Battle Brothers

• When negotiating a contract, the number of skulls at the top of the window shows the difficulty of the contract. Pay rises based on how difficult it is, but it can be smart to stick to 1-skull contracts if you're having difficulty progressing.

• Caravan escort contracts are a death-trap if they're going anywhere but a neighboring city. You can get several fights in one journey or multiple groups of enemies attacking you at once, if you're unlucky.

• When you're hiring people, backgrounds determine their base stats, not how much they increase per level.

• The amount a stat can increase per level is based on talents, the little stars next to a stat. They're completely random and separate from a character's background.

• When you hire a character you're also paying for the equipment they have. Expensive backgrounds have better base stats but be careful not to spend a lot of money on equipment you wouldn't otherwise buy, when recruiting.

• It's often better to have fewer, better armed soldiers than a large number of poorly armed ones.

• Armor always takes precedent over weapons. Enemies strike fast and they strike hard, and being lightly armored is a death sentence when facing anyone but the weakest enemies. You can get some decent armor for relatively cheap.

• One handed spears give bonus to hit chance so start the guys with low accuracy out on spear/shield.

• It's possible to bring extra replacement shields with you for when your pawns' shields break, which they often do. This does reduce their maximum stamina a little unless you have a specific perk, however.

• Goblins and orcs can be extremely dangerous. You can take on orc young without strong equipment, but other orcs and goblins are a nightmare without high level mercs using good equipment.

• Specialized mercenaries are best, so decide their role early based on their stats and talents and build around that.

• You want a character with sky-high resolve and decent stamina to be your bannerman. The merc holding the banner spreads a percentage of their resolve to your other bros, and can use the Rally the Troops perk to raise the morale of everybody around them.

• Shieldwall and Spearwall are great skills but keep in mind they cost a lot of stamina, it's better to save your stamina than use stamina on abilities inefficiently.