Dominions 6 Thug Expansion (Examples EA Caelum, EA Arco, EA Kailasa)

[@Thurokiir1]

Oh dude this is the video I've been waiting for. Played some dom 6 decided on MA Abysia. Thugged the berserkers with a heat aura, fire resistance and blind on hit bless. They were nutty stormtroopers that aoe'd everything in sight through fatigue, armor and beating up the blind. Trying to replicate that on different nations turned out to be super hard, so thank you!

[@topguides6991]

You're welcome that sounds ridiculously fun. Will try it out

[@thedoc7184]

I am so lost in the labotomy kaisen that I thought this was going to be some kind of thug shaker domain expansion. Instead I found a rising star! Video was really engaging despite the fact I have never touched the game before

[@azure3354]

The jujitsu Kaisen brainrot is real. I should know, I suffer from it as well.

[@kOfTheQ]

I've tried thug kailasa, and a pike really helps them both defensively, and in bypassing repel. The astral pike does the job. Ran one with a lions pelt into cataphracts and he won without afflictions.

[@topguides6991]

Thanks for the idea I'll try it out I'm glad it worked well for you.

[@duartemarco]

Dom 5 turbo expansion still works: I'm currently top 1 on a 16 player MP game as LA Ulm. Expanded with Black Lords with fireshield, fateweaving, stygian skin and windwalker. Scales are complete garbage though.

[@topguides6991]

They'd have to be with that sick bless. Do you find windwalker worth it

[@duartemarco]

@@topguides6991Honestly, during SP tests, I though it was just expensive. But during MP, they saved my life several times, either by consolidating several expansion groups (which are just 3 hochmeisters on bless+attack closest) to win a bump, and to surprise jump 6 mages casting Iron Blizzard. Windwalker paid itself by a lot, especially considering that I'm the largest of all nations by a considerable margin. Still, my troop production is pretty much garbage, and I had to face 300-500+ unit stacks with just 80 troops (versus Patala, I had my pretender jump in from 3 provinces away and cast Storm and Mist).

[@duartemarco]

But what you lose in troop production you make up for in amount of forts and mages. All my cap can make is 2 hochmeisters and 2 templars, but all my other forts pump out mages and 13~ ish zweihanders per turn.

[@SpentaofWater349]

I did some testing with LA Ulm thug expansion and concluded that It is not worth doing, You put all your gold/resources into commanders and when expansion is over you are left with a small army and some thugs. You have to have peace with neighbours until your forts are finished so you can finally make some troops and be a threat to somebody's forts. If you are scouted in multiplayer you are done, you will be rushed.

[@topguides6991]

What bless did you take out of Curiosity? Though I agree with you sieging forts is rough and la is also rough for heavy prot thugs because of crossbow spam. Also crossbows are now super effective vs your unshielded mounts.

[@SpentaofWater349]

@@topguides6991 I took Fire shield, Enchanted blood, Stygian Flesh, They expanded just fine, there were some losses though. I won the game vs ai after switching to normal troops after first year but this won't work on multiplayer.

[@topguides6991]

gotcha yeah that what id take too. Unfortunate@@SpentaofWater349

[@kevinpiala6258]

Only mistake I see is that Fear is a way to kill, not a way to survive. Especially as far as expand is concerned.

[@topguides6991]

That's fair I waffled back and forth on fear and auras since they don't really do much damage and incapacitate the enemies but ultimately I think you're right they do fall into ways to kill

[@vagrant2863]

For some reason the occasional sound of you touching your mouse reminds me of the title screen song from Fear and Hunger.

[@topguides6991]

Hmmmmm I gave it a listen. It's an apt comparison I should figure out how to lower sensitivity

[@TheMelnTeam]

I've tried thug expansion on a few nations with early research combined...I've yet to be impressed by the reliability. Sometimes fear + awe lets you clear out barbs. Sometimes you eat an unlucky arrow or two through air shield and you lose tempo and hundreds of gold...and those DGAF about awe, fire shield, etc. Prot stackers don't care, but the defense guys definitely do. Awake expanders benchmark at 20-25 provinces. Even a very light bless on imprisoned scales can get to 19ish on t12 with some of these nations (or more!). The thugs are a little too counter-able for the slow expansion pace IMO. Though maybe there's still a better build for them out there...

[@topguides6991]

As EA Abyssia, EA ctis and EA Arco I have achieved quite good expansions with thugs. That said Arco and Abyssia already expand amazingly and thug expanding with them is a worse expansion but it does open up different avenues of play but ctis with hard skin fire shield and enchanted blood is quite interesting and expands better than normal and the bless is quite good on their serpents. Overall I agree the risk out ways the reward but it's so tantalizing. I feel like if I do just one thing better I'll have unlocked it. It's my white whale so to speak. I will say I think awake researchers are legit and that early research give you better flexibility in your first war is that worth everything else probably not but maybe. My mind always goes back to EA caelum as they should be the poster child they have so much going for them. Maybe I just need to suck it up and run a fear + defense bless so they stop getting interrupted when casting shockwave.

[@JoViljarHaugstulen]

Description: Good Base combos Twist Fate + auras/blood vengeance/repel You mean Fateweaving right? Twist Fate only blocks 1 attack so I don't see how that would be a good combination

[@topguides6991]

Sorry yeah good catch

[@altvibr]

You sound almost exactly like Curits Yarvin

[@topguides6991]

I'll take that as a compliment 😉

[@huldread]

ea pangea is also good for early thuging with their melee/ranged hierophant and white hierophant god

[@topguides6991]

True

[@mitchell9959]

I did a lot of testing to try and make LA Pan Keeper of Traditions expansion viable but it was really tricky. I think I had a good expansion one time with weightlessness Regen and some other stuff.....

[@topguides6991]

Haha I did the same only in Dom 5 I can see how weightless would be a big boon. Glad to know you can fanagle it.

[@tjeisenman4439]

Dom content yes!!!

[@ASAS-ve4sr]

Just do assassin expansion. MA Xilbalba is good at this and the cave provinces have very consistent number of indie commanders. Also the frogs can clear cyno chieftrains and cyno shamans.

[@Milorada7375]

Assassin expansion is generally not safe to do outside of your capital circle in competitive MP lobbies. I suppose it is slightly different for Xibalba if you are in a cave system by yourself but doesn't really hold for surface nations

[@ASAS-ve4sr]

@@Milorada7375 Weak mentality tbh. Caves are hard to expand with awake and normal units, Unless the awake is an assassin. You have to pinpoint expansion on provinces that have the best indies (Cynos, Lavaborn, Cavemen) and you can get early thrones easily with your assassin Pretender (there is only one chassi). Keep in mind that stealth items + self bless can be extremelly hard to play against in MA. Cynos take 2 turns to clear, whereas there is almost no underground unit that can take them on without heavy loses. Even Abysia struggles against cynos.

[@Dante3214]

@@ASAS-ve4sri can feel the cringe from here brother

[@ASAS-ve4sr]

@@Dante3214 Describe its flavour and consistency

[@JoViljarHaugstulen]

Vampiric Weapons seems incredibly unreliable for the high cost? It requires you to deal damage and the target not being dead to trigger (and of course it also only works on living targets)

[@TTHJJD100]

And requires you to have the gems for both armor and a good length and damage weapon. it'd be a bit better with larger but I'm unsure how you'd fit that bless in w/o an awake rainbow.

[@JoViljarHaugstulen]

@@TTHJJD100 "And requires you to have the gems for both armor and a good length and damage weapon." Well yes you do need weapons good enough to hit and deal damage but not too good damage because if the damage is too high the target dies to the weapon damage making the weapon effect not trigger. Which is a rather difficult thing to get just right as you need enough damage to reliably get through protection but not so much that you kill squishy humans with the weapon damage (the most common target)

[@TTHJJD100]

@@JoViljarHaugstulen well yeah, but not much within construction 1 is going to hit that hard on most of kailasa/patala thugs unless maybe 2 handed with strength and not just the larger, larger is just most effective hp boost especially with the armor, as opposed to flat bonus it's percentage which makes the things a lot more survivable. I would also add that yeah, vampiric weapons is counter intuitive to the thug expansion, you'd more want it when Fighting giants and SC's that have much larger health pools. And when expanding you simply want to be as hard to kill as possible while killing as many units per turn without fatiguing out. Which is what causes the final expansions to fail. Reinvig might've helped the thugs in those expansions last a bit longer as the fatiguing out causes things like mist form/moss body to just fail altogether and once that's gone it's joever. Found that the easiest xpaths to do anything like this with was E1 A1 S1 mistform,twist fate, ethereal, iron skin (whatever bless) on kailasa patala it's much easier to just take an awake researcher and bring along ethereal and reinvigorate. Then buff out mossbody twist fate, and stone skin till you get iron skin, but without armor and a pair of enchanted spears the thugs don't do well. Edit: this also requires the water random from the male mages, the female mages don't have reliable cross paths from my tests as opposed to the former which have everything you need besides water :)

[@TTHJJD100]

@@JoViljarHaugstulen something else that should be mentioned though, as a kailasa player myself, their one strength is wide path access, but it's also their weakness since almost every mage is S1/S2 which means they can be magic dueled. Makes you an easy war target if a neighboring astral nation sees you're spending excessive amount of gold and gems on easily countered thugs. Simply 2-4 S1 mages magic dueling a thug will kill it. They're much better being combined in armies with other mages to help aid in that situation not to mention the incarnate bless just to boost them. Not as much an issue in singleplayer as the casting ai vanilla side isn't gonna magic duel often if ever, especially if they have gems.

[@warlove5106]

Is there a thug build for Ulm?

[@topguides6991]

For expansion I doubt it and haven't found one. Best guess would be to get a air random warrior smith and prophesize it and give it gems so you can mistform and iron skin. Bless would be awe dread and enchanted blood if you could afford it. In therms if just a general imprisoned thug bless for Ulm there are some and they're quite good. Take an imprisoned litch with blood surge enchanted blood and undying 5 it works quite well and helps your sacreds during expansion.

[@e1py766]

I think it was perfect example on how not to play as Caelum. I mean sorry, but that was just painfull to watch. You crippled your bless, you ruined your scales, you still expanded with usual troops and had losses, you loosed 5 earth gems for helmet and turn to craft it and even one eagle king. Like for what all this? What the idea for the mid or late game?

[@topguides6991]

I agree that this is a suboptimal way to play caelum but it is a fun way and I think sometimes being fun is enough. I'll play a game vs AI to test but I dont think there's quite as many issues as you believe. Mid game idea is run down construction get armor of knights and the arm braces with iron skin temper flesh you can get to high 30s for protection and then equip items that match elemental resistance with what your opponent is fielding. Also you'll use a lot of your gems for army summoning contact draconians etc. Late game if do you have more diversity you're kinda fucked

[@asgoritolinasgoritolino7708]

You sent a lady to kill an entire army with her bare fists and you were surprised she didn't kill a single dude. wtf

[@topguides6991]

Hah it worked In testing

[@tyrant1567]

Two of my favorite ways to do this. Is MA Phlegra and taking either a drakon. With the same blends as always and prophetize the first tyrant. Or the Ultimate paypig. Which is the name I give a Eldest cyclops and boost his basic paths and one of my choice. Usually glam or nature.

[@topguides6991]

dang have never tried that will have to try.

[@Mrollllf]

Blood weapons seem garbo, they need to be changed to work differently or be way cheaper, it's no way strong enough to be your main bless.

[@topguides6991]

Agreed unfortunately but they do scale well with items horned helmet chi shoes quickness stone bird sword of swiftness it's possible to get up to 30 attacks a turn which at that point you become unstoppable

[@Erichfiederer]

Did you end up getting that kailasa expand to work? Do you know how you changed it to work?

[@topguides6991]

Yep I ended uop getting it working fear plus revig bless paired with seting the yakshas to advance and cast so they can fists of iron though the most important part is using a yogi to point buff body etherial

[@meowmeow9326]

how does one get to construction 3, have the gems, make the item, and start expanding by turn 3 or 4, while also having researched magic to use? (even without the magic assuming these are 2 different scenarios)

[@topguides6991]

With construction the earliest you can do is turn 5 or 6 so it's helpful if you can make useful items at const 1 like black steel plate you can open const 2 alt 2 make black steel plate cast temper armor and stone skin usually enough to expand in ez provinces as you get const 3 online

[@skoub3466]

I try Feminie expansion whit thug but I still get a better expansion whit scale and cav.

[@topguides6991]

Thanks for trying!

[@Campernicus]

I love dominions content but come on

[@topguides6991]

Thug expanding is something I enjoy and is on the edge of viability. But I can understand the well warranted skepticism