MA Eriu

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by bbz

My point is if you remove the false fetters effect from the siddhe lord its gonna be harder for them to ammas great numbers of always hitting thugs. Also there is not even need to remove it if you make it singe target rathr than aoe, this way high defence units will be a suitable counter, and you might be a bit more incined to go for a fire bless.

I do agree that the false fetters effect should be made to take effect on a hit, just like was done with the vine whip, and I mentioned that in the CBM thread.

Originally Posted by bbz

I am trying to think of something that can stop them but I cannot. Even big communions will fail due to how easy it is for Eriu to cast rain of stones.

I had assumed you were talking about 1-2 thugs (for which you wouldn't send a large communion), not thug backed armies, but in any case rain of stones isn't easy to cast. It was already often a death sentence for human HP level casters but now that it requires two gems to cast and thus can't be cast using an E random bean sidhe with just earth boots it's become a very expensive endeavor since you need two boosters to cast it in the first round (and getting it off the first round before the attacker can buff is the whole point).



Thugging is my favorite part of the game and I spend more resources on it than is wise and I've faced a lot of effective counters so I'll throw a few ideas out there.

First, look at the thug's gear. Either the player will have spent a lot of gems to avoid weaknesses (like I tend to do) or they'll have spent less and there will be vulnerabilities. No equipment to boost MR? A perfect target for smiting if you've got H3s (really, all you need are enough blockers and you're almost guaranteed a kill). Astral magic is the same thing - mind burn, paralyze, soul slay, etc. - all very effective if the thug doesn't have high MR, and given enough time even if they do have high MR. This is the great thing about MR magic - there is no full immunity and given enough rolls one of them will succeed. The only thing better is magic that doesn't allow a resistance roll. If you can pull off drain life that's pretty much a guaranteed win.

Second, look at the scripting. TNN/Eriu thugs can cast a lot of buffs - more than they can script in five turns actually. In one of my most fun matches my opponent was Machaka. My thugs could get full elemental immunity when buffed but they needed time to do it. He didn't give me that time. He cast haste on fire snakes and black bow equipped archers and I had two rounds before they were on me. I needed to cast bless first but what next, air shield or elemental fortitude? This cat and mouse game was huge fun but when he broke into blood magic the issue was decisively decided in his favor. Also, when it comes to scripting remember you may need to use "attack one turn" to get in range for your spells.

Blood magic kills glamoured thugs. Want an exercise in futility? Try sending thugs after Jotun late game. But you don't need high level blood magic. Research blood 1 and cast blood burst. Research a little more blood and then send flying troops to hit the thug pre-buff. Since they also have magic attacks they can knock off mistform even if you do get it cast.

Btw, even if you don't have high quality flying troops like blood magic does you can still send flyers to disrupt the thug's buff routine, giving your higher quality troops and mages time to close before the thug can finish buffing.

Also, these are not morale 30 SCs. Fear can route them quite effectively and if they're off raiding and don't have an escape province a routed thug is a dead thug.

Then of course there's the bane of glamoured thugs, mind hunt. If you're playing Arco then you just send out forces to retake your provinces post-raid. Does the glamoured nation have spectres covering every province? He'd better.

Anyway, I can think of more things later if you want. My basic point is as much as I like thugging/raiding it's not a game winning strategy. If that's all you've got then you'll trade provinces back and forth until your thugs are killed and then the nation with a real army will crush you. The key thing about the changes to Eriu is they now can put together a stronger real army (at least up though the midgame as mentioned earlier).