Octopus Overlords

gbasden wrote:OK, I really should get this with the way you all are talking about it. I have to admit I'm turned off by the incredibly minimal graphics, though. Why is everyone missing their legs? From the video, it doesn't look like attacks are modelled at all? How do I know who is doing what to whom?

Think of them as meeples with a tiny bit of personality.

The attacks are minimally modeled as well, is in you only see models shake and results of damage or missles flying. The game is much more war gamer abstracty than it is traditional video game. It was probably both stylized decision and a decision to make creating the game easier. I'm OK with it but if that's a turn off, then this would be a major strike against the game for you.

LordMortis wrote:The attacks are minimally modeled as well, is in you only see models shake and results of damage or missles flying.

Also, the way the game models all the damage that your brothers take is very clever. Every injury that they take in battle is reflected on their bodies so you can see at a glance when fighting how injured they are. This also includes damage to armor. It's pretty clever. I was initially put off by the busts for characters but I understand why they did it given they had one artist and it really didn't bother me at all once I started playing. The art itself in the game is excellent, as is the music.

ColdSteel wrote:

LordMortis wrote:The attacks are minimally modeled as well, is in you only see models shake and results of damage or missles flying.

Also, the way the game models all the damage that your brothers take is very clever. Every injury that they take in battle is reflected on their bodies so you can see at a glance when fighting how injured they are.

This ensures combat is fair, as there are no hits "below the belt".

I actually save enough to buy billhook, 30 days in. Oi. I'm wondering about builds and equipment now.

I find the pitchforks work surprisingly well when matched with the right guy.


Edit: Just tried to load my old campaign and it's not compatible! Oh good!

Went after 15 wimpy bandits 12 more wimpy bandits joined them for a total of 27. I was a pin cushion to lines I couldn't flank to get at their archers.

That'll learn me for thinking I'm bandit wimpy bandit invulnerable.

Up to day 61 and I've found my first piece of special equipment, a 300 defense helm with -3 vision and I've managed to buy 2 noble swords, 2 bill hooks, and two war bows. Most of main lines are at or approaching level 7.

I'm ascared that if day 75 is when the end game events start I'm in trouble but we'll see.

LordMortis wrote:I've found my first piece of special equipment, a 300 defense helm with -3 vision

Wow, that's sweet. What's the fatigue cost on that? The vision is okay as long as you have some keen eyed archers to spot for you.

The special events can start at any time after day 50, really. It depends on your renown and some other factors to kick it off (maybe contracts completed?). I'm up around turn 40 on a veteran level game with 'war' as the endgame crisis. Can't wait to see how that goes. I haven't been able to find any exceptional hires this game. They're all pretty meh so things could get dicey later on.

It's called "unruly helm with coif" and the fatigue is -15. I don't tend to think about fatigue hits as I take brawny on all melee guys pretty quick and seem to take fatigue as a stat boost on most level ups as well. I rarely take defense and I think I should probably change the philosophy... But defense always seems to be +2 or +3 at best and there are always nice +4 and +5 to think about.

I read a bit of spoiler on the crisis, and they recommend you choose faction war first because

It's amazing how much has changed since the big change. For the better I might add. Now I can start at easier levels. And those weird Roman zombies, plus more money.

They just put out a new patch that allows you to see the map seed so you can share it with others or replay the map later. That should help a lot with the worldgen inconsistences. Also, a fix for the ruined cities issue. So, some really good stuff in there.

Changelog
• Added map seed that can be entered upon starting a new campaign, and seen for ongoing campaigns created after this update, for replaying and sharing maps.
• Added checkbox for 'Permanent Destruction' during late game crises when starting a new campaign. It's checked by default to work how you're used to. Unchecking it will result in settlements getting the 'Razed' situation for a considerable time instead of being permanently destroyed.
• Added warning prompt for users of Avast due to compatibility issues introduced with one of their latest updates.
• Changed game to unpause only after autosaving is completed when leaving towns in ironman mode, so no time on the worldmap is wasted.
• Fixed issue with the game potentially hanging in some cases as characters rise from the dead during the Undead Scourge.
• Fixed AI not using the 'Footwork' skill properly in some cases.
• Fixed issue with 'Decisive Battle' contract.
• Fixed issue with 'Privateering' contract.
• Fixed various minor issues.

Anyplace to get good seeds from yet?

Lorini wrote:Anyplace to get good seeds from yet?

http://www.alliedseed.com/

I had no idea the there were world generation problems. What was so bad? Was I lucky and never saw crappy worlds or unlucky and just accepted a sub par world every time and assumed everything was OK.

LordMortis wrote:just accepted a sub par world every time and assumed everything was OK

This one would be my guess. Worlds can vary widely from great to terrible in layout.

Lorini wrote:Anyplace to get good seeds from yet?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/d ... 442667345/

https://www.reddit.com/r/BattleBrothers ... seed_bank/

https://imgur.com/a/DmfmN

LordMortis wrote:I had no idea the there were world generation problems. What was so bad? Was I lucky and never saw crappy worlds or unlucky and just accepted a sub par world every time and assumed everything was OK.

I had one world that was three very long peninsulas that the had only roadless mountain ranges connecting them. Insta-Reload. Most are not that bad though and I tend to play what I'm given most of the time.

Archinerd wrote:

LordMortis wrote:I had no idea the there were world generation problems. What was so bad? Was I lucky and never saw crappy worlds or unlucky and just accepted a sub par world every time and assumed everything was OK.

I had one world that was three very long peninsulas that the had only roadless mountain ranges connecting them. Insta-Reload. Most are not that bad though and I tend to play what I'm given most of the time.

I've accepted bad connections. The worst world I saw was two towns on islands. Fuck that noise. One island town is annoying but acceptable. Two is simply untenable for my enjoyment.

I had an interesting situation the other day. My crew took a contract to clean out a site full of ghouls. I was almost to the site and suddenly a big pack of brigand raiders popped out of the surrounding hills and began chasing me. At the time I only had nine men in my company and the raiders had a leader so I was like 'well crap'. I paused the game and thought for a minute and decided to give something a try.

I was almost at the ghoul lair so I ran behind it and waited. Sure enough, the raiders made a beeline right for me, passing directly over the lair. As soon as they were right on top of it, I attacked. Sure enough, the raiders and the ghouls were all drawn into the battle. The ghouls started in the north part of the map and the raiders and I were faced off east and west below them. The ghouls moved first straight south and the raider leader and the next heaviest armored raider which had both moved to get around my north flank were caught up with battling ghouls.

So, I spent the first part of the battle taking out the remaining raiders and taking potshots at the ghouls to the north with my archers. One armored raider killed one or two ghouls before he was overwhelmed but the raider leader, who was completely surrounded by ghouls held out for a long, long time and killed a lot of them. They finally killed him right after I finished mopping up the rest of his raiders. Of course, by that time, some of the ghouls had feasted on bodies and grown bigger and two of them grew into the big boys that swallow your men. But there weren't that many of them left. The battle ended with the last one swallowing one of my men while were had him completely surrounded. He couldn't run though so he was easily killed and the man inside was no worse for wear afterwards.

So, I fulfilled the contract and got some nice raider loot all at the same time. All thanks to a little help for the ghouls. It's nice that there is at least some world map battle strategies like this that you can employ.

Cool!

I convinced some undead to help me fight direwolves using a similar strategy once. The loot was crap but all my guys survived.

Well, time to start a new merc band. All of my level 6-8's were wiped out by 8 Necrosavants last night. I killed 5 of them but my men were too exhausted and wounded to keep going. They started picking us off one by one and I just couldn't get enough damage on the savants before they healed up. My dogs running around after their handlers died wasn't doing me any favors either.

I started a new band as well. I wanted to try some of the stuff in this strategy manifesto:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/365360/di ... 090901828/

Archinerd wrote:Well, time to start a new merc band. All of my level 6-8's were wiped out by 8 Necrosavants last night. I killed 5 of them but my men were too exhausted and wounded to keep going. They started picking us off one by one and I just couldn't get enough damage on the savants before they healed up. My dogs running around after their handlers died wasn't doing me any favors either.

I've never faced more than one at a time. Does that mean I'm nowhere near crisis?
Oi.

LordMortis wrote:I've never faced more than one at a time. Does that mean I'm nowhere near crisis?

I don't think it has anything to do with the crisis. When you have them mixed in with other undead types there tends to be just one or two of them. But they also run together in roaming packs. I was attacked by a roaming pack of 5 near an undead site I found. Needless to say, after fighting them I left the site alone and got the heck out of there. There might have been a bunch more in the site. I sure wasn't about to find out.

I poked my head into an old castle without knowing what was in there. It was a risk and I knew it, but I told myself it would be okay because it had gone alright every other time I had done it.

The enemies in the release version really are a lot deadlier than in the previous beta versions. Those raider marksmen in particular I hate. They manage to hit me almost every time and they just rip my men up. I'm beginning to dread big raider battles that include 4 or more of those.

ColdSteel wrote:The enemies in the release version really are a lot deadlier than in the previous beta versions. Those raider marksmen in particular I hate. They manage to hit me almost every time and they just rip my men up. I'm beginning to dread big raider battles that include 4 or more of those.

Yeah, my back lines take wounds all of the time from marksmen. I really need to up their defense but I don't...

I'm on the beanie level and the bad guys are less hard.
Thank goodness.

I'm on day 25 in my current veteran game. I just got a sweet unique helmet from a "Mass Grave" site that was crawling with undead. I'd gotten rumors in taverns that the site contained a gemmed sword but it ended up being a helmet. Though, I did get a contract to recover something from the site and when I went there, there was an ancient sword there which I also took. I expected to have to fight for the sword but I was able to take the quest item and the ancient sword and leave unmolested.

I then went back to the site and fought the undead there and got the below helmet. Also note that my guy has a greatsword. I got a funeral event while traveling and elected to take the sword. So all in all, I'm in good shape for just being day 25.

That's the same image as my helm. I've never been to a location and not had to fight.

So you have the base version of the helmet, awesome. Would you mind posting what the stats are on the one you have? I figure the unique version I have must either have a higher durability number or less fatigue. I would bet it's higher durability since the 281 durability mine has is not a nice round number.

Mine is also unique. If the same as your but with 300 defense.

-15 fatigue. He gets a swing every other turn?

LordMortis wrote:Mine is also unique. If the same as your but with 300 defense.

And yours also has one less stamina than mine. Looks like I got the lower end of the RNG on it. Still, it's far better than any other helmet I have. And it looks very cool.

dbt1949 wrote:-15 fatigue. He gets a swing every other turn?

Actually 15 is great on a heavy armor helmet like this. Brawny and Battle Forged skills take care of it.

SO i picked this up last week, and my god is it fun. It has swallowed up my gaming time like no one's business. Fun as heck if you like this stuff. I've had to restart about 3 times, twice due to lackluster maps and once as a learning game. But once I started figuring out how to use the perks, its become a real joy.

On a sad note, i just had a small portion of my squad forced into early retirement. They had hit level 5 but had received some nasty wounds. So they got he privilege of being the the absolute center of my formation and were given honorable deaths. Unfortunately some of em had the dont die on the first death perk, and survived a few battles longer than i'd anticipated. Also doesn't hurt that they were eating up cash, since one of em was a witch hunter at 20 gold a day.

Newcastle wrote:Unfortunately some of em had the dont die on the first death perk

If you're talking about "Survivor" rather than "9 Lives" then that's a great perk if you get some luck with it. In a previous game one of my founding bros had the Survivor perk and he apparently died twice but came back both times due to the perk. I was lucky that he had permanent injuries that didn't gimp him (loss of initiative and some HP) so he continued being one of my best fighters and survived the whole game.

Glad you like the game. For people that like this genre, it's fantastic.

ColdSteel wrote:

Newcastle wrote:Unfortunately some of em had the dont die on the first death perk

If you're talking about "Survivor" rather than "9 Lives" t

Its the cat icon, so i assume 9 lives.

Still am enjoying the heck out of this. I can only hope that the devs can add some solid dlc/content for it. They have a solid base to work with and really would love to see them expand the game and add more depth. But for 30 bucks its well worth it. There are things they can do better, ui sorting, smoothing of the ui screes, a better inventory system (ie make a sell category, so you can toss things in it and wont clog up the rest of your stuff.

I am about 70 days or so into the new start, and i am thinking about restarting. Mainly because I want to optimize a bit better at the start. I am starting to think that your starting units should always get either that 9 lives perk or the pathfinder one or the bonus xp one as a starting perk. The bonus xp, especially on units you want to groom into heavy hitters. I've gotten pretty good at picking up guys, i tend to gravitate to those who have intriguing stories and backgrounds. I just picked up a beggar (4 gold a day) who has starting stats at 50ish on both melee and range, as well as 2 stars in both. Also has a star in melee defense. Gonna baby that guy as he grows up though.

Finally beat a game of this last night!
It's not the greatest achievement ever though as I was playing on Beginner difficulty. I did have ironman enabled though. My Crisis was the Noble House War, which I somehow won itself. I had participated in a few battles earlier but at the time of my victory I wasn't actively working on it or taking any contracts to forward my Allied House's agenda. So, a bit anticlimactic.

I'm still going with the company but I think I may retire them and start a new game. I want to try a few new things and would like to try playing at a higher difficulty again... but I'm a bit attached to some of them. Still, I think it's best.

Archinerd wrote:Finally beat a game of this last night!
It's not the greatest achievement ever though as I was playing on Beginner difficulty. I did have ironman enabled though. My Crisis was the Noble House War, which I somehow won itself. I had participated in a few battles earlier but at the time of my victory I wasn't actively working on it or taking any contracts to forward my Allied House's agenda. So, a bit anticlimactic.

I'm still going with the company but I think I may retire them and start a new game. I want to try a few new things and would like to try playing at a higher difficulty again... but I'm a bit attached to some of them. Still, I think it's best.

The wiki suggests you will see all of the crisiseses eventually, or it did when I read it a while ago.

Spoiler?

Checks again...

http://battlebrothers.wikia.com/wiki/Late_Game_Crises

LordMortis wrote:

Archinerd wrote:Finally beat a game of this last night!
It's not the greatest achievement ever though as I was playing on Beginner difficulty. I did have ironman enabled though. My Crisis was the Noble House War, which I somehow won itself. I had participated in a few battles earlier but at the time of my victory I wasn't actively working on it or taking any contracts to forward my Allied House's agenda. So, a bit anticlimactic.

I'm still going with the company but I think I may retire them and start a new game. I want to try a few new things and would like to try playing at a higher difficulty again... but I'm a bit attached to some of them. Still, I think it's best.

The wiki suggests you will see all of the crisiseses eventually, or it did when I read it a while ago.

Spoiler?

Checks again...

http://battlebrothers.wikia.com/wiki/Late_Game_Crises

I think you are right.
Too late though, I retired my company.