Ulm - what items do you build w/Smiths?

[jaif]

I'm curious - what items do you find worthwhile to build with your smiths? Earth boots obviously, but after that, what else do you like?

Note, I'm not dissing the smiths. I'm curious what others get out of them.

-Jeff

[KissBlade]

Hammers that you trade for other gems/items. SEriously, I never forge anything else besides hammers/earth boots practically. When you're ulm, everyone will haggle with you straight away for hammers.

[quantum_mechani]

Hammers, charcoal shields, lightless lanterns and less frequently marble armor, girdles of might.

[Baalz]

lightless lanterns
fire brands
boots of stone
blood stones (worth empowering one or two if you can get a small blood economy going)
charcoal shield
shield of beaten gold
marble armor

With boosters/randoms (you'll have several of each if you recruit a bunch of smiths, and hey, they're cheap):
dwarven hammers
chainmail of displacement
gate cleavers
astral caps
crystal coins
stymian wings
winged boots
owl quills
robe of shadows
lucky pendant
amulet of MR
flambeau
herald lance
crystal shield
slave/crystal matrixes


With Forge of the Ancients plus randoms/boosters - you can crank all this stuff out at about 30% cost when using a hammer
rods of the phoenix
robe of invulnerability
rings of sorcery
rings of wizardry
robe of the magi (assuming you empowered an air random smith for forging blood stones)
flame helm
winged helm
bag of winds
staff of storms
staff of elemental mastery

[KissBlade]

Oh right, I forget, I get lightless lanterns too =).

[thejeff]

Everything I can. I try to make sure my pretender can make boosters for all the smith's random paths, so they can forge more things.

The Air and Astral randoms on the smiths open up whole new areas of cheap items.

[Potatoman]

I realize that this is slightly off-topic, but why are charcoal shields so good? I almost never see units suffer damage from the fire effect in my tests, and even then rarely more than 3 or 4.

[DrPraetorious]

Well, that depends on the unit.

A Prot 16 unit isn't going to suffer very much damage from a Dam 4 fire shield.

OTOH, A prot 0 unit is going to be fried eventually.

So if you are concerned that your SC is going to be swarmed by summoned undead or something and bottled up, you give him a charcoal shield.

[Lord_Bob]

You've got an armoured combat mage, why are you bothering having him monkey around with "forges" and such? His true purpose is to rain down magma and blade wind destruction on evil pie stealing monkeys. They may look cute, but they have an unholy hunger for apple pies. The only way to stop them is to exterminate them! Exterminate the monkeys! Save the apple pies for people! Apple pies are for people, not monkeys!

[jaif]

lol@bob :-)

Thank you all for the ideas.

-Jeff

[Baalz]

DrPraetorious said:
Well, that depends on the unit.

A Prot 16 unit isn't going to suffer very much damage from a Dam 4 fire shield.

OTOH, A prot 0 unit is going to be fried eventually.

So if you are concerned that your SC is going to be swarmed by summoned undead or something and bottled up, you give him a charcoal shield.



Also realize that the fire damage is reduced by the weapon length of the attacker, so it's not going to do much to armored pikeneers. If you're getting attacked by ghosts though, low protection, short ranged attack, fire ignores their etherealness....quite effective.

[Folket]

How do you build SCs with Ulm? I would just be happy with thugs.

[NTJedi]

Folket said:
How do you build SCs with Ulm? I would just be happy with thugs.



Depends on what turn of the game and your targeted enemy nations. A SC on turn_15 against Pangaea would be equipped differently than a SC on turn_75 against R'yleh.

[Baalz]

Well, I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between SCs and thugs. I generally think of thugs as strong enough to take out most any PD singlehandedly, while SCs are in the ballpark of taking out moderately strong armies absent magical support. Ulm has some good thugs in the construction line which is a high priority anyway- golems & iron dragons (you can GOR the dragons, or just have a smith equipped with winged boots lead one dragon apiece for pretty lethal raiding options). For SCs, with boosters Ulm can reasonably easily summon all the elemental royalty other than water. You're also almost certainly going to want to empower a smith one level in death for forging reasons, this gives you an easy way to create death golems which can start encroaching into SC territory if properly equipped (no astral to mind duel, high HP & prot, built in crowd control with banefire shield). Outside of that, you've got the boosters to get that d1 smith high enough to cast liches, then the liches can take the boosters to make tartarians.

Also, keep in mind Ulm really needs a pretender to flesh out some of their magic diversity, and summoning SCs is a pretty reasonable use of pretender-turns so its not unreasonable to expect that to be something your pretender contributes to.

[Lord_Bob]

Really, Flail(2 attacks per round)+"Strength of Giants" (burn gems early on then get Earthpower a little later) = Killing Machines

Enchantment-3 can be gotten very early. However, once you get Blade Wind your going to need to phase out the Flail troops and phase in the Tower Shield Morning Star units.

Do not use Black Plate. Do not use Black Plate. Do not use Black Plate.

Also, your units are mighty and Smiths have Leadership-50.

DO IN THE EARLY GAME USE THEM AS A COMMANDER!

If a Smith ends up wandering around for several turns before a normal commander becomes available, then so what? Yes, you've lost some mage-turns, but you still have the mage, so it doesn't matter much. It's important to make sure he doesn't die though.

Oh, and making everyone angry by pointing out glaring flaws in the game will pretty much destroy your diplomacy forever. This only matters if want to continue playing a game that is broken "because".

[Lord_Bob]

I have already had it explained to me that raiding is useless. You are wasting your time raiding. Baalz why are you confusing this player with your nonsense about raiding? Baalz, Baalz, you accuse me of trolling, but then you seek to lead this poor man astray with your talk of "raiding". A childs dream. Raiding is useless, and never done in MP. That's why useless PD has so little effect.

Oh, and it seems the only "fair" match up for any Monkey race is the bottom of the bottom. Unfortunately, LA Abysia was mentioned, which is pretty funny. I think it would be amusing for Patala to attempt to survive very long against LA Abysia. You know, Blood-2 hunters from turn 1 and Blood 2 Agony spammed on low MR monkies. Of course, later(Evocation-3, wow, really late) Abysia will Magic Duel all the Nagarashi to death. Then we'll see how good monkeys with astral and nature do against concentrated rains of fire and demons. But it's pretty clear people don't think out the consequences of Patala's many, many weaknesses before they trash talk. Patala honestly would benefit from having no PD at all if it would give them a real stealth unit. Of Astral-2 on the Nagirashi. Or much of anything, because their PD is currently completely useless.

[Baalz]

You're a pretty good troll, you do so make one want to respond. But instead, hmmm, what's this? Ohhh, an "ignore this user" button. Cool, I think I'll push that one instead.

[Ironhawk]

Hahaha. Yeah, you are a troll, Lord Bob.

[hoo]

Baalz said:
Well, I'm not sure exactly what the difference is between SCs and thugs. I generally think of thugs as strong enough to take out most any PD singlehandedly, while SCs are in the ballpark of taking out moderately strong armies absent magical support. Ulm has some good thugs in the construction line which is a high priority anyway- golems & iron dragons (



I think the golems make really good SCs for UlM..or as I design them anyway. It's pretty easy to give them the invulnerable robe, boost their MR and then they can use luck/body ethereal on themselves and go to town. The big problem is that they don't regen so they can be worn down. but I've had pretty good success with a tricked out Golem with the stonesword laying waste to armies.

[Lord_Bob]

Respond? Exactly how were you going to do that? You just spent a post extolling raiding, and now you have to explain how PD has no effect on raiding. Clearly that's going to be a bit of a problem. Oh, and the Sanguine Rod has very little positive effect after Blood-2 is reached. It helps, but not in any spectular manner.

Blood 1:
0.50 times 1 to 7 slaves=2 slaves a turn
0.90 times 1 to 8 slaves=4.05 slaves a turn
1.00 times 1 to 9 slaves=5 slaves a turn
1.00 times 1 to 10 slaves=5.5 slaves a turn

Clearly, Blood-2 is just fine. The reason why LA Abysia does poorly is people refuse to accept this and insist on getting Construction-4 first. So yeah, I can hunt with a Blood-2 Mage just fine.

[Sombre]

I don't think he needs anyone to respond, he'll just keep talking to himself, though ignore function sounds pretty good if he's going to do so off-topic in lots of threads.

[Baalz]

Regular golems are pretty vulnerable to mind duels, in MP its often pretty tough to use them against real armies as if nothing else your opponent probably has lizard shamen somewhere and for a couple hundred gold and a few pearls your 50+ gems worth of golem and equipment has a pretty good chance of going poof round one. Very good for raiding though, particularly against nations with no national astral mages.

Poison golems though, there is no easy way to stop other than the usual SC counters.

[DigitalSin]

Yeah, the ignore button works like a charm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

[Lord_Bob]

Fleeing the field after refusing to actually answer any of my points doesn't actually make me feel bad. I've more than gotten use to the know-it-all super-vain yet completely and utterly conventional attitude of many Western Europeans. Do you also think it is "oh-so-bold" to dislike America? Not saying your wrong, but does it get any more conventional than that? Baalz didn't even make ONE SINGLE POST about why I was actually wrong. Pretend to be superior, and who knows, maybe the poor fool will believe you. Or maybe not.

And being offended isn't going to make me say I'm sorry either. Patala is nerfed, and the only "help" you've given is to whine about valid problems.

[Evilhomer]

I do not know where your rant about Europeans, and about Europeans disliking americans came from. Baalz "Loc:Houston, Texas" makes me belive he is in fact an american himself.

[archaeolept]

I don't think lord bob started out as a troll, just highly opinionated and somewhat uninformed; however, all the argument has gotten him worked up and now he really is trolling. I would suggest to him that he take a breather. then play some real MP games to test his theories http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

empiricism FTW++

though i certainly agree Patela is underwhelming... but then again, "cold blooded" always makes me /shudder

[jaif]

Bob - seriously, no need to keep ranting. You made a point, many didn't believe you. Play the follow-on games, see what happens, have fun. But no need to troll here.

To throw this back on-track - anybody ever used the black lords as weak thugs?

-Jeff

[KissBlade]

Seconded the opinion. It's a shame too because Bob's posts does have qualities that dictate he does understand MP pretty well though possibly with slight biases.

[Lord_Bob]

Ok, here is some help. You know what unit you build at your capital turn 1 through 10? Flail troops+Smith. Nothing but.
Now, there are interesting possibilities with Indies, but don't build anything but Flails at your castle.

Then cast Strength of Giants on your flail troops. Have the discipline to give up territory if you must to keep your troops alive. Get that Strength of Giants! For the first few turns, you need to burn an earth gem to cast it. Great. Do that. With Strength of Giants 68 flail troops with light mage surport, and ABOVE ALL SERMON OF COURAGE, you can take on bless troops and rip them apart. Your GOLD VALUE in bless troops. I fought three times my gold value in Bless troops(22 White Tigers and 8 White Monkeys, Water and Earth Bless VERSUS 68 Flail Troops) and killed all the monkeys and five of the tigers before breaking. Your flail troops are heavily armoured and have high hitpoints. They will be making ALOT of morale rolls. It is NOT silly to get the Herald Lance if you can or the Horn of Valour. NOTHING IS PUT AHEAD OF STRENGTH OF GIANTS!

STRENGTH OF GIANTS!
STRENGTH OF GIANTS!
STRENGTH OF GIANTS!

[Baalz]

jaif said:
To throw this back on-track - anybody ever used the black lords as weak thugs?

-Jeff



Yes, they can be effective under certain circumstances, but that low MR is a killer. Still, it doesn't take very much to let them solo a decent amount of PD - fire brand + barkskin amulet can often be enough. They can also add a whole lot of offense to your solid defensive lineup (3 or 4 with fire brands on the flanks while your infantry holds the line do pretty well). Just remember, no matter what you do they're gonna be fairly expendable....

[Lord_Bob]

Still, it doesn't take very much to let them solo a decent amount of PD - fire brand + barkskin amulet can often be enough


PD IS USELESS! DON'T LISTEN!

[Shovah32]

Ok Bob now the trolling is just getting silly, seriously.