Dominions 5 – ふりをして、祝福し、サグをデザインする方法

これは、一般的な概要と利用可能な優れたオプションのリストを提供することにより、偽装者、祝福、凶悪犯を構築するための簡単で汚いガイドです.

Pretender、Bless、Thug の構築ガイド

はじめに

Dominions 5 は非常に複雑なゲームです。ゲームの仕組みをしっかりと理解していない限り、国家とそのユニットを設計する際に適切な選択をするのは難しい場合があり、利用可能なオプションの膨大な量は、新しいプレーヤーにとってまったく脅威になる可能性があります.ゲームの背後にある数学を深く掘り下げた詳細なガイドがあります。それはこのガイドの目的ではありません。このガイドは、ゲームのより複雑な部分の簡潔な概要と、国をカスタマイズする際に考慮すべき事項の提案を目的としています。

プリテンダーボディ

国を選択したら、最初に選択するのは偽者の体です。 4 つのアーキタイプがあり、ベースドミニオンスコアによって次のようになります。

ドミニオン1：「レインボーメイジ」

カラフルな魔法のスキルアイコンにちなんで名付けられました。これらは、戦闘には脆すぎるが、さまざまな魔法の道をたどることができる、汚れた安価な死すべき体です。これにより、通常は少数の魔法学校にしかアクセスできない国家が、通常はアクセスできない他の種類の魔法に分岐できるようになります。また、良い鱗と安価な祝福の両方を得る良い方法でもあります (火/水/土/空気またはアストラル/自然/死/血のいずれかに 3 ポイントを置きます)。

ドミニオン 2:「アウェイクエキスパンダー」

これらの連中は、高い自然保護と複数の攻撃を備えた巨大なモンスターであり、1ターン目から強力な凶悪犯になり、ほとんどの場合目覚めます.それらは、1 年目に NPC に対して領土を拡大するのに役立ち、2 年目または 3 年目に他のプレイヤーとの初期の戦争を戦うのに役立つように存在します。独立者を征服するのに苦労している場合は、目を覚ましているエキスパンダーを取ります (12 ターンまでに少なくとも 10 の領地を持つことを目指します)。または、非常に攻撃的になり、できるだけ多くの土地を獲得して早期戦争を開始したい場合は、1 つを選択してください。さらに攻撃的にするには、インカネイトブレスを持ったものを手に入れて、強力な序盤のゲームに勝利するためにスノーボールを試みます。初期の戦争に関与している場合、偽りの神々は敵の支配下でははるかに弱く、敵の首都を急いで攻撃するのは危険です.

ドミニオン3：「タイタンズ」

巨人であるにもかかわらず、これらの連中はたいてい弱すぎて 1 年目の拡張を手伝うことができません。特に基本的なギアをすばやく鍛造できる場合は、それができる場合もありますが、主な利点はゲームの初期ではなく、ゲームの中期/後期にあります.彼らは 2 つまたは 3 つのパスで優れた魔法のアクセスを持ち、さまざまな装備スロットを持っています。つまり、完全に装備すると非常に強力なユニットになり、建設 4 前後では、ドミニオン 2 モンスターよりも強力になることが期待できます。 /P>

ドミニオン4：「不動」

これらは、2 つまたは 3 つのパスで強力な魔法を備えた非常に安価なボディですが、魔法を使用しない限り州を離れることはできません (研究所が必要です)。また、通常は非常に耐久性がありますが、通常は防御的な役割でのみ使用できます.それらの主な用途は、良い祝福や良いスケールのための統計スティックになることです.

ハイブリッド

上記のカテゴリのいずれにも当てはまらない、Demilich、Virtue、Ghost King (およびその他多数) などの変わり者もいます。これらのふりをする人はより用途が広いですが、独自の欠点もあります。 Demilich は Rainbow Mage と Immobile のハイブリッドで、魔法へのアクセスは良好ですが、他の Immobile の耐久性に欠けています。 Virtue は Awake Expander と Titan のハイブリッドで、ターン 1 で拡張できるさまざまな組み込み能力があり、完全な装備スロットがありますが、真の Titan よりもはるかに小さくて弱いです。 . Ghost King は、Rainbow Mage と Awake Expander のハイブリッドです。他のパスに分岐でき、拡張に役立ちますが、Rainbow よりも高価で、専用の Awake Expander よりも拡張が劣ります。したがって、上記の 4 つのアーキタイプには例外があることに注意してください。

起きているか、休眠中か、投獄されているか

偽者を寝かせてゲームを開始させると、使用できる大量のデザインポイントが払い戻されます。このため、神の覚醒に実質的な利益がない場合は、神の覚醒を可能な限り遅らせる必要があります。

覚醒

Awake とは、偽者が砦にいる状態でゲームを開始することを意味します。これを行う理由は 1 つだけです。それは、世界のほとんどが手付かずで手に入る 1 年目に、より強力な拡張を行いたいということです。神聖な軍隊の力を大幅に高める強力な化身の祝福を持っている場合、または最小限の準備で州を確実に占領できる強力な偽者を持っている場合は、偽者を目覚めさせる必要があります.

休止中

休眠状態とは、あなたの偽者がおよそ 12 ターン目頃に目覚めることを意味します。これは、彼が到着するのが遅すぎてゲームの初期の拡張を支援できないことを意味します (通常は今までに終了しています) が、魔法のサイトの検索、研究、どのように彼を設計したかに応じて、アイテムを作成したり、他のプレイヤーと戦ったりします。彼が目覚める頃には、ほとんどのプレイヤーは併合しやすいターゲットを探し始めます。強力なボディまたは強力な化身の祝福を備えた休眠中の偽装者は、他のプレイヤーがあなたをこのターゲットとして見るのを思いとどまらせるのに役立ちます.

投獄

投獄されたということは、あなたの偽者がゲームの約 3 年後に目を覚ますことを意味します。これは待つのに長い時間がかかるため、強力な祝福で強力な敵の聖なるものによる侵略を阻止できる優れた国軍を持っていない限り、投獄された偽者を服用しないでください。 .投獄された偽者に化身の祝福や高価な体を与えることは、ゲームのかなりの部分がこれらのいずれもあなたに利益をもたらすことなく通り過ぎるため、大きな無駄です.ただし、強度や防御スキルなどの安価なマイナーブレスを積み重ねることで、強力なブレスを得ることができます。

うろこ

これはあなたの国の経済です。あなたが好きなように国のバランスをとるために、ある国から取って別の国に与えることから、そのように名付けられました。戦略にとって重要ではない経済の部分から設計上のポイントを取得し、これらのポイントを使用して、経済の他の部分または神のいずれかをより強力にします。

ドミニオン

ドミニオンはあなたの神、預言者、寺院から広がり、近くの弱いドミニオンを圧倒します。それはあなたが支配している州にあなたのスケールを適用します。それはまた、その地域への限られた視界を提供します。味方の部隊にボーナスの士気を与え、敵に士気のペナルティを与えます。そしてそれはあなたの神を友好的な支配下ではより強くし、敵支配下ではより弱くします。領地にプロヴィンスが残っていない場合、ゲームに負けるため、4 が最低限必要と見なされます。通常、ドミニオンによって制限されるため、ターンごとにリクルートしたい聖なるものの数に基づいてドミニオンを設定する必要があります。敵の支配を自分の土地から遠ざけたい場合は、より高い支配スコアも必要になります。

秩序/混乱と生産/怠惰

これらの 2 つのスケールは、主に採用コストを微調整します。注文の採用ポイントと生産性のリソースコストです。軍隊を編成する際の制限要因に基づいて、これらのスケールを調整する必要があります。たとえば、軍隊の大部分を形成すると予想されるユニットのコストが 10 ゴールド 25 資源 10 回復ポイントの場合、これらの軍隊を構築しているとき、募集がなくなる前に資源が不足していることに気付くでしょう。そのため、生産性を使用してより迅速に生産したり、混乱を利用してより多くの設計ポイントを解放したりできます。リソースや募集ポイントに比べてユニットのゴールドが高価な場合は、ゴールドが制限要因になるため、混乱と怠惰の両方を利用しても安全です。物事をテストして、rec-point またはリソースのいずれかが常に不足していないかどうかを確認し、バランスが均等になるまでこれらのスケールを適宜調整します (ただし、これは砦ごとに多少異なります)。

暑さ/寒さ

種族ごとに理想的な気温があり、そこから外れると収入が減ります。ただし、年間を通して、気温は自然に変動するため、暑さ/寒さは最も影響の少ない経済規模の 1 つになります。このため、ヒート/コールドは一般的にダンプ統計として使用されます。少なくとも、好みの気候から熱+1または寒さ+1を取得することを強くお勧めします。暑くても寒くても、どこまで行くかは、いくつかの考慮事項に依存します.最も重要なもの：部隊の機動性。夏の間、平原を越えるには 6 移動ポイントが必要です。あなたの国の軍隊を見てください（具体的には、軍隊で使用する予定の最も遅いものを見てください）.彼らは12以上のマップムーブを持っていますか?その場合、一度に 2 つの味方の平原/農場プロヴィンスを移動できます。これは、戦略的状況が進展するにつれて軍隊を迅速に再配置できるため、非常に便利です。マップの移動回数は 12 回未満ですか?その後、あなたの軍隊は、一度に 1 つのプロヴィンスから移動する必要があります。 cold-1 では、土地は雪に覆われ、移動が遅くなります。これは、夏に一度に 2 つのプロヴィンスに移動できるユニットが、冬に一度に 1 つのプロヴィンスにしか移動できないことを意味する場合があります。このため、ユニットが MM12 以上の場合は、ヒートに行く必要があります。 MM12 よりも低い場合、寒さは悪い考えではありません。川を渡ることができるため、一度に 1 つのプロヴィンスを移動しなければならないという機動性の不利な点を軽減するのに役立ちます。もう 1 つの考慮事項は疲労です。極端な温度では、ユニットはより早く疲労します (耐熱性または耐寒性がない場合)。 6 個以上の負担がある部隊に依存している場合は、より穏やかな温度が適している可能性があります。火の魔法使いはいますか？炎の呪文は、寒い地方ではメイジを早く疲れさせるので、領地を寒くしすぎないようにしましょう。最後に、一部の国 (アビシアなど) は極端な気温に強い親和性があり、好きな気温で戦うと、そのユニットはより強力になります。

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.