Urgent Thug advice needed
 

I appear to have blundered in to a MP game for newbies and now find that some newbies are more newbie than others. And I certainly fall in to the former category http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif So I am hoping to get a bit of advice without giving my whole position away. But as this is a newbie game I am taking it as a bit of a learning experience anyway so if this thread invites my destruction thats just too bad http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif And hopefully any advice will be useful to me and others in later games.

I am looking for some Thug advice specifically. Hopefully before its too late http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif My typical thugs leave something to be desired - usually being something like a Commander weighed down by expensive magic items http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Here is my game position. Sorry for not being completely open but these boards may have enemy eyes upon them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

We are in what I imagine would be called the mid game....

The only magic path I am weak in is Blood. I have a small blood economy but have done little research here and I have no blood & fire/water combination mages. But if pure blood is worth pursuing (or blood/astral/death combinations) I can expand my blood economy and research here relatively quickly. Every other path I can put together a decent levelled mage with boosters including most combinations.

I can construct just about anything I want. Sadly gems are not unlimited and I am especially short of fire gems - while having decent astral & earth incomes.

But what sort of equipment is best for thugs?

I have a relatively low Summon & Enchant research levels at the moment, but have a 20% discount site for the latter.

I don't have a decent national Thug chassis - either summons or recruitable. So I'll need to summon those commonly available to all.

So what should I summon as thugs or should I even summon thugs at all?

What level in Enchantment or Summon do I need before I can summon a reasonable chassis?

Limited Gift of Reasons are an (expensive) option. Presumably this is not worth doing on a Behemoth or Gargoyle type unit but should wait for a 'proper' SC chassis? And is this worth doing to get the slots or do you really need to start empowering to make this worth while?

Or should I not bother with further Thugs and just wait for SCs or go with none leader summons (Gargoyles etc.)?

I am a lot closer to Iron Dragons/Jugganauts/Siege Golems than I am to Abominations & Tartarians. But I imagine any Thug chassis will be found on the way to the later and I can always reuse the Thug equipment on SCs when I get to them? Which way should I research?

Mage support of most paths and combinations including communions are an option. I don't have any thugable mages but could communions themselves be an alternative to thugs and so should I just go for more battlefield magic protected by chaff instead?

All advice gratefully received.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Here's a thread where I'm talking about a specific thug chassis, but I also delve into general thug theory and it should give you an idea of what you want to do so you can re-examine what you have available.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...art=2&vc=1

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

What do you have to face with your thug(s)? Specifically, what magic? Knowing whether we need high protection/resistances/MR ect would help.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

If you have death gems, you can try the Bane Lord. Enchantment doesn't really have summonable thugs, but Pale Riders is a good Enchantment spell that gets a whole lot better when you save a few gems on each cast.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Gargoyles are actually quite a nice chassis except for the abysmal MR score...if you can keep them away from stuff that will exploit that they're actually SC-quality, and a lot of spells that are MR-resisted won't work on them due to them being mindless. Disintegrate, opposition, and shatter (not MR, but huge damage) are extremely problematic though, so use flight and avoid engaging mages that can toss those spells at you.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Not really sure at this stage as I am mostly at peace. My only current enemy is R'yleh. But as I have not ventured under the water yet and he is in what looks like a losing fight with multiple enemies I think he will not attack me. there are a lot of potential rivals though - covering most magic paths and combinations. My other neighboures are NAPed or distracted so I have a brief build window perhaps....

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

For thugs, generally I guess the idea is you don't want to have too much invested in them, because by definition (i.e. not being SCs), they are pretty killable.

So, like a Bane Lord or Firbolg Sleeper.. it's a cheap commander (10-12 gems). They both start off with magic weapons, so I suppose you could use them as is. But, generally you'll want some sort of weapon in there (maybe a fire brand, 6 gem cost total with hammer). You also don't want them to die too fast, so maybe throw on a protection item or two. Like an amulet of magic resistance, luck pendant, ring of lightning resist, or burning pearl (all 3 gem items with hammer).

The protection item you choose of course depends on what sorts of threats you will be facing (magic resistance if you are facing priests or astral mages, lightning resist against Caelum, etc.).

So, that is a 12 gem bane lord, 6 gem sword, and 3 gem protection item for a grand total of 21 gems.

If you want to get fancy, add another protection item and boots of quickness or flying (7 gems) for a grand total of 31 gems.

Oh, if you have researched a lot of construction, you might want to consider golems as well.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Regular Golems are probably not a good plan against R'lyeh because of Magic Duel.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

You have quite a manner of drawing attention to yourself, Arco.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

haha

ps
1. a thug should have luck
2. and at least def or prot above 20-25 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
3. a shield is always nice against arrows, one that attacks/hinders enemies is better http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
4. a lot of HP never hurts
5. AoE damage helps a lot http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

What is more important, defense or protection? I tried testing out a very high protection build with a full suit of black plate, but he wound up getting fatigued and criticaled a lot, then I tried a less protection, less fatigue build which seemed to survive pretty well against armies of 50-100 melee units. Maybe it's possible to get high protection to work if you balance things out better though.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Protection is much more importance. If a SC has more than 0 encumberance, he should have alot of reinvigoration. Black Plate is pretty bad on anything with more than 0 base encumberance.. Try marble armour or, better yet, a robe of invunerability.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Hmm, so what are the ideal fatigue levels for a thug that will be in melee? Should it be close to zero then to avoid critical hits? If I read page 76 of the manual right, a fatigue of zero or one means no chance of critical hits, and critical hit become possible at 2. Maybe a low but manageable level of fatigue is okay, but if zero is best, than maybe undead fatigue immune units are the ideal choice.

Also, how does reinvigoration work? If your reinvigoration is greater than your melee fatigue, on a mage-thug that buffs and charges into melee, will your fatigue drop every turn that you are swinging?

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Undead can make a good chassis for SC because of their 0 encumbrance. But at the same time, this makes you vulnerable to anti-undead spells like Wither Bones which can't be defended against. Still it's a tossup because Drain Life doesn't work against Lifeless units, which means most undead will be safe against it. But Drain Life is a lot tougher to research and use than Wither Bones, so it's still a concern, but 12+ unresistable damage by D1 mages via Wither Bones which only takes one level of research seems to me to be more of a danger to SCs.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Do you mena Wither Bones, Dust to Dust or some totally different spell? Dust to Dust is 22+ AN damage to one square, no magic resistance, which seems quite close to what you described.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Ah yeah, that's the one.

Sometimes I get carried away and don't reference things.

Wither Bones: Level 6 Thaumaturgy, D3 needed, Area 6, 16+ AN damage, not resistable. Fatigue 50, Accuracy -1.

Dust to Dust: Level 1 Thaumaturgy, D1 needed, Area 1, 22+ AN damage, not resistable. Fatigue 20, Accuracy 0.

So either one can be used to take care of most undead SCs, with Dust to Dust being very easy to research and cast for many nations.

Drain life is a lot rarer so the short answer would be, non-undead SCs are less vulnerable than undead ones. However, undead often come with great perks like Fear or Immortal. So it's definitely a trade-off... if it's worthwhile or not will likely depend on the opponents you're facing, the state of the game, the spread of your dominion; it just depends.

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

For some strange reason this URL seems to lead to an empty thread http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

Probably a temporary glitch, the URL works fine for me. The thread's title is "Build me an MA Ulm thug".

Re: Urgent Thug advice needed
 

> 1. a thug should have luck
> 2. and at least def or prot above 20-25
> 3. a shield is always nice against arrows, one that attacks/hinders enemies is better
> 4. a lot of HP never hurts
> 5. AoE damage helps a lot

You forgot the most important one:
0. A thug must keep his fatigue below 20 against his current opponents.

Which means either reinvigoration greater that his encumberance times his actions
per round, a life drain weapon or soul vortex. Of course, having all three is
nice, but much too hard to achieve without compromising something important. Once
you look at that list, you realize that thugs don't come much better than
Early Age Niefel Jarls.