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Voting closed, Bersi is benched.
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May 17, 2014 01:51
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| # ? May 16, 2024 13:14 |
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 By popular demand, Bersi will be benched moving forwards.  BGM: Little Did they Sleep Spirits remain high as day 14 starts.  Look, if I'm going to be leading this band all the way to Grofheim then I do not have the patience for this kind of talk.  What's his name?" You ask his companions. "Griss." "Take care of Griss," you reply. You hear them laughing at his misfortune as you wander off. +5 Renown  Most of a day later...  Worth a shot.  We have enough supplies to last us a good ways, so keep it. "As you like. If you're passing Denglr's stone, I have a request, though. My wife's brother stayed behind. You'll know him by the necklace with many gold rings. If you see him, say we are safely in Strand." You agree, and the merchants continue onward."  (Also, spoiler alert - the food was poisoned, which seems like kind of a dick move design-wise) Day 15! Due to our pace, morale has dropped to Good. Good is good enough for me, so we continue moving.  Dredge watch you, waiting to see what you do. "When's the last time you commanded a few hundred, Hakon?" asks Mogr. "Don't overthink it. The warriors can take care of themselves."  A new game mechanic! This is our first War. The enemy is strong, but we outnumber them. The Varl alone almost match their number, and we also have Ludin's fighters.  Wars are largely a game of risk versus reward. Our options:
We're going all in on this one. We will usually be going all in. You gather your allies and tell them to get ready to lead the attack.  No Bersi, so here's our team. Let's kill some Dredge!  BGM: No Life Goes Forever Unbroken Well, this won't do.  Learning from last time, I'm keeping my team together. That middle area is suicide. Battle start.  The enemy force is one Stoneguard, two Scourges, and three Grunts. Numbers are even. The first two enemies to act are Grunts in the far back, so I can start to form a defensive line without worrying about taking damage.  This Scourge is the first enemy who will be able to damage us, so let's mitigate that a bit. Because of Hakon's passive, Heavy Impact, the adjacent Grunt takes a point of Strength damage as well.  After the enemy wastes another turn, Gunnulf gets a fantastic Tempest in. His weak Armor means that he needs to be aggressive to avoid having too many run-ins with high-Strength enemies.  The Scourge, finally in a position to attack, is down to 4 Strength. Instead of going for the hit, he falls back to begin summoning a Grunt.  The problem with this formation is that second Scourge, which is acting after Yrsa. Time to see what she's capable of.  Slag & Burn Throws down an area burst of flames, dealing 2 Strength damage to the target tile and all adjacent tiles. In addition, two tiles of hot coals are placed randomly within the target area, dealing 1 Strength damage for every tile spent walking over them. After stepping over two tiles of hot coals, for a total of 4 Strength lost, the Scourge stops short of Yrsa.  Ludin is too far back to do anything interesting this round, so I'll just put him somewhere where he might be able to do some good next time.  The first hit I've taken in this fight! Gunnulf is down to 5 Armor, which could get dangerous fast. I'll have to be careful with him.  Eirik presents himself as a more appealing target than Yrsa. Hopefully.  When he promotes, I'm really going to need Gunnulf to pick up some Armor.  Now, this is getting a bit complicated. Look at the turn order here. The important bit is right after Gunnulf: First the summoning Scourge, then Yrsa, then the other Scourge. Hakon can't reach any enemies other than the summoner. If I kill the Summoner, though, then the northern Scourge will act before Yrsa. He can reach her, and has 11 Strength and enough Will to push that up to 12 damage. Yrsa has 6 Strength and 6 Armor, so that would be an instant kill.  I don't want Yrsa to die, and I don't want that summoner to summon anything, and I don't want Hakon to have to waste a turn, so I'm forced to pull Mogr off to deal with it.  There's pretty much no way Gunnulf isn't going down this fight.  There's some trouble here due to the fact that I misread the turn order. Now I have a Grunt with 10 Strength in the middle of this formation, and Hakon's the only one in position to do it any real damage. Unless I want it to take down Gunnulf for sure on its next turn, I'm going to need to just let the Scourge finish summoning.  I'll pray that it doesn't drop it somewhere inconvenient.  The last Grunt goes for a feeble Armor hit on Hakon...  Gunnulf gets some Armor damage in...  Some day I'll learn to stop praying to dead gods. Right behind my defensive wall. Yrsa can't fall back to any meaningful position, now, for fear of ending up within its attack range. She can't move towards Gunnulf because it'll put her in insta-gib range of the Stoneguard. If I leave the new Grunt alone, it'll damage Ludin just enough that he won't be able to damage it back meaningfully. This is getting ugly fast.  This is the best move I can think of here - blow another Slag & Burn to drop the new Grunt's Strength down to 8. This puts Yrsa into the Grunt's move range, but only if he spends one Will - and he only has one Will, so that'll leave him at doing 8 damage, which will only slightly impair Yrsa and won't hurt Ludin at all.  And then instead of either of those things, he takes out Gunnulf. My humans are now fully exposed to the enemy. poo poo. Okay.  There are now two serious threats left on the battlefield. The Stoneguard has 11 Strength, and the westmost Grunt has 10. Hakon can deal with the Grunt on his turn, so that just leaves the Stoneguard.  Oh for gently caress's sake. No. I can't deal with another Grunt right now.  Eirik can't kill it in one shot, but thanks to the number advantage swinging towards the enemy, he can hit it twice before it finishes summoning.  A Grunt rests instead of trying to attack. Small favor, since I have to waste a turn with Mogr coming back towards the main front.  Here's Kindle, the Stoneguard active. Knocks all adjacent units up to 4 tiles back, doing 1 point of Armor damage for each tile they move.  And that's one remaining enemy with meaningful Strength! Hakon eats a 1-Armor hit from a Grunt in retaliation.  Slag & Burn is an incredible ability. Second only to Oddleif's trick in terms of area denial, and it can do Strength damage to multiple enemies regardless of their Armor. Yrsa should almost never be attacking if it can be avoided.  9 Strength is manageable, so long as he doesn't get close to Yrsa. From here, I can take my time whittling down his Armor.  That's the third straight turn the enemy has wasted doing 1 damage to Hakon's Armor. This is why we leave weakened enemies around.  First kill of the battle! Another single point of Armor damage to Hakon.  2 Strength, and I wish I had gotten a screenshot of what happened next, but I was laughing too hard to catch it: The Grunt walks onto a tile of coals, takes 1 Strength damage, and dies on the spot.  Hakon's active, Sundering Impact, does a Strength attack that does an additional point each of Strength and Armor damage. In addition, Heavy Impact is enhanced on the attack to do a point of Armor damage, in addition to the usual point of Strength damage.  Despite the enemy's weakened condition, Yrsa is still better off throwing coals.  Time to start getting kills.  Eirik is too far out to do anything useful, so instead he goes for his active, Rally, which grants 2 Will to an ally at any range.  In another display of the AI not understanding Yrsa, the Stoneguard uses Kindle, knocking one of his own allies into a bed of hot coals. It dies.  Hakon is down to zero Armor! Not that it matters at this point.  Pillage start!  And Ludin gets the last kill. You take a moment to survey the battlefield. The enemy is being pushed back all the way down the line.  We're in pretty bad shape right now. Gunnulf has fallen, and with his Armor stripped away, Hakon is soon to follow. I'm going to play it safe this time. The dredge give you a wide berth and scatter into the distance.  -3 Fighters -8 Varl +11 Renown Ludin and Yrsa can both promote.  And so the journey continues, with a slightly smaller caravan.  Day 16 sees us still in good spirits. Schlid is still a ways off - we haven't even passed the Hanged man.   This could get dangerous. We're facing a much more dangerous force, far larger then the army that we just routed. The village is about half a day's march ahead. We can try to split their forces, fighting half of their army now and the other half when we reach the village. We can take the fight to them, fighting their entire army at the village. We can skirt the village, not risking further losses but also not getting access to the village. Voting will end in 24 hours.
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May 20, 2014 01:03
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Split their forces. We don't want to fight that large a force when it's entrenched in a village.
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May 20, 2014 01:15
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The supplies you can get from the merchants aren't poisoned so much as they are spoiled. They're fish that someone didn't dry/cure properly. It's kind of a reality check of accepting food blindly...realistically that sort of thing would happen a lot, and it would be the caravan quartermaster's job to make sure he kept on top of it. But the closest thing to a quartermaster you have is Mogr, who is busy with a hundred other things. e: The other cool thing about Ysra is that since her Strength sucks so bad, if she gets wounded she'll only be out for a day or two, even on Hard. And since her primary output is Slag & Burn, she can fight while wounded like it's not even a thing. Coolguye fucked around with this message at 01:34 on May 20, 2014 |
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May 20, 2014 01:32
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God drat, Yrsa. Splitting 'em seems smart.
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May 20, 2014 01:32
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Split them. I like this system for doing mass combat and warfare.
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May 20, 2014 01:36
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Divide and conquer. (Yes, I know that's not what the phrase means). Mechanically, I'm guessing it amounts to 2 more difficult fights like the one you just had rather than a potentially devastating text option.
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May 20, 2014 02:58
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Split sounds like the only thing approaching tactics here, so I vote for that. Skirting seems like we'd be discovered anyway (we're a ginormous pile of giant flesh with human sprinkles passing the local school of hard knocks at recess, and the dredge have their spoons ready) and fighting everything at once is just dumb.
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May 20, 2014 03:44
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Make like a banana and split them
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May 20, 2014 05:47
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Fight the enemy's entire army when they are dug into a fortified position, just because it will be more of a challenge. 
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May 20, 2014 07:50
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Half and half. I approve of upgrading Gunnulf's armor. That guy goes down like he's made of paper towels.
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May 20, 2014 09:49
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Yeah, Gunnulf has defence that is actually worse then a wet paper bag. I mean, that's just because it's too tempting to throw him in there and to do a bunch of damage with tempest.
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May 20, 2014 10:20
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Split them up. We're here to kill dredge so avoiding them isn't an option, but fighting more dredge at once then we have warriors would be best avoided.
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May 20, 2014 10:39
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Split the enemy force: a head-on attack sounds like the worst possible choice, and bypassing the village could mean leaving a large Dredge force behind us.
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May 20, 2014 10:44
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Personally, I would have let Yrsa take the hit, and kept Gunnulf in it. His asinine strength is incredibly useful, despite Slag and Burn's utility, but more importantly if you get in another fight immediately afterwards, Yrsa will still be performing at about full strength even while injured. Gunnulf will be noticeably impacted by an injury. Also, Yrsa and Ludin go incredibly well together. Both deal small amounts of unavoidable strength damage, and both can cause enemies to take damage through movement. If you can set up a good Yrsa > Ludin > Shield Bash combo, you can neuter almost any enemy in the game with very little effort. Edit: almost forgot, Divide and Conquer 
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May 20, 2014 10:50
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Make like a banana and split
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May 20, 2014 11:42
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Testekill posted:Yeah, Gunnulf has defence that is actually worse then a wet paper bag. I mean, that's just because it's too tempting to throw him in there and to do a bunch of damage with tempest. Bersi seems moderately better, what with having 2 more potential armor points. I get the feeling that Warhawks are probably best used with one of those items we saw early on, though, where you recover armor on rest. If you're not using Tempest, just rest 'em that turn.
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May 20, 2014 13:05
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Or let them arrive a little late to the party. Once the battle lines have set in place a bit, you can roll in the warhawk to a position where they can feast on multiple lower-strength enemies.
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May 20, 2014 14:04
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Skirt the village because varls are big hulking scaredy-cats who abhor a fight.
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May 20, 2014 14:13
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Johnny Law posted:Or let them arrive a little late to the party. Once the battle lines have set in place a bit, you can roll in the warhawk to a position where they can feast on multiple lower-strength enemies. That doesn't really seem that useful, though. As has been pointed out, having multiple low-strength enemies on the battlefield is a good thing, and a warhawk removing them all in one fell swoop would probably be a net negative for team Varl
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May 20, 2014 14:47
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FairGame posted:I get the feeling that Warhawks are probably best used with one of those items we saw early on, though, where you recover armor on rest. If you're not using Tempest, just rest 'em that turn. Fortunately, this isn't as hard as you might think. You can actually have Gunnulf at level 3 before you even leave Strand if you feed him enough kills during the mead hall fight (not hard, with those enemies' low strength and Gunnulf's Tempest). Maxing out his armor before you even leave the first chapter helps him like you wouldn't believe. Even just spending one level on armor and the other on Exertion and Strength makes him a goddamn monster. Also a fun note: These war battles are quite random! It's entirely possible to come up with completely different enemy dispositions and makeups here if you reload enough. I always liked that, it keeps the game from being dismantled by singular case logic, since, as we discussed a while back, the AI is deterministic.
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May 20, 2014 15:48
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To be fair, and this is especially true now that more complicated abilities are in play: The AI is deterministic, but the gameplay is not. Rook's got a 15% chance to avoid every Strength attack. Hogun and Mogun do random Strength or Armor damage. Slag & Burn drops two coals at random points within its radius (although it always takes the middle tile if it's unoccupied, I think). There's deflecting, too, but in practice it rarely comes into play. Even given the exact same actions by the player and the exact same starting conditions, the battle won't always play out the same way.
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May 20, 2014 15:52
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ProfessorProf posted:To be fair, and this is especially true now that more complicated abilities are in play: The AI is deterministic, but the gameplay is not. Slag & Burn does not always take the middle tile, though it does seem more likely than otherwise, I agree. Moving across it will rarely happen such that someone takes 1 damage instead of 2, or 1 damage instead of 3-4 in the case of a giant. You're not wrong with some of these (dodging chances are actually a static seed and are fully predictable, at least with the statically populated battles), but in practice almost all of it rarely comes into play. Bloody Flail is the only one that can really change the features of a fight's progression, presuming identical orders, and that would require something like a full Strength damage output, which is 6.25% likely. The static battles of this game are actually so reliable that I briefly considered making AutoHotKey scripts for many of them just to show off. I think at one point or another someone on the team realized this, because a lot of the later 'static' fights are actually nothing of the sort.
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May 20, 2014 16:06
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I'm assuming that Yrsa's one of the characters where strength and armor building doesn't matter that much since Slag and Burn does fixed damage? What do you spend points on with her? Just armor break and willpower?
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May 20, 2014 17:10
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If you're just using her for Slagging and Burning, boost Willpower for more uses of it and Exertion for the extra move speed, then Armor for survivability.
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May 20, 2014 17:12
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Armor Break is also really good on her since she can get 3 Exertion and 3 Armor Break. Knocking off 6 Armor in one move is incredibly good. It's hard on her Willpower, though, so it isn't right for some peoples' style, but if there's a Stoneguard or something that needs to go, Ysra is exactly the person to tee it up for a bruiser.
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May 20, 2014 17:18
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An important fact to know about Slag and Burn is that the burning coals are always to going to land in a square someone isn't standing in. If there are no free squares, the coals simply aren't going to ignite, they just go away with the initial burst of damage. However, if you're clever about positioning the S&B, you can 'plant' burning coals at the periphery of enemies, preferably in their future paths. Excellent to guarantee that almost no matter how a large enemy moves forward, the git is going to at least take some damage... or multiple hits, if you're lucky in how they move. Examples: -B EEB EE or -B- BEE -EE E - A large enemy. B - Burning coals, guaranteed. (Begins at 2 squares per shot.) Bolded - The cross shape where the burning coals would normally randomly land. (Oh, and the 'no burning coals appearing in squares someone is standing in' includes enemies you kill with the initial burst of damage using Slag&Burn gives, sadly.)
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May 20, 2014 19:39
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As others have pointed out, the first option seems the most sensible. Trying to take 'em all on at once is just begging to get slaughtered, while the last option is unlikely to result in anything but getting caught (and running with our tails between our legs or having to fight the entire force anyway). Hence, my recommendation is to split the enemy.
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May 20, 2014 21:23
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Also fun to note: If someone's standing at the center of the cross of S&B, it'll do 2 strength damage immediately, and then slap on another 1 armor damage. Because, you know, gently caress that guy. 
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May 20, 2014 21:36
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FairGame posted:I get the feeling that Warhawks are probably best used with one of those items we saw early on, though, where you recover armor on rest. If you're not using Tempest, just rest 'em that turn. The absolute best use I've found for Warhawks is to concentrate the battlefield. What I mean by that is, you usually have a dredge or two split off from the group, or you'll face archers and poo poo that hover around and plink away like assholes. You stick your Warhawk away from the group, and he will annihilate that poo poo no problem. Aside from large enemies that take up four squares, I don't think there's a single unit in the game that can take a full-strength, full-exertion hit from Gunnulf in the face, and not instantly die. When you're facing 7+ enemies, you've already got the turn advantage, being able to selectively point at one and say "You, you die now" in the very first turn is incredibly useful. And, best of all, if the enemy is by itself, sending Gunnulf to one-shot it on the first turn actually works out pretty great, since he's then away from all the stuff that wants to neuter him. After the couple of turns needed for him to plod back into position, you should have been able to knock away at the strength of the biggest and baddest enemies, meaning they can't instantly gently caress him up with one hit. Gunnulf is one of my favorite dudes in the game to use, and he's always maxed out before this chapter ends when I'm playing with him. Edit: One more thing, are spoilers about items ok? I want to mention one of the abilities that certain items can have, but we haven't seen one yet, and if that's not kosher I'll just hang loose until we see one.
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May 20, 2014 22:11
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Captain Bravo posted:
Huh. Weird. My strategy has been to ignore the straggling groups and concentrate my entire force on the larger group, since I'd rather have the enemy have to waste turns bringing their straggling dudes my way. By the time their stragglers make it to me, their buddies are massively wounded and basically useless, and I can use my turn advantage to focus fire on the full-strength reinforcements. I really, really love this game. The UI can be irritating at times (no way to review heros/equip items except in camp? ugh), but it's so beautiful, the combat is interesting and rewarding, and it might be the most fun I've had playing a game in years.
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May 20, 2014 22:32
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Coolguye posted:Also fun to note: If someone's standing at the center of the cross of S&B, it'll do 2 strength damage immediately, and then slap on another 1 armor damage. Because, you know, gently caress that guy. It's even better than this. S&B is also an armor breaking attack against the middle square, so it won't do 1 armor, it'll do Yrsa's break. If you pump her break to 3, her speciall will then trigger splinter off dredges, because S&B wasn't already good enough.
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May 20, 2014 22:42
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Captain Bravo posted:Edit: One more thing, are spoilers about items ok? I want to mention one of the abilities that certain items can have, but we haven't seen one yet, and if that's not kosher I'll just hang loose until we see one. Hmm, I think items are fine.
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May 20, 2014 22:46
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Omobono posted:It's even better than this. S&B is also an armor breaking attack against the middle square, so it won't do 1 armor, it'll do Yrsa's break. If you pump her break to 3, her speciall will then trigger splinter off dredges, because S&B wasn't already good enough. Haha oh man, you're right, I completely forgot about that. So instead of gently caress that guy, it's more 'gently caress all those guys'.
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May 20, 2014 22:48
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Vote's over, by the way, in a near-unanimous vote to split the force.
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May 20, 2014 23:07
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Yup, we always envisioned Warhawks as paper tigers. Keep em in the back and then let em swoop in when the time is right. That certainly explains why a certain future character comes pre-equipped with a certain unique item.
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May 21, 2014 05:33
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So the Dredge, they're metal/rock men? They eat, but are they constructs of sorts or living beings? They apparently can feel fear, but presumably do not communicate or negotiate (E: Much, or possibly not at all) with other races? Also not terribly formidable individually, and organized enough to form into armies?
Teledahn fucked around with this message at 06:45 on May 21, 2014 |
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May 21, 2014 06:36
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Teledahn posted:So the Dredge, they're metal/rock men? They eat, but are they constructs of sorts or living beings? They apparently can feel fear, but presumably do not communicate or negotiate with other races? Also not terribly formidable individually, and organized enough to form into armies?
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May 21, 2014 06:42
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Teledahn posted:So the Dredge, they're metal/rock men? They eat, but are they constructs of sorts or living beings? They apparently can feel fear, but presumably do not communicate or negotiate (E: Much, or possibly not at all) with other races? Also not terribly formidable individually, and organized enough to form into armies? Technically, according to the legends, just as varl were made by a god by combining man and yox, the dredge were formed by merging man with stone. Whether that means they're partially made of rock or they just have an affinity to earth and a talent for using it (like the norse dwarves) is up to you (and maybe future clarification in the sequels). One theory I've seen that is definitely wrong is that they're robots or clockwork golems. They're definitely organic.
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May 21, 2014 07:20
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| # ? May 16, 2024 13:14 |
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JT Jag posted:Crazy theory: the "Splinter" passive ability the Dredge share that causes all Dredge surrounding the one originally hit to be damaged as well might hint towards some sort of hive mind. I always saw that as armor splintering off and the shrapnel hurting the others. Could be wrong, though.
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May 21, 2014 07:59
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