Another one bites the dust
 

So, I tried again to play Dominions effectively... once again I failed. I thought the following build would be pretty effective and reasonably inexpensive:

Gargoyle
Gift of Reason
Charcoal Shield
Sword of Swiftness
Robe of Shadows
Amulet of Antimagic
Pendant of Luck

Thanks to being inanimate, it doesn't have encumberance issues, so it can happily wade through AI armies of 500+ troops without getting chewed up. It also has a great defense on top of the protection, ethereal, & luck. So does it work?

Of course not. As soon as mages show up, they die. Tangle vines cast by nature mages held the first one down long enough to get chewed up, and in my next confrontation an S3 mage blew it apart with Opposition.

So... back to the drawing board. Given the gem investment needed to make an effective thug, they're just not efficient. It seems as if it's best just to save your gems until you get to SC power levels.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

I'd say your problem is that you're sending thugs against forces too great for them to handle. Ya, stating the obvious, but perhaps you should be using it to harass and kill smaller armies, or send it into battle with an army and/or mages at its back?

The problem with, say, gargoyles is that they have a few weaknesses: they are magic beings and inanimate. The inanimate is especially bad because they can be blown apart by shatter and there is no save. Gotta watch out for the same thing with undead, although different spells.

One way to deal with obsessive vining is quickness, since it gives your guy a chance to break the vines then still attack, rather than being deadlocked.

Mages are always going to have a counter of some kind to anything you can make (assuming your enemy has the right paths). There's really no getting around it. Find a way to kill the mages, fight when they aren't around, or make sure exploiting your weaknesses requires magic they don't have!

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

That's what keeps discouraging me. If even AI mages can take down my cost efficient thugs, what chance do they have against a competent player? Ugh.

And if a 70 gem unit can't punish a 500 unit army, what can? The AI has a lot more 500 unit armies than I have 70 gem units...

BTW, thanks for the advice on the quickness. I'll keep that in mind, that will help.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

Also, defense goes down for each attack made against you.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

Yes, that's why I don't even think about sending out a thug without ethereal, it cuts down the # of attacks by 75% and gives their defense a chance.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

Like iRFNA said, some combination of magic paths and research can sink any SC. Otherwise, the larger the army the more you need to cut down the number of hits your SC has to deal with per turn. A Shield of Gleaming Gold and a Horror Helmet are good for fighting troops with normal to low morale. A Vine Shield is the best for weak troops, especially in a province with Growth scales.

But, taking down a 500 unit army is too much for just about any SC regardless of how indestructible it is due to the limit to the number of turns for each side in a battle. I believe that's 50 turns for the attacker.

Baalz has an excellent guide for thugging here: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=41970

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

Somewhat counter-intuitively a lot of thugs work better against players than against the AI. At least the design philosophy is quite different.

The AI wanders around somewhat aimlessly with large armies. To be any use solo a thug has to almost SC level, capable of handling an arbitrary amount of chaff, with some resistance to whatever the AI's mages specialize in. Thus, even for a raiding thug, you really need a large investment. OTOH, the AI won't send forces designed to kill that thug, so your investment is likely to pay off.

Most MP players use low PD, fewer elite troops and don't tend to have huge armies wandering around their backfield. Therefore a relatively cheap thug can do a lot of damage in the backfield. OTOH, the player will actually target your thugs, so you will lose them. So you make them as cheap as possible and expect them to do some damage and then die.

Very different strategies.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

If I recall correctly ethereal (and luck) don't prevent the defense penalty for being attacked. I think the only main defense attribute that does is awe.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

I figured Luck didn't, it specifies that 50% of hits don't do damage, but I figured Ethereal did... ugh... that just makes it harder to produce an adequate defense.

So what *is* a good way of frying AI superhordes? Assuming I don't have level-9 magic, and I don't want to consume gems faster than he can replace troops.

Re: Another one bites the dust
 

AoE attacks.
I like the Sun Slayer and the Unquenched Sword.

Unquenched is extra great because it also casts Heat from Hell, fatiguing enemy troops.