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

[Skittles]

Any thoughts on high tier perk choices? Berserk, nimble, headhunter, that sort of thing.

There are few bad picks at Tiers 5 - 7. Reach Advantage is a must on 2H guys. Berserk and Killing Frenzy are great and useful in nearly every build. Duelist for that build is a must. I love Fearsome on archers--you can effectively end battles during your opening volley against low morale enemies and any debuffs your archers can inflict are great. Battle Forged will keep your melee guys in fighting shape during those protracted battles and another almost insta-pick for armoured bros.

 

[golgo21]

I have seen many guys using 1 guy as a sergeant and another as the standard bearer,I always have my sarge holding the standard,why people have them separately?

 

[Tigranes]

When you go on a mission to some strange place, and you can either take the mission macguffin or try to also take the ancient weapon - I did it once, fought a tough battle for it, and got a spear that's hardly better than the beginner spear. Are they ever worth it? Are there ever any exciting items to find beyond the normal progression?

My bros still don't have a sergeant because I had no way of knowing if it's useful, and only got a banner by accident since the ambition only said 'get some cash'. Heh.

 

[sser]

I run two Sergeants, creatively labeled 1st Sgt and 2nd Sgt in-game. One partakes in battles and the other goes in reserve, alternating every other fight (health permitting). A high-resolve Sergeant will make your entire formation stronger. Morale isn't just a flee/fight dichotomy, having it high or low greatly alters the actual fighting effectiveness of everyone save for undead.

And I always try and Sergeant the standard bearer because of the AOE effect. My Sgt.'s are usually around 70-100 Resolve after all the bonuses are accounted for. Formation's falling apart due to morale deterioration is very common in games I've watched. People put all their effort into making their company a bunch of killbots, forgetting that when the enemy kills someone, and it will eventually, you need soldiers who won't panic. Morale breakage makes all those sweet weapons and armor, stats, everything, completely worthless.

 

[Celerity]

Why's someone summoning me in an Early Access scam thread?

...Oh.

One cuck army at a time.

 

[Quatlo]

Fearsome is pretty great on hammerbros too since you deal some damage when using the shit-on-enemy-armour skill, they usually break or at least get morale debuff.
I play with only single Sarge that has ~110 resolve and is more than enough to keep bros in check against geists, but I guess I just didnt meet enough of them to actually get routed, at most it was around 8.

 

[Krivol]

I'm considering using long axes for back row - destroying shields is great and this attack is allways 100% to hit IIRC, so you don't have to waste to much points in meele for your back row archers.

I'm also thinking about using spear/hammer combination in first row, so I will get: 3 archers with axes and sergant with polearm/axe in second row. 4 spearmen and 4 hammermongers (one of them sergant maybe) in first row. I could destroy armours and shields fast, and spearwall will hurt enemies in the begining. Must try it...

 

[Kayerts]

There isn't really a best weapon.

I'd go with flails. Lots of annoying shieldwall enemies become trivialized without having to spend one, two turns of the longaxes each. And if enemies don't have helms, it's even better. For most non-beast enemies my entire front line is flails except for the edges.

I'd say flails are a good choice for the worst late-game weapon type. They're quite good early-mid but fall off hard. Damage isn't great, they're bad versus armor, and head procs start to suck when you're against enemies with heavy (200+) head armor. Lacking a two-handed variant means they're a low-damage single-target weapon that doesn't do much versus armor, and large numbers of armored tanks form the bulk of most late game armies.

I could see flails being better en masse (because you can actually focus the head), but I'm skeptical. You've played the game quite a bit, right? Are you taking on ~30 undead or ~25 orc mobs with flails?

 

[Sarissofoi]

After I lost my bannerman I got totally wreaked by routs in two next battles that normally would not lead to that disaster.
Making comeback is hard late especially when your company is full of wounded veterans and newbies who do not know which side of spear stab the enemy.
It scale contracts with your power but if you do not have sergeant/bannerman and archers department coming back would not be easy. And if this happen in the midst of crisis - end of the story.

Anyway I was thinking about replacing all humans and settlement graphics by mix of orcs/goblin and proceed to Warghh but there is no way to edit items(other than look) or backgrounds or any text so it will be pointless.

 

[Kayerts]

I'm interested to hear more about how you use/would use Adrenaline. I never found myself using it more than once in five fights or less when experimenting with it.

Here are the uses I've found:
* Really good in fights where you can take out a portion of the enemy line in two rounds. (Advance, hit, adrenaline, hit twice again. Recover next turn before moving onto a different portion of the field; takes a ton of fatigue but is totally worth it.)
* Good against elusive enemies (mostly Necrosavants; geists will probably die in one hit anyway), especially on a mace master or netbro who can lock them down. But it's good against necrosavants even without that.
* Good on assassin specialists to take out the enemy Necromancer or disrupt their archers. (Wait, adrenaline, move twice.)
* Good as an insurance policy to enable aggressive rescues of injured comrades by bros with rotation. (Lets you first try to rescue the injured guy by killing his assailant, and then rotate him out if that doesn't work.)
* Good on support frontliners to take out one near-dead enemy, clearing the way for a two-hander to move in and hit multiple targets.
* Decent on backline polearm users with Overwhelm, especially if you decide to start giving them somewhat heavier armor. (I sometimes make backliners from retired frontliners, and those tend to have shit initiative and fatigue to spare.)

 

[Murk]

In the current run I decided to keep a small company of high quality bros (no more than 8, including reserves (basically, no reserves)) and so far it's working surprisingly well. My lowest level is 7 on day 50, fulfilled multiple ambitions easily, and it seems enemy company size scales based on yours as I haven't encountered any 15 or so companies other than those protecting large settlements or trash mobs (all thugs with 1 raider, etc.).

 

[oneself]

What weapon mastery perk is worth it? Polearms are good but the perk seems pointless. Spear is good but everything else seems.. meh

Maybe the crossbow one is worth taking.

 

[Krivol]

If you are going to use spears, then spear skill is quite good.

 

[Murk]

Bows, Swords, Hammers so far are grrrrrrrrrrreat.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

The only thing BB has over Mordheim is that its interface isn't a piece of shit.

Mordheim has much worse out of combat gameplay as it's basically a screen that you visit between missions and nothing more. You finish a mission, go to your management screen, do some stuff and back to another mission.
BB makes that feel much more natural and involved what with all the resource management and so on.

Also loot kinda sucks in Mordheim, even purple items don't feel especially powerful.

Level ups in Mordheim are also not so interesting as in BB. Here you get abilities that really change a bro every level.

Generally apart from maybe graphics (if you prefer 3d instead of 2d) and maybe setting, I can't find something better in Mordheim. And I like Mordheim a lot mind you

I can't see many games looking better than BB. I love good 2d art though.

I'll have to spend more time with Mordheim. I'm fairness I haven't really played it, just watched some video, but think that I would have heard more praise if it was that good.

 

[Brancaleone]

I keep reading a worrying amount of mentions of difficulty scaling (level, equipment, size of your party, etc. etc.). Is it really that pervasive?

 

[Jimmious]

Difficulty scaling? Meaning?

 

[Brancaleone]

Difficulty scaling? Meaning?

I mean composition and strength of the enemies you face, I think Murk just mentioned an example of it. Does it work like that?

 

[Jimmious]

Well kind of, yes. The contracts you get will have stronger enemies the more you progress, especially in Renown. Roaming in the map though you will still find weaker groups and camps

 

[Ezeekiel]

I keep reading a worrying amount of mentions of difficulty scaling (level, equipment, size of your party, etc. etc.). Is it really that pervasive?

The biggest differences are between difficulty settings, enemy parties are notably larger in expert vs. the normal setting.
In the lowest difficulty you could run with a 6 man party for a while (unless you get unlucky and encounter archer/crossbow spam before you get enough armor or whatever). In expert a 6 man party doesn't seem feasible to me, at least not early on and during lategame.

It's not like mordheim though, just because you add 1 guy to your party doesn't mean all enemy parties will now feature 1 more guy of the equivalent type, more points in equipment = enemy also gets same additional points (?) etc.
In battlebrothers you can totally get ahead of the game pretty easily without even knowing all the details of how the enemy works. In mordheim I always got the feeling it was down to isolating enemies or using goofy tactics (or playing skaven). YMMV

Scaling is more like a milestone thing rather than a "you add x, they immediately also get x" thing, you won't see orc warriors (esp. more than a few) until quite a ways into the game regardless of what metrics are tracked to make it happen. Ancient honor guard same...
The main issue, difficulty wise, is that the release version has more enemy crossbows/archers in some parties that can really fuck you up if you haven't prepared enough, and weak versions of them can show up somewhat early.
Avoiding enemies you figure you can't take on without losses is good practice in this game though, pretty crucial even. At least on ironman.

 

[Serus]

For starters, many of the perks in BB are very obvious trap options.

Can you list trap options?

My List of Perks in Battle Bros

My list of traps differs a bit from general consensus, so I'll divide it into obvious traps and what I feel are traps or have very limited usefulness. I'm also mostly approaching this from the perspective of how good they are when they unlock--I'll make a note of perks that become nicer high level options and why.

Tier One Obvious:

• Fast Adaption: Tiny bonus and the perk gets more useless the better your bro is.
• Bags and Belts: Base bros have enough slots for almost every useful build, especially if you're smart enough to change equipment out before battle. Besides, things in your pockets count vs. max. fatigue and should be as limited as possible.

Tier One Controversial/Marginal

• Colossus: The lower your bro's health, the less this will benefit him. Some people like slapping it on tanks/sacrificial bros or to reduce chances of taking injuries, but you can manage injuries on the strategic layer and IMO health past a very achievable 70 offers quickly diminishing returns.
• Nine Lives: Some people will slap this on sacrificial bros to keep them around as long as possible, but on ordinary bros, you've fucked up if it's popped and you're going to lose that bro anyway 80% of the time.
• Adrenaline: It's not awful, but it's expensive and cases where it offers any substantial advantage are very few.
• Recover: The lower your bro's fatigue, the less useful this will be. That said, as a late game perk during an undead crisis, I'd consider it an option.

Tier Two Obvious:

• Hold Out: Morale should be managed by a morale bot. You might not have a good one when this perk becomes available, but once you do, half of the perk's use will vanish. The other half isn't useless, but this is just a weak, weak perk compared with other options at this level.
• Steel Brow: The better your armour, defence, and health, the worse this is. It gets worse the better your bro is.

Tier Two Controversial/Marginal

• Executioner: When this unlocks, it's not useful. You're probably still relying on swarming enemies and delivering low damage attacks, so smaller benefit and injured enemies are 9/10 going to be dead in a round with or without this perk. Later, 20% becomes respectable for 2H guys and there's nice synergy with Berserk and with a load of good archers using Crippling Strikes.
• Fortified Mind: Take it on your morale bot(s). For anyone else, it has the Colossus problem.

At Tier Three and beyond, I think there are fewer obvious traps when compared with the first two. I'll highlight a couple that I think are weak and point out where a new player might go wrong:

• Shield Expert: Just don't automatically slap this on every bro. You'll be using 2H weapons or duelist builds to dish out damage at higher levels, so you need to know who's going to switch and who's going to stay S&B. This is important because there are actually decent options to contend with at Tier Three.
• Taunt: Some people use it. The only real advantage seems to be convincing certain shield or sword using enemies from shieldwalling and/or riposting every turn. Riposters are easily dealt with using polearms and ranged attacks. Dangerous shieldwallers are usually helping you by choosing to spend AP and fatigue on shieldwall instead of attacking. Besides, decent axemen will take care of most every shield short of the metal orc shields in a round or two and flailbros can just laugh at them.
• [Weapon] Mastery: All of these are pretty solid options, just choose wisely. More than two on a single bro is usually a waste. Vary selection a bit so that you can make the most of different weapons.
• Lone Wolf: Although I like this on paper, I find that my tactical preferences means it rarely procs. It's debatable whether the bonuses outweigh the benefits of having multiple bros acting in concert who can win you the AP advantage and offer weapon synergies.

Sorry to be nitpicking in this case but "trap" should mean a skill that is useless or even harmful not just "i think it is is weak / only usueful for specialized buids".
In this game at current state the only "trap" perks i can think of are:
1. Bags and Belts - used to be good in early access, now the only sensible use i can think of is to spam throwing nets. This perk can be a literal trap if you burden your guy with additional weapons just to make use of the perk and end up with too low fatigue.
2. Head Hunter - can in some cases be harmful and otherwise is weak.
Everything else has its uses - even if they are only for 1~2 specialized brothers at most (Lone Wolf, Fortified Mind)
I might be missing something.
As i said it might be nitpicking but the use of the world "trap" in this context triggers me. It should be used responisbly, like this guy does:



Another weird thing. Why people who seem to know the game well enough (not just You) insist on writing things like: "This is important because there are actually decent options to contend with at Tier Three" ?? No it isn't important at all at what level a perk is once your bro makes a few levels. Perks in Battle Brothers do not contend with each other (except of curse the limited number of perks a brother can have). You can (and will have) have several perks in one tier and you can skip another tier completely as long as you have chosen something somewhere else. Even in Tier 1 you don't have to chose anything (not really - except Student of curse but it only remains a "real" perk until level 11).

 

[Ezeekiel]

Re weapons discussion:
2H axes split their damage between head and body always, thus the seemingly crazy damage numbers (if you look not at the item but the standard attack skill). They're actually not that great against heavy armor/orc warriors compared to warhammers. I haven't played in a while, but I'm not sure a 2h axe does more armor /piercing damage to, say, the body than a greatsword, or at least not much. Against fully armored opponents (good helmet and body armor) they're meh.
Also, they tend to reduce your armor loot if the head/body armor values are certain percentages of each other because they destroy both pieces of armor.
Upsides is that you will be swimming in orc 2h axes eventually, which are a nice upgrade at the cost of high fatigue malus and additional 5 fatigue generation. Can be managed, but "recovery" perc may be useful or iron lungs trait if you're lucky.
Other upsides: Best at killing shields (rarely used, but if you find you can't hit well... Longaxes suck at shield killing the better shields), can cause decapitation (useful against Wiedergänger)
and most of all: Max damage against necrosavants or other poorly/unarmored hp sponges. Also nice if you encounter enemy without helmet because head is always autohit in addition to body. So goodbye many noble troops.
Axe round swing skill is only useful in a few situations, and you need bro with good resolve if you want him to get surrounded and not suffer attack malus or break. But it can totally kill 6 enemies in one go... Happened to me before several times, makes you feel like an armored orc berserker haha.
I wish your guys would laugh like the berserkers when they do that.

2H Hammers kill orc warriors/warlords/ancient honor guard better than 2h axes in practice, and also do the thing where they move them to the back of the action queue. Really helps against warlords.
They can also split shields but worse than 2h axe. Their alternate attack apart from split shield is the same as 2h sword, 3 tile partial round swing. Can use much more often than axe skill. Need high melee skill to make the fatigue cost worthwile.
Other than that... They can't decapitate, that can hurt against lotsa Wiedergänger. Their health damage is also not so great... But they do move enemy to the end of the action queue... So a rather mixed bag against big Nachzehrer and necrosavants.
No orc equivalent weapon unfortunately, hammers could really use something like that. Have to rely on uniques to upgrade... Sucks tbh. 2H hammers can feel underpowered in some types of fights.

2H swords aren't that great imo... They cost the least fatigue to equip out of the big 2handers, but their damage is meh and they do nothing all that well apart from taking out weak targets like bandits. Against orc warriors they're meh. Their +5/10 (? which was it?) to hit helps offset enemy shields a little. I would not rely on them too much because their strength is in their skills (2h straight line attack, 3 tile partial round swing, weak shieldsplitter)... And skill use costs lots of stamina. There are better setups for hitting enemy backline (like warscythes in your backline).
They are versatile of course, but keep in mind that 2 enemies hit with less damage can both attack you next round while taking out 1 enemy first with stronger weapons means less damage output against you.
I would include some of them maybe, but don't make your entire frontline out of 2h sword guys. If you have someone with insane melee defense, you could specialize him in swords and have him riposte with noble sword and switch to 2h if you need direct attack damage... But only if you don't rely on a initiative/fatigue sensitive defense perk.
On the upside, they do decapitate Wiedergänger. Bros with the trait that makes them always overkill like that can really help there.
No orc equivalent, but I've found a lot of unqiue variants... But due to their low-ish damage (better than hammer against low/no armor enemies at least) an orc 2h sword would be really nice.

Flails do have a 2h variant, the orc flail (berserk chain?). Same fatigue issues as other orc weapons (can be managed), but kind of low damage imo (80-100?) and I forgot whether they ignore shields or not. Have a round swing attack like the 2H axe.
Haven't tried them, may be very useful against ancient dead though, or on brothers with only like 70 melee skill but lotsa fatigue against orc warriors or some such.
That being said, the damage output is not too impressive vs. fatigue cost.

I've used polarms in the frontline but their dps (dpr I guess) is too low relative to frontline 2handers. If you got lots of fatigue you could equip each guy with 2H + polarm in the frontline, and your rear polearm users (not hybrids) would benefit from the same against necrosavants (give them 2h axe).

 

[Jimmious]

I never use orc weapons, they need way too much fatigue to be sustainable long term. My bros would be tired after two rounds of combat. Interesting to see that you do. I just repair them and sell them, they're a good source of revenue

 

[Serus]

Re weapons discussion:
2H axes split their damage between head and body always, thus the seemingly crazy damage numbers (if you look not at the item but the standard attack skill). They're actually not that great against heavy armor/orc warriors compared to warhammers. I haven't played in a while, but I'm not sure a 2h axe does more armor /piercing damage to, say, the body than a greatsword, or at least not much. Against fully armored opponents (good helmet and body armor) they're meh.

Well, unless you consider 35%/100% vs 40%/150% not "more armor/piercing" damage then yes, greataxes are not better than greatswords against heavily armored enemies.
Of curse base damage on axes is slightly lower but then they have the "always also hits head" ability built-in. Overall they are significanly better than greatsword against a single enemy in heavy armor. I don't know where did you get the impression that they aren't. Greatswords are still better overall because of much better attack options.

 

[Ezeekiel]

I never use orc weapons, they need way too much fatigue to be sustainable long term. My bros would be tired after two rounds of combat. Interesting to see that you do. I just repair them and sell them, they're a good source of revenue

Takes certain builds or as mentioned above, lucky iron lungs trait and maybe recovery perk, but can be worth it.
I usually sell them too, you fight orcs with those 2h axes so much that you can alwas get them if you need them imo.