Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

> I'd strongly hesitate to send a Thug with enough bodyguards to trip the 75% hp retreat, unless they're close to as tough as he is.

This is critical. In general, a thug is designed to be able to fight without taking any damage for a very long time. You usually optimize thugs' equipment/buffs for defensive capabilities (protection, awe, defense, reinvig) and assume that given enough time the thug can kill PD with their natural attacks. Banes/Bane lords are a good example of this: If you ever try to use them together with an army, they will be almost useless because of their slow movement; by the time they do anything useful the rest of the army will either have won or be routed.

Bodyguards are sometimes useful, especially when they occupy the same square as the thug. So you will see Helheim helkarls with one mounted sacred; Caelum Eagle Kings with one Yazata, Kailasa yakshas (?) with one summonable sacred. Are there any size 2 thug types? Ulm perhaps? In that case I could see putting in 2 bodyguards to fill the square. The reason you want to do this is it halves or thirds the number of incoming attacks; this is important if you are relying on awe/defense.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

> I'd strongly hesitate to send a Thug with enough bodyguards to trip the 75% hp retreat, unless they're close to as tough as he is.

It's actually a good trick to know, to get the thug to retreat earlier when in danger.

Let's say a thugs has 20 hp, and the escort 20 hp, and the thug is being overwhelmed for whatever reason (escort killed and taking heavy damage). He'll flee when down to 10hp, while if he's alone, he'll flee at 5 hp, which could improve their survival (depending of the situation).

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

There's defnitely size two thus. First that springs to mind are oreiads.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

In my opinion there are three kinds of thugs.

1) Raiders: This is the most common and useful type. They rely on speed, flight, teleportation/CT and stealth to capture poorly defended provinces. They are of less use vs the computer because the AI tend to leave a similar number of chaff troops in each province. Humans tent to not waste money on defenses in non-critical provinces due to money restraints.

Examples include Glamour Cavalry, Shishis, Eagle kings.

2) The second kind of thug is the army thug. Typically a Herse or similarly tough recruitable commander. Give them a frostbrand or a demon whip and mix them in with normal elite troops for some extra sting. Also serves to protect normal troops from enemy thugs that use mistform/mirror image/body ethereal etc. Unlike most thugs they rely on the normal troops and their battle line for their survivability. So take care during placement.
In practice this takes a lot of micro so you rarely see this kind of thug.

3) The third kind is the Main Battle Thug. The Dominions answer to the main battle tank. Useful because they are spammable and affordable. They can make up entire armies of their own or fight together with real armies with some good scripting. When fighting with real armies they must not spend too much time buffing though, or the battle will be over before they can get to it.
The operative word here is cost effectiveness. They must be cheap or you might as well spend the gems on summonable troops.

Examples includes Shuras, Ujigamis, Skrattis, pre-CBM Zammzumites and again, Shishis. Most of these are nationals so you wont see them too often either.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

What are Shishis? I cannot find them in the wiki.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Endgame diversity mod (EDM) summons. Now part of CBM.