I've been facing a guy who is making lots of thugs and ramping them up early. Not being able to one shot a 4 health thug (ever) with your thief makes that seem like a really strong strategy! Time will tell though.
The strategy may in fact be too powerful! Thugs have actually been nerfed a couple times already - it used to be that they guarded a tile until they were killed, and that guarding thugs wouldn't count towards thug-tax on subsequent turns. This made them ridiculously overpowered, but I'm strongly considering the following changes to the next version:
- Thugs start with 1 health; alcohol upgrades get them 2 and 3 health
- 2nd-level Strangefellows upgrade gives all Thugs AND Gangs +1 health
This would bring thugs more in line with where I think they ultimately need to be, and would also make the 2nd-level Strangefellows upgrade much more compelling (as it is, I rarely see players continuing to upgrade the Strangefellows after sticking 1 urchin in it).
That seems to be a good plan. From a gameplay perspective I feel like an opponent that abuses thug strategies (especially if they had a strong start) can shut down their opponent and make it very hard to come back. What if increased thug health was at 2/3 urchins in the Strangefellows? I'm guessing you have a reason for not having a 1, 2, 3 upgrade path for everything though.