EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by Deathjester

I've tried it, and it works great. The main thing is the awe though. With awe +5 almost no hits get through, and they very seldom pop the mistform. She can script "air shield" as well. Against anything except high morale giants, undead and tramplers, she is near invincible.

Yeah, the awe is true enough. Still... I do not know why but I feel some reluctance to have a 400 gold, fully kitted 10 HP ubermage melleeing at the front lines...

[DeathDaemon]

I did use them, and they worked really well in groups of three. I had to make a couple tweaks:

• forge ring of lightning resist - my bodyguards weren't keeping enough cavalry, wolves, flying, etc off the mages to prevent casting
• issue with cold - I lost a few to cold auras because of stoneskin
• for revig - I used boots of messenger on E2, and earth boots + amu of resilience for E1 so I could cast summon earthpower w/o gems.

[Verjigorm]

I didn't like the "Oriead Thug" concept either for several reasons:

1. Orieads only have 10hp, so even with all of their protections up, they still get killed frequently by a single lucky hit.

2. Awe is nice, yes, but it can be countered easily by berserk units. Orieads, if left to their own devices rather than being scripted to attack, will spam Stream of Life until units get in range of Shockwave. One Berserk unit made in this way will utterly ignore the Awe aura.

3. Mistform is countered by magic weapons.

A 400gp mage that has easy access to reinvigoration and items thereof can cast a lot of battle magic. Is it really worthwhile to take such a unit and have it run into melee? I certainly don't like seeing an Oriead surrounded by a swarm of units. Against indie units, fine, they do quite well, but not against an enemy player's army.

Why would I want the Orieads (whose numbers are rather limited) to fight armies when I could use them to assassinate commanders? Their thugging ability is provable, but against a great host, they are always endangered. Why not use their power against a smaller force of usually a single mage or commander, or at most such a commander and 10 body guards?

[llamabeast]

The "particularly hard" hit, when it comes to 10 HP, represents 2.5 HP of dammage (25% of total HP as per the mistform definition...) so no diference at all...

I think mistform is broken by 25 damage, not 25% of hp.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

I didn't like the "Oriead Thug" concept either for several reasons:

1. Orieads only have 10hp, so even with all of their protections up, they still get killed frequently by a single lucky hit.

2. Awe is nice, yes, but it can be countered easily by berserk units. Orieads, if left to their own devices rather than being scripted to attack, will spam Stream of Life until units get in range of Shockwave. One Berserk unit made in this way will utterly ignore the Awe aura.

3. Mistform is countered by magic weapons.

A 400gp mage that has easy access to reinvigoration and items thereof can cast a lot of battle magic. Is it really worthwhile to take such a unit and have it run into melee? I certainly don't like seeing an Oriead surrounded by a swarm of units. Against indie units, fine, they do quite well, but not against an enemy player's army.

Why would I want the Orieads (whose numbers are rather limited) to fight armies when I could use them to assassinate commanders? Their thugging ability is provable, but against a great host, they are always endangered. Why not use their power against a smaller force of usually a single mage or commander, or at most such a commander and 10 body guards?

I don't use oreo thugs much, but assassination is a losing game.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I don't use oreo thugs much, but assassination is a losing game.

Why? With access to a nice thug, and a spirit helm. It works often.

[Viajero]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

I think mistform is broken by 25 damage, not 25% of hp.

Thanks for the correction. I guess the Wiki definition got me quite confused as it shows also the >25%HP in the list: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Mistform

[chrispedersen]

Fundamentally, it loses due to cost/return.

It costs too many actions to assassinate.
To concquer an indy you will have to assassinate 3 commanders.

To conquer an opponent you will have to stealth assassins. Which will take one or more turns, usually and runs a risk of detection. Assassinations also frequently fail.

Assassins pay a 'premium' usually for the stealth ability, and roughly speaking are inferior to equivalent thugs without.

So the extra turns - stealthy, or assassinating are the costs.

The return problem is this: The average mage, thug or SC has the opportunity (and will usually succeed if winning the fight) of killing *multiple* enemy troops and/or mages/SCs.

The 'return' on the action is therefore much higher than an assassinations possible death of an opponent.

Toss in the fact that the chances to score loot are lower too.

I'm *not* saying a well timed assassination, or surprise stealth of a key retreat province can't be an incredibly viable tool.

But merely that generally speaking much less so than other options.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

Why? With access to a nice thug, and a spirit helm. It works often.

Because it's not worth the time and effort.

Even if you succeed, you're likely to spend your time killing indy commanders.

And you have to keep moving, or they'll patrol with a force designed to kill you. Since they know where you are and how
you're geared & scripted.

When you could be raiding, taking provinces and sneaking away before you can be attacked.

Not that assassination doesn't have niche uses. Multiple assassins on an unprepared target can be effective. Assassins can kill commanders in an attacking army to split it. But not as a main use for 400gp cap-only mages.

[Baalz]

I've used this strategy verbatim, I'm a bit surprised how many people are dismissing it without even trying it. The ultimate answer is it works very well (in most situations), just try it. There are several people commenting that it worked well for them, and near as I can tell the people saying it doesn't work are speaking from a (flawed) completely theoretical point of view. For a bit more of a technical discussion...

As I discussed in my thug guide, mistform is a game changer spell as to what can thug. Magic weapons are a no-no, but theres plenty of situations where that's nothing you need to worry about when you're talking about cloud trapeze/stealthy guys that can dictate when they fight. Excepting magic weapons, once you get any sort of protection 25 point damage blows just doesn't happen so you've only got a 1% chance of mistform popping each time you get hit. Awe/vine shields trigger before defense (easy access to vine shields, no reason not to double dip), so if you've only got a couple people actually swinging at you each round, even a fair defense will counter most of them and against most foes you're looking at getting hit in the rough ballpark of a couple times per round. When you're talking about having a 20+ protection (iron /bark skin on top of armor) most of the times you're hit don't do damage (no chance to pop mistform). Again, just try it. Orieads with any cheap armor and mistform will only take roughly 1 damage every round even against pretty tough opponents. With regen (and reinvig) they just can't be taken down by regular troops - a pretty solid definition of a thug. With nicer equipment I'm not exaggerating that they can clear whole armies if the army is not fielding anti-SC strats (I've done it more than once in MP games) - a pretty solid definition of a SC. Magic weapons or mindless troops are easy thug counters for many thugs, but against "normal" troops - even pretty good ones the Oriead will clean up. Being able to pick up 100% elemental immunity to whatever seems appropriate cuts down a good bit on magic weapons you need to worry about.

BTW, even if you get unlucky and mistform pops from that 1% you're still pretty solid against plenty of troops with a 25+ protection, good defense, awe, vine shield and regen.