Poor, poor Brigands. They're the Recruits of Sturgia.
They are admittedly much more usable with the recent shield buff and mobility improvements.
They suffered I think the most from scaling back of throwable ammo.
At this moment, all skirmishers basically have the same Javelin loadouts options except Aserai Skirmishers, who obviously have the best thrown damage potential in the game.
Brigands:
Damages:
Default 3 x 38 = 104 x 16 = 1664
Improved 3 x 55 = 155 = 2480
Extra 6 x 38 = 228 = 3648
Default 3 x 38 + T. Spear 105 = 205 = 3280
This compares pretty exactly with the Wildling, until you consider Troop Counts:
Default 3 x 40 = 120 x 18 = 2160
Stronger Javs 3 x 51 = 153 x 18 = 2754
Extra 6 x 40 = 240 x 18= 4320
Default + T. Spear = 225 x 18 = 4050
Its like this Recruits as well, and Aserai Skirmishers are just superior ranged units to all others. The problem being of course, the Wildling's other equipment.
Wildling: 22 Armor, 83 Move, 68 Cut and otherwise solid Sword or 71 Cut Axe which is pretty quick.
Brigand: 10 Armor, 83 Move, Can take Imp Armor to get 19 armor or can take a pretty nice axe at 94 damage.
This would make the Brigand a slightly more melee damage outputting Skirmishers, except the skirmisher has 16 troops, the lowest troop count of any Skirmisher.
I assume the design intent looked at just the overall damage output when balancing these guys, something like:
Brigs:
94 * 16 = 1504
Wildlings:
71 * 18 = 1278
Skirms:
68 * 19 = 1292
Recruit:
65 * 20 = 1280
If you look at just this very basic output, it seems like Brigands are doing well in melee. This of course doesn't account for envelopment, hit stuns, blocking, handling, weapon length, etc, and I'm not sure there's any way to do that mathematically. This doesn't really pan out in the Brigs favor in game.
Brigands have the lowest ranged damage potential of all skirmishers, tied with Recruit for lowest default armor, the lowest troop count, and decent to good melee damage. This still doesn't stack up against the other Skirmishers however, Wildling is a better melee unit and better harassment unit, Skirmisher is a far better ranged unit and can beat them in melee with Kaskaras, and Brigands still stand no chance against Recruits due to troop count disparity.
The only thing the Brigand has going for it is the melee damage potential of their "Better Axe", but this is less important in Captain than in Skirmish, since their paper-thin armor means they often die before using it.
If the concept for them is going to remain a high-damage Melee skirmisher, it seems like they either need a Troop Count buff, or a buff to their armor values all around, as they don't live long enough to really take advantage of their pretty decent melee abilities.
As an alternative, if we want to shore up the concept of Brigands as a Anti-Lightt Infantry skirmisher, we could swap the boring Better Javelins perk with a stack 3 x Better Northern Throwing Axes (Same stats as Southern Throwing Axe).
This shortens their range a bit, but increases damage potential against lightly armored targets to 55 per hit, 165 damage per salvo, and hoping we'll get a chance to pick them up. This would give brigands something interesting to do instead of just being a slightly worse Wildling
.
If we want to get really crazy, and lean into their identity as Criminals and thieves, and give them a stack of throwing knives.