MA Ulm Pretender

[TheKDawg]

With the new changes, what is your pretender going to look like? Rainbow Master Enchantress with enough Earth to reinvig those sacred smiths?

Also if you were going to build an awake SC pretender for MA Ulm to defend against rushes (which my opponents like to do) what would you make?

Thanks in advance for the answers.

[Xietor]

In MP, Ulm still needs a size 6 awake pretender to stop elephant rush. None of the changes help with that.

Just a quick thought, Father of Winters, 4w4a4n. 3order, 2cold, 1 growth, 3 drain.

Forge him on turns 2-5 black plate, sword sharpness, shield,
and helmet, and he will be a formidable sc.

High priority research, ench 2 for personal regeneration, alt for quickness, mistform, mirror image.

While this pretender could not safely solo take provinces on turn 2, by turn 8-10 he could kill any dragon or wyrm sc's. And he would laugh at elephants, hydras, and mammoths.

This pretender would see Ulm into the midgame, where they seem to rarely reach in the mp games i have been in.

[vfb]

Have you tried an awake Prince of Death to counter an elephant rush? His high defense prevents him from getting trampled too badly and the fear is great against elephants too.

[Xietor]

Until they cast touch of madness on the elephants.

A bigger fear early is arcos. if they have 2-3 astrologers with their elephants solar rays can mess up undead pretty bad, caelum get lightning early, and ulm cannot make rings sr protection. Bandar log can also cast solar rays.

Father of Winters can cast resist lighting, has superior hps,
and would give Ulm access to 3 new paths. And he is extremely hard to kill once he gets decked out and buffs.

[Shovah32]

An awake Prince of Death with Dom9-10, D5(or more) and possibly some earth magic(E/D makes shadow brands, earth gives him ironskin/invunerability) really helps Ulm. Stops alot of early rushes, particularly elephants - and now with new and improved guardians to stop dangerous sacred rushes you should do well early on.

Get him ironskin and some basic equipment and he should be ready to go and beat on some enemies. Black Plate Infantry do far better against PD than against big, well scripted armies(the difference is bigger than it is for most other units) so if you can get your Prince of Death to target fairly large armies and leave your troops to mop up you can actually take out one or two enemies early on - I mean who will expect to be rushed by Ulm?

Later on, your pretender can help diversify your magic. Spectres and much later Tartarians can greatly broaden your available magic paths and demiliches can get you heavily into death. He can also summon banelords ect midgame for you to cheaply thug out.

[Xietor]

Several viable choices for pretender. And many experienced mp may have many different preferences.

One thing I think all would agree with though, is that Ulm must take an awake pretender that can fend off an elephant rush.

[Jazzepi]

Shovah32 said:
An awake Prince of Death with Dom9-10, D5(or more) and possibly some earth magic(E/D makes shadow brands, earth gives him ironskin/invunerability) really helps Ulm. Stops alot of early rushes, particularly elephants - and now with new and improved guardians to stop dangerous sacred rushes you should do well early on.

Get him ironskin and some basic equipment and he should be ready to go and beat on some enemies. Black Plate Infantry do far better against PD than against big, well scripted armies(the difference is bigger than it is for most other units) so if you can get your Prince of Death to target fairly large armies and leave your troops to mop up you can actually take out one or two enemies early on - I mean who will expect to be rushed by Ulm?

Later on, your pretender can help diversify your magic. Spectres and much later Tartarians can greatly broaden your available magic paths and demiliches can get you heavily into death. He can also summon banelords ect midgame for you to cheaply thug out.



PoD is amazing for Ulm. My build for him involves this.

2x Black Kite Shields
1x Steel Helm
1x Black Steel Full Plate
1x Boots of Behemoth (Note, PoD can take out any indies without these due to fear, but this actually gives him the ability to get kills instead of just routing the enemy when you start fighting actual armies)
2x Bracers of Protection

The above build is completely built out of earth magic items and is absolutely ridiculous http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif What you really want though is a lucky amulet, and probably an amulet of antimagic for the misc slots. Or maybe something like a ring of elemental magic protection depending on who you are fighting.

Jazzepi

[Xietor]

I did a duel between Ulm and arcos. Used awake pod 6d 9 dominion. In a fight with arcos, in Ulm dominion, POD started with 99 hps and 21 mr. He has a level 2 priest and 1 mage cast earth shards, lots skellies, 10 guardians, and 50 crossbows.

Arcos has 15 elephants mixed with heart companions(about 20),
1 priestess(prophet), and 6 astrologers with evoc 2 research.

3 astrologers died to crossbow fire, but the other 3 using solar rays made short work of the pod. Since 2 of the elephant rush nations have strong astral mages, and the other has strong air, my personal preference remains the Father of Winters.

[vfb]

I had big plans to Dust to Dust a PoD built almost exactly like Jazzepi's (but not 2x Bracers of Protection ... are you sure they stack?). But my mages set on Dust to Dust went berserk and charged, oops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Then I got lucky and Smited the PoD to death.

[Cor2]

I have had great luck with dust to dust and maggots agianst PoD. Its almost too easy.

[Jazzepi]

vfb said:
I had big plans to Dust to Dust a PoD built almost exactly like Jazzepi's (but not 2x Bracers of Protection ... are you sure they stack?). But my mages set on Dust to Dust went berserk and charged, oops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Then I got lucky and Smited the PoD to death.



In my testing they did. The 2nd pair was only worth like +1 protection, but I'm a protection whore you know, and since it's relatively inexpensive to forge I threw it on there.

I had TERRIBLE LUCK with dust to dust against your stupid PoD in the first mega game D:

Jazzepi

[Dedas]

vfb said:
I had big plans to Dust to Dust a PoD built almost exactly like Jazzepi's (but not 2x Bracers of Protection ... are you sure they stack?). But my mages set on Dust to Dust went berserk and charged, oops http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Then I got lucky and Smited the PoD to death.



It was a PoD built by Jazzepi! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I was so close to crushing your last skeleton spamming mages defending your capitol - *bam*, smited.

[Twan]

Out of duels against elephants or small rush friendly maps I would prefer a rainbow great sage offering real magic diversity and curing the real weakness of the nation : without him the magic race is lost.

my build : great sage F3 A2 W2 S3 E2 D2 N3 B1, dom 5, order 3, prod 2, misf 2, growth 1, drain 3, heat 1

26 RP / turn may look a negligible advantage but having them since the beginning can snowballs more than being one of the numerous players with a totally unimaginative awake SC chassis.

4 forts with lab (economize on temples) must be built as soon as possible, and researchers the priority, even if the price is taking just one province/turn when ennemies take 2 or 3 the first year.

Evo 3 and thaum 2 will be researched fast so priest smiths and others start to be usefull on the battlefield and can cast gnome lore (and augury sometimes), then Con 6 for lanterns and powerful boosters, Evocation 6, enchantment *or* conjuration 6 to be able to summon some thugs -or if you have nature or astral income early, target a gem producing global the sage can cast with boosters, ench 7 for stellar focus or alt 5 for mother oak, but don't search levels 5+ in more than one school out of conjuration & evocation-, and then go for construction 8 before other endgame magics.

With construction 6 reached around turn 20-25 and many lanterns forged as soon it's possible (fire gems may be the problem, and so should be the first trade objective) only nations taking magic 3 may beat you in the magic race, even if the sage now forge boosters or search sites.

Also reaching construction 6 fast and being able to forge items of many paths is an huge diplomatic advantage. You can furnish what your neighbour need and can't forge and you have a small territory but hard to take with all your forts, you don't look like a threat and your weak dominion don't spoils neighbours magic scales. You must be really unlucky if someone attack you with all these goods reasons to take on someone else.

As other nations will often research level 5+ in more than 3 schools because their mages have more possibilities, or go for a level 8 in another school first, the artefact race should be won (or at least you should be one of the first, with a lot to forge).

Once you can make artefacts the difference between a rainbow and a PoD shines : with the boosters you had been able to make you can forge a lot of things at -45% cost with the master smiths having one random, and more with the sage himself. Also a smith with an astral pick can summon golems with the two astral boosters. And the iron angels are summonable with some effort.

And once you have researched conjuration with a booster you have the same capacity to summon spectres (and then liches and tartarians, if you have D2, you'll have D7) but as you are also able to forge nature boosters and the magic rings, you will be able to GoR your tartarians far more easily (and eventually some powerful constructs can also worth to be GoRed before you have access to tartarians).

ps : of course it's a weak strategy
- if someone rush you
- if you have to fight an astral or other MR spells using nation in midgame (no temper the will)
- if your sage die and lose 8 magic levels, killed by the archer of Bogus team the first time he goes out to search some sites near the capitol (happened to me :" )

[Shovah32]

Once spells like dust to dust start flying around it's probably best to retire your Prince of Death to casting, forging and possibly raiding.

[Jazzepi]

Shovah32 said:
Once spells like dust to dust start flying around it's probably best to retire your Prince of Death to casting, forging and possibly raiding.



You can raid with her all day long, even after DTD starts being cast.

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

Jazzepi said:
You can raid with her all day long, even after DTD starts being cast.



Mmm, Princess of Death! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Does she wear an Ankh around her neck? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Shovah32]

Don't worry, Jazzepi is just a little gender confused http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

And my worries about raiding were: teleporting mages with dust to dust along with the fact that alot of nations with dust to dust could also have death mages with their PD.

[Xietor]

Again, if you are Ulm and facing an elephant rush you need your pretender to fight, not forge etc. and solar rays can be researched very quickly. And the pod cannot stand up to solar rays.

That is why, in my humble opinion, the best pretender for withstanding an early elephant rush is Father of Winters. D magic is easy to tie in to. you do not really have to have a death pretender to end up with tartarians in the endgame.

[Tuidjy]

Tawn, a great sage is better than anything but a rainbow ghost king unless you
are attacked. By taking one, you guarantee that if you are attacked in the
first twenty turns, you will lose the game. It is not just elephants that will
tear your armies up. A SC pretender backed up by a decent army and high level
priests will also make short work of Ulm's smiths and troops.

I just finished a three way MA game with Ulm against Caelum and Man. I was
extremely lucky as I found the Mirror Wall Palace, one of the enchantress forests,
and the Daoine Sidhe hill (never seen it before), and because the map placement
stuck Man between Caelum and me. Still, there was a moment in the middle game,
when my Pretender was everything that stood between Caelum's shock backed
mammoths/thugs and defeat. Yes, my sorceresses could deal with small numbers
of mammoths, and my Daoine Sidhe made fine raiders once I got enough druids to
lead/bless/berserk them. But Ulm still has a huge mid game period in which it
has nothing to throw at non-sacred thugs - Banes and Wraiths in this case.

By the way, my pretender was the air/earth titan, with 4A1W4E3D, and
Order/Production/Misfortune/Drain scales. A small map pretender, by all means,
and probably worse than Xietor's Father of Winter. Still, Ulm needs something
in MP, if the nation wants to hold its head high, as opposed to sending messages
like 'Please, please, let me live, I will forge anything you want until the
end of the game' I have gotten messages like this.

-------

By the way, I did not get a good feel of the usefulness of the new additions,
except for the holy smiths. Man went down too quickly, and my guardians did
not get a chance to kill wardens. The Iron Blizzards killed one thug, but it
was freakish good luck - he managed to get within spitting range, and ran
out of action points - he must have eaten 30 darts... that would have
probably taken out a Tartarian, let alone a wraith lord with no shield.
I did not go for Iron Angels, and as for the lightened armour, indies died to
Ulm just fine before.

But the holy smiths are Heaven sent. One can furnish a castle with lab/temple,
costs half as much to maintain, easily gets to 4E +6 reinvigoration... I love'em.
I hate hearing that they will be getting old age. Ulm is really short on design
points, and thus my Ulm will never get enough growth. Why should they be old,
anyway? Usually it is the young rebels that adopt new trends. And why the hell
are the normal smiths flirting with old age out of the box, anyway? If you're
going to age the holy smiths, make the standard ones younger.

[CUnknown]

Tuidjy -- I agree about making the regular Master Smiths younger. Let them not die of old age, it's a little silly.

Twan admitted that the rainbow strategy was weak against rushes or on small maps. On that kind of map, Ulm really does need the Prince of Darkness build or something like it.

To say that you are guarenteed to be attacked in the first 20 turns if you take a rainbow is just not true.. there's never a guarentee about anything. I agree that it makes it more likely that you will be attacked, how much more so is impossible to say.

Yet, even if you are attacked, you're not defenseless. I know you disagree, but arbelests are actually effective in dealing with people's SC gods. With the CB mod you can have your smiths cast Blindness also in the early game. I think you are seriously underestimating Ulm's power in the early game, especially with the new changes to Guardians. And the +1 morale! That is key.

Although even before, it was not hopeless. With Production-3 and the Ulm production bonus, you have a serious edge on troop production. Black Knights are one of the best non-sacred cavalry out there, and Black Lord thugs are very effective if given a magic weapon. Ulm also has a edge on the mercenary front, given the huge supply of cash they can save up in the early turns.

Elephants can ruin your day, though, no doubt.

Twan - I have a build very much like yours, except for a couple points. I prefer the Great Enchantress, because I think the +1 astral pearl per turn is far better than the research bonus. Also, I don't think that Ulm needs a 5 dominion, either. But, that is being picky. Another nitpick, I would drop Growth and also drop Heat -- Heat is -5% money, Growth is only +2%. I suppose the pop growth would pay that off eventually, but it doesn't seem worth it, imo. Also, dang... how can you get away with not taking production-3 with Ulm (and also not taking an SC god)? I am baffled.. doesn't that slow your early expansion?

Also, I try to go straight for Construction-6, if possible (for lanterns), and then on to Construction-8 if I'm not being attacked. You are in it for the long-haul with this build, and hoping not to be attacked, might as well go the whole 9 yards if you are allowed to do so.

So, the ideal is that you will build a Ring of Wizardry around turn 25 or so with your pearls you have saved up, then move on to artifacts (Hammer of the Forge Lord!), before you've even researched any other school. Pay people off to make friends, share the wealth.

Tuidjy, I know what you are thinking, that this would never work against good opponents, and maybe against the absolute best opponents in some sort of World Series of Dominions it wouldn't work. But in typical games against typical opponents in non-newbie games it usually works fine in my experience.

You seem very concerned about getting rushed early game, but generally isn't it true that you are either double-teamed or are the one double-teaming your opponent? People die when they are double-teamed and are successful when they double-team someone else. So, being worried about how Ulm would fare in a 1v1 rush is a little beside the point. I think it is best to worry about how to get on the right side of that double-team. And Ulm is well equipped with the forge bonus as a diplomatic tool to be able to do that.

Edit: I wanted to add more thing, Xietor's Father of Winter looks like a great SC god. But, I think this same god would be better suited for another faction. Not taking production scales with Ulm is just.. I don't know.. I mean, was it a random game and you were forced to pick Ulm, when you really wanted someone else?

Xietor, you say that Ulm needs an awake SC to deal with elephants and that's true. But the sort of god you threw out there just seems like the kind of god another faction would take. I think it's an attempt to shore up Ulm's weaknesses rather than a build to maximize Ulm's strengths, which I think is a mistake.

I think if you get elephant rushed as Ulm and you have no allies to back you up you just die. I am content with that and would just start another game where I'd hope to do better. Whereas your build, I think, would get you to the midgame where you'd lose just about every time. But that is just my take on it.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I wonder if CUnknown is actually one of my alter egos I'm not aware of. Your thinking on Ulm is spot on my own. I was going to write a MA Ulm guide until I saw you had written one and it covered basically all the points I would make. I think people really underestimate how effective Ulm's advantages can be in mid game. Focusing on construction early? How weak are those swarms of cheap dudes when buffed with weapons of sharpness and strength of giants while your enemies are earth melded? Magma eruption is arguably the strongest mid-line evocation spell and every one of your 140 gp mages can cast it. Destruction is brutal when cast by several mages in a battle and you should have *lots* of smiths. Then there's that little forge bonus...

As to being defenseless against elephants, I again call phooey. Obviously this boils down to player skill, but a couple reasonable counters come to mind depending on what you've got available- again, keeping in mind what Ulm does have going for it. With Ulm you should have a couple castles up pretty fast and plenty of smiths to field if you're rushed. Magma bolts. Bonds of fire. Body ethereal (from pretender, smith randoms, mercenaries, lizard shamans, sages - you only need a couple S1 mages) cast on 12 or so Black Knights can easily take out a similar gold cost of elephants. Assuming you took a rainbow pretender depending on your research paths you can combine the above with panic/terror and all the classic MR check counters. My preference is also the enchantress for Ulm and I find it very viable.

Personally, I research some of the above spells for exactly this reason before I begin focusing on construction. If you do end up being rushed, push through for destruction or magma eruption depending on what's coming at you. With just those spells a handful of smiths can beat back some pretty strong advances by just hiding behind PD meatshields.

[Twan]

Between prod 2 and prod 3 the difference isn't big for early expansion. Having a forest or a mountain near your capitol makes more difference (and anyway if you have only farmlands/swamps around Ulm is screwed). I prefer growth to reduce the old age affliction chances of the priest smiths (and heat... I always take 1 heat or 1 cold as temperatures varies with seasons anyway) and offer a little increase of income as we speak about a long game on big map.

Then I prefer the great sage because it give the edge on research even against other rainbows, and for some more turns against magic nations, but I agree the enchantress is a good choice too (probably better if you aren't lucky with site searching).

I find rushing straight to construction 8 risky. With the new evocation spells I find more logical to learn some battle magic first, and gnome lore is a must have since early game too.

Then my choice of searching conjuration 6 before construction 8 is discuttable, as someone really rushing the artefacts may beat Ulm. But I prefer to summon some spectres as early as possible to have more than one mage with death, to search sites or summon bane lords (of course if I have no death income by turn 20 I'd rather skip this phase, trolls kings don't worth the effort as you have hordes of earth mages).

[jaif]

For my own amusement, I made a 10 space random map and played a little test between arcos and ulm. I built 7 ulm black knights and set them on the front lines with attack nearest. I built 4 elephants and did the same command. The commanders I left on the back lines with "stay behind troops" so they wouldn't interfere.

Ulm wiped the floor with them twice, killing 3 than 2 with no losses. I tried a 3rd time, and ulm lost 5 knights out of 7, kill 2 elephants. Ulm routed, the elephants routed, and the arcos commander won the fight.

Obviously 3 quick fights aren't a wonderful test case, but the shock from black knights is enough to kill elephants pretty easily. Also obviously, support forces and tactics can change the equation, but that works both ways.

-Jeff

P.S. 7 knights - 385 gold. 4 elephants - 400 gold

[ComTrav]

Little OT, but:
The Father of Winters design actually looks appealing for EA Ulm. You get points for Cold anyway, and EA Ulm has a variety of magic but no high paths.

[Xietor]

The elephant rush will have elephants mixed with high morale hyperists, and 4-5 astrologers, all casting mind burn-or worse.

A good elephant rush will have 20 elephants, not 3-5. And it will be backed by numerous astrologers, many whom teleport to the front lines to reinforce. In my experience, ulm's troops do not stand up well to mind burn/soul slay a bit later on.

Father of Winters and the scales were off the top of my head. I am sure a better awake sc/scales could be devised to stop elephant rushes. Especially since I would never have considered playing Ulm mp before the changes. So I have no real expertise in designing a pretender for them.

Having conquered them though, i have good ideas about their weaknesses in mp.

[jaif]

An good elephant rush will have 20 elephants, not 3-5. And it will be backed by numerous astrologers, many whom teleport to the front lines to reinforce. In my experience, ulm's troops do not stand up well to mind burn/soul slay a bit later on.



a) I just wanted to see if ulm had a unit to counter elephants. The forum wisdom is that ulm has nothing that can beat an elephant. Nothing. But gold-cost equivalents did fine in my limited testing.

b) I specifically mentioned that support troops change things, but that it goes both ways. So you now need some smiths in the mix as well.

c) 20 elephants is 2000 gold. How many is "numerous" @180 apiece? I assume hyperiasts are hypaspists - how many of those? How much gold are we working with here?

d) what does a rush mean, exactly? That hardly sounds like a rush to my ears - it's a strong, prepared attack force. What turn do you expect to have that on?

-Jeff

[Baalz]

Admittedly I haven't been on the receiving end of an elephant rush orchestrated by you, that might be fun to try as I have beat back other rushes playing Ulm. Ignoring castle-recruitment constraints for a second, for the price of 3 elephants you get 2 smiths plus change. Obviously this isn't scalable because you can only recruit one smith per castle, but still given Ulm's typical early gold advantage and urgent castle building it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to field 10-12 smiths by the time you're looking at a 20 strong elephant force threatening you - and without permanently crippling your research curve. Assuming you marched a force as you describe into my territory at the end of year one I'd counter by trying to catch you as you attacked (shouldn't be hard) so you're running into about 40 PD backed by the dozen or so smiths leading whatever of the halberd wielding infantry I could scrape up over a couple turns from my multiple castles and prod-3 edge (likely in the 100-120 man range). Your initial elephant charge will be broken by 7 or 8 smiths spamming Bonds of Fire. It won't stop them all but they'll trickle in several at a time rather than in one overwhelming mass as even the ones not hit will have to run around those that are. While causing some damage, they'll quickly be surrounded and hacked to pieces by halberds. Meanwhile my remaining smiths begin raining magma bolts down into the elephants strung out by the fire bonds while my black plate keeps friendly fire from being too much of an issue. All the while your astrologers are popping 4-5 of my infantry per turn out of probably close to 200. By the end of the battle you've killed mostly my PD (which were in the front) and are out close to 2000 gold of elephants.

Would it work that well in practice? Perhaps, that's debatable (or better yet testable), but you'd have a hard time arguing that it'd have no chance. My point is that Ulm isn't helpless, you just have to use what you have at your disposal. Cheap troops, cheap mages, lots of gold/castles.

[Xietor]

I am not an elephant rush player. In fact I am just playing arcos. for the 1st time in EH II. And I took a rainbow pretender.

Gameextremist always played arcos. and was king of the elephant rush. I have seen good players not playing Ulm fall to his elephant rush tactics. Somehow he always had 20 elephants very early in the game, back by mages. I suspect
he set taxes high, patrolled, and used his dragon to expand.


He did take an awake dragon, so you can forget about building a 2nd castle unless you had enough troops building it to defeat his dragon. So against a good rush player, you not only have elephants/mages to deal with, but an awake dragon.

[CUnknown]

Baalz -- I'm glad we agree! Us Ulm players have to stick together. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Twan -- I agree that rushing to artifacts is risky. I wouldn't do it every game, but as Ulm a nice bonus as Baalz pointed out is Weapons of Sharpness at Const-7. One of the best buffs, and Ulm can cast it with no problem.

However, I think I am inclined to agree with those like Xietor who say that Ulm is extremely weak when faced with a strong early game elephant rush, esp. backed with astral mages. Not that there is no hope if you are creative, but generally you will be in a world of hurt.

I just disagree that you should base your whole strategy with Ulm around defending against an elephant rush.

I am not surprised that you aren't generally an Ulm player, Xietor. You don't seem to think like an Ulm player, hehe (some people would take that as a compliment). Criticisms of Ulm really are valid, Ulm has weaknesses, and if you are concerned about them, the best way to avoid them is to not play Ulm, lol.

Arcosephale and Caelum pose big problems for Ulm, so why not play Arcosephale or Caelum instead?

When I pick a faction, I do so because I am excited about something, some strength they have, not because I'd like to minimize a weakness they have.

I look at Ulm and see, wow, they are the best forge race in the game, how can you max that out to full effect? And I might get stomped by elephants. But that is life.

[Xietor]

Actually my goal is now to play every single ma race. I played MA Pangaea for years(going back to dom II), and they certainly are not one of the elite mp races. I just like their theme.

But I am now playing pythium and arcos for the 1st time, and in future mp games will play every MA race I have yet to play.

So far in mp I have won mp games with Shinuyama, Pangaea, and did very well in the Big Game with Ctis that ended due to unit limit being reached. I owned 7 capitals at that time and likely was about 4th or so in power rankings.

So I have done pretty well with the nonelite ma MP races. Time will tell how I do with pythium and Arcos. Eventually I will get around to playing Ulm, but I am in no rush.

When I do, however, I will have an awake size 6 pretender who is not vulnerable to solar rays.

[Sir_Dr_D]

i vote for a Prince of Death expanded into at least one other path of magic, either nature or astral. Here is why.

1) You can expand almost right away using it. And from my experience it takes a couple turns longer to really start expanding with a nation that relies on production. It needs that boost from the pretender.

2) After you have a fast enough expansion using knights, you can use the pretender as a site searcher, to expand into the addiontal paths.

3) In order to best make use of ulms forging abiliity, you need chasis' to to put the items on. Death provides the best summons for that. In particular with ulms heavy earth forging, you can put heavy encumbrance items on undead. Earth forging isn't as good for thugs that get fatigued.

4)Elephants don't like princes of death.


The only problem with this is a prince of death is very unthemetic for ulm. Ulm breaks away from Ermor to follow an anti magic, anti sacred, anti everything, cult, and then worships a prince of death? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif

[Xietor]

Did you not just play Ulm in Fallacy Sir_Dr_D? And were they not one of the 1st races to die? That is not a slight to you, you are a good player. But in every single MP game I have been in with Ulm present, they were either the 1st to die, or very close to it.

Have yet to see MA Ulm make it to middle game in any MP game I have played in.

A funny memory i have in the Big Game was talking early to some of the players i knew to see if any of them were close to me, and several said they had their scout out looking for MA Ulm. It was like a winning lottery ticket to start out near MA Ulm. If memory serves Frank Trollman(LA Atlantis) found them 1st and they definitely were the 1st of the 65 races to die.

When the perception exists in the mp community that a race is weak early, then you can expect an early attack.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I was the first to die in that game, for more reasons then just playing Ulm. I hadn't practiced that nation enough. In that game I tried to expand too fast, and ended up dying against indies. The ulm infantry weren't as invinsible as i thought. Even with production three I could not build troops fast enough to take most indies. Which is why I am saying now that an awake pretender is important. In that game I did have a cyclops, but I messed it up. Another mistake I made is I should have been expanding using knights not ifantry. The knights can expand significantly faster then the infantry.

But I agree that in order to win as ulm, you need to get lucky. You could face off an elephant rush as ulm for example, as long all that is the force is elepants. If you need to face elephants backed by mages,elephants made ethereal, or awake pretenders as well, you don't stand much chance. I see this thread as, how you can do as much damage as possible as ulm before dying.

In the game I had to face Shinuyama. Shinuayama, has a lot of powerfull low resource troops. Because they are low resource, Shinuyama can expand much faster. And because their troops are all high strength, ulms armor doesn't help much. I have also found it slow to reasearch as ulm. You need to build a lot of castles before you get going on research. Which means in the early game, anyone you face will likely have higher magic then you. Even if I didn't make those mistakes in the game, I don't think I would have stood much of a chance.

[Baalz]

Baalz said:
Admittedly I haven't been on the receiving end of an elephant rush orchestrated by you, that might be fun to try as I have beat back other rushes playing Ulm. Ignoring castle-recruitment constraints for a second, for the price of 3 elephants you get 2 smiths plus change. Obviously this isn't scalable because you can only recruit one smith per castle, but still given Ulm's typical early gold advantage and urgent castle building it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to field 10-12 smiths by the time you're looking at a 20 strong elephant force threatening you - and without permanently crippling your research curve. Assuming you marched a force as you describe into my territory at the end of year one I'd counter by trying to catch you as you attacked (shouldn't be hard) so you're running into about 40 PD backed by the dozen or so smiths leading whatever of the halberd wielding infantry I could scrape up over a couple turns from my multiple castles and prod-3 edge (likely in the 100-120 man range). Your initial elephant charge will be broken by 7 or 8 smiths spamming Bonds of Fire. It won't stop them all but they'll trickle in several at a time rather than in one overwhelming mass as even the ones not hit will have to run around those that are. While causing some damage, they'll quickly be surrounded and hacked to pieces by halberds. Meanwhile my remaining smiths begin raining magma bolts down into the elephants strung out by the fire bonds while my black plate keeps friendly fire from being too much of an issue. All the while your astrologers are popping 4-5 of my infantry per turn out of probably close to 200. By the end of the battle you've killed mostly my PD (which were in the front) and are out close to 2000 gold of elephants.



I tried this out to see how it worked.

Team Arco:

25 elephants : 2500 gold
20 hypaspists : 300 gold
5 mystics : 900 gold
total : 3700 gold

Elephants and hypaspists in one large group, all the way forward. Mystics scripted to mind burn X5

Team Ulm:
12 Master smiths: 1680 gold
90 chainmail + battleaxe infantry = 900 gold
16 arbalests (had them sitting around from initial expansion) = 160 gold
40 PD = 820 gold
total : 3560

Infantry set just back and flanking PD on each side.
All smiths set to magma bolt X2, bonds of fire X3

Round 1: Magma bolts & arbalests kill 4 elephants and severely damage many more as they charge across the open ground. A couple Ulmish infantry popped by mind burn.

Round 2: Several more elephants dropped by magma bolts and over half of them are at least down to 2/3rds HP, elephants hit PD and cause minor damage having used most of their movement to close so only a little trampling.

Round 3: About a third of the remaining elephants are trapped by bonds of fire and another third killed by the infantry (many of the elephants were quite low on HP from the magma bolts). Arco breaks, but most of the elephants are trapped by bonds of fire and killed by the advancing infantry.

Final tally (excluding PD deaths):
20 elephants killed (the 5 that got away were badly afflicted)
6 hypaspists killed
0 astrologers killed

14 Ulmish infantry killed


So, there's a fairly concrete response to those who claim Ulm has no chance against elephants. This is a simple case and I'd expect the Arco player to pull a trick or two, but it's clearly not impossible for Ulm to win.

[Xietor]

Good analysis Baalz. Give Ulm a try.

But Arcos will use astrologers, not mystics. And by the time Ulm has magma bolts, arcos will have soul slay.

Other issue is Ulm is not likely to get that build up if it faces an awake dragon raiding its lands, while its pretender is asleep, or is a 10 hp arch mage. The dragon may just be sitting on Ulm's capital on turn 3 or 4 and how do you get it off with a sleeping pretender and infantry?

[Tuidjy]

Baalz: Ha ha ha!

[Baalz]

If you take, as suggested, an awake rainbow pretender and spend the first several turns researching you hit bonds of fire and magma bolts very quickly, and soul slay isn't really much better than mind burn against Ulmish infantry - I don't think that would have made any difference at all. I actually did use astrologers in the test, just mistyped.

As to the dragon, that's really kind of a different question, we were talking about elephants. A dragon sitting on your cap on turn 4 is quite a different ball of wax and is a challenge for many nations outside of whatever is following it up. Lets give this a try though...you've got an awake rainbow mage and in a total surprise a dom-10 dragon plops down and takes out all the PD in your capital on turn 4. I'll go ahead and make some assumptions: you've got a 4 strength dominion on your cap (you've had a pretender sitting there plus a temple plus the capital spread for 4 turns), you've got 3 master smiths, and you've got one expansion army with an arbalest squad outside your capital as well as a handful of infantry, you've also been researching thaumaturgy to pick up bonds of fire.

Depending on what the research actually is on your pretender, stall for a turn or two until you hit thaum-2. In the mean time your expansion army grabs a few more provinces (make sure you cut off all retreat routes for the dragon) and you try to find barbarians, or lizards, or any low resource/high damage indies to recruit (bonus, you'll probably take them easily with your arbalests) or mercenaries. A couple turns after the dragon appeared you attack with whatever you've been able to scrape up - which obviously will vary quite a bit, but you open the fight with your pretender cursing the dragon then casting berserkers a couple times on your biggest weapon carrying dudes, while your three smiths spam bonds of fire. Your prophet casts a bunch of sermons of courage and your expansion forces probably have a star or two so they've got fairly good moral and can hopefully take a swing or two despite the awe even without the berserk. The dragon is in significant enemy dominion with the accompanying penalties, is held for awhile with no real defense or chance to cause damage or make fear rolls, is cursed, and is being hacked at by berserk battleaxes (dare I hope you had a couple black knights?) who ignore his awe as well as being focussed on by arbalests at presumably short range. After the berserkers you can have your pretender cast frighten X 2. Dragon, taking some damage, is in enemy dominion, hit with 2 15 fear attacks and facing the extra moral check of lone combatants will route and die. Depending on how many arbalests and your actual mix of troops you might do better to skip the berserkers and just do frighten X4.

Now, this set you back a couple turns, but your enemy lost his pretender and you're hardly crippled.

Heck though, seems like the dragon would potentially have trouble just taking out the capital PD. Facing 25 arbalests in enemy dominion...14 AP damage focussed on a single guy with no shield or buffs and ignoring awe...seems like he'd need to win before they reloaded and fired at close range to have a chance.

[Xietor]

I think you script the dragon to hold 4 times then attack archers. Your mages would be casting spells that tire themselves out, but the dragon is oor of bonds fire etc.

Meanwhile arcos teleports in 5 astologers to support the dragon and they are casting mind burn the entire time. Assuming also arcos capital is 3 provinces from ulm's as seems to be the case in most mp games with spacing, then the reinfocement elephants should be getting close as well.

Baalz you have excellent ideas, and are a very good player. But the fact remains Ulm in my experience always dies early.
Not every person playing ulm is going to be a hall of fame player.

While it is certainly possible you could put up a good defense against a rush, I have seen proof with my own eyes that most players cannot. And that is why my suggestion to take an awake sc pretender is a good idea for the average player.

And I am using gameextremeists's arcos rush tactics as an example, but he was better than the typical player at rushing with arcos. But he did use an awake dragon to bolster his early rush. And teleporting astrologers in to bolster his forces was another of his common tactics.

[Zeldor]

Baalz:

Yeah, dragon could have some problems with that PD, though your anti-dragon tactic does not seem viable. Waiting few turns, getting indie reinforcements? His elephant army would be in your capitol by then to reinforce the dragon. Or any other force - he will need army to siege the fort and he will want to do it fast.

[thejeff]

Definitely seems like we're changing the rules from step to step here. Is there a worst case scenario where Ulm can't win? Sure. True for everyone. Is Ulm completely doomed without an awake SC pretender? No.

You've now set up a scenario where they have to start within a few provinces of an elephant nation with a flying Monster pretender, who happens to send his starting scout out in the right direction, or accidentally land his dragon on Ulm's capital in a blind jump. (Do people actually attack blind with flying pretenders? Guaranteed death on a retreat and no idea what you're facing?)

[B0rsuk]

Baalz inspired me to run a test.

Arcoscephale: blue dragon, dom 10.
Ulm: awake rainbow pretender, dom4.

I forgot to appoint prophets. For simplicity sake I didn't move Ulm army out of capital, it was set on Defend anyway.
The dom10 blue dragon attacks 25 Ulm PD at capital on turn 4. Orders are 'attack rear'. (Perhaps I could do better, I never did such things before)
All arbalests miss.
The blue dragon attacks and hits the melee infantry group. Arbalests don't fire, they walk forward and engage the dragon in melee.
Halberds and pikes deal some damage. Arbalests fire again.
The Dragon retreats into enemy territory and dies. This was on the first try, I didn't do any more tests. I could've backed up the turn files, I guess.

Moral of the story: beating 25 Ulm PD is not trivial for a dom10 blue dragon. It's a gamble.

[Baalz]

thejeff said:
Definitely seems like we're changing the rules from step to step here. Is there a worst case scenario where Ulm can't win? Sure. True for everyone. Is Ulm completely doomed without an awake SC pretender? No.

You've now set up a scenario where they have to start within a few provinces of an elephant nation with a flying Monster pretender, who happens to send his starting scout out in the right direction, or accidentally land his dragon on Ulm's capital in a blind jump. (Do people actually attack blind with flying pretenders? Guaranteed death on a retreat and no idea what you're facing?)



Right, exactly my point. A SC pretender is a perfectly fine choice, my point is Ulm is viable without one. I will take issue though with the fact that I suggested a strategy based on scraping up what I can on turn 4 worst case scenario and now its morphed into astrologers teleporting in (a thaum-3 spell...while having no pretender to research) and elephants on top of the dragon by turn 6. That storm is a bit too perfect I think, and I don't think a SC pretender is going to help too much if the deck is so stacked against you.

[Xietor]

I guess my MP experience is a small sample, but Ulm is typically the 1st to die in every game i have played. Shrug.

Why is that if they are so good?

[Baalz]

No arguments that they are a bit trickier to play than most nations. A newbie can pick up Arco and be stomping around with elephants and doing a reasonable job pretty quickly. A slightly more experience guy can figure out to take a W/F bless and put up some impressive numbers with Vanheim. Ulm doesn't have a quick and easy strength, and it's also got some fairly obvious weaknesses which require subtlety to compensate for. I don't think I'd classify myself as a hall of fame player, but I do think most players tend to miss the more subtle strengths of nations. If you just try and march out with your strongest Ulmish troops like you would with elephants or dual blessed Vans you're gonna get horribly spanked - no argument. Same for Atlantis. Same for Eriu. Same for Marverni. Same for several more nations. Successfully playing these nations requires a different type of gameplay and it's not nearly as obvious. That would be my guess as to why these nations generally do pretty poorly though I don't personally feel like they're underpowered.

[Xietor]

Arcos is not easy to play In fact MA Arcos has never won a mp game according to the hall of fame kept by Tyrant. They may be a strong starter, but elephants become obsolete by midgame, and Arcos has no castle bought troops that are worth buying in the midgame.

Arcos has terrible national summons, and there are few good s summons.

Now I will admit, mind hunt can be a killer to the handful of MA Nations that do not have s mages. But the vast majority of MA Nations have s mages, so are immune to mind hunt if played smartly.

But I do not want to hijack the Ulm thread. However, I do take exception to arcos being a "easy race to win with."
It takes planning to survive the mid and late game with arcos, and that planning needs to occur before the game begins.

You cannot win a mp game against good players just by stomping around with elephants. In fact, in both games I played with gameextremeist, he got off to great starts, but did not end up winning those games(though he made sure some other races did not win them either before he went down).

[Endoperez]

I think Ulm dies mostly because they can't rush. If you find Ulm, you know that they'll have lots of arbalests, but no sacred troops, no stealthy units, you know what mages they have (E2F1) and you know their troops and armies will both move slowly.

Ulm's trick isn't as good as some other nations' tricks, but more importantly, they have just one trick. Your pretender has to provide another. SC pretender can easily do it, but I think a rainbow's research could also work, if you knew what you were doing.

[Baalz]

I did not mean to disparage Arco as being easy to play, but I do think Arco is one of the stronger nations if played right. I was referring to the opening turns in response to your question about why Ulm doesn't tend to last very long. Coincidentally enough the game I tied for second as Ulm in was won by MA Arcoscephale, guess it didn't get added to the hall of fame.

[Tuidjy]

Coincidentally, being second in a game means exactly nothing. If you are Ulm,
and start next to my Pythium, you can be second by just saying "I'll be your
forge *****, no need for your big bad Lord of Fertily to fertilize me". There
is one spot that matters in Dominions. And it is not number two.

By the way, your Arco example was messed up big time. I call shenanigans. I ran
it myself, except that I forgot to assume that the Arco player is playing to
lose. I still kept your assumption that his lab burned on turn four, and kept on
burning so that he could not even research Body Ethereal. Hey, it is possible,
and more likely that MA Ulm putting up a fight that does not involve grabbing
its own knees.

First, allow me to note that my arco army was ready on turn 6, seven turns before
Ulm was, and that the elephants were used in conquest, as opposed to the
battleaxe infantry that is about the worst choice against indies. So I send them
to visit Ulm's capital, as opposed to make Ulm's troops actually move, for which
we know they are particularly unsuited. Of course, your scenario also assumed
that. It is not as if Ulm would have a chance if their smiths had to chase Arco
around as if it collected lands that did not happen to have PD 40.

Then, I actually bothered positioning and scripting Arco's forces. I did not
replace the hypaspists with something more useful for my tactics, but I still
placed 10 of them in such a way that they will draw the PD's attention, and I
ordered them to guard a commander in the upper right corner. Now if the Arco
player had a clue, these would be hoplites - heavier armour, cheaper, and mobing
slowlier, all of which are pluses in this case.

Remember, kids. PD is stupid, and cannot be scripted, so you can abuse it any
way you want. You know how fast it moves, and you know it will go for the
closest target. Thus, I positioned 10 of my elephants so that they would come
up on the infantry slowly chasing the hyps from below, and wipe them out on
contact. Using hold and attack closest, I made sure it happened as far away from
the front as possible.

The rest of the hyps and elephants were on guard commander in the bottom
rear corner. My commanders (mages which I was using as grunts, because I needed
grunts for this retarded army composition)

What happened: PD fired at the shielded infantry, and killed one, which was
lucky. Because I did not want to play unfairly, the real arbalesters were
scripted at fire large monsters. Because I did not want to lose, I did not
have elephants anywhere but in the corners, so they missed. The poor smiths,
not having any targets, proceeded to waste fatigue.

Turn 2 some arbalests fired. They did nothing. The smiths wasted some fatigue.

Turn 3 some arbalests fired, don't ask me to explain how. A smith burned a hyp.

Turn 4 lotsa arbalests fired. Two hyps died, three elephants were scratched.
Some of the pd stopped chasing my commanders' bodygaurds, and tickled some
elephants. The elephants hit the PD, killed half, and failed to rout the rest.

Turn 5 the unrouted PD keeps chasing the hyps. The 10 elephants killed
practically all of them. Some arbalests fired in that melee, to no effect. The
smiths are still firing from way too far away, doing zip.

Turn 6, my bottom row commander retreats, his bodyguards (10 hyps, 15 elephants)
attack. The 10 elephants from the top row waste time finishing off the remaining
PD. The smiths are falling asleep.

Turn 7, the PD arbalesters nail the bottom rear commander as they shoot at his
bodyguards (6 of them remain, and are still drawing fire) The commanders dead,
the bodyguards attack.

Turn 9, the 10 elephants hit the chainmail infantry. Bad luck, they barely reach
them.

Turn 11, the 3 remaining elephants rout. The infantry is nearly halved. The 15
elephants, having outdistanced the 10 hyps hit the PD arbalesters, without
having suffered any damage. The real albalesters are shooting at the melee on
the top row. At this point, Arco has three commanders left, huddling behind the
10 hyps. I am getting scared the battleaxe infantry will hit them from behind
and rout Arco.

Turn 12, the 6 bodyguards on the top row rout 30 of Ulm's infantry. The 15
elephants in Ulm's rear wipe out the arbalesters, PD or not. Ulm routs.
Too damn many smiths wave woken up, shame.

Result: disaster for Ulm. Arco loses 8 elephants, and 7 infantry. They also
lose 3 mages, which would have fared better, had they been grunt commanders.
only 6 smiths die. Could have been better.

Now, as homework, please run the same scenario with body ethereal and luck
tossed in, and with the right kind of infantry and commanders for Arco.
Or use Caelum, and Arrow Fend... Or toss in the SC that my Caelum always had.

[ComTrav]

So, newbie question (although I do like MA Ulm)--

What are the theoritical counters to some of the above situations? Besides, obviously, playing MA Arco yourself--are awake size 6 SCs (or playing a bless or elephant country) the only options?

[Xietor]

Awake size 6 sc pretender. For starters, his presence may make someone else appear to be an easier target. 2nd. Father of winters with early alt3/ench 2 buffs and some constr 0 armor is a terror.

[Baalz]

My goodness this is rather silly, you're being a bit abrasive and I don't really feel like playing "in theory" vs constantly changing scenarios. My comment about being second was in response to the assertion that Ulm always seems to die early, I felt that was relevant. Arrow fend? I thought we were talking about early rushes. If we're talking about 6th level spells lets see how mammoths fare against 15 magma eruption spammers with crusher linebackers. I ran a simple scenario to show that it was quite possible for Ulm to win vs a large group of elephants supported by astrologers in year one without a SC pretender and I didn't use particularly fancy tactics on either side. You're entitled to go on believing whatever the heck you want.

[Shovah32]

I'm with Baalz here. We could probably run through specific tactics and counter tactics all day without finding something unbeatable when both sides have equal resources(research time ect). I also think Ulm can survive through the early game - even against elephants.

[Endoperez]

I like Ulm. I'd like to see Ulm as a viable choice. But Ulm can't rush itself, except perhaps with a pretender. Because of that, rushing Ulm is safe. Ulm can react, but it can't counter-rush you.

I have never rushed with elephants, or been rushed against with them. From Tuidjy's post, I think he knows very well how to do it, and what one should have available before considering a rush. He's stating something, and Baalz/Shovah and sometimes me - we are reacting, giving counter-examples to the SPESIFIC example Tuidjy gave. We can always come up with something, given a while, but we'd have had to prepare for it from turn 1 if this were about a real game. We wouldn't know which NATION attacks us, much less about the counters. But rushing? It's easy, just do what you normally do to expand? He'd know what's the best Ulm can throw, it's mages, it's spells, how it's PD is organized and how it moves, what units are available and how they're usually used.

Unless Ulm has something going in for it that would force Tuidjy to change his tactic, we and Ulm is the reactor, the passive side, and the rusher is the aggressor, and the aggressor is in better situation. Tuidjy's plan is, basically "build elephants, research Thaumaturgy, rush". Ulm needs Thaumaturgy for Bonds of Fire to counter an early rush, Evocation for battle whammies and Conjuration or Construction for Summon Earth Power or Earth Boots before it's able to use most of them. Tuidjy can concentrate on Thaumaturgy and get the high Thaumaturgy spells much faster than Ulm can get anything better than Magma Bolts.
It seems to me that unless Ulm gets vastly superior numbers of elite units or of mages, it's trying to negate it's opponents' advantages instead of building on its own strengths. Again, that's passive, that's reacting, that's bad.

If Ulm can actually throw up castles faster than other nations and out-produce others in troops and mages and research; or if there's some as-of-yet undiscovered tactic that's going to make Ulm an early rusher, Ulm's going to be the reactor, the passive one, the one that is rushed, the one that can be killed off early.

I think Tuidjy is right, even though I don't like it. I doubt he likes it either - everyone seems to have a soft spot for Ulm, who are supposed to be awesome but aren't. Ulm is easy to kill in a rush. Good player can beat you, but it's harder than for some other nations.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Good post Endoperez. I agree with that.

I too would like to see ulm a better nation because it is is a cool idea.

If ulm could build castles faster, it may be enough to balance it. And by faster I mean being able to build a forest fortess in 1 turn, and a castle in 2 turns.
As is, it is hard for ulm can not build enough troops, (or smiths) in the early game to be competitive.

Baalz. You if anyone will be able to instruct people to play ulm as effectivly as possible. But the problem is the other nation can use tactics that are just as strong. Ulm could win yes. But that comes down to player skil mattering more then the nation. If the opponent is equally skilled, ulm is at a disadvantage.

[Zeldor]

Tuidjy:

But would it be true for like 60-70% other nations that either have no bless, no elephants etc? In MA for example TC, Man, C'tis, etc.

[Shovah32]

Man can throw lightning bolts early on, which do alot of damage.
Tien Chi has access to alot of artillery spells too.
Man and Tien Chi both have nice archers which are very handy.

Ctis has frighten/terror, along with skelespam to keep them busy.

All of those nations also have more magic than Ulm, meaning a very versatile(magically) pretender isn't as necessary.

[AreaOfEffect]

I've been following this post for some time. Given all that has been said, I would have to say that Endoperez has so far made the wisest observation.

Personally I don't think Ulm needs an awakened SC god. Then again, 'need' is on a case-by-case basis.

I think the first thing the original poster wanted to see was if the new changes to Ulm revised most player's pretender gods. In my case it didn't. My Middle Age Ulm strategy is still an awakened blood fountain with order, production, a little growth, drain, and a little earth magic.

The second thing the original poster wanted to know has evolved into a full blown discussion of rush and anti-rush strategies. The final point of that discussion being that Ulm lacks an aggressive strategy of it's own that can be used to rush with.

Do I agree with this? Not really. However, it is hard to point out any 'big gun', like Ulm's calvary, that isn't extremely limited in production.

[Baalz]

See, the thing is I think this discussion is generally discounting the risk of rushing. Rushing has obvious advantages, which have been pointed out here. It also has *disadvantages* which are not taken into account. An elephant rush, as presented here, is not simply a bonus on top of what you were doing anyway to expand. If you're really pressing an early rush you're doing it at the expense of other expansion - pushing into another player's territory instead of taking easy indies. If you're supporting it with a pretender push you're sacrificing the other things a pretender could be doing for you. The relevant point here is that if the rush is successfully repulsed the rusher is now at a significant disadvantage. If you attack with a dragon pretender on turn 4 and I kill him, you're fairly crippled (long term). If you attack with 25 elephants and I manage to beat them with minimal losses you've just sacrificed 5+ expansion parties and all the relevant opportunity costs. The defender has several built in advantages. PD is an obvious one. Better research/income is generally another as the rusher uses mage turns and design points for rushing rather than growth. Having a chance to react is another one: if elephants attack my border territories I almost certainly have a turn or two to recruit/research specific counters before they threaten my capital. The rusher has advantages, the defender has different ones.

I think it's obvious that in a contest between equally skilled opponents you'll lose more than half the time if your opponent successfully applies a national strength (a strong early rush) against one of your national weaknesses (a slower start). I don't think this means that any nation with a slower start is horribly crippled, it's just one of the weaknesses that you have to consider in your overall plan. Some nations are fairly screwed if they are targeted by an early rush. Some nations have weak research and no astral/death magic and are screwed if they don't take an early lead. Some nations have very specific counters like anti undead/demon spells so they're very screwed if they happen to have a certain type of opponent at a certain stage of the game. Every nation has strengths and weaknesses and some of them are easier to use than others.

Not being able to rush/counter-rush does not mean a nation is crippled. In my experience there's a fairly good mix between the initial fast expander being able to translate that into a win and the tortoises being able to pass the gasping sprinters as they brightly burn out. Being the defender has it's own advantages, and if you're able to capitalize on them you can show the rusher what he's given up to be able to rush.

[Endoperez]

Baalz said:
See, the thing is I think this discussion is generally discounting the risk of rushing. Rushing has obvious advantages, which have been pointed out here. It also has *disadvantages* which are not taken into account. An elephant rush, as presented here, is not simply a bonus on top of what you were doing anyway to expand. If you're really pressing an early rush you're doing it at the expense of other expansion - pushing into another player's territory instead of taking easy indies. If you're supporting it with a pretender push you're sacrificing the other things a pretender could be doing for you. The relevant point here is that if the rush is successfully repulsed the rusher is now at a significant disadvantage. If you attack with a dragon pretender on turn 4 and I kill him, you're fairly crippled (long term). If you attack with 25 elephants and I manage to beat them with minimal losses you've just sacrificed 5+ expansion parties and all the relevant opportunity costs. The defender has several built in advantages. PD is an obvious one. Better research/income is generally another as the rusher uses mage turns and design points for rushing rather than growth. Having a chance to react is another one: if elephants attack my border territories I almost certainly have a turn or two to recruit/research specific counters before they threaten my capital. The rusher has advantages, the defender has different ones.



Turn or two of time to react isn't enough, and furhtermore, AFAIK elephant rush is very easy to convert from expansion to rush. It will take few turns to move about half of your armies (the ones expanding into the other direction) towards the rusheé, and unless your mages can teleport/cloud trapeze/fly you lose some research while they move. Unfortunately, Arcoscephale's fast-moving armies and teleporting mages aren't really slowed down.

If Cave Drakes were viable, they MIGHT work. They are big and have lots of hp, all Ulm's researchers can cast the spell, Ulm has the gems to summon them and Ulm wants Summon Earth Power any way - but spending gems on those is still a waste. 8 gems for 1? You'd probably need about as many as your enemy has elephants, and even 20 elephants would require you to spend 160 gems... Even if you did survive the rush, spending gems against gold will probably cost you the game in the long run.

EDIT: even equal numbers of cave drakes are just massacred by the elephants.

[Baalz]

Endoperez said:
Turn or two of time to react isn't enough, and furhtermore, AFAIK elephant rush is very easy to convert from expansion to rush. It will take few turns to move about half of your armies (the ones expanding into the other direction) towards the rusheé, and unless your mages can teleport/cloud trapeze/fly you lose some research while they move. Unfortunately, Arcoscephale's fast-moving armies and teleporting mages aren't really slowed down.

If Cave Drakes were viable, they MIGHT work. They are big and have lots of hp, all Ulm's researchers can cast the spell, Ulm has the gems to summon them and Ulm wants Summon Earth Power any way - but spending gems on those is still a waste. 8 gems for 1? You'd probably need about as many as your enemy has elephants, and even 20 elephants would require you to spend 160 gems... Even if you did survive the rush, spending gems against gold will probably cost you the game in the long run.

EDIT: even equal numbers of cave drakes are just massacred by the elephants.



Well, I disagree, a few turns to react is significant. If I've got 2 castles up and production-3 scales and my opponent takes 2 turns to gather his forces and 2 more to reach the point he's threatening my capital it's not unreasonable to think I've got 100+ troops recruited specifically to counter him and been able to research a level or two in one path. And again we're getting into this too perfect storm. You can't have an awake expansion pretender, a bunch of gold dumped into elephants, mages marching with the army and thaum-3 researched (teleport keeps being brought up) if you're talking about attacking me on turn 6.

Gah, I seem to have gotten sucked back into playing "in theory". I will comment though that cave drakes can be reasonably effective if you realize that they're not there to kill the elephants, they're there to trip them up and stall the charge to give smiths and arbalests time to do the killing. You don't need anywhere near 1:1 for this, more like 1:5. Elephants generally don't do so well if you can get them to hold still on the front line for just a couple turns which is where you want to aim for a counter.

[Xietor]

Like many things, there may not be a "correct" answer. But taking an awake size 6 pretender as Ulm certainly enhances Ulm's chances to see the middle game. Of that I think there can be no argument.

Likewise, taking a archmage for magical diversity is much better and gives Ulm more options in the middle and endgame. That is not disputed either.

But I maintain that Ulm is perceived as weak, and that perception will cause them to be rushed early. So I still think it is prudent when designing Ulm to keep that fact in mind.

[Endoperez]

15 elephants killed 14 of the 15 Cave Drakes in two turns. That helps, but it's nowhere as good as I had hoped.

Turn 6 rush will be different than turn 10 or 16 rush, but if you're expanding with Elephants and research with mages who can Soul Slay and teleport if you get the research done. Arcos does the same thing regardless of when it rushes.

Arcos can reach level 3 research on turn 7, with mages teleporting on turn 8, without difficulty, on Easy research, with fire dragon. So on easy research at least, starting rush on turn 6 with elephants and pretender, and teleporting in mages for the important battle, is quite doable. I'm not sure if they could have Soul Slay for that battle, but I doubt it.

It can't be done on normal research, not so quickly. Which have you been thinking about?

[B0rsuk]

Does anyone actually play on Easy research in MP ?!?! I thought many people agree evocations make other parts of the game insignificant by midgame. Why make it worse ?

[Endoperez]

Blitz games are played on Easy.

[Baalz]

Endoperez said:
15 elephants killed 14 of the 15 Cave Drakes in two turns. That helps, but it's nowhere as good as I had hoped.





Hmmm, I hadn't actually tried that out, I thought they'd do better than that based on how well crushers work with that strat. I have used crushers and they work pretty darn good, just one crusher and that huge mass of of elephants looks like it runs into a brick wall - though you probably want to use a couple to keep the elephants from just going around.

[Endoperez]

Crushers are size 6, Cave drakes size 4. So they don't stop the elephants. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

[Baalz]

Ah, yes, for some reason I was thinking they were size 6. That makes sense then.

[Endoperez]

Baalz said:
Ah, yes, for some reason I was thinking they were size 6. That makes sense then.



I thought they might be, as well.

[CUnknown]

So, it's true that an awake combat pretender helps Ulm (or really any faction) survive to the midgame. I also think it's true that Ulm has particular difficulties surviving an early elephant rush -- that sort of rush is normally difficult to stop, but for Ulm it may mean death 90% of the time if done by a skilled player and you as Ulm don't have allies to back you up.

Baalz suggests that Ulm has the tools to stop an elephant rush, and he's right, as he showed. But I still think most people agree that a different faction would stand up better than Ulm to this same rush.

But, how often does an elephant rush happen? How many elephant rushers are there in middle age, three? (Caelum, Arcos, Bandar Log) If all three of these have signed up to a game, you might want to think twice before signing up as Ulm. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But, normally, maybe only one of these three will be present. And the odds that you will be bordering them as Ulm aren't huge. And then the odds that the elephant rusher gets rushed himself or otherwise forced into a war with someone other than you..

I mean, sure maybe we've identified a weakness for Ulm. But, it's a weakness that affects only like, what, 5% of games? Is it really worth fretting so much over? At least the major rushing worry, super-blessed sacreds, has been lessened a lot for Ulm due to the current patch. So, Ulm right now has good odds for surviving most rushes, imo.

Now maybe someone should come up with a rush build for Ulm. I wonder what that would look like. Is it possible?

[Twan]

With easy research Ulm using the awake great sage has evocation 3 + thaum 2 in turn 6 (bonds of fire, iron darts or magma bolts for the priest smiths, and the great sage can use berserkers to have some guys ignoring the dragon awe).

If Ulm turtle in his capitol and continue researchs up to turn 9 (evocation 3 + alteration 2 + thaum 3) the priest smiths can use earth meld to slow the elephants when the great sage uses spells like rage or panic.

Not to say that it's sufficient to have 100% chances to stop a rush, but I think it's far to be a totally hopeless situation.

Especially if the attack happens a little later (like it's far more probable considering Arco has to find Ulm capital first and won't risk elephants against knights without some alteration researched for body ethearal ; say they start to attack around turn 12-13 and the big battle happen in turn 16) Ulm may have conjuration 3/ alteration 2/ thaumaturgy 3 / evocation 5/ construction 4 (so a great sage with earth boots able to kill some elephants or an unlucky dragon with gifts from heaven ; and smiths with earth power) when Arco (with magic 1) has thaum 5 / alt 4 and a level 2 in another school.

(test made just counting capitol researchers, didn't built castles, just made priest smiths and astrologers, and even the dragon was set to research, some castles build early can make Arco closer in research -if they build the same number-, but I think it's hard to afford several castles + elephants, so Ulm would probably have more forts)

[Xietor]

I think Abysia is just as vulnerable as Ulm to an Elephant rush. But many races have no need to take an awake pretender.

They have tough castle bought troops that can hold out for the 1st year.

[Baalz]

CUnknown said:
Now maybe someone should come up with a rush build for Ulm. I wonder what that would look like. Is it possible?



Funny thing, I was actually just looking at this based on this thread, and I decided to do it with a rainbow mage. Was going better a couple beers ago. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I have managed to put together some fairly nasty stuff, but I suppose it depends on what your definition of a rush as there's no way Ulm is going to be a threat on turn 6. Turn 12 though it's not difficult to have three castles pumping out arbalests and black plate flail infantry (double attacks) backed by a significant number of smiths casting destruction and earth meld for quite the double whammy of removing both protection and defense (you've got to use earth gems for destruction initially since you've got no earthpower). You also bring whatever indie slingers and archers you can scrape together. Finally, your rainbow pretender wind guides your massed arbalests and follows that up by casting wooden warriors a couple times which stacks...nicely with black plate infantry while wind guided slings/shortbows are plenty nasty enough when falling on the victims of destruction. True this has some obvious counters if you're expecting it and doesn't have the universal application of a classic rush (its just not gonna work against some nations), but there are plenty of nations that would have a lot of trouble dealing with this very unexpectedly aggressive Ulm with research they have available on turn 12.

[Sir_Dr_D]

With Black halbreds, can you not now rush a nation that is reliant on blesses.

[HoneyBadger]

That's an interesting question, Sir_Dr_D, it's too bad noone's replied to it yet. Also, Magma bolts are Evo 3, and Bonds of Fire is Thau 2, isn't that a little high to be relying on them, under two separate schools, for early rushes?

[Endoperez]

That's an interesting question, Sir_Dr_D, it's too bad noone's replied to it yet. Also, Magma bolts are Evo 3, and Bonds of Fire is Thau 2, isn't that a little high to be relying on them, under two separate schools, for early rushes?

It is. Any suggestions for what else to do?

I'll probably post little more on this when I get back home and can try stuff out, but there's little else to do.

[Baalz]

Yes, I just recently obliterated dual bless (W/S) Vanhiem with the black halberds in a rush. The best they could do was zapping me with a bunch of lightning bolts, but as the black halberds aren't sacred, I just overwhelmed him with numbers - mixing in flail black plate infantry from my second castle to soak up some damage. It was funny, his infantry actually did better than the vans or Valkyries, but you're not really gonna win slugging it out infantry vs infantry against Ulm....

[sum1lost]

Actually, my experience says that it depends. Black halberds are dangerous against small sacred elites, but against lower-tier massable sacreds, they can be less effective- I used Mictlan every effectively against them, and although they did more damage than the average ulmish troop, they fell quickly as well.

[vfb]

I think Abysia is just as vulnerable as Ulm to an Elephant rush. But many races have no need to take an awake pretender.

They have tough castle bought troops that can hold out for the 1st year.

MA Aby has Beast Trainers, who have Animal Awe+3. I took a 12-elephant indy province in MP at the end of year 1, with just 1 Trainer and minor chaff lost, using 2 Beast Trainers, 2 indy commanders wielding Rat Tails (built by Wolf Tribe Shamans I'd been hiring to try to get a D1), my starting army, some free event militia, and a few salamanders.

There was no real loss building Beast Trainers instead of mages at the second fort (actually I had 3 forts because I got a freebie from luck-3) because I'm using drain-2 scales anyway.

Aby can also build H3's at all forts, for Smite.

Edit: Whoops, sorry to have gone all OT!

[Baalz]

Actually, my experience says that it depends. Black halberds are dangerous against small sacred elites, but against lower-tier massable sacreds, they can be less effective- I used Mictlan every effectively against them, and although they did more damage than the average ulmish troop, they fell quickly as well.

That doesn't sound right. I just tested the following couple scenarios with a F/S blessed Mictlan.

40 Black Halberds vs 30 jaguar warriors - Mictlan spent a little more gold to get a priest to bless, not counting the opportunity cost of a double bless. Result - 30 dead jags, 6 dead halberds.

40 Halberds vs 50 jags - Mictlan spent a bunch more gold and managed to outrecruit the non-sacred halberds somehow. Result - 45 dead jags, 21 dead halberds.

As this is MA, considering the more likely matchup of eagle warriors - 50 eagles vs 40 halberds. 5 dead halberds, the eagles broke after 22 deaths.

Thing is, even "cheaper" sacreds are limited by your "holy" recruit points, and given the standard Ulmish prod-3 you're not going to be able to outnumber the black halberds until you've got more than 3 castles, with temples (and labs for mages)...pretty far outside the "rush" range.

[vfb]

I agree, but have to nitpick about MA Mictlan. They shouldn't be putting labs in their first expansion castles, since they just need a temple to recruit the eagles and 60-gold priests. Move the priests back to the capitol to research, and indy commanders can bus the eagles about. Capitol should always only recruit jags.

Also, Sloth-3 pays a lot towards the F/S bless.

On pure random maps though, MA Mictlan doesn't stand a chance of doing this since they need 'real' mountains to build 800-gold, 3-turn forts. All other fort choices are horrible. On a non-random map with mountains, you can have a Hillfort and temple up in turn 7, and still have been recruiting 10 jaguars per month, using something like:

Oracle
Magic: Fire 9 Astral 9
Dominion 10
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Imprisoned

Also, Mictlan's force should include a few turkeys from the lab. They are excellent at getting to the front in no time, and are great against low-MR units with their 100-precision Mesmerize ranged weapon, which is penetration+2 according to debug:

hitunit 2124 568 dmg128 spec1216499712 ba1
spec_mr pen 12 mr 10 (unr 2124 vic 568 dmg 11 eff 128)

I think turn 12 you could be looking at 80 jags, some shield chaff, and 20 eagles.

But Mictlan's going to take significant losses and be open to a 3rd party attack, so the Halberds are probably enough of a deterrent.

[Baalz]

Well yeah, my test was simplistic, but a decent Ulm player is likewise not going to have just a block of halberds set to be slaughtered. I'd counter that by turn 12 your suggested Mictlan force would be facing easily 80-100 halberds plus another 100+ black plate infantry from secondary castles. If you're bringing turkeys I have to insist that Ulm has several guys using gems to spam blade wind - which is not unreasonable for turn 12 with an awake rainbow pretender (who I think is by far the best way to play Ulm).

Heck, I just ran some tests and even just nothing but black plate pikeneers with no support at all handily won on a gold for gold basis vs F/S jaguars (80 vs 30). Ulm's best counter to single target MR effects like mesmerize is often just to bring enough guys that it doesn't matter. 5 turkeys will hit less than 25 guys (some of them will pass the MR roll), that's not battle winning if you've got 200+ troops.

[sum1lost]

Well yeah, my test was simplistic, but a decent Ulm player is likewise not going to have just a block of halberds set to be slaughtered. I'd counter that by turn 12 your suggested Mictlan force would be facing easily 80-100 halberds plus another 100+ black plate infantry from secondary castles. If you're bringing turkeys I have to insist that Ulm has several guys using gems to spam blade wind - which is not unreasonable for turn 12 with an awake rainbow pretender (who I think is by far the best way to play Ulm).

Heck, I just ran some tests and even just nothing but black plate pikeneers with no support at all handily won on a gold for gold basis vs F/S jaguars (80 vs 30). Ulm's best counter to single target MR effects like mesmerize is often just to bring enough guys that it doesn't matter. 5 turkeys will hit less than 25 guys (some of them will pass the MR roll), that's not battle winning if you've got 200+ troops.

For what it is worth, at turn 12 in my mictlan game, I had built my third fort as well- eagle warriors are incredibly cheap, and allow quick expansion and for construction. On a gold for gold basis, eagle warriors do very, very well, especially over several battles- flying means that they get away if they lose, and that enemies don't, meaning that over the course of several battles, they tend to come out on top.

[Endoperez]

an awake rainbow pretender (who I think is by far the best way to play Ulm).

What scale/path combination do you go for? I've been trying to get Luck for all those gems, but it slows down my early game, especially the second fort - unless I get some gold events, of course. On the other hand, with Luck-generated gems, I don't feel so bad for empowering. I also seem to get lots of Water gems from events, useful for a single empowerment and lots of Staves of Corrosion and Rune Smashers afterwards.

[Baalz]

For what it is worth, at turn 12 in my mictlan game, I had built my third fort as well- eagle warriors are incredibly cheap, and allow quick expansion and for construction. On a gold for gold basis, eagle warriors do very, very well, especially over several battles- flying means that they get away if they lose, and that enemies don't, meaning that over the course of several battles, they tend to come out on top.

Well, incredibly cheap is a very relative term. 15 gold for an eagle warrior vs 10 gold for a black plate pikeneer. The eagle warriors also have several inherent costs - the fact you have to have a temple to recruit them, an expensive leader to divine bless them (eagle warriors don't do so well if you don't bless them all at once), and an expensive bless coupled with an expensive dominion score to recruit a significant number of them.

Don't get me wrong, eagle warriors can be great if you treat them right, but dirt cheap is Ulm's bread and butter. Black plate infantry is 10 gold. Smiths are 140 gold. No need to build temples unless you need to push your dominion. On a nation playing order/production.....*that* is dirt cheap.

[Baalz]

What scale/path combination do you go for? I've been trying to get Luck for all those gems, but it slows down my early game, especially the second fort - unless I get some gold events, of course. On the other hand, with Luck-generated gems, I don't feel so bad for empowering. I also seem to get lots of Water gems from events, useful for a single empowerment and lots of Staves of Corrosion and Rune Smashers afterwards.

Luck is nice, but what Ulm *needs* to keep it's engine running in the first year is a steady gold flow. Once you've got a couple extra castles up you're generally gonna be doing OK, but it's urgent to get those up to start pumping out your cheap yet resource hungry troops. Order, Production, Drain, and Misfortune (Ulm's PD is pretty good at repelling barbarians) along with a modest dominion score gives you plenty of points to have a nice awake rainbow pretender. Don't worry, once your critical research is done and the pretender starts site searching your gems will start to roll in...

[HoneyBadger]

By the way, what are the thoughts on using a Virtue with these guys? I'm currently using an asleep Virtue in a game, and he seems pretty good. Air 4, Death 5, Dom 10, 3 Prod, 1 Order, 2 Luck, 1 Growth, 2 Cold, and 3 Drain. So far so good, against the AI.

Not quite relevant to the conversation of Ulm vs Rushers, but I'm just getting used to actually being able to play again (sortof). Would a Virtue be a relevant choice for Ulm in MP?

[chrispedersen]

What scale/path combination do you go for? I've been trying to get Luck for all those gems, but it slows down my early game, especially the second fort - unless I get some gold events, of course. On the other hand, with Luck-generated gems, I don't feel so bad for empowering. I also seem to get lots of Water gems from events, useful for a single empowerment and lots of Staves of Corrosion and Rune Smashers afterwards.

Luck is nice, but what Ulm *needs* to keep it's engine running in the first year is a steady gold flow. Once you've got a couple extra castles up you're generally gonna be doing OK, but it's urgent to get those up to start pumping out your cheap yet resource hungry troops. Order, Production, Drain, and Misfortune (Ulm's PD is pretty good at repelling barbarians) along with a modest dominion score gives you plenty of points to have a nice awake rainbow pretender. Don't worry, once your critical research is done and the pretender starts site searching your gems will start to roll in...

It is my opinion that ulm slaughters *any* blessed units on anywhere near an equal basis. And that includes ashdod, niefle, mictlan and lanka. Quite a nice balance.

[HoneyBadger]

Yeah, MA Ulm, once it gets rolling, seems quite powerful. All those individual units have good synergy with each other, and they can build up some serious experience. 3 stars on an arbelaster is more precision than you'd get with sacred Kailasan archers, and in a cheap, armour-piercing unit, with great armour.

Ofcourse, it takes a lot of time to get to 3 stars, but, used wisely, they have potential to last long enough to get there.

And, MA Ulm's units aren't hard to use. It's relatively straightforward to create a line of shield+morningstar infantry out front, calvalry to the side, arbelasters in back of the infantry. You can play around with the other units, adding in pike, flailers, battle-axers, etc. but the basics are almost built in.

Another cog in their engine is that you can instantly use their mage-smiths in combat. You'll want them researching, ofcourse, but when you're first establishing your empire, having 3-4 mage-smiths casting rain of stones or fire flies in the back does a lot against independents. And they're one of the few units Ulm has, that don't take a monstrous amount of resources to build.

That said, their sappers-armed with lighter crossbows-are actually a pretty good support unit. You can build them quickly, for sheer missle superiority, and use them later on in the game to break castles.

[Endoperez]

You'll want them researching, ofcourse, but when you're first establishing your empire, having 3-4 mage-smiths casting rain of stones or fire flies in the back does a lot against independents. And they're one of the few units Ulm has, that don't take a monstrous amount of resources to build.

I hope you meant Stone Shards. If you didn't, could you PM me the details? :p

EDIT: I like using magic bows and Sceptres of Authority on my support commanders, very early if I get the chance. In fact, as I tend to research Construction 1 for Legions of Steel first, if I get a Fire gem event early I go for Constr 2 instead of Evocation. 5 fatigue Flame Bolts for 3 gems is hard to beat in the early game (from Sceptre of authority). Now if only Fire Bolas were an effective counter to elephants...

[HoneyBadger]

Stone shards is what I meant, rain of stones just sounds better (and I didn't have my manual handy) :p

[archaeolept]

I agree, but have to nitpick about MA Mictlan. They shouldn't be putting labs in their first expansion castles, since they just need a temple to recruit the eagles and 60-gold priests. Move the priests back to the capitol to research, and indy commanders can bus the eagles about. Capitol should always only recruit jags.

Also, Sloth-3 pays a lot towards the F/S bless.

On pure random maps though, MA Mictlan doesn't stand a chance of doing this since they need 'real' mountains to build 800-gold, 3-turn forts. All other fort choices are horrible. On a non-random map with mountains, you can have a Hillfort and temple up in turn 7, and still have been recruiting 10 jaguars per month, using something like:

Oracle
Magic: Fire 9 Astral 9
Dominion 10
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 3 Heat 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 2 Magic 1
Imprisoned

Also, Mictlan's force should include a few turkeys from the lab. They are excellent at getting to the front in no time, and are great against low-MR units with their 100-precision Mesmerize ranged weapon, which is penetration+2 according to debug:

hitunit 2124 568 dmg128 spec1216499712 ba1
spec_mr pen 12 mr 10 (unr 2124 vic 568 dmg 11 eff 128)

I think turn 12 you could be looking at 80 jags, some shield chaff, and 20 eagles.

But Mictlan's going to take significant losses and be open to a 3rd party attack, so the Halberds are probably enough of a deterrent.This is all correct, though i'd play with the bless some.

I'd counter that by turn 12 your suggested Mictlan force would be facing easily 80-100 halberds plus another 100+ black plate infantry from secondary castlesThis is not. ulm can't move. the jag armies will run around and join together to take out the reinforcements and the breadbaskets, and be back in time to relieve any attempted siege by the un-reinforced original Ulm force.

[Baalz]

I hope you meant Stone Shards. If you didn't, could you PM me the details? :p


Rain of stones is actually a really powerful move for Ulm. You should end up with a couple smiths who get an air random, and with your forge bonus you can cheaply slap black steel plate on your combat mages (2 earth gems apiece with a hammer). Have your mages cast stone/iron skin round one and they (along with all your black plate troops) will be functionally immune to the rain of stones. Anybody tough enough to shrug off the stones now gets the joy of charging into magma eruptions. Anybody too tough for *that* will probably face destruction. Hmmm, come to think of it, a sadistic person might wait until after a couple turns of destruction to land the stones. >:)

Or, just empower your air random smith cheaply with 30 gems, stick some black steel full plate on him and a pair of earth boots, cloud trapeze into the path of an attacking army to drop a first round rain of stones which your PD will mostly ignore (not so much the enemy mages). Retreat, rinse, and repeat. Probably worthwhile to invest a few extra items on that guy, but you don't need anything expensive.

[SlipperyJim]

Rain of stones is actually a really powerful move for Ulm. You should end up with a couple smiths who get an air random, and with your forge bonus you can cheaply slap black steel plate on your combat mages (2 earth gems apiece with a hammer). Have your mages cast stone/iron skin round one and they (along with all your black plate troops) will be functionally immune to the rain of stones. Anybody tough enough to shrug off the stones now gets the joy of charging into magma eruptions. Anybody too tough for *that* will probably face destruction. Hmmm, come to think of it, a sadistic person might wait until after a couple turns of destruction to land the stones. :)
You're a very evil man, and I appreciate that. After I finish my current Lanka game, I'm thinking I should play as MA Ulm. Ulm was my first choice back in the Dom:PPP days, and it's about time to revisit those glory days. :D

[HoneyBadger]

I think just having a small corps of mages set to casting Destruction, specifically, wouldn't be a bad idea, once you've got Rain of Stones going on.

[KissBlade]

I should point out, rush strategies tend not to win games anyway outside of small maps. Remember, against good players, you don't have to have the best army. You just have to have a better one than his other neighbors.

[Agema]

To what extent could Ulm divert elephants with a load of small combat groups (say, 6 groups of 5 each) by creating a sort of "chain" of target nearest that keeps them from large troop formations for as long as possible, allowing mages and missiles to whittle them down?

[Baalz]

Elephants vs Ulm are a bit of an overblown threat IMO, particularly since Ulm's face lift. Magma bolts decimate the shieldless pachyderms when spammed in sufficient numbers, and I haven't tested it out but it seems like iron darts/blizzard would work reasonably as well.

As far as beating elephants without using mages - no there's not really any clever placement you can do, the best you can really manage is trying to mass enough sappers/arbalests to get critical mass to bring them down before they start splattering your troops. This actually works pretty well due to your archer's range if you can get a sufficient number and your opponent is holding his elephants back waiting for your mages to tire out. 2-4 volleys of bolts does a lot when you fire enough of them at things without shields. If your opponent is instead charging straight forward with a big block of elephants, try half a dozen smiths spamming magma bolts into their face - you won't be disappointed. Moral of the story is Ulm's combat mages are their backbone, you'll struggle mightily against lots of stuff without them.

The thing about elephants is they really need critical mass plus they're expensive. If your opponent masses a bunch of them together and pushes straight for your capital, meet it with all those research mages you've got there. If he splits it into a couple largish groups, spread out your mages into hit squads and take the aggressors out one group at a time. If he splits into smaller squads, just boost your PD strategically - it has the right weapons to do some damage if there are less than 5 elephants per group. If you're to the point that you've got several largish squads of elephants...well you should really have magma eruption and blade wind by that point as well as several castles cranking out smiths, so I don't see that as too much of a problem.

[Baalz]

Yeah, I just ran 2 tests out of curiosity.

Test 1: 20 elephants + 20 Hypaspists (~2400 gold) vs 100 arbalests + 20 PD(~1200 gold). Elephants all the way back (behind hypaspists) set to hold then attack, arbalests set to fire large enemy monsters. Elephants break with heavy losses, Ulm takes no non-PD losses.

Test 2: 30 elephants (3000 gold) set to charge straight forward vs 100 arbalests, 20 PD and 6 priest smith's set to spam iron darts from the back row (~2400 gold). Elephants break with heavy losses, Ulm takes no non-PD losses.

I shudder to think about slapping a wind guide on top of that with your pretender, as you were researching alt-4 for destruction anyway.

[JimMorrison]

I just have to comment - Iron Darts is really a sick, sick spell. I've taken some hideous losses against comparatively weak forces (should have walked over them), with 5-6 smiths spamming Darts - and they do cut through Elephants like Ginsu cuts tomatoes - fast and juicy. :eek:

[HoneyBadger]

So no word on the Virtue?

[JimMorrison]

Doing an SP right now with a Virtue, cause I love her. Something that occured to me when she came out - whatever you take, must have Earth on it, or you will require an immense investment of gems to get anyone ready to put up any of the globals that you have access to.

Honestly at this point, I'm trying to figure out what to even go with, that suits my playstyle and what I'd want from a pretender for Ulm, that is affordable with the kinds of scales that I like for them. The problem with the Virtue there, is that she is 80 path cost, which is insane - that's 152 just to get to 4E, but you'd want to spend the 192 for E5 so you can do Deep Well with just boots, but? That's 5 scales right there, kinda rough.

So really, seems to me the only pretenders that can be in any way cost effective (assuming that you -want- E5 along with whatever else) -

Oracle
Wyrm (probably with nothing but E5?)
Titan
Great Mother
Forge Lord
Lord of War (only in CBM, at 0 cost?)
or a Rainbow chassis with whatever combination of paths you prefer.


Honestly, looking more and more to me like Rainbow is your only real answer, but you can't really Imprison, because you need to be out to increase your diversity.


So, what I get then (with CBM) is a Dormant Enchantress, Dom6, Prod3/Luck3/Drain3 - F3/A2/E5/S5/D2. Obviously you can swap the Luck for Order, but I figure since your baseline expenses are low, and you want to minimize unlucky magic events, this is probably a better way to go.

Hmmmm. Compared with (bear in mind, in CBM again), a Dom7 Virtue (it hurts me to not boost her Awe, makes me saw "awwww") with the same scales, with 4A/5E/4A. So, less cost effective to boost her Astral, and you don't get the synergy of high Fire access via Skull + Helmet, but..... it's a Virtue with very useful paths. The lack of an Awe boost isn't terrible since you're not using her for your primary expansion. (Going Dom10 with her Awake is -not- even remotely doable.) You can drop her to A2/E5/S2, and dip into Turmoil2 if you really want her Awake, but I don't think that's necessary, and I think it's scary to use Virtue for expansion with only the Awe4 and no buffs, she's too fragile.

[vfb]

You've got Boots, Blood Stones, and a Ring of Wizardry from your Virtue. With an E3 mage (10%), that's all you need isn't it?

[Endoperez]

So really, seems to me the only pretenders that can be in any way cost effective (assuming that you -want- E5 along with whatever else)

So, what I get then (with CBM) is a Dormant Enchantress, Dom6, Prod3/Luck3/Drain3 - F3/A2/E5/S5/D2. Obviously you can swap the Luck for Order, but I figure since your baseline expenses are low, and you want to minimize unlucky magic events, this is probably a better way to go.

Ulm should have access to AT LEAST two Earth boosters. Besides boots, the pretender should be able to forge Blood Stones, Stave of Elemental Mastery, or Ring of Wizardry. I wouldn't go higher than Earth 4, and if I'm taking a rainbow, I won't take any Earth unless I take Astral too.

I thought Ulm could do well with Luck, but I was told otherwise. Ulm's baseline expenses are low, but it's better to use that to build several forts in the first year. The goal is to recruit troops and mages from several castles and still have enough money over to build one more. Even Order1/Luck3 doesn't get the first fort up fast enough.

I'm still experimenting with Ulm pretenders, trying to find something that's more suitable for multiplayer. I try to get access to the kind of magic that makes the build-everywhere Master Smiths more potent in whatever I want to do with them. I usually try to get at least F3 A3 W2 D2 B2. Death or Blood can be dropped to 1 if you're hungry for points, but it slows down diversification into that path. This lets you:

- build Staves of Elemental Mastery with the pretender (F/W: flaming skull, water bracelet, robe of the sea) and Master Smiths with Air randoms. The first Smith requires the F/W staff, Earth Boots and two Air boosters, and he can't use Dwarven Hammer since the staff takes both hands. Still, it does free the pretender for other duties.

- hunting 50 blood Slaves, to empower a young Master Smith to continue hunting. This gives you access to Blood Stones (Earth booster AND produces gems!) and, eventually, high-level Blood items such as contracts.

- Flaming Skulls. A F1 Smith with a Skull gets to F3 with Phoenix Power, and the pretender can forge a Flaming Helmet to give better forging ability as well. F2 Smiths with both Fire boosters can be quite a surprise for your opponents, and you can use a Staff of Elemental Mastery to reach F5 rituals.

- Revenants/Black Servants. Revenants can cast Dark Knowledge, and Black Servants are ethereal life-drainers with enc 0, and one of the better options for early thugs - and can be equipped by the Master Smiths.

- Water has some nifty items, and Water/Fire even more so. Staves of Corrosion are excellent, Rune Smashers make Petrify Spam even more deadly. Ability to forge Rings of Tamed Lighting/Shock Resistance, Copper Plates, Frost Brands etc is also a great help early on.


I'd also like to mention that Master Smiths get more out of empowerment than most other mages. 50 gems for a single-level empowerment isn't cheap, but you can get some incredible discounts this way. Water gives Staves of Corrosion and Rune Smashers mentioned above, Nature gives ultra-cheap Fever Fetishes. Just remember that two-handed boosters won't work with Dwarven Hammers, so it's hard to get e.g. Standards of the Damned at 50% price.

[Baalz]

Yes, a bootstrap blood economy works very well for Ulm. When you're empowering your smiths I like to use one with an air random. You're forging those air boosters anyway, might as well open the door to robes of the magi (awesome for getting that boost with free hands for a hammer). Robe + ring of wizardry + every path has a least one non-hand booster puts almost everything at full discount, and of course the robe does wonderful things if you're using a rainbow pretender.

Ulm's ability to forge cheap boosters open up some fantastic flexibility that most people don't associate with Ulm.

Astral cap + crystal coin = every smith with an astral random should be ready to teleport at a moment's notice and throw down an antimagic for those guys hoping to take advantage of your MR. Throw in a crystal shield and...what's that? Ulm is dropping doom and will of the fates on top of army of lead and weapons of sharpness in every fight? Stack a light of the northern star on top and you've got solar brilliance. Throw some rune smashers in and spam enslave mind, or an eye of aiming and drop gifts from heaven on that SC thinking Ulm is a unmaneuverable easy target.

Blood stones + earth boots = every smith (after earthpower) can spam petrify, weapons of sharpness, army of lead, and invulnerability/earthquake (go ahead and chain 10 together round 2!). With an earth random (or an elemental staff) they can spam earth attack, crumble, and melancholia (which is great for the price against anybody with resource intensive troops)

Fire helm + fire skull (death empowering a smith is a very good idea) + crystal shield = every smith can drop a Flame Storm. Go ahead and chain 10 together turn 2! Alternatively, Fire Storm works fabulously with army of gold and Ulm's heavy armor.

1 air booster = every air random smith is a cloud trapezing rain of stone dropper.

Also consider that slave matrixes can be mass produced for 4 gems apiece. Magma eruption's AOE and damage scale with mage power. Earth boots + blood stone + crystal shield + earthpower + leading an 4 man communion = +6E. Use 2-3 earth random smiths and you're dropping 9E magma eruptions that never stop. Talk about a battlefield clearer...

[JimMorrison]

I guess I'm just having a really hard time wrapping my head around accomplishing all of this with the pretender. There are massive amounts of gems being thrown around in these plans, and no real way to get the incomes going, other than indies, or manual site searching with the pretender. Manual site searching, it will take 2 years of game time to search 12 provinces, which will probably net ~30 gems/turn or so, depending on site frequency, and of course dispersed between the available paths.

This leads me to three conclusions -

The first being, that you need to narrow the focus of the pretender, to be able to assume actualization of your intent, in most games. You can plan for minimum needed to accomplish what you want with maximal use of boosters, but ultimately this means you are either searching with pretender, or relying on indies. But you get the indies whether or not you have the path on your pretender, and if you don't get any indies, you are unlikely to leverage your pretender's paths into doing anything really large scale in a diversification path.

Second, this means drop the Blood. Again, you're either Blood Hunting with your pretender (hard to do while they are crawling around, site-searching, and vice-versa), or you are relying on indies/0Bs to do your hunting. In the former case, your pretender just has too much on their plate, and in the latter, you are hunting with someone else, to empower someone else. Your pretender hardly has time to forge a Blood Stone a turn and do anything else useful, so this is a sideline for other people, no?

Which brings us to third, Astral will get you further than most paths, as you can use RoS/RoW to boost mages on a task specific basis. Also indies with Astral are more common than anything other than Nature, so while you could build up a Lizard Shaman to do what you need, I would consider it better to have someone ready to rock already, so that you can get the most bang out of your Pearls.


All of these other things sound good in theory, and probably work like gangbusters in SP, but they appear to need perfect luck, and perfect circumstance to have viability in MP, in the timescale of a competitive game. I know I must be crazy to be arguing these points with Baalz and Endoperez, but I've never been afraid to put my balls where my mouth is.... errr..... :shock:

[Endoperez]

I did say I'm still experimenting. I know there are problems. I'd love to take Luck, for the gems, but when I try Ulm without Order, I have hard time getting extra forts up, the rainbow is needed in early game to boost research and look for gems, and you just don't have points for everything. It could work great - or not. I haven't tried it out in MP.


Ulm NEEDS Blood and Blood Stones. With just Boots, vanilla Master Smiths are E3F1, or E4F1 with Earthpower. Blood Stones give EVERY Smith Petrify, and at the same time "clamming", each item forged with 50% forge bonus! Not to mention that if you can spare 50 Nature gems, you can do the same for Fever Fetishes.
The pretender only needs to gather 50 slaves. After that, you empower a young Master Smith once, and your pretender won't need to bloodhunt ever again. I takes several turns even when I'm recruiting Scouts to do supplementary bloodhunting, but Blood Stones are too good to miss, and you'll need lots of slaves to empower the smiths unless you spend the design points and pretender time to forge boosters.

[JimMorrison]

I'm really struggling with this too, not trying to be a naysayer. :p

Just seems like Ulm demands high scales because of the resource demand of their troops, and the necessity that creates for additional castles (not to mention the castles needed to get any kind of decent research). At the same time, they suffer from a horrendous lack of magical diversity, so need some serious help there, and can't have an Imprisoned pretender, because they need the help soon. The scales need is so great though, that to me it's unthinkable to be Awake, meaning that without that first year, your pretender is going to be crunched for time.

So, I agree that Blood Stones are amazing, and are immensely valuable for Ulm. But what I'm wondering is if it's worth it to worry about on your pretender, just to pop out and Blood Hunt for 5-6 turns to empower 1 guy.

And still, you find yourself torn between Staves of Elemental Mastery, Blood Stones, Clams, Fever Fetishes, Robes of the Magi, Flaming Skulls..... It just seems like while these are all obvious options for how to potentially bolster Ulm for the late game, that it's an awful lot to ask for all at once. I mean, you don't often get that much done even with nations who can do -some- of it with national mages. :p Especially when to accomplish it, you need so many paths, and so many gems, that you'll have to manually site search for years to get what you want.

I think I'll start a game with an A/E/S pathed pretender, and experiment with the B0 hunters, see if I can get enough slaves to make something interesting happen.

[Baalz]

Nah, I don't take blood on my pretender (rainbow in every other path). Just bootstrap your first 50 blood slaves with about 10 scouts bloodhunting. It'll take several turns to scrape up 50 slaves, but it's a darn sight better (IMO) than using the design points and then having your pretender spend time blood hunting. Ulm needs blood....but they don't need too much of it, and they don't need it early. Towards the end of year one as your expansion is stabilizing and you've got at least three castles start a scout blood farm. If things go smoothly there's no reason not to do this in a couple provinces. You shouldn't have too much problem to be cranking out blood stones sometime in year three with no effort from your pretender, which is about the time you really start needing them.

I tell you, I did a fever fetish farm with Ulm once, and I'm never gonna do it again. It just gets to be a micro management nightmare...it got to he point that every turn I had to cycle through 50 guys to see who was getting ready to die, shuttling fresh bodies around, trying to juggle some regen items. I got so fed up with it I ended up forging regen rings for everybody...what's the ROI on that? :)

As to the gems, you gotta remember Ulm's philosophy- super efficiency. When you say massive amounts of gems, you're not really thinking about it the right way. You're seeing empower here, forge big item there, but if you look at what you're doing you're not really using a huge amount of one gem type and most everything you do can be incrementally built up. With a rainbow pretender doing some site searching it's pretty much guaranteed that you're gonna have at least several gems of each type coming in per turn. As you're obviously lacking in magic diversity, they're just gonna pile up. With no particular effort you're gonna rack up 50+ air, water, death, and nature gems because you're just not using them. One big investment in an empowering and now you start leveraging that efficiency. Using your strong earth income you should have a bunch of hammers, so that modest (ie) water income is enough to forge an item every turn with the guy you just empowered. You don't need a huge outlay of gems immediately (other than one empowering), you want to make sure you only forge using hammers and steadily build up all the things discussed. You don't want to crank out tons of elemental staffs, rings of wizardry and robes of the magi, you just (optionally) want a handful of these, then steadily crank out the low to mid end items - steadily building up dozens of earth boots, blood stones, flaming skulls, rune smashers, slave matrixes, etc. etc.

Also, I wouldn't underestimate the return you get with a rainbow mage site searching. If you mostly stick to mountains/forests/swamps/wastelands you'll average multiple sites per province, and average multiple gems per site with indubitably a couple really nice finds, so searching a dozen provinces it's not a stretch to imagine you're now pulling in 10+ gems in a couple paths and at least 5 in all of them. Throw in the fact that your smiths can site search in earth, fire, and astral and you've got plenty for the bootstrapping empowerment/boosters discussed. Once you do that initial bootstrapping, well, now it's easy to site search the rest of the paths and get a very solid gem income.

[Endoperez]

When I tried blood-hunting with Scouts, I thought it was way too slow, but I didn't think I'd have two years to do it. I'll have to test that out sometime.

[JimMorrison]

Well, giving my Enchantress a try. At least in this first test, expenses are so low that Luck has furnished me with plenty of gold, and is also helping get that extra gem income from events. She has less diversity than yours (I settled on 1F/4A/4E/5S/1D), with only having F/D because I had ~20 points at the end, not because I couldn't live without them. :p This still gives her Staffs, and Skulls, and Rings, but also gives her the ability to remote search Death if need be, as well as giving her more immediate access to several globals.

I do agree that Blood Stones are of incredible value to Ulm..... so, gonna see what the Scouts can do, the one time I tried it, I got 3-5 slaves a turn with ~12 hunters.

[Baalz]

Yeah, it's pretty lumpy but that's pretty much in line with what I got. A bit less than a year to scrape up enough slaves for an empowering, then another half a year for a second empowering (leveraging the first empowering to blood hunt), then pretty steadily cranking out one then two half priced blood stones per turn after that. When I did that in my last Ulm game I ended up having 3 provinces with 10 scouts apiece by the end, cranking out two blood stones per turn and stockpiling enough slaves to pop out a robe of the magi or armor of souls every few turns. If you start right around the end of year one you'll be just ramping up production around the end of year three which is around when the real fireworks often start.

[Meglobob]

I tell you, I did a fever fetish farm with Ulm once, and I'm never gonna do it again. It just gets to be a micro management nightmare...it got to he point that every turn I had to cycle through 50 guys to see who was getting ready to die, shuttling fresh bodies around, trying to juggle some regen items. I got so fed up with it I ended up forging regen rings for everybody...what's the ROI on that? :)

I recently did a fever fetish farm as Ea Oceania in MP, I got to 100+ fever fetishs and the micro only took me 5 mins per turn.

The key is renaming on. When you recruit your 12 hp fetish victim lets say, simply rename him to 1 turn before he dies. For example current turn is 21, your put a fever fetish on the 12 hp victim and rename 32. Now you can leave him all alone. Just have a quick scroll down using the F1 overall view once a turn looking for the current turn number to change the fetish to another victim.

Easy and very simple.

With renaming off, just don't bother fever fetishing! Its too much micro!

[vfb]

Don't they lose 2HP every late winter though?

For more micro madness you can pre-poison the replacements so they spew gems right away without having to wait for the HP drop. I don't think I'd like to try that with a 100-fetish farm.

Yomi in CBM can got nuts with Kappas because they stay diseased with the fetish on but recuperate once you switch, so you don't need to keep hiring scouts or barbarians.

Fever-fetish scouts can also pull dual-duty blood hunting for non-blood nations.