Sarissofoi
Arbiter
- Joined
- Mar 24, 2017
- Messages
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KRAUTS WHERE THE HELL IS MY WEEKLY FIX OF BB BLOG?
It serves me right I trusted a Kraut(to deliver)
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Dev Blog #119: Tunes from the North
22 MAR @ 3:52PM - RAPSDJFF
Before venturing further into the northlands, let’s set the mood this week by taking a closer look at fresh music accompanying the new faction of northern barbarians coming with the “Warriors of the North” DLC. Yup, Breakdown Epiphanies[soundcloud.com] are on board again to add to the game’s music. Let’s see what they have to say in this week’s dev blog!
Tunes from the North
As those of you who have been following Battle Brothers since they days of Early Access know, as composers we ourselves took an RPG approach when it comes to orchestrating soundtracks for the various factions in the game. The undead are accompanied by an orchestra solely comprised of dark string instruments and percussion that is supposed to resemble the rattling of bones, the orc music is dominated by dark and menacing brass as well as sounds of metal, for the brigands our theme was „instruments you can carry around with you“, and so on. The signature sound of each faction in the game grew from imposing limitations upon ourselves, which in turn lead to a very distinguishable tonal landscape that could even give away what the player is fighting the first time they do so.
You may be happy to hear that for the upcoming “Warriors of the North” DLC we got on board again to expand the soundtrack with new music accompanying the player’s battles against their new adversary, the northern barbarians.
Adding new factions to the soundtrack gets more tricky as time goes on: While from a gameplay standpoint, fighting the barbarians will play out differently than fighting orcs, there are certain aesthetic similarities (brute force, heavily armored higher tier units, show up in clans) that would also favour a similar approach to the music (which in case of the orcs translated to throwing all the brass instruments and war drums that we could find into the mix). Luckily, though, the barbarians also lend themselves well to going a different route, which is mostly inspired by their nordic and rus themed lore and background.
Avoiding brass (and the resulting overlap with the orc faction) completely, we decided to use vocals as the tonal backbone of this faction of northmen. Aside from more common singing styles, we incorporated mouth percussion, overtone and throat singing, which is a vocal style found in Norwegian folklore, Mongolian music and shamanist rituals leading back to the stone ages. As, from a gameplay perspective, the barbarians are a variant of the brigands, we also fell back on the brigands’ „instruments you can carry around with you“ philosophy. Only a single violin, a Swedish nyckelharpa (a medieval string instrument), a couple of drums and a choir of hardened nordmen come together to add new signature battle tracks to the Battle Brothers soundtrack. While production is still ongoing, we are happy to give you this sneak peek today.
Dev Blog #120: The Barbarians, Part III
In part two we introduced three basic unit types of the new barbarian faction that is to claim the north in the upcoming ‘Warriors of the North’ DLC. This week, we take a closer look at their more specialized unit types. As always, keep in mind that things are still in development and may change. With that said, let’s go!
Drummers
As has been tradition for generations, larger parties of northern barbarians that go to war are often accompanied by drummers. In a sea of rhythmic tribal beats and chants, the barbarian mind will enter a trance-like state where there is only battle, and the barbarian spirit will press the body to its limit and beyond.
As mentioned previously, barbarians have a very physical and fatiguing style of combat, and they don’t pace themselves well. They’re especially dangerous in the first few rounds, but if you can weather this opening onslaught, barbarians will then often find themselves exhausted.
The rhythmic beats of the drummers will have barbarians press on to glory despite this, reflected in the game by reducing the fatigue of any barbarian on the field by a small amount each round. A barbarian can have their fatigue reduced only a single time per round, no matter how many drummers on the field, but it may be enough to give them the strength to use an additional skill, which makes them all the more dangerous. It’s worth considering, therefore, to make drummers a priority target – even if they themselves are unlikely to inflict any damage on your men with their wooden drumsticks.
Beastmasters
Beastmasters are revered for their druid-like abilities to control the biggest natural predator of the north – the unhold – and lead them into battle as living and breathing war machines. They wear ceremonial helmets with long horns and decorate their armor with animal bones, but their most useful tool is a thorned whip with which to exert dominion over their beasts.
In battle, the beastmaster will always appear with one or more unholds. These mighty beasts can wear anything from a simple metal harness and chain, to be controlled more easily, to having metal plates nailed right onto their hide – something possible only due to the unhold’s uncanny ability to quickly heal any wound, even during battle. A beast armored like this can be impossible to bring down if you’re not equipped both for handling massive amounts of armor and health at the same time.
Every turn, a beastmaster cracks the whip to direct their beastly warmachines to do his bidding. However, a beastmaster can not do so if anyone is in their zone of control. And they very much can’t do so, if they’re dead. If an armored unhold doesn’t get directions from any beastmaster, they become confused, and every round there is a chance that they become feral, change to the beast faction, and attack player and barbarians alike in a mad rage of befuddlement.
Don't forget oil.Naked Nimble Dagger-Bro Strike Team
You don't need dogs to beat Alps, just spread your guys (and switch the polearms to one-handed weapons).So I picked this up a while ago, and now my first campaign has ended after a little over 100 days from being attacked by Alps for the first time. Literally ignore all fucking stats and equipment, and the only viable strategy is have 12 dudes with dogs and weapons they can swing twice per turn. Cool. Fucking awesome. Such tactics. I could have won this fight with 12 naked level 1 beggars with dogs and no weapons. But I lost my entire company instead because half of them had polearms and I only had a handful of dogs.
It really isn't (a gamble). You just need to know what to expect and how to handle it. Quite often a new enemy catches you by surprise and by the time you realize how to handle them, it's too late. The walking trees are a nightmare unless you have axes, etc. For me the giant snakes were the worst enemy because I was completely unprepared and didn't even know what hit me.I can only assume people talking about having a band of guys in special gear at level 12 were playing on easy or just grinding out nothing contracts for 200 hours and buying it all. Anything remotely interesting to fight in this game is also a total gamble that isn't worth it in the long run. It's like I need to spend time grinding to have a fun fight that costs me some of my progress.
It really doesn't because you don't have to attack all alps at once. What you need is to spread your men to make sure that those who are turned don't do much damage. Alps are usually spread around the map, so target the closest 2-3 first, then go after the rest, 2-3 or even 1-2 at a time. Patience is a virtue in this game, rushing in gets you killed.The battle had 8 alps. That means, just to tread water, I need to land 16 attacks every turn.
Wear good armor and helmet with neck and nose guards or use shields. Just because you favor polearms doesn't mean you shouldn't use other weapons when the situation calls for it. I've never lost a guy to a random crossbowman after the first 10-15 days (when you get decent armor and shields).I'm ok with losing some guys to new enemies, that had been happening all game long. I'm not ok with losing my best character to a random bandit marksman firing his crossbow from max range...
It is if you let it happen. Surely you have a couple of crossbowmen of your own, ready to kill or weaken enemy's two-handers? You shouldn't move all the way in to allow the enemy to close the distance and attack.... some shitty thug running up with a 2 handed pick and getting a headshot on a guy in the middle of a shield wall, that shit is beyond retarded.
Easy-breezy.There's no way to 'handle' half a dozen marksmen. You roll well or you lose characters and their armour.
Do you even know what the alps do? They each conjure a pair of shadows that ignore armour and automatically hit if they aren't killed immediately. There's no 'turning'. Spreading out is suicidal.