expert combat is actually easier in the long term due to getting better loot earlier, so id suggest everyone to try out higher combat difficulties asap the economic difficulty is probably the biggest game changer
@@rafaelcastor2089 getting pegged is better than going to the first crisis with only 75 110 gear if these poor fellas can even find them, I’d rather they get clipped and learn from it than grow too cautious
@@Dude-1887 That's exactly it. People who don't know how to snowball probably aren't going to actually go past brigand raider armor before the crisis and probably will wipe from getting those early encounter orcs. That being said; Yes, they should stick to the highest difficulty to learn as much as they can. But saying expert combat is easier is too reductive
@@Dude-1887 You can buy a decent 150 armor for 1k gold in village or ~1300 in stronghold with good relationship. So accumulating 10-15k gold is what it takes to get you full frontline. But if you use nimble bros, they don't need that high armor. Getting better loot earlier can provide you more money to equip your bro.
Nice one! I have an instinct to Leeroy Jenkins too often and it generally doesn't go how I plan. I really like the strategy vids with tactics for fights. Would love to see one with Reaver/Chosen before your bros are leveled and decked out. The adrenaline rotate with those hammer/mace/axes with the drummer constantly refilling stam give me fits.
Never put a bro in a chosen triangle. They will kill anyone who step close unless you have a good chance of break their rotation by killing one. 1v1 are not that scary even on early game.
this is a great video but what would happen if it was me is my guy would miss the spear through, the axe guy moves in and be-head one brow and drop another to half health in one aoe swing lol
@@alext5497 i really like the game but for me the one major drawback is the first 8-10 hours of every playthrough is very similar - focus on brigades to steal their armor, stack the RNG to your favor as much as possible and hope a single bad turn doesnt end two of your starting bros. there are so many enemies that are interesting but are seldom worth their rewards.
@@mcb4067 what enemies aren't worth it?? I've seen lots of 'pros' succeed with different strats and different builds and compositions. It's not quite as linear as it seems. Rng is a pain though. Something that helps is having no archers and taking most of your battles at night.
@@alext5497 this is just focused on ironman mode. For example Alps and Hexe's, or caravan protection contracts. and in the beginning stay away from the North anf forests because unless you're 100% focused if you get into a fight you dont want to take and they have dogs its gg. Its not that these fights aren't winnable, they just dont seem to offer rewards that balance the risk. Of course there are some pros who are getting famed gear less than 40 turns in, but that is less than 5% of the playerbase. if there are certain fights that if you get into might decimate half your team simply because you looked away from the screen for 10 seconds, or didn't spend a hundred hours on a normal campaign practicing facing every conceivable enemy, or against a certain enemy that unless you prepared for it (maces/polarms/ no clothes vs alps) might also decimate your team. And we cant underestimate the risk. Maybe for other games that is a few hours wasted. But for this game it might be 10 -40 hours you spent building up just to lose everything because of that one misjudgment, now requiring you to start a new campaign spending another 15 hours doing exactly the same thing in your previous campaign (killing brigades for their gear) .
My go-to strat for the first fight is having the ranged bro all the way right or left and everyone else offset on the opposite side for round 1 with no shields (need the +25% dmg on everyone). I make all melee bros go forward two tiles and complete their turn. This preserves their initiative for round 2. Weapons of choice - spears, because of the bonus hit chance, and knives, in case I manage to corner an armor I want to pick off. I make the ranged bro wait, so half the thugs split and go after him, and them move him just enough far back, so the thugs can't lock him in combat. Meanwhile, the thugs going after the melee bros, go right up in their face. They don't have AP to attack, so they are forced to end their turn right in front of my line. This enables me to deal first hits with every melee bro in Round 2, and I prioritize their dangerous weapons - spears, axes, Tier 2 flails and pickaxes. Around turn 2-3 my ranged bro will have returned at the back of my melee line, and by that time, I have killed 2-4 of them and the kited enemies are just now getting in position to attack my melee line. Some of my guys will have gained Confident bonuses from the 2-4 thugs I've dispatched in round 2, and the kited enemies become easy pickings. I do this EVERY time. My winrate on the first 3-4 bandit-chasing contracts is approx 85-90% as long as RNG doesn't screw me. I cannot stress how great early bros are with high initiative and Dodge.
GREAT VIDEO, i only know few days ago from your vid about taking enemy's armor by using dagger, always thought it will drop like normal game loot, first time playing this type of game but man it is satisfying when it goes well
So, I really like this game. The problem with that is that I'm someone with 0 experience in strategy games and my prefered difficulty is "easy enough for a 4 year old". I like my games as challenging as unlocking my phone with my face is, which means when I read from multiple sources, that they recommend you to play on expert difficulty after abandoning my 2nd campaign on the lowest difficulty for reasons I don't remember, I was confused. That sounded to me like someone trying to pitch you the idea of shooting yourself in the foot with the words 'Trust me, it's fun!'. And getting frustrated way to easily again I somehow got to this video and through that your entire channel. I may just have started, curently on day 3X and spent a third of my in-game time reloading, but I think I'm learning, which is a start I guess. I still get easily frustrated and don't know what I'm doing, but it's the first time I have so muchfin failing in this and probably any game. So thank you for your content, which made me stick with this game, though I hate to love it, but now I want to see how far I can get. Cheers ^^
Just remember, failing is part of learning. Hard part is blocking out the frustration you feel. Once you master your mind, you can do anything. Keep going no matter what. Try not to save scum, just do your absolute best down to the last battle brother. Once he dies then you can restart.
@@CarveaHole Was playing and have some 8 decent bros with worn mail kits, just went down to 2 against a 5 raider team. I fucking just alt+f4 that because im fucking throwing so bad. There is a point where I start being stupid and I cant seem to find it.
Only the first 10 days or so are harder. Then it's a bit easier cuz your gear will be better faster, and you can go do the fun stuff faster and level faster too, so you're first crisis should actually be easier.
Lol, all 5 of your spear throws hit and your first 3 attacks also hit. When your rng is that good, sure this game can be fun. But I realized a couple nights ago that this game is just a coin toss. Here's what happened for me: My second fight, the one after this one with the thugs, was versus 4 direwolves. I had 6 guys and I thought I had a decent chance. I set up my guys and looking at the rolls the game told me my 2 of my guys had 50% chance to hit, 2 had about 60% and 2 had about 70%. The wolves had a 25-30% chance to hit me, but I knew they had 3 attacks to my 1 or 2. My guys ended up hitting about 35% of their hits and the wolves hit 10 of their 12 first round attacks. My party was half killed and the other 3 severely wounded by the end of it. I got really frustrated. So I took a break, I came back and reloaded the auto save. Second try had almost the same chance to hit for me and them. However this time, my guys hit about 75% of their attacks and the wolves who had 30% chance to hit only hit 2 of their first 12. So this time I completely rolled over the fight and had nothing but a little hp damage at the end. So yea, that's when I realized that even though I fought the same exact battle with almost the same exact attack percentages, the outcomes were so wildly different. And it's not because I'm bad at playing tactically, I mean I did what I could to maximize my attack percentages and minimize the enemies, but in the end it came out to a coin toss. First battle was tails, and I got crushed. Second time was heads and I crushed them. I enjoy your vids and they've helped me learn lots of things. But that fight proved that this game has way too much rng.
No dude, you have a sample size of two with different results. Not anywhere near valid for a test. Play enough and the numbers work out as they ought to. And yeah, don't take second fight wolves lol.
@@CarveaHole I get what you're saying, but the problem is that in the early game a sample size of 2 is all I might have. If I roll as bad as I did the first time, the campaign practically asks for a restart. I'm still trying to learn the game and the farthest I've gotten is 60 days in. I actually enjoy the early parts because once it's like day 60 I've got a full band and they're kitted out quite well. I'm on my newest campaign right now and I want to get to the end of the crisis in this one. The point I'm trying to make is that in the first 10 battles, it's a lot easier to notice when things are going well or not. Once it's like day 20 and I've got 12 brothers and well over 10k gold, losing a couple bothers to a bad battle isn't nearly as impactful as losing a couple brothers in the first week. At for the wolves I personally don't find them that hard. I have shields on my front guys and since they're such cowards, after I've focused down one the others are already beginning to break.
@@arckmage5218 I thought your point was about RNG. The game isn't a coin flip, and it's more in your favor the smarter you play. A lot of that comes from experience. All this nonsense about blaming numbers is usually unfounded.
@@CarveaHole yes that is my point. Let me put it like this. You're a smart guy and you've figured out this game. You go into battles like you regularly do. However, tonight you begin to play, and even though you're using your usual tactics, in each fight you keep losing a brother to beheading. It's always eerily similar. You get shot by 2 marksmen and the melee guy gets a "lucky" headshot. Do you change your playstyle to accommodate this new phenomenon or do you try and figure out if there's perhaps something else at play? For me, in my previous playthrough, the phenomenon was that my 2h backline who had at least a 70% or higher chance to hit, he always missed his first shot in each fight, always. I nicknamed him "miss first". I don't know how many battles I did, probably at least 30 with him. So yea, just because I hope the numbers work out for me in the long run, this game has some weird things that happen with the percentages. If you're playing into day 800, you're not playing at the level I'm talking about. At that point you've got so much armor and hit chance and perks that it would take pretty extreme rng to ruin your party. But in the early game extreme swings in rng are a lot more noticeable. I'm always looking at the percentages now, and I notice when the numbers get weird, even when it's benefited me. It's just that I don't normally take lots of shots below 50% hit chance, so I tend to notice when I'm on a "miss" streak, and I don't tend to give opponents a greater than 50% chance to hit me, so I notice when they're on a "hit" streak. I mean technically even with your thousands of hours of playtime, you would notice if you went into a "typical" fight, but you missed almost all your shots in the first 2 rounds, right? The first rounds are the most important. I don't care if I'm daggering down guys and my 20-30% hit chance with that is more like 10%. But when I'm facing 4 berzerkers and 8 young, I definitely notice when my hit percentage is half what I was expecting to hit in the first 2 rounds. That's why I chuckled when I saw this fight you showed in the video. Your spear thrower who has probably about a 70% chance to hit and he hit all 5 shots. I imagine this fight would go quite differently if he only hit 1 or 2. Which would still be about a 20-40% hit chance.
Dude i have my ass kicked só hard, i was playing about 5 hors and i cant win. I take 4 Raiders with 95 - 90 armor on a fortification and they have qick hand and javelins, ho my ass , the contrat pay only 290 Gold. Holy fuck. I Win with 8 Man but Lost 4 Man. What hell kkk
@@Foremek Low funds on some origins makes for quick restarts. Oathtakers with 2 starting brothers and 500 gold is rough if you don't get recruit for around 100 in the starting area :V. Even though you have superb brothers they will have good chance of dying without some next level strats like kiting to utilize terrain. Had fun run when I decided to risk it on short caravan mission on day 1 to next city (under day worth of travel) and immedietely after leaving town, 2 Orc Berserkers + 3 Orc Young charged into caravan xD.
Do it again. No way your first 8 attacks all landed.
Lucky af
He was on high ground, using a javelin, against targets without shields.
Oh and it was the lowest level enemies in the entire game.
This dude is def cheating for the TH-cam clicks
@@doncoyote68You're maling the wrong choices if you're first fight is anything but 7 thugs tbh
expert combat is actually easier in the long term due to getting better loot earlier, so id suggest everyone to try out higher combat difficulties asap the economic difficulty is probably the biggest game changer
Only if you know how to snowball*
If you don't, you're getting pegged
@@rafaelcastor2089 getting pegged is better than going to the first crisis with only 75 110 gear if these poor fellas can even find them, I’d rather they get clipped and learn from it than grow too cautious
@@Dude-1887 That's exactly it. People who don't know how to snowball probably aren't going to actually go past brigand raider armor before the crisis and probably will wipe from getting those early encounter orcs.
That being said; Yes, they should stick to the highest difficulty to learn as much as they can. But saying expert combat is easier is too reductive
@@Dude-1887 You can buy a decent 150 armor for 1k gold in village or ~1300 in stronghold with good relationship. So accumulating 10-15k gold is what it takes to get you full frontline. But if you use nimble bros, they don't need that high armor. Getting better loot earlier can provide you more money to equip your bro.
Imagine only rolling 3 misses on your first fight lol. Thats some insane rng right there.
Nice one! I have an instinct to Leeroy Jenkins too often and it generally doesn't go how I plan. I really like the strategy vids with tactics for fights. Would love to see one with Reaver/Chosen before your bros are leveled and decked out. The adrenaline rotate with those hammer/mace/axes with the drummer constantly refilling stam give me fits.
Never put a bro in a chosen triangle. They will kill anyone who step close unless you have a good chance of break their rotation by killing one. 1v1 are not that scary even on early game.
this is a great video but what would happen if it was me is my guy would miss the spear through, the axe guy moves in and be-head one brow and drop another to half health in one aoe swing lol
Then it's game over man
The first week is the hardest
@@alext5497 i really like the game but for me the one major drawback is the first 8-10 hours of every playthrough is very similar - focus on brigades to steal their armor, stack the RNG to your favor as much as possible and hope a single bad turn doesnt end two of your starting bros. there are so many enemies that are interesting but are seldom worth their rewards.
@@mcb4067 what enemies aren't worth it??
I've seen lots of 'pros' succeed with different strats and different builds and compositions. It's not quite as linear as it seems.
Rng is a pain though. Something that helps is having no archers and taking most of your battles at night.
@@alext5497 this is just focused on ironman mode.
For example Alps and Hexe's, or caravan protection contracts.
and in the beginning stay away from the North anf forests because unless you're 100% focused if you get into a fight you dont want to take and they have dogs its gg.
Its not that these fights aren't winnable, they just dont seem to offer rewards that balance the risk. Of course there are some pros who are getting famed gear less than 40 turns in, but that is less than 5% of the playerbase.
if there are certain fights that if you get into might decimate half your team simply because you looked away from the screen for 10 seconds, or didn't spend a hundred hours on a normal campaign practicing facing every conceivable enemy, or against a certain enemy that unless you prepared for it (maces/polarms/ no clothes vs alps) might also decimate your team.
And we cant underestimate the risk. Maybe for other games that is a few hours wasted. But for this game it might be 10 -40 hours you spent building up just to lose everything because of that one misjudgment, now requiring you to start a new campaign spending another 15 hours doing exactly the same thing in your previous campaign (killing brigades for their gear) .
My go-to strat for the first fight is having the ranged bro all the way right or left and everyone else offset on the opposite side for round 1 with no shields (need the +25% dmg on everyone).
I make all melee bros go forward two tiles and complete their turn.
This preserves their initiative for round 2.
Weapons of choice - spears, because of the bonus hit chance, and knives, in case I manage to corner an armor I want to pick off.
I make the ranged bro wait, so half the thugs split and go after him, and them move him just enough far back, so the thugs can't lock him in combat. Meanwhile, the thugs going after the melee bros, go right up in their face.
They don't have AP to attack, so they are forced to end their turn right in front of my line. This enables me to deal first hits with every melee bro in Round 2, and I prioritize their dangerous weapons - spears, axes, Tier 2 flails and pickaxes.
Around turn 2-3 my ranged bro will have returned at the back of my melee line, and by that time, I have killed 2-4 of them and the kited enemies are just now getting in position to attack my melee line. Some of my guys will have gained Confident bonuses from the 2-4 thugs I've dispatched in round 2, and the kited enemies become easy pickings.
I do this EVERY time. My winrate on the first 3-4 bandit-chasing contracts is approx 85-90% as long as RNG doesn't screw me. I cannot stress how great early bros are with high initiative and Dodge.
Meanwhile in my playthrough: Guy trips uphill falling on dagger and killing himself.
GREAT VIDEO, i only know few days ago from your vid about taking enemy's armor by using dagger, always thought it will drop like normal game loot, first time playing this type of game but man it is satisfying when it goes well
Might be a good idea to overexplain things like runners too, it's a good tool early on to get into harder fights and come on top
Already have a video on that :)
@@CarveaHole You have other videos? Kappa
So, I really like this game. The problem with that is that I'm someone with 0 experience in strategy games and my prefered difficulty is "easy enough for a 4 year old". I like my games as challenging as unlocking my phone with my face is, which means when I read from multiple sources, that they recommend you to play on expert difficulty after abandoning my 2nd campaign on the lowest difficulty for reasons I don't remember, I was confused. That sounded to me like someone trying to pitch you the idea of shooting yourself in the foot with the words 'Trust me, it's fun!'. And getting frustrated way to easily again I somehow got to this video and through that your entire channel. I may just have started, curently on day 3X and spent a third of my in-game time reloading, but I think I'm learning, which is a start I guess. I still get easily frustrated and don't know what I'm doing, but it's the first time I have so muchfin failing in this and probably any game. So thank you for your content, which made me stick with this game, though I hate to love it, but now I want to see how far I can get. Cheers ^^
Just remember, failing is part of learning. Hard part is blocking out the frustration you feel. Once you master your mind, you can do anything. Keep going no matter what. Try not to save scum, just do your absolute best down to the last battle brother. Once he dies then you can restart.
very concise and informative, thanks for the uploads!
Over 600 hours in the game. And I have never played on Expert.
Now, however, I think next playthrough, I am doing Expert.
That is awesome Luca! Let me know how it goes :D
How did it go?
I really need to take more time in my play. I realize my impatient nature has shown itself.
Yeah definitely. Most of the time when I lose bros now it's cause I was playing rashly
@@CarveaHole Was playing and have some 8 decent bros with worn mail kits, just went down to 2 against a 5 raider team. I fucking just alt+f4 that because im fucking throwing so bad. There is a point where I start being stupid and I cant seem to find it.
Loved this video! Really helpful!
Hello everybody, today I want to get you playing on expert difficulty...that is all. - five second video over.
Nice content, thanks for sharing
Thank you :D
Great video
Great vid bro
Thank you!
I like it!
alright, now what do I do when it's 11 thugs!?!
Hopefully you have more than six bros lol. Same idea, fall back to a good position, use consumables, and position trash bros in bad spots.
Not struggling anymore with the game thanks to your advide but I'm not sure I'm ready for expert XD
Only the first 10 days or so are harder. Then it's a bit easier cuz your gear will be better faster, and you can go do the fun stuff faster and level faster too, so you're first crisis should actually be easier.
Good stuff, but sound still way too low. Like, I was just watching a utube game vid on another tab, tabbed over and its half the volume at least(
I'm trying to find the optimal position for my mic that maximizes volume while minimizing pops and breaths. Will continue to look at it.
MOAR
Lol, all 5 of your spear throws hit and your first 3 attacks also hit. When your rng is that good, sure this game can be fun. But I realized a couple nights ago that this game is just a coin toss.
Here's what happened for me:
My second fight, the one after this one with the thugs, was versus 4 direwolves. I had 6 guys and I thought I had a decent chance. I set up my guys and looking at the rolls the game told me my 2 of my guys had 50% chance to hit, 2 had about 60% and 2 had about 70%. The wolves had a 25-30% chance to hit me, but I knew they had 3 attacks to my 1 or 2.
My guys ended up hitting about 35% of their hits and the wolves hit 10 of their 12 first round attacks. My party was half killed and the other 3 severely wounded by the end of it. I got really frustrated. So I took a break, I came back and reloaded the auto save.
Second try had almost the same chance to hit for me and them. However this time, my guys hit about 75% of their attacks and the wolves who had 30% chance to hit only hit 2 of their first 12. So this time I completely rolled over the fight and had nothing but a little hp damage at the end.
So yea, that's when I realized that even though I fought the same exact battle with almost the same exact attack percentages, the outcomes were so wildly different. And it's not because I'm bad at playing tactically, I mean I did what I could to maximize my attack percentages and minimize the enemies, but in the end it came out to a coin toss. First battle was tails, and I got crushed. Second time was heads and I crushed them. I enjoy your vids and they've helped me learn lots of things. But that fight proved that this game has way too much rng.
Battle Brothers is also about which fights to take. I would not engage Direwolves early on, they hit too hard and can overwhelm you quickly.
No dude, you have a sample size of two with different results. Not anywhere near valid for a test. Play enough and the numbers work out as they ought to. And yeah, don't take second fight wolves lol.
@@CarveaHole I get what you're saying, but the problem is that in the early game a sample size of 2 is all I might have. If I roll as bad as I did the first time, the campaign practically asks for a restart. I'm still trying to learn the game and the farthest I've gotten is 60 days in. I actually enjoy the early parts because once it's like day 60 I've got a full band and they're kitted out quite well. I'm on my newest campaign right now and I want to get to the end of the crisis in this one.
The point I'm trying to make is that in the first 10 battles, it's a lot easier to notice when things are going well or not. Once it's like day 20 and I've got 12 brothers and well over 10k gold, losing a couple bothers to a bad battle isn't nearly as impactful as losing a couple brothers in the first week.
At for the wolves I personally don't find them that hard. I have shields on my front guys and since they're such cowards, after I've focused down one the others are already beginning to break.
@@arckmage5218 I thought your point was about RNG. The game isn't a coin flip, and it's more in your favor the smarter you play. A lot of that comes from experience. All this nonsense about blaming numbers is usually unfounded.
@@CarveaHole yes that is my point. Let me put it like this. You're a smart guy and you've figured out this game. You go into battles like you regularly do. However, tonight you begin to play, and even though you're using your usual tactics, in each fight you keep losing a brother to beheading. It's always eerily similar. You get shot by 2 marksmen and the melee guy gets a "lucky" headshot. Do you change your playstyle to accommodate this new phenomenon or do you try and figure out if there's perhaps something else at play?
For me, in my previous playthrough, the phenomenon was that my 2h backline who had at least a 70% or higher chance to hit, he always missed his first shot in each fight, always. I nicknamed him "miss first". I don't know how many battles I did, probably at least 30 with him. So yea, just because I hope the numbers work out for me in the long run, this game has some weird things that happen with the percentages. If you're playing into day 800, you're not playing at the level I'm talking about. At that point you've got so much armor and hit chance and perks that it would take pretty extreme rng to ruin your party. But in the early game extreme swings in rng are a lot more noticeable.
I'm always looking at the percentages now, and I notice when the numbers get weird, even when it's benefited me. It's just that I don't normally take lots of shots below 50% hit chance, so I tend to notice when I'm on a "miss" streak, and I don't tend to give opponents a greater than 50% chance to hit me, so I notice when they're on a "hit" streak.
I mean technically even with your thousands of hours of playtime, you would notice if you went into a "typical" fight, but you missed almost all your shots in the first 2 rounds, right? The first rounds are the most important. I don't care if I'm daggering down guys and my 20-30% hit chance with that is more like 10%. But when I'm facing 4 berzerkers and 8 young, I definitely notice when my hit percentage is half what I was expecting to hit in the first 2 rounds.
That's why I chuckled when I saw this fight you showed in the video. Your spear thrower who has probably about a 70% chance to hit and he hit all 5 shots. I imagine this fight would go quite differently if he only hit 1 or 2. Which would still be about a 20-40% hit chance.
I am playing on legendary/legendary
Fun video overall, but i do have a pet-peeve:
Mail armor is made of chain links. It was very annoying to hear you call the surcoats "mail"
I call all body armor mail. A sackcloth is 5 mail. Just easier that way lol
@@CarveaHole Wryyyyyy
Maille being French for armor so he's not 100% wrong but yeah we don't do that over here so mildly infuriating haha
Thanks you for this
Cool video… moar please
Dude i have my ass kicked só hard, i was playing about 5 hors and i cant win.
I take 4 Raiders with 95 - 90 armor on a fortification and they have qick hand and javelins, ho my ass , the contrat pay only 290 Gold. Holy fuck. I Win with 8 Man but Lost 4 Man. What hell kkk
Wait, people actually play on any difficulty other than expert expert low?
Yes, I am proud of playing on beginner beginner high.
I used to play in beginner without mod, in legend i play legend (harder than expert)
Played mostly on vet/vet/high
To me, expert econ and low starting funds makes for an unfun grind, so I play expert combat, beginner econ, high funds
@@Foremek Low funds on some origins makes for quick restarts. Oathtakers with 2 starting brothers and 500 gold is rough if you don't get recruit for around 100 in the starting area :V. Even though you have superb brothers they will have good chance of dying without some next level strats like kiting to utilize terrain.
Had fun run when I decided to risk it on short caravan mission on day 1 to next city (under day worth of travel) and immedietely after leaving town, 2 Orc Berserkers + 3 Orc Young charged into caravan xD.
His way to guarantee a win: cheat. All his attacks hit. This dudes a cheater.