Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by dbt1949 »

A couple of months ago I started using their editor and was finally able to start holding my own. It's a little tricky to use and hard to get the really good equipment but it's good enough for me now.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

NickAragua wrote: Thu Jan 24, 2019 9:22 pm I'm already seeing 12 mods on NexusMods: https://www.nexusmods.com/battlebrother ... +this+week
Alp nerf & Hexen nerf both look good to me. Those will still be tough battles even with those changes.
Tryout Talents also looks like a nice improvement. The tryout option wasn't really worth the gold for the amount of info you got before.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

Another DLC announced, Warriors of the North.
Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:

-A variety of new human opponents with their own fighting style and equipment, providing a fresh challenge at every stage of the game, including the late game
-Different origins to pick for your company, each with different starting characters, equipment and circumstances, as well as special rules that impact your campaign from beginning to end
-New nordic and rus inspired banners, armors and helmets
-A new legendary location
-New contracts
-New events
No release date yet, but they anticipate it being out in "a few months".

I'm excited.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by NickAragua »

I picked the Warriors of the North DLC up and started up another company. Well, three companies that got massacred within a couple of days of starting out, then one more company ("Reaper's Due") which actually did pretty well. Lasted about 80 days, then took a caravan escort job south-to-north. Mostly nothing happened until a whole shit-ton of barbarians attacked us, two separate groups.

First, a bunch of Chosen. Barbarian Chosen are heavily armored, and love their two-handed weapons - axes, giant skull clubs, etc. "Just" five of them, against my twelve (nine battle-hardened veterans and three fresh meat). I get into my standard enclosed shield wall formation, and two of the Chosen charge up the front, while the other three run around the south and north. It starts off well, one of my crossbow guys gets a leg injury in on one of them, slowing him down. Then they start hitting us. One swing from an axe, and two of my guys are down to near zero health. One of the guys swinging around the south gets a two-fer on the caravan guards, while the guy in the north shrugs off the ineffectual attacks of the two caravan guys and takes their heads off. We manage to kill the two beefcakes attacking our front line, then the other three, but we lose four guys, with three more heavily injured.

Then the regular barbs attack, with their dogs and the no shirts. We have no chance - gaps in the formation, etc. The company rallies around the sergeant's banner, falling one by one, but in the end, we get overwhelmed. The sergeant and the last of the three founders are the last to go down, the founder picking off three dogs with the heavy crossbow, while the sergeant stabs at least four guys to death with that flag.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

I've started a new merc company too, using the Peasant Militia start.
Only 3 days in but we're doing all right. One of the crappy guys got eaten by a spider and a Barbarian Thrall gave another of my bros a chest wound but the company is starting to cheer up and everybody has a weapon now.

Hopefully this does well enough that they will do at least one more DLC. I'd like them to flesh out the non-combatant support roles a bit.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by LordMortis »

New DLC coming... I haven't yet bought the last one. :o

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3653 ... _Brothers/

Here’s the rough list of features we’re aiming for:


A realm of independent southern city-states with their own lore, equipment and services, as well as entirely new character backgrounds to recruit
A new late game crisis that tests the mettle of your company in the fires of religious turmoil
A gallery of company feats that grant permanent boons with which to customize your company to your playstyle as you progress throughout your campaign
A variety of new opponents with their own fighting styles - from exotic beasts to desert raiders and southern armies quite unlike those in the north
New environments both on the world map and in tactical combat
Several new origins to pick for your company for a different campaign experience
New banners, weapons, armors and helmets inspired by historic Arabian and Persian cultures of the medieval ages
New legendary locations and legendary rewards
New contracts and events
New crafting recipes for owners of the ‘Beasts & Exploration’ DLC
Several new music tracks by Breakdown Epiphanies to accompany you on your travels south



In addition to these major features, the DLC will also include countless smaller additions. Just like in the past, we’ll explain all major features and most minor ones in detail in future dev blogs as we go along, so you’ll always know what we’re working on and why. We expect to be finished sometime in Q2 of this year and will announce a release date and final feature list once we’re closer to the finish line.

Alongside the DLC, which will not be free, the game will also receive a sizable free update again. This update will contain a whole bunch of improvements, quality-of-life features and balancing changes, as well as some minor content additions.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

Yeah, I'm excited for it.
Not the focus I would have preferred but there is no way I'm going to pass this up.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by LordMortis »

If you run into a group of Lindwurms and nebakanezers, Let them fight each other. Don't get involved until they are done.

That's all I have to say about that.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by NickAragua »

Every time a new DLC for this comes out, I swear to myself that I'll make a run through a full campaign.

Then when it does, I start it up and start leveling my guys up, getting up to chainmail and stuff like that, then wind up taking a contract that's harder than I expected and either all my guys die or get maimed.

I should stop playing ironman.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

Okay, I admit. I play ironman but I do cheat a little and alt f4 sometimes.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Paingod »

I picked up the expansions for this last week after owning the base game by itself for some time. I've been enjoying it more than before.

Historically, I'd want to get into this game but have a hard time of it. Inevitably there would be a fight/contract/event that would just put me off playing. Usually around days 15-20. I'd have a number of worthwhile people, but not a lot of great gear, and then we'd get smeared hard. I'd get frustrated and put it down but never come back.

This time I've opted to try more patience and it's worked. I also followed a guide on gaming the difficulty algorithm a little by keeping my team to 8 or less until day 20 and then slowly building up. My team is all 6th/7th level with a few below as I add them. The new monsters add a bit of flavor I felt the game really needed.

The things I've encountered so far...
Spoiler:
  • Nomads: A gooey treat of experience and crud gear to resell.
  • Brigands: The average human opponent in degrees of difficulty, from fodder to challenge.
  • Barbarians: Lower armor, but in love with throwing axes and spears.
  • Spiders: Fairly easy to kill, try and keep your team together and focus-fire. Shields up.
  • Goblins: Quick, love ranged weapons. They seem to swarm.
  • Dire Wolves: Thank goodness they come in small numbers. Try and stay at least 1 space away so they don't hit 3 times.
  • Zombies: Chewy and resurrecty. It makes for longer fights, and Necromancers are obnoxious.
  • Ancient Undead: Crunchy and sometimes hard to kill.
  • Orcs: Not your Tolkien variety. These buggers are mean and brutal combatants. Focus-fire the Berserkers!
  • Serpents: It's probably best to rush them and swap out your archers to have shields. Beware in large numbers.
  • Ifriit: Interesting foes, best to kill them in their larger forms to whittle them down quickly.
  • Nightmares: Somewhat annoying. Keep your soldiers together and stay awake!
  • Ogre-Trolls: What's not to love about regenerating mountains that smash and scatter your soldiers?
  • Late Entry: Schrats. Ents with built-in shields on them.
  • Late Entry: Hags. Charming! Better have that Resolution up there.
  • Late Entry: Hyena. Dire Wolves of the deserts.
  • Late Entry: Lindworm. I'm very glad I simply watched an NPC patrol fight these and then jumped in to finish them after the patrol died.
I admit that I'm not playing on Ironman, but am playing on Veteran. It just isn't much fun to lose troops in a game where gear and experience make such a huge difference. I'll suffer the occasional loss to pass a hard fight, but not the foolish "Whoops, your best guy just got randomly decapitated!" events. Having the Blacksmith in your Retinue helps mitigate the gear loss concerns.

*Edit: 2020-11-13: Schrats. Ents, basically, but meaner. There's a trick to killing them.
Spoiler:
Schrats have been noted as possibly being one of the hardest enemies in the game. They have a "line" attack with tremendous armor piercing ability that easily cripples the Brothers; it will hit three tiles in a row and they're immune to it. They start with a "Shielded" trait. Shielded prevents them from taking more than a few points of damage from even the hardest hits. To rip this off and get to the chewy center, you've got to use Shield Breaking attacks - maces and axes usually have these. Simply wailing away with an axe isn't going to do it. Once you've broken through the shield, use one-handed weapons to knock them down quickly. Hitting them too hard causes a Splinter to spawn in an open hex, which acts like a mini Schrat and complicates things.
  • Step 1: Split the Schrats up. Try and get them separated by a few tiles or more and lock them down. What you don't want is two Schrats overlapping their attacks on the same Brother. Nor do you want two Brothers in line with each other for double-damage.
  • Step 2: Break their shielding. It takes maybe 3 or 4 Shield Breaker attacks with a regular Hatchet or one good swing with a War Axe or Orc War Axe.
  • Step 3: Focus on hit light and fast. With the shield down, they can be hit hard enough to knock off splinters. Just about any Polearm class weapon will do this. Most smaller weapons, like Boar Spears or Arming Swords, do not.
  • Step 4: The Splinters. If you were silly enough to hit them hard enough to knock one off, these little buggers will create some problems - but they're not the primary objective and fall with a couple good hits. Sometimes one comes off as the Schrat dies, too. It's entirely possible for them to easily murder a weakened Brother, though.
Thankfully Schrats have crap attack ratings and will miss your Brothers half the time or more, which is why it's important to keep them out of line formations or overlapping ranges. Once you break the Shield, it only takes a couple turns with 4 or 5 Brothers whittling away on it to knock one down. One person online advocated using War Dogs in abundance instead of Brothers, but admitted that it was usually a financial loss to do so as the dogs died easily if they were hit. Still, if you need the Crafting ingredients they drop...

You will leave this fight bloodied and crippled, and likely missing one or two people unless you got lucky or did some good repositioning to safety.
A cheesy tip, too.
Spoiler:
If you have a large enemy to deal with - either numerically or powerful - try leading it around and look for a friendly patrol. Start the fight near the patrol (almost on top of it) and they should join in. Double the fun!
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by dbt1949 »

I've finally got back to playing this...........on the beginner level.
This time I've lasted long enough to have one of my Brothers at level 9 and the rest 6-7.
I wish I could arm most of my men with the 3 headed flail and the ball and chain gizmo.
The last one can take out armored enemies with one hit. Have to rest every few turns tho.
From what I've been reading I guess there is no endgame, just play till you drop and start over.
I've faced those giant green snake thingies. Really tough. Fortunately only 5 at a time so far.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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dbt1949 wrote: Fri Nov 13, 2020 6:55 pmI wish I could arm most of my men with the 3 headed flail and the ball and chain gizmo. The last one can take out armored enemies with one hit.
I've given all of my front-line soldiers (sword & shield) the extra inventory slots skill from level 1 and the Quick Swap skill from level 2. They all carry four weapons. Spears for a spear wall phalanx, cleavers for trolls/unarmored/beheading, flails for crushing headshots, and axes for shields/ents. The last bag slot is set aside for Bandages so they don't bleed out. It's a pretty good general assortment of items. I try and keep all the items I may need in those slots so I don't have to clutter my Stash too much - like a sword and shield on my archers, for example, for the rare times when they might get pushed up accidentally (like when fighting desert Snakes or if something jumps behind my front line).

On Veteran I've found that the damage skills take back seat to movement and survival skills.
Tier 1: Nine Lives, Bags & Belts, Pathfinder, Recover
Tier 2: Quick Hands
Tier 3: Shield Expert, Rotation, Rally the Troops
Tier 4: Weapon skills, great to have but secondary to living
Tier 5: Footwork
Tier 6: Nimble for Archers & Pikemen, Battle Forged for the front lines
Tier 7: Indomitable

I tend to focus early levels on preferred Attack skill, Melee or Ranged defense based on line position, getting HP to 60, getting Resolve to 50, and then working up Fatigue.

I have one guy right now that's level 9 and he's a monster with an 85 melee skill. I've given him my best armor and helmet along with whatever might be appropriate for 2H melee. I've lost a smattering of others and hired on quite a few. I'm up over Day 100 and in the middle of the Noble House wars.

My favorite moment from recent play is assisting a siege and blocking an enemy force with allied help. During the fight one of the allied shield bearers got beat up pretty hard and decided to Rotate the pikeman (MINE) behind him up to the front line to save his own life. I swore at that asshole pretty hard and pushed him back up at the first opportunity, where he was promptly cut down.

Rally the Troops is essential for instances where morale is challenged. The last thing you want is someone trying to flee and getting hit twice for free, killing them. This becomes even more crucial when fighting Wights (Banshees).
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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I've been reading that the sword isn't as good for late game. Higher chance to hit but not much damage. I have found this true. Now I go with flails and 2handed axes mostly. Cleavers are pretty good too. Added a couple of more bowmen for the second line.
I picked up the Northmen DLC. Adds quite a bit. The other DLCs will have to wait until I see how well I like this one.
With the addition of the DLCs my olde campaigns became obsolete as the new content required a new campaign. I was up to something over 2-300 days and had finished the Great Houses war.
Was playing on veteran too. I didn't like that so back to beginner!
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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Yeah, around Day 60 I stopped wanting to use Swords in general. Light and easy to swing, but lackluster in effects. They didn't cripple or bleed enough and couldn't push through heavier armor for beans. Useful against animals, but then a cleaver is more useful. The cleaver can ensure those zombies never come back from the grave, too - as well as negating the regen of the trolls you face by making them bleed out constantly.

Spears also kind of wane later when enemies have a lot of defense and Spearwall doesn't repel them most of the time. It does still force a lot of things to pause, though, so it's actually good for crowd control if not damage. Buys a turn or two to whittle down other things that did charge in. I've had Barbarians in heavy armor spend several turns skirting around a single guy on a hill with a spear to try and get to my archers. By the time they could, their friends were dead and I could focus on them.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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Met my first orc warlord today Hope it's my last.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by LordMortis »

I don't know what defines late game but I like swords. I tend to have 1 two handed sword user and two or three sword and shield user. My memory is they don't exhaust as fast as their higher damage counterparts and depending on that counter take less AP.

to where I was when last I played my difficulties were mainly the nightmares and the wyrms. Everyone else was doable enough. I don't know how far I was from my first calamity event and I know I hadn't seen the most difficult creatures from the iteration I had played before (vampires).
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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LordMortis wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:26 pm I don't know what defines late game but I like swords. I tend to have 1 two handed sword user and two or three sword and shield user. My memory is they don't exhaust as fast as their higher damage counterparts and depending on that counter take less AP.
Swords do tend to be lighter, but they don't excel at any particular thing. I suppose you could call them the general tool of warfare. They don't cause a lot of bleeding, but they can bleed. They don't create a lot of wounds, but they can wound. They don't ruin armor but they can penetrate some of it. I just find that general tools aren't as good as purpose-built ones. I pull out the Cleavers to bleed out trolls and decapitate undead. I pull out Hammers to smash armor into pulp. I pull out Axes to split shields.

The two-handed swords are nice, though, in that they have a "line" attack and a "sweep" attack, but I wasn't overwhelmed by either. I've been using a 2H Orc Axe on my front-line brute (he gets two swings every 3 turns, but that's enough to wreck enemy lines), as well as the 2H steel maces with Reach found on the desert Nomads.
LordMortis wrote: Thu Nov 19, 2020 5:26 pmto where I was when last I played my difficulties were mainly the nightmares and the wyrms. Everyone else was doable enough. I don't know how far I was from my first calamity event and I know I hadn't seen the most difficult creatures from the iteration I had played before (vampires).
The Nightmares are annoying, but workable as long as you keep your soldiers clustered and waking each other up. Stay a couple paces away from them and they have to move to put you to sleep, which makes it impossible for them to then hurt you in the same turn.

Wyrms, though... nope. Only time I "fought" two of these, I watched them massacre a patrol of heavily armored soldiers and took enough pot-shots that when the soldiers had all died I had to hit each one a couple times to fell them. They're probably intended to be shield-blocked by heavy defense and killed by Reach weapons, given the acid spray with each up-close hit.

My first Calamity was at Day 80.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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I wish they would add statistics. Like number of killed by brother and group. What type etc.
It does seem odd in this day and age there are no "sisters". Altho the chauvinist in my says no thanks.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

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Bought the last DLC a week ago and this got its hooks into me again. I seem to suck worse at it than I used to. I can't get any sort of start by day 20 and by then the game is starting to advance.

I've still yet to finish a first major event. Last time in 2020(?) I was almost to the Nobles at War ending when I got distracted. (Before that I made to almost to undead ending and got distracted) Now they've added a whole new southern area and North vs South first ending in addition to the Nobles at War ending.

Not sure what is really added yet. There is more variety to early foes and equipment but variety is largely cosmetic in nature. There are now thrown "bombs" which I've had powders used on me but have not actually bought any.

Anyhoo, I haven't sat to play games in a while as I'm trying to stay more physically active, so I tried not playing any game that would have me sitting in front of the computer for more than 10 to 15 minutes at a time but this has pulled me back in, so I'll have to watch myself to make sure I don't accidentally "waste" two hours or more at a time in front of a screen when I should both be active and productive.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by TheMix »

Standing desk with a small treadmill? :wink: (On a serious note, I've often thought about getting something like that for my standing desk. But haven't quite pulled the trigger yet.)

I did beat all the endings in the base game. Some day I will need to get the DLC that add more endings.

One question, how do you deal with worms? The only times I've tried them, I reloaded and avoided them instead. They always seemed ridiculously difficult.

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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by LordMortis »

TheMix wrote: Sun Mar 19, 2023 12:44 pm Standing desk with a small treadmill? :wink: (On a serious note, I've often thought about getting something like that for my standing desk. But haven't quite pulled the trigger yet.)

I did beat all the endings in the base game. Some day I will need to get the DLC that add more endings.

One question, how do you deal with worms? The only times I've tried them, I reloaded and avoided them instead. They always seemed ridiculously difficult.
I tried a sitting pedal to sit and be active but I can't do that and use a computer at the same time and found the benefit to be negligible for my situation. I may try a standing desk one day but right now I prefer my down time to be down and my not down time to active.

I don't remember how I dealt with worms other than not great. I haven't gotten that far again but there has already been more variety. I reset after I was woefully ill prepared for the first slow ramp up around day 30. That and giant snakes (not worms) just ate my peasant army without a thought.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by Archinerd »

I don't have any useful advice for worms (wyrms?). I beat one, but I only had 2 badly injured bros left so it was the end of the company.
That's pretty much how it always goes for me though, I'm not actually very good at fighting most of the mid to high level creatures.
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Re: Battle Brothers (Indie TBS)

Post by LordMortis »

Had my first encounter with schrats this morning and I figured out how to beat them... Save Scum... and axes...

The combined DLC has lots of new to me content, though the core of the game hasn't changed at all yet, just the tactics, which is fine for me. New baddies and new equipment are all meaningfully different as are less meaningful additional envionments. It's a great point and click TBS, which is all I can handle with a single arm right now. Followers are an interest choice tree as well which is the only real change outside of the tactical game.

I'm at midgame content right now, I think.
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