I'm writing this guide after completing the game twice, partly as an exercise to crystallize my own thoughts while starting a third run (and I learned a few things examining the mechanics in detail, as well as clearing up a couple of misconceptions on my part). My object is to provide a comprehensive overview of all the factors you need to consider in developing your soldiers over the course of the game. There are some pretty good guides for the game already, but none of them so far has put all the pieces together when it comes to leveling your legionaries. I especially recommended the following, and, though I might disagree with them on some points, I drew from them in constructing this guide: Combat Classes and Multi-Classing and Last Train Home - Weapons Guide; note especially the conclusion that for Machine Gunners and Medics, the Tier 2 weapons are probably more effective than the Tier 3. When planning on who to develop and how, if you don't mind some spoilers you might also look at this list of available soldiers: Meet the Legion. The game's wiki is incomplete, but it can also be a useful resource for the subjects it covers (in particular, detailed descriptions of combat role benefits by level, and of Traits).

Note that some of what I'm saying here might not apply for a speed run--see LTH Speedrunning and Train Upgrade Guide[gamefaqs.gamespot.com] for an excellent guide to that objective (and the author's analysis of train car upgrades is pretty useful for any playstyle).

BTW, I'm well aware than you can complete the game without this or any other guide--but I'm one of those people who can get obsessed with optimizing. :)

I'm going to discuss Attributes first, for two reasons. One, looking at Attributes will give us insight into the combat mechanics that will serve us well in the later sections. Unfortunately, because the mechanics aren't exposed directly to players (it makes me long for the Baldur's Gate 3 combat log), this discussion will necessarily be somewhat vague. Second, starting with Attributes rather than Roles will help prevent giving the impression that this is just yet another post about the relative merits of different classes.

Keep in mind that each Role, Combat or Train, has both a primary and a secondary Attribute. You get +1 on the primary at levels 2, 4, and 5, and a +1 on the secondary at 3 and 5, for a total for +3 for the primary and +2 for the secondary at level 5. Interestingly, for Train Roles primary and secondary Attributes have the same effect (1 percentage point per Attribute point) on Work Efficiency. Unlocking a new role requires meeting a minimum score of 4-6 in one or (usually) both Attributes, but a soldier who enters the game with a role won't necessarily meet those minimums: aside from the mid- to late game legionaries who start with promotions (see "Roles: The Basics" below), beginning characters have a 4 in all Attributes, unless modified by Traits.

Soldiers also get 1 freely assignable Attribute point when promoted to Lance Corporal (rank 2), Corporal (rank 3), Sergeant Major (rank 5), and Second Lieutenant (rank 7), for a total of 4 points; use these 4 points carefully, as they may be the only way to shore up a weak point (e.g., FIT to improve low hit points) or, especially, to open up an otherwise inaccessible role.

Do you want to max out an Attribute at 10 (or 11 with a positive Trait modifier)? That's 6 points you need to add to the starting score. In some cases, the equation is easy: a level 5 Rifleman gets 3 points of FIT (the role's primary Attributes), and can obtain another 3 from the easy-to-level Worker role on the train. Maxing out the secondary Attribute for your primary Combat Role can be more of a challenge. For example, a Rifleman benefits from high WILL for the Focus Skill, but a level 5 Rifleman gets 2 points from that role, and would need either level 5 in both of the Train Roles with WILL as a secondary (Engineer and Worker), or level 5 in one, level 3 in the other, and a final point from level 3 in Scout or the free promotion points. The moral is, getting the Attribute scores you want can be complicated, and may require careful planning, especially if you're trying to avoid wasting experience points when a role's other Attribute is already maxed or not really useful. Things get even trickier when you're worried about the trade-off between improving a character quickly and optimizing in the long run: after all, a build that shines only at the end of the game isn't terribly useful overall.

It's worth noting that using a freely assignable Attribute point from a promotion to open up a Train Role can be very cost effective: e.g., the 1 point you spend on Charisma to make a legionary eligible for Cook might be useless in itself for a non-Medic, but it gives you 3 points of DEX in the long run. Other times, if you need only 1 point in a particular Attribute, it might be worthwhile just to drop the free point into that Attribute so that you can save a valuable role point. For example, if I give Maxmilián Dráp, whose primary Combat Role is Scout, Grenadier as a secondary role, and work him up to level 3 in it, he'll have INT 6 (due to his Intelligent Trait), letting him unlock Doctor. If he levels Scout (DEX is primary) and Doctor (DEX is secondary) both up to 5, he'll get a DEX of 9. I could use a free point to increase CHAR and unlock Cook (the only other train role that increases DEX), but I don't need the full +3 to DEX from Cook, and the +2 from CHAR is entirely useless, so I just put his first free point in DEX--which also gives an immediate boost to his combat effectiveness, on top of saving the role point for a role that's more useful. Or I could eventually unlock Machine Gunner, get the 1 point of DEX that way, and spend the free point on something else entirely. Adding that first free point to FIT (and getting the extra point of DEX either with the second free point or with Machine Gunner) is also a good option, since Scouts have trouble maxing FIT (3 from Worker and probably 1 from Grenadier leaves them 2 short). As I mentioned above, the planning gets complicated.

Despite all my talk about efficient role choices, keep in mind that a character who starts at Private (rank 1) with 2 roles will be able to unlock both two Combat Roles (for a multiclass--though a few characters, like Martin Valášek, start with a Combat Role you might not want to develop) and all four Train Roles. Leveling all four Train Roles up to 5 will give total bonus for FIT +3, DEX + 5, INT +6, WILL +4, and CHAR +2. That's enough to max out DEX and INT pretty easily, as well as FIT for Grenadiers and Riflemen and WILL for Riflemen and Scouts. The trick therefore is not so much hitting the maximums in key Attributes, but making sure a soldier has the minimum Attributes to open all the roles in the first place, and--importantly--improving the Attributes quickly, so that you don't have to wait until the endgame for an effective fighter. Things are also trickier for legionaries who start with only one role, or those who join later and have access to fewer total roles (see "Roles: The Basics" below).

Primary for: Grenadier, Rifleman, Worker
Secondary for: Machine Gunner

Fitness affects hit points, melee damage, time to aim, Work Efficiency of Workers, range of grenades and smoke bombs, and the accuracy bonus granted by Recoil Control (Machine Gunner). Because it increases both hit points and damage per minute (DPM, by way of decreasing aim time), all roles benefit from FIT, so it's a good idea to get a few extra points through multiclassing soldiers whose primary roles don't include it (Scout and Medic). Increased grenade range is also hugely significant: in the most extreme case, there's a big difference between tossing a grenade under heavy machinegun fire, and tossing from just beyond the enemy's view range, which you can do with FIT of 9+.

Primary for: Machine Gunner, Scout, Cook
Secondary for: Doctor

Dexterity affects "aim" (probably means gun accuracy, aka Precision), reload time, Work Efficiency of Cooks and Doctors, and range of Distract and sleep flasks. Like FIT, Dexterity is important for everyone, as it increases DPM, through aim and reload time, which means that roles without it, especially Rifleman, will benefit from getting points through multiclassing (Grenadier and Medic also benefit, but they don't rely as much on gunfire for their utility).

Primary for: Medic, Doctor, Engineer
Secondary for: Grenadier

Intelligence affects Work Efficiency of Doctors and Engineers, speed of Heal, damage modifier from Dangerous Mind, and the bonus to cover from Foreteller (level 5 Machine Gunner Combat Expertise Trait). Intelligence isn't as universally useful as FIT or DEX, and Alfréd Kraus can effectively serve in a Scout role as an INT 3 blockhead\. However, ideally, by the mid- to late game almost every member of a mission squad should be running either Dangerous Mind or Heal. Intelligence is key to the damage modifier from Dangerous Mind, which can be used by any role if the character has Grenadier 2+ or Medic 3+ (and to be honest, in my most recent runs, I've bitten the bullet and used 2 promotion points to unlock Grenadier for Alfréd, but on any other Scout, I'd put at least one of those points in FIT, and he finished with a FIT of only 8). For Medics (or soldiers with a secondary Medic role), faster Heal is nothing to sneeze at: there are times when being able to heal a legionary before she gets shot at again can be a literal lifesaver, and even without that, getting a soldier back in the fight faster is always useful.

Primary for: none
Secondary for: Rifleman, Scout, Engineer, Worker

Willpower affects how long a downed character will stay alive before being Stabilized, Work Efficiency of Engineers and Workers, and the accuracy bonus granted by Focus. Except for high-level Riflemen (who'll want to use Focus), Willpower is very nearly a useless Attribute, though it's not a bad idea to find a way to get soldiers an extra point or two by the late game, to make it easier to revive them in time.

Primary for: none
Secondary for: Medic, Cook

Charisma affects the Work Efficiency of Cooks, and the defensive and offensive bonuses granted by Inspire Caution and Reassuring Presence, respectively. Charisma is even less useful than WILL for most soldiers. I personally do like to run a specialized Medic with Inspire Caution, but that's not a valuable enough Skill that it's worth going out of my way to increase Charisma on that soldier. (OTOH, it's not clear whether a higher CHAR increases the penalties for the two "aura" Skills, and not just the bonuses, though I'm assuming it only increases the bonuses, making the Skills better tradeoffs for Medics with higher Charisma.)

All legionaries begin with 1 or 2 roles; They gain new ones with promotions to Lance Corporal (rank 2), Sergeant (rank 4), Warrant Officer (rank 6), and Second Lieutenant (rank 7), making it possible for a soldier who starts with 2 roles to unlock 4 more for a total of 6. Interestingly, a soldier can begin with a role without meeting that role's minimum Attribute values.

Legionaries who join you in the mid- to late game start with promotions but still only 1 or 2 roles, meaning they can never unlock as many roles as starting characters--but some (though not all) of them get bonus Attribute points to make up for this. For example, Roman Kutálek, whom you pick up on the southern route after Penza, has FIT 5, DEX 6, and WILL 6; he's a level 3 Scout, which accounts for 1 point each in DEX and WILL, and he starts as a Lance Corporal (rank 2), which should give him 1 free point, but that leaves 2 points unaccounted for. The bonus points are useful in themselves and can help to unlock new roles, but in the long run they fall short of what the soldier would get by leveling up missing roles, which makes maxing out key Attributes trickier.

The most important difference between Combat Roles and Train Roles is where their experience points (XP) come from: a reasonably upgraded train with most of the available car types will have enough job slots to produce far more XP for Train Roles than the rather limited number of XP available from missions and POI's for Combat Roles. Hence, getting a Train Role to level 5 usually doesn't take nearly as long as doing the same with a Combat Role.

Combat and Train Roles also differ in their level progression curves, though this difference isn't as important as it might seem at first glance. Combat Roles follow the usual RPG pattern of easy leveling at the low end (2,500 XP each for levels 2 and 3) and much more difficult progression at the high end (10,000 XP each for levels 4 and 5). On the other hand, both mission and POI XP increase over the course of the game, so in practice, over the entire game, advancing characters in Combat Roles doesn't really get harder as they reach higher levels.

In contrast to Combat Roles, Train Roles' level progression is completely linear, at 5,000 XP per level, which would seem to make them easier to level up--but train jobs give the same XP throughout the game. In other words, it's not the flat progression curve that makes Train Roles easier to level, but, as mentioned above, the much greater abundance of train job XP. That being said, during the early game you won't have many train job slots, the big exception being Workers doing upgrades.

Despite the difference between Combat Role XP and Train Role XP in sources and quantities, both contribute to the total XP used to determine promotions in rank. Because XP contribute to promotions as well as role levels, even a character with level 5 in a given role gets some benefit from gaining XP, as long as she hasn't already reached Second Lieutenant.

I'm going to consider the merits of each Combat Role as both a primary role (the one you go into a mission with) and a secondary role (providing Attribute boosts and Skills usable by the primary role--which I refer to as "transferable Skills" below). Since the consideration of Combat Roles is complex, I'm going to start my description of each role with a discussion, then list the role's stats (Attributes, Skills, and multiclass builds).

In the lists of "key", "useful", and "less useful" Skills, I've omitted Stabilize, except for Medics. It's available to all characters, and it's especially useful at low levels, where you've got limited options. Even at higher levels, if you're not running multiple "full healers" (characters with both Stabilize and Heal), it's not a bad idea to sprinkle a few soldiers with Stabilize through the squad, just in case things go wrong and you need to keep someone alive long enough for the real healer to arrive. It also makes sense to put Stabilize on one character and Heal on another in the same fire team, so you have both Skills available without taking up two slots on a single soldier.

One other note when considering transferable Skills: the more soldiers you bring into a mission with a given Skill, the more ammo you get, and since the squad shares inventory, that means that one soldier can use most of the ammo everyone else is carrying (all except the first item carried by each character). For gun ammo, this isn't a big deal (I've never seen the squad run out), but for medical kits, grenades, and the like (I personally like land mines), this can be a game-changer, especially if you've done enough crafting that you can throw the things out like candy at a Mardi Gras parade. It's also an important consideration for the Moscow mission: every soldier you take with Grenade or Heal carries grenades or medkits that otherwise would have disappeared with the old train.

Grenadier is a bit of an odd case because both of its key skills, Grenade and Dangerous Mind, are transferable to any other combat role. Moreover, its "short rifles" have the lowest DPM in the game. For these reasons, you might never take a legionary into combat as a Grenadier save for the early missions where you have no choice: you just need to get to level 2 in Grenadier as a secondary role to get the key Skills, maybe level 3 to get the easy extra point of INT. In fact, Grenadier is probably the strongest secondary role for multiclassing, with Attribute bonuses and one Skill that all enhance DPM, and another Skill that lets a soldier one-shot multiple targets simultaenously, including heavy weapons, or put solid bites into vehicles (2 will take down an armored car, and 3 a light tank). What's not to like?

That being said, if what you want is a really good grenade-thrower, the +3 to FIT for a level 5 Grenadier is pretty nice. But that's only half the story, because--and here's the fun part--a level 5 Grenadier can go into a mission at level 1 in any other role, while keeping almost all of what makes the Grenadier useful in the first place: Grenade, Dangerous Mind, +3 FIT and +2 INT to improve those Skills, and even the Unshakeable Combat Expertise (which reduces the damage of explosions and eliminates their status effects). Thus, a level 1 Rifleman with a level 5 Grenadier secondary role is essentially a level 5 Grenadier with Bayonet Charge and access to the highly effective Tier 3 rifle, while a level 1 Machine Gunner with a level 5 Grenadier secondary role is essentially a Grenadier with a very lethal weapon and, with Unshakeable, protection against the explosions that Machine Gunners are so prone to getting caught in because of the time it takes to exit Focused Fire. Mind you, to create this build, you have to run the soldier as a Grenadier primary for a good part of the game, to level up the role in the first place. Leveling up the new primary roles can add Focus for the Rifleman and Controlled Burst or, later Recoil Control for the Machine Gunner, creating particularly potent damage dealers.

The only good reason to enter a mission with a Grenadier, other than to level him up, is to get access to land mines and smoke bombs. I do believe there's a role for land mines, but they're very situational: there are a few missions where they're extremely useful, and others where they aren't, depending mostly on whether or not the Reds have a vehicle that's not too difficult to get a mine in front of and easy to separate from the infantry (so that they don't trigger the mine first). Knowing the missions from previous play-throughs is helpful here (if a little cheaty to some of us). I haven't actually tried smoke bombs, but they strike me as a way to get out of disastrous situations I probably shouldn't have let happen in the first place, though I can think of at least one mission where a frontal assault is essentially unavoidable, and smoke bombs might be useful for screening my troops as they get into position, or while waiting for the end of the Scouts' Critical Shot cooldowns.

The biggest limitation to Grenadier, even as a secondary role, is the restricted supply of grenades in the early game, before you can start crafting them in the Workshop Car.

FIT (min. 4), INT (min. 5) (Yes, the secondary Attribute requirement is higher than the primary.)

Grenade, Dangerous Mind

Land Mine, Smoke Bomb

Extra Padding (keeps the Grenadier alive but doesn't help eliminate the enemies tearing up the rest of the squad, and the Grenadier is already one of your tankiest soldiers by virtue of having FIT as the primary Attribute)

Unshakeable (reduces damage from explosives and makes the soldier immune to Shaken and Stunned); this is actually more useful for Machine Gunners than Grenadiers, because of how long it takes to get moving from when Focused Fire is set up--and it might make a nice combo with Foreteller, possibly making it more beneficial for a Machine Gunner caught in the middle of an explosion ring to sit tight in cover rather than trying to run to the edge.

Medic allows Grenade/Dangerous Mind/Land Mine/Heal or Grenade/Dangerous Mind/Smoke Bomb/Heal, which are really the only two viable options that provide something you couldn't get from Grenadier as a secondary role (they compete with a pure-Grenadier Grenade/Dangerous Mind/Land Mine/Smoke Bomb). However, for leveling up Grenadier before switching to another role in the late game, Grenade/Dangerous Mind/Stabilize/Heal probably gives greater general utility, though it's definitely weaker than Medic with the same Skills, because of the difference in weapons.

Machine Gunner produces by far the most (non-explosive) damage of any role in the game; with Focused Fire, a Machine Gunner can cut down an entire attacking squad, and take on an armored car when protected by hard cover (though dealing with the explosive shells of a tank is a different matter). A Machine Gunner isn't as useful on offense as a Scout, mostly due to lack of stealth and the one-shot alpha of Critical Hit, but whenever you need to set up a defense (and this will happen at some point in most missions), the Machine Gunner is your guy. And if you add the Grenade Skill, the Machine Gunner can contribute on offense as well, especially since his typically high FIT translates into a long grenade range.

While the exact mechanics are opaque, Controlled Burst (increased accuracy, lowered burst count--hence lower sustained ROF) should increase DPM. Recoil Control (increasted accuracy based on FIT) likely has a bigger impact, meaning you should swap the latter out for the former once the soldier reaches level 4. Adding Dangerous Mind from Grenadier or Medic increases DPM even more, though a Machine Gunner already spits out so much damage that I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes.

I'm not a fan of Suppressive Fire (stuns everyone in an area, but empties an entire magazine), since your MG can kill so fast that it seems like a waste to use a whole magazine on disabling enemies when you could eliminate them instead, but I can see where it might be handy on offense (when Focused Fire isn't an option), letting your gunner neutralize enemies in hard cover long enough for his squadmates to charge in and off them with melee attacks, but I personally try to avoid the sort of frontal assaults where this would prove most useful. Sprint would be really, really useful for a Machine Gunner using Focused Fire caught in the middle of an impending explosion, but I don't think that makes it valuable enough to take up a precious Skill slot.

Machine Gunner is notable for increasing the two most important Attributes, DEX and FIT. That makes it a reasonable choice for a secondary role, but its only transferable Skill, Sprint, has little value for other roles.

DEX (min. 4), FIT (min. 5) (This is another instance where the secondary Attribute has a higher minimum than the primary.)

Focused Fire

Controlled Burst, Recoil Control

Sprint, Suppressive Fire

Sprint

Foreteller (cover effectiveness increased by INT); this isn't bad, since a Gunner set up with Focused Fire will pretty much always be in cover. I'm curious to try combining this with Unshakeable to see how well the soldier in question could tank explosions.

Grenadier level 2 enables a very deadly Focused Fire/Recoil Control/Grenade/Dangerous Mind (substituting Controlled Burst for Recoil Control at lower levels), while Medic allows a high-damage healer with Focused Fire/Recoil Control/Stabilize/Heal. Focused Fire/Recoil Control/Grenade/Heal and Focused Fire/Recoil Control/Dangerous Mind/Heal are also viable, substituting Controlled Burst or Dangerous Mind for Recoil Control at lower levels (it's hard to guess which has more of an impact on DPM, and it probably depends on how high your INT is). If you've already got enough grenade-tossers in the squad (and you really should by the late game), foregoing Grenade and combining Dangerous Mind, Recoil Control, and Controlled Burst gives you an extraordinarily high damage output.

As with Grenadier, both of the Medic's key Skills are usable by other Combat Roles: all Combat Roles already have access to Stabilize, and Heal is transferable. For that matter, while Dangerous Mind isn't a key Skill for Medics themselves, it's also transferable, making Medic 3 as a secondary role a possible alternative to Medic 1/Grenadier 2 for some multiclass builds, and while CHAR is nearly useless, the extra INT from a Medic secondary role makes Dangerous Mind more useful, whatever the source of that Skill. All of the other Combat Roles have viable multiclass builds that combine two primary-role Skills with the "full healer" combo of Stabilize and Heal, at the cost of some offensive output that would come with Dangerous Mind; Dangerous Mind/Heal and Grenade/Heal builds can also work.

For reasons that defy both logic and real-world facts, the pistols used by Medics have a higher DPM than the same-tier "short rifles" used by Grenadiers and (except at Tier 3) the rifles used by Riflemen, making Medic the preferred primary for a Medic/Grenadier multiclass unless the object is to level up Grenadier. (If things were more realistic, pistols would still do a lot of damage, but be less accurate and have a much shorter effective range than rifles and carbines.)

It's entirely reasonable to go into missions without a primary-role Medic, and there's even a Steam achievement for it. Moreover, the case for leveling up before switching to another primary role is weaker for Medic than for Grenadier: Medic gives more INT than Grenadier (+3 vs. +2), but has a relatively useless secondary Attribute, CHAR. On the other hand, I do find it useful to run a specialized Medic with Stabilize/Heal/Head Down/Inspire Caution. Head Down makes it viable to Stabilize or Heal in combat (as long as you're not the only target in the field, or doing something stupid like running into heavy MG fire), while Inspire Caution (increased defense and lowered attack speed for nearby allies) slows down the combat, giving you more time to reposition soldiers (something you're way better at then the AI you're fighting is) and wait out the cooldowns on your Scouts' Critical Shot.

For the same reason I find Inspire Caution useful, I'm not wild about Reassuring Presence (lowered defense and increased accuracy for nearby allies). Sleep Flask is intriguing, but why not multiclass and throw a grenade instead (unless a high DEX and low FIT give you better range on the flask)? Dangerous Mind is a great transferable Skill for soldiers using Medic as a secondary role, but makes little sense on a defensive specialist with a mediocre weapon. (But I assume Dangerous Mind works with grenades as well as guns, so a multiclass Stabilize/Heal/Grenade/DM build is reasonable.)

INT (min. 5), CHAR (min. 4)

Stabilize, Heal

Head Down, Dangerous Mind, Inspire Caution

Reassuring Presence, Sleep Flask

Heal, Head Down, Dangerous Mind

Lifesaver (Stabilize heals up to 30% of hit points, and Heal has a 50/50 chance of not burning a medkit); the first effect here is the most important, as giving a downed soldier with 220 hit points 66 with Stabilize makes it possible for her to suck up 2 or 3 bullets without being killed, not to mention speeding up the Heal that follows the Stabilize; by contrast, saving medkits isn't terribly important once you can craft them, unless you're only running 1 or 2 soldiers with Heal (as it's hard to burn more than 15 medkits in a mission).

Grenadier enables Stabilize/Heal/Grenade/Dangerous Mind, and Stabilize/Heal/Head Down/Grenade gives you a good healer who packs a little extra offense in a pinch.

The poor Rifleman gets a bad rap, and not without reason. Its melee focus (other than the one-shot Bayonet Charge) is not that useful, and its Tier 1 and Tier 2 rifles beat only the "short rifles" carried by the Grenadier. However, there are a few factors that (arguably) save the role from being completely useless. First of all, in the early game, before you get level 3 Scouts, you really do need the Bayonet Charge for taking out enemies in hard cover, because watching a guy in hard cover wear down your squad for 10 seconds before they can silence him is no fun at all. Sadly, once you do have level 3 Scouts, Bayonet Charge looks pretty weak, as it takes much longer than Critical Shot and also makes the Rifleman in question a prime target during the charge (never, ever, ever charge a heavy machinegun position); on the other hand, it's actually kind of useful that you're usually not tempted to burn Bayonet Charge at the beginning of combat like you can Critical Shot, meaning it's always available when you need it to dig out that entrenched enemy.

Second, with the Tier 3 M1916 Automatic Rifle, the Rifleman achieves a sustained DPM comparable to (if a little short of) the Scout's Tier 3 Pattern 14 Sniper Rifle. With Focus (greater hit probabilty in cover, based on Willpower) the Rifleman probably passes the Scout in DPM with Tier 3 weapons, though a lot depends on Willpower (aim time), which favors Riflemen, and Dexterity (aim and reload time), which favors Scouts. Add Dangerous Mind and you've got a character with impressive damage output that's a lot more flexible than the Machine Gunner.

Third...you only have so many high-tier Scout weapons, especially the Pattern 14; the most of the latter I've seen available, taking the northern route on the last leg, is 7. In sum, you need the Rifleman early on, and there's a decent argument for taking one in the late game, if you build him right, but you have to accept that he's (relatively) dead weight in the mid-game.

Fitness probably wasn't the best choice as the primary stat for Riflemen: it does enhance DPM through improved aim time, and it's generally useful as it increases hit points and increases grenade range. However, Riflemen seem to have been intended as a melee class (which would benefit from FIT's improved melee damage), and in practice the game doesn't see much melee combat, probably because even a successful melee takes some hit points away from the winner, assuming you get into melee range safely in the first place. The secondary Attribute, Willpower, works with Focus, so at least Riflemen get more out of it than Scouts do...but replacing either Attribute with DEX would have made the role more effective.

The fact that the secondary Attribute is nearly useless for every other Combat Role makes Rifleman (along with Scout) a very poor choice for a secondary role: aside from FIT, the only thing it brings to the table are two transferable Skills that probably aren't useful enough to take up valuable slots for a high-level legionary. Rifleman can be a way to pick up an easy point in FIT, though you'd want to choose Grenadier first (unless that's your primary, in which case Rifleman is your only Combat Role option for increasing FIT).

FIT (min. 4), WILL

Bayonet Charge, Focus

Quick Feet--but you probably don't have a slot for this after a certain point in the game.

Silent Steps (seems good in theory, until you realize that unlike the Scout Combat Expertise Ghost, it only works when you're not moving silently, and a soldier not moving silently will shoot anything in range, negating the benefit of being quiet), Low Profile (like the Grenadier's Extra Padding, it keeps the Rifleman alive but doesn't help eliminate the enemies tearing up the rest of the squad, and the Rifleman is already one of your tankiest soldiers by virtue of having FIT as the primary Attribute)

Quick Feet (Medic and Scout only, and Scout already gets it at level 2), Silent Steps

Lethal (improves melee damage and melee protection); this is easily the weakest Combat Expertise, given the low importance of melee combat

Grenadier at level 2 allows a nice Bayonent Charge/Focus/Dangerous Mind/Grenade build; Medic is also an option, but a full medic takes up two slots (for Stabilize and Heal), making the BC/Focus/DM build not viable.

Yes, at level 3+, the Scout is the ubercclass. At level 3, this class gains a one-shot alpha strike (Critical Shot) and the ability to stop dead in broad daylight without being seen after a short delay (Camouflage), which is extremely useful for probing enemy defenses without alerting anyone. At level 5, Scouts can do all that while moving at full speed, making Ghost easily the most valuable of the level 5 Combat Expertise Traits. Yes, I'll fill the first 6 slots in a 10-person squad with Scouts, and some people use more. However...before level 3, it's a completely different class, relying mostly on Recon for utility, which means it's hard to lean heavily on Scouts in the early game. (By contrast, the other combat roles all get at least one key Skill at level 1.)

Aside from delayed development, the biggest downside of Scout is its secondary Attribute, because Willpower does absolutely nothing for either offensive effectiveness or any of the Scout Skills.

Like Rifleman, Scout makes a very poor choice for a secondary role, for exactly the same reasons: the same poor secondary Attribute and dubiously useful transferable Skills. It can nonetheless be an easy way to pick up a point of DEX, though you'd want to choose Machine Gunner first (unless that's your primary, in which case Scout is your only Combat Role option for increasing DEX).

DEX (min. 5), WILL (min. 4)

Critical Shot, Camouflage

Recon (late game, I'll put it on one or two Scouts, especially if they don't have access to Dangerous Mind or Heal), Distract, Death Zone (I find the narrow cone problematic except when it's possible to channel the enemy into a restricted kill zone for an ambush), Quick Feet (at low levels)

Distract, Quick Feet (Medic only--Rifleman gets it at level 1)

Ghost (silent movement at full speed, both in an out of silent mode); this is far more valuable than any other Combat Expertise.

Grenadier for Grenade, and Dangerous Mind at level 2 (Critical Shot/Camouflage/Grenade/Dangerous Mind is a good combo), Medic for a healer who can keep up with level 5 Scouts and get to them quickly if they're downed (Critical Shot/Camouflage/Stabilize/Heal--I always run at least 1 of these, 2 once I can field 6 Scouts); I've even run Critical Shot/Camouflage/Grenade/Heal on occasion, though I suspect Dangerous Mind (higher damage based on Int) is more useful on the whole than Heal here, provided you can get to Grenadier level 2. Another option is to trade grenades or healing power for scouting utility with Critical Shot/Camouflage/Recon/Dangerous Mind (works with either Grenadier level 2 or Medic level 3)--as I mentioned above, you don't need Recon on every Scout, but having it on one or two of them is nice. Best yet is a Scout with Medic 3/Grenadier 1 or Grenadier 2/Medic 1, which give her the ability to run any of the above configurations as needed in a particular mission.

The most important idea to grasp about train roles is that, in most cases, the quality of a character's performance on the train (the "Work Efficiency" percentage) really doesn't matter. Why? Because Work Efficiency determines how long it takes to get things done, and doing things quickly is rarely important: unless your legionaries are about to starve, it really doesn't matter if the person cooking soup is working at 87% or 129% (in the end, you'll make far more soup than you actually need), and a train upgrade that would take too long can usually be delayed until the next POI stop or blockade. In the artillery car, moreover, Work Efficiency isn't even an issue: any warm body with at least one level in Worker performs equally in these slots.

The upshot of this is that you should think of train roles primarily as a means of padding Attributes to enhance Combat Roles, especially since it's a lot easier to reach level 5 in a Train Role than in a Combat Role, making a Train Role the better bet if you don't need specific transferable skills. That also means that once a soldier hits level 5 in a Train Role, you swap her out for someone else, and you're never going to use her in that role again unless there's no one else available, or you need something done very quickly. That being said, there may be occasions where you're tempted to give a soldier one Train Role rather than another (or at least change the order in which she gets two beneficial roles) because you desperately need more people for a particular job slot--which also means more opportunities for the soldier in question to work rather than sitting around waiting for someone else to level up first.

What are the exceptions to the general rule that you don't need to worry about Work Efficiency? Well, first of all, at the beginning of the game you want to level two Engineers for driving the locomative and two Workers for stoking it to 5 as quickly as possible (ideally, that means putting the soldiers in question in these slots fulltime, plus letting the workers do car upgrades while the train is parked). These particular train slots are critical to the locomotive's maximum speed in the case of the Engineers (nice to have) and fuel consumption in the case of the Workers (close to an absolute necessity in the early game, though you can use these slots for training later on, when you have plenty of fuel). Interestingly, for the locomotive roles none of the usual modifiers to Work Efficiency from Attributes and Traits apply--only the role level matters. That means you can freely dump your most useless clods into these jobs (I'm looking at you, Josef Mejzlík), though you do need to watch out for soldiers with Alcoholic (unless you want the see the "Drunk Driver" event) or Careless (increases the chance of work accidents).

The one other job in which I often try to use at least some legionaries with high Work Efficiency is healing in the Hospital Car: getting your troops back quickly can be very beneficial, but highly competent Doctors especially shine if you take the northern route in Chapters 8 and 9, where nightly (and sometimes daily) -5 temperatures will sicken 8-10 soldiers a day, and once the temperature goes up to -4 or higher (they won't get better before then, though I think goulash still works, eliminating the Health loss from Ill), you want to get them all well before it goes down again, especially since the longer they stay sick, the better the chance of getting Seriously Ill. On occasion, you might also want fast Workers, to make a critical upgrade quickly in order to avoid a Red attack as the threat level increases.

A corollary of looking at Train Roles as Attribute boosters is that, unless you're doing a speed run (or if you're willing to run fewer than 4 infantry cars and leave legionaries behind), you really want to use the Towing Bull so that you have all four of the specialist cars (Artillery, Hospital, Kitchen, and Workshop) and their unique job slots. It should also go without saying that you want to buy the specialist cars as soon as possible, so that you have more time for training. It's entirely possible to buy one car at Penza after getting another for free (by selling guns you don't really need, and a little fuel--especially if you sell as much as possible for the better prices at Villages), though doing so may make it hard to get the 4th infantry car you'll need to hold all 38 legionaries you can pick up through Chapter 3 if you take the northern route after Penza.

For Train Roles, I start each description with the role's Attributes, because they're pretty much all that matters about a role for purposes of character development.

Attributes: DEX (min. 5), CHAR (min. 5)

Because all Combat Roles benefit from Dexterity, Cook is a solid Train Role, despite the near uselessness of its secondary Attribute, Charisma, and starting with Cook gives a soldier an easy path to the extra point of DEX needed to unlock Scout. The high value of DEX makes taking the Kitchen Car as your free choice after Penza a reasonable decision, especially since doing so solves your food supply problem (and both Kitchen and Workshop provide potential combat buffs); if you take the southern route at this point, you also benefit from being able to make immediate use of the very capable Božena Riedlová, who literally can't do a thing without either a Kitchen or Hospital Car. For a Medic primary running Inspire Caution or Reassuring Presence, Cook is a near necessity, since it's the only source of CHAR other than Medic itself, and even having both roles at level 5 still leaves a soldier 2 short of max.

Attributes: INT (min. 6), DEX

Doctor is arguably the most desirable Train Role, as it increases two useful Attributes, improving accuracy, decreasing reload time, and enhancing both Dangerous Mind and Heal. Unfortunately, it's also the most difficult role to unlock because of the Intelligence minimum of 6. A soldier could take Engineer (min. INT 5) first in order to increase Intelligence enough to unlock Doctor, but Engineer and Doctor at level 5 each, combined with Grenadier even at level 3, gives a total of 7 points, which is more than a character needs, and comes with a +2 to Will he may not need at all. It might make more sense just to use a promotion point here, combined with the +1 INT from Grenadier level 3--but there are only so many POI's in the game, and you probably can't get everyone you'd prefer to Grenadier level 3, let alone do so quickly enough to gain access to Doctor before late in the game.

Aside from the high minimum, Doctor has two significant drawbacks. First, most players won't buy the Medical Car until the mid-game, delaying any benefits from selecting this role early on. Second, the Medical Car offers only one crafting station (with day and night slots), vs. up to four each for the Kitchen and Workshop cars. There are also up to three healing stations (for up to six Doctors), but legionaries can't gain XP that way without Sick or injured patients.

Attributes: INT (min. 5), WILL (min. 4)

Engineer probably isn't quite as useful as Cook for most soldiers, because DEX is a little more valuable than INT. However, the WILL bonus makes it an excellent choice for Rilfemen (with Focus), and having Rifleman, Engineer, and Worker all at level 5 gives exactly +6 points. And even when the Attribute bonuses aren't optimal, you're going to need a certain number of Engineers on the train, especially if you decide to take the Workshop as your free car choice after Penza.

Attributes: FIT (min. 4), WILL

Every soldier benefits from FIT, Worker is easy to get, and there are ample opportunities to use it for upgrading cars and manning the Artillery Car (and the latter doesn't even burn resources). This role is especially a no-brainer for Rifleman, who can make good use of the WILL as well as the FIT.

Combat Role XP are precious: even XP from POI are much scarcer than Train Role XP, and you shouldn't waste them on any soldier you won't be taking into combat.

There's not a strong downside to taking a full squad of 10 into any mission, regardless of the recommended squad size, as long the extra legionaries are characters you need to develop. You get the same total number of XP either way, the only difference being that if you run smaller squads, you develop soldiers more quickly, but then end up swapping them out for more inexperienced soldiers in later missions. Once you get to the late game, and some of your legionaries are entering missions at level 5, it unquestionably benefits you to pad out the squad to a full 10, since that means fewer XP distributed to characters who can't use it (though some of the level 5 soldiers will still be able to use it on promotions).

As mentioned in the "Roles: The Basics" section, the scaling of mission and POI XP over the course of the game makes it as easy to reach high levels in Combat Roles in the late game as it was to reach low levels in the early game. Nonetheless, at any given point in time it's easier to get a soldier to level 2 or level 3 than to level 4 or level 5. You'll find this especially noticeable using POI's for advancement, because they provide a lot fewer XP than combat missions. Thus, in most cases, you'll want to use POI's mostly to reach level 2 or level 3 (enough to pick up all the key Skills for a primary role or all the transferable Skills for a secondary), and then use missions for further advancement (bar the occasional POI run to push a nearly-there soldier over the line to the next level, especially Scout 3), especially since you naturally want to use your most experienced soldiers in combat. POI's will thus be your main method for leveling secondary Combat Roles.

That being said, the huge difference in XP between missions and POI's means that you can drop a low-level legionary or two into a late-game mission squad as tag-alongs for very rapid progression through the lower levels, and this is workable for secondary as well as primary roles, since you're not relying on these soldiers to ensure mission success.

While POI's give XP, they're also critical for resources: they're the primary source of food (until you have the Kitchen Car), herbs, and wood, and Abandoned Villages produce a reasonable amount of cloth. You'll need these resources until the late game, or more precisely, the point at which you've completed all necessary car upgrades and produced enough food, consumables, and medkits that you no longer need more herbs and wood. (But feel free to make useless upgrades whenever you're stopped and cook unneeded dishes to skill up your Train Roles!) Because POI's give needed resources as well as XP, make sure you always send out a team with the right Traits, even if you have to send someone who's Tired on the run (just try to avoid Exhausted--see "Stamina, Health, and Illness" below). A corollary of that rule is that the pool of soldiers you develop for combat needs to include at least two or three characters with each of the POI traits, so that you don't waste any POI XP.

Remember that Villages (the off-track locations where you can buy and sell) don't give XP, so aside from one character with Avaricious, you can assign anyone free to visit these, including people you'd never use in combat. Of the two Avaricious soldiers, I try to use Alfréd Kraus for these runs, because Antonín Kůra is useful elsewhere for the valuable Herbalist Trait, while Alfréd's Jinx Trait doesn't come into play when visiting this type of POI.

Ideally, unless you're aiming for the under-20-days Steam achievement, you need to hit every non-Village POI before Chapter 8 in order to maximize your XP gain. The major downside of this is greater food consumption per kilometer of track--another reason to take the Kitchen Car as your free choice--but the train isn't using fuel while it sits there, until it gets cold late in the game and you have to turn on the stoves, at which point you should have plenty of coal to burn. Another consideration is the threat meter, but you can start and stop the train for short bursts to mitigate that problem.

I'm not sure what algorithms determine POI results, but once you hit Chapter 8, every Abandoned Village is in ruins, every Lake is empty, and every Village is a massacre site; Timberlands and Hunting Grounds still work, though it may be the case the latter are producing just hares at this point, rather than elks (I'm not sure on this one). However, all non-Village POI types still give XP, and some of them still produce resources.

Lakes don't yield fish, making the Hunter Trait superfluous, but they often produce herbs (with an Herbalist--not sure if Survivalist still helps), but since you'll have long had the Kitchen Car by this point, getting XP is the only reason to visit POI's anyway. In my last run, I had a nasty accident at a late-game Lake (in Chapter 7, I think) that left Vera Moretti Scarred, so it's possible that accidents get more likely or least more serious in the late game. Ruined Abandoned Villages produce nothing of value, and since they never produce anything, it doesn't really matter who you send. Note though that i you haven't triggered the tuberculosis event at an Abandoned Village yet, it will eventually show up if you keep visiting them, giving you 8,000 gold (IIRC) in addition to a Seriously Ill soldier (who will not infect anyone else, and who will be be completely cured in under 24 hours in a fully upgraded Hospital Car with multiple Doctors looking after him, which sounds loopy but is no more unrealistic than some of the combat mechanics, let alone the enemy AI).

Massacred Villages cause a serious drop in Morale for two of the soldiers you send on the run, so they should be avoided at this point.

Highly trained soldiers do you no good if they can't go on missions, and soldiers who are Exhausted or Injured can't be assigned to squads (or deployed if already in squads), while those who are Tired or Ill suffer Attribute penalties. The upshot is that you're going to need a few backups, because stuff happens--especially when your legionaries visit POI's, or work on the train, both of which burn Stamina and run the risk of injuries (though both costs are more significant for POI's). As the game goes on, POI stamina costs increase, making the problem worse in some respects (though you've got better Infantry Cars and a Hospital Car at this point, and probably enough resources that you don't have to hit every POI just to keep movng towards Vladivostok). Missions that are spaced too closely together can also pose problems, since they burn even more stamina and entail much higher risks of injuries than POI's do.

In theory, you could save your most experienced soldiers for missions, and send characters you'll never use in combat to POI's, so that the first-line troops are always fresh and ready to go. You'd lose out on POI XP, but you wouldn't have to spread mission XP as thinly. In practice, though, unless you want to make a habit of sending soldiers into missions with their secondary roles active (hence losing many of the benefits of their experience), you're probably going to have to use POI's to farm XP, both for secondary roles and for legionaries developing new primary roles (in particular, because you probably want more Scouts than the game gives you).

Sometimes, the soldiers you'd like to send into a mission will be Tired. They can certainly tough it out in a mission at the expense of a minor penalty (-1 to all Attributes). The bigger problem is that when the Stamina cost plus travel cost for a mission is at least as high as a character's current Stamina, that soldier is going to be Exhausted after the mission, and unavailable for deployment...and Exhausted only goes away when a character has rested long enough to reach max Stamina.

Careful Stamina management--paying attention to Stamina costs, keeping an eye on the horizon at the next mission, and, of course, making sure your train cars are properly upgraded--can mitigate these problems to some extent, but it's still a good idea to have backups, perhaps 15 or 16 actively developed soldiers. And in the early to mid-game, when both resources and personnel are in short supply, it may be perfectly reasonable to send a soldier you don't want to develop on a run for critical resources, or, conversely, to send a squad to a POI with a key skill missing. You may even need to develop 20+ soldiers if you're going for the 2-day Steam achievement, because moving fast leaves your legionaries less time to rest, and late-game missions have high Stamina costs that will regularly leave nearly a whole squad Exhausted.

On a fully developed soldier, the effect of a +/-1 modifer is marginal. What's more important is how hard or easy these Traits make it to unlock roles: Intelligent Maxmilián Dráp can unlock Grenadier or Medic as soon as he gets a promotion to Lance Corporal (rank 2), with a free Attribute point left over, while Slow-witted Alfréd Kraus needs the points he got at both Lance Corporal and Corporal (rank 3) to reach the INT 5 that Dráp started with, burning 2 of his 4 total promotion points, and tempting you between the two promotions with that temporarily unused role point. This is not to say that you shouldn't develop a legionary with a negative Attribute modifier, but it's only worthwhile on someone with other, more useful traits, like Kraus's Burglar or Magdalena Zámecká's Charismatic and Housekeeper, the latter of which is critical and extremely rare, especially on the southern route after Penza.

One of these Traits, Charismatic, deserves a special mention because it's needed to interact with NPC's in a handful of missions, giving you a few resources you wouldn't get otherwise.

The Traits that give bonuses for POI exploration are pretty self-explanatory. Herbalist deserves special mention, because it's not listed on Abandoned Village and Hunting Grounds POI's, but it can absolutely produce herbs for both of those, if not (I think) as often as it works for Forests and Lakes.

Burglar is unique because it allows you to find otherwise hidden caches (mostly gold) in a handful of missions, which makes it a good idea to always carry at least one Burglar into missions, though the amounts involved aren't large enough that I'd characterize the need as critical.

Keep in mind that some POI Traits are rare, hence more valuable than others: the obvious one here is Housekeeper, which you have on exactly one soldier (Magdalena Zámecká) for most of the game if you take the southern route after Penza.

For reasons that escape me, and possibly involve poor translation from Czech to English, Martin Valášek's Dignified Trait can prevent accidents at Timberland POI's; Diligent has the same effect (even though its description only mentions a bonus to Train Role Work Effficiency). Having a character injured isn't the end of the world, so I wouldn't Exhaust Martin or a Diligent soldier (or put him in a position where the next mission would Exhaust him) just to avoid that possibility, but you want to bring one of these Legionaries along to these POI's whenever it's practical to. Of course, if you have the Hospital Car, soldiers heal quickly, and there you might actually benefit from injured legionaries for your Doctors to practice their skills on.

These Traits sound similar, but aren't. Careless increases the chance of injury when working on the train (I'm not sure, but I think the only other way a soldier can be at risk for injury is if he's Tired, or maybe Ill), though this can be mitigated with the Security Precautions car upgrade. Chaotic, by contrast, lowers Work Efficiency by 15 percentage points. In addition, Careless legionaries will sometimes suffer a Morale penalty for stopping to clear a blockade (like Reckless characters), while Chaotic ones have a chance of losing an axe at a Timberlands POI, which reduces the amount of wood found there, which generally keeps me from sending Alžběta Vybíralová on those trips. I have seen a couple of people suggeset that Careless soldiers suffer the same problem at Timberlands, but I don't think I've seen it personally, and it's possible that they confused the similar-sounding traits, especially since one character, Anna Davidová, has both.

When a legionary joins your unit is absolutely critical: late joiners have higher ranks than starting soldiers, and the Attribute points that come with them, but they lack all the roles that would have been unlocked by those promotions, and the promotion Attribute points are pre-allocated, further reducing your flexibility in developing these characters. For example, Dorota Vlčková, the last soldier to join you, looks pretty good at first glance: she's already a level 5 Scout, she has Eagle-eyed (giving her a longer view range), and her DEX (buffed by Dexterous) is at the absolute max of 11.

However, her second role, Rifleman level 1, is pretty much useless (except as a way to give her a quick point of FIT by visiting POI's), and because she starts at Sergeant Major, she can only unlock two more roles. She does get 4 bonus Attribute points, but, of her 7 "extra" points (3 from promotions, 4 bonus), 3 go to DEX, 1 goes to FIT, and the remaining 3 go to more or less useless Attributes: WILL (2) and CHAR (1). Her DEX is great, but her FIT, at 5, reduces her DPM, and because her INT is 4, she can't unlock Grenadier or Medic (having one of these is a must for a Scout, IMHO), or for that matter Engineer, until she gets her final promotion, to Second Lieutenant, when she finally gets the one and only promotion point you can freely allocate (and by which point it might be too late in the game to develop her). Taking one of those two roles will also limit her to a single Train Role (which can only be Worker if you take it immediately), which makes it hard for her to advance while the train is moving. You also have to choose between buffing FIT (Worker) and buffing INT (Engineer), with the neglected Attribute limited to a +1 or maybe +2 bonus from a secondary Combat Role (Rifleman for FIT, Grenadier or Medic for INT), plus one promotion or bonus point (the pre-allocated point for FIT, the last promotion point for INT), for a total of 6 or 7. If you choose to favor INT, getting her last two promotions quickly enough to matter will likely require sending a Scout without Grenadier or Medic on multiple missions, and you won't be able to unlock Engineer and its INT buff until very late. In sum, Dorota is useful, and you can send her into the field, but she's not as capable as the Scouts you've developed since the early game.

By contrast, Alžběta Vybíralová has Kind-hearted, which reduces her accuracy (by some unknown amount), but you get her on the second mission, giving her plenty of time to develop, and she starts as a Medic. Her first promotion makes it possible to unlock Scout (by putting the free point in DEX), making her a viable Scout/Medic from the get-go, while her starting Train Role, Doctor, works great for both of her Combat Roles. By the time Dorota shows up, Alžběta can easily have a FIT of 8 or 9 (+2 or +3 from Worker, and 2 promotion points), making up for the DPM hit from Kind-hearted (probably) and making her the far less squishy of the two alternatives. In my third run, Alžběta had FIT 9, DEX 9, and INT 7 when I picked up Dorota, with 3 Train roles unlocked, promising to keep her well ahead of Dorota overall. And she had both Medic 3 and Grenadier 1, meaning I could run her with either Stabilize/Heal or Grenade/Dangerous Mind (from Medic 3), depending on whoever else was available.

Well, that's 10,000 words on a game that's already been out for a year and a half. I didn't think it would turn out this long, but, as I said at the beginning, I wanted to get everything in one place. Nonetheless, if I've missed something or gotten something wrong (there were a few things I couldn't look up without having a save from a certain point in the game), please let me know and I'll fix it.