Expeditions: Rome - the final Expeditions game from Logic Artists

[SniperHF]

My legion lost a battle with 100% success chance, is that little indicator just bullshit as it appears?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

My legion lost a battle with 100% success chance, is that little indicator just bullshit as it appears?

Depends on what stratagems you've played. You could theoretically pick too many aggressive ones and fuck up your manpower way more than theirs.

 

[Nryn]

Beat the game after switching to the hardest difficulty a few hours into Act 1. I haven't had this much fun with a game's encounter design since KotC 2's initial release in 2020. While Conquistador and Viking had their share of interesting fights, Rome dwarfs them both in this regard and is an unequivocal recommendation to those looking for turn-based tactical combat goodness, and especially to fans of Blackguards' encounter design. More detailed spoiler-free thoughts on various aspects of the game I liked and disliked:

Things I Liked:

1. Encounter Design is Blackguards on Steroids: Just like with Blackguards, every combat encounter takes place on a handcrafted environment with a lot of thought behind the positioning of enemies and the level design. To expand:

• Unlike too many RPGs to name with mindless encounter design, it is very rare to find enemy archers in Rome who start combat at ground level or out of cover. Whenever combat starts, enemy archers are almost always placed on rooftops or hilltops, giving them a massive range advantage over the party's own archers. The one time an enemy archer was all by his lonesome without any nearby cover turned out to be too good to be true -- the entire area around him was full of hidden traps designed to punish an overzealous player who rushed towards an easy kill without considering how suspicious it was. I never made that mistake again and it served me well for the rest of the game.
• Just like with Blackguards, coming to terms with each combat arena's layout with all the chokepoints and verticality that it entails is paramount. Getting stuck in chokepoints is often a death sentence, since enemy support units, such as arsonists and poisoners, tend to rain down fiery and poisonous death on the hapless party members who are out of position.
• Another similarity with Blackguards is that the combat goals can vary and don't just amount to "kill all enemies". There are missions reminiscent of the infamous crypt lice mission of Blackguards where the party's group is not meant to fight, but instead get to safety while fending off enemies. My only complaint with the mission goals in the game is that too many fights in the game can be trivialized by beelining for the leader and killing him, thereby instantly ending the fight.
• Every combat arena has hand-placed usable items such as bandages, javelins and torches that both the party and enemies can use as a free action, completely turning around fights. Not paying attention to the location of these items and allowing the enemies free rein over the use of such items can be a recipe for disaster, as even untrained mooks can be devastating with a lucky throw of a torch of fire, especially when the party is in the vicinity of puddles of oil.
• On the highest difficulty, one has to pay even more attention to the level layout to predict potential points of entry for the near incessant enemy reinforcements.
• Barring 1 exception (in Act 3, a pacification mission and a random encounter share the same combat location), every single main quest, side quest, pacification mission and random world encounter takes place in a unique location with handcrafted level design and hand-placed enemies.
• The tense multipart siege fights without any chance to rest in-between fights are the highlight of the encounter design of Rome, and I can't think of any other game that offers a similar experience. Involving as many as 3 separate parties and 14 party members, a party's performance in its current fight has consequences for the fights other parties face in the future during the course of the siege. Since hp and tactical item usage persist between each part of the multistage siege fight, there is an added incentive to do well during each part of the siege, in order to help alleviate resource management pressures.

One aspect of Rome's level and encounter design that is a massive improvement over Blackguard's is that Blackguard's combat took place in separate abstract combat arenas. In contrast, Rome's combat locations are indistinguishable from non-combat areas that one can freely explore. In fact, a lot of the earlier exploration areas serve as combat locations themselves later in the game. Designing areas that are believable to explore while doubling up as interesting tactical challenges must have been no easy task.

2. Well Told Revenge Story with Personal Stakes: The game's villain is constantly around and well built up over the course of the entire game, and is the primary reason why the game's revenge tale works. Based on one's choices during Act 1, mutually exclusive events can unfold involving the protagonist's and the villain's family members, further adding to the simmering revenge plot. My biggest issue with the narrative is that certain aspects of the Act 3 military storyline seem rushed and lack proper build up, primarily those involving a sacrificial ritual and the act's main siege.

On a related note, I found the companions to generally be likable. Syneros, in particular, has become one of my favourite rpg companions, and he achieves this feat by being entirely normal and loyal. Even Bestia, who starts out as just a bloodthirsty gladiator develops in interesting ways depending on how certain companion quests resolve. Of the other 3 companions, I took the longest to warm up to Julia, who does mellow somewhat as the game progresses.

3. The Final Act's Impressive C&C: Without going into specific spoilers, the final splits into 2 radically different scenarios and fights based on a choice at the start of the act. Different companions can die and leave the party during each path, and how a companion's side quest was resolved in earlier acts can open up new non-violent options. Even the faction one was aligned to during Act 2 has consequences. It's well worth keeping a save around at the start of the act to experience the 2 entirely different turns the story can take from that point onwards.

4. Unique Item Mechanics: One novel addition to itemization introduced by Rome is the ability to dismantle and extract the special ability from a unique item and add it to a completely different item. I found it a lot of fun to take a unique staff that knocks enemies down 25% of the time, dismantle it and add the knock down effect to a Veles' generic dagger that is used multiple times a round, leading to the constant sight of prone enemies. This mechanic ensures no unique item in the game is wasted, and if one is not able to use a unique item in its default state, the item's unique proc effects can still be transferred onto an item of the player's choosing.

Things I Didn't Like:

1. Loading Screens in Sets of 4: A highly specific complaint for a highly specific flaw. There are 6 ways to manage the Legion:

• Assign someone to refresh the use of Tactical Items
• Assign someone to refresh the currently available Praetorians for hire
• Assign someone to craft weapons, armour and items
• Assign up to 3 people to the camp's infirmary
• Assign someone to the Baths to improve morale
• Assign someone to work on new Stratagems for use in Legion Battles

Of these 6 activities, only healing assignments can be done from the World Map, and that too a highly limited form of it. For serious injuries and healing efficiency, one needs to be treated at the camp's infirmary. Thus, for all intents and purposes, one needs to be inside the Legion camp to manage all 6 of the Expedition's activities. And this is where the loading screen hell starts. Entering the Legion camp from the World Map takes 1 loading screen. After making assignments in the Legion camp, one has to wait to see the results of the assignments. For some mindboggling reason, one cannot pass time when inside the Legion camp, and one needs to return to the World Map (loading screen 2). After passing time on the World Map to complete assigned tasks, the party members are not automatically removed from their assignments and neither are crafted items accessible yet. Inexplicably, one needs to head back into the Legion camp (loading screen 3) to "free up" the party members who were assigned to various activities and to collect crafted items. Finally, one has to return to the World Map (loading screen 4) to continue the campaign as before.

This problem really comes to a head during Act 3 which loves to spam a random encounter involving boars where the party ends up with 3 injuries or loses a random item permanently. Getting 2 of those events back to back, and sitting through 8 loading screens in the process, ensured that I gave my quicksave and quickload keys a good workout for the rest of the random World Map encounters.

2. The Expedition Mechanics Have No Stakes: The game's Expedition mechanics feel like they were designed around the idea of a time limit, only for the time limit to be removed later during development, but with with none of the Expedition mechanics changed to reflect the removal. One can essentially "grind" battle stratagems to use in Legion Battles by just passing time and then completely roll over Legion battles. Similarly, there are repeatable Legion missions all around the World Map that can be done by the Legion for resources, and this ensures resource management is barely a concern given the infinite time available. In Conquistador and Viking, I took on fights with injured party members thanks to worrying about the passage of time, but I didn't have resort to such desperate measures even once in Rome, since I could always postpone fights until after visiting the infirmary.

All this means the Expedition mechanics have changed from core mechanics in the prior games to just some mechanics that add a bit of flavour and lots of busywork filler.

3. Pointless RNG in Crafting: While the game does not have levels filled to the brim with pointless loot containers like in Viking, the crafting RNG means the player ends up wasting time anyway due to bad crafting rolls. When modifying items through crafting to have certain kinds of stats or resistances, the crafting result should have had just a single possible result instead of a range of results that only add to the frustration due to bad luck.

Overall, if one's looking for a game with interesting encounter design where the odds are stacked against the party (certain broken skills such as the Veles' Reaper skill notwithstanding), Rome is a blind recommendation. It's a nice bonus that a game with such a strong emphasis on the combat and encounter design also features a well-told revenge story with a fine example of branching C&C during its final act. The best way to play the game is with a custom difficulty that pumps up the combat difficulty, enabling better A.I. in the process, while turning down the settings involving the legion management to avoid getting bogged down with the poorly thought out and implemented Legion Management mechanics.

 

[HoboForEternity]

2. The Expedition Mechanics Have No Stakes: The game's Expedition mechanics feel like they were designed around the idea of a time limit, only for the time limit to be removed later during development, but with with none of the Expedition mechanics changed to reflect the removal. One can essentially "grind" battle stratagems to use in Legion Battles by just passing time and then completely roll over Legion battles. Similarly, there are repeatable Legion missions all around the World Map that can be done by the Legion for resources, and this ensures resource management is barely a concern given the infinite time available. In Conquistador and Viking, I took on fights with injured party members thanks to worrying about the passage of time, but I didn't have resort to such desperate measures even once in Rome, since I could always postpone fights until after visiting the infirmary.

this I agree SOOO much. i don't think you can even run out of time in these games since I remember vikings was pretty generous, but even with that the existence of a timer adds to the tension that I feel like I must use my time effectively. this is apparently are too much for the ooga booga homo erectus that THQN wants to target they removed it. you can just wait wait wait while masturbating until your army and crew recovered, or make profit from the marketplace indefinitely. it's dumb

 

[Starwars]

Finished the game and I greatly enjoyed it all in all. It definitely feels like another Expeditions game, many strengths (and problems) remain from past games but, like with Viking and Conquistador, it still feels different in many ways.

Some of my complaints:

-The game is way too easy, though I just played on Normal, weakling that I am. This especially goes for the "legion layer". To me it's a pretty fun distraction and a way to shake up the gameplay but there doesn't seem to be that much depth or challenge to it. Just roll across the sectors. Still, I found it a pretty fun variation on the overland maps in Viking and Conquistador. The usual combat is also too easy (again, on Normal), which is a shame because the combat system is superfun to use.

-The formulaic pacification quests. This feels a bit too much like "modern game design padding". While a lot of the encounters are still fun due to... well, again, the combat system just being fun, it still feels like busywork and an afterthought to the rest of the game.

-The game starts to drag in the third act. Apparently they will change it up a bit in an upcoming patch but as is, it feels too much like you're just being led around the nose for a long time.

-The story is entertaining to follow but it relies a bit too much on yanking the player around, being BETRAYED and other kind of cheap tactics at times. Like with Viking, I feel it's the colorful characters that makes it entertaining and not the actual story.

-I played as a female character and I actually quite liked how they handled it. Historically accurate, no, but there were plenty of references to it throughout the game. Not just a "oh you're a female" at the start of the game and then nothing more. Great for roleplaying. However, with both the female companions, there are parts of the game where there's just a lot of sassy dialogue pertaining to being female. Again, the way the game treated a female main character was fun but in conjunction with the female companions it gets a bit much.

Still, despite the problems I had a lot of fun playing this and I'd say I prefer it to Viking. I also think they actually did a nice job with making the series feel slightly less janky. I was afraid that the higher budget (I assume at least) and publisher would suck the "Expeditions feel" out of the game but I don't think it did at all. Very happy with it overall and will definitely replay at a later date.

 

[Zarniwoop]

I just got to Cleopatra

Interesting choice, having her voiced by an obviously Arab chick.

Interesting bewbs too.

But I can see what others have commented already, the campaign is very repetitive. The strategic map just repeats itself, starting over but with some upgrades to your camp kept. It's more like a new game plus than an ongoing campaign if anything.

 

[Sensuki]

the problem isn't even the combat goals but how overused they are as if they were required to implement them by a manager or something

That's funny because I was actually thinking the same thing. It's very 'process-oriented' from a production point of view. This is the design document these are the parameters, follow these exactly please.

 

[The_Mask]

Average Joe just put up a video for this title. Not saying his opinion is valid. It's probably equal to 0 for everyone here. Just saying it'll add to the sales the game will have because of the exposure. And because he likes the game.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

So played for about 60ish hours now.
Its good, better thsn previous installments imo.

 

[HoboForEternity]

I am im rome, i am disappointed they dont show the communal latrine with shared butt sponge

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium

This is a civilization advanced enough to get running water in toilet, yet share their butt wipes with strangers lol

 

[Rieser]

I am im rome, i am disappointed they dont show the communal latrine with shared butt sponge

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xylospongium

This is a civilization advanced enough to get running water in toilet, yet share their butt wipes with strangers lol

In the middle of the first century Seneca reported that a Germanic gladiator had committed suicide with a sponge on a stick. The Germanic gladiator hid himself in the latrine of an amphitheater and pushed the wooden stick into his gullet and choked to death.

Even then the fucking Germans were into scat so much they literally choked on it.

 

[Starwars]

I do wish the Rome parts of the game had been a bit more... urban-feeling I suppose. That's one thing I missed from Viking. Despite the areas in that game being kinda... to be honest, shitty to explore in a way, due to the engine and overabundance of loot, it was nice that Ribe, York and other places were pretty big places and gave a nice feeling of scale. Rome is too divided into different areas and with too little content, you don't really get a good sense of it as a city. I also wish the time progression of the game had changed stuff in Rome as you come back.

 

[Infinitron]

Oh hey, the dev diaries continue: https://community.expeditionsseries...s/devdiary-17-first-update-after-release-r24/

DevDiary 17 - First Update After Release

Ave, and welcome to another DevDiary – the first one since the glorious release of Expeditions: Rome in fact. We skipped last week due to being rather busy with the launch, but this week we are back to talk about the reception and our support plans.

It’s been hugely exciting for us to finally let you all play the game we’ve been making for the past 3 years. We’re loving the discussions on Steam and Discord, and it’s been particularly fun to see you guys compare notes and gradually realise how far-reaching the effects of your decisions throughout the game can be, and how many things change depending on your choices and even your gender. We’ve spent a little more time than we perhaps should over the weekends watching Cringer, Bikeman, BurkeBlack, CohhCarnage, and others play Expeditions: Rome on Twitch, and chatting to their communities about the game.

All of us at Logic Artists and at THQ Nordic have been very pleased with the game’s reception – the critical reception and the player reactions have both been overwhelmingly positive. There’s no doubt this is the best and most successful game in the Expeditions franchise so far, as we always felt it would be. Thank you from the bottom of our hearts for playing our game!





Since the release, our main priority has been to keep an eye on the reception of the game and what you’re all saying about it, fix the bugs that have surfaced, and make whatever tweaks or improvements we could quickly do to improve the play experience. We’ve worked hard to ensure that we would be releasing a stable and polished game, and it’s very gratifying to see that we haven’t received all that many bug reports. As you may have noticed though, two hotfixes did go out last week to address the few major issues that popped up early on, and a more significant update is currently being tested that will fix many smaller issues and add some quality-of-life improvements overall. That update will be released as soon as we feel certain that it doesn’t introduce any new problems.

One of the major things this update will do is to loosen up the structure of Act 3 a bit. Many players have expressed that the campaign feels too linear and drags on for a bit too long, and we agree. The upcoming update will reduce the amount of mandatory regions you need to capture to complete that campaign, and it will also make it possible to do some of the main missions in a different order, so it isn’t as linear. That way if you just want to get to the finale as fast as possible, you can skip some of the pacification content. If you do decide to stick around and complete your conquest, there’ll be a nice new colour theme available for your legion as a reward for your efforts.



The other major piece of feedback we’ve received is that the legion battles are just super difficult to figure out. A lot of you really want to understand what’s going on under the hood, and the game doesn’t do much to explain. Addressing these issues will take a little longer, so this next update will not have anything for that yet, but we are discussing what to do with the legion battle system in general – how to better communicate what’s going on and what your choices are doing, and how to make it feel less random.

Now that the initial reactionary bug fixing and improvements are done and being tested, we are able to set our sights on the next thing – which leads us to the answer to a question that has been burning on many players’ minds. Expeditions: Rome will have DLC, and we are working on that as we speak. We can’t yet talk about what the DLC is going to be, nor when it will be released, but it’s going to be very cool. For this new piece of content, we have chosen to add something more to the existing game rather than making anything self-contained. It will add something new for you to do as you replay the game’s story to see where other choices would lead you, and it will add new ways for you to engage with the combat system that we are so very proud of.



That’s it for this one! Despite the lack of DevDiary last week we had a great time hanging out with you on Twitch in our usual DevStream timeslot, playing a bit more of Rome, and answer all the questions you guys had for us. Let’s repeat the success this Wednesday, February 2nd at 1:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM GMT at http://twitch.tv/thqnordic. If you have any particularly pressing questions, please remember that you can post them as comments on this article and we will prioritise getting you some answers during the stream.

Valete!

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

They should probably look into balancing the classes better before they add anything to the combat system, because Reaper and Barrage (especially in combination) completely invalidate everything else in the game, while Princeps isn't even a class.

 

[Spectacle]

Whoever the voice actress for Raia is, she does a great job putting on an Annoying Catgirl perfomance.

 

[Infinitron]

https://community.expeditionsseries...s/devdiary-18-legion-battle-improvements-r25/

DevDiary 18 - Legion Battle Improvements

Ave, and welcome to our 18th dev diary – the second after the release of Expeditions: Rome. As we mentioned last week, the first major update is currently undergoing testing. We were hoping to release it last week, but QA did their jobs well and found a new issue that had slipped into the game due to one of our stability fixes, so we had to push the patch until this week so we could get that fixed first and give QA time to re-test the build.

In the meantime, those of us not already working on the first piece of DLC have set our sights on a much-requested set of improvements to a certain system in the game, namely the legion battles.

The legion battle system has been a challenge right from the start. We knew we wanted to represent the large-scale battles of a Roman legion somehow, and give the player a feeling of being a grand strategy commander handing out orders from on high, but at the same time we didn’t want to cram a whole wargame into our tactical RPG. During the prototyping phase we intended battles to simply be resolved by a die roll based on the strength of each army – but it seemed too simple. Later we briefly considered representing it by a re-interpretation of a Roman dice game called Tali – but we decided that would be far too abstract. We knew we needed to do something that would sell the fantasy without ballooning out of scope to take over the whole project.

What we settled on was a resource management system where you balance your losses against the risk to your centurions, a desire to scatter the enemy troops, the likelihood of getting some loot out of it, the morale and experience of your legion, and so on. Success is still essentially a dice roll based on your legion’s strength compared to the enemy army, and you would always be able to win as long as you paid just a little bit of attention. However, you would have some control over how well you come out of it in the end: how great your losses, how good your loot, and whether the enemy survivors would retreat to fight another day.



Now that the game has been out for a few weeks, it's clear that the system was not received well. Although Expeditions: Rome is a premium single player game, we’re committed to giving it the post-release support it needs to remain an excellent and beloved game for years to come, and the big thing we need to address is how to make this legion battle system more interesting.

There are limits to what we can do. We are still not planning to turn this into a real-time grand strategy game. It must remain a relatively minor part of the game loop that doesn’t overstay its welcome and get too much in the way of the core gameplay of Rome.

We have perused all your feedback and identified the following two major criticisms: First, it’s too difficult to understand what’s going on and how it works; second, it feels random, not giving you enough agency over the outcome of battles especially in the beginning before you have a chance to unlock new stratagems and level up your centurions.



With that in mind, we’ve decided to make the following changes. First, we will remove the “challenges” that pop up during each phase of a battle. These are the “attacks” and “defences” you see getting either succeeded or failed by your chosen commander, based on his character class and his command specialisations. This will also have the benefit of making each phase shorter, for those who don’t wish to skip them entirely.

To replace this system, we plan to add new trackers that compare how many points your centurions have in each specialisation compared to the enemy commander. To refresh your memory, the specialisations are Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery, and Logistics. Each specialisation your centurions have will be added to your count, and your chosen commander will get their specialisations doubled for this purpose. The enemy’s specialisations are deducted from your count, and each tracker can go into the negative this way. To help you visualise it, here is an early mock-up of what two of these trackers may look like in the UI. Each line marks a point where a new effect will be unlocked:

Spoiler

In each subsequent phase, every stratagem you play will add points to or remove points from these trackers. This will simplify the stratagem cards as well, reducing the plethora of largely unexplained effects to a combination of specialisation points. The enemy will also play stratagems that affect these trackers, and you will be able to see at least some of what the enemy is going to do before you make your own choice.

At certain tiers, each tracker unlocks a new effect: a bonus to your defence or aggression, a new loot crate, a morale bonus, ultimately even forcing the enemy army to scatter rather than retreating. This means the new system allows you to aim for tangible goals: rather than a card just making you lose slightly less manpower, you might be trying to build up to reach a certain tier of Artillery in order to unlock a particular effect, and which cards you draw in the following phase will determine whether you succeed or fail. Inspecting these effects and deciding what to aim for based on what the enemy seems to be focusing on, and what stratagems are at your disposal, will give you a better sense that you’re formulating and following an overall strategy, and that you’re going up against another commander with their own strategy.

To give you some idea of what these effects could look like, here’s a screenshot directly from the design document. Please note that this is extremely work in progress, subject to all sorts of pending iterations, and reproduced here over the dead body of the technical designer (he will be missed):



Since we’re removing the challenges that were formerly based in part on the chosen commander’s class, each class will instead apply a specific overall bonus to the outcome of the battle, similar to how certain perks (namely Cautious, Reckless, and Medicus) already add specific bonuses or penalties to a battle when a character with those perks is selected. These bonuses will not only be more significant and tangible than the previous effect of the commander’s class, but will also be completely orthogonal to the specialisations, creating more variation in possible outcomes based on who you choose to command the battle.

In addition to these core changes, we have a few minor tweaks planned. First of all, losing battles will now affect the legion’s Morale directly: before, the morale effect was tied to the specific set of stratagems you would have to choose from if you lost a battle, but this just seems like the game is forcing you to make a bad choice. Simpler to just deduct the Morale directly if you lose. Second, winning a battle will always give the legion Experience. In the current system, Legion Experience is based on relative losses during a fight: if you loose 100 more manpower than you kill, you lose 10 Experience, and vice versa. However, losing Experience feels bad, so we’ll remove that.



And finally, this is not a simplification but rather an effort to bring the system in line with expectations and with the core fantasy: attrition during each phase (how many men you lose or enemies you kill) will be based on the relative active manpower of each side, rather than now where it is essentially a predefined random range that increases in each phase.

Once we have these changes in place, we need to test it and iterate on it, paying special attention to how well we explain how the system works and what you as the player should be thinking about during a battle. Though we are removing some of the more confusing aspects of the system, we are adding new elements to it as well, and we want to make it clear this time what’s going on during each phase and how your decisions have affected the outcome.



We’d love to hear what you think of these changes. Please leave your comments and questions below and we will be guaranteed to read them. We will as always have a Dev Stream on Twitch this Wednesday, February 9th at 1:00 PM Eastern / 6:00 PM GMT at http://twitch.tv/thqnordic, where Senior Producer Brad Logston will host Creative Director Jonas Wæver to talk about our plans for this system and what other things we’re working on for future updates. We will answer any questions left on this diary, and we’ll of course try to answer any other questions you throw at us during the stream.

Until then, Valete!

 

[Larianshill]

Legion mechanics were an afterthought I didn't bother with in the release version, and I don't think it will change much when I replay the final one.

 

[The_Mask]

That lil spreadsheet makes things a LOT clearer.

 

[The Wall]

At least we got bunch of artwork from this game and Cleopatra's tiddies. Both are beautiful and historical

 

[Shrimp]

Legion battles definitely felt like one of those "we just put it in because it's cool and more importantly easy to implement" kind of game mechanic.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Sadly, E:R followed in Shitmaker's footsteps with a lot of terrible design decisions. Most RPGs can't even get the base RPG gameplay right? Ok, let's add gameplay from another genre for kicks!

 

[Sensuki]

Yeah seems like RPGs that have tried to do a minigame battle system in the past decade have not been able to pull it off. Minigames in RPGs in general tend to be ehhh at best I'd say.

There was one moment I liked and that Lucullus teaches you a specific one-time use tactic that allows you to win one battle and it's a battle that you pretty much can't win otherwise. That made sense from a story point of view (but no C&C there really).

It would have probably made more sense to make the RPG part of the game directly relate to winning the battles rather than them being pretty much disconnected eg you do some questing or missions with your praetorians to get the army into good shape and get some local info / advantage with some C&C involved about how it goes etc

 

[Larianshill]

There was one moment I liked and that Lucullus teaches you a specific one-time use tactic that allows you to win one battle and it's a battle that you pretty much can't win otherwise. That made sense from a story point of view (but no C&C there really).

I don't remember that.

 

[Sensuki]

I think you get that 'reward' from a sidequest where you buy him some nice wine. I'm playing on Insane difficulty so I assume that the minigame battles are a bit harder numbers wise on that. I think my chance to win the battle without use of that tactic was 6% or something.

 

[Shrimp]

In this old forum post from the Expeditions: Vikings Steam discussion boards Jonas says they plan on leaning more towards systems-driven gameplay in their next game as a way of reducing the production cost.
I think legion battles might be one of these features. They appear somewhat frequently throughout the entire game but the gameplay part of it mainly consists of navigating a series of different interfaces, so it probably didn't cost too much to develop.