Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?

[krpeters]

[quote=rdonj;742583]Have you tried thugging? That sounds like something you'd feel is way too inefficient, but it works very well, and is really the best way to fight the AI. If you haven't and want to get a good idea of how effective thugging can be, try the following: Play Tir na N'og with an e9n4 bless. Try making armies that consist of 2 sidhe thugs, and 3 mages with air magic to at least level 3. Thugs should be equipped with a vine shield, a frost brand, and possibly rainbow armor to help with fatigue. Nothing else. [quote]

I have tried thugging. Normally to keep my thugs alive, I have to put a ridiculous amount (50+gems) of equipment on them, making them not cost effective. In the example you describe the equipment is minimal, so maybe I should give that a try. I'm not convinced it is going to work -- against 100+ troops, mistform never seems to last long enough. Once it fails, my thugs die quickly.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by Rookierookie

This makes sense only on normal difficulties. On Impossible settings, with custom advantaged AI-Gods, the AI will outbuild you 10-1 on conventional units. Units like knights will achieve a very favorable KD ratio, but there is only so much they can do before the AI swarms all over you.

Exactly, as I try higher difficulty levels, I just get swarmed by enemy troops, so I'm looking for strategies to wipe out his swarms. What I find is that most of the magic is geared toward taking out small numbers of quality troops, not huge amounts of chaff.

What is all the excitement regarding Thunderstrike? I've tried it several times, and it never seems to work for me. My mages nearly always target the periphery of an enemy squad instead of the center, so I kill the three guys in the square it hits and injure half a dozen nearby. Very underwhelming. Is it critical to cast an aiming spell first to make this useful?

[cthulhu]

Late-game AI on impossible difficulty will wipe through 125 PD without effort. 125 PD w/ a dozen decent battlemages backing it up though will stop most late-game AI armies, but will suffer occasional mage casualties to enemy fliers and spells and be defeated occasionally by particularly strong armies. Also useful for stopping AI armies in defensive situations: PD + half a dozen battlemages + some middling zero-upkeep-unit-producers (unholy priests, fairy queens, whatever). If the province gets left alone for a while it will start building up a few hundred zero-upkeep no-need-to-eat soldiers, which should hopefully make it impossible for the enemy to take it later on as long as the combat mages stay to support the troops.

In my experience vs AIs you generally want troops until about research levels 4-5, then a mix of mages and troops (possibly using PD or summoned troops to minimize upkeep) until research levels 8-9, then an end-game strategy (massed clams if not using a mod that makes them unique, massed juggernoughts, massed vampire lord or wraith lords, some wished up seraphs or chayots w/ full items).

[thejeff]

Huge PD is rarely worth it even against the AI. Maybe at a chokepoint if you want to concentrate on other fronts.

Thugs are the real way to go against the AI. It's not hard to build high end thugs/ low end SCs that essentially can't be killed by normal troops. The AI isn't creative about killing them, so it's worth investing the gems. You know the main paths that nation has, so protect against them and the AI won't surprise you like a human player will.

[Sombre]

No, but you could have a map where every province has a supply bonus site, or you could make all commanders give a huge supply bonus, if you want to remove that part of the game entirely.

[nordlys]

I've been playing a 300 everything EA game on Faerun map, and not a turn had passed without AI wiping a 125 PD of mine here or there. Everyone from Sauromatia to Atlantis to Arcoscephale to the japanese. Not with particularly large armies even, typically in 500-1000 range, and that's with normal difficulty.

Of course, I played Niefels, and their PD is notoriously sucky, or so I've heard.

[sector24]

I do play on 300 supplies, but the really large armies still starve if they province they are sitting in doesn't have enough population. I guess I am an anomaly, or I've just been using nations with powerful PD. The worst things for PD to have is low morale, and/or flyers. So Mictlan, Caelum, the giants, etc. are going to get rolled eventually. But most human nations do fine: T'ien Ch'i, Eriu, Ermor, Pythium, Utgard, etc.

[Sombre]

It sounds like you're trying to thug the wrong stuff.

And even if a thug does cost 50 gems (which it never should) if it then defeats army after army of the AIs, that isn't cost inefficient at all.

[thejeff]

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of advice is geared towards MP, because that's what most of the experienced posters play. Small numbers of elite units is the efficient way to go, so that's what the standard strategies counter.
SP is easier to beat, because the AI only has only has one real strategy and doesn't try to counter yours. You have to figure out how to effectively kill large numbers of troops.
Cheap raiding thugs work in MP, because no one invests in PD or has large armies wandering around in their backfield. And there's no point investing more gems into them, since if they run into a real army with mages, they'll die anyway unless they're a full-fledged SC. Or they'll get hit by something designed specifically to take them out.
In SP, you don't have that problem, but you'll generally be hitting stronger PD and larger armies so the thugs will need to be tougher. Which is OK since they won't be targeted by anti-SC forces.
You were playing C'tis? Have you tried Banelords? (Or Banes for a lesser verion) Maybe, Fire/Frost Brand, Vine Shield, Horror Helm, Luck Pendant, Antimagic Ammy or regen if it works on them. Flying shoes if you can get them. The default armor is good protection, Forge something if you need specific resistance or a special ability.
Wraithlords, with similar gear and casting Soul Vortex are better, but more expensive.

[rdonj]

The thing about thunderstrike is, used en masse, it can defeat ridiculous amounts of units as long as they aren't immune. Nine e9 tuatha sorceresses, for example, should kill about 27 units per turn, even before accounting for the splash damage (which also causes fatigue, which can allow your normal troops to defeat them more easily and even cause them to pass out altogether) which should allow them to kill significantly more. And because they have e9 in this example, the extra reinvigoration will help them to keep throwing off these thunderstrikes. Aim is not critical, per say, but it does help make each thunderstrike more efficient. Thunderstrike is also more efficient under storms, when you cast summon stormpower. Which can then allow your a2 recruitables to also spam thunderstrike. So a nation like TNN can mass a lot of thunderstrikers if it needs some chaff clearing. Of course, at 6 evo, you get wrathful skies... which will eventually kill any army that's not completely immune to lightning, and would not be hard for just one mage to cast behind a handful of lightning immune thugs.

Here are a few spells to try if you still find magic too inefficient: curse of the desert, stellar cascades, strength of giants, legions of steel, flaming arrows, wailing winds.

Curse and stellar cascades can weaken troops enormously, and even outright kill them with enough casters, but only require a few to have a pretty significant effect on tough troops. Strength of giants through flaming arrows are good army strength multipliers, and will make your own troops even more effective on a unit per unit basis. Wailing winds, well, used appropriately it will let you rout armies with much fewer casualties, which will have the side effect of giving you lots of easy kills in battles.

Also I agree with thejeff with regards to banelord kitting, but if you're using them with skellyspam as I've suggested you can drop the air boots and horror helm, and they'll still work. Banelords are NOT as durable as they might seem though, and should not try to take on large armies by themselves. They work better as raiders and army support. Taking on 100+ man armies single-handedly is the domain of real SCs and upper end thugs like sidhe :P And a final note on thugging: one of the biggest killers of thugs vs conventional armies is fatigue. Having more than a net +1 or 2 fatigue per turn is pretty much suicide.


Edit: Oh yes, I forgot. I was going to say that I once won a game against full on impossible AIs using unequipped sidhe lords as though they were troops I won the significant majority of my battles with those, and only started using real thugs in the end because it was taking too long to finish the enemy off. I lost probably less than 10 sidhe lords that game.