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[Ai Shizuka]

The early game is actually my favorite stage.
I don't find the following stage (upgrade from raider gear to the good stuff) as exciting. Actually it feels like a grind at some points. Then it becomes cool again when some guys start hitting level 11, you get end-game gear and start clearing harder sites.

In my opinion, the most important task in the early game is defining a clear path for your mercenaries.
If they have late-game potential, you give them a polearm and keep them safe in the backrow. Farmhands, brawlers, thieves, lumberjacks, cultists can be perfectly serviceable in the late game if they roll good stats. Look at the talents page on the wiki to get an idea about their projected stats at level 11 and build them accordingly.

All the other disposable clowns don't matter. You give them perks to make them less useless NOW and don't care if they die. Fast adaptation, gifted, nine lives, colossus. Stuff to make them take an extra hit before their inevitable death and stuff to make them less terrible at hitting things.

The surround bonus is very important at the beginning. Extra +5% hit chance (10% with backstabber) for each ally adjacent to the same target. Your 48 melee cripple won't hit shit if you give him a club and let him attack alone. But give him a spear and some surround bonus and he'll become less useless.

Also, nets. In the first few weeks I always move in a coastal area to buy nets. Nets are awesome because they:
- reduce the defense of a target
- make them waste AP and fatigue to break free
- allow you to surround them and puncture them with dagger to get the armor (you are using daggers, right?).

About 2-handers. If a bro has 2-hander potential, you give him a shield or, even better, a polearm. You actually don't use him as a 2-hander until he has decent melee defense, the fatigue to use decent armor (200+) and the important defensive perks (battleforged and underdog - reach advantage is debatable after the expansion). Even then, if the enemy has a significant ranged force (goblins or noble units with arbalesters), your 2-handers should start with a kite shield until they are engaged in melee.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, two-handed weapons without reach have to be use situationally in the early game.

Early on, the goedendag is probably the only one worth using to actually try and kill people with, since it has the +20% to hit that spears get on a stab attack and does good damage. The lumber axe you start with has one purpose - breaking shields. Chances are you won't kill people with it too often unless you have high ground advantage or the like. Mostly people with it die, in my experience, so I use it to finish people off who are surrounded and to break shields.

Other two handed weapons early on are used sparingly. They *can* do a lot of damage, but the wielder is very vulnerable so I would only use them on people who are more or less expendable or in fights where the high damage is really helpful (like against an Unhold).

[Man of Paper]

Yeah, ultimately how effective your various bros are relies heavily on your situational awareness in regards to your opponents, location, and a million variables. I've topped 300 hours and still it's more a gut feeling than me actually knowing why equipping x with y is better than z at a certain point, but worse otherwise. There is a good bit of common sense though - like if you know you're fighting skeletons you might want to equip weapons that crush or slash over pierce.

I find the midgame to be the biggest slog for me, barring an abysmal start. Early game can be fun, especially if you manage to nab some good weapons and armor early or get a good trade route in the opening villages.

A lot of the time I can buy the trade goods at the starting village and sell them at the city you're sent to recruit dudes in. I'll grab a few shields and some spears, and a bow if they have it, at the start as well, and recruit some guys there before moving to the objective city. Once there, unless I get unlucky with trade good rolls, I can sell for a nice profit and have enough to recruit a caravan hand or someone else with some more potential than a leper while also being able to shell out for some heavier (but at this point still light) armor for my 2hander. If you can get that second ranged bro then the fight with the Weasel guy (300 hours and his name escapes me...) tends to be easier, since AI rushes when outranged and they'll only have the one bowman.

After that it's just a matter of luck with contracts. One skulls are almost always a breeze so long as my startup works, and with the new "find the location" contracts you can usually clear them out for their sweet loot if they're one skull.

Also, always remember to have a couple expendable bros (expendabros!?) on the field. While I don't treat any of my guys like fodder, you'll probably lose a guy or two at some point, and then you'll have some low-level bros mixed in with your vets. Use them to tie up the enemy and break up their battle line, and if they die oh well, you can always replace them (and if you cant then there's bigger issues in store).

Apologies for this not being quite comprehensive. On a phone at work. If I was home on my computer I'd probably be playing it instead of giving my two cents though.

[Tack]

The real question is, now that payrates have been patched, am I better off with 20 farmers, all specialized into different gear, or 12 sellswords/hunters?


Edit: In other news, after my successfully killing 3 unholds I thought I'd try my hand at five.

That's a hard no.

[Ai Shizuka]

With the new wages it looks like a balanced roster is the way to go, equally divided between cheap/mid-tier/elite backgrounds.

Cheap backgrounds with good potential: farmhands, brawlers, cultists, lumberjacks.
Mid-tier: witch hunters, hunters, wildmen, squires, raiders.
Elite: hedge knights and sellswords. I don't like the other expensive backgrounds for various reasons.

Earlier the end-game basically was all about sellswords and hedge knights.
Now I don't think it's sustainable, so cheap backgrounds with good potential are very important.

[Sindain]

Personally I've never really payed attention to payrates and it works out just fine for me. On my current game (~day 400, full expert ironman) I have like 4 hedge knights, 2 or 3 sellswords, and a sword master, and I have no problem making money.  Better parties are better at making money.

[Tack]

Followed that group of 5 forest unholds which met up with two armies. Decided to jump in on the action, and it's a big forest clusterfook. At the very least the unholds are split up, but it's an absolute crapshoot and I can barely get LoS without getting targetted while the trolls happily munch through linemen, then pikemen, then arbalesters.

It's awesome.

[Cthulhu]

I think the biggest thing I need to figure out is footwork in positioning.  I usually have a line of alternating spears and axes/flails and use shield wall and spearwall, but bandits refuse to enter the spearwall unless they can shieldwall first, and it leads to a thing where the enemy group bunches up and works their way around, either splitting my line or hitting it on the two flanks.  Trying to reposition while maintaining defenses for whem they finally engage just chews through early guys' fatigue.

Wondering if making my line a semicircle with a backline spearman on each flank would help defend against it.  Monsters are actually easier for me, they gladly run into the spears and i can usually kill several on their turn

What do you usually do when they do that?


The actual combat early on once theyre on each other just seems to be a matter of stacking positive modifiers and hoping they die before you do.  Anything other than surround and shield wall you can do for that is in meta-level choices like gear and leveling

[Persus13]

If you're having an issue with Shields, use your axemen to break them. Its guarenteed to at least damage the shield. If you manage to get ahold of the axe polearm, that one is super useful.

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, bandits are smart about spearwall, which is why I don't use it much against them except to give them a spot in my line *not* to hit. So you can guide them a bit that way to going towards you better troops.

Breaking a shieldline is generally the way to go. You can do that in lots of ways, from breaking the shield to using flails to batter down a few people, to using shield bash or push from a polearm to knock one of them out of position so you can surround and smash someone. It's as much about picking your targets as it is hoping you do damage. Sometimes it's smart to save fatigue on a few shield guys and have them just shieldwall and try to live while you actually try to kill another part of the line. I like giving all linemen Recover for this reason, as fatigue is super important to keeping your shieldline functioning. If you can tire out the enemy while staying fresh you're in a much better position to win.

Focus fire is your friend. Especially as every enemy you kill reduces the rest's morale and makes all the others easier to kill.  So I try to identify the easiest to kill at the start and have my backline focus on them if I can. Get a few shots in early with archers and try to maneuver my polearms to that part of the line so we can get 4 or 5 people attacking that one person at a time.

[Persus13]

There's no search function for regions, right? I'm trying to find a tundra region for the mission I accepted, and I'm realizing I have no idea where it is.

[Tack]

I still haven’t gotten good at identifying weak points. But the AI seems to pick out which of my guys is the most exposed immediately

[Majestic7]

There's no search function for regions, right? I'm trying to find a tundra region for the mission I accepted, and I'm realizing I have no idea where it is.

No search, I'm afraid, but the quest description should give you a direction. The region name might be under the fog of war. You will eventually get events where explorers give you tips on which direction to go.

[Mephansteras]

I still haven’t gotten good at identifying weak points. But the AI seems to pick out which of my guys is the most exposed immediately

I assume the AI just quickly goes down the list checking to-hit % and maybe checking HP and fatigue. That's too tedious for a player, most of the time. I do it by looking for weaknesses. Low armor, lack of a helmet, no shield (or just buckler), low ground, stuff like that.

Or you make a weak point, by breaking shields/pushing people out of line or into worse terrain.

Raider AI is smart, your only advantage as a player is your ability to do good tactical planning and multi-turn planning. And, often, you at least slightly outnumber them. The ability to curl around an edge to surround someone or send a flanking group in to take out their archers is often the tipping point.

If it's a mixed group of Thugs and Raiders you can smash thugs until the raiders start to have their morale break. It's good to note that knocking someone out of position often makes them do a morale check. You can do a lot of morale damage just by moving people around (in/out of contact and away from their allies).

[Persus13]

There's no search function for regions, right? I'm trying to find a tundra region for the mission I accepted, and I'm realizing I have no idea where it is.

No search, I'm afraid, but the quest description should give you a direction. The region name might be under the fog of war. You will eventually get events where explorers give you tips on which direction to go.

Its not an exploration mission, its a "kill stuff in this region" mission