[elmokki]

I'm talking with CBM in mind, so some things might vary slightly. I also am no expert.

Originally Posted by Zywack

---1) First turn expansion. I've seen some mentions about using a fighting-oriented awake god for first turn expansion. How do you do that, exactly? I've tried a few 2-minutes games to test it out, and the results were disastrous.
The wyrm died 2 times out of 4, Ice Dragon 1 times out of 4, and various titans 3 times out of 4, all that at default independant settings (5).
I could understand waiting until turn 2 for intel to see if there's a super weak independant province to send your god to and your army to another province, but I don't understand how you can expand on turn 1 without facing heavy risk of losing the game outright.

Even the best expansion pretenders are vulnerable, if they aren't going to die, at least they are going to get nasty afflictions. That's why people usually wait until turn 2 and attack only provinces they know have weak enough troops. I personally disregarded this tip on the multiplayer game I currently play though and it was fine - I had dominion 6 green dragon scripted to fire closest and it was fairly decent. It's very notable to note that some chassises just are better against indies though.

In general avoid hard hitting indies (yellow lizardmen, barbarians, knights) and most special stuff (undead are nasty if there are mages summoning more, the dark vine provinces can be fairly nasty too)

---2) Thugs in general. I understand the concept in general but I can't seem to get it effective in practice, or even know where to start really. I know that defenses like Luck + Etheral + Awe + Regeneration all stack but I can't seem to have it be "worth it" or "useful" in either of my games.

For example, as T'ien Chi, my biggest opponent is an absolutely huge Ermor so what I'm facing is mainly hordes of small undeads. My gems are currently being used to buy spell boosters so that my earth mages can use Blade Wind, for summoning cheap tanking units like corpse men to guard my archer cavalries or to summons creatures like the Naiad and Troll King to boost my forging/summoning capabilities.

I'd love to use a few thugs to help my battles and have some variety but I have no idea what I could possibly summon/equip that could actually help in a fight, even though I have access to all magic types except Fire. There's swarms of enemies so I need something (anything) that can kill multiple of them in one round. I can't get Fire Brands, and Frost Brand are useless. Awe is useless. Fear is useless (which scraps the majority of my current thug potential). I don't see anything beside Trample that could help during fights but it feels as if the gem cost/mage turns expended would be much higher than the prospective reward.

Is there any useful thug I can summon/equip to even remotely help my armies against the Elmorian hordes or should I just follow with my current short-term plan to use Dark Vines to tank for all my archers and priests and forget about equipping any battle commanders with anything beside Cauldrons of Endless Broth?

I'm no expert in thugging, but shadow brands should still damage the undead, shouldn't they? Don't underestimate trample though, as long as it's on a big enc 0 unit (poison golems are brilliant). Poison golems with stymphalian wings for flight and boots of quickness for quickness are pretty nice especially since they can get full or nearly full elemental resists fairly trivially too if required. AI especially will rarely use spells that can hurt them and their prot is quite high.

Also for spare air gems and weakly armored masses bows of war (air) are brilliant. In Aftermath II (multiplayer game) most of my commanders got one and thanks to the nature of the game being most players having huge armies of weakly armored summoned chaff half of my commanders have the hall of fame heroic trait. Similiarly in general fire/acid wands are fairly useful.

---3) Dominion Strength of 8+. I've read in countless places that a very high Dominion strength is critical. That amounts to the majority of design points of your god, though... Is it viable to protect your dominion territories in multiplayer with 4 to 6 dominion and priests preaching on your borders, or is it simply inviting dominion death even with multiple provinces remaining?

I personally take the risk and have dom strength 5 or 6 unless I am blood sacrificing a lot or need awe on my pretender. It's a risk, sure, and recruiting huge masses of priests is expensive when that money could be spent on mages, but in general I've usually lost the game when dominion becomes a problem if it ever does.