Any one got early game tips?

[Rabble]

should i try to raid a lot early game or scavenge?
Game fun but definitely harder than this company older games.

[Necroscourge]

It's all RNG and percentile meaning that there is no skill involved in playing. So expect most of your attacks to just randomly miss, and avoid attacking settlements too early on. You'll cause the Regulators to show up really early and they will rapidly make things more difficult for your playthrough.

Just attack caravans and keep scavenging for wood, spending the chips/fear to get more wood for building. Eventually you will build up your base enough so that you can hold the garrisons that you take.

The game fails to warn you about this, but unlike every other RPG ever made your main character CAN die, and the enemy will always attack your main character if possible. There's no warning or prompt that they can die, you will just randomly lose all of your progress in the leadership tree if they get reduced to zero hitpoints. So basically you just play untilk the game decides that you win (randomly without any kind of player skill)

Edit: it's been brought to my attention by the dev that I can choose whether or not to wipe the leadership tree, but it still sucks that they can die.

[=]

Hit chance is low at the start but it will quickly increase, also don't equip heavy armour early on as it will severely lower your hit chance even further.

Don't mind about your leader dying, one of your henchmen can take over.

What I did was constantly raid traders. You will very quickly level up while gaining lots of loot, prisoners and recruits. I prioritised the leadership skill that allows you to recruit more raiders (you can have a max of 8 active at once with everyone else in reserve). Once you have 8 decent raiders the game actually becomes very easy as you can demolish traders and the initial regulators with little to no risk. You can also start raiding small settlements with no losses at this stage.

[Danny the Deranged]

Scavenging is a must, yeah it hits your morale, but not terribly and you have to scavenge so you can unlock that sweet, sweet artillery.

[Realtoltek]

Make your char with high chance to hit and take rifle :). Then u need some good tanks with shields.

[Realtoltek]

I capture first city very soon :) but it was hard battle :))).

[Danny the Deranged]

Having played some more, getting holding pens, capturing slaves and a chemist, building an ammo building, and capturing the saltpeter settlement is very important for a steady supply of ammunition.

[Steinaar]

@Necro
RnG > Skill

I concur, this is less strategy and more luck based. I miss four times in a row, enemy then has me killed. I had 120 hp and they were hurt down to 10 hp and I lost all because I kept missing four times in a row giving the enemy the win.

It's not just losing a fight that is an entire party wipe, missing so many times is just pathetic. Especially when you had 120 hp and the enemy was down to 10 hp but you died. Hmmm yeah okay.

Maybe the game needs to remove the strategy tag and replace it with a luck/puzzle tag?

[Wenatchee Willie]

I've not played too much yet, but I have learned it is much easier winning fights at the beginning with 7 people in your party and not 5.

[Tiny]

The game points it out to you, but because your base is initially hidden, put as many raiders into your party as possible. You don't need to leave a lot to guard your base. Also be sure to level up hit accuracy and stamina. Hit accuracy is obvious, but especially very early in the game you'll run out of stamina while you just watch your guys get smacked by enemies. Most weapons have some sort of ability to make an opponent bleed, or stun them. Use those abilities liberally. Making an opponent bleed will also make them spend turns trying to stop the bleeding, which in effect is a stun. This is important because you can focus down one enemy while the rest of them just have to watch. While (i THINK) it is more important in the long run to level up accuracy, leveling up damage for anybody who has a weapon that can hit multiple enemies at once is very useful. I have three raiders (two melee, one ranged) who can do that and for four man caravan they can normally take out one or two on their own, while injuring the rest.

I'd probably build the warehouse building first, if you can, because I found that I ended up with a lot of leftover resources after fights and scavenging.

[Chopper Dave]

Originally posted by Rabble:

should i try to raid a lot early game or scavenge?
Game fun but definitely harder than this company older games.

I'd say try to do scavenging time to time. You will fight often so you can compensate for lost morale in no time.
You can raise your characters only to lvl25, so plan you build ahead and don't waste leadership points. Mobilization will always be helpful but negotiation and motivation will became obsolete quickly so don't spend points on them. Don't bother with determination, you woldn't get THAT many loot. Not sure if you can achieve something with high subterfuge. Shrewdness may or may not come into play only late in game so see for yourself.

[Steinaar]

scavenging is good to do, even if you decide not to take the scavenged pile. Sometimes it displays a nice schematic, so scavenge and move on until you found some cool stuff

[Danny the Deranged]

I've found that going heavy into fear is a really good strategy. You can easily scare strong regulator parties away with the fear you build up from raiding the weaker caravans.

[Realtoltek]

1. Make char with high chance to hit 70 procent minimal ;). and take rifle
2. Make a 1x tank character with 1h and shield with max HP
3. Make another char with chance to hit minimal 60

Make a few battles for lvl heroes, then capture city and capture it for moneys. If u going scavenge material u can go alone...morale impact only your main char :).

[HaveADay]

A couple of things come to mind even before you click "Start Game:"

1. It looks like the default amount of Raiders in a party is 5, the "Logistics" leadership trait gives +1, and the maximum you can have in battle at once is 8. Therefore, it might be optimal to always put 3 in Logistics on the character creation screen so you can have the maximum party size right from the start.

2. Your starting leader stats aren't set in stone but are generated randomly and can vary significantly. It looks like you can have a leader with as low as HP in the 30s. After doing a couple dozen generations I got a leader with HP and Hit Chance in the 60s (after spending points). Depending on how much you care about keeping your starting leader alive, you might want to re-roll a few times.

3. Does anyone know how Totem effects and Leadership traits stack? One totem gives +100% Fear and the Leadership trait Aggression gives +4 fear each point, another totem gives +100% XP and the Motivation Leadership trait gives +5XP for each point (the last totem gives +5% hit chance and there's no leadership trait for that). Ordinarily if you max out Aggression it's +40 fear and if you max out Motivation it's +50XP, but if the Totem effects apply that could be +80 Fear or +100XP respectively.

And once you do start:

4. You start with a number of Miscellaneous (necklace icon) items, that don't start out equipped to anyone. They do things like add X amount of resources each day (+10 Water, +20 Wood, etc), or increase things like Morale and Movement Speed. If you don't want to miss out you should go to your Roster right away and equip those things.

5. There are 2 fortifications that cost nothing but time to build: Ditch and Mounds. You start by your Hideout and can immediately go there and start building one of them. It costs you nothing and it's better to have them then not have them.

[thebadman]

Dump your party in hideout at start of game and scavenge for some time alone. You won't lose morale that way and caravans will have time to spawn.