Battle Brothers – The Goblin City Fight Guide

I have done the Goblin City fight 3 times under 3 different play through with different strategy. Wanted to share my trial and errors.

Guide to Goblin City Fight

All credit goes to Glorious Comrade!

Assumed Knowledge

I assume you have found the Goblin City and completed the pre quest, now you just tried to fight it and lost. or you wanted to know how to prepare for it before you fight it.

Enemy Composition

There will be total of 47 Goblins. I believe this is fixed, it is the same everytime you try it.

• 16 Goblin Skirmishers
• 13 Goblin Ambushers
• 3 Goblin Overseers
• 4 Goblin Shamans
• 11 Goblin Wolfriders

Shaman Skill Set

If you have not fought a Goblin Shaman before, it has 3 abilities

1. Grants Night Vision to 6 goblins
2. Entangle 6 of your bros, (similar to a net but AOE)
3. Swarm of flies to a single bro, (reduce all stats, basically render your bro pretty useless for 3-4 turns)

Goblin Weakness

• Low armor.
• Low health.
• Low morale.

The key to victory is to cause multiple goblin to die on the same turn, triggering morale lost cascade. So the Goblin waste their turn running instead of attacking.

The goblin overseer can whip up to 2 goblin back to steady morale per turn, but it will not be enough as the Goblin overseer himself may start running. Everytime there is a chain route, some will run off the map and be gone forever.

Strategy 1, Kite Shield + Fire Pot

This is the easiest strategy because it is least demanding on your bros’ stats or gear.

What you need

• A kite shield for every bro( including backliner and bannerman).
• Heaviest armor you can get for every bro.
• 1 to 2 fire pot purchased from southern city for each bro.

Why fire pot?

• Fire pot cost 5 ap and 15 fatigue to use.
• It can be thrown 3 tiles (if your vision allows, check your bro’s vision, big helmet, night time and goblin position can reduce your vision to 1, then you cant throw it without damaging yourslef)
• It cost 15-30 fire damage to every tile in a circle when first being thrown, then the fire will stay there for 2 turns. anyone end their turn in the fire will take another 15-30 damage. The fire will burn body armor first, then health if there is no armor.

How is fire pot useful?

• Goblin shaman will spam entangle on your bros, so you will quickly find your bro out of fatigue trying to break free, which mean each turn your bro can only attack 1 time with the 15 fatigue they always recovers every turn. You will quickly realize it is simply not possible to kill off 47 goblin if you only attack once per bro per turn. Because you only attack 12 times per turn, but they goblin will attack 47 x 2 or 3 times per turn.
• On top of that the Goblin shaman will start using Fly Swarm abilities after a few turn, further reducing the hit chance of several of your bros, so you miss your attack even more.
• But Fire Pot does not miss.
• Fire pot is AOE damage, with so many goblin surrounding you, it is very easy for a fire pot to hit at least 4 goblins per throw. over the course of 2 more turn you will do about 180 damage per fire pot, 15 damage per tile x 4 goblin on average x 3 times fire burns. All with just the cost of 5 ap and 15 fatigue.

The fight

When the fight starts:

• Everyone will go into battle with a kite shield, including backline bros.
• When fight starts either move backwards if there are more favorable terrain or simply stay in place and use shield wall for everyone on first turn.
• Once shaman start entangling you, just spam break free and keep formation.
• Turtle in place until all the melee goblins come to you.
• If a bro is in ranged to attack an goblin, do not waste fatigue and action point on breaking free, focus on doing damage.
• After turn 4 – 5, there should be a bunch of Goblin skirmisher bunched up in front of you.
• Then have your bros that are not in immediate danger swap to fire pots and start throwing. you should prioritize using fire pot as long as you can hit 3 or more goblin with it.
• From here it is matter of attrition. You just need to survive, let the fire do its work.
• Since fire pot is AOE, goblin will die in groups, 2 – 3 at the same time after a few turns, this is devastating to Goblin morale. Most of the enemies weren’t killed but simply routed off the field. after all the melee goblin got burnt to death.

Strategy 2, Night Vision Potion + Throwing Mastery

If your find your team have lots of really good rangers, at least 3 ranger with 85+ ranged skill and throwing mastery you can try this.

You can buy night vision potion in the southern cities.

Why throwing Mastery

• Heavy Javelin from barbarian + Throwing mastery + killing Frenzy allows you to one shot Goblins with Javelins. 3 ranger is 6 goblin dead per turn if you are lucky, or 3 goblin dead if you are not lucky.

Why not just fight during the day

• Fighting Goblin at night is mainly to have the Goblin shaman waste its turn granting night vision to the goblins instead of entangling you, and there will always be goblin that is not in a group thus never given night vision. So it is in your favor to fight at night to lower goblin’s hit chance, since there are so many of them.
• So we drink night vision potion it allows your ranger to fight effectively at night.

The Fight

• Give your rangers kite shield and lots of javelins.
• It maybe helpful to give your ranger slightly heavier armor, 200ish body armor. To help mitigate lucky ranged hits and focus fire.
• You do the same thing as the fire pot strategy by waiting for enemy to come to you, but instead of fire pot you rely on your ranger to do the killing and causing chain route.
• The difference here is you need to move your backliner to box in your rangers, so the enemy wolf rider cant get to them.
• You can combine this ranger strategy with the fire pot and use them together.

Downside of First 2 Strategy

The only down side of the first 2 strategy is it is not very satisfying win, because most of the goblin actually just ran away instead of being killed, especially all the Ambusher and the shamans. They most likely have killed your bro but they just routed before you can get to them,

Strategy 3, Heavy Armor 2 Handers

This is the hardest, also most stats demanding but also the most satisfying because you get to kill most of the goblins personally.

What you need

• All front line bro to have 300 body armor and 300 head armor.
• Majorities of your front line bro need 80 melee attack skills.
• Every one on the front line should take 2 handed weapon.
• Everyone on the backline should bring polearm, preferably swordlance.
• The bro with highest initative or acts first should bring a falcon.

Why 2 hander

• Goblin have high initiative and they have huge number advantage, which means the goblin will attack you 2 times before you get your turn (Turn starts, goblin attack you, you move forward end turn, next turn starts, goblin acts first and attack you, you attack back end turn).
• The goblin shaman drains your fatigue by entangling, so you can only attack once per turn per bro. You must ensure on average every 2 bro can kill 1 goblin per turn. Thus triggering the chain route.
• If you try to go in with shield and one hand weapon, you will notice you can only kill 1 maybe 2 goblin each turn, thus most of the goblin stays in confident morale and just whittle down your bro one by one while all your bro is out of fatigue, entangled and cant do anything.

The Fight

• When fight starts, your first bro release the faclon, so you can see the terrain and enemy placement.
• It should be about 30 goblin right in front of you on a hill top.
• The other 10ish goblin to the top of the map.
• Move all your bro forward as far as you can while keeping formation.
• End turn.
• Enemy get to act first due to high imitative.
• Your bro get entangled on turn 2, but have all your bro wait their turn, some of the goblins should come to you, this way you can use your action to attack instead of breaking free or moving.

How to Deal with Entangle

• If your bro is in ranged to attack, do not waste fatigue on breaking free, focus on attacking and doing damage.
• Have bros work in pair of 2 – 3, focus on breaking free bros that have enough fatigue left to move and attack. 1 – 2 Bro help breaking his buddy free, so his buddy will have full action point to move and attack.
• Pay attention to remaining fatigue and location of the bros, it is ok to stay entangled if breaking free renders you unable to move or attack.
• If you try to break yourself free and failed on first try, then do not try to break yourself free again this turn, try breaking free other bros or simply ending this bro’s turn to conserve fatigue. Because even if it succeed, you will be out of action point to move, next turn shaman will act before you and you will be entangled again.
• The key is to have your bros work together to ensure 3 – 4 of your bros gets to attack each turn. And with 2 handed weapon hopefully that would mean on average 3 – 4 kills per turn as well.
• The fight will start swing in your favor after 2 turns of combat if you can consistently get 3 – 4 kills each turn.

Why not space out your bro so Shaman cant entangle more than 1 bro

• This idea works well if there is only 1 or 2 shamans and less than 20 normal goblin, so you can have some time to maneuver your bros around , but with 4 shaman and 40+ normal goblin, they do too much damage for you to wait around. you need to start making kills as early as possible or you will notice your bro starts to die off 1 by 1 very quickly after 3 – 4 turns.

What About Dogs

I have tried to bring dogs for everyone, except the bro that is wearing the special goblin necklace.

But I notice dogs are helpful in keeping advantage once you have the advantage but dogs cant gain you the advantage. They die too quickly when the goblins are in confident morale,

Bring dogs, and release them once you start seeing chain routes. the dogs will go after fleeing enemies and keep them fleeing.