When to Hire Better Backgrounds

[NKlein1553]

It's day 40 on veteran / veteran start. I've got a bunch of pretty decent farmhands, brawlers, thieves, caravan hands, etc. With the exception of one of my starting brothers (default start), no one has particularly high attack skill (most brothers in the mid-to-low 60s). A couple of the farmhands and brawlers are pretty tanky, though. Most of my brothers (I've got 15 total) are around level 5-6. My starting brothers are around level 7-9. I've got a few pieces of somewhat better armor (scale, reinforced hauberk, sell-sword, etc.), but most of my brothers are still in basic mail shirts. A good number of tier three weapons. I've been mostly hanging out around the arena and doing contracts for the Southern City States and cities on the coast (arena port seed). Unfortunately, the citadels and hunters cabins on the map are pretty centrally located. When is a good time to start recruiting higher tier professions? Should I start venturing into the center of the map to try for Hedge Knights, Hunters, Sell-Swords, Adventurous Nobles, etc. or wait to get even more durable armour? I've got about 10k crowns saved up and four retinue slots unlocked and recruited (drill sergeant, cook, scout, and about to hire the recruiter, if I decide to go on a recruiting binge). Thanks for your advice!

[Sebslocker]

Start slowly phase lowborns out unless they are really special. But it depends on playstyle.
On my first vet/vet Ironman I have average death every other day but now I replaced casualties with some better backgrounds they tend to survive longer.
On my cultist run I run full rooster of cultists except 1-2 better dumb background. I have my best 5 cultist to lvl 11 and keep them away from fights letting others gain levels until they get to 9 or 10th and then i can properly judge them/rolls. Then I give them final stars (that mark how disposable they are).

[Bird]

I don't think you ever have to phase in better backgrounds. In my current run I have all lowborn backgrounds plus like two Bastards and a Raider. Bros get killed but none are too valuable or too difficult to replace other than the really good Raider. And I'm rolling in money with such a low payroll (15-16 bros at a time).

[A5G_Reaper]

If you dont have decent archers yet, you can start hiring hunters now. Day 40 is the time nomad got Dodge anyway so it's the perfect occasion to leg it from the south. But otherwise I think you should buyout all the lowborn in the villages you find and replace the bad bros with lategame potential ones since mid-60 melee skill is horrendous for any crisis contract. If there's good background for cheap (squire, beast hunter, etc) for 1k or less you could try your luck, however 10k gold isn't big enough saving to start hiring the likes of hedge knights yet. Maybe once you reliably can raise 20-30k.

[flameDjinn]

I usually go in this order
- hire mediocre/good farmhands, brawlers, caravan hands... for 500g and less. Than lvlup them to 11 lvl. Because lvl 11 brawler + skip min rolls + colossus + gifted are very strong. Team of such guys is capable of doing any contract.
- t3 weapons, good armors (though nimble doesn't need good armor)
- start hiring wildmans, beast slayers, hunters, lumberjacks, squires i.e. backgrounds cheaper than 1.5k. At this point i look for best bros - with good start rolls and stars in right stats. Because i already have mediocre team. Something like this guy
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2307470959
He have ~max roll hp, matk, resolve, mdef, good fat and 2 stars in matk.

- start hiring cheap sellswords, gladiators, assasins, nobles, squires ~3k gold
- start buying unique items

Anyway i think, spending first 10k gold on one hedge is not good idea. Better to hire 10 wildmans, militia, brawlers... There is a little difference between mediocre hedge and good brawler, but for hedge you need to spend a lot of gold at start and daily wage.

[Nerdgasm]

Just save scum for recruits starting on day 1. Every time you visit a settlement, save your game. Then you hire everyone in town and check out there stats. If their stats are good, you reload the game and rehire them, if they're bad you leave them. Once you have a decent amount of gold you can do this with the higher background recruits.

[flameDjinn]

:D
Why bother with save scumming if you can use bro editor mod and give a bro 999 hp, atk, fat...

[NKlein1553]

Thanks, Felix. Cam you estimate what day you are on for eqchnofnyour steps above?

[Nerdgasm]

Originally posted by felix:

:D
Why bother with save scumming if you can use bro editor mod and give a bro 999 hp, atk, fat...

Sarcasm aside, mods exempt the player from earning achievements, if I'm not mistaken. Cheating also runs the risk of ruining the game. I made the mistake of giving myself god mode stats in Skyrim using the console commands. It ruined the experience and I didn't pick it up for about year after that.

[Heron]

I hire better guys when I see a good deal or once I'm happy with my equipment.

In my new campaign I'm trying to theme my company as a noble army with adventurous / disowned nobles, knights, squires and so on. Recruited the first two nobles for 5k around day 25 with my backline decked out in acceptable weapons and everyone in at least 80/110 armor. Got to get that hedge for 7k next.^^

[flameDjinn]

Originally posted by NKlein1553:

Thanks, Felix. Cam you estimate what day you are on for eqchnofnyour steps above?

I don't remeber exact days. It depends on your playstyle, how much money you earn. Some people are fighting with brigand leaders at day ~15, some doesn't have lvl 11 roster at day 250.

In my current campaign i was quite satisfied with my team, consisting of few wildmans, few adv nobles, gladiator, assasin, sellsword and some hunters at day 350. I realized that i have over 70k gold and decided to buy heavy armor for 40k. I bought 1-2 unique items before, but they was very cheap ~5k gold.

[Tephros83]

Originally posted by NKlein1553:

It's day 40 on veteran / veteran start. I've got a bunch of pretty decent farmhands, brawlers, thieves, caravan hands, etc. With the exception of one of my starting brothers (default start), no one has particularly high attack skill (most brothers in the mid-to-low 60s). A couple of the farmhands and brawlers are pretty tanky, though. Most of my brothers (I've got 15 total) are around level 5-6. My starting brothers are around level 7-9. I've got a few pieces of somewhat better armor (scale, reinforced hauberk, sell-sword, etc.), but most of my brothers are still in basic mail shirts. A good number of tier three weapons. I've been mostly hanging out around the arena and doing contracts for the Southern City States and cities on the coast (arena port seed). Unfortunately, the citadels and hunters cabins on the map are pretty centrally located. When is a good time to start recruiting higher tier professions? Should I start venturing into the center of the map to try for Hedge Knights, Hunters, Sell-Swords, Adventurous Nobles, etc. or wait to get even more durable armour? I've got about 10k crowns saved up and four retinue slots unlocked and recruited (drill sergeant, cook, scout, and about to hire the recruiter, if I decide to go on a recruiting binge). Thanks for your advice!

Updating your cart is pretty high priority. Hunters for ranged would be decent where you are, but would do 1st cart upgrade 1st. The others are kind of marginal benefit over talented cheaper backgrounds, so would probably fully upgrade cart first. More space causes me to make more money as I can sell in better cities and continuously kill and loot and have space for things I use sometimes like sticks for hexxen.

I'm a bit biased though since I hired like 10 hedge knights in my last game and kept none of them. None had good talents. Nevertheless, I will hire them for late game as the only other thing I would spend money on at that point is uniques and I'd rather hunt champions with my bounty hunter for uniques.

[Coldoge]

Originally posted by Nerdgasm:

Originally posted by felix:

:D
Why bother with save scumming if you can use bro editor mod and give a bro 999 hp, atk, fat...

Sarcasm aside, mods exempt the player from earning achievements, if I'm not mistaken. Cheating also runs the risk of ruining the game. I made the mistake of giving myself god mode stats in Skyrim using the console commands. It ruined the experience and I didn't pick it up for about year after that.

Mods don't stop achievements. At least not all mods. Makes the achievement statistics unreliable. There should be a note saying "statistics include achievements gained with modded games".

[Hairy Coo]

You dont really need expensive backgrounds till you can afford to burn cash on them. Talented farmers, brawlers, thiefs and such can be fine end game material. Only expensive bro u wanna try to fish for is hunter - you really want that rngattack skill as high as possible.

[Crowkeeper]

Originally posted by felix:

:D
Why bother with save scumming if you can use bro editor mod and give a bro 999 hp, atk, fat...

Because then the game becomes pointless and boring with a lack of challenge. Why play a game that you are guaranteed to win without even trying?

[Hairy Coo]

Originally posted by Wight Male:

Originally posted by felix:

:D
Why bother with save scumming if you can use bro editor mod and give a bro 999 hp, atk, fat...

Because then the game becomes pointless and boring with a lack of challenge. Why play a game that you are guaranteed to win without even trying?

I agree. I never understood taking advantage of some game mechanics to make it easier on yourself - savescumming, exploiting AI, farming +atribute events, etc. yeah you’d beat the game...but its not fun anymore because challenge is gone. Just IMO, people are free to play however the heck they like, I’d just never see the point in some tactics.