[thejeff]

Using thugs against the AI is different than against players. Players will kill your thugs whatever you do, generally sending something specifically designed to do so, whether be targeting specific weaknesses or using anti-thug thugs. Thus you make thugs as cheap as you can and hope to raid a few lightly defended provinces before they get nailed.

The AI won't react to what you do. So you usually only have to worry about covering his major paths. MR if he's got good astral, lightning resistance if he's got Air, etc.

OTOH, players tend to leave a lot of poorly defended provinces around since a good thug can take a lot of PD and actual troops are needed at the front. The AI tends to buy PD and have a lot of troops wandering around its backfield. This means you'll run into more generic troops and for a thug to be useful it has to be able to handle that. Which usually means a more expensive chassis and/or more gear. Which is OK, since they're not guaranteed to get targeted and killed as they are in MP.

To get any real use out of a thug in SP, he has to be almost an SC. Able to deal with pretty much any amount of normal troops. 20+ protection. Luck. Awe/Vines/maybe ethereal. No fatigue. Probably regen. AoE weapon.