Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Do Thugs always fight alone? Do SCs always fight alone?

I've read about Thugs/SCs, tried to build one, gave him some better bodyguards and some chaff to draw enemy fire and attacked, only to see the entire troupe rout because some chaff had died - so the Thug fled happily along, not even finishing his buffing sequence. In another try, the chaff which was supposed to die (3 heavily afflicted elephants) had routed the enemy, once more before the Thug finished buffing.

So are Thugs meant to fight always alone, even if they could bring troops or should I believe the DomIII manual that SCs should not fight alone due to the new moral mechanics? If so, should they always come with a biggerish army instead? Should they have bodyguards? Or should any squads be better lead by another commander?
More importantly: What are the considerations to take to answer these question in specific cases?

One consideration is certainly whether I attack armies or PD-only provinces, but I am not yet sure how this affects the answer. (Oh, I am talking about multiplayer, not solo play.)

(Also, I am considering shorter buffing sequence, currently I try at most 2-4 spells, of which at least one is low fatigue (i.e. <10), for example: "bless,mistform,invulnerability,holyavenger,ho ld; attack". The hold and holyavenger is in there for the reinvigoration derived from boots&bless to work.)

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

As you said, it depends on their role. Against armies, things will vary on a case-to-case basis. Against PD, though, I sometimes send out a couple of 'sturdy' chaff only if my thug needs to do some casting. Naiad Warriors are my personal favorite, having shields to block arrows as well as Awe to block most melee, since PD is generally relatively low-morale units.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

With the caveat that i play exclusively single player, i notice that thugs do better if at least working in twos and with 4-5 bodyguards each.

It is also important to select the right bodyguards: ideally a bodyguard should have high HPs and/or protection, a shield also helps a lot, the rest is optional.

SCs, if well kitted, can work solo without much problems...

You also should not spend more than 2-3 turns in buffs (2 is better) regardless of reinvig, as the problem is not only the fatigue, but the lost turns before the thug/SC starts dishing damage.

Edit: a good strategy for using thugs is attaching another mage to the thug couple solely for buffs, i normally use those independent 1 nature mages for this role to cast small buffs on the thugs (nature has some useful low-level buffs)... I always equip them with some kind of bow, script the last spell as eagle eyes and leave them to fire at enemies...

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Interesting - my answer would have been that they should always fight alone. But I guess it depends very much on exactly what we're talking about.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

llamabeast: i think the main difference is what you define as a Thug and what is a SC...

SCs normally appear medium-late game (unless pretenders) and have a lot of kitted itens, normally be from summons, and should fight solo for best effect...

Thugs on the other hand should appear early-medium game, have at most 2 itens kitted (normally level 4 or lower), be from recruitable sources and need to fight at least in twos and benefit by using some bodyguards... their advantages are early appearence and cheap price...

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Interesting. In the examples above, I was actually talking about yakshas and kinnaras, which are described as "thugs" in Baalz's Bandar Log guide available here or in the wiki. I equipped horror helmets, fire brand, lucky coins or vineshields, robe of etherealness and boots of the messenger, plus having N4E4 bless.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

What I had in mind was TNN/Eriu Sidhe Lords with frost brands and vine shields. They definitely aren't SCs, but they are best on their own.

I think I've never seen effective thugs with bodyguards, *but* despite having played for years there are many things I haven't seen which are apparently common.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

From the top of my head:

- Sauromatia Warrior Sorceress with frost brand and 4 Oiropatia (spelling?) bodyguards (script is blessing, barkskin, attack)

- Midgard Vanherse with Horror Helmet (optional) and 4 Van bodyguards (script is air shield/mistform, blessing, attack)

You can even change the bodyguards to less expensive ones, so long as they have shields and you will not notie much loss in efectiveness...

Remember: these are not meant to fight alone, they need to be at least in twos...

Of course, i only play singleplayer and have no idea about their effectiveness against human players...

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Often SC's are given badass items or have abilities which make it unwise for them to bring around troops.
The Unquenched sword, for example, should be used with care. It's area fire and heat from hell effects can wreak havoc on friendly armies (unless you're Abysia- which makes it a very good idea for that particular nation).
Stuff like poison cloud and plague carrier generally shouldn't be brought too close to troops either.

As far as bringing around a bodyguard, I would say no. Troops will hamper your mobility. You would need a flying body guard with as least enough movement as your commander. Also, troops would invalidate the use of spells like teleport or cloud trapeze.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

There are a couple of early game thugs builds that work well with a bodyguard. A single one with the same movement will split the attacks on the main thug in half.
Vanherse with a Van, Eagle King with a yazata, a few other things.

I'd strongly hesitate to send a Thug with enough bodyguards to trip the 75% hp retreat, unless they're close to as tough as he is.

Later in the game thugs and SCs are often teamed up or used in larger armies. Multiple thugs can be used as SC killers.

SP is different from MP in many ways. Strategies that work in one don't work in the other. The AI tends to recruit more chaff troops and have them wandering around it's backfield and it tends to buy a decent amount of PD. It also doesn't know how to target a thug's weaknesses. This combination means that cheap disposable thugs tend to get overwhelmed, but it also means it's worth investing more since if you equip a thug to handle an arbitrary amount of chaff and your enemies common magic, he'll survive indefinitely.
In MP, if you put that much into him, a player will find the weakness and kill him anyway, so you want minimal investment. Which is ok, because players, knowing that any PD can be killed by a decent thug don't bother investing in much of it and you can raid them with even cheaper thugs. Who will quickly be killed, but who cares they were cheap.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

> I'd strongly hesitate to send a Thug with enough bodyguards to trip the 75% hp retreat, unless they're close to as tough as he is.

This is critical. In general, a thug is designed to be able to fight without taking any damage for a very long time. You usually optimize thugs' equipment/buffs for defensive capabilities (protection, awe, defense, reinvig) and assume that given enough time the thug can kill PD with their natural attacks. Banes/Bane lords are a good example of this: If you ever try to use them together with an army, they will be almost useless because of their slow movement; by the time they do anything useful the rest of the army will either have won or be routed.

Bodyguards are sometimes useful, especially when they occupy the same square as the thug. So you will see Helheim helkarls with one mounted sacred; Caelum Eagle Kings with one Yazata, Kailasa yakshas (?) with one summonable sacred. Are there any size 2 thug types? Ulm perhaps? In that case I could see putting in 2 bodyguards to fill the square. The reason you want to do this is it halves or thirds the number of incoming attacks; this is important if you are relying on awe/defense.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

> I'd strongly hesitate to send a Thug with enough bodyguards to trip the 75% hp retreat, unless they're close to as tough as he is.

It's actually a good trick to know, to get the thug to retreat earlier when in danger.

Let's say a thugs has 20 hp, and the escort 20 hp, and the thug is being overwhelmed for whatever reason (escort killed and taking heavy damage). He'll flee when down to 10hp, while if he's alone, he'll flee at 5 hp, which could improve their survival (depending of the situation).

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

There's defnitely size two thus. First that springs to mind are oreiads.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

In my opinion there are three kinds of thugs.

1) Raiders: This is the most common and useful type. They rely on speed, flight, teleportation/CT and stealth to capture poorly defended provinces. They are of less use vs the computer because the AI tend to leave a similar number of chaff troops in each province. Humans tent to not waste money on defenses in non-critical provinces due to money restraints.

Examples include Glamour Cavalry, Shishis, Eagle kings.

2) The second kind of thug is the army thug. Typically a Herse or similarly tough recruitable commander. Give them a frostbrand or a demon whip and mix them in with normal elite troops for some extra sting. Also serves to protect normal troops from enemy thugs that use mistform/mirror image/body ethereal etc. Unlike most thugs they rely on the normal troops and their battle line for their survivability. So take care during placement.
In practice this takes a lot of micro so you rarely see this kind of thug.

3) The third kind is the Main Battle Thug. The Dominions answer to the main battle tank. Useful because they are spammable and affordable. They can make up entire armies of their own or fight together with real armies with some good scripting. When fighting with real armies they must not spend too much time buffing though, or the battle will be over before they can get to it.
The operative word here is cost effectiveness. They must be cheap or you might as well spend the gems on summonable troops.

Examples includes Shuras, Ujigamis, Skrattis, pre-CBM Zammzumites and again, Shishis. Most of these are nationals so you wont see them too often either.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

What are Shishis? I cannot find them in the wiki.

Re: Should thugs fight alone or with bodyguards?
 

Endgame diversity mod (EDM) summons. Now part of CBM.