Urgent Thug advice needed

[moderation]

What is more important, defense or protection? I tried testing out a very high protection build with a full suit of black plate, but he wound up getting fatigued and criticaled a lot, then I tried a less protection, less fatigue build which seemed to survive pretty well against armies of 50-100 melee units. Maybe it's possible to get high protection to work if you balance things out better though.

[Shovah32]

Protection is much more importance. If a SC has more than 0 encumberance, he should have alot of reinvigoration. Black Plate is pretty bad on anything with more than 0 base encumberance.. Try marble armour or, better yet, a robe of invunerability.

[moderation]

Hmm, so what are the ideal fatigue levels for a thug that will be in melee? Should it be close to zero then to avoid critical hits? If I read page 76 of the manual right, a fatigue of zero or one means no chance of critical hits, and critical hit become possible at 2. Maybe a low but manageable level of fatigue is okay, but if zero is best, than maybe undead fatigue immune units are the ideal choice.

Also, how does reinvigoration work? If your reinvigoration is greater than your melee fatigue, on a mage-thug that buffs and charges into melee, will your fatigue drop every turn that you are swinging?

[Renojustin]

Undead can make a good chassis for SC because of their 0 encumbrance. But at the same time, this makes you vulnerable to anti-undead spells like Wither Bones which can't be defended against. Still it's a tossup because Drain Life doesn't work against Lifeless units, which means most undead will be safe against it. But Drain Life is a lot tougher to research and use than Wither Bones, so it's still a concern, but 12+ unresistable damage by D1 mages via Wither Bones which only takes one level of research seems to me to be more of a danger to SCs.

[Endoperez]

Renojustin said:
Undead can make a good chassis for SC because of their 0 encumbrance. But at the same time, this makes you vulnerable to anti-undead spells like Wither Bones which can't be defended against. Still it's a tossup because Drain Life doesn't work against Lifeless units, which means most undead will be safe against it. But Drain Life is a lot tougher to research and use than Wither Bones, so it's still a concern, but 12+ unresistable damage by D1 mages via Wither Bones which only takes one level of research seems to me to be more of a danger to SCs.

Do you mena Wither Bones, Dust to Dust or some totally different spell? Dust to Dust is 22+ AN damage to one square, no magic resistance, which seems quite close to what you described.

[Renojustin]

Ah yeah, that's the one.

Sometimes I get carried away and don't reference things.

Wither Bones: Level 6 Thaumaturgy, D3 needed, Area 6, 16+ AN damage, not resistable. Fatigue 50, Accuracy -1.

Dust to Dust: Level 1 Thaumaturgy, D1 needed, Area 1, 22+ AN damage, not resistable. Fatigue 20, Accuracy 0.

So either one can be used to take care of most undead SCs, with Dust to Dust being very easy to research and cast for many nations.

Drain life is a lot rarer so the short answer would be, non-undead SCs are less vulnerable than undead ones. However, undead often come with great perks like Fear or Immortal. So it's definitely a trade-off... if it's worthwhile or not will likely depend on the opponents you're facing, the state of the game, the spread of your dominion; it just depends.

[WraithLord]

Baalz said:
Here's a thread where I'm talking about a specific thug chassis, but I also delve into general thug theory and it should give you an idea of what you want to do so you can re-examine what you have available.

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...=&fpart=2&vc=1

For some strange reason this URL seems to lead to an empty thread

[capnq]

WraithLord said:

For some strange reason this URL seems to lead to an empty thread

Probably a temporary glitch, the URL works fine for me. The thread's title is "Build me an MA Ulm thug".

[Tuidjy]

> 1. a thug should have luck
> 2. and at least def or prot above 20-25
> 3. a shield is always nice against arrows, one that attacks/hinders enemies is better
> 4. a lot of HP never hurts
> 5. AoE damage helps a lot

You forgot the most important one:
0. A thug must keep his fatigue below 20 against his current opponents.

Which means either reinvigoration greater that his encumberance times his actions
per round, a life drain weapon or soul vortex. Of course, having all three is
nice, but much too hard to achieve without compromising something important. Once
you look at that list, you realize that thugs don't come much better than
Early Age Niefel Jarls.