Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Post your builds here. I'll start:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v5...allenangel.jpg

Pictures say more than 1000 words, now don't they? Not perhaps the most optimal build, but Awe + Fear is quite funky. The Reinvigoration he gets might be over the top though, and I'm not sure which is a better weapon, that demon whip or heartseeker.

Anyway, his main advantage is that Awe+Fear+High-ish def+20 prot+Luck makes him hard to hit.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

I usually use a few "artillery" banes. Equipted with a Bow of Thunder, Spirit helm and a bottle of living water.

The chasi for this thug really isnt that important, but banes are cheap in gem costs and generally gets more resistances then national bought commanders.

Five of these placed infront of my mages, but behind the normal infantry lines will make a good backbone to any none flying/stealth army. 5 Water elementals and 10x lightning bolts per turn.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Strong on paper but quite hard to create and useless : the SC Lord of War with Ulm EA !
All these item needs Construction 4 at this time it was already useless because there was no more problem with independant. The picture was taken on the battlefield after Ironskin and Body Ethereal.

http://img250.imageshack.us/img250/1...tendantsb3.jpg

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Sounds nice, but Firbolg is propably even better since they have a pretty high precision from what I remember. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

I dont have acess to the manual right now, but isnt Firbolg 10N gems and no resistances? So the banes should have a higher survival rate, and being cheaper. Except against nasty anti-undead spells. Low level banish is usually resisted though.

The thunderbow gives a slight precicion bonus, and I havent noticed any arrows going astray unless my banes need to hit something inside a castle. If that is a problem, and you dont have acess to nature magic, putting an eye of aiming on them should work.

Scrap the thunderbow, get an eye of aiming and the soulkilling crossbow (999 damage every second turn if it hits) and you got yourself a commander killing thug. Here the Firbolg would probably be better, since one will always be shooting at long ranges.

The demon whip, gleaming shield (the one that gives awe) and something that gives fireresistant. Is a good combo to clear low hp chaff with a Thug that has decent hp and protection. A charcoal shield could work, but then you would need to put regen on your thug since he is more likely to get hit.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Well, Bane's survivability depends on what he's fighting.

Does the Demon Whip have Area Fire or somesuch?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

If we are trying to avoid nation pecifics then I like:
Poison Golem with:
1 Handed Weapon of choice
Charcoal Shield
Heavy Armour vrs most things or robe of shadows if you know you wont be facing any form of magic.
Horror Helm
Some sort of boots (quickness is nice)
Lucky Pendant
Any misc that will help him survive

Basically he runs it, uses his luck, shield, great health and prot to shrug off hits while his damage shields(fire and banefire) take advantage of his fear to rout the enemy.

If we can go national specific:
Angel of Fury (pythium and marignon)
Hands arent too important for this guy but i would go with a weapon chosen depending on enemy (multiple/AoE vrs hordes, herald lance vrs big undead ect) and a charcoal shield.
Horror helm for routing enemies or skullcap for extra mr
Again, heavy armour (i love robe of invunerability but its expensive) or robe of shadows depending on enemy
Boots of the messenger (cant remember if he has enc or not but other things can fatigue him)
Ring of regen (its the new lifedrain, even though i used it alot in dom2)
Lucky Pendant

He has blood vengance, fireshield, nice health, is sacred, good prot/decent prot+ethereal, luck, regen and reinvig.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

If it hits and if the unit fails a magic resistance roll.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

I prefer Wraith Crown + Bone Armor a specially on assassin. Thats force multiplication to the max.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

EA Abysian slayers are nasty assasins, i gave one a robe of shaodws, girdle of might, boots of giant strength (he will do fine with just girdle and boots vrs most recruitables) and a bearclaw talisman forged by pretender. Iirc he had a total of around 28 strength, flying, ethereal and 2 strongly poisoned attacks (each hitting at around strength 30).

Some other assasins i like (expensize but still..):
Void Spectre (national summon for dreamland) with black heart, starshine skullcap, spell focus and amulet of anti magic. He was expensive but deadly, he had S4 or 5, amazing mr and good penetration, i wished for the slaves though.

Heliophagi/harvester of sorrows with a black heart, lucky pendant and some high damage weapon with decent attack.

Any assasin with eye of aiming, boots of quickness and the instantdeath crossbow.


Some nice thugs/SC's:

Dai Oni with any sword you want, shield of gleaming gold, horror helm, robe of shadows, boots of quickness/messenger, luck pendant and some other misc (ring of regen?). Script him to cast: stoneskin/iron skin/invunerability, soul vortex(or whatever the lifedrain aura is), fireshield and then let him attack. Damage shield, damage aura, great prot, way to heal fatigue (soul thing), regen, ethereal, luck and great fear.

Niefel Jarl:
This ones pretty simple:
Sword of swiftness, shield of gleaming gold, horror helm, fire plate, boots of messenger, lucky pendant, ring of regen (if no/low nature bless) or reinvig item if low/no earth bless.
Script him to Soul Vortex thing, Quickness, BoW and send him in, high high prot, nice defence and damage and fatigue auras means he can just stand there freezing and draining his enemies while his buffs, regen and reinvig keep him at full strength

Golem:
High defence weapon, charcoal shield, starshine skullcap, heavy armour(i like marble personally), boots of quickness, bracers of protection, some other misc.
Send him in, cast ethereal, luck and possibly resist magic and astral shield depending on opposition. With nice defence, damage shield (see a pattern with my thugs/SC's?), high prot, great MR and a load of astral buffs behind him hes nearly unkillable. If you can then swap the high defence weapon for a bloodthorn, partial lifedrains better than nothing.


Some Annoying Things:
Get anyone who has astral and fire magic, a load of cheap s1 mages and a few units of chaff up front. Give the s1 mages items such as doom glaives and accursed shields and place them just behind the chaff. Send them in and have the strongest mage cast communion master, ethereal, luck, phoenix pyre, fire shield. The little guys are almost mini thugs for the ammount of damage they do, their weapons being extremely nasty vrs large expensive units (Other SCs/thugs, pretenders, expensive summons ect), they are very hard to kill (works even better with multiple masters due to speed buffing) with all their buffs, they have a fireshield (and with alot of them, the masters fire magic will be higher so their shield will be stronger) and when they die, they each cause a huge explosion and re-apper somewhere else.

Take the cheapest commander you can buy, fill his slots up with rubbish/annoying cursed items and send them against a non fully equipped SC/thug (or leave him there to catch assasins http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif) and watch their owner cry as all his valuable slots are filled with rubbish items (lycan amulets are worst as they can permanently destroy the unit)

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Here is a tryout from me, his dominion 10 was really great to smash indies http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
I used him with LE Atlantis

[image]http://img318.imageshack.us/my.php?image=dagonmh1.jpg[/image]

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Only one problem from this end, the image dosnt work http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

hmmm.... but why......

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

[image] is at the start, should there be a / in there somewhere?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Ahhh, the Firbolg sniper... if memory serves, in D2 they had a base precision of 15. Nice. They also avoid the Bane's cold aura that may be a problem for some armies... and an archer normally shouldn't be sent alone.

I'd favor either Botulf or Vision's Foe (preferred) over the Ethereal Crossbow, 'tho, as both ignore target's MR. And AN+eye loss is so evil.

If you're looking at assassins, Spirit Helm + Phoenix Rod is a nasty, expensive, 1-2 punch. Add a Rime Hauberk if you want to cover yet a third element. :p

Of course, if you're going REALLY profligate, the prize for funny (from the winner's POV) + profligate + unreliable might have to go with empowering an assassin until he can cast Gifts from Heaven.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Or give an Empoisoner a Treelord's Staff, and make him cast Creeping Doom.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

*guitar riffs*

Die! By my hand! I creep across the land! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

lol, where did that come from?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

That's Metallica. Or the Leprechaun as played by Warwick Davis. I'm not sure which is more of an embarrassment at this point.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

-Frank

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Dont recall hearing that in any metallica songs but whatever.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Ride the Lightning. Their second album. Cliff Burton. Huge Lovecraft fan. 'Nuff said.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Thanks for that.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Metallica - Creeping Death

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

What about an assassin with high base precision (maybe ninja?) with the scepter of corruption? You can't quicken him anymore, but with a few surrvival items, you can kill just about anything.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Personally, I like to give assassins Bane Blades if they don't already have them. Most mages are old age already, so it doesn't really take that long for a Bane Blade to do it's job, plus it's a pretty cheap investment.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

One of my favourite assassins (no, not for mp.)

Star Child. with a horror harmonica, starshine, ritual of returning, and twist fate. And the oath rod, just for fun.

Actually, it works okay against armies to.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

don't have much experience with dom3 yet, but what i liked to do in dom2, and maybe this was a bug, was wait around until the eternal knights showed up and way over bid them. then when i got them i'd send them to thier death. orion always get 1000+ xp and usually got the heroic strength ability. once i'd researched the spell that raises heroes on the hall of fame, i would raise orion as a mummy and by then he would have 60+ strength. i would give him the wraith crown, shoes of flying, monolith armor, the scythe artifact, and a few other things. i'd usually make him my prophet as well.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Monolith armor? Why?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

best armor there be and he was undead, so he wasn't encumbered by it. so what the ethereal-ness didn't take care of, the armor did. i suppose he would have been vulnerable to spells, but he usually had the army routed after the first few rounds anyway, so nobody ever got anything bad enough off to kill him

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

That orion seems like a bit of a waste. 60+ strength is wasted on almost anything other than pretenders, SC's and extremely costly, powerful units (ie, what the enemy wont let him near) and hes extremely expensive and hard to get for what he does. He does sound fun though.

Mummy Orion
 

Is awesome. I had no idea you could resurrect dead mercenaries to stay "on the team" forever.

Re: Mummy Orion
 

Im pretty sure you can, aslong as they were working for you at their time of death.

Re: Mummy Orion
 

only bad thing is that you can't take the items back from them that you equip them with. the other thing that i did once was cast gift of reason on all of his minion knights, that was pretty bad ace, though i think that still had the equipment problem that orion had

Re: Mummy Orion
 

The other negative effect of a mercenary brought totally under your control via spells is that they cannot be given troops.

Re: Mummy Orion
 

true, but i didn't go to all of that trouble to just make some guy to ferry troops around

Re: Mummy Orion
 

Well in some of my games I've done ritual of rebirth on commanders with lots of astral or nature magic... these weren't mercenaries, but it sure would have been nice to use them in casting spells to teleport large armies. These were DOM_2 games.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

thought that only applied for mercs

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

I may need to provide my build but my favorite assassin is still the Lord of the Night pretender. Mictlan gets him (not sure who else does). Titan, stealth, flies, summons aid during assassinations. And thats without equipment.
I think Id probably give him a bow.

The other thing Id like to try is giving a black heart to the many armed pretenders.

I also loved giving black hearts to Pans in Pangea. They would sneak into a province, and assassinate (usually by equipment or spells), and then they would throw a few maenads off. The maenads would instantly attack that province. Usually they would die fast since 3 or 4 maenads dont take a province very well but you at least saw what was there. AND if that assassination was the last commander then the enemy would route. It saves alot of trouble continually testing a province to see if the assassinations have made it weak enough to be taken.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

iirc, the pans just generate maenads each turn, so if you were to park a stelthy pan in enemy territory, he would keep generating them and they would attack right? sounds like a good way to drive unrest through the roof.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Yes.
A regular pan can be a real pain-in-the-back-provinces for any enemy that doesnt use PD. Just move him around alot and watch the provinces fall. When you take one; crank the taxes to max, buy some PD, recruit locals, generally make it hard to take back and worthless if they do get it back. If you are given time to recuit a local commander then pillage also.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Using the lord of the night as an assasin, i never thought of that! One question though: how can you make an assasin out of a 4 armed stealthless pretender(such as a nataraja)? Those pans also sound very nasty indeed (creeping doom, charm with some penetration help, swarm, various other useful spells) and, if im not mistaken they could bring some stealthy troops with them incase you need to attack in force after assasination.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Impossible... unless you create your own unit via mods.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Ahh I forgot that that none of the natarajas have stealth.

And the Lord of the Night is already an assassin altho it doesnt say that he is.

Lord of the Wild could be one with a Black Heart and that might be fun to try since he tosses out maenads. And the ghost king would be fun. Are there other stealth pretenders that toss out units or get assistants in combat?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

I don't see too many players fall for this more than once, really. It doesn't take too much effort to figure out how much PD you need to beat the Maenads (not much, I'd say), and after that all they need to do is crank PD a little over the minimum in all provinces. You get a free peek at defenders, which isn't useless, but you won't get free provinces anymore.

And even the AI does build a little PD, right?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

but unrest would keep getting driven up due to constant attacks

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

And in some games I invest multiple Pans. Ive even been known to use my pretender (Lord of the Wild). I was in a 3-pllayer game where my capital and home territories were taken midgame. I survived until endgame by harrassing the #1 player (that took me out) until the other guy could get up an army and sweep in. It might not have been a winning strategy, but it was a game-affecting one. (vengeance sucks, huh?)

It might just be because of the way I play but I find Pangaea to be massively useful as an ally. Flying scouts (quick reports on everyones location), stealth armies (able to move thru your partners territories), able to trade off mages with major support abilities, lots of tactics for harrassing and reporting. But like I said, I prefer playing a supporting role in an alliance so it might just be my viewpoint.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Headless hoburg assassin?

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

How would you guys use a mummy with 28 precision and 4 levels of holy (not unholy).

Prophet (Bakemono General) got killed after 40 turns in the hall of fame with heroic precision and brought back as a mummy and reprophetized (+1 holy).

I stuck him with a bunch of wights and unfrozen (cold and disease immune) and gave him a winter bringer (falling frost wand) and sword of injustice (for the automatic protection of the sepulchure), and just have him stand back and spam 28 precision falling frosts on my enemies.

But it sorta seems like a waste, anyone have a better build for a super high precision unit with a wind of leprosy? Maybe bow of war or thunder bow on fire rear to try and snipe commanders? I tried him with an ethereal crossbow and he didn't really hit as often as you'd think for such a high precision.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

Bow of War or that Banefire Crossbow. Or Thunder Bow. Does he have high strenght? Ah, only if you could build that Sarlath rod...it would be so fitting for a mummy.

Re: Thug/SC/Assasin builds thread
 

The Sarlath rod Nerfix mentions would enable him to cast Banefire.