OMG, Retired Soldiers suck soooo bad!

[Lampros]

So I recruited Retired Soldiers last run to test how far Apprentices can be boosted in terms of stats when sitting in reserve 3-500 days. And my God, is a Retired Soldier (who is among the four Backgrounds that can train an Apprentice through Events) is horrific. He has no HP and no Fatigue. So it's a double whammy, where you can be one-shot easily by a lot of things, and you don't have the Fatigue to wear anything heavy to compensate. As a result, my first Retired Soldier died at level 3 - and the next one at level 8. They didn't even have the time to train the freaking Apprentice!

I thought Swordmasters were terrible. But Retired Soldiers are Swordmasters without the Melee Attack and Melee Defense. Worthless.

The fact that you need to recruit Retired Soldiers and Swordmasters to train Apprentices means that the strategy to farm stat-boosting Events with Apprentices is bound to fail.

In short, Farmhands for the win!

[VoiD]

they are ok as backline polearm users

[lubed_assassin]

hedge knights work and brawlers work too but each brawler can only teach once.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by VoiD:

they are ok as backline polearm users

That's where I had both of these dead wood (literally and figuratively!).

Originally posted by lubed_assassin:

hedge knights work and brawlers work too but each brawler can only teach once.

Brawlers can teach any non-combat Backgrounds once, not just Apprentices.

[Scathe]

retired soldiers do have a solid spread for attack and defense, don't know if you got bad rolls on yours... 60-67 matk, 5-13 mdef, 5-13 rdef. I get that bad luck can kill one with only a 40-45 health start... unless you take colossus and 9 lives for his first two perks... then you can mitigate that somewhat.

edit - also, they don't get old like swordmasters.

edit2 - also, load him up on armor in spite of his low FAT.. why not, his polearm shouldn't take more FAT to swing once per turn than he recovers each turn.

[nightworg]

Retired soldier is among the strongest background early on. Sure they have low hp and fatigue, but they make up for it with high Mdef, Matt. and resolve.

I really don't like swordmasters. They are too expensive 3x times the price of retired soldiers, and the upkeep is the higest, and you have to deal with old. Much worse than retired soldiers.

[bossmuro]

Retirees are definitely a niche pick. I only try them if I haven't found a good sergeant by the mid-game.

But with Colossus as an early pick and some investment in HP they can be a fine nimble backliner, and reasonably safe to hold the back flank. Plus, their daily pay is about the same as a brawler.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Scathe:

retired soldiers do have a solid spread for attack and defense, don't know if you got bad rolls on yours... 60-67 matk, 5-13 mdef, 5-13 rdef. I get that bad luck can kill one with only a 40-45 health start... unless you take colossus and 9 lives for his first two perks... then you can mitigate that somewhat.

edit - also, they don't get old like swordmasters.

edit2 - also, load him up on armor in spite of his low FAT.. why not, his polearm shouldn't take more FAT to swing once per turn than he recovers each turn.

I took Colossus, and both of them still died easily. It didn't help that neither guy had stars in either HP or Fatigue.

Originally posted by nightworg:

I really don't like swordmasters. They are too expensive 3x times the price of retired soldiers, and the upkeep is the higest, and you have to deal with old. Much worse than retired soldiers.

Swordmasters are easily the worst "premium" Background in the game. It's a joke Background basically.

Originally posted by bossmuro:

Retirees are definitely a niche pick. I only try them if I haven't found a good sergeant by the mid-game.

But with Colossus as an early pick and some investment in HP they can be a fine nimble backliner, and reasonably safe to hold the back flank. Plus, their daily pay is about the same as a brawler.

I'd only use them to train Apprentices.

[Whatever100500]

But Apprentices can receive training only once. So it's really too minor event to build your company around.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Whatever100500:

But Apprentices can receive training only once. So it's really too minor event to build your company around.

No, he can be taught once from each of the 4 specific Backgrounds. Brawlers can also train him once - but this is repeatable. There is also Combat Drill - which is also repeatable.

Besides, I am not building my company around Apprentices. Just one for test. I do it around Farmhands, who can have stats comparable to Hedge Knights or better after 500 days or so of sitting in reserve.

Edit: I may ditch Apprentices anyways though, since it's a pain to level Swordmasters and Retired Soldiers.

[laveley]

They are not among my prefered backgrounds either.

Hp have become a progressively important stat with more and more mobs that have armor pen. They have kinda low fatigue also so that leaves this background with a very narrow window of late game material, they cant get traits like tough and iron lungs to "fix" those weakness so you are left with the rng of stars align in the right places.

All this would be fine for a cheaper backgroud but they usually cost around 1k-2k.

[Muscarine]

I find they make great bannermen, wouldn't hire more than one though

[McGrits]

You can get retired soldiers from the webnecht specific disappearing villagers mission. Free makes a mediocre bro a little bit better.

[cube_eyed]

Well, you can sit on your farmhands and apprentices for hundreds of days waiting all the events to proc for them to become ubermensch and also you can use all available resources.

In terms of second approach retired soldiers makes almost perfect nonflanking macemen, whippers, billmen and/or sergeants — depends on traits, rolls and stars, as usual.
All these roles generally do not require high hp or really high fat, but high matk is a must for them and decent rdef is strongly preferable.

[Antifringe]

Originally posted by Lampros:

No, he can be taught once from each of the 4 specific Backgrounds. Brawlers can also train him once - but this is repeatable. There is also Combat Drill - which is also repeatable.

This is incorrect. From apprentice_learns.nut:

foreach( bro in brothers )
{
if (bro.getLevel() > 3 && bro.getBackground().getID() == "background.apprentice" && !bro.getFlags().has("learned"))
{
apprentice_candidates.push(bro);
}
}

This is the part that decides if a bro is eligible for learning. The has("learned") flag gets set if he's received this event before (and only this event, it doesn't interfere with other events). It does not distinguish between teachers. He can learn once from this event, period.

I've also tested this empirically using the debug mode mod. You can use it to force events, and it definitely only works once per apprentice.

[Lampros]

Originally posted by Antifringe:

Originally posted by Lampros:

No, he can be taught once from each of the 4 specific Backgrounds. Brawlers can also train him once - but this is repeatable. There is also Combat Drill - which is also repeatable.

This is incorrect. From apprentice_learns.nut:

foreach( bro in brothers )
{
if (bro.getLevel() > 3 && bro.getBackground().getID() == "background.apprentice" && !bro.getFlags().has("learned"))
{
apprentice_candidates.push(bro);
}
}

This is the part that decides if a bro is eligible for learning. The has("learned") flag gets set if he's received this event before (and only this event, it doesn't interfere with other events). It does not distinguish between teachers. He can learn once from this event, period.

I've also tested this empirically using the debug mode mod. You can use it to force events, and it definitely only works once per apprentice.

Thank you very much; you saved me a lot of wasted hours. Someone told me otherwise in the most confident tone, so I deferred to him. The upshot is that Apprentices are more useless than I thought.