Due to me liking playing Peasant Militia origin, I was forced to learn the ins-and-outs of cheap backgrounds. Can say confidently that any high initiative (and armor) backgrounds are excellent front-liners for the early game. Surround bonus is very important for the early game and to be able to do that any recruit needs the highest defense he can muster - so taking Dodge is a great way to do that, especially when you don't have access to heavy armors at that point. Due to that Peddlers are not as bad as they seem on the offensive, as they can just help with the surround and be at the most dangerous position with less risk compared to other brothers and Thieves are phenomenal, because they can reach sky-high defense and survivability right from the get-go. Expensive backgrounds are nice and definitely powerful, but you get them when you have more or less solve the money issues and from this point onward steam-rolling is relatively easy to achieve.
I personally like hiring farmhands. Ive had quite a few of them end up becoming very powerful. Sure, i had to wade through some trash farmhands to find them...but overall, it was cheaper than a sellsword or noble. The +Matk event is fairly easy to trigger as well, helping compensate for their lowish offense.
That stam is pretty killer for me, once you need armor having 90 max stam is pretty bad. If you max roll the event you can get +6 which is nice. I don't really consider miners to be underestimated though, their stats aren't too surprising.
@@CarveaHole I make nimble flail/mace headbangers with miners. They're cheap, usually rolls brute and their stam pool gets fixed when converted to cultist and levelled.
I really appreciate the Events look in particular. For some of these backgrounds I've almost never taken them, so I didn't know anything about their events. Cheers.
Like I had a choice :) I'm running indebted to keep cost downs, daytalers because they were there, a gambler, a couple peddlers, a caravan hand for the storage event, a theif and a nomad.
I’ve had more than a few farmhands end up becoming legendary mercenaries. There were plenty of trash ones as well though. Abusing event triggers can help get their stats up, but even that isn’t necessarily needed.
I had super good gambler as sergeant at one of my runs. It had 2 stars at matk and ranged def and 3 stars at resolve. On top of all he was tiny too so he had awesome defence stats from get go. I think he had 150 resolve at lvl 13.
That's really good. Think about not leveling Rdef on the banner. The banner rarely gets hit in melee, so if he takes a few ranged hits instead of your frontline you're probably saving armor without risking the banner's life (since he's a backliner). Seems counterintuitive, but you're really baiting the enemies with your low def bannerman.
One of my best and weirdest recruits in my poacher band is actually a southern gambler. He is ranged unit I keep in the frontline, either xbow or handgonne, with a longmace and firespear for potential melee. Thanks to insanely high initiative he can spray incoming group of enemies with overwhelm from handgonne and thanks to super-high def (dodge) and not-so-bad melee attack (further aided by FA) he totally survives being in the frontline and can rapidly switch between xbow and spear if needed. Having lots of fun using him.
I utilize a lot of these cheap backgrounds on peasant militia runs. Buying a vagabond to be a runner/flank unit is a good value already. Sometimes these cheap units have well placed stars, and earn their rank & ground grains by proving themselves in battle.
You forget to mention the Gambler is also really good sometimes i rolled on a like 3 mdefs and i think its a underrated background , its also really good for a Banner early is as it can role max 52 resolve and with stars if you get lucky and ALSO you forgetted the Indebted can be a very good cheap frontlines as they can roll some nice mattaks and mdefs i got the mod where i can see the every stars on recruits i have to say atleast like 1 or 2 indebts that have some stars that are actually good on every city state i ve been in PLUS they have no WAGES
Yeah you're right gamblers are quite good for cheap bannerman. I wouldn't called indebted a good background - there can be good indebted but that doesn't mean the background as a whole is good. I believe they're best for fodder and cultist sacrifices because of the no wages part.
Finally some love for trash backgrounds, even Peddler :D I actually always liked Gravediggers, they always have super low hire cost and if you roll 2-3 stars on melee attack, with their stamina and resolve you might have good late-game backliner imho. For peddlers i just hired for memes, though in my peasant militia i managed to squeeze in two and they act as very decent tanks. The only issue is that peddlers often have high upfront cost, which makes it harder to use them early game. (I might be ok to spend 100 crowns on gravedigger and discard him if he is really shit, but 350 for a most-likely-useless peddler is harder to justify. Also i think their wage is higher than other trash backgrounds).
So now that I'm back playing again, I have a notion to make to you and anyone else viewing: What if Miner was a better background than Farmhand? XD I've recently given up my shunning of miners so heavily, and honestly I'm starting to think they're better than farmhands. Here's why: Avg HP: Miner: 65 Farmhand: 66 // less than a level more for farmhand Avg MAtk: Miner : 54.5 Farmhand: 52 // a full level more for the miner Avg Resolve: Miner: 41.5 Farmhand: 32.5 // 3 levels of resolve for the miner (rough estimate) Avg Fatigue: Miner: 85 Farmhand: 110 // 7 levels of fatigue for the farmer (rough estimate) Rest of stats the same averages. How important is fatigue if you're using a 0stam 2h build? Neglible. Unless you want to specialize in sword and board tanks, or duelist style builds, miners are actually better for 2h wearers in a lot of cases when comparing them against farmhands.
If you're going for a 2h 0 stam build. If you want to make a nimble guy and never level fat, farmhand is better, as well as when you want stam intensive BF. You're right that miners aren't as bad as people give them credit for.
@@CarveaHole The problem I have with that statement is that there just isnt any other build than 2h 0 stam for big dps on shitty backgrounds. If you level in fat you're giving up one of the best three stats for your bro (atk def or hp). I dont know anyway else in order to level a bro competently so that the amount of bullshit rng the game throws at you doesnt end up in your bro getting insta 2 shot gibbed. Resolve also has to be taken to shore up a bro too that isnt even included, theres just no room for fatigue builds on shitty backgrounds.
@@aylictal I mean you're right that is why 0 stam builds exist. But some backgrounds don't have to worry about that, like the farmhand. Those extra stam points allow you more flexibility. Miners are better for the resolve and matk, so it's more what you need/want in a bro.
Swordmasters are the 2h equivalent to hunters imo, whenever I want a 2h bro I hire swordmaster, they never disappoint even with bad rolls. Events are great, once you “accidentally” find other background that high rolled into 2h candidate, they can be super substitutes after getting old. Most underrated background by far.
SM can still be around if you build him as Fatigue Neutral. I had a great SM that at level 11, had like 100 attack, 40 mele defense, around 75 hp and 65 resolve, all of this after old. He is truly a monster. Now I undestand why people love fatigue neutral because made the hiring process less than tossing a coin and praying everything to get all the stars aligned.
I'm pretty new to the game, something over 40 hours, but I love buying the cheap backgrounds. I have built some good bros that way, the rest either died or got retired.
Getting better at the game is doing more with worse stuff. You don't need hedge knights, and you can win before you get to the stage of hiring them too.
Graverobber has an event where you can go on a heist with him and possibly get free FH armor or a named shield if you have a historian (which i never do). Sheapherds are also really common in the south and thus even without tryout you can just buy them in bulk (those who spawn without nomad slings at least) until you find a good one for very few crowns. Miners are also somewhat underrated imo.
@@dvel185 Ah, ok. I didn't know if it was something similar to nomads where ones with ranged weapons have different stats than those with melee weapons.
Generally use thief a lot as long he doesn't min roll matk. While i mostly use them for their high mdef and high ini they are also very good in some events especially the robbing drunk noble event just as long no lawman come after my thief
one time i had noble house i was trying to do allied ambition with suddenly come after my 10 lvl thief. With heavy sigh i ponied up 1000 crowns for a bribe and clicked confirmation text "Things i do for you lot..."
Slaves. Im not sure if its a Legends mod start, but the "Escaped Slaves" beginning gives every char a +1 to most stats for every other slave and the mod increases party size to 27. So you have some monsters running around by late game. You also dont pay them once you buy them. So an army for zero upkeep. Tough part is maintaining your food supply.
I disagree on Beast Slayers. I believe they're not worth the price for the stats they give and I'd rather save for a more expensive bro with higher avrg stats since it will most likely be a better late game bro.
You showed me something I didnt know that beast slayers can hit in the 60s range. I usually ignore them as they're fairly expensive. I think for your moneys worth its more value to just go for a melee nomad instead as they can roll up to 67 i believe for roughly the same cost. Not sure on events comparison. You should also consider gamblers. I roll pretty well on them occasionally about the same rate as I do messengers and thieves it seems. Shephards I think have too broad of a range. If you need a ranged unit like RIGHT NOW shephard is a really bad idea while as poacher has a very narrow range of range skill meaning you'll get roughly the same range skill out of them.
Nomads obviously only come from the south so Beast Slayers still have their worth from being available everywhere. Their higher resolve makes them better banner potential. And yeah shepherds are pretty bad lmao but they're better than you may at first think, that's all.
@@CarveaHole Yup but they're fairly consistent hires. Whenever I go south theres almost always 1 melee nomad for hire. Whether hes good or not is debateable but for the most part I feel they're very solid bros on par or even surpassing sellswords. I think the only background that is really justified in their extreme price is hedge knights. Even adventurous nobles i'm hesistant because they cost so much freaking gold daily its hard to justify one. They do make insane banners though lol.
@@aylictal I love adventurous nobles because I never have to level resolve on them, which means more HP or stam when I need it. 5-13 base mdef is amazing too. If a bro is good enough I don't care about his upkeep cost cause he wins me fights.
@@CarveaHole 2 years later im coming back to some of my idiotic comments and having played the game a lot more adventurous nobles are now my favorite late game background. Resolve and mdef are just too good of stats. I think I still stand by my nomad statements though.
Due to me liking playing Peasant Militia origin, I was forced to learn the ins-and-outs of cheap backgrounds. Can say confidently that any high initiative (and armor) backgrounds are excellent front-liners for the early game. Surround bonus is very important for the early game and to be able to do that any recruit needs the highest defense he can muster - so taking Dodge is a great way to do that, especially when you don't have access to heavy armors at that point. Due to that Peddlers are not as bad as they seem on the offensive, as they can just help with the surround and be at the most dangerous position with less risk compared to other brothers and Thieves are phenomenal, because they can reach sky-high defense and survivability right from the get-go.
Expensive backgrounds are nice and definitely powerful, but you get them when you have more or less solve the money issues and from this point onward steam-rolling is relatively easy to achieve.
Well argued.
I personally like hiring farmhands. Ive had quite a few of them end up becoming very powerful. Sure, i had to wade through some trash farmhands to find them...but overall, it was cheaper than a sellsword or noble. The +Matk event is fairly easy to trigger as well, helping compensate for their lowish offense.
I love miners. High melee despite the lower stam. Good events and can get more fatigue from all terrain rolls. Excellent in cultist runs.
That stam is pretty killer for me, once you need armor having 90 max stam is pretty bad. If you max roll the event you can get +6 which is nice. I don't really consider miners to be underestimated though, their stats aren't too surprising.
@@CarveaHole I make nimble flail/mace headbangers with miners. They're cheap, usually rolls brute and their stam pool gets fixed when converted to cultist and levelled.
I really appreciate the Events look in particular. For some of these backgrounds I've almost never taken them, so I didn't know anything about their events. Cheers.
Flagellants and brawlers are amazing bannermen aswell for around 140-150 crowns.
Veery late to the party)), but imo monks make the best bannermen.
thanks for upgrading the mic. subbed
Peddler tank is amazing. Once i had a peddler without any stars in mdef and he had 50 mdef at lvl 7 with a heater and shield expert.
Like I had a choice :) I'm running indebted to keep cost downs, daytalers because they were there, a gambler, a couple peddlers, a caravan hand for the storage event, a theif and a nomad.
I’ve had more than a few farmhands end up becoming legendary mercenaries. There were plenty of trash ones as well though. Abusing event triggers can help get their stats up, but even that isn’t necessarily needed.
I had super good gambler as sergeant at one of my runs. It had 2 stars at matk and ranged def and 3 stars at resolve. On top of all he was tiny too so he had awesome defence stats from get go. I think he had 150 resolve at lvl 13.
That's really good. Think about not leveling Rdef on the banner. The banner rarely gets hit in melee, so if he takes a few ranged hits instead of your frontline you're probably saving armor without risking the banner's life (since he's a backliner). Seems counterintuitive, but you're really baiting the enemies with your low def bannerman.
One of my best and weirdest recruits in my poacher band is actually a southern gambler. He is ranged unit I keep in the frontline, either xbow or handgonne, with a longmace and firespear for potential melee. Thanks to insanely high initiative he can spray incoming group of enemies with overwhelm from handgonne and thanks to super-high def (dodge) and not-so-bad melee attack (further aided by FA) he totally survives being in the frontline and can rapidly switch between xbow and spear if needed. Having lots of fun using him.
I utilize a lot of these cheap backgrounds on peasant militia runs. Buying a vagabond to be a runner/flank unit is a good value already. Sometimes these cheap units have well placed stars, and earn their rank & ground grains by proving themselves in battle.
Well said.
You forget to mention the Gambler is also really good sometimes i rolled on a like 3 mdefs and i think its a underrated background , its also really good for a Banner early is as it can role max 52 resolve and with stars if you get lucky and ALSO you forgetted the Indebted can be a very good cheap frontlines as they can roll some nice mattaks and mdefs i got the mod where i can see the every stars on recruits i have to say atleast like 1 or 2 indebts that have some stars that are actually good on every city state i ve been in PLUS they have no WAGES
Yeah you're right gamblers are quite good for cheap bannerman. I wouldn't called indebted a good background - there can be good indebted but that doesn't mean the background as a whole is good. I believe they're best for fodder and cultist sacrifices because of the no wages part.
the only good thing about indebted is their wage -.-
Finally some love for trash backgrounds, even Peddler :D I actually always liked Gravediggers, they always have super low hire cost and if you roll 2-3 stars on melee attack, with their stamina and resolve you might have good late-game backliner imho. For peddlers i just hired for memes, though in my peasant militia i managed to squeeze in two and they act as very decent tanks. The only issue is that peddlers often have high upfront cost, which makes it harder to use them early game. (I might be ok to spend 100 crowns on gravedigger and discard him if he is really shit, but 350 for a most-likely-useless peddler is harder to justify. Also i think their wage is higher than other trash backgrounds).
I will forever stand by my assertion that disowned nobles are terrible.
Still gamble on bastards, though.
What if he max rolls?
Bastards are better if you're going for a frontliner (on a max roll), but disowned nobles have the ability to be hybrids.
I have a messenger in the late game and he’s brilliant! He outperforms my raiders and oath takers frequently!
I actually always hire thieves, they're amazing in the early game that high initiative can deal some damage. Beast slayers = cheap, yet good stats
petit message pour le référencement - nice vid
So now that I'm back playing again, I have a notion to make to you and anyone else viewing:
What if Miner was a better background than Farmhand? XD
I've recently given up my shunning of miners so heavily, and honestly I'm starting to think they're better than farmhands. Here's why:
Avg HP: Miner: 65 Farmhand: 66 // less than a level more for farmhand
Avg MAtk: Miner : 54.5 Farmhand: 52 // a full level more for the miner
Avg Resolve: Miner: 41.5 Farmhand: 32.5 // 3 levels of resolve for the miner (rough estimate)
Avg Fatigue: Miner: 85 Farmhand: 110 // 7 levels of fatigue for the farmer (rough estimate)
Rest of stats the same averages. How important is fatigue if you're using a 0stam 2h build? Neglible. Unless you want to specialize in sword and board tanks, or duelist style builds, miners are actually better for 2h wearers in a lot of cases when comparing them against farmhands.
If you're going for a 2h 0 stam build. If you want to make a nimble guy and never level fat, farmhand is better, as well as when you want stam intensive BF. You're right that miners aren't as bad as people give them credit for.
@@CarveaHole The problem I have with that statement is that there just isnt any other build than 2h 0 stam for big dps on shitty backgrounds. If you level in fat you're giving up one of the best three stats for your bro (atk def or hp). I dont know anyway else in order to level a bro competently so that the amount of bullshit rng the game throws at you doesnt end up in your bro getting insta 2 shot gibbed. Resolve also has to be taken to shore up a bro too that isnt even included, theres just no room for fatigue builds on shitty backgrounds.
@@aylictal I mean you're right that is why 0 stam builds exist. But some backgrounds don't have to worry about that, like the farmhand. Those extra stam points allow you more flexibility. Miners are better for the resolve and matk, so it's more what you need/want in a bro.
great video
also thanks for the guide and info, i'm definitely gonna utilise them
Swordmasters are the 2h equivalent to hunters imo, whenever I want a 2h bro I hire swordmaster, they never disappoint even with bad rolls. Events are great, once you “accidentally” find other background that high rolled into 2h candidate, they can be super substitutes after getting old. Most underrated background by far.
SM can still be around if you build him as Fatigue Neutral. I had a great SM that at level 11, had like 100 attack, 40 mele defense, around 75 hp and 65 resolve, all of this after old. He is truly a monster.
Now I undestand why people love fatigue neutral because made the hiring process less than tossing a coin and praying everything to get all the stars aligned.
I'm pretty new to the game, something over 40 hours, but I love buying the cheap backgrounds. I have built some good bros that way, the rest either died or got retired.
Getting better at the game is doing more with worse stuff. You don't need hedge knights, and you can win before you get to the stage of hiring them too.
Graverobber has an event where you can go on a heist with him and possibly get free FH armor or a named shield if you have a historian (which i never do).
Sheapherds are also really common in the south and thus even without tryout you can just buy them in bulk (those who spawn without nomad slings at least) until you find a good one for very few crowns.
Miners are also somewhat underrated imo.
What does spawning with a nomad sling do to a shepherd?
@@CarveaHole Well, nothing. Just inflates their recruitment cost due to adding the value of the weapon to it.
@@dvel185 Ah, ok. I didn't know if it was something similar to nomads where ones with ranged weapons have different stats than those with melee weapons.
Generally use thief a lot as long he doesn't min roll matk. While i mostly use them for their high mdef and high ini they are also very good in some events especially the robbing drunk noble event just as long no lawman come after my thief
one time i had noble house i was trying to do allied ambition with suddenly come after my 10 lvl thief. With heavy sigh i ponied up 1000 crowns for a bribe and clicked confirmation text "Things i do for you lot..."
Slaves. Im not sure if its a Legends mod start, but the "Escaped Slaves" beginning gives every char a +1 to most stats for every other slave and the mod increases party size to 27. So you have some monsters running around by late game. You also dont pay them once you buy them. So an army for zero upkeep. Tough part is maintaining your food supply.
Cool video man!
Thank you!
I disagree on Beast Slayers. I believe they're not worth the price for the stats they give and I'd rather save for a more expensive bro with higher avrg stats since it will most likely be a better late game bro.
What's mammoth?
Tank
@@CarveaHole ty
You showed me something I didnt know that beast slayers can hit in the 60s range. I usually ignore them as they're fairly expensive.
I think for your moneys worth its more value to just go for a melee nomad instead as they can roll up to 67 i believe for roughly the same cost. Not sure on events comparison.
You should also consider gamblers. I roll pretty well on them occasionally about the same rate as I do messengers and thieves it seems.
Shephards I think have too broad of a range. If you need a ranged unit like RIGHT NOW shephard is a really bad idea while as poacher has a very narrow range of range skill meaning you'll get roughly the same range skill out of them.
Nomads obviously only come from the south so Beast Slayers still have their worth from being available everywhere. Their higher resolve makes them better banner potential. And yeah shepherds are pretty bad lmao but they're better than you may at first think, that's all.
@@CarveaHole Yup but they're fairly consistent hires. Whenever I go south theres almost always 1 melee nomad for hire. Whether hes good or not is debateable but for the most part I feel they're very solid bros on par or even surpassing sellswords.
I think the only background that is really justified in their extreme price is hedge knights. Even adventurous nobles i'm hesistant because they cost so much freaking gold daily its hard to justify one.
They do make insane banners though lol.
@@aylictal I love adventurous nobles because I never have to level resolve on them, which means more HP or stam when I need it. 5-13 base mdef is amazing too. If a bro is good enough I don't care about his upkeep cost cause he wins me fights.
@@CarveaHole 2 years later im coming back to some of my idiotic comments and having played the game a lot more adventurous nobles are now my favorite late game background. Resolve and mdef are just too good of stats. I think I still stand by my nomad statements though.
Peddler for me is down here with cripple. Even 50 crown beggar will be better
13 mdef on peddlers is great, so they really are not a bad background.
@@CarveaHole You can just hire thieves, they have far more combat potential
You talk like Elon Musk
What do you mean by that lol, never heard that one before
Idk it's just the way you talk in this video, reminds me a lot of Musk's one