Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Taking a break from my usual M.O. of writing nation guides I decided to delve into some more general overall strategy applicable to all nations. Much like my communion guide this is intended to give you the theory and some tools with which you’ll hopefully be able to do interesting things far beyond what’s specifically spelled out here. This isn’t anything revolutionary, but hopefully this will be helpful to some people and I do think even the more experience players tend to get set in their ways and miss some opportunities to field different things.

Alright, everybody knows about the super combatants. Stick a couple artifacts on a tartarian and presto you’re carving up the countryside. This is true, but not terribly interesting from a design point of view. What I’m more concerned about is using tanks at a much earlier point, and in particular with a minimum of cost. It’s almost always better to field 2 guys which are each 90% as effective as the one guy for the same price and fielding them in year two is not even in the same ballpark as fielding them after you’ve got multiple level nine spells researched (and your opponent has equivalent counters). You could probably argue all day about what the difference is between a thug and a SC and I’ve got no interest in doing that. Suffice to say I’m focused on economical killing machines with things we can cludge together early rather than the top of the line jet fighters with all the bells and whistles.

Before we start talking about specifics I wanted to clearly define the target we’re shooting for. The ideal thug is one that’s about 98% effective and doesn’t cost one gem or gold more than it needs to. Cost is almost the most important factor in thugs, the whole point is to field something which gives you the most bang for the buck possible and that’s a whole lot easier if you spend less bucks. Now, cost is a terribly relative thing and I wouldn’t imagine to give cost targets. Is a Niefel jarl equipped with a frost brand more expensive than an Ulmish black lord fully loaded with lots of equipment forged at half price? It’s a pointless question because Niefelheim can’t get black lords and Ulm can’t get giants. The question you should be asking is “what’s the most cost effective thing I can field, given this nation, this gem supply, this research, and that expected opposition?” It’s not always a single answer, you might field one thug with your fire gems and a totally different one using mostly pearls. Designing a good and efficient thug is one of the best aspects of dominions, let me share how I generally go about it.

*crowd control*

Thugs come in many different flavors. The primary characteristic of a crowd control thug is that “normal” troops (whatever that means for your particular situation) can’t damage him fast enough to kill him, and his secondary characteristic is that he lays out enough damage that he can carve through at least moderate amounts of troops before the turn limit runs out. Generally they’re used for raiding or indie clearing, though they certainly can be valuable additions to a larger army. Let’s look at the damage outlay first.

Many people consider a frost or firebrand a necessity for a thug, and might condescend to look at a snake bladder stick or demon whip if they must. Well, these are all generally effective and there is a reason they’re staples, but there’s no reason to limit yourself to them. Does your thug chasis have a second attack (a hoof, a bite, etc.)? A high strength? A 0 encumbrance? How about a high magic path? All of this can often be translated into an offensive punch sufficient to go through the medium resistance these guys are intended to confront.

As a general rule of thumb being reasonably sure to kill 30-40 humans over 50 turns is often enough to accomplish this task (depending, of course, on what you’re attacking). Remember, you don’t need to kill them all, just enough to start those morale checks, which they’ll eventually fail. Once you realize how low this bar is you start realizing that as nice as the brands are they’re often a bit overkill for what you need. Why spend 10 gems on a fire brand when your guy has a nice bane blade and high strength at default? Would an axe of sharpness or a serpent kryss accomplish the same thing for half the price and be more easily forgable? How about slapping on a horned helm or dancing trident? Don’t limit yourself to the staples and tons of options start opening up for whatever gems you happen to have in surplus. Trampling is great, so long as you’ve got a zero encumbrance. More than that and it’s practically impossible kit yourself economically to handle the fatigue you’ll rack up.

Another thing people tend to overlook is the very effective and very low fatigue point blank combat spells. If your intended thug has a 3 or 4 in one magic path without crippling spell casting encumbrance chances are he has a very effective point blank spell the AI will be kind enough to cast 50% of the time in melee if you just leave him scripted to “cast spells”. Shock wave and immolation are the flagships, but don’t overlook fists of iron, hand of death, cold blast, acid spray, & leeching touch. Really only astral and nature lack enough punch to lay some serious damage down as long as you’re gonna be at short range anyway. The fatigue on these spells is so low and damage output so high that you can often count on simply routing your opponents before fatigue is an issue. Of course cheap reinvig is even better, so consider this angle for your earth bless, anybody who can summon earthpower and also consider investing 5 gems in boots of the messenger or a battle saint shroud rather than a weapon. Note, if you’re using this sort of tactic it’s important to be aware what the AI is going to try to cast by testing it out. If not having ie raise skeletons researched leaves open a useful thug for you it might be worthwhile to focus your research elsewhere for awhile.

Special consideration goes to a fear aura. As your whole goal is likely to route PD you don’t care how many you kill, you just want the buggers to run. Fear auras cause morale checks, and it doesn’t have to be a big fear aura. Fear-0 is often the only weapon you need to route PD…you’re gonna cause close to 50 morale checks and PD doesn’t have great morale so they’re gonna miss one of them. Feel free to terrorize them with that useless kick.

Finally, consider that it’s often a better idea to double up your thugs rather than equipping them better. If your damage output is too low and your opponent is pumping up his PD, but another thug is cheaper than a fire brand…well just make sure you weigh your options before going with the default.

By now you’ll probably see my point that damage output can be almost inconsequential for this type of thug. The tricky part is being pretty sure that after 50 rounds of a whole lot of guys whacking at you you’re still standing. There’s several ways to accomplish this, and ideally you’ll combine more than one, but never forget our goal is to pay for only exactly as much as we need.

Before I get into hitpoint preservation I wanted to discuss fatigue. Fatigue is the downfall of many a newbie thug swinging their quickened self into a coma. After their initial blunders many people consider getting their reinvig to equal encumbrance the whole issue and don’t give fatigue another thought. This misses several subtleties which should be considered for optimal thugging.

The first thing you need to consider is that merely keeping yourself from climbing to 100 fatigue and passing out isn’t enough. The chance of critical hits rises with your fatigue, as your defense drops. This nasty one-two punch means that a thug who would easily wade through the chaff consistently dies with a fatigue of 50. This is a very important consideration for thugs who self buff as this lands them in the first round of combat with a heaping of fatigue even if their encumbrance is low and can often mean it’s just a matter of time until somebody gets a good roll and chops their head off. Fatigue is so important it’s often a better idea to skip one or two of the self buffs you thought you wanted and instead meet those pitchfork waving peasants refreshed and ready for mayhem. It’s also not a bad idea to consider giving reinvig to zero encumbrance guys who plan to self-buff for this reason.

Another thing to consider on fatigue is external things which cause fatigue. Heat/cold auras, stellar cascades, grip of winter, etc. Having a strong reinvigoration is not going to make you immune to this by a long shot, but it can make you considerably resistant if you’re working with an army and not being focused on. Having several thugs resistant to everything (but immune to nothing) laying in the bodyblows while your mainline troops take the licks is a great tactic.

Finally, consider the opposite angle, it’s not always necessary to mitigate your encumbrance at all. If you’ve got a 3 encumbrance and hit like a ton of bricks without self buffing, you can often just count on squishing everybody before you need to worry about tiring out. Adding quickness in this situation can make a lot of sense as well, which is something that is often the bane of thugs with non-zero encumbrance.

So, finally we get to the most obvious way people are going to try to kill your thugs, hitpoints, and I’ll start with the most straightforward way to protect them – protection. Protection is your last line of defense and a factor that you’ll want to carefully consider for most thugs. Even if you’re focusing primarily on other methods of hitpoint preservation, protection is important because it’s going to change that one lucky hit from a catastrophe to a scratch. The amount of protection you’re gonna need is obviously going to vary quite a bit, but most of the time you’ll want to aim for at least 20 (don’t forget your helmet!). This will put you in the range that a hit from most “normal” troops will have to be pretty lucky to damage you. Note: protection alone is almost never enough to keep you alive by itself no matter how high it is. This is because you’ll obviously be taking a *lot* of hits, and even with 0 fatigue you have a small chance of taking a critical hit which will halve your proctection. An awesome 30 protection is then just a nice 15 and not all that hard to puncture by a human wielding a spear. Trust me, it’ll happen with more regularity than you want to replace your thugs.

This leads to the next concept: successful thug preservation is all about reducing the number of attacks you take. Dominions uses open ended dice rolls, and that means no matter how good your defenses are, if you get attacked enough times you’re gonna take it in a place you’d rather not. Increasing your protection is a diminishing return prospect, at some point it’s a much better idea to focus on stopping those attacks from ever occurring. This is really the very heart of what makes a thug more so than anything else. The primary ways this is accomplished are awe, etherealness, luck, and a vine shield, though there are some more exotic avenues like blood vengeance. Each of these options shines in different situations but generally it’s not possible to make a crowd control thug without one of them. Certainly their effects stack beautifully together and having two or more is generally enough to guarantee successful thugging (assuming you satisfy the other requirements).

Reducing attacks is critical to your second line of defense, um, defense. Defense is great, it’s not hard to get a hero with a high one who can parry an incoming attack with easy. Problem is each attack drops his defense for the next attack in the same round by 2. Doing a little math, surrounded by man sized guys on 5 sides means the last guy is stabbing at you with a +30 to his attack. How high was your defense again? Fortunately, attack reducers come to our aid. If awe prevents half the guys from attacking, and our high defense blocks most of the rest then there’s not many who get to try for a lucky roll to punch through our armor. Because awe and vines prevent attacks from happening and thus dropping your defense (unlike etherealness or luck), vine shields and shields of beaten gold are staples that are much harder to replace than brand weapons. Still, give special consideration to anybody who has natural awe, there’s a good chance you can leverage that into extra economical thugging.

Hitpoint preservation is a big give and take. The more defense you have, the less protection you need. The more attack nullifiers you have, the less defense you need. There’s another couple factors that go into the same pile: the more hitpoints you have the less of everything you need, and the more regen you have the less hitpoints you need.

Before going on I wanted to touch on a wonderful little spell that opens the doors to thugging to many guys who would otherwise be too fragile - mistform. Every thug (unless you’re spending way too much on them) is going to take an occasional hit, and without mistform it’s a pretty good bet that human hitpoint guys are going to at least take an affliction if they don’t straight buy the farm. Mistform though allows those low hitpoint humans to slug it out as if they had tons more hitpoints than they do, it’s the first way to synthetically gain hitpoints for a unit. In light of what I just said in the previous paragraph this is usually the difference between being able to make a cost effective thug or not -. without sufficient hitpoints the bar (and cost) is a lot higher on avoiding hits.

The second way to synthetically gain hitpoints is regeneration. Look at it this way, if you were to consistently take 1 point of damage every round, while having one point of regen, well then your regen effectively gave you an extra 50 hitpoints over a 50 round battle. That’s a drastic gain for a 15 hitpoint Vanjarl or Sidhe. This has an amazing synergy with mistform which conveniently enough makes your hits all cost a consistent 1 hitpoint so as long as you can keep from getting hit more than once per turn on average you’re golden. I’ve had many people question the efficiency of investing in a minor nature bless on lower hitpoint units, but examined in this light you can see why this is so powerful.

Of course the same logic applies to units without mistform’s synthetic hitpoints but more real ones. A Skratti werewolf regenerating 6 hitpoints per turn will potentially gain a whopping 300 hitpoints in a long fight, you can imagine how this starts looking when you stack more regen up. High regen is one of the seldom appreciated and used facets of thug preservation. Most know how hard it is to bring down that water queen regenerating 50+ hitpionts per turn, but few apply that elsewhere – a more modest 10 hitpoint regeneration is still incredibly hard to get on top of by “normal” units combined on an already tough thug. One of my favorite SCs was an elemental earth king with hydra skin armor and a ring of regen. When I watched him wade through anti-SCs shrugging off the 30 or so damage which penetrated his protection every turn I fell in love with this strategy. There’s several ways to get regeneration, and I believe every one of the stacks. Natural regeneration, a blessing, hydra skin armor, ring of regen, lycanthrop’s amulet, and a spell buff (self or other).

The final way to synthesize hitpoints is life draining attacks. These are fabulous as they not only gain you hitpoints they also drop your fatigue. This two for one special is one of the best things for thugs – except it’s rare and often too expensive to be economical. Still, if you’ve got blood slaves to burn on blood thorns, or a national summon with a natural life drain attack (say a civateteo or umbral) give it special consideration for thugging. Wraith blades and hellblades are, unfortunately, seldom cost effective. When using life draining attacks you mostly don’t need to worry about fatigue at all, so stack that quickness on. Do be aware that you won’t be able to drain the life from lifeless units, so be careful about running into skellispam if you’re reliant on this to keep your fatigue down.

Don’t neglect the advantages of flying in a crowd control thug. Not only does this allow drastically better strategic deployment, it also allows them a much greater chance of fleeing if things go bad. Often, the equipment is the most expensive thing about a thug, so even if he gets greatly afflicted it’s often much better if he can run off to pass the equipment onto a fresh chasis and retire to research or something.

Stealth is another attribute that bears special consideration. Because of the way the turn sequence resolves, stealth units go under cover before ritual spells go off. Combined with the fact that most spells won’t hit stealthed units this means used cautiously (attack, then sneak, attack, then sneak) stealth thugs can be extremely hard to counter. Seeking arrow, earth attack, disease demon, teleporting responses, etc. just can’t catch them. The one exception is mind hunt which does catch stealthed units, mind hunt is really pretty much the best anti-thug spell in the game.

Another consideration you want to make for your thugs is resistances. Resistances can make a solid thug almost invincible against the right opponent. Being frost and lighting immune is a serous pain to Caelum. Being fire immune cuts way down on the things abbysia can drop on you. Consider what counters your opponent is likely to use and it is often worthwhile to put an extra item or two on your thug. In general I don’t like to invest in MR buffing items for thugs, preferring instead to invest in more thugs and trying to avoid putting them in situations where they have to make that roll. This goes right to the heart of what it means to be a thug, they should be fairly expendable and trying to bump up their MR can often double or triple their cost. Of course, there’s nothing for it in some situations except to suck that up, but it’s not where I aim by default.

I also wanted to talk about blood vengeance. This is a rare ability (or buff) that causes a bit of confusion. The way it seems to work is that once you’ve been hit the blood vengeance is checked to see if damage is rolled against you or your attacker. This means that blood vengeance has a poor synergy with high defense and attack nullifiers like awe or etherealness because they negate the hit before it gets to the blood vengeance. BV has a great synergy with high protection and high regeneration and things like fire shields or eye shields– you take just a little damage you regenerate while everyone around you keeps hitting themselves in the face.

Finally, I wanted to talk about buffing. Many spells are standards for thugs from earthpower to gain reinvig to invulnerability or mistform to that yummy soul vortex. As I mentioned in the fatigue section you really need to balance the benefit of any buff against the drag of the fatigue it bestows in light of the reinvigoration you have. It’s seldom a good idea to lay down 5 buffs then attack, you’ll often want to lay down a couple then rest a couple turns before attacking. Also don’t forget that most buffs can be bestowed by a mage onto another. This can often open up doors to thugging which are not obvious, a cheap tower shield is often all it takes to make a mage archer-proof enough to lay a couple buffs down and retreat while the beefy guy runs forward with 0 fatigue. Note: you’re mage is going to have to be tough enough to fend for himself against flankers if he intends to hang around which often of defeats the point of having a separate thug, but some mages can handle it. Also don’t forget that berzerking units will fight on after their leader leaves. Have a guy guard commander and the last buff the mage lays is berserkers and presto that iron warrior’ed, ethereal non-leader is now chewing threw everything there without the need of any equipment or a gift of reason.

So, as a practical exercise let me list out a couple concrete examples using the theory laid out here. All costs assume one dwarven hammer was used and everything created on the same turn…for no particular reason other than to tilt the tables towards good budgeting. Yes, everybody knows a bane lord with a fire brand and vine shield, lucky pendant and horror helm works. Let’s see what else we can do with a little bit of creativity and a lot less resources. To head off all the “but…but…but’s I’ll preface this by saying obviously everything would need to be tweaked in light of what you expected to face, these are just some general ideas.

Good example of an extreme budget thug:
A Jomon ghost general equipped with a shield of beaten gold. Cost: 11 gems. The ghost general immediately catches your eye in light of what we’ve been discussing. He’s ethereal and has a fear aura, has good armor and hitpoints and like all undead he’s cold immune with a 0 encumbrance. He is undead which opens up several counters, but still an outstanding value. His strength is 16 so the punch he’s throwing isn’t completely worthless, but the real charm is the fear aura will usually be all he needs to run off PD.

Good example of a great thug:
A Mictlan civateteo equipped with a vine shield & any decent armor & helmet. Cost: 25 slaves and about 17 gems. Like the ghost general she’s ethereal with a fear aura. Unlike him she’s got a life draining attack and self blesses and is stealthy. It’s not like Mictlan is likely to have a good bless or anything…. Adding a lucky pendant and flying boots are nice options if you’ve got the gems and she’ll be sneaking around terrorizing everybody, and very hard to counter.

A good example of a buff-other thugs: Argathan oracle of the dead leading 2 umbrals wielding a couple fire bolas. Cost: 400 gold and 12 gems. Umbrals are ethereal and have high hitpoints and a life draining attack. Stack iron warriors on them and they’re incredibly hard to take down. The oracle meanwhile gains reinvigoration from earthpower and possibly a blessing, and protection from ironskin/invulnerability and should be down to very low fatigue and able to handle a couple flankers (assuming they don’t just get pelted down by his high strength bola attacks firing at closest)

Good example of a caster thug (other than the eagle kings I just showcased). EA Abyssian Anointed of Rhuax sporting a fashionable blood stone, boots of the messenger, double enchanted shields and hydra skin armor cost: 32 gems, 12 slaves & 440 gold. With an earth/nature blessing and earthpower you’ve got a powerful reinvigoration, buffing invulnerability brings your protection soaring up to the point your powerful regeneration is generally enough to ignore the hits which get through your high defense and burn the crap out of your attackers with your powerful fire shield. You’re vomiting emolation every other turn in a wide area – the potency of this thug matches his high cost. If you’re lucky enough to land any of the 10% randoms other than fire even more buffing options become available.

Good example of a high offense thug: Same thing as the one above, only using Anathemat dragons, substitute in something like marble armor & a shield of beaten gold and add a lucky pendant and bracers of defense and you should have the staying power it takes to crisp enough PD guys to carry the day. You’re not nearly as tough as the Annointed, but you should be tough enough given your damage outlay.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

**anti-thugs**

Anti-thugs are intended to carve up much bigger targets. Generally they’ll be targeting other thugs and SCs, but they can also be a good option for dealing with particularly tough troops like Niefel giants or Palashankas. The big difference between an anti-thug and a crowd control thug is the anti-thug is much more concerned about damage outlay than damage avoidance – the idea is to kill them quickly before they can hit you back much. Anti-thugs are seldom going to have shields, preferring to dual wield or go for the big two handed weapons. Foregoing their own buffs and flying in to smack the bad guys before they lay they can get their own buffs up is how they like to roll, but this is often complicated by wily opponents placing chaff around so some cleverness is often called for. Weaponry obviously varies a lot, but a couple weapons bear special consideration:

Demon bane, flambeau, moon blade – many of the things you’ll be targeting anti-thugs at are undead, demon or magic beings. These items lay out a lot of damage themselves, which stacks with your strength then multiplies. Its not uncommon for thugs to have strengths in the twenties (particularly if you kit them for it), it’s not hard to figure how what happens when you add a big number to that then multiply.

Duskdagger & gate cleaver – AN damage is great for taking down notoriously tough guys as not only does it ignore their armor, it also ignores their shield – punches right through it. Duskdaggers can be dual wielded, gate cleavers add a ton of their own damage, both are great in the right situations.

Axe of hate – causes an aoe fatigue effect which is a great way to bypass the rest of a SC’s strong defenses, particularly dual wielded by quickened guys.

Flesheater axe – This dirt cheap item not only delivers a large amount of damage, the chestwound it inflicts can be a death sentence for non-zero encumbrance SCs even if they kill your anti-sc. They start racking up the fatigue, and…well I already covered what happens then.

Sword of swiftness/wave breaker/stone bird – anything which gives you multiple attacks is invaluable for breaking through high defenses. Make sure you stack this with quickness and attack boosters like the ring of the warrior.

Serpent Kryss/astral serpent – often overlooked, death poison can be a great way to take down guys who aren’t poison immune if you expect your anti-thug to be on a kamikaze mission anyway. Particularly consider this if they’re using invulnerability.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Heh, this is your best article yet IMO. Hard to decide between Eriu, Maverni and this one for me. =)

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Impressive! I really like your texts Baalz, keep it up!

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Actually the stun affect isn't aoe and have to hit in order to take effect. I've had SCs survive small groups of anti-thugs armed with Axes of hate by being able to doge enough attacks to have time to kill most of the attackers. It's still a great anti SC item but make sure you have high attack skill and enough attacks to get through.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Thanks Baalz for another great guide!

On the anti-thug topic:

There's also the bows, which are good anti-thugs especially if the thug is the largest unit on the other side. Set phasers on "fire large enemy monsters"

Botolf to feeblemind caster thugs.

Thunder Bow is AN for non-lightning resistant thugs.

High precision, a bow of war, and Flaming Arrows works pretty well.

Ethereal Xbows for when MR has been neglected.

Vision's Foe against high-defense thugs will being their defense and attack down to zero after 2 hits (or just one hit for one-eyed thugs).


In the non-bows category, the Standard of the Damned is also good in combo with Quickness, against any thug that's not lifeless.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

About doubling up on thugs: this is also true strategically. Having two thugs (or pairs of thugs) attack adjacent provinces helps guard against surprises which are tough enough to force you to retreat but not necessarily tough enough to kill you straight out. Like, say, Send Horror spam, or 11 mages popping out of a fort, or an indy province which turns out to be inhabited by Spring Hawks and Sylphs. If you were flying in, or if you have an opponent who is savvy enough to attack your escape routes, you may get afflicted and have to buy a new thug but at least you won't lose the equipment.

Plus, it's a lot easier to do things like cut off enemy armies or avoid "bouncing" off armies when you have attack-capable units in multiple provinces.

On a tactical level, using multiple thugs can sometimes help save equipment even if you DO die. You still win the battle (denying gear to the enemy) and if someone has slots free he may pick up 30% or so of the gear. That someone could be another thug or even a mage--Niefelheim/Ashdod/Caelum/Agartha/Abysia/etc. certainly have the option of converting an arty mage to a thug if he picks up the right equipment.

One final thought: peacetime armies (like the United States Air Force currently) sometimes focus on performance, spending lots of money to eke out every last bit of superiority and minimize casualties. In Dom3, though, you're an evil pretender who doesn't HAVE to care about casualties or PR, so you can go for the Russian approach, "quantity has a quality all of its own." A decked-out Seraph with four artifacts is STILL going to die to PD 20 + five indy priests with SotD, whereas an equivalent gem-weight of cheap thugs will take some losses but still kill all the priests.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I should mention though, the argathan oracle's probably not a chassis you want fire bolas on. They're umm... less than precise with the things and might end up hitting your own umbrals. -.-

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I know! They lack what we call depth perception (one eye and all that).

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

In addition to awe/etherealness/luck/vine shield, Astral Shield (attacks MR) is another dimension of protection you can add. It's usually not all that effective because I think attackers get weapon length as a bonus to MR, but sometimes it's better than some of the other options (awe vs. berserk/mindless units).

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Thanks a lot baalz ! I'm still wondering how to make something usefull with the items I forge (right now I sometime right click on a commander and randomly assign him one the -numerous and unorganized- items I got, just because it looks cool to have a fire sword, an orange helmet, an orange armor, and then I call him 'King of Fire', and he dies on the first battle... :'( )

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Great thread! This really answers some questions.
And I see I'm putting far to much into a sigle unit.

Haha, in a MP game I'm in I have special rescue teams to save my raiders once I think they are no longer save. Now the enemy attacks me the first mage kills his only leader and the teleported in rescuer casts Vortex of Returning. D'oh.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

My thought on the fire bolas is that the oracle is not there to lay out damage, the oracle is there to buff the umbrals who lay out the damage. The oracle's job is to handle any flankers who get around the umbrals, and to do that he needs to have his fatigue low. If flankers get around the umbrals they'll get pelted by the fire bolas for a couple turns, precision is a lot better from very short range and if there's more than one flanker they stand a very good chance of being further broken up due to the entangling - from short range and multiple targets even the one eyed guy is gonna toss it in the right general direction. When they close on the invulnerability buffed oracle who has 0 fatigue from firing ranged weapons with reinvigoration, he's got a good chance of living long enough to accidentally drop his club in the right place to squish them, particularly since his strength and weapon will often crush PD type guys even if they make a shield block. Meanwhile, the fire bolas aren't going to do too much to the 20 protection umbrals, they're not relying on their defense at all to survive so being entangled for a turn isn't the end of the world.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Umbrals suffer from one of the same problems that I found Mind Lords have. They only have a Life Drain attack. When faced with a longdead, they just stand there trying to eat its soul for 50 turns, like it's some kind of plastic cheeseburger.

I wish they'd just punch it, or in the Mind Lord case, whack it with their tail, or something.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Baalz, I cannot understand how you ever expect to win another MP game if you keep telling people how you think! Awesome stuff, keep up the good work.

In the spirit of tipping your hand, I'd like to give away my number-one favorite anti-thug item. It's a bit niche, failing against high defense/luck/vine shields...but for those fear/awe/protection/selfbuff guys, it's so devastating, and so deliciously unforseen, and so evil, I can't help but give it away...you guessed it, the Vine Whip!

[crickets]

Oh, you haven't seen a Vine Whip in action? Well, the next time some flying, regenerating, Dom10 Cyclops with 33MR, dual firebrands, and full resistances comes headed your way, calmly (but coolly) forge a Vine Whip, some Winged Shoes, and a Berserker Pelt (17gems+a reinvg item if necessary), and put em on your guy with the highest Attack rating. IED him right in that Cyclop's path.

Practice menacing cackle.

Open new turn file.

Cackle menacingly as the Cyclops spends all 75 turns breaking free from vines, and is annihilated when the hard turn-limit is hit.

Total physical damage dealt: 0 points
Total psychological damage dealt: 15 points
Total style points awarded: 1 million, possibly more
:D

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

If you happen to be have blood B2/B3 thugs, casting Reinvigoration (the Blood spell) at the end of the buffs might be a great way not to enter the fight with high fatigue. Just one slave and is at Blood-1 (in CBM at least)

@cleveland: Tested? Does it work? :shock: Too funny! :D

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Now I think a wine whip calls for being paired with a Scutata Volturnus/Stone Bird/Dancing Trident or just another thug ;)
(Fire/death bless?)

Just watch out for damage shields

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

It doesn't have to be paired with anything. If any battle lasts 50 turns, the attacker's side routes. After some time, the defender's side routes. If there are still units in the battlefield at a spesific turn count (I presume it's 75), they are all killed.

The mechanics is there to prevent two feeble-minded Sphinxes from staring at each other for an eternity, but since the berserking vine whip-wielder is berserk and won't rout, and the Cyclops is entangled every turn and can't rout...


Since they will both die if all goes well, you don't want to spend any extra gems.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

That is a neat trick. Most evil!

I often equip my thugs with magic items that assist by bringing other attacks to the party. I'm thinking about Spirit Helmets, Scutata Volturnus, and other gadgets that either:

• attack on their own, or
• summon allies to the battlefield.

Would your whip trick work against a thug or SC with a Spirit Helmet? Can my hat still zap people even when my feet are tangled in vines?

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Doesnt the vine whip trick fail if the SC you are attack has Quickness? It uses one action to break out of the vines - and does due to its probably high strength. And then the second action to bash your guy's skull in... ?

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Just to be certain, is the entangle effect from the Vine Whip AoE, or does it actually have to land a hit? A thug with reasonable defense is bound to avoid getting his sooner or later.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Nah, didn't work that way.
Tried with a quickened tjatse who had 48 strength due to a heroic ability as the target dummy.

You need actually hit to entangle your foe but you do not need to deal any damage (penetrate protection).

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

He did say it fails against high defense SCs and to give it to your highest attack thug. Attack boosting items would help too.

Using 2 of these would almost guarantee the target would always be entangled.

You'd have to be immune to any damage shields or other attack items as well.

It's a neat counter to some SCs. Cheap, easy and tailorable to what you see coming at you.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

The Whip has a length of 5, so will probably always work better if you don't dual wield it.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Your hat doesn't zap people while you're unconscious. I suspect it will still zap if you're entangled, though, since you still get an action ("break free").

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I enjoy Baalz guides which always introduce some off the beaten path ideas. That said, for raiding PD it is hard to beat the humble Frost Brand with an AoE effect, CR50 which will solve your fatigue issues in Cold 3 provinces (indeed I will sometime give surplus Frost Brands to mages, just for this), and nice combat stats, all for 3(w/hammer) W gems - one of the least useful types of gems IMHO so nothing to feel guilty about spending given they have less late game use then say S, D or E gems. AOE is hard to beat - not only does it wipe out squares of units but can help with high defense guys that would otherwise be unhittable. Speaking from experience, brands are one way to make use of blind units and Frost brands are cheap.

For shields, its hard to beat the Vine Shield. Awe is fun, but often needs Fear to be effective, and there are lots of high morale troops that can make an Awe unit a paper tiger - vine ogres, undead, skinshifters, anyone with a berserk bless, minotaurs, centaurs, etc. The Vine Shield can entangle most PD and basic units and has a decent parry value as well.

Thinking of anti-thug gear, I find SR is often the most overlooked resistance. CR/PR often comes with the typical undead chassis, and FR comes with commonly used Fire Brands, Charcoal Shields, and Dragon Helms, but SR is trickier to get. Most thugs will overlook it unless they are fighting a strong air nation. So as I think vfb alluded to, just giving a few Thunder Bows to some indie commanders, or to some high str/high precision unit if you have access to them, can be an effective and cheap deterrent. Pretty funny to watch 3 cheap indies with a 9 air gem investment trash a 100 gem investment while it sits their buffing itself up. I have been on both sides of that btw.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

It's not hard to beat a frost brand if you've got no water mages. Or if you're aggressively clam forging. Or spamming wolven winter every turn. Or you're trying to save for the Maelstorm. Or you want to crank out boots of quickness or bottles of living water or rings of water breathing. Or you're just simply trying to crank out 3 thugs per turn and have had bad luck finding water sites (a common occurrence, say, following my Eriu guide).

One of the concepts that I've touched on in several of my guides which I think I haven't done a good job expressing is how relative costs are. Sometimes water gems are cheap, sometimes they're expensive. Sometimes every other province seems to have an S1 indie mage, sometimes you'd sell your soul for somebody, anybody to make those mind hunts stop. Two different thugs, outfitted exactly the same can have drastically different "real costs" to two different players because the "real cost" is the opportunity cost. You using your pretender to forge those frost brands? They're not nearly that cheap if you are. In a very real sense 10E can be cheaper than 5W, and 10W on turn 30 can be cheaper than 5W on turn 10.

I give several good, concrete suggestions for things costing the same (or less!) gems than a frost brand which are often "good enough" and quite possibly using resources which have a "real cost" to you which is quite a bit cheaper. Certainly a frost brand is an above average weapon and there are plenty of times it's the right tool for the job, but from what I've observed in games I've played is that about 95% of "crowd control" thugs/SCs have a frost or firebrand. This is a significant misallocation of resources lots of times. You're raiding PD? My claim is you don't need a brand weapon to accomplish that goal most of the time and you can often get a whole lot more effeciency from your resources by putting to better use gems who have a small opportunity cost for the situation you're currently in. I'd much rather have 3 guys "good enough" to run PD off than one who kills the hell out of them - assuming I'm using them for raiding.

Also, it's absolutely not the case that you generally need fear to make awe work. I'm not sure what the exact mechanics of the vine shield are but I find the shield of beaten gold to be roughly comparable against "normal troops", and neither one is sufficient without considering the other factors of hitpoint preservation. Again, it comes down to "real costs", sometimes a N2 mage is not easy to come by.

The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

And an aspect of our readers. If the only "good" posts are those which list the highest most unarguable tactics, builds, etc (as if there is such a thing) then we create an elite atmosphere. If there are better choices then there is nothing against listing them but lets not give the impression that any lesser choice must be removed from the lists with only the end-game choices worthy of pursuit.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

One more quick comment about thugging/anti-thugging and quantity: a unit will preferentially engage units in front of it, and then I think directly behind it and then to the upper-back corner. This means that a thug surrounded by chaff will always attack the same square (or 2 squares if he's quickened and clears out the first square) every turn, with 2 or 3 new chaff plugging the "hole" every turn. The implications are both bad and good: the units attacking him will gradually fatigue out, unless they die from repel (or Fire Shield) damage first, but it also means that an anti-thug mixed in with a bunch of chaff is going to get a lot of free hits in without the thug ever hitting back, unless the anti-thug is unlucky enough to wind up in the frontal square. And of course, multiple cheap anti-thugs are exceedingly unlikely to all wind up in the unlucky square. This is yet another instance where quantity tends to win out over quality.

SCs may be able to counter this by using *real* AoE weapons like the Stone Sword, Sunslayer, and the Sword of Many Colors, combined with Quickness. Sunslayer w/ Quickness is sometimes able to kill *all* the squares surrounding the SC, every turn.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Oh yeah, one more thing I wanted to mention is the casting route can be a particularly good anti-thug route that I have yet to see anyone else use. Hand of death in particular is a great one, works great with...say vampire counts buffed-to-fly liches. :)

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Where did I say you have to limit yourself to a Frost Brand and Vine Shield? Thats taking my point ad absurdem. I just said “for raiding PD it is hard to beat the humble Frost Brand”. In your original post when you tried to compare things to Brands IIRC you reference the Flame Brand which costs 7 and requires 2 paths to forge – which I agree is expensive. But a Frost Brand can be just as good and costs 3 with only one path. And I tried to point out an aspect of the Brand that might be neglected – having 50 of CR (or FR) is enough to eliminate the fatigue penalty in extreme temperature scale provinces.

Of course there are times when you may need Water gems for other things. I guess I need to caveat everything with the phrase “may not apply in all situations” in order to avoid you taking the extreme case. But I generally find W gems the least useful of gems (again there are obviously times when this may not be the case). But I was making the point of relative cost and (many times, not always) find, say Earth, in shorter supply and thus relatively worth more. I can cite all sorts of spells that require those types of gems (eg for earth, Hammers, Crumble, Earth Attack, Mechanical Men, Earth Kings...) but obviously the player must decide themself what has the least opportunity cost.

Again, of course using your pretender to forge Frost Brands is more expensive than using some non-cap only mage. I mean if you want to use that to argue 10E is cheaper than 5W because you need to use your pretender, then I can just do the same and say using your pretender to forge any item you suggest is more expensive than a W item. It is sort of ridiculous.

Again on the Vine Shield, its almost always easier to forge than the Shield of Gleaming Gold (Con 4 vs. Con 6 and only requires Nature – the easiest path to get through indies, although admittedly getting N2 might be a challenge but overall is less difficult then getting E+F if you start w/o either). And again,in talking about raiding PD/taking indies, I think the Vine Shield works much better than Awe for the reasons I cited - basically high morale PD/national troops are more common than high Str PD/national troops (again there are exceptions as I am sure you will rush to point out).

I am not trying to discourage innovation, only pointing out the Frost Brand is pretty cheap for what you get and the vine shield is often better than the Shield of Gleaming Gold. Not in all cases.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

And of course Vine Shield + Shield of Gleaming Gold works even better, since if Awe stops them they still get entangled. Put it on a Poison Golem w/ Stygian Wings (also supplies Flying and Fear). And at this point Baalz rightfully yells "Stop! You just spent 75 gems to create a thug. Is that really cost-effective or are you mindlessly optimizing for performance? Could you still raid the same provinces with a Bane Lord with a Ring of Regen and an S1 mage to cast Body Ethereal and Luck on him? How about two national recruitables with Slave Matrixes and a communion master with a Fire Bola casting Summon Earthpower/Ironskin/Personal Luck/Astral Shield/Fire closest?" This is the Zen of thugging.

But I agree, if you want to talk about particulars, Frost Brand is often cheap and a nice item.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I tried using hand of death against llamabeast in the warhammerama game... it took out a large chunk of health but 60 or so damage doesn't quite cut it on a 300 hp cyclops. Still, against anything reasonable that would have more than sufficed.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Well you don't get a weapon much cheaper than the frostbrand for it's effect that is one thing (Don Corazon is right there) on the other hand I thought Baalz point was that while some weapons are cheap (say frostbrand) quiet a few thugs don't even need that weapon to still be able to rout PD or hurt armies.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

fists of iron
farstrike under 1.3

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

What are some "generic" thugs? Summons possibly that would be generally recognized as thug chassis.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Because thugs need to be gem-cheap, they're more likely to be recruitable units (which cost only gold) than summons. Still, avoiding national summons and sticking to generic only (and leaving off uniques):

Banes and Bane Lords come to mind. Vampires and Vampire Counts. Troll Kings and to a lesser extent Sea Kings. Llamia queens. Spectres. The mages you get from Unfrozen or Hidden in Snow don't usually make great thugs because they're #noheal, but with enough lifedrain that may not matter. Golems and poison golems. MAYBE Fairy Queens but I've never tried it (low HP will probably be fragile, but she's a thug not an SC right?). Firbolg Sleepers.

Wraith Lords may be thugs or light SCs. Tartarians are cheap enough to use as thugs if you have GoH up.

That's all I've got from memory. There's probably some blood and nature chassises that I've missed. Death obviously has the best summonable chassises of the ones I can remember, but Troll Kings aren't bad.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Thanks. Those will work well into a new song Im thinking of. :)

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I am the very model of a cheap generic thuggable,
I've good Protection, high defense, and gemcost nearly neglible;
My built-in gear's a plate hauberk and Bane Blade, which is adequate
For PD which will route if you can only make them hurt a bit.
I'm zero enc (like most undead) and rarely take a critical hit
I benefit tremendously from a simple lucky amulet,
I have the slots to use whatever gear that you can forge for me,
From Winged Boots to Aegis or a Vine Shield to a Brand or three.

I've resistances respectable, most Hydras find me affable,
A Niefel Giant's cold aura to me is merely laughable.
In short in matters economic, tactical, and Bog-beast huggable[1]
I am the very model of a cheap generic thuggable!

-Max

[1] Can't leave out the Bog Beast love. Besides, none of the other rhymes I thought of made any sense either. And the scansion is terrible. If you want GOOD poetry go read Poe or Kiping: http://www.wargames.co.uk/Poems/Grave.htm

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

MUCH better than mine. Add it to the Song thread please.

All I had was: "little bunny foo foo"
Poison Golem FooFoo
Running thru the forest
Scooping up the infantry
And bopping them on the head

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Will a successful Repel attempt lower defence? I.e., does the repel count as a hit.

If it prevents defense from being lowered, high attack and a long weapon might help a high-defense thug. Demon Whip comes to mind, especially in CBM 1.4 where it's Constr 4 and only Fire 1.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Pretty sure repel comes before the hit/miss calculation made by the attacker.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

And to add to that - it wouldn't matter if you hit them with the repel if they have high morale. They are only stopped if the 1 damage from successful repel to hit roll + successful damage vs prot roll kills them (as with dragonflies) or they fail their morale test. If you're against stuff with bad morale and you have high att and a long weapon, repel pretty much stops them hitting you.

That's how I understand it to work, anyway. So being good at repels only helps an SC if he's against things with shorter weapons which will suffer badly from taking 1 damage (and have lowish prot) or have bad morale.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Which makes a long weapon a weird sort of substitute for Awe. So a Demon Whip might be worth trying if you have inherent Fear.

I've tried this a couple of times but could never figure out if it was working better or worse than another tactic would.

-Max

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I think you get a -2 penalty on each repel roll beyond the first you make each round. It'd assist Awe perhaps, but I don't think it'll substitute for it.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

The problem with using Repel together with Awe is that everything that cuts through one will cut through the other...
But against most generic mobs, it is a good additional layer of defense. Mostly thinking about giants and sacreds.
Wonder if the wine whip triggers on a repel hit?

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

I'd assume repel instead of Awe. Especially with Fear.

It's not the same level of protection as Awe, but with other defenses it helps. Especially since it also works as a minor damage shield. Since you always attack the front square if you're surrounded, eventually that 1 hp per repel adds up on the other sides and you can watch them disappear for seemingly no reason.

Special effects of the weapon, like the Vine whip's entangle, do not trigger.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

It only does 1 damage if you beat their prot. Which is less often than you'd think. Though with a high strength thug or high damage weapon, it might happen fairly often. Not exactly sure how that part of it works.

It would suck with a whip though. They'd never do 1 damage unless it was against 0 prot stuff.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

Yeah, repel doesn't hurt, but I find it almost never makes enough difference to promote somebody to "thug" that wasn't there already as to approximate awe you have to have an absurdly high attack skill - which is cross purpose to a crowd control thug. I find it does do a pretty noticeable effect in troops (ie pikemen) who often only get attacked one or two times in a round and are often matched up against normal morale troops.

Re: Zen and the art of Thugging
 

The more interesting question, I think is if demon whip will trigger.

Becomes devestating against small chaff. If you have and high attack and a demon whip and it does a small area fire on every repel....