Detailed Follower Mechanics: A Guide :: Battle Brothers General Discussions

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Antifringe 16 Dec, 2020 @ 7:13pm

Detailed Follower Mechanics: A Guide

I've been studying the exact mechanics of the retinue, and finally decided to make a dedicated thread for my findings. The information is all based on actual reading of the code, when practical, confirmed through empirical testing.

This is mostly about revealing previously unrevealed mechanics, but I'll indulge in a little bit of evaluation while I'm at it.

I'm not going to be giving ratings for the various followers, because I personally think that ratings are not very useful. A detailed discussion is much more informative.

I tend to think of followers in terms of four categories:
Economic- The follower's main function is to make back their hire cost and then turn a profit
Downtime- The follower's main function is to reduce time spent on common tasks
Sustain-The follower's main function is to provide resources that let you stay in the field longer
Utility-Some other function not well contained in the previous three

There is obviously some overlap in these categories. Saving time also saves money, increased sustain reduces time spent returning to town, etc. They're not hard divisions.

I'll be labeling each follower by the functions they provide. The capital letter (like, E for economic) means that this is a core function of that follower. A lower case letter means this is a secondary function, not quite strong enough to justify the follower by itself. A lower case in parentheses means that this is a vestigial function, probably a side-effect of some other function.

Alchemist - e/U:
Provides a 25% chance of preserving a reagent when crafting. This roll is made per ingredient, not per craft. So if a recipe calls for 4 reagents, you roll the 25% for each reagent individually. The roll is made when the reagent is generated and the result is stored. This means that you cannot save scum to get better results. A reagent can be "saved" more than once (a new roll is made when it is used in a recipe and then attached to the reagent).

Kraken parts can be reused by the Alchemist, which is a big deal. Things that you might not consider to be alchemical reagents, like the net in the reinforced net recipe, can be reused like any other ingredient.

The Alchemist also unlocks the Snake Oil recipe. Snake Oil is unique in that it always sells for a flat 650, ignoring all relation, scenario, and town modifiers.

There are 14 different recipes that all create the same product. The base cost of the reagents adds up to roughly 1800 for each recipe (there is some minor variance, but you can tell that 1800 was the intended value). Realistically, you would only be getting 20-25% of this value if you sold the raw parts. A large allied town with no other modifiers on medium economic difficulty gets 24%. Town situations can rarely push this as high as 30%. Crafting the oil costs 50.

What this means is that you are paying somewhere between 410 and 500 to make a 650 item (assuming no town situations). That's not a very big margin, but on average, every fourth snake oil is "free" (it still costs 50 to craft). It only takes a few freebies for the alchemist to pay himself off.

Planning around Snake Oil is a pain in the ass. You'll end up with a cart full of monster parts that almost but not quite meet the requirements for Snake Oil. I'm thinking about writing a mod that keeps the same balance but makes Snake Oil less fussy.

Takeaway: The Alchemist extends your supply of taxidermist products. He will also pay his own cost back in a few weeks if you're willing to put up with the hassle of making Snake Oil. But oh God it's a hassle.

Agent - U:
The Agent alters the daily normalization of relationships by 10% in your favor. To understand this, you need to know how the basic mechanics work.

Relationships are measured on a 100 point scale, with 50 being neutral. Every day, relations normalize towards 50 by 0.25 points. The agent multiplies this number by either 0.9 or 1.1, depending on if the normalization was helping you or hurting you.

That's really weak. You go from losing 0.25 points a day to losing 0.225 points. For reference, a completed contract is worth 10 points (or 5 points if it's for a noble house). It would take 400 days for the agent to impact your relations as much as doing a single contract. Her direct economic benefits are effectively zero.

But that's fine, because her real power is that she reveals active contracts on the map. This is a very powerful utility. You can avoid going into "dead zones" with no viable contracts, you can search for monster contracts if you need alchemy parts, etc.

Takeaway: Get her for the map reveal. The relationship stuff sounds nice but is really just ornamental.

Blacksmith - D/U:
He increases the rate (but not tool efficiency) of repairs by 33% and lets you automatically keep any gear from a fallen brother. See Item Drop Rules for more on this:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/365360/discussions/0/2971776551517767395/

He also lets you keep shields if they were broken in combat. This greatly increases the viability of famed shields.

Takeaway: An uncomplicated follower. Almost mandatory late game if you are using unique shields.

Bounty Hunter - (e)/U:
Slightly increases the odds of champion (not to be confused with leader) enemies spawning. You also get additional gold equal to the xp value of the champion for killing him.

The formula for an enemy being promoted to champion is:

if (!this.Const.DLC.Wildmen || this.Math.rand(1, 100) > unit.Variant + _minibossify + (this.World.getTime().Days > 90 ? 0 : -1))

_minibossify is zero unless you have the Bounty Hunter, in which case it's three.

People claim that the Bounty Hunter is bugged and doesn't work, but this is provably false. He just gives a small bonus to an already small chance. I've experimented with increasing his bonus to 2000 and it definitely works. It looks like brigand leaders qualify for the upgrade, as well as ordinary goblins and orcs. In my crazy +2000 test run, I ran into lots of normal groups of brigands with no leaders or champions, but ENTIRE CAMPS of orcs and goblins that were nothing but champions. So you'll see disproportionately more greenskin champions overall.

Takeaway: The Bounty Hunter is odd because he actually makes your enemies stronger. He's more of an optional challenge mode than anything, While you will get more champions, you will still not get many, so you will be disappointed if you were hoping to make back your monetary investment in a timely manner. His most practical advantage is that he will give you marginally more chances at finding famed gear.

Brigand - U:
Lets you see trade caravans without having to be near them. Very straightforward and easy to understand.

Takeaway: Very strong utility if you are using a raider play style.

Cartographer - E:
Pays you money for discovering new locations. Payment scales with distance from nearest settlement. Pays double for legendary locations. Does not pay you for locations revealed to you by a quest giver, but does pay you for locations found in the "find a location" quest.

The Cartographer is a pure economy follower. His only function is to earn back the money you spent hiring him. The pay is good (ranges between 100-400 for non-legendary sites) but always takes longer to hit breakeven than I'm comfortable with. He would be an automatic hire if we had unlimited retinue slots, but we don't so he isn't. He's fine.

Takeaway: A fine hire if you are planning on extensive exploration of the wilds. If you are sticking to the civilized areas and doing local contracts, you will quickly discover that you find less locations than you thought you would. Contract chasers should look at other economic options.
Cook - D/S/(e):
Increases HP recovery by +33% and extends lifetime of food items by three days.

Pretty straightforward. The only non-obvious thing is that food value decreases in proportion to its spoilage, so adding three days causes food to lose value slower. The Cook therefore makes trading food slightly more viable. It's unlikely that you'll make your money back on her, but she does defray her costs a little bit.

Takeaway: Reduces downtime and lets you stay in the wilds a bit longer. Stronger if you are using lots of nimble units. Any direct economic benefit is incidental.

Drill Sargeant U:
Gives your men a 20% xp bonus, scaling down by -2% for every level over first level. Also removes the mood penalty for being in the reserves during a fight.

If you do the math, the Drill Sargeant reduces the amount of raw xp you need to reach level 11 by 1003 points (out of 15000). That's not very much, but I think that's the wrong way to look at the Sargeant. He's not about getting your middle level guys to 11, he's about getting your raw recruits to the mid levels. He saves 270 out of 2000 points to reach level 5, and 567 out of 5000 to reach level 7. That's better, but still a bit underwhelming. However...

The bonus is multiplicative with other bonuses. In fact, all xp bonuses multiply. So a first level recruit with a Drill Sargeant (20%) and a Potion of Knowledge (100%) is getting a +140% bonus, not a +120% bonus. Stacking the sargeant, student, potions, and training halls can get you gigantic total bonuses. Very useful in the late game when you are trying to train up new recruits.

Takeaway: The mood effect is mostly ornamental. The xp bonus is potentially very strong, but you have to deliberately leverage it to get significant value from it.

Lookout U:
Increases your sight radius by 25% and lets you identify tracks. Not complicated. The track information is very basic. Like "Raiders," or "Goblins." Doesn't tell you anything about numbers or composition.

Takeaway: Map visibility is good. Works well with Cartographer (but do not hire the Lookout if all you want to do is get value out of the Cartographer. You'll lose more money than you make). I have never found the track identification to be useful. The information is usually either obvious or irrelevant.

Minstrel U:
Increases renown gain by 15% and guarantees that tavern rumors will point you to a famed item.

The Renown is the complicated part. I'll link to my findings rather than retyping them:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/365360/discussions/0/2994295183862781840/

The Tavern rumor thing is fine for a temporary hire in the late game.

Takeaway: Very underwhelming. The Renown bonus sounds good in theory but is revealed as useless when you do that math. Contract values cap out way too early for the Minstrel to do anything useful. Would be much better if Renown kept giving you value past 3870. But it doesn't, so he isn't. Somewhat useful in the post game, where money no longer matters and you can temporarily rotate him in to harvest tavern rumors.

Negotiator E:
Just read this:
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/365360/discussions/0/2922228082015480977/?ctp=2
I lay it all out there.

Takeaway: Base contract values are too low and it just takes too long for the Negotiator to earn his pay back. He would be good if you had unlimited slots, but as it is the opportunity cost is too high for my taste.

Paymaster E
Reduces pay by 15%, reduces odds of desertion, and blocks the events where your men demand more pay.

I think people overrate this guy. I'm looking at my Day 100 20-man party right now, and he saves me about 80 gold a day. That would take 44 days to reach break even. How long am I going to play?

He does block the two most annoying events in the game, so there's that. But I think people overstate the impact of these events. They feel bad, I get that, but they don't actually matter all that much.

Takeaway: Are you one of those guys that hires only Hedge Knights and plays until day 1000? Okay, this guy is for you. Otherwise there are better options for your slots.

Quartermaster - S
Increases your ammo cap by 100, and your tool and medical caps by 50. Uncomplicated.

Takeaway: The ammo cap helps a lot if you are leaning on throwing weapons. The tool cap is useful for everyone. You only get value out of him if you are going on long expeditions, but if you are he's very useful.

Recruiter - U/(e)
Adds 2-4 extra spawns in each town's hiring pool, reduces hiring cost by 10%, and reduces try out cost by 50%.

The cost reduction is mostly flavor. The real action comes from the extra spawns. You hire the Recruiter when you have stabilized and are searching for specific builds. Do NOT hire the Recruiter at the beginning, on the theory that he will save you money. He most definitely won't. At the beginning, you are hiring guys for 100-500 gold. You will have filled your roster long before you recover your 2000 capital cost.

Takeaway: Good for late-ish game, when you are searching for quality over quantity. Shouldn't be a permanent resident in your camp.

-splitting post here-

Last edited by Antifringe; 17 Dec, 2020 @ 12:44am

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Showing 1-15 of 35 comments

Antifringe 16 Dec, 2020 @ 7:14pm

Scavenger - S/e
Generates extra tools when you destroy armor. Recovers a small portion of ammo that you spend.

The armor recovery works like this: If you destroy a piece of armor (body armor or helmet, but not shields), the game calculates how many tools it would have taken to repair that armor. Fifteen percent of that number is added to a pool of "potential tools." At the end of the battle, you gain a random number of extra tools somewhere between half the pool value and the total pool value.

It takes 0.067 tools to repair one point of armor (15 points per tool). Taking 15% of that means that you potentially recover 1% of the armor value in tools.

For example, if you smash 600 points of armor, you will get somewhere between 3-6 bonus tools at the end of the fight.

The bonus tools show up as a separate stack from the normal loot tools, and always as the second stack. If you smashed any armor, you will get a minimum of one tool. You can never get more than 60 tools in one fight.

You only get tools for armor that was reduced to zero in combat. If it had any points left, it doesn't count. It doesn't count even if you fail the loot roll and the piece doesn't drop. I've tested this extensively and have confirmed that this is how it works.

Orc and goblin armor counts for the Scavenger, but the natural armor of monsters does not. I don't know about Armored Unholds, I haven't tested them.

Ammo recovery is a random number between 10 and 20 percent of the ammo spent by the player, with a floor of 1 if you spent any ammo at all. (Technically, its Rand(ammospent*.2/2, ammospent*.2), which is the same thing).

I'm reasonably certain that enemy ammo doesn't contribute.

Takeaway: Scavenger is badly placed in the game. He's the first follower that unlocks, but he is basically useless in the beginning of the game. He shines when going on long trips against orcs or noble armies.

In a long game, the Scavenger will eventually recover most/all of his cost, but the real reason you hire him is because he lets you stay out in the wilderness longer before running out of supplies.

Scout - D
Grants a 15% movement bonus. Technically, he multiplies the terrain modifier by 1.15, but this number is then multiplied against your base speed, so it's all the same. He also blocks a few rare and inconsequential events.

You can't really "feel" the movement speed bonus, but it's there if you try to measure it. It's a solid, universally useful effect.

The bonus becomes more important during chase scenarios. The player party has a base speed of 105. Most enemies have a base speed of 100. If you're chasing brigands, that's a closing speed of 5. The Scout makes this a 120v100 chase, for a closing speed of 20, a four-fold increase!

Takeaway: He's always good. Probably one of the best. I think some people underrate him because it's harder to measure his impact.

Surgeon - D/U
Shaves a day off of wound recovery times. Also lets brothers survive with a permanent injury instead of dying, kind of like a super Survivor perk for every one. Doesn't work if the brother already has a permanent injury.

Not much to say here. The mechanics are straightforward and clearly presented.

Takeaway: Fantastic if you're playing an "honest" game. The chance of keeping a bro with a inconsequential injury is very strong. Wound recovery reduces downtime for players of all stripes.

Trader - E
Causes buildings that produce trade goods to create one extra good. If a settlement has multiple production buildings, then the Trader affects all of them, even if the buildings are of the same type.

An economy-only follower with a buy-in of 3500, and requires you to invest in trade goods on top of that? I was deeply skeptical of this guy, but he ended up being all right.

He earns that 3500 back faster than you think. I did a test run where I visited all three city states, bought their goods, and sold them to a northern town. I had Friendly relations with the all (about four contracts' worth of good will). The Trader alone earned me an extra 1083 net gold. That's not bad. Getting better relations and/or exploiting town situations could almost double that.

Takeaway: Much better than I thought. A good midgame pickup when you've gotten good relations with several towns and can exploit price differences. His usefulness depends a little bit on the map, but all maps get the city states, and the city states are always good (their unique items sell at a +15% rate in northern towns). Crazy powerful with the Merchant origin. With merely Friendly towns, I was netting 3000 coins from the Trader's bonus goods alone. But the power of the merchant origin has never been a secret.

Last edited by Antifringe; 16 Dec, 2020 @ 7:17pm

Nerdgasm

16 Dec, 2020 @ 7:44pm

You may want to consider copy and pasting this into the guide section because it's very well written and will inevitably get buried by new threads on the discussion forum. A proper guide format would also give it a bit more ease of legibility. Thank you for taking the time to do this write-up, especially the math governing the various mechanics.

Crowkeeper has Battle Brothers

16 Dec, 2020 @ 7:50pm

Originally posted by Nerdgasm:
You may want to consider copy and pasting this into the guide section because it's very well written and will inevitably get buried by new threads on the discussion forum. A proper guide format would also give it a bit more ease of legibility. Thank you for taking the time to do this write-up, especially the math governing the various mechanics.

I concur. I have to say, Battle Brothers is a hidden gem of a game with an equally fantastic community.

felix

16 Dec, 2020 @ 8:31pm

Originally posted by Antifringe:
Drill Sargeant U:
Gives your men a 20% xp bonus...
Takeaway: The mood effect is mostly ornamental. The xp bonus is potentially very strong, but you have to deliberately leverage it to get significant value from it.

Drill Sargeant gives you on average +7.5% xp multiplier. Is it really "very strong"?

Originally posted by Antifringe:
He's not about getting your middle level guys to 11, he's about getting your raw recruits to the mid levels.

You can't hire him from start and going to mid lvls are very fast. You need 2k exp for lvl 5, 15k for lvl 11. Do you really need him to reach 2k exp?

Most laughable retinue. I am better hire useless negotiator. At least he gives me ~10% money from contracts, rather than useless 7.5% exp bonus.

Last edited by felix; 16 Dec, 2020 @ 8:32pm

Crowkeeper has Battle Brothers

16 Dec, 2020 @ 8:34pm

Originally posted by felix:
Originally posted by Antifringe:
Drill Sargeant U:
Gives your men a 20% xp bonus...
Takeaway: The mood effect is mostly ornamental. The xp bonus is potentially very strong, but you have to deliberately leverage it to get significant value from it.
Drill Sargeant gives you on average +7.5% xp multiplier. Is it really "very strong"?

Originally posted by Antifringe:
He's not about getting your middle level guys to 11, he's about getting your raw recruits to the mid levels.
You can't hire him from start and going to mid lvls are very fast. You need 2k exp for lvl 5, 15k for lvl 11. Do you really need him to reach 2k exp?

Most laughable retinue. I am better hire useless negotiator. At least he gives me ~10% money from contracts, rather than useless 7.5% exp bonus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWdd6_ZxX8c

=)

He also said "potentially" very strong if you "leverage" the bonus; as in, if you stack it with other bonuses.

Last edited by Crowkeeper; 16 Dec, 2020 @ 8:37pm

turtle225

16 Dec, 2020 @ 9:21pm

Did you test the Lookout in regards to camp revealing range? I've heard rumors that she doesn't increase your ability to "see" camps at distance, and so you run into scenarios where she is painting more map but you are missing camps on the added part of what she is revealing. I'm inclined to believe the rumor is true based on using her myself, but I could be wrong.

Thank you for taking the time to research and present this.

Tephros83

16 Dec, 2020 @ 11:21pm

Math is wrong on the agent by a factor of 10, or more depending on how you look at it.

If it goes from .25 loss per day to 0.225, that's 0.025 less attrition. If a contract is worth 5, 5 divided by 0.025 is 200. So in 200 days it would have the impact of a contract on noble house, 400 days for civilian. But the impact is really being multiplied by the number of places you don't have completely neutral relations with.

Still not as important as the other utility, but better than your guide says.

The bounty hunter isn't a marginal chance at all, but you're right the chances are a lot higher for greenskins. Maybe it depends on the game day? At day 400 it was really noticeable. But your guide really doesn't give me any idea what the chance is. What is the formula, in math language not code language?

Last edited by Tephros83; 16 Dec, 2020 @ 11:28pm

Antifringe 17 Dec, 2020 @ 12:59am

Originally posted by turtle225:
Did you test the Lookout in regards to camp revealing range? I've heard rumors that she doesn't increase your ability to "see" camps at distance, and so you run into scenarios where she is painting more map but you are missing camps on the added part of what she is revealing. I'm inclined to believe the rumor is true based on using her myself, but I could be wrong.

Thank you for taking the time to research and present this.

I'd never heard that one before. I just now tested it by altering her effect from 1.25 to 1000. The moment I hired her, the entire map was revealed, camps and everything.

I guess it's possible that the paint distance and the camp reveal distance are different and my test was too crude to detect the margin.

Originally posted by Tephros83:
Math is wrong on the agent by a factor of 10, or more depending on how you look at it.

If it goes from .25 loss per day to 0.225, that's 0.025 less attrition. If a contract is worth 5, 5 divided by 0.025 is 200. So in 200 days it would have the impact of a contract on noble house, 400 days for civilian. But the impact is really being multiplied by the number of places you don't have completely neutral relations with.

Still not as important as the other utility, but better than your guide says.

Whoops. Typed an extra zero there. Thanks for the heads up. The error has been fixed.

The bounty hunter isn't a marginal chance at all, but you're right the chances are a lot higher for greenskins. Maybe it depends on the game day? At day 400 it was really noticeable. But your guide really doesn't give me any idea what the chance is. What is the formula, in math language not code language?

So the reason I revealed the code there is because it was the best that I could do :) I don't 100% understand it.

if (!this.Const.DLC.Wildmen || this.Math.rand(1, 100) > unit.Variant + _minibossify + (this.World.getTime().Days > 90 ? 0 : -1))

^This technically the odds to *not* be a champion, I should make that more clear.

To be a champion, a given enemy unit has to roll a D100 under ("unit.variant" +"Bounty Hunter Bonus" +"TimeBonus") where

Bounty Hunter is 3 if you have him, zero if you don't
Time Bonus is 1 if it's past Day 90, zero if it's not
unit.variant is something I couldn't figure out but is obviously important

unit.variant is probably what allows goblins to be champions and dire wolves not to be. But I can't find out where it is defined. So the very best I can say is that the Bounty Hunter adds 3 percentage points to your roll. Proportionately, that might actually be very high, but in absolute terms, it will still only make a difference three out of 100 times.

Last edited by Antifringe; 17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:01am

Santo

17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:21am

Even before I read it complete, I just wanted to tell you that this is GOLDEN, thanks a lot Antifringe -- great job!!

Antifringe 17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:22am

@others

Thanks! I agree that a "real" guide is best. It's easier to get feedback on the forums and iron out any errors. I'll migrate it to the guides section sometime in the future.

#10

Tephros83

17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:26am

Originally posted by Antifringe:
Originally posted by turtle225:
Did you test the Lookout in regards to camp revealing range? I've heard rumors that she doesn't increase your ability to "see" camps at distance, and so you run into scenarios where she is painting more map but you are missing camps on the added part of what she is revealing. I'm inclined to believe the rumor is true based on using her myself, but I could be wrong.

Thank you for taking the time to research and present this.

I'd never heard that one before. I just now tested it by altering her effect from 1.25 to 1000. The moment I hired her, the entire map was revealed, camps and everything.

I guess it's possible that the paint distance and the camp reveal distance are different and my test was too crude to detect the margin.

Originally posted by Tephros83:
Math is wrong on the agent by a factor of 10, or more depending on how you look at it.

If it goes from .25 loss per day to 0.225, that's 0.025 less attrition. If a contract is worth 5, 5 divided by 0.025 is 200. So in 200 days it would have the impact of a contract on noble house, 400 days for civilian. But the impact is really being multiplied by the number of places you don't have completely neutral relations with.

Still not as important as the other utility, but better than your guide says.

Whoops. Typed an extra zero there. Thanks for the heads up. The error has been fixed.

The bounty hunter isn't a marginal chance at all, but you're right the chances are a lot higher for greenskins. Maybe it depends on the game day? At day 400 it was really noticeable. But your guide really doesn't give me any idea what the chance is. What is the formula, in math language not code language?

So the reason I revealed the code there is because it was the best that I could do :) I don't 100% understand it.

if (!this.Const.DLC.Wildmen || this.Math.rand(1, 100) > unit.Variant + _minibossify + (this.World.getTime().Days > 90 ? 0 : -1))

^This technically the odds to *not* be a champion, I should make that more clear.

To be a champion, a given enemy unit has to roll a D100 under ("unit.variant" +"Bounty Hunter Bonus" +"TimeBonus") where

Bounty Hunter is 3 if you have him, zero if you don't
Time Bonus is 1 if it's past Day 90, zero if it's not
unit.variant is something I couldn't figure out but is obviously important

unit.variant is probably what allows goblins to be champions and dire wolves not to be. But I can't find out where it is defined. So the very best I can say is that the Bounty Hunter adds 3 percentage points to your roll. Proportionately, that might actually be very high, but in absolute terms, it will still only make a difference three out of 100 times.

Only with 1 eligible unit. I assume it's rolling for each one. Almost every unit is eligible in a goblin camp. If there's 20 goblins it's more like a 46% chance to get an extra champion (97% to the 20th power). Might require a more complicated calculation, maybe Poisson distribution, but it's something like that. But what we're really doing is adding 3% to a low number for each eligible unit it sounds like.

Last edited by Tephros83; 17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:32am

#11

Antifringe 17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:35am

Originally posted by Tephros83:
Only with 1 eligible unit. I assume it's rolling for each one. Almost every unit is eligible in a goblin camp. If there's 20 goblins it's more like a 46% chance to get an extra champion (97% to the 20th power). Might require a more complicated calculation, maybe Poisson distribution, but it's something like that.

Oh, it's definitely rolled on a per unit basis. The all champion goblin camp proved that. But I don't 100% understand the eligibility requirements or what the base chance is without Bounty Hunter.

When I said "3 out if 100" I meant per roll, not per enemy group. More badguys means more rolls, whether you have the BH or not. But I get your point. A +3% bonus means a much higher chance of getting at least one champion versus none at all for large spawns.

Last edited by Antifringe; 17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:36am

#12

Rude$t

17 Dec, 2020 @ 1:45am

ooo. Excellent post.

#13

NM9G

17 Dec, 2020 @ 3:17am

Originally posted by Antifringe:

Paymaster E
Reduces pay by 15%, reduces odds of desertion, and blocks the events where your men demand more pay.

I think people overrate this guy. I'm looking at my Day 100 20-man party right now, and he saves me about 80 gold a day. That would take 44 days to reach break even. How long am I going to play?

He does block the two most annoying events in the game, so there's that. But I think people overstate the impact of these events. They feel bad, I get that, but they don't actually matter all that much.

Takeaway: Are you one of those guys that hires only Hedge Knights and plays until day 1000? Okay, this guy is for you. Otherwise there are better options for your slots.

There is a lot I could say, although I personally don't currently wish to make any strong claims about the retinue right now, as it is hard to test all their potential, but I did want to pop in and say that there is a tiny bit of misrepresentation of the 15% reduced pay of daily wages.
Let's say one were to hire good backgrounds like militia or wildmen, and about level 11-14 they reach 40 daily wages, and let's say you had a full company that would be 120 per day that you save (earn). If you were to have squires at a high level of 11-14 you would see about 60 gold per squire, maybe only 12 of your troops were of this refined caliber, with the remaining 8 being 30 gold, that would be 156 per day. If you were to have 6 hedge knights similarly leveled at 90 gold per day, along with 7 squires and 7 wildmen/other, you would have 176 gold per day saved.
In order to get your 80 gold a day you would have to hire a full company of very low tier backgrounds that ask roughly for less than 9 gold a day as a starting pay, which leaves out a very large amount of premium backgrounds, middle cost backgrounds, and decent peasant tier hires. One of the best one could get with these sub 9 gold wages would be a caravan hand, which is okay, but get's severely outclassed by something better like a militia, brawler, lumberjack, or wildman in terms of peasant tier recruits. This is also hardly involving reaching day 1000, while this may be a more realistic day 100-200 (more or less) goal.

That said, money isn't much of an issue in the late-game, once one's decked out their troops. I just wanted to give some examples and help shed some light on some realistic, estimated savings that the paymaster provides.

Last edited by NM9G; 19 Dec, 2020 @ 4:00am

#14