Warlord: Britannia

[JasonPratt]

Ran into a potentially game-killing bug twice (even on a fresh restart) yesterday, where even after troops are assigned to working, and are given jobs to do or already have jobs waiting, they just cluster together -- sometimes due to being surrounded by troops, but even when the troops are pulled away the workers huddle like pitiful cowards! 

Do they need wood to work with? -- but they already have enough, and won't go cut more.

Do they need chests to store wood in? -- but they won't make the chests.

Do they need tents to spread out the camp for people to walk around in? -- but they won't build the tents!

I experimented around and never got them to de-huddle, so I had to restart the game (hadn't saved that campaign yet so I couldn't reload from a save). I suspect had I converted them all back to soldiers (still doable), called them to arms (tried that, too), and walked them out to the maximum distance from the camp vex pole possible before disbanding them, and then QUICKLY ENOUGH tabbed over to assign some workers from the troops while the figures were re-convening at the pole, that would have worked. But I don't know.

The dev should code a larger amount of 'milling' room around the vex pole, proportionately scaling to the number of troops, so that figures are better able to deploy once assigned as workers. I'll try to remember to drop a note about that in a bug report.

[JasonPratt]

Meanwhile, with several restarts of the campaign I've been experimenting about the fastest way to bootstrap up.

1.) Don't attack anyone until your company ('century' in game) has got as many officers as possible. You can have a 0 day Tessarion, but that isn't enough; you should promote him to an Optio first (and promote another troop to Tess), and that means waiting until about noon when the day-experience kicks in.

2.) Relatedly, don't attack anyone until your 'century' has picked up more troops to replace the promoted officers. You'll start with 10 gold, and gold is (so far) worthless for anything except buying new troops; but 10 gold should be easily enough to fill out your first 'century', especially if you're careful about resting between fights.

3.) While you're waiting for noon, march your first troops over to near your first target, ideally a waystation, and assign workers to build two chests and then chop five trees. (I'm honestly unsure how the chests really work yet, since clearly you don't need them to hold wood at the beginning, or between moving camp.) That will be enough to get five contabrium tents, and the officer tent, which will be enough camping room to fill out your century, though it'll be a few game-days before you have enough experience (and silver) to get there.

4.) After noon, fill out your Optio and Tessarion slots, and buy up as many troops as you can get with those two officers. (This won't fill out the century yet; you'll need three more for that including the Centurion, who won't be available until day 3, but the Signifier and the other guy can be promoted on day 2.)

5.) In the afternoon, go hit your first target, being careful NOT to have any convoys on the way or nearby to help defend them. If you deploy in battle line and hold position, you should be able to win that fight handily, but don't go after anything bigger than a farm (and even some farms are bigger than others! -- a small farm. Of course a real 'century' would tear through a farming village like paper, but this is really more like a platoon.)

6.) Be lenient with the captured village, just one quarter taxation. You won't need more silver income for a while (and you'll be picking up at least one more income every day), and it'll keep down unrest. Also, you won't need more than initial gold to fill out your 'century' (including some spare overhead to replace a few casualties).

7.) Go back to your temporary base camp to disband, allowing the troops to heal and restock on javs.

8.) Pack up your camp (you'll get all your wood back), and set up a more permanent base (no need for walls yet) near your first captured area, so you can deploy against targets and convoys nearby it. Go ahead and put in torches for night late, and a couple of barrels for..... not sure what they do, but you should have enough wood (and if not, a couple of trees should suffice). Aside from walls (no gates!) this is all the construction available in the game presently. More might unlock later, don't know (but a lot is still on the dev list).

Be sure to get all the workers immediately back to troop status when they're finished, at any time, just in case there's trouble. At this time you don't need guard/patrol troops on assignment: just make sure you aren't camped on a road or a likely path for convoys to go through; or else plan to be there ready to fight! Your sneaky scouts-not-appearing-in-the-game will let you know what's coming.

9.) By now evening is probably coming, or already here. Go hit any other small farm or waystation nearby. You'll get a bonus if you tell your troops to douse torches (x key I think?) before you get close enough to fight, although I don't know whether you have to charge out of battle line for that bonus. Holding a battle line is better anyway, as it provides more defense, allows javs to throw (which can mulch up to 75% of the charging force in my experience), and you can run around outside the line supporting your troops by drawing away problems or hitting troublesome enemies in the back. This should get you a second quarter-tax income by dawn of day 2.

10.) Go back to camp to disband, heal and restock on javs.

11.) Wait until mid-morning or noon or whenever the 'day' clock rolls over for your 1-day troops to level up to 2-day; then get your next two officers, filling out troop slots accordingly with gold afterward. (This, or maybe earlier, will trigger a quest reward from Legion HQ giving you more silver, too.)

12.) Continue this plan through day 3, hitting waystations and (more likely) nearby farms. I don't know that I'd go for hamlets yet, certainly not villages.

13.) When your 3-day level arrives (at the time they get paid in silver in the morning, I expect), promote your Optio to Centurion, back fill that officer line, and complete your 'century'.

14.) From this point, you'll be focusing for a while on upgrading your century's armor, starting with your officers. Managing extra centuries becomes progressively more bothersome (under the current game system), but you can do a lot with just one, as long as you ranger up. ;)

[W8taminute]

^Very nice tips!

I more or less follow what you recommend with the exception of packing up my camp and moving it around.  I tend to find a spot located centrally from all the targets I intend to attack.  I only move the camp when it's time to go after another section of the map. 

Incidentally, if you pack up your camp not only do you retain all the wood stored up in your chests and barrels but any walls you built get left behind.  In this way you can return to that campsite later on and still have those walls to protect you.  Really cool!

[JasonPratt]

I only move the camp once so far: I can't set up too near my first target, but I don't want to be far away either. Then after I take my first target, I set up a more detailed camp nearby so I know I've got defense near that first conquest. Besides I need to spend some time doing stuff so my troops day-level up.

This is another reason I like to choose a waystation as my first target.

[W8taminute]

Interesting.  I'm going to have to attack a waystation the next time I fire this game up and see what's what.   :)

[JasonPratt]

The small 1.12 update today, a few hours ago, broke the game not only even loading, not only even finishing the update, but even installing after a delete. sigh.

[Jarhead0331]

The small 1.12 update today, a few hours ago, broke the game not only even loading, not only even finishing the update, but even installing after a delete. sigh.

Works for me. I know this does not help you, but I don't think your issue is one with the patch.

[JasonPratt]

Installed it on my operating system drive, same thing happened in the same sequence: a crash back to Steam/desktop from the all-black loading screen; then the game refuses to even try loading, with a Steam error talking about a download error; combined with a permanent download failure on the Steam download screen. This is after a full reinstall which as far as Steam was concerned went fine to verified completion. Attempting to verify the install simply stops short with a crash at the last second, same results.

I noticed this time, that when trying the second load (after the crash from the black loading screen), Steam briefly threw up a window asking for a verification code, like Matrix/Slitherine might give you (for example, nothing specifically to do with them).

That would suggest a new DRM problem in the game; perhaps it only affects Windows 8.1 systems, which is why it works for you?

The dev has been steadily releasing patches since v.1 release, so hopefully this will be resolved in a few days. It isn't like I don't have bunches of other things to play. ;)

[JasonPratt]

The 1.2 update has added some camp-defense structures originally planned for later, especially watchtowers and gates, as well as fixing some serious bugs and adding some nice QOL functionality (such as converting 1 gold to 75 silver).

However, it doesn't fix my prior crash to desktop problem -- or possibly it does, but only by shifting problems!

Previously, I had seen evidence (from a split-second Steam window asking for a product verification code) that the 1.12 addition of Steam DRM was causing the crash (although why that would nuke some final file from the install, preventing me from neither launching, nor verifying, nor re-installing beyond a 99% install, I have no idea.)

Now, after a fresh install, running the game crashes into my Avast antivirus, which stops the executable and wants to put the exe into quarantine!

On one hand, I'm not a big fan of whitelisting execs from new devs/publishers without an established trustworthy track record; and Avast had no problems (per se) with earlier versions, including 1.12 (which was apparently crashing for other reasons).

On the other hand, Avast can't tell me what the specific problem is that it wants to quarantine, categorizing it as generic.

I have noted the problem on the official 1.2 release thread, and probably will just wait for the next release to see what happens. It isn't like I don't have other games to play!  ::)

[devoncop]

Early Access is an absolute lottery.

I now use my very limited reserves of self control to avoid all kickstarter/ EA and even beta versions of games.

Helps my blood pressure no end  ;)

[JasonPratt]

Update 1.3! -- the final planned (aside from hotfixes) before the next level of update, "Foundations".

Adds some base-defense quality of life fixes, especially including re-arming missiles every 20 seconds while within a reasonable distance of the base during battle.

Also now introduces the saved-camp layout function (moved up a bit from the original plan, iirc.) Upon disassembling the current camp, the layout is saved and can be optionally applied to the next camp setup for the legion. (Apparently, every camp takedown currently autosaves for an optional rebuild at the next camp, rather than saving possible layouts yet.)

Most importantly for my purposes, however: the Steam DRM problem currently seems gone! I could load the game and get into the museum (as a quick test, nothing new to see there yet)!

[JasonPratt]

So here's Rimmy (whom many of us know, I think), playing the game almost completely the wrong way. ;)

Mistakes were made...

[Jarhead0331]

That is a different guy. The one you're thinking of is from England...not Oz.

[JasonPratt]

Mm, no? -- I didn't mean "know personally", I thought many of us watch Rimmy the Australian (Rimmy Downunder Gaming) who does a bunch of humorous computer wargaming things, especially in Arma3.

[Jarhead0331]

Mm, no? -- I didn't mean "know personally", I thought many of us watch Rimmy the Australian (Rimmy Downunder Gaming) who does a bunch of humorous computer wargaming things, especially in Arma3.

Alright. I thought you were referring to Jason Rimmer. He was a member of our forum and went and started a wargaming group of his own. Seems like he would have been the obvious reference you were making. I've never heard of Rimmy from Downunder.