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

[Serious_Business]

Play this, Xcom 2 or Jagged Alliance 3? Help me with my gaming dilemma.

You should have 200h minimum in this or gtfo. It is one of the best tactical games of all times, period. The best, in my view, but that's subjective. Incredibly addictive and a lot going under the hood. Only philistines look down at it as simple. To be fair, it took me a while to realise how much it had going on. It is a highly skilled based game, let's put it at that.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

.The best, in my view, but that's subjective.

That honor goes to original X-com, modded.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Fought ancient guards, found their war scythes and now I feel stupid for using billhooks

 

[Reinhardt]

don't be.

 

[k0syak]

Billhooks ain't what they used to be, nowadays I'd rather have poleaxes on most bros.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Holy war on team NORF is the hardest, they get obliterated by gunpowder and assassins.

Yep, from my experience as well. Southern armies are dangerous as fuck, a couple of assassins can be deadly (pun intended) and the northern armies looses all the time. On the plus side, iirc, assassins have the best regular light armor so at least there is worthy loot to be had.

Jesus, got to the second crisis and Southerners are hard as fuck. Having them as a 1 crisis seems insane.

 

[Zariusz]

Yeah the southern fucks... ehh i remember when i fought my first holy war on northern side. I waited near holy site with allied army for a quest, first battle was heavy and enemies numerous, while my bros suffered light wounds my allies got heavily battered and lost lots of their numbers. "Ok that was tough but now after such big battle im sure i will get smaller war parties or reinforcements" i thought, nope, reinforcements were nonexistent or worthless, allies didnt heal and next enemy army was twice as numerous, fuck that shit. I wasn't going to send my bros to suicide through bombards and assassins so i abandoned that quest. I was playing on Legends like always.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

What amazes me is how well Southerners work together, there is enough shield guys to protect the reach weapons guys for just enough time for assassins to outflank me and use AoE attacks to pin me down. I guess the trick comes in dividing your forces into smaller groups, so AoE would have less impact.

Guns are too unreliable to be used by my bros, but when enemies put out a whole squad of gunmen, they become a threat. Quite realistic, to be fair.

 

[Brancaleone]

Billhooks ain't what they used to be, nowadays I'd rather have poleaxes on most bros.

After the introduction of -1 AP from Polearm Specialization, billhooks would have been the absolute best choice by far otherwise.

 

[k0syak]

What amazes me is how well Southerners work together, there is enough shield guys to protect the reach weapons guys for just enough time for assassins to outflank me and use AoE attacks to pin me down. I guess the trick comes in dividing your forces into smaller groups, so AoE would have less impact.

Guns are too unreliable to be used by my bros, but when enemies put out a whole squad of gunmen, they become a threat. Quite realistic, to be fair.

Have you tried quad gunmen?

Billhooks ain't what they used to be, nowadays I'd rather have poleaxes on most bros.

After the introduction of -1 AP from Polearm Specialization, billhooks would have been the absolute best choice by far otherwise.

With the damage and armor damage nerfs I'm now putting poleaxes on non-polearm spec bros by default.

 

[Brancaleone]

What amazes me is how well Southerners work together, there is enough shield guys to protect the reach weapons guys for just enough time for assassins to outflank me and use AoE attacks to pin me down. I guess the trick comes in dividing your forces into smaller groups, so AoE would have less impact.

Guns are too unreliable to be used by my bros, but when enemies put out a whole squad of gunmen, they become a threat. Quite realistic, to be fair.

Have you tried quad gunmen?

Billhooks ain't what they used to be, nowadays I'd rather have poleaxes on most bros.

After the introduction of -1 AP from Polearm Specialization, billhooks would have been the absolute best choice by far otherwise.

With the damage and armor damage nerfs I'm now putting poleaxes on non-polearm spec bros by default.

Depends on how much you value mobility for your polebros, especially in conjunction with Pathfinder. If I decide to give up the AP reduction, I typically go for polehammers later in the game.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

After utterly destroying Barbarian King army and it's unholds I was offered a single star religious war contract. It was just a single star, I do those type of contacts without sweating.

When actiony style overlay told me about incoming AoE attacks from the mortal I knew I was screwed. Then a few shoots from firearms broke my men morale better than any geist ever would.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It turned out the religious war ended without my involvement. I always thought you need to complete crisis related quests to progress the crisis.

I feel bad for Southerners, they were defeated in a cutscene.

 

[Brancaleone]

It turned out the religious war ended without my involvement. I always thought you need to complete crisis related quests to progress the crisis.

I feel bad for Southerners, they were defeated in a cutscene.

You can, for example, win the Greenskin crisis without completing a single crisis-related contract, just by cleaning enough greenskin lairs in the wilderness.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

It turned out the religious war ended without my involvement. I always thought you need to complete crisis related quests to progress the crisis.

I feel bad for Southerners, they were defeated in a cutscene.

You can, for example, win the Greenskin crisis without completing a single crisis-related contract, just by cleaning enough greenskin lairs in the wilderness.

I didn't kill a single Southerner. I was bidding my time collecting funds for high end armors for my bros to come with a vengeance. Maybe you can end the war indirectly, by completing a lot of side, non war-related contracts for one side?

 

[Brancaleone]

It turned out the religious war ended without my involvement. I always thought you need to complete crisis related quests to progress the crisis.

I feel bad for Southerners, they were defeated in a cutscene.

You can, for example, win the Greenskin crisis without completing a single crisis-related contract, just by cleaning enough greenskin lairs in the wilderness.

I didn't kill a single Southerner. I was bidding my time collecting funds for high end armors for my bros to come with a vengeance. Maybe you can end the war indirectly, by completing a lot of side, non war-related contracts for one side?

When it's between factions, it ends even without your intervention, simply with the victory of one of the factions (that's why Noble War or religious war are not particularly difficult, since you can literally pick you battles, i.e. even none at all).
With Greenskins if you have Permanent Destruction activated and you ignore them, they'll just raze settlements to the ground. I suppose depending on the quirks of the rng it might be possible for garrisons to repel them until the crisis ends, but since I always play with Permanent Destruction enabled, I never let them rampage, instead from about day 50 I start carving out an ever expanding 'demilitarized zone' in the wilderness, which can lead to the scenario I mentioned above.
Undead play similarly to Greenskin, only you focus much more on the settlement areas if you want to nip it in the bud.

Overall, if you have Permanent Destruction turned off, you can basically ignore any kind of crisis (they'll probably take quite longer to resolve though).

 

[thesecret1]

Do you guys play over multiple crises, or so you stop after the first like the game recommends?

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Horrible day

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Do you guys play over multiple crises, or so you stop after the first like the game recommends?

On first 2 playthroughts I stopped because I underestimated fatigue requirements of heavy armors. Now I am carrying on. I very much dislike high level scaling of monster numbers, it makes game too slow. Goblins are especially bad here, because bow shooting animation takes longer than melee animation and goblin shamans combined with forest tiles make progressing glacial.

 

[thesecret1]

I'm asking because I'm basically never ready to face the various end game locations spread around the world by the time the first crisis hits. Wondering whether I'm doing something wrong or whether you're meant to tackle them much later on

 

[k0syak]

Horrible day

Why isn't everyone naked, did you get ambushed?

I'm asking because I'm basically never ready to face the various end game locations spread around the world by the time the first crisis hits. Wondering whether I'm doing something wrong or whether you're meant to tackle them much later on

Gotta power-up the band faster, watch some speedrunners on youtube.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Why isn't everyone naked, did you get ambushed?

I was lazy. Didn't have reach weapons for everyone either.

 

[Brancaleone]

I'm asking because I'm basically never ready to face the various end game locations spread around the world by the time the first crisis hits. Wondering whether I'm doing something wrong or whether you're meant to tackle them much later on

There's people who play many hundreds of days before tackling legendary locations, so there's that.

If you want to do it around the time of the first crisis, you have to maximize the average number of fights per day you take, which means you have to switch from being careful about party-wipes or casualties, to being careful about minimizing also wounds and armour damage (and even hit point loss), simply because you won't have the time to recover much of any of those with such fight frequency. That means also judging very carefully which fights to tackle because now a very difficult fight that you win with no casualties, but with a lot of wounds and armour damage, is not a good outcome. You also maximize the loot you gain (to buy high level armour earlier, and to always have a lot of tools and supplies for wilderness expeditions), and you focus on getting better armour as early as you can by daggering brigand leaders and fallen knights. Your playthrough will be much more combat-dense, which can become repetitive, but on the other hand now even the easier fights will carry some tension, since you have to focus on losing as little armour/hitpoints as possible.

 

[FritzedProcess]

Yeah the southern fucks... ehh i remember when i fought my first holy war on northern side. I waited near holy site with allied army for a quest, first battle was heavy and enemies numerous, while my bros suffered light wounds my allies got heavily battered and lost lots of their numbers. "Ok that was tough but now after such big battle im sure i will get smaller war parties or reinforcements" i thought, nope, reinforcements were nonexistent or worthless, allies didnt heal and next enemy army was twice as numerous, fuck that shit. I wasn't going to send my bros to suicide through bombards and assassins so i abandoned that quest. I was playing on Legends like always.

It's so much easier to defeat them in detail. When the holy war starts, a bunch of smaller armies depart from the southern cities to assemble at a rally point somewhere south of the holy site (not too far, usually). Just ambush each of the detachments before they assemble the full army, you'll be facing smaller numbers, less attrition, probably no injuries, and most of the time no combined arms.

 

[Space Satan]