[thejeff]

Somewhat counter-intuitively a lot of thugs work better against players than against the AI. At least the design philosophy is quite different.

The AI wanders around somewhat aimlessly with large armies. To be any use solo a thug has to almost SC level, capable of handling an arbitrary amount of chaff, with some resistance to whatever the AI's mages specialize in. Thus, even for a raiding thug, you really need a large investment. OTOH, the AI won't send forces designed to kill that thug, so your investment is likely to pay off.

Most MP players use low PD, fewer elite troops and don't tend to have huge armies wandering around their backfield. Therefore a relatively cheap thug can do a lot of damage in the backfield. OTOH, the player will actually target your thugs, so you will lose them. So you make them as cheap as possible and expect them to do some damage and then die.

Very different strategies.