Levelling Your Brothers: Early Game Tip

[michaelsbacon]

I've never seen this comment anywhere else, so I'll make it now. EXP is a limited resource, and spreading it too thinly slows your bros' progress. Early game, you really need to level some bros to a decent level quickly, so you have a backbone of experience to draw on. This means:

Don't go above 8-ish bros in the first 10 or so days of the campaign (maybe others have more precise guidelines here? I'm being unscientific.).

The militia origin can cause nightmares for your ability to level bros, and you can make that origin a lot harder than it needs to be by having too many. It's still pretty easy though.

Sometimes, spending money on levelling may be worth it, although gear, higher tier recruits and followers, etc. as always, are usually a better priority.

[UnluckyNoob]

That's wrong. The more bros you have the more enemies you'll face. Also you may farm camps earlier with full roster.

[MMMMK]

This is a debate as old as the game itself :D

Both strategies are viable. I prefer a lower roster count, adding new recruits at the same pace as I pick up armor and weapons to equip them with.

[Willow Ufgood]

Originally posted by MMMMK:

This is a debate as old as the game itself :D

Both strategies are viable. I prefer a lower roster count, adding new recruits at the same pace as I pick up armor and weapons to equip them with.

how low is low like 8 men?

[Melkolf]

I tend to play Lone Wolf and rarely go above 4 until I've enough cash for decent gear. And then it's keeping to 6 for a while thereafter. Knowing where the temples are is a must for much of the time.

[Willow Ufgood]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

That's wrong. The more bros you have the more enemies you'll face. Also you may farm camps earlier with full roster.

the problem isn't human enimies it is monsters - a roster of 4 decent bros and 6 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ can handle the increased size of human parties they face but if you get jumped by nachos or spiders you can be in quick trouble

i like to have a 'solid six' before building any larger - but a lot of time it is dependent on what armors i have or find, no armor = no add because the unarmed bro will just raise the number of enmies we fight but will die instantly

good number makes sense thanks for the tip

[UnluckyNoob]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

That's wrong. The more bros you have the more enemies you'll face. Also you may farm camps earlier with full roster.

the problem isn't human enimies it is monsters - a roster of 4 decent bros and 6 ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ can handle the increased size of human parties they face but if you get jumped by nachos or spiders you can be in quick trouble

Beasts are dangerous but that doesn't mean you can't beat them using full roster. Just fight in a forest and you'll be more or less safe. Forest is always safest place to fight.

[michaelsbacon]

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

That's wrong. The more bros you have the more enemies you'll face. Also you may farm camps earlier with full roster.

It’s not a 1:1 AFAIK; though you do face groups that scale with your squad size, there are other factors at play. Anecdotally, I’ve played the exact same seed to day 25 and my smaller party levelled faster. I’ve played Militia start many times and my bros always levelled slower. That’s how I figured out it was an issue in the first place. You can take on camps quite early (I’ve done several by day 25) with 8-10 bros. So I don’t think this is correct.

[michaelsbacon]

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

Originally posted by < blank >:

Beasts are dangerous but that doesn't mean you can't beat them using full roster. Just fight in a forest and you'll be more or less safe. Forest is always safest place to fight.

Are you kidding? If you get a disordered forest start against tough enemies it’s easy to wipe. I’ve lost Ironman games that way. It probably depends heavily on squad composition, etc., and it’s often very easy if the terrain is favourable, but when it isn’t, it’s really risky. I actively avoid forests because ambushes are so deadly.

[UnluckyNoob]

Originally posted by michaelsbacon:

Are you kidding? If you get a disordered forest start against tough enemies it’s easy to wipe. I’ve lost Ironman games that way. It probably depends heavily on squad composition, etc., and it’s often very easy if the terrain is favourable, but when it isn’t, it’s really risky. I actively avoid forests because ambushes are so deadly.

Terrain is always favoured in a forest unless you fight hexes. Forest negates number advantage so you may fight much tougher parties than without forest.

[UnluckyNoob]

Originally posted by michaelsbacon:

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

That's wrong. The more bros you have the more enemies you'll face. Also you may farm camps earlier with full roster.

It’s not a 1:1 AFAIK; though you do face groups that scale with your squad size, there are other factors at play. Anecdotally, I’ve played the exact same seed to day 25 and my smaller party levelled faster. I’ve played Militia start many times and my bros always levelled slower. That’s how I figured out it was an issue in the first place. You can take on camps quite early (I’ve done several by day 25) with 8-10 bros. So I don’t think this is correct.

How much faster? It was probably because you ignored camps with bigger party. Anyway I'd better get 6 nimble bros at day 32 than 3 at day 30.

Militia is slower because of many reasons. Most important is nothing scales to 16 bros. In my rough estimation militia takes ~10 more days to reach lvl 11 which is around 20% slowdown.

With militia you can take camps at day 1 and that's the strength of full roster.

[UnluckyNoob]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

Beasts are dangerous but that doesn't mean you can't beat them using full roster. Just fight in a forest and you'll be more or less safe. Forest is always safest place to fight.

i just meant that the scaling of a full (but newbro) party is harder when you are fighting monsters than men, so if you want to go big party early - it is better to fight bandits during the day but stay safe at night and dodge beast stacks

dont really agree about forests, depends on the tiles you get they can be good or deathtraps

It's better to fight whatever you managed to catch whenever you caught up them. And safest fight location is forest.

P.S. of course you can't fight in a forest if you do not pick pathfinder on everyone at lvl 1 or 2.

[michaelsbacon]

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

Originally posted by < blank >:

i just meant that the scaling of a full (but newbro) party is harder when you are fighting monsters than men, so if you want to go big party early - it is better to fight bandits during the day but stay safe at night and dodge beast stacks

dont really agree about forests, depends on the tiles you get they can be good or deathtraps

It's better to fight whatever you managed to catch whenever you caught up them. And safest fight location is forest.

P.S. of course you can't fight in a forest if you do not pick pathfinder on everyone at lvl 1 or 2.

Most forest fights are easy, but rarely they can be very tough. For instance, some forest fights start with your troops disordered. If you're lucky it doesn't matter, but if the terrain is poor and the opponent is, for instance, one you would choose to withdraw from because they outclass you, or because they are more dangerous when they can surround you, you can't get away, and you can lose a lot of bros, even wipe if you're very unlucky.

This is especially true if you don't run an 'all pathfinder strat'. I don't think you can reasonably assume every player takes pathfinder on every bro. They don't. I beat all fights (inc. kraken, etc.) without having it on a single bro.

[michaelsbacon]

Originally posted by UnluckyNoob:

Originally posted by michaelsbacon:

It’s not a 1:1 AFAIK; though you do face groups that scale with your squad size, there are other factors at play. Anecdotally, I’ve played the exact same seed to day 25 and my smaller party levelled faster. I’ve played Militia start many times and my bros always levelled slower. That’s how I figured out it was an issue in the first place. You can take on camps quite early (I’ve done several by day 25) with 8-10 bros. So I don’t think this is correct.

How much faster? It was probably because you ignored camps with bigger party. Anyway I'd better get 6 nimble bros at day 32 than 3 at day 30.

Militia is slower because of many reasons. Most important is nothing scales to 16 bros. In my rough estimation militia takes ~10 more days to reach lvl 11 which is around 20% slowdown.

With militia you can take camps at day 1 and that's the strength of full roster.

If you have 8-10 bros in your party you can get 6 nimble bros by day 32. 8 is still more than 6. I sincerely doubt you're getting a full roster of 20 bros to levels 7-8 in 32 days. 8 of those bros can't even do each fight, and you're splitting the exp. pool. It's just simple maths.

To be honest, I'm not knocking your strategy; if you want a full roster on day one, do it. It clearly works for you. But I have found that with my play style, growing the company too fast has been vastly inferior to growing very slowly. I only had 13 bros by day 50 and I've had what I think is my best early game on record (and I do patchily keep records for comparison).

I'm clearly not the only one; you're the only person in this thread who is advocating rapid expansion. I'm not saying your way doesn't work, but it doesn't work for me; you seem to be suggesting my way doesn't work. But it demonstrably does. So why not just accept that it's a valid strategy?