Forsaken in groups

[Buncs the Squigg]

Okay so I've been trying out the new update, I like it overall. There are definitely some issues though. A Large group of forsaken is SO HARD to beat, while a small group of forsaken are too easy to beat. I just entered an "easy" help some villagers against forsaken quest, and oh lord is it hard. Firstly, if one of the enemies is in melee range of you, they basically all are (with light foot), but then on top of that it's near impossible to separate one from the group to avoid giving another enemy +100 damage. Okay at that point, it is just much harder than most other factions, okay whatever. But then, if you have "allies" "helping" you, the enemies get so many damage buffs and healing because the friendly AI aren't playing tactically. I would honestly prefer to have no allies at all in these situations! And when you have allies, there are usually more enemies added to the mix! So basically my point is that the forsaken scale too strongly with numbers, and so pretty much after I reach the second level I am avoiding them completely, they are just too hard to beat.

[Mad Sheep Studios]

I've made it a bit easier for the new players and the Forsaken:
1. the Forsaken Wrath now unlocks at lvl 10
2. the Forsaken villages count has been reduced by 30% in 1st zone

If you are interested in this (and many many other changes and improvements), you can play test it in our beta branch.

David

[Buncs the Squigg]

Wow it's good to see how responsive you are, thanks!

[Arjy Yu]

well, id say you need to separate the group - and having some stalwart warriors helps too

[Limecat]

Ive recently restarted as well just to see if i could make prep better, because even though i can beat Forsaken, i feel they are just straight up more dangerous than Valdor atm.

[Bird]

I also restarted on easy mode because I was getting smoked by forsaken just spiking my guys with damage and deleting them. I was just getting utterly massacred. I even had immobilizing crits on hunters as people here suggest. but it didn't matter, with move 4 they cover so much ground, so fast.

The counters to these guys are very specific, probably 80% of players in general aren't going to optimize the counters and will have a very negative experience with this game.

I would even argue that they're problematically imbalanced for most players on easy mode.

[Dogtown1]

it feels like this faction needs to get moved up into area 3 or 4 with necro and swampers instead of first area and scavengers

[UnluckyNoob]

2nd zone, attack village mission. You start in the open field surrounded by 20+ forsaken. I killed ~10 in about 5 turns when 8 more arrived. Lost 400 trillium for retreat.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2101736935

[Mad Sheep Studios]

@UnluckyNoob - you could not have been surrounded by the enemies in that village map right in the start.
All defenders are placed inside the village center - by the map design.
Only reinforcements are coming from bottom of map after turn3.

If I am wrong, tell me and I'll fix the bug.

Otherwise please don't add incorrect information here.

[pponmypupu]

Playing on epic journey/ironman diff. I was going to make this post last night, glad to see it's being addressed already in this thread. Got to second map, found an "easy" fight defending vs a horde of forsaken and wow was that a frustrating experience. OP post summed it up perfectly - due to lightfoot it's like a buffet line once one of them gets in range to one of your guys; everyone is going to get in a turn on that poor guy, and no one can stand up to that kind of punishment especially if there are berserker forsaken (2x hit) in that buffet line ensuring any "protectors" or "shielders" defensive stamina gets used up. Add in forsaken archers who get snipe up quickly (mind of a cleric i think), and it was like getting hit 7+ times on one person per round. To be fair, my A team this run is melee only so I didn't have access to traps or terraforming, which I hadn't needed til this point.

Forsaken's power scales tremendously with how many units they're fielding. It's like when they come in force it's a .... force multiplier. Wouldn't go so far as to say that they are out of control and need huge rebalancing, I've already thought of a few strategies for future fights. But that definitely was not the "easy" fight I was expecting. A significant number of elites and npcs that were basically focus batteries.

[UnluckyNoob]

OK, reinforcements arrived between first and second barrel shots, maybe that was 'turn 3', but they were really fast. And it's village, not castle. You can't capture it after killing 4-5 defenders while others are chilling far away. So you are surrounded with tiny delay and have no way to prevent surrounding (well, you really can dig fortress as usually, but I don't like that way to play).

[Dogtown1]

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

2nd zone, attack village mission. You start in the open field surrounded by 20+ forsaken. I killed ~10 in about 5 turns when 8 more arrived. Lost 400 trillium for retreat.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2101736935

this is actually the easy town assault map
first move you make is to get all your people into the yellow area
the enemy is spread out in this yellow area at the start, so take advantage of this and focus fire them to death one at a time
YOU NEED TO ONLY KILL THE YELLOW AREA ENEMIES
once they are dead you win, even if there are 10,000 reinforcements outside
I dont fire a single barrel into the town, it just gets in my way, I fire the oil outside to slow the reinforcements from getting in town

also the town usually has 2 small places to get in, you get to choose where to place your troops, choose an opening close to the bottom of the screen, as your troops move into town, if you have a hunter or jav unit, drop traps or change the terrain height to slow or stop reinforcements from entering here, this way they are forced to go the long way to get in

[Bird]

Playing on easy I just got annihilated by TEN forsaken trying to get into one of their fortresses, a large group of them. First map.

Basically they rush multiple double-hit berzerkers at whoever I have in front and then start light footing in other guys, it's focus-fire hell that's not survivable at all.

I take continuous oil barrage and ranged fire if I try to wait them out. And fighting in all the oil really makes exploiting the choke point difficult. Exploiting the choke point take time and the oil barrage makes sure I don't have time.

Why do these guys have movement-4? Is there a thematic reason why a bunch of undead wearing heavy armor are the most agile guys in the game?

Four spaces + free swap = a ridiculous five-space threat range. It's just so far out of balance with the rest of the game.

[UnluckyNoob]

@Mad Sheep Studios On the second attempt I tested that reinforcements arrived exactly after I take single turn by all units. So they give you only 1 turn, not 3 as you tell above.

@Dogtown1 the problem is I cannot kill 14 forsaken in the open field. I managed to kill 12 remaining on the second attempt, but that was toughest battle of the whole game so far. The problem is that's forsaken, highest mobility and highest damage of all fractions. Thanks to their 'strong VS' trait I got new oneshot record - 2800 HP monk at only zone 2.

@cebalrai You need 2 monks to easily storm castles. Just jump in and throw enemies away one by one. Also oil is your friend. While you are in oil they can't surround and pwn you. And oil deal only miserable 10% damage which is easily countered by feast.

[f0rd]

Hey everyone,

First, I think it is awesome the game is evolving and appreciate all the new content! For background, I have played 84 hours; all on epic journey w/ ironman. Pretty familiar with tactical games (xcom; battle brothers).

It seems like the "point" of the forsaken is to be weak individually, but strong in numbers. Cool theme, but I agree they are too strong. They have quite a lot going for them:

- dualists melee units
- high focus archers
- pull axmen
- footmen clones that deflect projectiles
- defender/protector units with decent armor + shield ally
- strong faction abilities (forsaken wrath giving AOE heal and damage; 4x move; Lightfoot)

The forsaken get very, very strong in groups of 12+, as then they are bringing 2-3x of each specialist unit.

As folks have mentioned, it seems the obvious intended counters are isolating single units (engaging strike; immobilizing/stunning; tile manipulation w/ bash, flip, ram). This is difficult to implement (again as noted) with dumb allies or 10+ forsaken mobbing you.

Defer to the designers on fixes, but options could be:

- moving 'em to higher difficulty maps
- decreasing their numbers
- nerfing some faction abilities (no Lightfoot or switching move to 2x)
- switching forsaken wrath to just heal or damage (not both)
- making the individual units worse (their special abilities are quite strong: duelist; focus + snipe; projectile deflection; shield; and pull are all amazing)

The forsaken seem to be most prevalent in defensive maps (fortress; villages) and another fix could be putting them into the AI vs AI encounters or giving the player the defensive position. I imagine forsaken are weaker when they have to come to you, but have actually not encountered that situation yet.

[UR|Dialetheia]

Forsaken are fine as they are. They are hard-countered by traps/engaging strikes/taunts/stuns, none of their units are Stalwart or Shatterproof, they're neither bleed- nor poison-immune, they have low HP and low armour compared to every other enemy type, they don't have taunts, stuns or engaging strikes of their own.

What i'm saying is that they have plenty weaknesses to exploit, provided you understand what constitutes an exploitable weakness in this game.