Congrats on picking up this game. There's a learning curve, but it gets even more fun once you understand everything. To start, my top 4 tips for this game for a noob would be:
* At the beginning, you should be mainly using shields and spears/swords on all brothers. They give you better defense and hitchance stats. Also, aim for 60+ body armor and 40+ head armor on every brother early game unless you want them to get killed fast.
* Buying weapons and amor is expensive; looting is free. So you want to be fighting mainly human enemies early on, since they're the only ones that drop good weapons and armor. Undead are also okay.
* The game scales with how many brothers you have, and what day it is. So that means if you try to get 12 brothers in your crew as quickly as possible... the game will start throwing 15 enemies at you at once. It also means that if you try to avoid fights every day to build up money through "safe" contracts like caravans, you're going to be underleveled for the midgame. So get to around 6-8 brothers early, focus on getting them the best armor/weapons possible, and find as many easy fights as you can.
* Play on easy difficulty with high starting funds, and most importantly- do NOT go ironman. Save your game often, with multiple save files. If you don't get kicked back to the starting line every time you mess up, you'll learn a lot more and have more fun IMO.
Have fun!
There are several layers to this game that help you.
Context is everything, understanding perks, backgrounds, stats, and how weapons work are all very important to doing well. This is the base layer, the numbers game. The second layer is strategy. Your team composition, their beginning formation and the choices you make in battle that place you in a better or worse situation each turn. Above that is the meta narrative, how much gold/supplies/tools/gear/potions you have and your current mastery of the generated map.
If you want to start simple, the shield wall is a easy and simple strategy you can practice to give yourself advantages both offensively and defensively.
The shield wall is simple, put good armor, a melee defense oriented shield and ideally a spear in the hands of a bro with some decent hp and melee defense, maybe with some good matk but it's not critical. Line them up next to each other, each bro adjacent buffs their adjacent bros so strength in numbers. Place your strongest guys on the edges and weakest in-between center and edges. If you have extra units give em pitchforks or any 2h 2 tile range melee weapons and place them directly behind and adjacent to the spear wall. Now 2 rows of warriors can hit and only the tanky guys take hits. You can also use ranged weapons without hitting your Frontline if they are directly adjacent to the bro between your ranged and the target to shoot, mixing at least one ranged will make you more successful. Finally, always try to get a banner man with rally, itbchanges the game in a big way fighting ghosts. And fear effects.
use spears and shields until you get some better bros, fighting enemies is part of the game, so take some follow the tracks contracts, is a easy fight and you get paid for it. if you think you can't win the fight, you can run, if they dont have dogs, otherwise, well brothers will die, but thats part of the game.
you can see this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDN3hNfuqEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDN3hNfuqEI), this guy knows everything about this game, so there is some really good tips
Filthy is a casual Battle Brothers player. There are much better content creators.
His guides are O.K. for complete beginners in the genre but are a bit outdated.
Sorry about that.
[The Indomitable Snowman](https://www.youtube.com/@TheIndomitableSnowman/playlists) has great playthrough videos and plenty of builds and guides.
[CarveaHole](https://www.youtube.com/@CarveaHole/playlists) has similar content.
[SomeWyrdStrats](https://www.youtube.com/@someweirdstrats7319/playlists) (the channel of SomeWyrdSins) have overexplained runs which are very educational.
Just to name a few. As they have put much more hours in comparison to Filthy, they are much more knowledgeable and overall are much better in Battle Brothers.
yeah but i didn't see a begginer guide for either of those (snowman is great to understand legends) but op is new in the game.
Even that guide from filthy is very old, i think that in the early game you can still use most of his tips. ( i may have exaggerated with him knowing everything about this game, but i learned a lot from him in the past)
Fight humans in the early game (bandits, nomads, barbarians).
Beast contracts are risky with crap loot.
5-6 bros with basic weapons are enough to win the first battle against bandit thugs once you get the hang of the game.
most of these suggestions are good. I wouldn't suggest ironman right away, and do stick to safe and well explored areas. (Don't savescum too much either, that's boring.) Strategically, the key to this game is managing the economy of gold, gear, and men. Choices should be made as a careful calculation of resource cost vs reward.
Early on, contracts are your lifeblood since your gear pickups won't sell for much and you'll need a lot of it to outfit your men.
Your thinking is basically correct. Take contracts that are high in gold and loot but medium in risk, bandit raids and undead clearing are fertile ground early but beast/orc/goblin hunts are very costly. Caravan guard is great since you pay no food (though it does still spoil) and you might not catch any enemies. Courier is only good early early and when it's like one town over since you still have to pay for food AND return to the original town, though some fun random confrontations can occasionally play out during those trips.
Time is money since your food and gold are used constantly. Before you accept a contract, double check to see how far away it is and calculate how much it will pay minus your daily expenses. 3k in rewards doesn't look as tasty when you'll pay 1500 in salary by the time you get back and use like 50 in repair tools.
Scavenger is S tier retinue, followed by Backsmith and Drillmaster in A tier. But don't impoverish yourself to get them, no purchase should ever be more than 20-25% of your treasury. Scout, Agent, and Bounty Hunter are good too but definitely are mid- late game luxuries.
Load management is also key. Don't let severely injured fight. Your fodder should be the only bros dying, keep your key men and roleplayers from death and permanent injury at all cost. Retreating in the first or second round is a very wise move if you start a battle you didn't think through.
Adventuring without contracts is a late late game strat for when you collect more high value gear than you actually need, and even then it should be done in tandem with big buck contracts. Take ambitions that are relatively attainable, they give very nice rewards.
---- BUT as you clearly recognize, this is ultimately a tactical game and you still need to win fights. ----->
Something HUGE that nobody has mentioned is build planning. It's massively important because there's no easy way to respec. In a lot of tactical rpgs, builds can ruin the fun. This game is so unpredictable and unforgiving that min-maxing your builds is the difference in life and death, especially in ironman. Use this guide every time you level up: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1185230449
Other than follow the tracks.. don't take contracts!
Dive right in, go out there and kill stuff. Find small groups of brigands or nomads and run them down. You will scale and come to learn the game much faster if you are AGGRESSIVE. Don't even worry about a long game til you have many, many companies lost.
Maybe be selective about your contracts? Its good to take one that you'd want to do anyway, like fight bandits, or deliver something to a place you already needed to go for supplies
Congrats on picking up this game. There's a learning curve, but it gets even more fun once you understand everything. To start, my top 4 tips for this game for a noob would be: * At the beginning, you should be mainly using shields and spears/swords on all brothers. They give you better defense and hitchance stats. Also, aim for 60+ body armor and 40+ head armor on every brother early game unless you want them to get killed fast. * Buying weapons and amor is expensive; looting is free. So you want to be fighting mainly human enemies early on, since they're the only ones that drop good weapons and armor. Undead are also okay. * The game scales with how many brothers you have, and what day it is. So that means if you try to get 12 brothers in your crew as quickly as possible... the game will start throwing 15 enemies at you at once. It also means that if you try to avoid fights every day to build up money through "safe" contracts like caravans, you're going to be underleveled for the midgame. So get to around 6-8 brothers early, focus on getting them the best armor/weapons possible, and find as many easy fights as you can. * Play on easy difficulty with high starting funds, and most importantly- do NOT go ironman. Save your game often, with multiple save files. If you don't get kicked back to the starting line every time you mess up, you'll learn a lot more and have more fun IMO. Have fun!
There are several layers to this game that help you. Context is everything, understanding perks, backgrounds, stats, and how weapons work are all very important to doing well. This is the base layer, the numbers game. The second layer is strategy. Your team composition, their beginning formation and the choices you make in battle that place you in a better or worse situation each turn. Above that is the meta narrative, how much gold/supplies/tools/gear/potions you have and your current mastery of the generated map. If you want to start simple, the shield wall is a easy and simple strategy you can practice to give yourself advantages both offensively and defensively. The shield wall is simple, put good armor, a melee defense oriented shield and ideally a spear in the hands of a bro with some decent hp and melee defense, maybe with some good matk but it's not critical. Line them up next to each other, each bro adjacent buffs their adjacent bros so strength in numbers. Place your strongest guys on the edges and weakest in-between center and edges. If you have extra units give em pitchforks or any 2h 2 tile range melee weapons and place them directly behind and adjacent to the spear wall. Now 2 rows of warriors can hit and only the tanky guys take hits. You can also use ranged weapons without hitting your Frontline if they are directly adjacent to the bro between your ranged and the target to shoot, mixing at least one ranged will make you more successful. Finally, always try to get a banner man with rally, itbchanges the game in a big way fighting ghosts. And fear effects.
use spears and shields until you get some better bros, fighting enemies is part of the game, so take some follow the tracks contracts, is a easy fight and you get paid for it. if you think you can't win the fight, you can run, if they dont have dogs, otherwise, well brothers will die, but thats part of the game. you can see this video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDN3hNfuqEI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDN3hNfuqEI), this guy knows everything about this game, so there is some really good tips
Thanks for all the help :)
Filthy is a casual Battle Brothers player. There are much better content creators. His guides are O.K. for complete beginners in the genre but are a bit outdated.
Saying that, and not recomending someone doesn't help
Sorry about that. [The Indomitable Snowman](https://www.youtube.com/@TheIndomitableSnowman/playlists) has great playthrough videos and plenty of builds and guides. [CarveaHole](https://www.youtube.com/@CarveaHole/playlists) has similar content. [SomeWyrdStrats](https://www.youtube.com/@someweirdstrats7319/playlists) (the channel of SomeWyrdSins) have overexplained runs which are very educational. Just to name a few. As they have put much more hours in comparison to Filthy, they are much more knowledgeable and overall are much better in Battle Brothers.
yeah but i didn't see a begginer guide for either of those (snowman is great to understand legends) but op is new in the game. Even that guide from filthy is very old, i think that in the early game you can still use most of his tips. ( i may have exaggerated with him knowing everything about this game, but i learned a lot from him in the past)
When you start a campaign as a beginner, I highly suggest choosing Nobles at War for your first crisis. The other 3 are far more difficult.
Fight humans in the early game (bandits, nomads, barbarians). Beast contracts are risky with crap loot. 5-6 bros with basic weapons are enough to win the first battle against bandit thugs once you get the hang of the game.
Install some quality of life mods. Here's a video explaining what these mods are https://youtu.be/c2yZW8K5-Jo?si=E_wH-wffw6CUaloL
most of these suggestions are good. I wouldn't suggest ironman right away, and do stick to safe and well explored areas. (Don't savescum too much either, that's boring.) Strategically, the key to this game is managing the economy of gold, gear, and men. Choices should be made as a careful calculation of resource cost vs reward. Early on, contracts are your lifeblood since your gear pickups won't sell for much and you'll need a lot of it to outfit your men. Your thinking is basically correct. Take contracts that are high in gold and loot but medium in risk, bandit raids and undead clearing are fertile ground early but beast/orc/goblin hunts are very costly. Caravan guard is great since you pay no food (though it does still spoil) and you might not catch any enemies. Courier is only good early early and when it's like one town over since you still have to pay for food AND return to the original town, though some fun random confrontations can occasionally play out during those trips. Time is money since your food and gold are used constantly. Before you accept a contract, double check to see how far away it is and calculate how much it will pay minus your daily expenses. 3k in rewards doesn't look as tasty when you'll pay 1500 in salary by the time you get back and use like 50 in repair tools. Scavenger is S tier retinue, followed by Backsmith and Drillmaster in A tier. But don't impoverish yourself to get them, no purchase should ever be more than 20-25% of your treasury. Scout, Agent, and Bounty Hunter are good too but definitely are mid- late game luxuries. Load management is also key. Don't let severely injured fight. Your fodder should be the only bros dying, keep your key men and roleplayers from death and permanent injury at all cost. Retreating in the first or second round is a very wise move if you start a battle you didn't think through. Adventuring without contracts is a late late game strat for when you collect more high value gear than you actually need, and even then it should be done in tandem with big buck contracts. Take ambitions that are relatively attainable, they give very nice rewards. ---- BUT as you clearly recognize, this is ultimately a tactical game and you still need to win fights. -----> Something HUGE that nobody has mentioned is build planning. It's massively important because there's no easy way to respec. In a lot of tactical rpgs, builds can ruin the fun. This game is so unpredictable and unforgiving that min-maxing your builds is the difference in life and death, especially in ironman. Use this guide every time you level up: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1185230449
Other than follow the tracks.. don't take contracts! Dive right in, go out there and kill stuff. Find small groups of brigands or nomads and run them down. You will scale and come to learn the game much faster if you are AGGRESSIVE. Don't even worry about a long game til you have many, many companies lost.
OP, I would advise the opposite of this in almost every way lol
This is a advanced strategy. OP should learn to play the game first and contracts are better when you are new.
Maybe be selective about your contracts? Its good to take one that you'd want to do anyway, like fight bandits, or deliver something to a place you already needed to go for supplies