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[Ehndras]

I tried different difficulties and eventually settled on this normal one, endgame selected to "war of nobility".

If normal is this much of a pain in the ass, I can't imagine surviving in veteran mode. I got murdered quite rapidly in my higher difficulty attempts.

Quick question:

How do you fare in the scenarios? Can you beat them all? Because I cannot for the life of me, actually manage to beat some of them. Necrosavants especially. How the hell do you counter those damn things!?

[a1s]

I play on veteran, and contract difficulty is a roller-coaster. I did two contracts back to back, one of them 3 stars, and 9 bandits of middling quality (didn't even get a single injury), the other 2-stars, half the money, and 12 bandits (a bit lower quality but with strong ranged presence.) We won in the end, but half my troop went to the reverves and my pikeneer is only alive by the grace of the gods (had 1 HP at the end, and a broken leg)

[Ehndras]

Ouch! Yeah, fighting heavy-ranged troupes can REALLY hurt. I try to use high elevation to help, but if you have terrible luck like I did yesterday, the enemy archers will spawn on a mountain overlooking your guys with a one tile gradual walkway up and no other way there, raining hell from above. :|

Goblins, though. Dear Gods, goblins... I just rush the bastards or they'll net you, bola your shields to splinters, and fill you with arrows until you're a troupe of human pincushions.

[Greenbane]

I play on veteran, and contract difficulty is a roller-coaster. I did two contracts back to back, one of them 3 stars, and 9 bandits of middling quality (didn't even get a single injury), the other 2-stars, half the money, and 12 bandits (a bit lower quality but with strong ranged presence.) We won in the end, but half my troop went to the reverves and my pikeneer is only alive by the grace of the gods (had 1 HP at the end, and a broken leg)

Veteran as well. Haven't dared to take three-skull contracts around Day 60+ due to dreadful experiences with two-skull ones. Sometimes you end up fighting manageable bands of brigands, but some other times you're thrown against serious orc war parties, with significant numbers of Warriors or Berserkers. In one recent case, I was sent to fight Goblin Wolfriders and Ambushers in mountainous terrain.

It'd seem there's issues with contract generation then, if a hard contract can be easier than a moderate one. In addition, contract difficulty appears to be based off the strength the game thinks your company has, which is fine if it weren't for the fact that estimation is likely off, considering how the opposition's quantity and quality grows off the charts from the mid-late game onwards.

I tried different difficulties and eventually settled on this normal one, endgame selected to "war of nobility".

I supposed that was the case, since I really didn't see you getting away with not buying equipment on Veteran plus. Improving through looting is often viable, but it generally implies defeating a superior force first. And sometimes you need parity beforehand, to prevent potentially considerable losses.

[Ehndras]

I sort of found a workaround: used a group of archers to kill groups of bandits, or even took advantage of multi-party combat to jump in and get free kills/loot with minimal risk by using the allied party (peasants, soldiers, militia, whatever) as bait.

It was a pain in the ass, but I slowly built up stocks of acceptable armor and weapons. My second mission was those undead auxiliaries and I got pretty much all the gear I could need from that and a prior bandit encounter. Since then, I've pretty much been using the same gear, slowly improving from for example basic crap spears to boar spears, light crossbows to crossbows, short bows to hunting bows, and the like.

Nine Lives is amazing. Its the first perk I get for all characters, and it has saved me from losing a character dozens of times.

...Sure, they walk away crippled, but alive.

Hell, my best crossbowman with the 74 ranged combat skill, high initiative, eagle eye, bloodlust, and ridiculous skills now has a ruptured lung: permanent injury that severely lowers his fatigue. I think by 50%? Or was it 25... Not sure.

[Tack]

I wonder if difficulty could just be a monster-attribute thing?
Veteran berserkers can wear armor. Normal Wiedergangers only rise once. Etc.

Would be basically impossible to code in this late though.

[Ehndras]

Do you mean modding or as per design?

[Greenbane]

I wonder if difficulty could just be a monster-attribute thing?
Veteran berserkers can wear armor. Normal Wiedergangers only rise once. Etc.

Would be basically impossible to code in this late though.

The Berserkers I've seen on my Veteran playthrough do wear some kind of bone armour, different from the Warriors' metal chassis suits.

Sort of tangentially, if you delve into the master data file, with an advanced super hacking tool such as 7zip, you can see all the contract, enemy, faction, etc. scripts in .CNUT files. Unfortunately, opening those vía Notepad++ or Sublime Text yields something that's either encrypted or just not a conventional, editable text file.

[Ehndras]

Sorry, you are not authorized to C Nuts.

[Greenbane]

Sorry, you are not authorized to C Nuts.

You've to be careful not to typo-swap the N and U, too.

Anyway, as far as I've read, it seems they're compiled database files, and can't be quite decompiled to be read and edited.

[Ehndras]

Ah, damn. Hopefully they introduce a way to make modding possible. A game like this... Creating a modding community would help this game skyrocket to the heavens and beyond.

[Greenbane]

Ah, damn. Hopefully they introduce a way to make modding possible. A game like this... Creating a modding community would help this game skyrocket to the heavens and beyond.

Yeah. The files are really neatly organized and it's easy to navigate the whole structure, but unfortunately only the images are in an accessible format (PNG), for the moment.

It would be awesome if they were made editable by text editors, but I'm not sure just how feasible that'd be in relation to how the game interacts with its own database.

[Ghazkull]

So after playing for a while now and i have to say i am confused. What are you guys doing? I am playing on normal and take on 3 skull contracts because otherwise i cant even finance my mercenary company. And most of those i breeze through like nothing.

I don't understand how you get problems with two skulls? Well apart from goblins, those suckers i just avoid as all hell. But yeah orks are easy as hell to do. The only real problem i encountered in my games so far have always been the noble houses. Huu boy. Those Billmen heavy companies are a pain to take down and i at least suffer 2-3 casualties in each of those encounters (that counts those that are just heavily wounded afterwards). Although apparently (according to Taricus) heavy armor makes them easier, and as far as i ve upgraded my company with super heavy armor thats holdy true as casualties have been reduced and those companies feel easier to take on (although it still feels like a beatdown every time).

As far as i can see the winning combination are crossbows (due to far higher accuracy than bows), axes and hammers and as heavy armor as you can get.

[Taricus]

Playing on Veteran Ghaz.

And financing the company at the late game is easy; just go exploring; there's a lot of good loot off the beaten path that can easily exceed the payday of a three-skull mission.

[Ghazkull]

Wot? I never found anything overly fancy while exploring. Also is it just me or does payment scale with the kind of men you hire?