EA Caelum

[Zenzei]

For Eagle King thugs you really want to have an E9 bless, this is paramount. For equipment my standard setting is frostbrand, weightless kite shield, weightless scale mail and girdle of strenght. If I have a fire random EK I add brimstone boots.

Script them with blessing-stoneskin/ironskin (depending on opposition)-personal quickness-mistform-attack. They should be able to take out almost any amount of conventional troops with this setup. Indeed, a well made EK is more like a SC than thug imo.

The above example has prot around 25, def over 20, high damage, encumberance 3, quickness, lots of resistances etc. Try it, you will be pleased by its performance.

[Renojustin]

If you're going to buff, you might as well throw in Mirror Image; it's great with A4.

[Zenzei]

Mirror Image is a great spell but I left it out because you rarely have 5 rounds of buff-time and it isn't really needed on top of all those other buffs.

The one instance where I would use MI is when fighting against opponents armed with magic weapons. In this case Mirror Image would replace Mistform.

[Corwin]

Zenzei said:
For Eagle King thugs you really want to have an E9 bless, this is paramount. For equipment my standard setting is frostbrand, weightless kite shield, weightless scale mail and girdle of strenght. If I have a fire random EK I add brimstone boots.

Script them with blessing-stoneskin/ironskin (depending on opposition)-personal quickness-mistform-attack. They should be able to take out almost any amount of conventional troops with this setup. Indeed, a well made EK is more like a SC than thug imo.

The above example has prot around 25, def over 20, high damage, encumberance 3, quickness, lots of resistances etc. Try it, you will be pleased by its performance.

If you are casting Ironskin you might as well replace wightless scale mail with shroud of battle saint, and cast Mirror Image instead of blessing.

[Zenzei]

Assuming you find astral enabled indy mages (your pretender likely has more important things to do than forging armor for thugs, if he/she has astral) and get decent astral gem income that isn't bad alternative at all. Personally though, I might still be inclined to save any astral gems I manage to scrape up for those Amesha Spentas.

[Corwin]

Zenzei said:
Assuming you find astral enabled indy mages (your pretender likely has more important things to do than forging armor for thugs, if he/she has astral) and get decent astral gem income that isn't bad alternative at all. Personally though, I might still be inclined to save any astral gems I manage to scrape up for those Amesha Spentas.

True, astral may be a problem for Caelum, since they don't have astral mages. But astral 1 indep mages are relatively easy to find (for example lizard shamans are arguably the most common type of indep mages), and you will want to get astral mages anyway for national summons, luck items, et cetera.

As for Amesha Spentas (which are indeed good units) - Battles Shroud only costs 5 astral gems, so 2-4 shrouds for your EK SCs are unlikely to make much difference. On the other hand Mirror Image on Air4 EK can make a big difference, especially if your opponent is using mages against your EK or using troops with magic weapons, as you have pointed out earlier.