?Peasants are Superior?: A stupid playthrough

[Greep]

Figured I'd catalogue a stupid playthrough idea.  If anyone wants to grab a peasant and give them a goal or shout out ideas let me know  

Restrictions: No Ubers, no SS
Difficulty: Jack sparrow (because YOLO)
Goal: Make as much money as possible before retiring this life of misery.  Or global domination.  Fuck mars (no x-prison means no higher studies, peasant zubrin is too silly for me)

Attempts 1 and 2 were a complete failure, so here's attempt 3 so far

January Summary:

Finances:

-Fired those worthless mutants
-Sold a bunch of junk, got rid of security corridors, spammin dem burrows
-Bought peasants dogs, shotguns and bows
-No additional brainers
-Got rid of bus and radar end of month, bought expeditions

Research roughly:
-Peasants
-Town
-Dogs
-Machinery
-Expeditions
->Bounty Hunting
-Cunning
-Fire walk with me (current)
(Various infamy research along the way (honor, 1 nurse, fugutive search orders, dr. x))

Battles
-Nurses #1: 1 death, 0 captures, just barely got them on the third touchdown
-(Failed) Medium civilian shipping: 2 deaths to a bad embark in daytime, GTFO
-(Skipped) Temple raid
-Death and taxes: 1 death, 0 captures:
-Nurses #2: 0 death, 0 captures
-(failed) Red Lantern:2 deaths, killed a half dozen guys and realized it was just too risky and bailed
-Nurses #3: 0 deaths, 2 captures!!!
-Watchtower: 0 deaths, 0 captures, First expedition.
-(Skipped) Pogrom
-(failed) Distress signal (dogs couldn't see the enemy, so it was probably catgirls, fuck that shit, bailed immediately.

Goals: get trucks, camouflage, named dogs, merchants???, bikes???, lokknars???, monster hunt??? PUMP DAT GROG


Notes so far:  So far strategy has been pretty simple.  Cower in utter fear with shotguns around embark and throw molotovs to see in the dark.  Feels a lot lot xcom and electroflares.  Fire immediately on turn 1 if they're close because the alternative is worse.  Don't get cocky.
Looted a bunch of varmint rifles so I think I'm good for carbines, high accuracy will help a bunch.

Peasants are so pathetic, my best shooter fired a gothic raygun at 30% so I sold it.  I ended up with a surprsing 1500+ despite the utter failures, helps to know the early game infamy researches I guess, but february's going to be a mess probably.

Also just realized I probably got some peasants killed cause they were wearing shepherd.  Not the brightest armor choice.  But this takes some getting used to.

Not really sure how I'll be able to handle infiltrations since peasants can't fire a pistol for crap, though.

Some pretty pictures:


Dog go bark, gun go shoot


KILL THEM ALL AND TAKE THEIR SHIT


Check out my sexy priestess.  Look at those wonderful stats


Attempt #3 going strong

[legionof1]

best of luck

[Interdictor]

I always play like this too. No black market ubers' recruiting, no slave soldiers, but many peasant girls. Last time I managed to lost all starting ubers, aircraft and ammunition failing the very first nurse mission so it was a bit more challenging in beginning.

Peasant girls lack some basic outfits so I've already added sailor and maid uniforms for them and going to add furs outfit for cold environment missions, sometime after next patch or update.

[Greep]

Yeah the lack of armor is making it hard to distinguish soldiers a bit, though some of their starting armor (mud, camo) is pretty good.  Less of a problem now that I have named dogs to fling at enemy buildings instead of having to sort out who the cannonfodder brave rookie door kickers are.

Alright Mid-march report. keeping these simple since piratez is so ridiculously long:

Research:
->Named dogs
->HE grenades
->Various
->Mess Hall
->Tiny drill


Current goals:  chateau, trucks (still), camo (still), carbines, warehouse wars, underwater missions, gambling, farms

Finances:

-Setting up for codex, Built an extractor
-Gold codex was chosen:  In serious need of money and brainers. especially to burn through these bajillions or journey notes from expeditions.  Sold everything (sleek hull, flame cannon, gold bars, diamond, admiral suit) for 2,444,000 dosh.  Kept the lash for symbolism
Red would've been pointless (no peasant chainmail), No castaways for green, grey is just too slow
-Filling out my two expeditions, 6 dogs in every embark with the help of named dogs
-GRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOG

Goals:  Expand brainers to 6, begin worldwide farming explosion, buy some recon


Missions:

Steady but small amounts of deaths on various missions.  Becoming more ambitious, getting red lantern districts,
Sadly, peasants are worth the same score as everyone else:  A successful red lantern with 4 dead peasants and 2 dead dogs gave a score of -111

Generally skipping the harder "easy" missions (scientific experiments, ratmen, lokknar village).  Scientific experiments should be doable soon, though.

Missed a traitors at large because I accidentally sent my expedition that was meant to stall the timeout instead of the actual expedition lol.  Ugh, need trucks so bad.

Pics attached:
(chronicles, morgue, FIRST SUPERSIZE PEASANT!, hiding in a crackhouse, peasants with pistols, le base)

[Interdictor]

It depends on what building you're talking about but even newbie peasants in hunter outfits armed with Small Shotguns and Handles seems fairly good, at least against basic enemies. Peasant girls with spears may put down more stubborn ones plus you can arm few of them with Mr. Handy to crush through the walls wherever you like. In worst case it's not a big deal if peasant catch a bullet or two, just send more and more, use advantage of outnumbering and have peasant nurses take care of the rest. Sending a dog seems too risky for me.

[legionof1]

Wow selling the hull. Don't think i would have done that, given the fuegos competency as an air combatant. but i guess with all peasents its more about getting bodies on target for the first several months.

[username]

The main thing which holds back peasants is their lack of any useful armor options until SAINT. Everything else is either non-flying, non-armoring, and/or saddled with crap gold or purple shields. Of course, SAINT has entirely fused weapon slots, but at least it flies, has TU out the wazoo, and blue shield, which is probably the best shield type in the game due to its broadband coverage and effectivity against the most common threat profiles.

[Greep]

Well Ghostbuster doesn't look that bad.  It's purple but a lot of purple.   I guess one laser and you're dead, though.  The best armor of course will be armored cars, so I'll have to make it a priority to get a light machine gun and advanced weapons rumors.   Bloodhounds look like the only tanky unit until then really.

I mainly went extreme enough to sell the hull because I was stuck at 3 brainers for 2 months.  Might burn me a bit now that the bigger ships are no longer easy Kraken bait, but I probably won't get that far anyways lol.

[username]

It's only "not that bad" in a very relative sense. While probably the best available general-purpose armor for Peasants, it's still heavy and -5 TU, cannot fly, has minimal armor value, and while it has decent chunk of purple shielding, remember: Purple Shields are weak vs. basically everything. Whereas Blitz's blue 77/10 is effectively 308/40 vs the most common and most unavoidable damage types (piercing and concussion respectively), and provides protection vs. pretty much every major threat profile, even if it is weak vs. lazor, Purple provides only lousy protection vs. every major threat profile except lazor, against which it is totally useless, as well as Stabbing. Unfortunately, Lazor is probably the second most common damage type, and Stabbing is probably the 4th most common behind Plasma (but all shields are bad at plasma).

[Greep]

Alright, May 1st update, taking a break after this:

Rare loot progress:
Pretty much everything that could have gone right did

-Managed to snag a self-charging laser pistol from an academy distress signal and then haul it back with a dog on the first turn
-Both scientific experiments were the easy kind (flat, no buildings, no light, low trees), snagged an academy medic
-Got a guild stapler from stranded govt agents so I didn't even have to do warehouse wars
-Scored a bunch of apples from lokknar farm
-Rogue fields on my first interrogation lol
-Just need a light machine gun and I'm set


Research:
-All of the mess hall/early mission unlocks
-Backfilling Various early tech
-trucks
-lokknars
-start of interrogations
-Goals: convoys, ... honestly not sure where to go from here.  Probably workshop in anticipation of cars.  Seems a bit early for class B bounty hunting.

Finances:

-Started two new bases for farming, more hangars, arctic and antarctica to save money.  Man uber wheat sure grows everywhere!
-Expanded garisson to 50 peasants, 20 dogs
-Eventually weed farming

Missions:
-Mostly at least attempting to do everything now except lokknars/ratmen, though had to bail a few times.  Managed to bag some zombies in haunted forest by taking them out on turn 1 and dragging them out.
-Base defense was pretty annoying.  My only way to really handle close quarters drones was to sacrifice a bunch of doggos to reaction fire as my point blank molotov peasants closed in.  Stupidly ran the dogs around close when I realized later I could've lost less by running at a distance.  Oh well.
-The underwater mission was jellyfish   Managed to kill one with spears but all the rest were out of vision so I bailed.




Notes:

-Trucks are a little underwhelming:  can't do night missions with them since there's no way to turn the lights out on the trucks and one of them points the lights right to an open truck entrance.  Selling the trucks for bikes for my second hangar
-Sci experiments isn't quite as hard as I thought it'd be, drones can be dealt with by an avalanche of carbine fire sniping usually, and I can just molotov the medic. 


Pics:

(chronicles, money, morgue, doggos in a farmhouse, a turn later, stupid jellyfish, jack's town, I'm a not chargin ma laser because it charges itself)

[Greep]

Okay final post:  I didn't get blown up but a sudden realization occurred: 

It's actually pretty boring!  The lack of TUs, range of armors, ability to effectively use almost every item in the game, inability to fight in more dangerous missions leading to only doing the same 10 or so over and over, and extreme levels of units to manage in every single mission resulted in just getting bored.  It was fun initially but I wouldn't recommend completing a game like this.

Wrapping up I managed to:

-Snag a light machine gun from a prepper camp (I avoided shooting any guys carrying them until one walked near my convoy)  This actually feels like a generally safe way of getting a light machine gun:  Just always embark on prepper camps and if you get a good spawn just turtle until you can swipe one.
-Kill some fishies with spears
-get a workshop up
-establish a bunch of farming bases, getting close to negative maintenance
-about to contact krazy hannah and get some cannons
-was working slowly on getting the 5 aqua plastics necessary for the armored car, capturing any armored enemies is quite an ordeal.

Things I learned:

-Peasants are actually pretty decent for ranged combat, ironically much better at night as well (just need a dog/cat for nightvision or fire)

-Although it was fun training some peasants to supersize I and even II, it it a completely pointless endeavor early game.  By the time any meaningful progress was made I could have just put them in dojos.  Slightly experienced peasants were only useful for sniping slightly faster anyways, they still couldn't really melee or toss grenades/axes with any effectiveness.

-There's some things hordes of peasant can do even easier than gals, such as haunted forest or anything that requires a ton of shotgun fire on turn 1

-Reactions really make a lot of difference, especially if you don't have any.  I'll probably be doing a lot more camo/nudie fighting with gals, and relying on warrior armor only for ratmen and a few gals to hug corners.  With peasants the only answer I had a lot of time was to camp hardcore behind a wall of flames and pepper everyone to death.  There was basically no way I had to effectively raise reactions through training with peasants.

-Given that peasants only was fairly effective, I think male touch might be a fun playthrough, especially since you get a fair amount of gals from events and missions.  I shed a tear every time I sold a castaway to the black market. I also hate how the SS route gets the worst SS soldiers (no flashbanger noooooo)

-Dogs rule

-Trucks kinda suck, go for bikes instead (lights shining into the other truck, not enough peasants, innaccurate although occasionally useful rotogun)

-Convoys freaking own (6 dog capacity, ladder blocking for EZ monster hunts/melee enemies, reasonable cover, comfort of darkness).  They're so good I would consider them a decent early game alternative to shadowcraft for hard missions.

-Named dogs, while very nice, has two downsides:  dead wardoggies give -21 infamy, and the advantage is shortlived, since convoys allows all the dogs you need

-Rushing shadowmasters and doing landed UFOs in a gal party, while effective, does cost a ton of money to set up (millions in ships brainers, gals, and radars).  Simply waiting until you get a library and using bikes/convoys until then feels equally viable.  Unless, of course, one of your early interrogations randomly gives you shadowmasters.

-Expeditions bring in a fair amount of money from journey notes infamy, not too shabby for simple missions.  Extra stabs at shadowmasters is always nice

-Coverless craft are pretty decent for night time missions, but are risky since any light usually means needing to abort.

-Always bring a dog

[username]

The one thing I've found when spamming peasants or SS is that spear infantry OP. Spear attack trains melee, so your peasants gain melee skill, but the attack is treated as a ranged weapon so bypasses enemy evasion, and has a 150% base accuracy.

[Greep]

And disrupts TUs, yeah it's nice.  It's great underwater. 

Just getting in range is a bitch (40 reactions, 1 hit = dead lol)

[username]

Underwater it's like your early lobsterman killer, because it has arpen and you can just hover 9 peasants over the head of the hapless lobsterman and stab it to death as it is helpless to engage you.