The Art of Thuggery
 

I was curious if anyone had any suggestions on creating good thugs? And once you've made them, how do you integrate them into a regular army so that they're effective without getting surrounded and wiped out?

Advice on bane lords in particular would be appreciated as I'm going into a game to play MA C'tis, and I am constantly underwhelmed by the performance of my banelords.

Jazzepi

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Baalz wrote a Guide to Thugging, you should check it out.

Mostly it is a matter of what troops you are using to thug.
Bane Lords are immune to poison and have fairly high natural protection, sticking them with a Snake Bladder Stick, ring of fire/lightning protection, a good Shield and a pair of winged boots should get you pretty far as a raider or general nusiance.

Still, gear your thugs primarily after what your enemy is bringing against you.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Integrating thugs with normal troops is largely a matter of matching up movement rates. You can also place them sort of "in the middle" of squads, so the thug can't rush ahead easily, but it means he can't get into the melee until a few guys have died.

But Bane Lords are not going to cooperate well with C'tissian infantry, with a Chill aura, and Cold Blooded troops. You will mostly want to use squads of Bane Lords operating without army support, as sweepers, perhaps with a buffing mage or three. Then have the infantry clean up and siege castles.

Of course, if you were talking about having the Bane Lords "blend in" to a horde of skelly spam, that's a different biscuit. Placed just ahead of the mages on Hold and Attack, you keep the Chill away from the casters, but the first round of skellies should get up ahead of the Bane Lords by the time they engage. This also means any missile fire focuses on your thugs, rather than on your casters, so you get bonus points. ;)

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Bane Lords are pretty slow with their default armour (3 squares move!), and MA C'tis has no access to Winged Shoes, so I'd forge them Boots of Quickness when you hit const-6.

I'd give them a Vine Shield, Frost Brand, and Luck Pendant at const-4, and maybe a Regen Ring if you are swimming in N gems, or an MR ammy if you are in positive Magic scales territory.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

What about an Eye Shield instead of the Vine shield? I can never decide which is better. The eye seems better if your guy can survive the first couple of rounds, but I would really like to know when one is better than the other.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Bane lords are not thugs. I would never give one an expensive eye shield. Only cheap equipment. They are only good for specific homeland duties, such as killing wolves if you have the Soulstone.

Oh, and I like the eye shield if your thug is tough (50 hp), and has regen.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Eye shields are what, 10N gems? with a hammer that seems reasonable. Or are you being facetious? Baalz uses bane thugs in his Machaka guide, and they have worse stats.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Lingchih are you thinking of Mound Kings maybe? Bane Lords are such good thugs that with the right gear they are mini-SCs.

In the Bonsai Kitten game I had a Bane Lord in the HoF with 430 kills, around turn 60. He'd solo some enemy armies, sometimes team up just with a Turkey, and sometimes work as a thug in a bigger army of mine. Even Banes (the Conj-3 guys) and Black Servants make pretty good thugs.

I agree that 50HP and regen is a good estimate of when you can use an Eye Shield though. Or, if you just don't have Const-4 yet, Eye Shields are an okay substitute for a Vine Shield. Or if you are fighting one-eyed or low-MR monsters -- I think an Eye Shield might do better against Vine Ogres than Vine Shield maybe, if your defense is high or your protection is good enough to withstand a few blows.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Not very gem efficient, but I believe that Eye Shields cause their check *before* the attack is rolled and on anyone attacking into the *entire square*.

What this means is that three indie commanders + eye shields vs low MR troops = NO hits (except the odd hit that will eventually kill 1 or 2 over multiple combats). Not bad, but still 30 N gems (though it could be only 21 if you have a hammer, which isn't bad if you have lots of N gems and low access to thugs/better gear).

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I think we need to know if this is for SP games or MP games... big difference.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Bane lords are undead and have no magic...so they don't get fatigued from fighting and no spell casting means that quickness is always a nice choice...frost brand, vine shield or eye shield and boots of quickness or jade armor. pendant of luck and amulet of anti magic are always nice choices. They get solid prot from their basic armor/helmet; if you have gems to burn you can always upgrade those to get some more defense or elemental resistance depending on what you're fighting. Beware enemy death mages.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I think you're the first person to ever refute that the Bane Lord is the quintessential thug. :p With 42HP, they rival some of the physically weaker SCs, like Air Queens.

Bane Lords are very versatile, only limited by their inability to cast any self buffs, but as stated Revolution, in a sense their lack of magic is a bonus - just bring a buffer with them.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Generally my outfit for banelords has been this.

Frostbrand
Eye shield
Horror Helm (or nothing, I think the base helm is the same protection)
(I can't remember what kind of armor, I think I just don't give them any since the base armor is okay)
Boots of Quickness
Amulet of Luck
Barkskin Amulet

Reading Baalz's guide makes me think like I'm spending too much on the thugs.

Also, with these setup thugs I generally have a hard time soloing PD of 25+ which is fairly disappointing

What are the thoughts on eye-shield versus vine shield? I've always thought eye was a better choice because it has better protection, but looking now it's only a 3 point difference, and I think shield protection only matters when you actually block a hit with the shield?

Jazzepi

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I reckon eye shield is better against elites (as it eventually cripples them), but vine shield against chaff, as almost all of them will instantly get tied up so you don't get hit very much. This is just a largely-untested opinion though.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Pair your thugs and have one with vine shield and the other with eye shield.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

@ llama - good suggestion, but one should add that being the Eye Shield's effect MR resistable, its usefulness against elites depends on -which- kind of elites, as ones that couple their... eliteness (?), with high MR could more or less exit unscratched from a meeting with the thug. :)

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

If you want to know about the eye shields effectiveness against elites, ask DonCorazon about them. :D

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

@ Jazzepi -

you're right, if you're equipping your bane lords that way you aren't building thugs but SCs imho. And regard of cost efficiency with those gems you might have maybe build 3/4 thugs to attack a high-PD province instead of a SCs which has problems soloing it. I love that guide of Baalz, really makes you think about your cost-efficiency :)

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Sorry, I just hate Bane Lords (and yes, I know which unit I am talking about). I use them, don't get me wrong. I use them all the time. But every time I have really decked one out, he gets himself killed or enslaved.

I'm just not a big fan of giving them really nice equipment, since they just lose it eventually. Mid-game, I use them all the time. Late game, not so much.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Well that's why you just don't "really deck out" thugs. SCs are worth the investment, thugs aren't. You can spend 15 gems (10 with a hammer!) to put a decent 1h weapon and shield on a Bane Lord, and they become perfectly survivable for the applications you want them for. Double your gem investment, and you do not get double the performance, so just double your manpower instead. 2 Bane Lords with new weapon and shield will outperform pretty much any single Bane Lord with the same investment.

Late in the game if you have gems coming out of your ears, and you can't access any/enough real SC chassis, then sure, start really gearing out Bane Lords and/or Spectres, cause you gotta make do with what you have. But early game? If I wanted to get fancy, I'd give em a Luck Pendant. If I had bazillions of water gems, maybe I'd be convinced to throw a Bottle of Living Water to provide some backup. Helm/Armor/Boots will never be touched unless I'm going whole hog, which I never get tempted to do with a Bane Lord. They're only 12D, if you get lucky with a Conj bonus site, you can even field them naked, I've seen worse things on the battlefield. ;)

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Jim, I'm going to stab my gonzo knife into all your avatars' little eyes, if you don't change that icon.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Well if that isn't completely off topic! :shock:

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Violence is ALWAYS on topic.

Jazzepi

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I think my nightmares finally have stopped. Because those eyes... the horror. I'm not prepared to go there again.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

It depends what you use your thug for. As part of an army, they can be quite lightly equipped as the chaff around them acts to soak a lot of the punishment. If they've higher HP than any other units in the army they may want resistances against the mass of spells that will preferentially target them. If the thug is being used to clear PD on their own they could do with a bit more, as they may need to survive assassinations and have that extra lastability or hit avoidance.

As to the eye shield or vine shield, Vine Shields are surprisingly effective when two thugs meet. Most thugs/SCs will smash a lot of HP off each other as weapons tend to have AP and beat armour. A unit that's only going to survive a few blows won't have much time for MR resist eyeloss to occur. The entangle can delay attacks as the opponent needs to free themselves. The Vine Shield is also a much better tool versus PD because it disables the chaff so they can be killed at will - taking eyes out of chaff is fairly useless as they can barely stand up to you anyway. The eye shield must be nicer when two thugs/SCs pound away at each other for a long time. Your average thug/SC probably has high MR and can resist it a lot of the time, but eventually given time, all rolls get failed.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Jiiiiiim this one is low quality :(

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

Y'all can blame Tifone for this. ;) ;)

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I want the dancing scepter lizard back.

Jazzepi

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

He was so tired. He had been dancing for nigh on 6 months now. I was getting bored of him, I used to change avvies every week or two. I guess it's time to get PhotoShop installed so that I can crop and resize more readily (just doing these with a web resizer).

Oh and I love "spell magnet" thugs, they make me cackle like a madman. Easily enough accomplished, but still!

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

What IS that???

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

looks like a pigeon with a grouper's mouth pasted onto its chest.

Re: The Art of Thuggery
 

I like it. Looks like a baby sandworm.

Thanks Jim. Gonzo knife has been re-sheathed.