Battle Brothers - The Retinue

A new gameplay mechanic has been introduced to Battle Brothers with the DLC Blazing Deserts called The Retinue.

Dev Blog #127: The Retinue, Part I


A big reason why suffering heavy losses late in a campaign is devastating, and also why coming back from those losses is difficult, is because most progress that you attain throughout a campaign is in the growing strength of your men - which is the very thing that you stand to lose in every battle. While you can and should save some crowns for hard times, all too often you'll have to start near the bottom again and hire fresh recruits all over. But what if you'd have a drill sergeant that whips these recruits into shape more quickly? And what if having that drill sergeant would be an advantage that you couldn't lose again? In other words, permanent progress not erased by battles lost.

Some of you will recall the concept of having 'non-combat followers' - non-fighting specialists like blacksmiths, surgeons or that drill sergeant mentioned above. A retinue of people that would support your company of fighting men outside of battle. It's an idea that we've been toying with since before Battle Brothers even went into Early Access, and it's what we're now introducing to the game.



Your retinue of non-combat followers can be found in a new screen accessible from the world map. Here, you'll find the men, women and children that travel along with your company sitting around a homely campfire. There's five slots in total for you to fill, and several times that many followers available to choose from. Each follower pulls their weight by granting you one or more beneficial effects on the world map. Let's take a closer look at the drill sergeant.



The drill sergeant makes your men gain more experience from combat and never lose mood when being stuck in reserve, by keeping discipline and enforcing a hard training regime. In order to hire a follower like him, you'll first have to unlock them. At the most basic level, followers require you to have a certain level of renown, but many also require other conditions to be met. For example, in order to unlock the drill sergeant you'll first have to retire a brother with a permanent injury. That's not hard to achieve, but other requirements can be more involved, giving new goals to pursue. Each follower costs a certain amount of money to hire, and you can replace a follower at any time with a different one for a cost.

There'll be followers available that have an impact on various aspects of strategic gameplay that any mercenary company has to deal with, like the drill sergeant, but also a couple that further support more specialized playstyles. For example, if you're particularly interested in banditry, exploration, trade or named item hunting, we've got you covered. Choosing the right set of followers for your company is another way to customize it to your playstyle and to make each company and playthrough feel more unique.



In addition to your entourage of followers, you'll also find a donkey around the campfire which you can upgrade first to a cart, then to a wagon, and then to an even bigger wagon, each time to increase the capacity of your inventory. Indeed, you no longer have to wait until the right ambition comes along in order to unlock more slots for your stash, but you can at any time just buy more inventory slots for money here. Easy!

Join us again next week when we take a closer look at some of the followers available for your retinue in part two of this dev blog.

More information.

Originally Posted by Silver
A new gameplay mechanic has been introduced to Battle Brothers with the DLC Blazing Deserts called The Retinue.

More information.

Oh this looks good to me.

I am looking forward to this dlc again.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

Originally Posted by Pladio
Oh this looks good to me.

I am looking forward to this dlc again.

Sent from my SM-G975F using Tapatalk

True that. I kind of like this model of continuing to expand a game.

I love the art in this game, nice shot of stumpy the leg chewer.

Any content for this game is an instant buy for me…but I’m honestly not all that excited for this feature. It sounds a little boring to basically be recruiting a “perk”. An earlier announcement talked about company feats you could earn. Is that different than these retinue perks? I guess I can see how some form of camp followers could make sense for large mercenary bands. But Battle Brothers is centered around small group tactics. Does a retinue of 5 camp followers for just 20 mercs make sense?

Maybe I shouldn’t be worried that this is gonna be half-baked as they haven’t released anything I dislike up to this point. And I do love the game and the variety they keep adding. Fingers crossed that I’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I guess the woman will be sort of food gatherer and for morale boost.
The kid looks like a thief and will probably either boost your income or increase the chance of finding legendary items, which could be of massive help when you're actively searching for them.
Blacksmith providing cheaper tools & faster armor repair between battles?
Donkey providing larger stash size and faster map movement (for the same amount of food, unlike the mod which just speeds up the game)?
You'll probably want to permanently keep the drill sargeant.

I love the concept, it will make gameplay less boring and more dynamic.

Fantastic feature.

A product is released and then receives multiple updates adding new content.
In the between, players have exhibited habits.

Gameplaywise, this retinue stuff is disconnected from players'habits.

It alludes to players losing nearly their company in late game, which seldom happens. Heavy losses (one third, one half of the company) happen in the early part of a run due to RNG.
Brigantry is another point: from the look of it, BB allows brigantry but players prefer to conform to the stronger sides unless they grow sufficiently powerful enough to ignore those formerly stronger sides. Players do not walk the path of brigandry, it does not fit their powermongering hunger.

This adds nothing, it withdraws. There are no heavy losses late run and it makes obsolete the other ways to train faster pawns (players will claim it stacks up)

Same for the morale thing etc

Gameplaywise, not so good. Which does not matter since non gamers have no interest in gameplay.

Now fantastic feature for streaming. One big offer by BB is to let a pawn being named after a viewer. The pawn is named, it grows etc It is not even needed to watch lenghtfully the stream, just pop in once in a while to enquire about the pawn, how it fares, its deeds, how it died etc

This update will add in this regard as now viewers who manage to get a pawn named after them are given that extra step, it might turn into retinue.

Looking forward to it.

Now this is the kind of DLC that gets me excited. This really adds a RPG component. I hope it's a difficult choice on who to add to your Retinue. If you just add the five same people every time that would get a little boring.

I come back from the Bahamas and see this news. Best week ever Even though I'm sunburned and have to shovel the damn driveway.

Ok, that does look good…

I would guess the female is a cook and helps your rations last longer and maybe find some exotic foods.

Prostitutes often accompanied mercenary bands, it was good for men's morale and they made constant and good money…
But I don't think the devs went that road, so yeah, probably helps for rations or maybe fastens healings.

The boy must be the one who gathers food. Maybe can spy on enemy camps (for garanteed intels)…

I like it, but I hope some of the followers have more interesting abilities. A 10% xp boost is the sort of ability that you will probably never notice and which will have no impact on how you play.

Camp followers of large armies weren't just prostitutes, though they were probably the first to join (plenty of customers and profit). Cooks and cobblers and the like joined the trail, too. Also, don't forget wives and girlfriends.

This feature sounds nice to me, but, at this point, I will buy any damn thing these guys want to throw at me.

Thinking about it the sgt keeping the reserves in a good mood will help with your larger battle brother bands as you can keep training newbies while the old hands hang out for those o shit moments.

The tavern will come handy. Buying rounds to improve morale of already good moraled pawn.

Originally Posted by Terry
I love the art in this game, nice shot of stumpy the leg chewer.

I like the kid looking sadly at his apple. Should be captioned, "The days before the smartphone."

Originally Posted by Hastar
Now this is the kind of DLC that gets me excited. This really adds a RPG component. I hope it's a difficult choice on who to add to your Retinue. If you just add the five same people every time that would get a little boring.

I come back from the Bahamas and see this news. Best week ever Even though I'm sunburned and have to shovel the damn driveway.

i am jealous… the ultimate place, the bahamas.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
Camp followers of large armies weren't just prostitutes, though they were probably the first to join (plenty of customers and profit). Cooks and cobblers and the like joined the trail, too. Also, don't forget wives and girlfriends.

This feature sounds nice to me, but, at this point, I will buy any damn thing these guys want to throw at me.

yep

Kid might be a scrounger who helps with provisioning while on the trail.