Need help setting up Stefan

[Aleddra]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2932512324

The guy can take a good chunk off a unit, but it completely falls appart everytime it defends.

[roix342]

You put 1 heavy infantry in the front
You put a pure healer in the second line + a light unit
You put your lord in the back + a light unit

With this, you stay in light infantry

It's a method that works.
Basically, the troops will have between 1 and 2 pure healers to maintain the fights over time.

[OverkillEngine]

Positioning on the battlemap is also super important with light infantry and archers. You always want to end their turn either behind a solid screen of beefier units or on defensively superior terrain. Their low threat rating causes the AI to focus them hard if it can.

[Sharkman]

An alternative (not necessarily better, just alternative) strategy that I used was to go full glass cannon with Stefan's squad and have a "bait" squad nearby to distract the enemies.

The bait squad MUST have lower threat than Stefan's squad. As far as I can tell the AI in this game is completely deterministic - it just goes for the lowest threat squad it can reach, every time. Stefan's squad should rarely, if ever, have to defend if you check the threat ranges and make sure the enemies that can reach Stefan can also reach the bait squad. Meaning you can load him up with assassins, swordmasters and rangers, which will do serious damage on ambush.

Eg. Early game the bait squad could be something like 2 soldiers (or anything that gets DR on defense) + 2 healers. Don't expect it to do any damage, its entire job is to draw the enemy attacks, heal off most of the damage, then get out of the way so your main squads can pummel the enemy on offense.

[OverkillEngine]

I do wish there were a few more leader traits, like maybe Guerrilla General, then it would be easier to manipulate total unit threat ratings to help keep light infantry squads from getting beelined so easily.

[Fendelphi]

I am still very new to the game, but I just go for full glass(nothing but thieves) and only attack targets where removing the back line is the main goal. I have an Artifact that automatically applies Chill at the start of combat to all enemies, which combined with the squad's high Skill allows for a lot of dodges and glancing blows against anything that survives.

This way, when he strikes, he will remove the enemy back line(goal) and will generate a lot of gold at the same time.
I might start adding healers and heavy infantry once his leadership is high enough to support that while still having enough backstab to reliably remove targets.