In Battle Brothers, you will lead a group of mercenaries across the lands as they fight monsters, take contracts and win glory in the arenas of the south. From time to time, you may even lose brothers due to a contract gone wrong or bad strategy. Luckily, you aren’t limited to the brothers that you start with. You are able to increase the size of your party in Battle Brothers.
Whether you are looking to increase the amount of brothers you have on your roster or increase the total amount of brothers you can have at one time, this will be the guide for you. Starting with simply recruiting more brothers, we will also show you how to bring more than 14 brothers to each battle and increase your maximum party size to 25.
How to Add More Brothers to Your Roster in Battle Brothers
Battle Brothers is a difficult sandbox game where your men will be fighting for their lives. As it were, you won’t always win every battle. From time to time you will need may find yourself in need of replacement men. Luckily, you are able to recruit new brothers to your crew.
In order to hire more brothers, you will need to enter any of the settlements across the world. Once you are in the game, left-click on any of the villages in the map in order to travel there. Wait until your party makes its way there (Avoiding enemies along the way), and left-click to enter the town. Once in any town or village, you can find new recruits by selecting the bottom image at the town known as the Hire button. Depending on how many different recruits are availalbe at the town, this group of men will be large or small.
Now that you have selected this, you will find a bunch of new recuits in a list. This varies depending on the town and what world events are happening a the moment. Fisherman characters can only be found near towns by the water. You will find some of the strongeest (and most expensive) recruits in the larger, richer cities. Select hire and they will join your company!
Increase Your Maximum Party Size and Bring More Brothers to Battle!
Are you running through the game wishing you could take just a few more brothers to battle? Need to bolster up your team and bring some variety? In a standard Battle Brothers game you are limited to just 20 brothers in total. Of these 20 brothers only 12 of them can be taken into battle at any given time. This can make life difficult if you have a certain strategy in mind, or have built brothers in the wrong direction and don’t have enough shield-men. Luckily there is a way you can get more men on your side, unfortunately that will mean starting a new game.
The amount of brothers you can have in your company depends solely on your company origin. When you start a new game in Battle Brothers, you have to choose an origin for your mercenary company. This will decide many starting factors including the type of brothers you will have, relations to certain factions and also physical location where your company will spawn.
In order to get the most brothers possible in your company, you will have to choose the Peasant Militia or the Manhunters start. In the Peasant Militia scenario you will be given a starting roster of 12 peasants and be able to take up 16 men into battle at once, (4 more than the other origins). You will also be able to have a total of 25 men in your roster as well, meaning you will have 9 benchwarmers.
Manhunters vs Peasant Militia
By choosing the Manhunters start, you will also be able to take 16 men into battle at any given time. That being said, it is probably easier to pick the Peasant Militia as if you have less indebted than non-indebted your men will quickly become dissatisfied. Peasant Militia is not all great however. Picking this origin will mean you won’t be able to hire any brothers from a ‘noble’ backgrund. This means you will mostly be hiring butchers, farmers and brawlers for your team.
In an RP sense, I actually always love to have peasant militia playthroughs. Having the extra manpower in each fight can drastically help you in the early game.