Dominions 5 – Vortäuschen, Segnen und Gangsterdesign

Dies ist eine schnelle und schmutzige Anleitung zum Aufbau deines Pretender, deines Bless und deiner Thugs, indem du einen allgemeinen Überblick und eine Liste guter verfügbarer Optionen erhältst.

Leitfaden zum Bauen von Pretender, Bless und Thugs

Einführung

Dominions 5 ist ein sehr komplexes Spiel. Wenn Sie nicht über ein solides Verständnis der Spielmechanik verfügen, kann es schwierig sein, beim Entwerfen Ihrer Nation und ihrer Einheiten gute Entscheidungen zu treffen, und die schiere Menge an verfügbaren Optionen kann für einen neuen Spieler geradezu einschüchternd sein. Es gibt detaillierte Anleitungen da draußen, die tief in die Mathematik hinter dem Spiel einsteigen. Dafür ist diese Anleitung nicht da. Dieser Leitfaden soll einen knappen Überblick über einige der komplizierteren Teile des Spiels geben und Vorschläge machen, was bei der Anpassung Ihrer Nation zu beachten ist.

Pretender-Körper

Nachdem Sie Ihre Nation ausgewählt haben, wählen Sie als Erstes den Körper Ihres Prätendenten aus. Es gibt 4 Archetypen, basierend auf dem Basis-Dominion-Score:

Dominion 1:„Regenbogenmagier“

Benannt nach ihren farbenfrohen Symbolen für magische Fähigkeiten. Dies sind spottbillige sterbliche Körper, die für den Kampf zu zerbrechlich sind, aber in der Lage sind, eine Vielzahl von magischen Pfaden einzuschlagen. Dadurch können sich Nationen, die normalerweise nur Zugang zu einigen wenigen Magieschulen haben, in andere Arten verzweigen, zu denen sie normalerweise keinen Zugang haben. Sie sind auch eine gute Möglichkeit, sowohl gute Waagen als auch einen billigen Segen zu erhalten (geben Sie 3 Punkte entweder in Feuer/Wasser/Erde/Luft oder Astral/Natur/Tod/Blut).

Dominion 2:„Awake Expanders“

Diese Jungs sind riesige Monster mit hohem natürlichen Schutz und mehreren Angriffen, was sie ab Runde 1 zu mächtigen Schlägern macht und fast immer wach gehalten wird. Sie existieren, um Ihnen zu helfen, Ihr Territorium gegen NPCs in Jahr 1 zu erweitern und Ihnen zu helfen, frühe Kriege gegen andere Spieler in Jahr 2 oder 3 zu führen. Sie sind nicht in der Lage, die meisten Arten von Ausrüstung zu tragen, sodass sie in der Mitte des Spiels an Effektivität verlieren. Nehmen Sie einen Wach-Expander, wenn Sie Schwierigkeiten haben, Unabhängige zu erobern (zielen Sie darauf ab, bis Runde 12 mindestens 10 Provinzen zu haben); oder nimm einen, wenn du einfach nur super aggressiv sein und so viel Land wie möglich erobern und frühe Kriege beginnen willst. Für zusätzliche Aggressivität nimm einen mit einem fleischgewordenen Segen, um zu versuchen, aus einem starken frühen Spiel einen Schneeball zum Sieg zu erringen. Passen Sie auf, wenn Sie in einen frühen Krieg verwickelt sind, sind vorgetäuschte Götter viel schwächer in der feindlichen Herrschaft, und es ist riskant, die Hauptstadt eines Feindes mit einem zu überstürzen.

Dominion 3:„Titanen“

Obwohl sie Riesen sind, sind diese Jungs normalerweise zu schwach, um Ihnen bei der Erweiterung des ersten Jahres zu helfen, da die meisten von ihnen mit unscheinbarer Ausrüstung und geringem natürlichen Schutz beginnen. Manchmal können sie es schaffen, besonders wenn Sie ihnen schnell eine grundlegende Ausrüstung schmieden können, aber ihr Hauptvorteil liegt im mittleren/späten Spiel, nicht im frühen Spiel. Sie haben einen guten Zugriff auf Magie auf 2 oder 3 Pfaden und sie haben eine Vielzahl von Ausrüstungsslots, was bedeutet, dass sie extrem mächtige Einheiten abgeben, wenn sie voll ausgestattet sind, und um Bau 4 herum können Sie davon ausgehen, dass sie mächtiger werden als die Monster von Dominion 2.

Dominion 4:„Unbewegliche“

Dies sind supergünstige Körper mit starker Magie auf 2 oder 3 Pfaden, die ihre Provinz jedoch nicht verlassen können, außer durch Magie (erfordert ein Labor). Sie sind normalerweise auch ziemlich langlebig, können aber normalerweise nur in einer defensiven Rolle verwendet werden. Ihr Hauptzweck ist es, ein Statistikstab für einen guten Segen oder eine gute Waage zu sein.

Hybride

Es gibt auch ein paar Sonderlinge wie den Demilich, den Virtue und den Ghost King (und viele mehr), die in keine der oben genannten Kategorien passen. Diese Anwärter sind vielseitiger, haben aber auch ihre eigenen Nachteile. Der Demilich ist ein Hybrid zwischen einem Regenbogenmagier und einem Immobile, er hat einen guten magischen Zugriff, aber nicht die Haltbarkeit anderer Immobile. Der Virtue ist ein Hybrid zwischen einem Awake Expander und einem Titan, er hat eine Vielzahl von eingebauten Fähigkeiten, die ihn in Runde 1 expandieren lassen, und er hat eine ganze Reihe von Ausrüstungsslots, aber er ist viel kleiner und schwächer als ein echter Titan . Der Ghost King ist ein Hybrid zwischen einem Rainbow Mage und einem Awake Expander, er kann in andere Pfade verzweigen und bei der Expansion helfen, ist aber teurer als ein Rainbow und ist schlechter in der Expansion als ein dedizierter Awake Expander. Beachten Sie also, dass es Ausnahmen zu den 4 oben beschriebenen Archetypen gibt.

Wach, schlafend oder eingesperrt?

Wenn Sie Ihren Anwärter dazu bringen, das Spiel schlafend zu starten, erhalten Sie eine riesige Menge an Designpunkten zurück, die Sie verwenden können. Aus diesem Grund solltest du das Erwachen deines Gottes wahrscheinlich so lange wie möglich hinauszögern, wenn sein Erwachen keinen wesentlichen Nutzen bringt.

Wach

Wach bedeutet, dass Sie das Spiel mit Ihrem Anwärter in Ihrer Festung beginnen. Dafür gibt es immer nur einen Grund, und zwar, dass Sie im ersten Jahr, wenn der größte Teil der Welt unbeansprucht und zu gewinnen ist, eine mächtigere Erweiterung wünschen. Du solltest deinen Anwärter erwecken, wenn du über einen mächtigen fleischgewordenen Segen verfügst, der die Macht deiner heiligen Truppen erheblich steigert, oder wenn du einen mächtigen Anwärter hast, der Provinzen mit minimaler Vorbereitung zuverlässig erobern kann.

Schlummernd

Ruhend bedeutet, dass Ihr Anwärter ungefähr um Runde 12 aufwachen wird. Das bedeutet, dass er zu spät kommt, um Ihnen bei der frühen Spielerweiterung zu helfen (die normalerweise inzwischen abgeschlossen ist), aber er kann Ihnen bei der Suche nach magischen Stätten, Recherchen, Gegenstände herstellen oder gegen andere Spieler kämpfen, je nachdem, wie Sie ihn entworfen haben. Um die Zeit, in der er aufwacht, werden die meisten Spieler anfangen, nach einfachen Zielen zu suchen, die sie annektieren können. Ein schlummernder Prätendent mit entweder einem starken Körper oder einem starken inkarnierten Segen kann helfen, andere Spieler davon abzubringen, Sie als dieses Ziel zu sehen.

Eingesperrt

Inhaftiert bedeutet, dass Ihr Anwärter ungefähr 3 Jahre nach Spielbeginn aufwachen wird, was eine lange Wartezeit ist. Nehmen Sie also keinen inhaftierten Anwärter, es sei denn, Sie haben gute nationale Truppen, die eine Invasion durch mächtige feindliche Heilige mit einem starken Segen abwehren können . Einem inhaftierten Anwärter einen fleischgewordenen Segen oder einen teuren Körper zu geben, ist eine große Verschwendung, da ein erheblicher Teil des Spiels vergehen wird, ohne dass Ihnen eines dieser Dinge in irgendeiner Weise zugute kommt. Sie können jedoch immer noch einen mächtigen Segen haben, indem Sie billige kleinere Segen wie Stärke oder Verteidigungsfähigkeiten stapeln.

Skalen

Dies ist die Wirtschaft Ihrer Nation, so genannt, weil Sie von einem nehmen und einem anderen geben, um Ihre Nation so auszugleichen, wie Sie möchten. Sie sollten Designpunkte von Teilen der Wirtschaft nehmen, die für Ihre Strategie unwichtig sind, und diese Punkte verwenden, um entweder die anderen Teile Ihrer Wirtschaft oder Ihren Gott stärker zu machen.

Herrschaft

Die Herrschaft breitet sich von deinem Gott, deinem Propheten und deinen Tempeln aus und überwältigt schwächere Herrschaften in der Nähe. Es wendet deine Waage auf Provinzen an, über die du herrschst; es bietet auch eine begrenzte Sicht auf den Bereich; bietet verbündeten Truppen Bonus-Moral und Feinden Moralstrafen; und es macht deinen Gott viel stärker, wenn er unter freundlicher Herrschaft steht, und viel schwächer unter feindlicher Herrschaft. Wenn Sie mit Ihrer Herrschaft keine Provinzen mehr haben, verlieren Sie das Spiel, also gilt 4 als absolutes Minimum. In der Regel sollten Sie die Herrschaft basierend auf der Anzahl der Heiligen festlegen, die Sie in jeder Runde rekrutieren möchten, da dies durch die Herrschaft begrenzt ist. Wenn Sie die feindliche Herrschaft von Ihrem Land fernhalten möchten, benötigen Sie auch eine höhere Herrschaftspunktzahl.

Ordnung/Aufruhr und Produktion/Faultier

Diese beiden Skalen optimieren hauptsächlich Ihre Rekrutierungskosten:Rekrutierungspunkte für Ordnung und Ressourcenkosten für Produktivität. Sie müssen diese Skalen basierend darauf anpassen, was Ihr limitierender Faktor beim Aufbau einer Armee ist. Wenn beispielsweise eine Einheit, von der Sie erwarten, dass sie den Großteil Ihrer Armee bildet, 10 Gold, 25 Ressourcen und 10 Rec-Punkte kostet, werden Ihnen beim Aufbau einer Armee aus diesen Einheiten wahrscheinlich die Ressourcen ausgehen, bevor Ihnen die Rekrutierung ausgeht Punkte, sodass Sie Produktivität verwenden können, um sie schneller zu produzieren, oder Aufruhr, um mehr Designpunkte freizugeben. Wenn Ihre Einheiten im Vergleich zu Ressourcen oder Rekrutierungspunkten teuer in Gold sind, können Sie sowohl Turbulenzen als auch Trägheit hinnehmen, da Gold Ihr limitierender Faktor sein wird. Testen Sie die Dinge und finden Sie heraus, ob Ihnen ständig entweder Rec-Punkte oder Ressourcen fehlen, und passen Sie diese Skalen entsprechend an, bis sie gleichmäßig ausbalanciert sind (obwohl dies von Festung zu Festung immer etwas unterschiedlich sein wird).

Hitze/Kälte

Jedes Rennen hat eine ideale Temperatur und eine Abweichung davon reduziert das Einkommen. Das ganze Jahr über schwanken die Temperaturen jedoch auf natürliche Weise, was Hitze/Kälte zu einer der am wenigsten einflussreichen Wirtschaftsskalen macht. Aus diesem Grund wird Wärme/Kälte üblicherweise als Dump-Stat verwendet. Zumindest wird dringend empfohlen, entweder Hitze + 1 oder Kälte + 1 aus Ihrem bevorzugten Klima zu nehmen, wie es in jeder Nation der Fall ist. Ob Sie Hitze oder Kälte fahren und wie weit, hängt von einer Reihe von Überlegungen ab. Die wichtigste:Truppenmobilität. Im Sommer braucht man 6 Bewegungspunkte, um Ebenen zu überqueren. Schauen Sie sich die Truppen Ihrer Nation an (insbesondere die langsamsten, die Sie in Ihren Armeen einsetzen möchten). Haben sie Map Move 12 oder mehr? Wenn dies der Fall ist, können sie sich gleichzeitig durch 2 befreundete Ebenen-/Farmprovinzen bewegen. Dies ist äußerst nützlich, da es Ihnen ermöglicht, Armeen schnell zu verlegen, wenn sich die strategische Situation entwickelt. Haben Sie weniger als 12 Kartenbewegungen? Dann müssen Ihre Truppen eine Provinz nach der anderen herausstapfen. In cold-1, lands will become covered in snow and will be slower to move through, which might mean that units that can go 2 provinces at a time in summer can only go 1 province at a time in winter. For this reason, you should go for heat if your troops are MM12 or higher. If they are lower than MM12, cold isn’t a bad idea, as it lets them cross rivers, which helps to mitigate the mobility disadvantage of having to move 1 province at a time. Another consideration is fatigue:your units will tire more quickly in extreme temperatures (unless they have resistance to heat or cold). If you rely on troops with more than 6 encumbrance, then milder temperature might be better. Do you have fire mages? Fire spells will tire out your mages quicker in cold provinces, so don’t make your dominion too cold. As a final note, some nations (eg. Abyssia) have strong affinity for extreme temperature and their units will be much stronger when fighting in temperature they like.

Growth/Death

Population directly corresponds to income, resources and recruitment points. Also, population will grow exponentially in growth scales. What this means is that growth is the single best economic scale in the game and is almost always put to 3, as any province you hold will increase in value so much over a game that the income provided by growth overshadows the income provided by any other scale. Death is debilitating to your economy and only ever taken by nations that are already forced to kill their own population (EG. Lemuria) or by nations that can control the rate that their dominion spreads (EG Mictlan) because they can just keep enough dominion on the map that they don’t die, while using their neighbor’s dominion for their economy.

Luck/Misfortune

Luck is the second-best scale in the game after growth for making lots of money over the course of a game, with all things averaged out. Unlike growth, the income comes in random, occasional bursts, so it can be unreliable, but can also potentially be a huge swing in power. One benefit luck does have over growth, however, is that luck will also provide you with magic gems and heroes. Depending on your nation, these heroes can be extremely powerful mages. Depending on what you can do with the gems, these may be more valuable to you than gold. Another benefit of Luck over Growth is that events have a chance to trigger for each province you own, regardless of the province quality. So barren, dead wastelands are still valuable under luck, while virtually useless under growth. This makes Luck a favorite for nations like Lemuria that kill their own population. Misfortune events will cause your nation to be constantly raided by Independent NPC armies, so misfortune is a good dump stat for nations that have good troop mobility or good thugs. If you struggle to respond to persistent attacks across your kingdom, avoid misfortune. Taking drain and misfortune will cause you to lose magic gems randomly.

Magic/Drain

These affect your research speed. Since this is a flat bonus that applies to each mage, if you have cheap, spammable mages (EG 50 gold level 1 mages) then you can rapidly blitz through the tech tree with Magic3. If your mages are all expensive and have high research skill, then drain will have less of an impact. Another consideration is that Magic Resistance is lower in Magic scales, and higher in Drain scales. Nations with banishable troops (EG. MA Ermor) tend to like drain because it makes their troops more resistant to banish. Nations with good astral mages tend to like Magic because astral can do some nasty things to troops with low MR.

Bless

A bless is a custom buff spell you design at the beginning of the game. You can use your design points to make it as powerful as you want. However, you can only cast it on sacred units and it can only be cast by holy mages (AKA priests). What you choose as your bless should synergize well with your sacreds, emphasizing their strengths and shoring up their weaknesses. Blesses are most dominating in the early game, when nobody has researched any other buffs.

What are your sacred troops?

Normal human soldiers

Then consider…

• Luck (Astral):Due to their small amount of HP, humans tend to die easily to evocations, or getting smacked by a giant, or getting lance-charged by a knight, or just about anything really. Luck will make your units remarkably hard to kill, and will let them take powerful evocations to the face without flinching, exhausting enemy mages and letting them survive much longer in melee with enemy troops.
• Barksin (Nature):This can be useful during early expansion and in early wars. Protection (Nature 1) and Wooden Warriors (Nature 2) does the same thing as this bless and is a very easy spell to research and cast, so your bless becomes obsolete by the midgame, but if you can gain a strong advantage during expansion, it might be worth it.
• Stygian Flesh (Death):Same as barkskin, but useless vs thugs and many enemy sacreds due to magic weapons. Less reliable but cheaper.
• Attack Skill + Shock Resistance + Defense Skill + Strength (3 of each:Fire/Air/Water/Earth):If your sacreds are just regular guys with nothing going for them except a magic candlestick on their character sheet then consider if they’re even worth a powerful bless at all. Magic diversity is useful for any nation, and picking up a cheap bless on a rainbow pretender can give your sacreds a little more punch while also giving you a strong mage that serves a useful midgame purpose.

Mounted units with high (16 or more) defence

• Quickness (Water):Getting surrounded is the biggest problem that a high-defence unit can face, as being attacked by multiple enemies lowers your defence score. Quickness is the most powerful offensive bless in the game, and as the saying goes, the best defence is a good offence. Quickness lets your sacreds quickly kill enemies before they can get surrounded and harassed. Also, since mounted units are already fast and quickness doubles their speed, this lets you blitz quickly across the map and pull off flanking attacks, and massacre fleeing enemies to the last man.
• Awe (Fire):Reduce the amount of attacks made against your unit, which will even further reduce the harassment penalties they get. If you have Awe and 20+ defence, then you will be virtually untouchable by nonelite enemy troops and can kill endless numbers of them, limited only by fatigue.
• Defence Skill (Water):Push that defence skill even higher and make your units almost impossible to hit. Mounted units are more resistant to harassment penalties from being surrounded, so that makes this a good pickup.
• Blood Surge (Blood):This is a huge benefit to all your combat stats and the only requirement to activate it is that your sacreds need to kill a single enemy, which is quite easy to do if you have a lance that does bonus damage to the first unit it hits.
• Swiftness (Air):An off-brand knockoff of quickness. It’s not nearly as good, but it is a cheap way to increase your mounted unit’s ability to rush down enemy mages and massacre fleeing foes. Perhaps more importantly, it’s also a cheap way to stack defence alongside the defence buff from water.
• Twist Fate (Astral):Since your units almost never get hit, twist fate will hedge against taking a bad roll. If your troops have glamor, then twist fate will keep glamor active for longer (since glamor ends when your units are hit).

Units with high protection (16 or more)

• Hard Skin (Earth):If your units have 5 or more natural protection (IE your sacreds are big tough monsters), give them Hard Skin. This will stack with their natural protection, and can stack further with their armor if they’re capable of wearing any. If your pretender is an awake expander, this will also be a huge benefit to them when they’re fighting in friendly dominion.
• Barkskin (Nature):If your units are squishy humans in strong suits of armor and have less than 5 natural protection, barkskin is a good pick-up, since it sets their natural protection to 10, which stacks with their armor protection and can make your sacreds ridiculously tanky in the early game. Barkskin does not stack with Hard Skin, so pick one or the other. Find some way to shore up the fire vulnerability if you expect to be fighting fire mages or your troops will be roasted alive.
• Stygian Flesh (Death):Wannabe barkskin. Cheaper but easily countered by magic weapons (usually found on thugs and sacreds). At least it doesn’t make you vulnerable to fire.
• Fateweaving (Astral):Great for units that are heavily-armored tanks with weak attacks that never seem to be able to kill anything. When enemies attack your tanky units, they will become fate-woven and much easier to kill. (A fate-woven enemy will take more damage from attacks).
• Heat/Chill Aura (Fire or Water):Also great for high-defense low-offense tanks. Instead of killing your enemies with superior combat skills, just outlast them and execute them once they’ve fainted. Especially good versus thugs without the right resistances.
• Reinvigoration (Earth):Units with heavy armor also tend to have high encumbrance, which means they’ll quickly become exhausted in a fight and then are easy pickings. Reinvigoration can help mitigate this, and it’s also a great bless for your sacred mages.

Expendable troops with low cost (10 gold or less)

• Charged Body (Air):Turn your troops into landmines and put them in the way of expensive enemy sacreds or cavalry. Watch as their 50 gold unit with a super expensive bless kills itself on your 10 gold unit with a cheap bless.
• Blood Vengeance (Blood):If you want to make a serious commitment to the human landmine strategy, blood vengeance lets you kill anything that damages your troops, particularly, enemy mages. Mix your sacreds in with the rest of your army. When enemy mages drop spells on your troops, they suffer that damage returned to them and die. This bless is expensive and doesn’t help with expansion, so don’t take it awake. Fighting in magic scales also helps make sure that the blood vengeance isn’t resisted.

Giants (units that are size 3 or more and have 30HP or more)

• Regeneration (Nature):Regeneration works great on units with high HP, as the regeneration effect increases based on total health.
• Fortitude (Earth):Effectively doubles your big bag of HP when in melee. Synergizes great with Regeneration but it is extremely expensive to do both.
• Blood Bond (Blood):A much more affordable (and sometimes better) alternative to fortitude. Works great with regeneration as it disperses the damage and then each unit regenerates individually. Works great with berserkers because it makes all your sacreds go berserk at once.
• Blood Surge (Blood):Always a nice pickup, especially for giants since they tend to flatten the first person who goes toe to toe with them. The extra attack will help you kill things faster and is good for repel (since giants get a length bonus to their weapons). The other stats are welcome too.
• Quickness (Water):Giants have attacks that are very strong, and can kill most enemies in 1 hit, but are so big you can’t fit many of them on the front lines, and so you might not be able to kill things as quickly as you would expect. Quickness will let them make more attacks per turn and push more quickly into the enemy lines.
• Elemental Resistances (Fire/Air/Water/Earth/Nature):These big guys make attractive targets for mages, and getting nuked down quickly by massed thunderstrikes is the bane of their existence.

Units with multiple attacks

• Quickness (Water):Turn your troops into absolute demons who will race across the battlefield, instantly massacring anything in their path.
• Strength (Earth/Blood):If you have extra attacks that are based on unit strength (IE. your sacred is not a mounted unit that is using its mount’s body as a weapon) then increasing strength can make your sacreds very frightening as the bonus damage will apply to each attack. Stacking strength multiple times (+4 to +8) is usually much better for dealing damage than elemental weapon enchants, and it doesn’t require an incarnate pretender.
• Magic Weapons (Astral):Good for fighting units with Etherealness (IE Ghosts) or Invulnerability (IE Stygian Flesh). Counters mistform too.
• Lightning Weapons (Air):The best of the elemental weapon enchantments in melee. While probably not as good for general purposes as stacked strength, it ignores armor (which makes it good at dealing with thugs that can stack their protection score well over 30) and has a good chance of stunning the enemy with each hit. A stunned enemy is a sitting duck that can be easily finished off. Units that attack more often trigger this effect more often. This is (potentially) more useful than strength on mounted units, since the mount’s attack (EG. Hoof) will benefit from it but won’t benefit from strength buffs.
• Attack Skill (Fire):Units with multiple attacks tend not to worry that much about high-defence enemies, because they can harass them down. But if your sacred has less than 12 attack, then a good portion of its attacks will be whiffing. Take Attack Skill to make sure they hit.
• Blood surge (Blood):A great pickup to make your sacreds more deadly. If your sacred is a glass cannon with a strong offence but a weak defence, then maybe pass on this and take Strength or Attack Skill instead, because you may find that they don’t live long enough to take full advantage of the stat boost.

Shapeshifters with multiple forms

• Shapeshifters:Tend to be quite dangerous in their animal form. Use the advice for units with multiple attacks as well.
• Luck (Astral):Luck gives a 3/4 chance to ignore killing blows and triggers independently on the death of each form. So you essentially get the luck benefit twice on a unit with 2 forms.
• Resilience/Strong Vitae (Nature/Blood):The bonus HP applies independently to each form. So it effectively doubles the amount of HP you get from your bless on a shapeshifter with 2 forms.

Archers or units with ranged weapons

Because archers can concentrate fire onto a single area, and don’t benefit as much from strength as melee troops, this makes weapon enchantments more attractive.

• Withering Weapons (Death):Any human unit hit by your arrows is now on a death timer if they fail magic resistance. They will age rapidly, which causes their combat skills to deteriorate. Eventually they will just drop dead. Even if they retreat, they will continue to age and die before the battle is over.
• Death Weapons (Death):Another death sentence for anyone struck. Your arrows will deal additional magic damage that can go through armor. Also, units hit will become diseased and die within the year. (So you can put an end to someone’s awake expander or thug using this, provided you can lay enough fire on them to bypass their magic resistance).
• Unholy Weapons (Blood):Great for taking out enemy sacreds and awake pretenders by dealing a lot of extra damage. Doesn’t help versus regular troops.
• Precision (Air):Hit more often. Precision is also quite useful for your mages.
• Flaming Weapons (Fire):Deals some extra damage. It’s quite useful against enemy archers as they tend to be lightly-armored. Flaming weapons isn’t very good against units with more than 12 armor, but is still capable of dealing damage on a good roll.
• Magic Weapons (Astral):Situationally good when fighting ghosts, vampires or other units with magical resistances.

Flying units

• Death Explosion (Fire):Amusing as heck, turn your flying units into homing missiles and drop them on the enemy back-line to kill their mages. With death explosion, even if they die to the bodyguards, they might take out a nearby mage. Be mindful of clumping together your own mages if they are sacred.
• Quickness/Strength/Attack Skill/Magic Weapons (Fire, Earth, Blood, Water, Astral):Flying units tend to be glass cannons. You want to kill the units posted on the back line on guard commander and chew through to the enemy mages. You’ll want to do this before the dopes nearby notice you and surround you. To this effect, you want to be as efficient at murder as possible, and any of these options are a good choice.
• Magic Resistance/Elemental Resistance (Astral, Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Nature):Since you’re going to be targeting the enemy’s mages you can expect your flyers to be the target of a lot of spells flung at them point blank. It’s not a terrible idea to make sure they can survive the barrage.

Undead

• Quickness (Water):Undead units don’t suffer from encumbrance. This removes the biggest downside to quickness (besides the design cost) and makes it an excellent pick.
• Magic Resistance (Astral):You will want them to be able to resist banishment spam and lategame spells like undead mastery.
• Undying (Death):This is basically 2 hp with no downside for undead, twice the effect of resilience or strong vitae.
• Reforming flesh (Death):More for your undead thugs than your sacred troops. Your troops probably benefit more from undying.
• Fire/Shock Resist (Fire/Air/Earth):Undead are naturally resistant to cold and poison. Consider making your sacreds immune to the other elements as well. Your enemies will definitely want to put down battlefield wipes to remove your giant horde of longdead, and you want at least your sacreds to survive.

Small, weak summoned creatures

• Thunder Weapons (Air):Gives them an attack that can penetrate armor and stun enemies.
• Fire Weapons (Fire):Gives them an attack that can deal decent damage to enemies with low armor (ideally 12 or less).
• Undying (Death):Helps them survive longer by giving them more HP.
• Charged Body (Air):Spam out cheap sacreds and let the enemy unleash lightning on themselves. Beware that taking charged body without also taking shock resist will probably make your main recruitable sacreds almost unusable.

Thuggable Commanders

• Regeneration (Nature):Probably the single best bless for a thug, as it helps eliminate the minor damage that accumulates over a fight; and it stacks with other types of regeneration.
• Reinvigoration (Earth):Also extremely useful for thugs, as it helps them fight for longer without becoming fatigued
• Blood Surge (Blood):Helps thugs chop through the endless hordes of enemy province defence
• Awe (Fire):Useful for thugs with high defence.

Sacred Mages

Note:you can make any non-sacred mage sacred by giving him a Shroud of the Battle Saint, a cheap item that can be forged by any astral 1 mage once you research Construction 4.

• Precision (Air):Increases accuracy of spells. Decent for evocation casters. (Air or Fire mages in particular).
• Far Caster (Astral):Increases range. Mages that are farther back from the action are usually safer. Mages that are farther forward with this buff might be able to target the enemy mage line with their spells.
• Arcane Finesse (Astral):Good for death mages and astral mages as these schools have spells that can usually be resisted. Late game astral strats usually involve boosting magic penetration as high as possible and killing enemy commanders.
• Reinvigoration (Earth):Mages will typically fatigue themselves out in battle. With reinvigoration they can cast more spells over the course of a battle.
• Magic/Elemental Resistances (Astral/Fire/Water/Earth/Air/Nature):Some spells can target the whole battlefield. Don’t let your squishy and expensive mages die to these spells.
• Unaging (Nature):Mages (especially your more expensive mages) tend to be old. This means they are slower on the strategic map, fatigue quicker in combat and occasionally get diseased and DIE. Unaging has the unwritten effect that it makes them younger when you hire them, so they’re no longer old. Not having to replace your 300 gold cap-only mages every year can actually be quite beneficial. It also makes your sacreds more resilient to the death spells Burden of Time and Decay.
• Arcane/Undead Leadership (Astral/Death):some nations (EG. Scelaria, Abyssia) will be able to easily summon more monsters than they can actually lead. This will lead to forts filled with endless monsters while your mages carry only a small fraction of your troops into combat. Use this bless (stacked 2-4 times) to let your low level priests act as commanders and carry more troops into battle.
• Regeneration (Nature):Very good for giant mages with blood or astral. This lets them act as communion slaves and your communion masters can drain their life to cast spells while the slaves regenerate the damage. Not recommended for human mages as they will only regenerate 1 or 2 hp a turn, which is too weak to cast spells from HP.

Thugs

Thugs are commanders that have been given magical items and who fight in direct combat (as opposed to fighting with spells). They are usually sent in solo or in small gangs to capture undefended enemy provinces or kill enemy thugs (by using teleport or cloud trapeze). Most thugs are designed to be economical to produce, and sent out on dangerous missions behind enemy lines, not expected to return. A variant of the thug, called the Supercombatant, is your ultimate, money-is-no-object superweapon designed to be as powerful as possible and confront enemy armies head on. Most successful thugs have some magic skill that they use to buff themselves before combat.

Building thugs to conquer provinces

The bare minimum essential quality of a thug is that it needs to be durable enough to survive being surrounded by province defence. There are four ways (non-exclusive) to build a thug to do this. If your thug doesn’t fit any of these criteria after he’s fully buffed, he’s probably going to be unreliable at his job and get killed by a random spearman. Use magic items to improve the areas that your commander is already naturally good at. It’s better to be really good at one thing than okay at everything.

Defence Skill Tank

If your defence skill is significantly higher than enemy attack skill, then they will almost never hit you in melee. Against small numbers of PD, 20+ defence is good enough for a defence tank with a mount and some buffs (eg. Mistform); 25+ is ideal for larger numbers of PD. However, you have to protect your defence skill from dropping, because if a large amount of enemies attack you at once, you will become “harassed” and your defence skill will drop to the point where you start taking hits. Mounted units are more resilient to this, but not immune. To deal with being surrounded, you have to reduce the amount of attacks being made against you either with Awe (Shield of Gleaming Gold) or Vine Shield or some similar effect which prevents enemies from attacking all at once.

Attack Skill Tank

If you have a weapon that is longer than the enemy’s weapon (Stone Bird or Dancing Trident are good for this) and your attack skill is significantly higher than the enemy’s defence skill (close to 25 is ideal), and the enemy has relatively low morale (beware of undead), then you can tank using your attack skill via the repel mechanic. Like tanking with Defense, repel is subject to harassment and becomes weaker when multiple enemies are attacking at once, so you will need some way to stop them from all attacking at once.

Protection Tank

If you have 25+ prot (30+ is ideal), most non-elite human units will struggle to deal any damage to you. Be wary of high-damage piercing weapons (like knight lances) or units with unusually high strength (like giants). The most common way to achieve high protection is casting Ironskin.

Regeneration Tank

If you have a lot of HP (40+, but the more the better) and your thug is at least somewhat tanky in other ways (EG you have 18+ protection, and some defensive buffs like body ethereal and liquid body) then stacking regeneration on them will often mean that they can regenerate damage faster than the enemy can deal it.

A note on Fatigue

Many thugs die when they get tired due to fighting a large number of enemy troops for too long. One way to deal with this is to make sure that either they have a reinvigoration score close to their encumbrance in the province they’re going to be fighting in (equal is ideal) you can do this with magic items like boots of the messenger. Another way, is to make sure that they have the ability to kill or rout enemies quickly enough that they win the battle before getting tired (weapons that deal AOE damage like frost brand are good for this; horror helm is good for scaring enemies away). If your fatigue goes over 50, your thug’s combat capabilities will drop. If it goes over 100, they will faint, and probably be killed.

Building thugs to kill other thugs

Every strategy has a counter. Is your enemy…

• Defence Tanked: Remove your opponent’s mobility with spells or items that root them in place (like a Vine Shield or a Vine Whip). This will drop their defence to 0 and they can be easily killed. An alternative is to boost your attack skill high enough to match them. Items like Burning Pearl are good for this.
• Attack Tanked: Counter repel with high defence (try a Main Gauche of Parrying), high morale (Dragon Helmet) or length 5 weapons (like Enchanted Pike).
• Protection Tanked?: Use high-strength units (like giants) or weapons that are Armor piercing (like Greatsword of Sharpness), or attack him with elemental spells or weapons that he doesn’t have resistance to (like Lightning Spear).
• Regeneration Tanked?: The easiest way is to surround it and kill it with a gang of lesser thugs. If it’s too strong then wear it down with items like Star of Heroes (breaks its armor), Black Bow of Botulf (removes its ability to buff itself), Eyecatcher (blind it and make its combat stats significantly worse), Bane Blade (make it age rapidly), flesh eater (chest wound, permanently adds encumbrance), try to insta-kill it (heartfinder sword), or disease it (axe of hate), etc.

Building thugs to kill entire armies (Supercombatants)

This is more of an art than a science. Anything you do can be countered by a prepared opponent. A supercombatant is more like a way to suprise an unprepared enemy than a reliable strategy. Still, it’s fun. You will need:

• A Strong Chassis – A Titan pretender, an King of Elementals, a Demon Lord, a Tartarian or any other big, high level summon are ideal. They should have naturally high stats, and have good access to buff magic.
• Over 60 HP – Enemy mages will be throwing spells at you and you need to be able to take at least a few hits to the face.
• Regeneration – you will take damage, no matter how good your tank is, and you need to make sure you’re healing it faster than it’s being dealt
• Over 30 Protection – ranged attacks bypass defence and repel.
• Close to 25 Magic Resistance – you don’t want your pretender to be insta-killed by spells like soul slay or stolen by spells like hellbind heart. Amulet of Antimagic is a great item.
• Elemental Resistance – depending on your enemy’s mages, you want to be able to tank through large numbers of elemental spells being rained down on your head
• Multiple or Area-wide attacks – you need to be able to kill large numbers of troops fast or you’ll get bogged down. Fire Brand and Frost Brand are two example weapons that let you kill multiple targets at once.
• Reinvigoration – You need to be able to fight without increasing your fatigue. To do this you need either reinvigoration equal to your encumbrance in the terrain you’re fighting in, or you need a buff spell like Soul Vortex that does it for you.
• Buff spells – Fire, Earth, and Death are the best paths for a SC to self-buff with; Astral is a liability (because astral mages can be killed by Magic Duel). Phoenix Pyre + Soul Vortex is a deadly combo that will make your SC invincible unless they can be killed multiple times in rapid succession.
• Berserk – Not essential for every situation, but if the battle goes on too long, the game will force the attacker to rout. Berserk units ignore this. Flesh Eater is an easy item to get that makes your unit go berserk when wounded.

Thug Spells

The best ones are marked with an asterisk (*)

Holy

• Blessing* – how good it is depends on your bless.
• Holy Avenger – damages attackers.

Fire

• Resist Cold – situational.
• Fire Shield* – good for clearing large numbers of weak troops.
• Phoenix Pyre* – makes you invincible as long as you don’t run out of fatigue.

Water

• Resist Fire – situational.
• Liquid body – a worse temper flesh that water mages are stuck with, reduces speed and strength.
• Ice Shield – only underwater.
• Quickness – doubles fatigue per turn, be careful.
• Breath of Winter – good for fatiguing-out enemy thugs.

Air

• Mistform* – reduces all damage taken to 1, cancelled by magic weapons.
• Mirror Image – stops a few hits, good for defence tanks.
• Cloud trapeze* – for mobility and killing enemy thugs.
• Flight – useful for assassinating enemy commanders during a battle.

Earth

• Resist Lightning – situational.
• Earth Might – increases damage done in melee.
• Stoneskin – raises protection by a lot, stacks in a limited capacity with ironskin.
• Ironskin* – best protection spell in the game.
• Temper Flesh* – halves damage from physical attacks.
• Summon Earthpower* – gives +4 reinvigoration.
• Legions of Steel – combos with bracers of protection, improves your armor’s protection.

Nature

• Resist Poison – situational.
• Barkskin – raises protection by a little.
• Elemental Fortitude – raises all your resistances.
• Personal Regeneration* – extremely useful for units with a lot of HP.
• Enlarge – raises HP and strength.

Death

• Skeletal Body – adds piercing resistance, useful against knight lances.
• Invulnerability – adds a lot of protection, but is hard to cast, and easy to counter. Better than ironskin for fighting PD.
• Soul Vortex* – drains endurance from enemies, insanely powerful when paired with phoenix pyre.

Astral

• Resist Magic – useful if your enemy is trying to soul slay you.
• Teleport* – for mobility/counter-thugging.
• Astral Shield* – stuns enemies that try to attack you.
• Body Ethereal* – good vs. regular units, worthless vs enemy thugs with magic items; you can have another mage (called a “fluffer”) follow your thug around and cast this on him at the beginning of the battle and then run away.
• Personal Luck – protects against death blows. Good for fighting supercombatants who can kill thugs in 1 hit. Not worth the casting fatigue in most other cases..
• Twist Fate – protects against the first hit to deal damage.

Blood

• Hell Power – raises your thug’s combat stats but horror marks them, so random monsters will occasionally try to assassinate him.
• Damage Reversal – very strong, but is at the end of the research tree for Blood.

Crosspaths

• Mossbody – Nature + Water – Unreliable, probably not worth the casting fatigue.
• Strength of Gaia* – Earth + Nature – Gives regeneration, barkskin and strength.
• Flying Shield* – Earth + Air – Randomly blocks attacks.
• Stygian Skin – Death + Water – Gives prot against non-magical attacks.