of noobie runs 3+ years ago.

That's not my experience on expert difficulty but I barely played vanilla BB, maybe 2 extremely short runs and 2x 60-120 days runs.

My experience with Legends is different, Goblins champions are extremely dangerous and Master Archers as well, and champions Master Archers are just LETHAL.
100 hp is nothing against an aimed shot with a fire arrow which could kill you in one shot + the burn damage next turn or just another shot from the next Master archer.
Noble crossbowmen can also hit really hard.

The best way to keep Archers and crossbowmen alive is 21/31 rdef + anticipation.

And of course, all my archers are nimble with 80/90 hp.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Read the title as Battle Brothers Breast Expansion.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[Darth Canoli]

Everyone knows you fight ancient undead with 2H maces, one hit -> berserk -> another hit, 2 enemies down.

2H hammers are not bad either but really, 2H maces do wonders.

1H swords, seriously...

 

[Joggerino]

Funny how that guys latest video answers my original question.

 

[Shaki]

Waste of points, better to just spend that on HP instead of rdef. Nimble backliner with 100hp can easily facetank 14+ hits from goblins, and 6-7 from even the heaviest hitters like arbalesters. And they'll always have decent chance to miss, especially if you use cover, or hide behind your frontliners, so realistically enemy ranged units would need to do absolutely nothing but focus your one ranged bro for multiple turns, to actually kill him. As long as you're using any nimble frontline, leveling rdef on backliners will just make your nimble fronts magnet for arrows, which you definitely don't want since they'll be also eating melee hits, things like goblin poison fuck them much more, and it's incomparably harder to retreat them if the fall to low hp, than ranged bros. And even if you run only BF frontline, when you're facing arbalesters or other crossbow using enemies, you want them to focus your backline even more, since this shit has a lot of armor pierce and will actually kill BF bros twice as fast as nimbles.

Overall, it's best to completely ignore ranged def on anyone, and pump more useful stats. Nimble frontliners will naturally have a little rdef from dodge, so with backline with no rdef hiden behind frontline, while enemy will try to target backliners, damage will spread out due to cover, and if unlucky archer eats multiple arrows and falls low, you just make him retreat far behind, beyond the enemy range. I don't think I ever leveled rdef, after my first couple of noobie runs 3+ years ago.

That's not my experience on expert difficulty but I barely played vanilla BB, maybe 2 extremely short runs and 2x 60-120 days runs.

My experience with Legends is different, Goblins champions are extremely dangerous and Master Archers as well, and champions Master Archers are just LETHAL.
100 hp is nothing against an aimed shot with a fire arrow which could kill you in one shot + the burn damage next turn or just another shot from the next Master archer.
Noble crossbowmen can also hit really hard.

The best way to keep Archers and crossbowmen alive is 21/31 rdef + anticipation.

And of course, all my archers are nimble with 80/90 hp.

Legends is a completely different game, so no surprise here, applying advice from Legends to vanilla is pointless. Legends enemies are rebalanced, they have different stats, usually use Legends' own perks and custom skills that can completely change how you should approach them, things like fire arrows don't even exist in vanilla. Same with your previous advice about using eunuch/loyal bro against hexes, it's also a mod thing that doesn't actually exist in the base game.