Q: Effective use of magic resources

[ExitJudas]

cheers.

[Autochthon]

Another thing about using humans as thugs is the fact that they have too few HPs.

That means that even when geared out, they tend to wear out due to the higher rate of Affliction gain. Even if you play Arco, you'll still have to sideline your human thug quite often.

Also, given their Size of 2, they tend to get Trampled by large units and swarmed by small units

[Cor2]

Another fun thing to do with normal human commanders is

1: give them a bow of war and boots of quickness. 26 arrow a turn!

2: give them a rod of the pheonix or any spell casting device like skull talismen and give them boots of the messenger, gridle of might or anything that reduces fatigue.

3: If you have a death bless or earth bless or any bless go ahead and give non sacred mages shrouds of the battle saint. It gives them armour with no encumberance, plus extra killing power (for death) or extra reinvig (for earth) or extra Magic resist (astral bless). The death bless makes spells be much more likely to cause afflictions. So if you casting Earthquake (8? ap damage to the whole battle feild) and you want to cripple alot of people this is the way to go

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sword of Ice, Cat Charm, Raw Hide Shield.

If you want to 80% guarantee a well supported human thug's survival, get defense at twenty or higher, and choose your targets carefully.

While I don't find humanoid thugs a reliable strategy, there is room for lightly equipping a few. They can turn the tide of an equal battle. Simply having some cheap, spare commanders and giving them basic fire swords can be handy (early on). If you've got two equally matched national armies, but side A has three units that will hit all of the time, instead of half the time... And yes, you will get casualties. It's not a great strategy, but if you're playing say, LA Atlantis, you can't always afford to build a temple, laboratory, AND fortress. I sometimes skip on the first two to focus on churning out always scarce infantry.

[Shovah32]

Cor2 said:
Another fun thing to do with normal human commanders is

2: give them a rod of the pheonix or any spell casting device like skull talismen and give them boots of the messenger, gridle of might or anything that reduces fatigue.

When giving commanders spell casting items I would stick with boots of quicknes and, although quickness no longer works for spell casting, it still works for item casting IIRC(so banner of the damned/skullface/rod of the phoenix can do some fun things)

[ExitJudas]

great advice everyone. thanx a lot. i guess decking out low hp melee commanders is not something to prioritize compared to other things your magic users can spend time on. i thing ill do it once in a while though. there is something cool about a mounted commander in full battle gear with a huge mace charging into ranks of undead!

[Shovah32]

If you want to try that then play MA Marignon with some sort of great bless(E9N9 and maybe others) and deck out your paladins - it's pretty fun .

[ExitJudas]

ill keep that in mind shovah32!