0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
| Reducing attacks is critical to your second line of defense, um, defense. Defense is great, it¿s not hard to get a hero with a high one who can parry an incoming attack with easy. Problem is each attack drops his defense for the next attack in the same round by 2. Doing a little math, surrounded by man sized guys on 5 sides means the last guy is stabbing at you with a +30 to his attack. How high was your defense again? Fortunately, attack reducers come to our aid. If awe prevents half the guys from attacking, and our high defense blocks most of the rest then there¿s not many who get to try for a lucky roll to punch through our armor. Because awe and vines prevent attacks from happening and thus dropping your defense (unlike etherealness or luck), vine shields and shields of beaten gold are staples that are much harder to replace than brand weapons. Still, give special consideration to anybody who has natural awe, there¿s a good chance you can leverage that into extra economical thugging.
Hitpoint preservation is a big give and take. The more defense you have, the less protection you need. The more attack nullifiers you have, the less defense you need. There¿s another couple factors that go into the same pile: the more hitpoints you have the less of everything you need, and the more regen you have the less hitpoints you need. 13.1.1.3.5 Mistform Before going on I wanted to touch on a wonderful little spell that opens the doors to thugging to many guys who would otherwise be too fragile - mistform. Every thug (unless you¿re spending way too much on them) is going to take an occasional hit, and without mistform it¿s a pretty good bet that human hitpoint guys are going to at least take an affliction if they don¿t straight buy the farm. Mistform though allows those low hitpoint humans to slug it out as if they had tons more hitpoints than they do, it¿s the first way to synthetically gain hitpoints for a unit. In light of what I just said in the previous paragraph this is usually the difference between being able to make a cost effective thug or not -. without sufficient hitpoints the bar (and cost) is a lot higher on avoiding hits. 13.1.1.3.6 Regeneration The second way to synthetically gain hitpoints is regeneration. Look at it this way, if you were to consistently take 1 point of damage every round, while having one point of regen, well then your regen effectively gave you an extra 50 hitpoints over a 50 round battle. That¿s a drastic gain for a 15 hitpoint Vanjarl or Sidhe. This has an amazing synergy with mistform which conveniently enough makes your hits all cost a consistent 1 hitpoint so as long as you can keep from getting hit more than once per turn on average you¿re golden. I¿ve had many people question the efficiency of investing in a minor nature bless on lower hitpoint units, but examined in this light you can see why this is so powerful. Of course the same logic applies to units without mistform¿s synthetic hitpoints but more real ones. A Skratti werewolf regenerating 6 hitpoints per turn will potentially gain a whopping 300 hitpoints in a long fight, you can imagine how this starts looking when you stack more regen up. High regen is one of the seldom appreciated and used facets of thug preservation. Most know how hard it is to bring down that water queen regenerating 50+ hitpionts per turn, but few apply that elsewhere a more modest 10 hitpoint regeneration is still incredibly hard to get on top of by ¿normal¿ units combined on an already tough thug. One of my favorite SCs was an elemental earth king with hydra skin armor and a ring of regen. When I watched him wade through anti-SCs shrugging off the 30 or so damage which penetrated his protection every turn I fell in love with this strategy. There¿s several ways to get regeneration, and I believe every one of the stacks. Natural regeneration, a blessing, hydra skin armor, ring of regen, lycanthrop¿s amulet, and a spell buff (self or other). 13.1.1.3.7 Life drain The final way to synthesize hitpoints is life draining attacks. These are fabulous as they not only gain you hitpoints they also drop your fatigue. This two for one special is one of the best things for thugs except it¿s rare and often too expensive to be economical. Still, if you¿ve got blood slaves to burn on blood thorns, or a national summon with a natural life drain attack (say a civateteo or umbral) give it special consideration for thugging. Wraith blades and hellblades are, unfortunately, seldom cost effective. When using life draining attacks you mostly don¿t need to worry about fatigue at all, so stack that quickness on. Do be aware that you won¿t be able to drain the life from lifeless units, so be careful about running into skellispam if you¿re reliant on this to keep your fatigue down. 13.1.1.3.8 Flight Don¿t neglect the advantages of flying in a crowd control thug. Not only does this allow drastically better strategic deployment, it also allows them a much greater chance of fleeing if things go bad. Often, the equipment is the most expensive thing about a thug, so even if he gets greatly afflicted it¿s often much better if he can run off to pass the equipment onto a fresh chasis and retire to research or something. 13.1.1.3.9 Stealth Stealth is another attribute that bears special consideration. Because of the way the turn sequence resolves, stealth units go under cover before ritual spells go off. Combined with the fact that most spells won¿t hit stealthed units this means used cautiously (attack, then sneak, attack, then sneak) stealth thugs can be extremely hard to counter. Seeking arrow, earth attack, disease demon, teleporting responses, etc. just can¿t catch them. The one exception is mind hunt which does catch stealthed units, mind hunt is really pretty much the best anti-thug spell in the game. 13.1.1.3.10 Resistance Another consideration you want to make for your thugs is resistances. Resistances can make a solid thug almost invincible against the right opponent. Being frost and lighting immune is a serous pain to Caelum. Being fire immune cuts way down on the things abbysia can drop on you. Consider what counters your opponent is likely to use and it is often worthwhile to put an extra item or two on your thug. In general I don¿t like to invest in MR buffing items for thugs, preferring instead to invest in more thugs and trying to avoid putting them in situations where they have to make that roll. This goes right to the heart of what it means to be a thug, they should be fairly expendable and trying to bump up their MR can often double or triple their cost. Of course, there¿s nothing for it in some situations except to suck that up, but it¿s not where I aim by default. 13.1.1.3.11 blood vengeance I also wanted to talk about blood vengeance. This is a rare ability (or buff) that causes a bit of confusion. The way it seems to work is that once you¿ve been hit the blood vengeance is checked to see if damage is rolled against you or your attacker. This means that blood vengeance has a poor synergy with high defense and attack nullifiers like awe or etherealness because they negate the hit before it gets to the blood vengeance. BV has a great synergy with high protection and high regeneration and things like fire shields or eye shields you take just a little damage you regenerate while everyone around you keeps hitting themselves in the face. 13.1.1.4 Buffing Finally, I wanted to talk about buffing. Many spells are standards for thugs from earthpower to gain reinvig to invulnerability or mistform to that yummy soul vortex. As I mentioned in the fatigue section you really need to balance the benefit of any buff against the drag of the fatigue it bestows in light of the reinvigoration you have. It¿s seldom a good idea to lay down 5 buffs then attack, you¿ll often want to lay down a couple then rest a couple turns before attacking. Also don¿t forget that most buffs can be bestowed by a mage onto another. This can often open up doors to thugging which are not obvious, a cheap tower shield is often all it takes to make a mage archer-proof enough to lay a couple buffs down and retreat while the beefy guy runs forward with 0 fatigue. Note: you¿re mage is going to have to be tough enough to fend for himself against flankers if he intends to hang around which often of defeats the point of having a separate thug, but some mages can handle it. Also don¿t forget that berzerking units will fight on after their leader leaves. Have a guy guard commander and the last buff the mage lays is berserkers and presto that iron warrior¿ed, ethereal non-leader is now chewing threw everything there without the need of any equipment or a gift of reason. 13.1.1.5 Examples So, as a practical exercise let me list out a couple concrete examples using the theory laid out here. All costs assume one dwarven hammer was used and everything created on the same turn¿for no particular reason other than to tilt the tables towards good budgeting. Yes, everybody knows a bane lord with a fire brand and vine shield, lucky pendant and horror helm works. Let¿s see what else we can do with a little bit of creativity and a lot less resources. To head off all the ¿but¿but¿but¿s I¿ll preface this by saying obviously everything would need to be tweaked in light of what you expected to face, these are just some general ideas. Good example of an extreme budget thug: A Jomon ghost general equipped with a shield of beaten gold. Cost: 11 gems. The ghost general immediately catches your eye in light of what we¿ve been discussing. He¿s ethereal and has a fear aura, has good armor and hitpoints and like all undead he¿s cold immune with a 0 encumbrance. He is undead which opens up several counters, but still an outstanding value. His strength is 16 so the punch he¿s throwing isn¿t completely worthless, but the real charm is the fear aura will usually be all he needs to run off PD. Good example of a great thug: A Mictlan civateteo equipped with a vine shield & any decent armor & helmet. Cost: 25 slaves and about 17 gems. Like the ghost general she¿s ethereal with a fear aura. Unlike him she¿s got a life draining attack and self blesses and is stealthy. It¿s not like Mictlan is likely to have a good bless or anything¿. Adding a lucky pendant and flying boots are nice options if you¿ve got the gems and she¿ll be sneaking around terrorizing everybody, and very hard to counter. A good example of a buff-other thugs: Argathan oracle of the dead leading 2 umbrals wielding a couple fire bolas. Cost: 400 gold and 12 gems. Umbrals are ethereal and have high hitpoints and a life draining attack. Stack iron warriors on them and they¿re incredibly hard to take down. The oracle meanwhile gains reinvigoration from earthpower and possibly a blessing, and protection from ironskin/invulnerability and should be down to very low fatigue and able to handle a couple flankers (assuming they don¿t just get pelted down by his high strength bola attacks firing at closest) Good example of a caster thug (other than the eagle kings I just showcased). EA Abyssian Anointed of Rhuax sporting a fashionable blood stone, boots of the messenger, double enchanted shields and hydra skin armor cost: 32 gems, 12 slaves & 440 gold. With an earth/nature blessing and earthpower you¿ve got a powerful reinvigoration, buffing invulnerability brings your protection soaring up to the point your powerful regeneration is generally enough to ignore the hits which get through your high defense and burn the crap out of your attackers with your powerful fire shield. You¿re vomiting emolation every other turn in a wide area the potency of this thug matches his high cost. If you¿re lucky enough to land any of the 10% randoms other than fire even more buffing options become available. Good example of a high offense thug: Same thing as the one above, only using Anathemat dragons, substitute in something like marble armor & a shield of beaten gold and add a lucky pendant and bracers of defense and you should have the staying power it takes to crisp enough PD guys to carry the day. You¿re not nearly as tough as the Annointed, but you should be tough enough given your damage outlay. 13.1.1.6 anti-thugs Anti-thugs are intended to carve up much bigger targets. Generally they¿ll be targeting other thugs and SCs, but they can also be a good option for dealing with particularly tough troops like Niefel giants or Palashankas. The big difference between an anti-thug and a crowd control thug is the anti-thug is much more concerned about damage outlay than damage avoidance the idea is to kill them quickly before they can hit you back much. Anti-thugs are seldom going to have shields, preferring to dual wield or go for the big two handed weapons. Foregoing their own buffs and flying in to smack the bad guys before they lay they can get their own buffs up is how they like to roll, but this is often complicated by wily opponents placing chaff around so some cleverness is often called for. Weaponry obviously varies a lot, but a couple weapons bear special consideration: Demon bane, flambeau, moon blade many of the things you¿ll be targeting anti-thugs at are undead, demon or magic beings. These items lay out a lot of damage themselves, which stacks with your strength then multiplies. Its not uncommon for thugs to have strengths in the twenties (particularly if you kit them for it), it¿s not hard to figure how what happens when you add a big number to that then multiply. Duskdagger & gate cleaver AN damage is great for taking down notoriously tough guys as not only does it ignore their armor, it also ignores their shield punches right through it. Duskdaggers can be dual wielded, gate cleavers add a ton of their own damage, both are great in the right situations. Axe of hate causes an aoe fatigue effect which is a great way to bypass the rest of a SC¿s strong defenses, particularly dual wielded by quickened guys. Flesheater axe This dirt cheap item not only delivers a large amount of damage, the chestwound it inflicts can be a death sentence for non-zero encumbrance SCs even if they kill your anti-sc. They start racking up the fatigue, and¿well I already covered what happens then. Sword of swiftness/wave breaker/stone bird anything which gives you multiple attacks is invaluable for breaking through high defenses. Make sure you stack this with quickness and attack boosters like the ring of the warrior. Serpent Kryss/astral serpent often overlooked, death poison can be a great way to take down guys who aren¿t poison immune if you expect your anti-thug to be on a kamikaze mission anyway. Particularly consider this if they¿re using invulnerability. 13.1.2 Comments " Axe of hate causes an aoe fatigue effect which is a great way to bypass the rest of a SC¿s strong defenses, particularly dual wielded by quickened guys. " Actually the stun affect isn't aoe and have to hit in order to take effect. I've had SCs survive small groups of anti-thugs armed with Axes of hate by being able to doge enough attacks to have time to kill most of the attackers. It's still a great anti SC item but make sure you have high attack skill and enough attacks to get through. -> On the anti-thug topic: There's also the bows, which are good anti-thugs especially if the thug is the largest unit on the other side. Set phasers on "fire large enemy monsters" Botolf to feeblemind caster thugs. Thunder Bow is AN for non-lightning resistant thugs. High precision, a bow of war, and Flaming Arrows works pretty well. Ethereal Xbows for when MR has been neglected. Vision's Foe against high-defense thugs will being their defense and attack down to zero after 2 hits (or just one hit for one-eyed thugs). In the non-bows category, the Standard of the Damned is also good in combo with Quickness, against any thug that's not lifeless. -> About doubling up on thugs: this is also true strategically. Having two thugs (or pairs of thugs) attack adjacent provinces helps guard against surprises which are tough enough to force you to retreat but not necessarily tough enough to kill you straight out. Like, say, Send Horror spam, or 11 mages popping out of a fort, or an indy province which turns out to be inhabited by Spring Hawks and Sylphs. If you were flying in, or if you have an opponent who is savvy enough to attack your escape routes, you may get afflicted and have to buy a new thug but at least you won't lose the equipment. Plus, it's a lot easier to do things like cut off enemy armies or avoid "bouncing" off armies when you have attack-capable units in multiple provinces. On a tactical level, using multiple thugs can sometimes help save equipment even if you DO die. You still win the battle (denying gear to the enemy) and if someone has slots free he may pick up 30% or so of the gear. That someone could be another thug or even a mage--Niefelheim/Ashdod/Caelum/Agartha/Abysia/etc. certainly have the option of converting an arty mage to a thug if he picks up the right equipment. One final thought: peacetime armies (like the United States Air Force currently) sometimes focus on performance, spending lots of money to eke out every last bit of superiority and minimize casualties. In Dom3, though, you're an evil pretender who doesn't HAVE to care about casualties or PR, so you can go for the Russian approach, "quantity has a quality all of its own." A decked-out Seraph with four artifacts is STILL going to die to PD 20 + five indy priests with SotD, whereas an equivalent gem-weight of cheap thugs will take some losses but still kill all the priests. -> In addition to awe/etherealness/luck/vine shield, Astral Shield (attacks MR) is another dimension of protection you can add. It's usually not all that effective because I think attackers get weapon length as a bonus to MR, but sometimes it's better than some of the other options (awe vs. berserk/mindless units). -> Originally Posted by KissBlade " I should mention though, the argathan oracle's probably not a chassis you want fire bolas on. They're umm... less than precise with the things and might end up hitting your own umbrals. -.- " My thought on the fire bolas is that the oracle is not there to lay out damage, the oracle is there to buff the umbrals who lay out the damage. The oracle's job is to handle any flankers who get around the umbrals, and to do that he needs to have his fatigue low. If flankers get around the umbrals they'll get pelted by the fire bolas for a couple turns, precision is a lot better from very short range and if there's more than one flanker they stand a very good chance of being further broken up due to the entangling - from short range and multiple targets even the one eyed guy is gonna toss it in the right general direction. When they close on the invulnerability buffed oracle who has 0 fatigue from firing ranged weapons with reinvigoration, he's got a good chance of living long enough to accidentally drop his club in the right place to squish them, particularly since his strength and weapon will often crush PD type guys even if they make a shield block. Meanwhile, the fire bolas aren't going to do too much to the 20 protection umbrals, they're not relying on their defense at all to survive so being entangled for a turn isn't the end of the world. -> Baalz, I cannot understand how you ever expect to win another MP game if you keep telling people how you think! Awesome stuff, keep up the good work. In the spirit of tipping your hand, I'd like to give away my number-one favorite anti-thug item. It's a bit niche, failing against high defense/luck/vine shields...but for those fear/awe/protection/selfbuff guys, it's so devastating, and so deliciously unforseen, and so evil, I can't help but give it away...you guessed it, the Vine Whip! [crickets] Oh, you haven't seen a Vine Whip in action? Well, the next time some flying, regenerating, Dom10 Cyclops with 33MR, dual firebrands, and full resistances comes headed your way, calmly (but coolly) forge a Vine Whip, some Winged Shoes, and a Berserker Pelt (17gems+a reinvg item if necessary), and put em on your guy with the highest Attack rating. IED him right in that Cyclop's path. Practice menacing cackle. Open new turn file. Cackle menacingly as the Cyclops spends all 75 turns breaking free from vines, and is annihilated when the hard turn-limit is hit. Total physical damage dealt: 0 points Total psychological damage dealt: 15 points Total style points awarded: 1 million, possibly more
Since they will both die if all goes well, you don't want to spend any extra gems. -> Doesnt the vine whip trick fail if the SC you are attack has Quickness? It uses one action to break out of the vines - and does due to its probably high strength. And then the second action to bash your guy's skull in... ? -> He did say it fails against high defense SCs and to give it to your highest attack thug. Attack boosting items would help too. Using 2 of these would almost guarantee the target would always be entangled. You'd have to be immune to any damage shields or other attack items as well. It's a neat counter to some SCs. Cheap, easy and tailorable to what you see coming at you. -> I enjoy Baalz guides which always introduce some off the beaten path ideas. That said, for raiding PD it is hard to beat the humble Frost Brand with an AoE effect, CR50 which will solve your fatigue issues in Cold 3 provinces (indeed I will sometime give surplus Frost Brands to mages, just for this), and nice combat stats, all for 3(w/hammer) W gems - one of the least useful types of gems IMHO so nothing to feel guilty about spending given they have less late game use then say S, D or E gems. AOE is hard to beat - not only does it wipe out squares of units but can help with high defense guys that would otherwise be unhittable. Speaking from experience, brands are one way to make use of blind units and Frost brands are cheap. For shields, its hard to beat the Vine Shield. Awe is fun, but often needs Fear to be effective, and there are lots of high morale troops that can make an Awe unit a paper tiger - vine ogres, undead, skinshifters, anyone with a berserk bless, minotaurs, centaurs, etc. The Vine Shield can entangle most PD and basic units and has a decent parry value as well. Thinking of anti-thug gear, I find SR is often the most overlooked resistance. CR/PR often comes with the typical undead chassis, and FR comes with commonly used Fire Brands, Charcoal Shields, and Dragon Helms, but SR is trickier to get. Most thugs will overlook it unless they are fighting a strong air nation. So as I think vfb alluded to, just giving a few Thunder Bows to some indie commanders, or to some high str/high precision unit if you have access to them, can be an effective and cheap deterrent. Pretty funny to watch 3 cheap indies with a 9 air gem investment trash a 100 gem investment while it sits their buffing itself up. I have been on both sides of that btw. -> It's not hard to beat a frost brand if you've got no water mages. Or if you're aggressively clam forging. Or spamming wolven winter every turn. Or you're trying to save for the Maelstorm. Or you want to crank out boots of quickness or bottles of living water or rings of water breathing. Or you're just simply trying to crank out 3 thugs per turn and have had bad luck finding water sites (a common occurrence, say, following my Eriu guide). One of the concepts that I've touched on in several of my guides which I think I haven't done a good job expressing is how relative costs are. Sometimes water gems are cheap, sometimes they're expensive. Sometimes every other province seems to have an S1 indie mage, sometimes you'd sell your soul for somebody, anybody to make those mind hunts stop. Two different thugs, outfitted exactly the same can have drastically different "real costs" to two different players because the "real cost" is the opportunity cost. You using your pretender to forge those frost brands? They're not nearly that cheap if you are. In a very real sense 10E can be cheaper than 5W, and 10W on turn 30 can be cheaper than 5W on turn 10. I give several good, concrete suggestions for things costing the same (or less!) gems than a frost brand which are often "good enough" and quite possibly using resources which have a "real cost" to you which is quite a bit cheaper. Certainly a frost brand is an above average weapon and there are plenty of times it's the right tool for the job, but from what I've observed in games I've played is that about 95% of "crowd control" thugs/SCs have a frost or firebrand. This is a significant misallocation of resources lots of times. You're raiding PD? My claim is you don't need a brand weapon to accomplish that goal most of the time and you can often get a whole lot more effeciency from your resources by putting to better use gems who have a small opportunity cost for the situation you're currently in. I'd much rather have 3 guys "good enough" to run PD off than one who kills the hell out of them - assuming I'm using them for raiding. Also, it's absolutely not the case that you generally need fear to make awe work. I'm not sure what the exact mechanics of the vine shield are but I find the shield of beaten gold to be roughly comparable against "normal troops", and neither one is sufficient without considering the other factors of hitpoint preservation. Again, it comes down to "real costs", sometimes a N2 mage is not easy to come by. The point of this guide is that if you limit yourself (as many people seem to) to thinking a thug has to have a frost brand and a vine shield and a bunch of hitpoints, you're missing a whole aspect of the game. -> 13.2
14. Reserved Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|