[Peter Ebbesen]

It hits lots of times. If you cast it in a MP game, expect somebody to dispel it, as the constant replacement of research mages and having to ensure that all critical human-hp mages have shock resistance is severely aggravating.

IIRC it uses something like a x%+myDom*y% chance for each and every unit in the world that isn't your own, i.e. each unit in the world outside your dominion has a low base chance to be hit and every unit within your dominion has a higher chance scaling by your dominion. Something like that, at any rate.

To get an idea of how hard it hits, you should try it out in SP first - I suggest using the DebugMod to quickly test the effects on a map of the same size you are playing on but populated only with the initial independents - that should give you some sort of idea.

TBH, I wouldn't use it against marauding thugs. Any human enemy will quickly issue SR equipment to his thugs while egging on everybody else to stomp on you for being a general pain in the arse, and no AI enemy is good enough that it requires you to spend gems to stop.