thugh approval

[Neils]

Any suggestions about my thug?
https://ibb.co/kF7cPK

i'm getting rid of the disease in a few turns.

[terve886]

Too expensive to be "thug" (good thugs are cheap), too bad magic paths to be SC (nature is better as army support magic).

The MR is also too low for all that gem cost. It is rather vulnerable to many instakill spells that test MR.

[Neils]

ok thx, still learning here ;-)

[Zymeth]

TBH - it depends which nation is it. It could be at least "ok" option, depending on alternatives. Imo , it is better to have 1 SC than none.

[Neils]

i am MA eriu

[Zymeth]

Eriu is quite underpowered nation, and Im afraid that the only way to play them is some good bless for their glamour commanders , troops and Cu sidhes. In any case, SC can be made well out of their Tuatha or Sidhe Lords. No real reason to get Ivy king for that nation imo.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Zymeth:

TBH - it depends which nation is it. It could be at least "ok" option, depending on alternatives. Imo , it is better to have 1 SC than none.

The unit in question isn't exactly SC material either, it lacks survivality to face armies supported with magic. Simply human troops buffed with antimagic and strength of the giants can be enough to defeat it, as the base protection is not high enough to block all incoming attacks and antimagic will make the vine shield which is the units main protection inefective. 7 base regenation is not enough to keep up with all the incoming damage. Even worse scenario is, if the ivy king is facing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thug that can simply cut it in two with minimal effort.

[Neils]

ok so for a thug its too expensive, for a SC its too weak

[Zymeth]

Originally posted by terve886:

Originally posted by Zymeth:

TBH - it depends which nation is it. It could be at least "ok" option, depending on alternatives. Imo , it is better to have 1 SC than none.

The unit in question isn't exactly SC material either, it lacks survivality to face armies supported with magic. Simply human troops buffed with antimagic and strength of the giants can be enough to defeat it, as the base protection is not high enough to block all incoming attacks and antimagic will make the vine shield which is the units main protection inefective. 7 base regenation is not enough to keep up with all the incoming damage. Even worse scenario is, if the ivy king is facing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thug that can simply cut it in two with minimal effort.

Not every nation has such easily avalaible counters , especially on every province you'd like to take.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Parathion:

ok so for a thug its too expensive, for a SC its too weak

Yup, SCs either need offensive power that will let them take out all threats before they get attacked or survivality to last multiple different attacks. Usually SC is combination of both.

Actually all SCs can be countered rather easily if your opponent focuses on countering them (counter thugs, magic specialised to kill the SC).

A somewhat semi SC would be sea king empowered in fire, given water bracelet and then armor, shield and helmet to increase its survivality.
This lets the sea king cast acid rain (as long as you have it researched) and then fall asleep for some turns (Really Dangerous!).

For armor you either want high protection, such as armor of the elements (if you also want security against magic) or armor of the knights, while you could either wear boots of stone or iron helmet to increase natural protection. Another option is to give robe of the sea on top of the water bracelet to prevent the sea king from falling unconcious.

Basically you will want the sea king to be able to tank out attacks while the acid rain kills most enemy troops and forces them to rout.
SC like this is very expensive mainly due to the fire empowerement which already costs 50 gems on its own.


A general tip to SC and thug building is that instead of trying to make the thug/SC protected against everything, you will equip it with items that allows it to survive against the things that your opponent is bringing to face you.

The above mentioned sea king thugged to cast acid rain worked very well against MA Nazca player who was using massive armies of supayas with monsterous bless. I just made the sea king have huge MR and protection to tank the incoming phantasmal weapons while the acid rain melted away the sacred armies among with the mages that were commanding them. It will not work if you are fightning giants or nation that is able to iron skin its entire army to prevent all the damage from acid rain.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Zymeth:

Originally posted by terve886:

The unit in question isn't exactly SC material either, it lacks survivality to face armies supported with magic. Simply human troops buffed with antimagic and strength of the giants can be enough to defeat it, as the base protection is not high enough to block all incoming attacks and antimagic will make the vine shield which is the units main protection inefective. 7 base regenation is not enough to keep up with all the incoming damage. Even worse scenario is, if the ivy king is facing a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ thug that can simply cut it in two with minimal effort.

Not every nation has such easily avalaible counters , especially on every province you'd like to take.

Thugs are for taking provinces, SCs are for beating armies. Having low MR is serious weakness for any SC as pretty much all magic paths have some sort of MR testing attack that either kills or enslaves the target unit. There is also the problem that it is SC that relies purely on killing armies with melee (it can't cast magic due to the Lychantrope's amulet, not that nature magic has great SC paths anyway), which means it might face problems when turn order limmit is reached or it simply walks close to mages who are able to cast short range, high damage spells.

The Ivy king would work as wonderful thug to take provinces, except that it is too expensive to be used as thug, since thugs are meant to be cheap enough to be considered disposable. Of course you want to equip them to the point where they simply don't die randomly, but you aren't trying to make them immortal because with the coost of trying to achieve that, you could just equip multiple other thugs.

[Zymeth]

Then I agree - I did not have these definitions in my mind.

[Twogun]

parathion-

many of these suggestions are very good for MP, and if your goal is to win MP, then you should heed them.

that said, i encourage you to 'make your own way' a bit as far as strats. i'm not sure what your design is for, but perhaps it is quite effective for what you want to do. what the other posters are talking about is 'MinMaxing'-which is, get the maximum effect for minimum cost. in MP, that's important.

you, however, may be playing in a newbie game or SP or whatever. so you don't always have to minmax. it might be more fun to do it your own way. i've built thematic thugs in MP games for fun(and who knows, maybe i lost because if it-i really don't care, it was a blast!).

what i'm saying is, in a game as detailed, lore filled, and just plain cool as dominons, there doesn'e always have to be a RIGHT way to build things. you can have Your way, as well.

enjoy the game. it's a lot of fun.

[Neils]

thx all for the info!!

[Rope Man]

Originally posted by Parathion:

i am MA eriu

you can recruit Sidhe Lords and use them as thugs just set them at the back and have them bless themselves and cast mistform (alteration 3) maybe give them a vineshield they're pretty good raiders I think since they're mobile and have stealth and glamour

[ChaosKhan]

Hm, like some wrote already, it is basically a thug level threat beeing as expensive as an SC. Some described pretty well what thugs and SCs essentially are and what they are beeing used for, but no one really told how exactly you differentiate between those on the economical scale - I'll fill on this one.

Thug

A thug should be basically a low to medium cost chassis, ideally with some initial damage mitigation or other bonis to start with. For example, a classic, light thug would be the Bane. It costs only 7 death gems to get, starts with decent gear and is undead, making it basically tireless. (Beeing tireless means, that you don't have to invest into reinvigorational items and can therefore save gems.) Now, a thug should have at least 1 extra (magical) layer of damage mitigation (except protection and defence) to make him nearly imprevious to standard chaff opponents. Added to that, he should dispatch this chaff also as quickly as possible to minimize the damage received. A Bane simply achieves those goals by equipping a Vine/Eye Shield and Frost Brand - nothing else. With this, he can take out 10 PD pretty easily and costs 15 gems stock in equipment (11 with Dwarven Hammer).

Basically, a thug should never cost more than 30 gems in equipment, because you can just do so much more with those gems instead.

SC

Super combatants are guys with equipment worth more than 30 gems and an unlimited investment in other types of ressources. Those guys are there to support large offensives but can also do some solo work on occasion. There really aren't a lot of limits on how to equip them, because while thugs need to be cost efficient, SCs require to be most effective against certain armies and threats. For example, if the opponent has astral magic freely at his disposal, maxing out magic resistance is a very sensible thing to do, if you don't want your expensive SCs mind blown to smithreens on turn 1.

Now, what is your Ivy King? Lets first look at the chassis.
The Ivy King has some light damage resistance to some damage types and is size 4. He costs 30 nature gems to summon (which is quite a lot) and has nature rank 3 for self buffing. This makes him suited for a heavy thug chassis role, but for an SC there are obviously better options. Just compare him to, lets say, a Niefel Giant, Heliophagus or a Fire King. Those are real SC chassis.
Lets look at his equipment.
You gave him basically omniprotection against multiple damage sources and kitted him out with equipment costing over 50 gems at least. He is protected decently and does decent damage, so equipment wise, he is balanced. What stops him from beeing a good SC is basically his chassis.

What can we do to make this guy a real thug? First, we need to decide his job. I actually think, that there are a lot more uses for a thug than just beeing a province capper, but lets go the main route to keep it simple. As he is a hevy thug by chassis, we should also invest into him like a heavy thug. Therefore we need to reduce the equipment to about 25 gems combined. In this particular situation, my guess is, that you want to keep him flying, therefore I would leave the Shoes, Vine Shield and 1 Weapon. Yeah, thats all. That is basically all the Ivy King needs to survive solo against weak PDs. In the battle he would just self buff with 1 or 2 spells, for example Personal Regeneration and just wait for the enemy soldiers to close in after that so he can meanwhile reduce fatigue by doing nothing (or just cast 1 spell and then attack rear to kill the commander outright). By no means a cost efficient thug, but one nonetheless. It would hurt a lot to lose those 55 gems if he dies though.