LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Dooooooooooooooom!

[Tolkien]

This Guide is Primarily Focused for CBM. All comments are welcome.

LA Ulm is one of my most favored nation, and has the ability to become one of the powerhouses in any game.

Advantages: Strong Blood, astral spies, Iron Blizzard, great national troops, Vampires (specifically counts), and great magic diversity.

Weaknesses: Resource intensive for most troops, rather weak mages and research, and low magic resistance.

At first glance, the weaknesses are crippling. Bad research? Weak Mages? Low Magic Resistance? Resource intensive troops? THAT’S HORRIBLE! Your first instinct would be to pick a SC pretender to fuel early expansion (in the form of the thematic Vampire Queen), or an awake rainbow pretender to even out the research. To me, building either of those designs into viable pretenders costs some severe damage to design points.
Dormant Great Enchantress (Dominion 6)
F2A2W2E4S4D3N2B4
Order3/Sloth1/Cold(or Heat)3/Growth1/Magic1
A Rainbow pretender works wonders for LA Ulm, as it allows Black Forest to get into all the magic paths that it has available. Once you forge some boosters and get some gems flowing, your randoms can all start remote site searching for more gems, and more gems means better accessibility to a magic path. The minor blesses are also very useful (although the main point of 4S4B is for endgame astral and blood), as Ulm can use all the MR it can get, the blood adds to the utility of the Templars, and the Reinvigoration works wonders for your Priests (as it lets them spam Iron Blizzard longer). The Order is necessary to help put up as many forts as quickly as possible (as well as benefiting patrolling a bit), as well as funding massive amounts of your cheap mages and troops. Black Forest, while many of their troops do have some very high resource costs, can still expand perfectly well without a SC, productivity, or really any magic whatsoever. Instead of relying on Zweihanders, rely on Rangers of Ulm (they make great, cheap, and most importantly, massable crossbowmen, and waaaay better melee fighters then practically any other archer you’ll find) for expansion, with a few Shields to draw arrow fire and maybe some Pikeneers to repel cavalry and weaker infantry. Second, magic isn’t crucial for LA Ulm to expand, and research will really be a secondary concern to blood hunting with Second Tier members (and setting up a working blood economy), expansion, and new forts. Instead of whining about all those good spells you can’t cast because of low magic levels, focus on gathering at least 44 blood slaves for the turn your pretender awakens. I’m not suggesting you abandon research altogether: just that it isn’t critical for your survival early on. LA Ulm is equipped to repel pretty much any kind of rush you’d face. The classic Rush-Any-Era-Ulm-With-Elephants Rush? An army of Rangers and some Black Templars (with +2 Reinvigoration, +2 Strength, and +1 Magic Resistance, for a little extra oompf) are more than enough with some PD (and if they come year 2-3, Second Tier Members and Iron Priests with mind burn, paralyze, iron darts, and iron blizzard will just decimate any would-be tramplers). Supercombatants? Halberdiers make Supercombatants bleed like it’s the new hip thing to do. A typical, clichéd sacred rush? Ghoul Guardians eat sacreds, both literally and figuratively, for breakfast: and then some. And what about a giant chaff army with plenty of range (like Markatas)? Shields to deflect the arrows, pikes or halberds to repel the swarm of chaff. And this is just the beginning: we haven’t even gotten to the best part.

Ok: your ranger/shields/pike armies have won you a fairly large expansion by itself, you’ve got a bunch of forts up cranking out troops (so rangers will stop being your primary unit), and a bunch of blood slaves to summon a vampire count. Your research though is rather below average compared to other nations at this point (though above Ermor level), and people are starting to look at you for territory. This is when your pretender wakes up, and the whole game changes. Start your pretender off casting Sanguine Heritage for your first immortal harbinger of doom (as I call the Counts). Vampire Counts are going to be an essential part of your strategy from here on out. Their going to start to become your primary source of blood slaves, as well as human thralls for a bit of patrolling and high morale chaff. Plus, they can double as immortal thugs that (coupled with good dominion: I suggest putting up more then a few temples to both spread and raise your dominion level, and using your Inquisitor acolytes or priests to keep it positive) make attacking you insanely costly (if you launch kamikaze attacks or mass them together). Plus, they can summon more counts with a Skull Staff and a Brazen Vessel. From this point on, get your Pretender on research and put any new Second Tier Members onto research as well. Summon new counts as soon as you get the blood slaves to do so, and you’ll start raking in the blood slaves and the tempo starts to quicken (SDRs are a must). With your new focus on your research (with your forts now turning out researchers instead of blood hunters); you’ll start seeing your once lowly research rise in an exponential curve of pure, unadulterated epic win. Your rainbow pretender can start researching, and with 6 research from cheap Second Tiers, you can start climbing the charts quite rapidly. Assuming you have 2 forts up at the end of year one, you get 12.2x+29 as your research equation, and the area under a research-time graph equals the total research done (or the ant derivative). Using calculus, we can determine the total research to equal 6.1x^2+29x, which means 1226.4 research points by the end of year two. If you’ve put up 3 fortresses by the time your pretender wakes up, you get 18.3x+29 which anti-derives into 9.15x^2+29x which means 1665.6 research points: and this is assuming you don’t have any researchers to begin year one with, and either of the two totals are more than enough to take you to Evocation-6 and Construction-4 (on normal anyway). You might not take Bogarus in terms of research, but you’ll definitely be in the top tier. Your main focuses will be on Evocation 6 (for Iron Blizzard), and on Construction 4 (for that Brazen Vessel and Skull Staff). If you’re really being pressed hard, go for Thaumaturgy 4 and Evocation 3 for Paralyze and Mind Burn and Iron Darts. When you get you Evocation 6: you’re pretty much set in terms of battlefield magic. Iron Priests are criminally cheap for their utility, recruit anywhere, and a group of 3 or more spamming Iron Blizzard will melt away practically ANY army you face. I’m not exaggerating: it’s Blade Wind on steroids that not only increases with Earth levels, but is also armor piercing (say goodbye to those knights) and deals extra, extra damage to magic beings. Plus the fatigue cost is ridiculously low; especially if they’re earth random and use Earth Power (I mean it‘s aweful). Once you have Iron Blizzard, you’re basically set on battlefield magic. The minor earth bless also comes into play here, and your priests are able to spam even more of it. Show anyone who dares think Black Forest is weak on magics the errors of their way with your cheap and easy to use Iron Blizzard Spam. At this point, you can focus on pretty much any other school you need: more construction for artifacts, conjuration for elemental royalty and SCs, and blood for…well, it’s blood! It’s an awesome school that does so much; it can only be described as blood.

Now we have battlefield magic covered: time to get to gems and higher level magics. Your pretender will be your main source of boosters for the time being (a single thistle mace for a nature random fortune teller for example will start a chain reaction and allow you to spam remote nature searching) and a site searched to start the gems flowing. If you’d rather not spend the time manually searching with your pretender though, you can also have your Illuminated Ones mass astral search and then cast Ascahic Record (though this is inefficient). Once the gems start flowing though, Ulm’s gem income will start skyrocketing. A few magic boosters and you have easy site searching for 7 out of 8 paths (to access water, just empower a priest and forge some water boosters and Air is simply easier to empower an air random priest for searching). A few skulls of fire and a thistle mace are all you need to get it started (and a brazen vessel and blood thorn for a count to start forging blood boosters). Once that chain gets started, your pretender is free to either site search (if you really want him to), keep researching, or start doing rituals. If you really want to boost your research, forge a few skull mentors with that large pile of death gems gathering dust (since you should be able to easily death site search with death random fortune tellers). Also, a Ring of Wizardry is always a good investment for your rainbow pretender. Also, with a booming blood economy, it’ll be a piece of cake to empower an earth random priest in blood, give him a pair of earth boots, and a blood booster, and start forging blood stones (with a dwarven hammer of course. Common sense much?). Maybe I’m not making it seem important enough. BLOOD STONES ARE IMPORTANT TO ULM. Your Priests with a hammer have a 40% gem reduction (15%+25%), and blood stones are REALLY important to Ulm. Heck, why settle for one iron priest forging them? Get two, or three, or four. You’ve got the blood to forge them: the only thing you need to worry about are the earth gems. Quite the opposite from MA Ulm, where blood was the limiting factor. You should be rolling in a sea of earth gems by endgame.

Now back to the counts and your blood economy. Cordon off and patrol (wolves get a patrol bonus in 1.44, which makes them your prime candidate) as many mid-size provinces as you need to keep your blood economy strong, and you should be easily able to rival Mictlan as a blood power. Counts will start to grow exponentially as your blood economy grows, and free thrall chaff will easily provide enough bodies to keep your hard-hitting Iron Blizzards going, as well as patroller. This is where the Growth comes in: you’ll be able to build up two or three counts or Second Tier members (for the Illuminated ones, give them SDRs for 90% effectiveness) per province, with 0% taxes and a commander patrolling with thrall chaff and can still expect to keep your population growing. Now, as you start capturing more provinces and start putting up more labs (if you want to spare yourself the micromanagement), you’re blood income will increase with it. Counts are also excellent, and I mean excellent, thugs and raiders, and are especially deadly in your own dominion. Imagine this: flying, sneaky, and IMMORTAL vampires spamming Shadow Blast, Summon Lammas, Darkness, Soul Vortex, and anything else you want. With Vampire Lords…oh man. Now you get free summonable thralls (though they aren't really massable, go with regular summonings instead). Their immortality just means you can suicide them with your Lord with Soul Vortex and Attack Rear in the middle of battles. Just imagine the damage they can do to enemy mages…all casting spells at the rear. Soul Vortex makes it even more potent, because now you’re adding extra fatigue to their counters. Now imagine slapping on Medallions of Vengeances for those suicidal attacks: dead mages and commanders: rare, medium, or well done? Not only can’t they run from your flying thugs of dooooooooooom (DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!), but the fatigue will throw off any well-planned communion. Say hello to dead communion slaves (which in the magic weak Late Era, are critically important to most nations in need of heavy magically support).

By now, you can basically abandon your national units in favor of a massive chaff army of thralls and wolves (did I mention wolfherds are really, really important to mass?), you’d be stronger if you didn’t. The unit that starts to shine again (after fading into obscurity after expansion) is the Ranger. Your conventional army of wolves, shields, zweihanders, thralls, pikes, and halberds are already deadly with just priests (add in some large communions and they’ll run in terror). Now throw in STEALTHY armies of wolf chaff, rangers, vampires, and, the coup de grâce, Stealthy Illuminated One Communions (with flaming arrows and arrow fend, if you empowered, for better survivability) and endgame astral! Now your enemies don’t just fear your frontline army, they’re afraid you’ll have giant armies of unmindhuntable communioned death attacking them from the rear. Couple that with astral spies (for shutting down fortresses with ease: and also unmindhuntable), you’ll inspire more fear then ANY Ashen Emperor could ever aspire to be. Your blood economy should also be booming. Once you get to that point, you can start getting into Vampire Lords and massing armies of thralls (all immortal in friendly dominion). Now, with inquisitor priests, you don't have to worry about dominion pushes, and thus your provinces will be virtually impregnable. Sure your opponents can take one here or there, but they need to get past your strings of forts...AND immortal swarms of vampires. Heck, a few equipped with medallions of vengeances set to attack rear will decimate their commanders and mages. Now throw in buffed vampire thralls in friendly dominion. And you thought Ermor or R'lyeh can throw neverending swarms of chaff? Now see what happens when you're fighting the same swarms over and over again...that keeps growing.

Now for Supercombatants: Ulm, with its very large range of magic, has a variety of supercombatant options. Death, in the form of Tartarians, is a common option. LA Ulm can also summon quite a few of the elemental royals: and being one of the strongest blood nations in the LA, they also have a shot at Demon Lords and all those other wonderful blood summons.


Unit Critique:
Villains: you are generally never going to use them. The low morale makes them unreliable at best without Sermons of Courage. Plus the fact that short bows are useless in general in the Late Age, when armor is common. They do however fill a very useful niche. Against LA R’lyeh, you need mass missiles to fight off their unarmored chaff hordes: and whatdoyaknow, villains don’t have a reload time like Rangers. And what’s this? They have normal magic resistance (while the rest of Ulm has -1 MR)?!?! This couldn’t be useful against the mass artillery R’lyeh could field (which, lo and behold, can be negated by MR)…could it? And what’s more, they’re easy to mass with their cheap resource cost.

Rangers of Ulm: Rangers are and extremely versatile and useful lot. They might not have shields, but their mass crossbows are also easy to mass (though not to the same quantity as villains), and they make fairly decent melee fighters if need be. They are going to be your primary expansion unit in the early game, and have lots of utility after that as guerilla fighters and for harassing. Armies of these can be massed under Ranger Captains with Crowns of Commands and Scepters of Authorities and strike any province of your choosing (think EA Helheim and Vanheim for some ideas as to how you can use them), and they’re a great unit all in all, especially since with their lower resource cost makes them easier to mass then your infantry.

Pikemen: Pikes are actually very useful all in all. While they have their weaknesses (against mass archers, trample, and massive armies of troops), they have a lot of utility. They’ve got better survivability then shields against giants (because if a giant lands a hit, your shield isn’t going to keep you alive anyway, whereas repel stays useful), and they do rather well against hoplites (which carry shorter spears then Pikemen and thus lose their repel advantage) and low morale chaff. They are also useful against heavy cavalry by being able to negate the tricksy and deadly charge bonus on their lances (the shock effect of the lances is the best part of cavalry). With the lower resource cost compared to the rest of Black Forest’s infantry, they fill a very useful niche, especially against Giant nations like Utgard and Gath.

Halberdiers: Halberds fill another useful niche in Black Forest’s arsenal. With the extra castle defense bonus, they’re efficient in defending your forts, which means you’ll be able to hold whatever you take. They might have slightly less length then the pikes (which means less repelling action), but they do get a boost in damage, and lets them fill yet another niche in the already flexible Ulmish army.

Infantry of Ulm (with Shields!): These units will be your only shield bearers (unless you count Templars) and your main arrow decoys for every of your armies. Plus the morningstars they wield are devastating against other shield infantry (in that they get a bonus against shields), which makes them great combat infantry against nations that have nothing BUT shields (like, say, LA Pythium). All in all, these are another essential unit in the Ulm arsenal.

Zweihanders: These bad boys have the best protection in all of LA Ulm (along with Templars). They have great survivability thus against normal infantry and with their increased stats and Great Swords, they can deal damage like no tomorrow. They might be vulnerable against crossbows and longbows, but they‘re worth the price (except in the early game when quantity of rangers beats quality of infantry against independents). Zweihanders are just good all around, in my opinion. Also, they have the best gold-resource ratio of all of LA Ulm’s units.

Ghoul Guardians: Besides buying an occasional Templar, these will be your primary recruit at your capital once you get a fort up. They fill plenty of niches for the Black Forest, and you’re naïve if you think they’re weak. Their black halberds, besides being of a length long enough to repel most standard infantry and dealing more damage then pikes, also deal a 1 square, AOE, unavoidable, fatigue damage to all sacred units. This makes them indispensable and a must against bless-dependent nations, for example Mictlan. Against easily massable sacred troops, like Jaguar or Eagle Warriors, they’ll throttle them; against expensive and high-end bless troops, they’re practically overpowered. Not only that, they have a 2 person bonus in defending castles, and have 2 movement (whereas the rest of Ulm’s infantry has 1), and that means they’re far more flexible then any of your other infantry. To top that off, they’re stats are higher then your infantry (with +4 HP compared to Pikes, Shields, and Halberds and +3HP compared to Zweihanders, along with +2 strength, high morale, and 19(!) protection), and are undead (which means poison resistance and no supplies). They also have 14 magic resistance, which makes them extremely difficult to banish, and (throw in +4 MR from a Tempering of the Will cast by a fully decked out black priest geared to penetrate, and banish will be out of the question) without encumbrance, they can duke it out and outlast enemy infantry without fear of fatigue.

Black Templars: Templars are another niche unit. They are difficult to mass and not worth a bless strategy, but they have their uses. Against large tramplers, they’ll work splendidly (their larger size means less damage from elephants, and their shock value will poke holes in any plump pachyderm that strays by, especially with a minor blood bless), and can and should be used sparingly to confuse your enemy. They are also good in combination with the Hochmeister for a thug group (one is enough to bodyguard him). Other then that, all things that applied to Black Knights with MA Ulm applies here.

Commander of Ulm: Your basic chaff ferry, patroller, and army commander. Nothing special, although throwing on a Bow gives them some use in battle (but you can do that with any commander).

Ranger Captain: Throw on a Crown of Command and Scepter of Authority and you get a free stealthy commander for ranger raids. Also they’re cheap snipers if you need one.

Black Acolyte: Cheap Inquisitor unit for keeping your dominion high. They can bless your Black Priests and save you some script space, and the earth random ones are cheap Iron Blizzard casters.

Member of the First Tier: They’ll be cheap, easy to mass, communion slaves and also make unmindhuntable spies, which means you can shut down fortresses with unrest with impunity.

Hochmeister: They make good thugs and can bless your Templars easily. Thugging them out is probably a safer and cheaper bet then thugging out a vampire count, since it comes with 20 protection already and can be blessed fairly easily.

Wolfherd: Once you get your count production started and second fort up, these, along with fortunetellers, will be your primary capital-commander recruits. Wolves are by themselves nice chaff, but now in 1.44, they get a patrol bonus (which makes them even more useful). Plus, wolves are stealthy and can accompany your ranger armies in province raids, if you are so inclined. Their utility shouldn’t be underestimated.

Fortune Teller: they are actually more cost-efficient researchers then your Second Tier members, and are your primary access (via randoms) to death and nature. Plus, the reduced chance of bad events never hurt anyone (unless you want an earthquake or hurricane to hit your capital). They also don’t suffer from old age, which is a problem with Second Tier members and Black Priests.

Black Priest: They along with Second Tier members will be your primary battlefield mages. With the sheer amount of variety on the Black Priests, it’s difficult to find all the uses for them. For Earth Random Priests, they can be scripted to cast Tempering the Will, which really helps to cover the sorely lacking MR on Ulm (the spell is E3): give him penetration items to help ensure success. Earth Random Priests can also cast some of the more useful Earth spells with boosters (an Earth Blood stone and a pair of Earth Boots is all you need) and you’ll be casting Earthquake, Petrify, Weapons of Sharpness, Curse of Stones, Army of [insert metal here], and (if you want to) Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel (and anything else I‘m forgetting). They can also cast Iron Blizzard much longer then your other randomed priests. Fire randomed priests are useful for easy access to Magma Bolts/Magma Eruption and the other lovely Fire/Fire-Earth spells. Air randomed Priests can be given boosters to cast wind guide and arrow fend and Rain of Stones, all of which means less reliance on shield infantry. They can also spam Orb Lightning if you are so inclined along with the usual Iron Blizzard. And finally, Astral random mages. While I love the Earth random Priests, the Astral mages arguably have more versatility as they can become communion masters , which means less fatigue and no boosters then Earth randomed Priests. They are also your best non-capital only researchers (due to reduced upkeep via sacreds), (fortune tellers have the same upkeep and 80 lower intial cost).

Member of the Second Tier: Members of the Second Tier will be your primary Communion Masters. The rare randomed Second Tier Members also have great utility: fire randomed Tier members are instant access to high-end battlefield fire magic(ala communion) and the same goes for death randoms. Astral and Blood randoms just increases your already existing paths and means you’ll need less slaves to empower up to endgame battlefield astral and blood magics. The best past about Illuminated One communions is that…they are stealthy! Your enemy will have no idea if a province doesn’t have a hidden communion, and being stealthy, they can accompany your ranger/wolf armies and lay waste to provinces and forts behind enemy lines. You'll also use them to kick off your blood economy: 3-5 (I normally only need to use 3) Second Tiers in a midsized province is more than enough to get you the 44 slaves needed to kick off your vampire chain by your pretender's awakening.
Part Two (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showpost.php?p=676516&postcount=106)

[JimMorrison]

I feel like I'm missing something..... where do I get Wraith Kings from? :shock:

[Trumanator]

Nice writeup. I'm not really experienced enough to comment on how viable the strats are though.

[Tolkien]

Whoops:o, I completely forgot: I had Mytheology on. Oh great, now I'm going to have to remove my whole paragraph extorting their virtues.

Ah well, back to Tartarians.

[analytic_kernel]

Whoops:o, I completely forgot: I had Mytheology on. Oh great, now I'm going to have to remove my whole paragraph extorting their virtues.

Don't know about extorting anyone's Virtues.... Don't they wield Flambeaus or something? I'd be more tempted to extol one than to intimidate one into giving me gold. ;)

Interesting guide, btw.

[KissBlade]

I don't think any one thinks LA ulm has problems with resources ... Rangers are well known to be one of the best units in the game and commonly spammed.

Also a few more critiques to your guide. I think you really should explain why drain 2 is better than magic one especially because the growth seems an odd choice in the build. Honestly, I don't think growth plays a huge factor for blood hunting (I rarely find the pop loss is the deterrant as opposed to raids on your blood hunters). Even if growth does play a part, misfortune 2 and sloth 1 is easily doable considering the fortune telling. Also some parts of the guide sounds very generic and overly optimistic. The lack of research seems just sort of glazed over and there's a very large gap between "this is my pretender" to all the sudden "I have forts and evo 6". I think you got the right idea that evo's the way to go but it got a bit blanked out. It's a good start but you should address some possible counters rather than skipping about. For example, what'd you do against early battle magics, arrow fend, do you find the knights worth using, etc, good commmunion spells, etc. LA Ulm's been one of my favored nations since dom 2 so I'm just offering some critiques here. =)

[licker]

Awake fountain of blood with D3ish B6ish.

Especially for CBM, you can have your first count around turn 5 or 6 depending on luck with the 1st blood hunt he does.

Resources are mostly useless to you anyway, sloth3 is no problem, blesses are worthless and your armies will consist of as many forge priests (you can communion them, you can forge crystal shields easilly, you can basically get any battlefield spells you want) as you can pull together (recruit anywhere afterall) and whatever chaffy chaff you want to stick in front of them (empower/equip someone to B3N3 and use advanced xbreeding...). So then yeah, turmoil 3 and luck 3 is also a pretty nice combo.

And that way you can even take some magic if you really want to.

And then you have your counts running around doing whatever you need them to do. They even generate freespawn for you to throw in with your chaff, and those thralls(?) don't rout much.

Yeah, you can toss in some rangers early, and make piles of them if you really need them I suppose.

Eventually you will have immortal flying thugs, massive communion potential, or just 50 some odd iron blizzards, or gifts from heaven, earthquake, stone rain, ... You have all the blood SC summons if you even need them.

[Tolkien]

Kiss: Well, the difference between Magic-1 and Drain-2 is 120 Design Points. Black Forest units are all low on magic resistance (with Villans and Black Templars at 10, normal, and Ghoul Guardians at 14), so Drain-2 is mainly for the extra points and magic resistance. For research, the goal here is quantity over quality: just get more forts up churning out Second Tier Members. Ulm doesn’t need magic immediately, so I think the extra magic resistance and points are more important as a whole (since I‘m advocating quantity of researchers over quality). Though maybe Magic-1 is worth it, since I‘m trying to maximize LA Ulm‘s diversity. As for misfortune: I’m hesitant about picking it. Fortune Tellers do help minimize the problem, but 5% means it’ll take a bunch to negate the misfortune (I have to ask though, are the percentages additive, or does the game simply run checks against each one?), and you’re going to be alternating between wolf herds (and all that lovely, stealthy chaff) and fortunetellers at your capital. As for the growth: it probably could be dropped down to Growth-2 or Growth-1, for the points, but I personally like to keep a growing/stable population, so I don’t have to worry about moving to new provinces. Of course, I like expanding slowly, so this probably doesn’t have any meaning in MP.

And I know, the guide is generic and skimpy. I’m working on it. My time is kinda tight, though. : (
I will say this though: I don’t use knights much: they’re too expensive and getting a bless strategy with Ulm compromises the scales and dominion (and pretender) way too much. That being said, they’re more of a niche unit that you can use from time to time. The charge bonus makes them a good unit to counter elephants with rangers. Other then that: Hochimeisters can be thugged out, and a few knights are useful in keeping your enemies off balance.

Licker: I’ve always been hesitant of taking Sloth-3, since the -45% resources. But, I suppose since I’m suggesting you put up forts up as rapidly as possible: it would probably fit in with the whole build. And Luck-3/Turmoil-3: I haven’t tried it yet. I’m not completely sure about trusting my income completely to luck, especially since LA Ulm in my build would need to throw up forts rather quickly: and I just don‘t like trusting my fate to the dice. I’ll test it out though.


The build I’m trying for is to maximize on Ulm’s diverse amounts of magic paths. Ulm already can easily go into astral, blood, death, and earth. By starting gem income in all paths and forging a few boosters, you can easily expand to the other paths with remote site searching spells: and with more gems, more spell options and summons. And more battle spell combinations. You can thus keep your opponents off-balance: they’ll never know what spells you’re going to script next round. Plus, greater diversity means more summons. You’ll have a shot at pretty much all of the Elemental Royalty (the Queens will probably the hardest to get), compared to nations that don’t have a natural access to a certain path.


And I’m really grateful for the advice and comments.

[licker]

Well I played (and won) a game with LA ulm using t3l3, don't recall exactly where I had sloth, but it wasn't much of an issue for me ever (I know I didn't take any production anyway).

Sure you hurt a little for income from time to time, but the point being that if you are going to go big blood, and leverage your magic paths, you don't miss the income quite so much. Mostly because everything you really need to recruit is cheap anyway, since you NEVER bother with the knights unless you want/need for some reason mid to late game.

And while it's really not that good of a deal, you can always alchemize a bit if you are really cash strapped, though in my tests I found I rarely needed to do it, unless it was to just get that last 50 gold to put up another fort/temple/lab.

The key was getting count production up early, letting them do my blood hunting while I recruited forge priests to support chaffy indie hunters.

Of course you can also put together a few 100 rangers over the course of the first couple years and if you need them somewhere they can move fairly quickly (and even stealthily if you need them to).

[Horst F. JENS]

nice guide, thank you for the work.

[Tolkien]

Well, I'll toy around with it. Sloth though is something that doesn't work too well, considering LA Ulm has some very good heavy infantry, and you'll need some resources to mass them up.

And Kissblade: missed the Arrow Fend part. If you're into the mid-game and have put up the necessary forts and started cranking up magic research, just stop using rangers. They're good, yes, but it never really pays to be a one-trick pony (in my opinion): diversify your armies. Arrow Fend is Enchantment-6, so it's difficult to put the research, so you probably won't face Arrow Fended armies in the first 6-12 turns, especially if they weren't focused on getting it immediately. If you want strategies around it if they've got it early and you don't have evocation (and don't have any Zweihanders or other heavy infantry), there are ways to get around it. If you got Construction-4, give a ranger captain a Secepter of Authority and Crown of Command, and send an army of 85 rangers to attack his rear provinces. He can't station a mage in EVERY province, give them all enough gems to cast arrow fend, and still get enough PD to beat you in melee, and if you raid and turn taxes up to 200%, he'll draw back his main army to try and crush your guerilla force. No one wants to fight a war that will leave them badly drained monetarily and weaker then before: it leaves them ripe for others to attack. So use diplomacy to your advantage. Besides that, send a small ranger group to attack their main army and make their scripted caster use up their gems casting it on a force set to fire and retreat. If they only planned to cast it once, it means they just lost their arrow fend in the next battle. Also, bring up counts if you need to. Later in the game, you shouldn't be relying on Rangers for everything: your infantry is still excellent (if not as heavily armored as MA Ulm, at least they have Broad Swords now). Rangers make an excellent harassing force: they can do both melee and range well, and should be used as such in raiding. Really, delay and harass them until you've fully shifted to heavy infantry and got your Iron Blizzards and Counts in sufficient number.

[licker]

Sloth is your friend.

You don't need that slow heavy infantry at all, or just a few shield carrying arrow catchers.

LA Ulms strength is NOT in its infantry.

Blood, blood, and more blood. And then you probably will want a side of blood to go with it.

[Renojustin]

Sloth is your friend.

You don't need that slow heavy infantry at all, or just a few shield carrying arrow catchers.

LA Ulms strength is NOT in its infantry.

Blood, blood, and more blood. And then you probably will want a side of blood to go with it.

Licker's absolutely right here. You can easily take sloth, and you should seek more leverage via luck-turmoil, or the more conservative order-misfortune.

[licker]

Order misfortune is also less than optimal in my opinion.

You really don't need cash the way other nations do.

Misfortune can really screw you hard early game anyway. This is true for most nations, but I just don't see taking order when you are going to crap on your provinces with blood hunters eventually anyway being that useful.

Luck on the other hand...

LA Ulm does have a couple interesting heros, and getting members of the 3rd teir can really help you when you are missing boosters.

[Illuminated One]

Agreed.
I have played with order 3/misfortune 2 in mp and lost. Gold is really not so much an issue after a certain time. Luck will give you gems from time to time which are quite nice considering that you don't have a starting gem income for most of your paths and your smiths are good forgers.

I also think Kissblade is right, drain is bad. You have only cheap mages. If you take drain it will hurt you more than a nation with expensive mages that will also try to win the research race.
Order 3 gives you +21% gold which means theoretically +21% research.
Magic 1 vs Drain 2 on the other hand gives every mage you recruit +2 rp which is +40% on a 5 rp mage, more on the lower mages.

One thing that caught my attention when reading the LA Man guide: Ulm can be pretty good at castle warfare, too, maybe even better than Man, if properly prepared. Vampires (not the counts, the normal ones) have a good strength and are flying. One summoning (22 blood slaves, 8 vamps) are almost as good as a Magister of Man in defending a castle and they are flying and stealthy right from the start. And you get lots of freespawn via stealthy commanders. So while Man needs to use valuable commanders to defend a castle you could only use troops/summons/freespawn while having your commanders research inside the castle.

[KissBlade]

I don't think we should dismiss order 3 (especially in base vanilla game) because ranger floods can be expensive and LA Ulm actually has nice non cap mages (cheapie and very useful) as a result, you can never have too much gold.

[licker]

I wouldn't dismiss O3, but the advantage of T3 (besides 240 design points...) is that you get more events early, more gem diversity early when you need it most.

Ranger floods are all fine and well in a small map perhaps, but in larger maps ranger floods are just so much chaff to be brushed aside if you want to use them once counters are available, and at that point, your money doesn't help you as much because you can't buy your way out of the problem.

Well your money still goes far enough to recruit your mages at all your castles, and your castles were built when you hit luck events as well.

There is certainly a balance to be struck depending on your play style, but 240 design points is huge. At least I assume you aren't paying for your order scale by taking misfortune, because I think that would be a really bad idea for LA Ulm.

[Dedas]

Rangers work quite well because most players don't have the sense to deploy counter archers. Remember that rangers don't have any shields, no helmets and only protection 8 leather armours. As they only shoot every other turn they get eaten by the standard tactic: one group of armoured missile units front, another group of cheap standard archers back. Trust me, I've been there. Facing shielded infantry is another thing they are bad at.
No I rather use them in small hidden groups following your army instead (ranger captain + 10 rangers). That way your enemy won't anticipate them and they can slaughter freely. The ranger captain with his high precision could also be fitted with a cool missile weapon to make him a mini ranged thugs. 4 or 5 of them with accompanying rangers. Perfect for that extra unexpected umpfh to your army.

[JimMorrison]

Rangers work quite well because most players don't have the sense to deploy counter archers. Remember that rangers don't have any shields, no helmets and only protection 8 leather armours. As they only shoot every other turn they get eaten by the standard tactic: one group of armoured missile units front, another group of cheap standard archers back. Trust me, I've been there. Facing shielded infantry is another thing they are bad at.

The only problem is that the 10g/4r basic archer is all but extinct in LA, and Woodsmen and Deer Tribe are also much less common than before.

But it's true, it seems that massed crossbowmen should have many ways to counter them. They'll get some kills, that's for sure, but a skilled opponent should be able to wipe them out - BUT, it is always always always good to make your opponent shift gears.

It's worth noting that with proper support, those Woodsmen are still pretty good against most targets (far better against shields than mere bows), while if you force your enemy to make tons of cheap archers - those men are all pretty useless against any infantry that Ulm produces.

Of course, bearing in mind that the suggestion is that you supplement your Sloth with Order so you can swarm with Rangers, and I have to wonder if the Rangers are -it-, or if there is some clever plan to get a mountain of steel crashing down on the foe as well.

[KissBlade]

Rangers have quite some lasting power compared to other troops. They're able patrollers and stealth raiders when counters start to get fielded. Plus you guys must've never seen wind guided/flame arrowed xbows because that thing gets dangerous even when something like storm gets fielded because there's just so many of those projectiles in the air. Plus Ulm has the points to field Order and Turmoil doesn't give you 240 free points because you wanted to take luck 3 with it while Order isn't necessarily 120 because Misfortune 1-2 is easily doable with Fortune Tellers.

[licker]

I commented on the luck misfortune thing. I can't see Ulm doing that well with misfortune honestly, compared to the difference from taking T3L3.

Map dependent of course.

And yes rangers are useful, and can be useful moving forward, but Ulm lacks the ability (outside of the pretender) to cast wind guide or flaming arrows without boosters/empowerment. Any nation could pack a ton of xbows and achieve much the same effect (less the rangers mobility, which is very useful).

My concern is that following a ranger centric focus ignores your real strengths, especially if you are going to waste time recruiting ranger lords to lead them. If you need stealth commanders you have plenty of other options from blood summons to standard conjuration summons.

A mass of black priests can do just about anything due to you being able to get them in communions (and forge matrices...) So perhaps that is where you are going to get your flaming arrows and wind guide from? But then you still need the mass of black priests to set it up...

Clearly you can play LA Ulm different ways, I'd just be skeptical of a ranger centric strategy being as effective as a mage based strategy. And in any case, it is not as though even with T3L3 you won't be able to mass a sizeable force of rangers at some point if you really want to.

The benefit of O3 seems to only be early game, and early game you simply cannot use wind guide and flaming arrows anyway (unless you design your pretender to do it, and then you have likely handicapped your count production).

[KissBlade]

Where do you get the idea that I was proposing a ranger centric strategy...?

One of my original points for Order 3 is that you have good non cap mages and more steady income = more mages. Ranger floods = good early game. Order 3 = better early game. Order gives you more early game to expand + threaten better => more snowball income than turmoil.

Also there's nothing from stopping Ulm from taking Order and luck anyway. Turmoil/luck doesn't pay off as much as people think nor do misfortune hurt all that much in base game.

[Dedas]

It is all a gamble. Massing one extreme can pay of, but against a good opponent you are taking quite the risk. If your opponent is less experienced however, you will most probably win 9 times out of 10.

[JimMorrison]

One of my original points for Order 3 is that you have good non cap mages and more steady income = more mages.

I think the point that we can all agree on, is that one of Ulm's great strengths, is their cost effective, and battle ready mages. Regardless of how you staff your armies, having gobs and gobs of Black Priests will be very important to your military goals. That's one of the reasons I like to at least have 4E on my pretender, as you get very solid performance with Summon Earthpower and a bit of reinvig from the bless.

(edit) - NOTE - Each Black Priest spamming Iron Blizzard, is the equivalent (until they pass out) of 60+ Rangers (30+ AP projectiles every round), and that is a very big deal indeed.

[licker]

Well I may have taken a liberty in assigning the ranger specific strat to you, but you did mention a mass of rangers buffed with WG and FA...

In any case, you do not need O3 to pump out mages, especially when you don't need to pump out expensive sacreds or other pricey units. Most ulm units cost ~10g right? Now especially if you are also taking sloth (which doesn't hurt you much either, since you don't need swarms of units with upkeep...) you are probably resource limited in cranking out anything rather than gold limited. Black Priests cost ~110? Members of the 2nd tier cost ~150? Sanguine Counts cost 44 blood slaves (or 33, depending on mods right?)...

Fortune Tellers cost 90?

You don't need O3 to pump these things out. You don't even need O3 to build castles if you save from your L3 gold events until you are ready to do it.

But still, ulm is strong enough that I think it will play well either way, just that at some point you reach a point where you don't really need gold for anything particularly useful.

Units should be free spawn or summons, commanders can also be summoned, or ~1k a turn to recruit ~10 commanders (or am i completely misremembering the costs?). Upkeep will be low, Black Priests are sacred, and free spawn/summons are zero.

It comes down to play style preference at this point I think.

[KissBlade]

Yep, I agree on that. Mind you, I was only pointing out Order 3 isn't a bad pick for Ulm in my original post. Luck 3/turmoil has it's own advantages as well. (I'm actually using it with LA Ulm in one of my test games) I do think CBM makes turmoil/luck able to compete with Order. In base games, I was getting barbarian harrassed more often than not. =\

[licker]

Oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention is that if you take T3L3 you probably have room for some growth as well, so over time your income isn't as hammered as it could otherwise be.

Growth is even nice since I think some of your Black Priests come with old age, and if offsets some of the pop decline from blood hunting.

The only question left is do you take the awake fountain of blood with Death and Blood, or do you take some kind of rainbow pretender to help your lacking paths?

I can't see LA Ulm needing an SC pretender.

[Dedas]

Remember that LA Ulm gets a production bonus in each fortress, which is a way of telling you to build many of them. Many fortresses equals many Black Priests and MotST which equals many Wolfherds and Fortune Tellers (the capital only guys). What I'm saying is that freeing up your capital means more freespawns and less bad events overall while you still get the battle mages, the troops etc. Do LA Ulm have cheap fortresses? A quick look in the manual says not really. That is why you need order, just as you did when you played MA Ulm. Not so much for the troops, but rather for the troops AND the ability to constantly build fortresses where ever you go. Also, a nation that has lots of slow troops and aims to build up a blood economy seems rather defensive to me. So turtle on and abuse that ill gotten real estate!

[licker]

Well my experience says otherwise.

You can bank the positive gold luck events for when you are ready for your fortress.

Also you just don't need that much gold anyway, and you don't need to be slow.

You can play them that way, or you can play them 'fast'. Either way will likely meet with success, and become just a difference in play style.

Honestly though, if you spend your time building lots of Ulmish HI I think you are going to lose eventually. While that infantry looks great, it's not really all that tough, and the movement is horrible. So unless you have some way of 'warping' them around (and Ulm doesn't have easy access to any of those methods) they will mostly just cost you upkeep while a more agile opponent dances around them until he's ready to level them.

That doesn't mean you cannot or should not use them, it does mean you should be thinking about how quickly you can retire them...

[Dedas]

That is why you need many fortresses, that way you can mass the right kind of infantry where you most need it. You also have to remember that fortresses don't cost any upkeep, on the contrary, they actually make more money in accordance with their admin value. That is why a more expensive fortress pays of in the long round (it is also more durable and generates more resources generally).
Another thing, please take a look at the Ulmish infantry. What do you see? High protection, slow movement, low gold cost, high resource cost, castle defence bonuses. What does that tell you? Their main purpose is defending your castles and hunting grounds, not embarking on long crusades against enemy players. They can do that too of course, but you rather want to have blood summons, knights and black priests (higher movement) to do that. The rangers and Tiers will infiltrate the enemy while you march. When you conquered territory let your Black Priests and Black Lords preach as they both have the inquisitor bonus (extremely effective when you have 10 BP doing it). At the same time you build a fortress on that spot, a fortress will be defended by Halberdiers (castle defense bonus) you build there. Repeat.
This way every unit is useful in some way.

[licker]

To each their own.

Playing Ulm that way is not my cup of tea. I see no reason to bother with slow infantry who will only be useful in defense! The whole goal is to not have to defend, as then your castle is useless, you cannot recruit, you cannot blood hunt, ...

I agree though that if you are going to play it that way you need more castles since you will need to constantly be rebuilding your infantry at the front. The problem is that once the front moves or disappears that infantry is now nearly useless for several turns while you reposition it.

Though the issue isn't whether or not to use the infantry, the issue is how much infantry do you need, and do you need to take O3 to accomplish this goal. You also don't need O3 to afford several castles, and anyway, you reach a point where your new castles are not ones you actually have to pay to build right...

My personal experience says you don't need O3, but that isn't to say that there is not more than one way to skin a cat.

[Dedas]

I understand you.

You ask how much infantry you need. I say a lot but not as much as you think assigned to a defensive role. Thanks to castle defence bonus of Ghoul Guardians and Halberdiers you effectively halve (and more) that number. But it will cost you some upkeep, most of which is covered by the fortress administration bonus on income of course, but that is thanks to order.

Another question is do you need defence in your castles? I would say yes, and that is because you've built a lot of them. Else you'll be giving your intelligent opponent a safe way into your kingdom.

You think that you will mostly be needing defence in your frontier fortresses but in a game like with stealth and teleportation I would rather be safe than sorry. 20 Halberdiers (that will count as 40 with strength 11) in each fortress is not a huge cost and it will buy much needed time for you troops to reach them. Or why not just tie your enemy up while you attack their land? In the meantime you can harass the besieging enemy with nasty blood magic, Vampires or other summons.

But to answer your last question. Is order 3 needed? Well, no. But it will speed everything up for LA Ulm. That is because this dog does not do one trick only, you need a bit of everything to beat a strong opponent. Fortresses, troops, combat mages, blood magic economy, patrollers the list goes on. If you take turmoil and luck you might or might not afford what you need, that makes it hard to plan ahead. LA Ulm is all about planning ahead like almost every slow moving nation. You could try to ignore this and try to play it more extremely by focusing on one of the faster aspects like rangers but that will make you very vulnerable if the enemy has good intel (like one should).
You want to reach the point where castles cost nothing and summons rule the earth, but to do that and be best at it you need a big and stable ground to stand on. Some nations get this by speedy scream attack troops and by a nimble defence that allows them to have more room between fewer fortresses. Turmoil/Luck goes will with them as when they have gold they can ship their new troops fast to the front. Ulm however... well they need time to get to that point, and any setback they will feel double, so to make that time shorter and safer they need a lot of steady gold.

[chrispedersen]

Ulmish heavy infantry moves 1.

Units sitting at home waiting for someone to attack - only help you when someone actually attacks. You lack readily available mages to transport your heavy infantry.

On top of that, ulms heavy troops generally have poor magic resistance, and are slow on the battlefield as well - ripe targets for ironbanes, acid mists, or master enslaves.

Which would you rather have.. 250 ulmish heavy infantry .. or 100vampires. Flying, move 3, immortal, stealthy, thrall summoning, Highly MR, vampires.

Until I meet Marignon in a dark ally.. I'll generally choose the vampires.

Side benefit: turmoil/luck = great chance for national heroes.

Growth scales. Blood hunt your capitol. Prophetize your first vampire count. Reanimate your unrested dead.

[Dedas]

My point is that you can have both. Having just one will make you too unpredictable. There are extremely good counters to undead you know, but with a mixed force your opponent need to choose.

As for Halberdiers defending your castles, they are not supposed to fight, only stop or slow down sieges.

[chrispedersen]

I got that they're not supposed to fight. And while they're *not* fighting they still require upkeep.

And with that in mind.. I"m announcing the All Ulm contest. We've all had opinions - now lets test them on the field of battle! May the best vampire - um man win.

Look for Ulmish Wars under multiplayer...

[JimMorrison]

Which would you rather have.. 250 ulmish heavy infantry .. or 100vampires. Flying, move 3, immortal, stealthy, thrall summoning, Highly MR, vampires.

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)

My question is (and I'm hoping it is "no") do Thralls cost upkeep? I didn't think they do. If they do not, then the more and faster your Count count (ha!) rises, the more you can feel free to have some of them bounce around your territory, depositing squads of Thralls to at least help slow down any sieges.

[KissBlade]

Which would you rather have.. 250 ulmish heavy infantry .. or 100vampires. Flying, move 3, immortal, stealthy, thrall summoning, Highly MR, vampires.

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)



I was trying to figure out how getting vampires prevents you from accessing infantry too but I see I'm not the only one confused.

Also vampires suck ***, I assume he meant vampire counts.

[chrispedersen]

Which would you rather have.. 250 ulmish heavy infantry .. or 100vampires. Flying, move 3, immortal, stealthy, thrall summoning, Highly MR, vampires.

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)



I was trying to figure out how getting vampires prevents you from accessing infantry too but I see I'm not the only one confused.

Also vampires suck ***, I assume he meant vampire counts.


I couldn't agree less that vampires suck. Sure, their prot sucks. First, ulm has steps to redress that, should it really want to...

But more importantly.. they're immortal, and fly. And undead.
That last point is sometimes a disadvantage but it can also be used to your advantage.

Consider: Wailing winds, blood rain, darkness, nether darts, rigor mortis - all just off the top of my head are going to have reduced or *no* effect against your vampires.

[chrispedersen]

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)


Well Jim, now thats an interesting proposition.
You can't buy vampires with gold. Now, 250 Zweihanders is 10,800resources. So how many turns do you think is reasonable to amass that many zweihanders - especially presuming you may be money limited - and want to buy some other units ....

And if I can show you how to amass that many vampires oh say in 40 turns - would you kow tow and admit *I'm* a dominions god <wink>

[JimMorrison]

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)


Well Jim, now thats an interesting proposition.
You can't buy vampires with gold. Now, 250 Zweihanders is 10,800resources. So how many turns do you think is reasonable to amass that many zweihanders - especially presuming you may be money limited - and want to buy some other units ....

And if I can show you how to amass that many vampires oh say in 40 turns - would you kow tow and admit *I'm* a dominions god <wink>

40 turns? :p Wouldn't that be an average of 110 slaves/turn? That's a good income, but I'm not sure about "godly". ;)

10,800 you say? I know in CBM they are 36res, which would be 9000. Not sure on vanilla. But I'll tell you what, I can do THAT faster than 40 turns, that's for sure. :happy:

[Dedas]

They are 36 res in vanilla as well. Say you build around 8 fortresses in good locations, which is not unreasonable for Ulm (you can do it quite fast with order 3 and patrolling), and considering the 25% production bonus for Ulm in every castle you should have around 300 resources in each (try to build the cost effective citadel as they have high admin). 300 x 8 = 2400. 9000/2400 = 3.75 turns. And even if you had abysmal luck with terrain you should be able to build them in 5 turns.

If you want to do a search I have posted a lot about Ulm and fortress placement over the years.

[chrispedersen]

40 turns? :p Wouldn't that be an average of 110 slaves/turn? That's a good income, but I'm not sure about "godly". ;)

10,800 you say? I know in CBM they are 36res, which would be 9000. Not sure on vanilla. But I'll tell you what, I can do THAT faster than 40 turns, that's for sure. :happy:

So what would be godly Jim =)


(And you're right about the 9000 - up two days on a court case doesn't do wonders for my math).

[JimMorrison]

40 turns? :p Wouldn't that be an average of 110 slaves/turn? That's a good income, but I'm not sure about "godly". ;)

10,800 you say? I know in CBM they are 36res, which would be 9000. Not sure on vanilla. But I'll tell you what, I can do THAT faster than 40 turns, that's for sure. :happy:

So what would be godly Jim =)


(And you're right about the 9000 - up two days on a court case doesn't do wonders for my math).

Well, assuming a province count ~20, I would be very impressed if someone could convert 7 of those provinced (as LA Ulm, of course) to hunting provinces averaging ~20 slaves/turn, and still maintain their overall economy. So, in that sort of map scale, you'd need to hit 140 slaves/turn total, and I think that would be pretty damned shocking. Of course, in CBM, that's 4+ Vampire Counts per turn, which would be very nifty indeed.

I still don't think it hugely impacts your need for infantry, though it negates the need for infantry in the backfield for defensive purposes. Since you are not Immortal outside of your Dominion, it's going to be very hard to complete a military campaign on the backs of Vampires, eventually you either subject them to possible attrition, or you resort to other means to take provinces with heavy enemy Dominion.

[KissBlade]

LA Ulm infantry is not bad. The lofty MR weakness that gets touted over them only comes into play against late game astral. Their h igh protection is still helpful against most other stuff. As for MR, /most/ nationals have that problem anyway so meh.

[Dedas]

Additionally, if you want to offset the subnormal MR on LA Ulm's troops you can take a healthy drain 2. That will at least give you normal MR in your own dominion and that isn't so bad considering their slow movement. Push slow and hard, hold what you take (build fortresses there). That is Ulm for you.

[Redeyes]

LA Ulm has easy access to anti-magic in their build anywhere Member of the Second tier.
If Astral nations are destroying you, that should be your remedy

Ghoul Guardians come with fairly good MR, though they arguably need it the most.

[Dedas]

And besides astral anti-magic you also have Tempering the Will that will add an additional +4 MR (if you're lucky). That is better than most nations could ever dream about.

[Trumanator]

Do Antimagic and TtW stack? I would be wary of taking drain w/LA Ulm too, as they don't have very good researchers. Do Iron priests ignore drain?

[vfb]

That's one of the effects that doesn't stack, unfortunately.

Cast Tempering first, and Antimagic will get cast on top of it, but it will just bump everyone's MR by +4, unless they already got boosted by Tempering.

Cast Antimagic first, and Tempering won't even get cast.

Ulm can build skull Mentors to make up for Drain, but it's still difficult to keep up in the research race. They get no research bonus in a drain dominion.

[Dedas]

Oh, didn't know that. I supposed they stacked because they are different spells. Thanks for clearing it up, vfb!

[licker]

Again, if the main advantage of ghoul gardians is that they count 2x as defense then why the #@$# would you buy them again? (they are also undead right?)
Because their upkeep is lower for the amount of defense you get? You can't reliably patrol with them anyway, since if you lose they will not be in your castle defending anyway...

That is if you need patrolers you are going to use wolves or thralls or whatever free chaff you can come up with.

And to mass them quickly you NEED not just order (which you still don't really need, but whatever) you NEED to take production which further cuts into the real advantage LA Ulm has. Production becomes more and more useless the longer the game goes on anyway, no amount of ulmish infantry is going to stand up to proper SCs or likely even a handful of thugs designed to counter them. Their magic resistance isn't even the issue, it's still their mobility which makes them expensive targets who are unlikely to be where you actually need them. And if nothing else, provide no kind of strategic problem for your opponents, who are more than happy (at least i would be) to see you turtle up in your 'impregnable' fortresses while they just do whatever they want. On a small map I can see them providing enough of an early advantage that different scales may be warrented. On mid-large maps, not so much.


But I think Chris has the right idea with his test game, though I'm not so sure about the 100 counts in 40 turns, but what the hell, even half that would still be giving you a ton of chaff and rapid defense/offense.

You don't need to give your counts much equipment to make them reliable raiders afterall, and Ulm (even LA) can still manage to out forge just about anyone else.

[Dedas]

High production is a given if you want to use the strategy I have outlined.

As for Ghoul Guardians, you buy them all the time, marching them up to your front fortresses to tie up the enemy while he attacks you as he sees you as an harmless turtle. At the same time you slowly grind away at him with your own army of summons and faster troops, building fortresses as you go along, stuffing them with those cheap defence troops. And if he attacks your main army you just fall back to your fortresses while you attack on another spot. Mobility and defence combined.

[vfb]

Ghoul Guardians have map move 2, zero encumbrance, base 14MR, good protection, 100%PR, and frikking laser beams in their skulls!

Wait, scratch the laser beams. But they do have Black Halberds.

I don't see why you'd buy any other troop in your capitol once you've got another fort up. Maybe if you desperately needed some cavalry ... but in LA you should be able to pump some out some indy cav at at least one of your forts.

[Tolkien]

Ghoul Guardians are extremely useful and when you have new forts up, they should be your primary unit recruit at your capital (unless you need a few Templars).

In my opinion, the best part of LA Ulm is the flexibility. Being a one-trick horse is a fatal strategic and tactical decision, as sure enough, your enemies will find counters and use them. You've got plenty of strategic and tactical options as LA Ulm: stealthy ranger armies and stealthy communions (think Helheim/Vanheim and mass glamoured stealthy armies for some ideas what you can do with those). You've got a versatile array of heavy infantry that all excel in certain situations and against certain opponents (pikemen have better survivability against giants for example). You've got ghoul guardians that will simply TEAR any bless heavy nation (like Mictlan) to shreds and have map move 2. You've also got Shields and Zweihanders that are just all around useful. You also have armies of chaff: wolves and thralls (I believe the wolves have gotten a boost in the new CBM and got a patrol bonus), which makes for an excellent buffer for your iron blizzard spamming iron priests and main army. You've got heavy cavalry for those rare situations when they're needed (charge against elephants, for example). Hell, you've got an easily spammable shortbowman (villans) if you are REALLY drowning against armies of chaff (like against R'lyeh: they also benefit from having +1 MR compared to the rest of Ulm's infantry), though you'll probably forgo them for the crap morale.

My point is that Ulm has so many options in terms of tactics and strategies that it's ALWAYS a good idea to keep all options on the table when you're playing with them. LA Ulm is incredibly versatile, both army and magicwise, and my philosophy is summed up by Napoleon:
One must change one's tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one's superiority.
So my opinion is that focusing on one strength at the cost of the whole (and Ulm's blood potential is VERY strong already) is a poor plan, as by focusing JUST on blood cuts out the other options.

[licker]

I could not disagree more while still agreeing in principle.

You cannot try to be a 'do it all' nation because then you will inevitiably fail against a nation who actually does something very very well.

That said, you don't go into a game saying "I'm going to do this and only this no matter what", but changing your strategy every 10 turns (or whatever an equivilent is) is only good for getting yourself killed, since any STRONG late game play is going to have required you to have played the particular strategy to set it up in the early and mid games.

To that end I cannot fathom wasting time with ghouls or infantry centric strategies (meaning strats where you take order and production to boost their production) since they are quickly rendered useless by anyone who knows what they are doing.

And if you never face anyone who knows what they are doing then it really doesn't matter what kind of a strategy you adopt unless you also don't know what you are doing.

The odd thing to me is that I'm not saying 'never buy ghouls or infantry' I'm saying don't build your nation so that your plan is to buy lots of them. That is don't sacrifice your ultimate strengths by taking scales which become less and less useful as the game progresses, as the benefits they provide you become essentially useless.

I also really do not agree that you need lots of money to buy more castles after around 25 turns in, because by then you are just going to be taking 'free' castles anyway, and pretending that you can turtle doesn't seem that smart either, since you don't research *that* well either, and you probably want/need more area to set up your blood economy, all the while pumping out black priests.

What is more versitile anyway? 11 HI or one black priest with free spawned chaff? Infantry are just really not as useful as I think some of you are making them out to be. Sure, they can have their uses, but guess what? If you don't 'guess' right about what infantry you actually need, you'll never have enough of it in the right place (becasue they are so slow) to respond to anything anyway. And if you just build enough infantry to cover every counter, then you've wasted 3x or 4x the gold and production on a force which is only 33% effective?

All the while you are still paying upkeep on these troops moving around one province at a time who are easilly exploited due to to their sluggishness and crap MR.

I don't know, maybe I'm misreading you all, but it sure seems you are suggesting sacrificing what Ulm actually has as a real strength to gain some minor advantage in the first 20 turns after which you have really nothing to scare anyone with.

Ghouls are nice units, but you NEED production to mass them, and then they are cap only, and ...

Just like any other guide or discussion of nations who wind up reliant on cap only troops you have to be able to justify them as an all game solution. Ghouls are not this, not even close. What they do well you don't even need that many of them (early sacred rush for example). As castle defense you can still get alot of milage out of freespawn (which you can get anywhere) and summons (same) which oyu will still generate even while you are being seiged.

I don't get any strategy which has you sacrificing time and man power defending against sieges while your other 'army' does it's thing somewhere else. Especially when your other army apparently has lots of map move 1 infantry in it.

Mobility? Hardly.

Try throwing a dozen outfitted counts at your opponents lands while his army tries to figure out whether to siege a meaningless castle or push on into your dominion where you can 'suicide' even more naked counts at him, spamming lamashastas (sp?). Even when you 'lose' you obviously 'win'.

[KissBlade]

I think you vastly overestimate the effectiveness of vampire counts as anything but very effective blood hunters. They make /ok/ raiders but so does a black servant with a lycan ammie and it doesn't require a constant stock of death gems if you're using summon lamm's. Furthermore, you still keep bringing up the trade of infantry versus mages/vampires where people are pointing out you can just get both.

[JimMorrison]

Also, the MR horse is dead. We Soul Slayed it. :happy:

To sum up - you are not likely to win a war with Ulmish heavy infantry alone, but the other side of that coin shows you are unlikely to win a war with Vampire Counts alone.


Besides, people spend enormous amounts of design points on awake SC pretenders, sometimes -mostly- to slingshot them to a strong mid-late game, and sometimes with a very diminished usefulness after that. I see Production scales as performing the same role, except that they cost less design points, and they provide a consistent increase in gold income, in contrast to the awake SC that usually erodes your ability to take good scales, thus reducing your income potential through the entire game.


To be fair, I will do some early game expansion tests with just Rangers, but I admit I am quite skeptical.

[Dedas]

You cannot try to be a 'do it all' nation because then you will inevitiably fail against a nation who actually does something very very well.

It is not a matter of "doing it all", it is a matter of doing the right things at the right time and that means planning. And planning means you need to know what your enemy is up to all the time.

If you meet a beginner he might try doing just one thing, like the tank rush in C&C, but in this game that makes him weak because there is actually counters to everything. An experienced players sees what he is up to and adapts accordingly. It is easy for him to do so because the enemy is so predictable.

Then you meet an experienced player, he watches you and adapts to what you do, and you do the same. And in the end that means mixed armies. The challenge is to find the perfect mix, and deploy it at the right spot at the right time. And that means planning... and so on.

:)

[chrispedersen]

I think you vastly overestimate the effectiveness of vampire counts as anything but very effective blood hunters. They make /ok/ raiders but so does a black servant with a lycan ammie and it doesn't require a constant stock of death gems if you're using summon lamm's. Furthermore, you still keep bringing up the trade of infantry versus mages/vampires where people are pointing out you can just get both.

1 vampire count + 1 horror = 1 taken province.

Ok, sometimes it will take 2 horrors...

[chrispedersen]

Also, the MR horse is dead. We Soul Slayed it. :happy:

To sum up - you are not likely to win a war with Ulmish heavy infantry alone, but the other side of that coin shows you are unlikely to win a war with Vampire Counts alone.


Besides, people spend enormous amounts of design points on awake SC pretenders, sometimes -mostly- to slingshot them to a strong mid-late game, and sometimes with a very diminished usefulness after that. I see Production scales as performing the same role, except that they cost less design points, and they provide a consistent increase in gold income, in contrast to the awake SC that usually erodes your ability to take good scales, thus reducing your income potential through the entire game.


To be fair, I will do some early game expansion tests with just Rangers, but I admit I am quite skeptical.

If by enormous you mean 150...

And gold is pointless in the late game anyway.

[licker]

You cannot try to be a 'do it all' nation because then you will inevitiably fail against a nation who actually does something very very well.

It is not a matter of "doing it all", it is a matter of doing the right things at the right time and that means planning. And planning means you need to know what your enemy is up to all the time.

If you meet a beginner he might try doing just one thing, like the tank rush in C&C, but in this game that makes him weak because there is actually counters to everything. An experienced players sees what he is up to and adapts accordingly. It is easy for him to do so because the enemy is so predictable.

Then you meet an experienced player, he watches you and adapts to what you do, and you do the same. And in the end that means mixed armies. The challenge is to find the perfect mix, and deploy it at the right spot at the right time. And that means planning... and so on.

:)


Yes it means planning, but if you are planning on having a 'mass' of strat move one infantry of different flavors to counter whatever your enemy throws at you, ...

You have no reaction time, you have no slack with that kind of a force. And that force isn't even particularly effective no matter its composition because the counters to slow moving infantry are easy, moderately cheap, and pentiful.

The counters to thugged counts (or flying thugs in general) are much less, and not always as easy for specific nations to come up with. They are also more costly in terms of opportunity cost to defend against flying thugs than to defend against a large slow army.

If you don't think equiped counts make for excellent raiders you've missed the boat somewhere. Also I did not say to use summon lamas with your raiders, you use naked counts in you dominion to attrit down a large invading army. Its rather pointless to use lamas on raiding counts, unless you are planning on throwing them all away, which is usually a desperation gambit anyway.

Infantry has a place for Ulm, just not one worth actually wasting design points on maximizing.

Income is entirely overrated for Ulm as well, so long as you understand what you are maximizing for the reduction in income flow. And anyway, while you may believe that L3 is not a good way to get gold, I think you've perhaps not studied it enough. Sure, it is not a guarenteed income flow, but with proper planning the income events (to say nothing of the mines...) allow you to behave as if you were actually getting that steady income flow.

It seems as though one should spend all their money every turn, but honestly, this is far from the case, even beyond such considerations as saving enough to put up fort/temple/lab in the next turn.

[KissBlade]

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

[Dedas]

As I find no reason to repeat myself I just point to KissBlade. :)

[chrispedersen]

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In one sense I agree with you; that vampires counts are unimpressive stat wise. I generally only summon 2-3.

VC counts are useful in a few ways:
1. They lead ghouls.
2. With two easy boosters, they cast sanguine heritage, relieving the need of your pretender to do same.
3. They fly - which most of the other things on your list do not. And hence are the perfect thing to lead vampires.

As long as you fly and raid *in dominion* you don't care whether you win or lose the fight. Merely inflicting casualties is sufficient.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

[Micah]

Chris - Did you just argue that a count has some sort of special utility because it can do the exact same job a 20g indy scout can? (Taking a prov over after a horror attack) Seriously?

[chrispedersen]

No, thats not what I'm arguing at all.

A scout you would have to attack the province.
The vampire *doesn't have to*. With the vampire, you take one province a turn. With a scout or other .. its one every other.

[JimMorrison]

But technically dor the price of one Count, you could have a Scout in every single territory of your enemy, just waiting.

[KissBlade]

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

So you think a stealthy raider that leaves a trail of thralls to point out his location is better than the other options I've listed because it can attack indies with the help of horrors? Seems awfully inefficient to me ... Especially since the premier remote spell is Mind Hunt. If you're talking about using send horrors to bomb an opponent's pd and raid, that's already a tactic you can apply to anything. If you rely on just thralls, not only is it inefficient versus scouts (you lose the blood hunting turns of the count) but your opponent can just counter it by moving around a few recruited indie commanders on "hold, hold, retreat". Since your thralls would auto rout versus them with no commanders.

Second, Harbingers are only 20 death gems versus 44 slaves. if you value slaves lower than 1/2 a gem, then 66 slaves for a succubi versus 44 for a vamp count isn't significantly cheaper since we're talking about using them on the field rather than blood hunting. Furthermore, the poster mentioned gearing them up with gems. Once you factor that in, it swings far more in favor of other chassis with more durability.


I'll state once again, raiding with vampire counts is entirely overrated. They're good for other reasons but martially, there are more effective tools once you get going.

Lastly, I'll point out again, there is nothing that says you can't use counts if you take Order 3. If anything, order 3 is better since you quell more unrest with order (small doses) than turmoil and is far less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians.

[licker]

You are less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians if you take luck than anything Order may give you.

You also seem to completely underrate flying. Flying (and stealth on top of it) is absolutely huge when you are raiding someone. Ulm cannot get boots of flying without their pretender, or willing trading partners (which cuts both ways for any strategy) and adds an additional 10 air gems (9 or 6 with boni) to the cost of equipping your thugs.

Counts require zero research as well, any other thug summon requires some (no matter how little in some cases).

But this is all tangential to the crux of this disagreement, which is over taking O3 and how necessary that is, vs having either better scales elsewhere, or a more rounded pretender.

My contention is that Ulm is better off with an awake pretender to get some counts out year one, than they are paying for O3 with a sleeping pretender and delaying count production into year 2.

Of course you can get pretty far using infantry and rangers, but I don't think you get much farther maximizing them at the expense of the rest of your strengths.

[atul]

The one thing I don't get is so bent on order = costly equality. Order3/Misf2 is only 40 points more expensive than Turmoil3/Luck3. And when it comes to bad events, that's why the nation has those fortune tellers and stuff.

[licker]

forutune tellers are only useful where you put them. No way are you going to have them in more than a handful of places, so you will still suffer from the barbs type of event hitting your provinces. Your PD is pretty mediocre until you go over 20.

Ulm also has some interesting heros you'd probably like to get. Mot3rd is really really nice to help you diversify into fire and often get another high astral mage.

Of course you can go O3M2 and do fine, alot of nations take this as some kind of default anyway. However, it really doesn't provide some of the support Ulm can use in expanding your off path gem pool specifically. Of course luck can be fickle, you may not get much, or you may get a ring of wizardry in the 1st year.

How do you plan on defending your empire from barbs and knights and bloodslave losses due to events? Or do you just accept them and divert a portion of your army to retaking what you may lose? Counts can do this as easilly as anything of course.

[vfb]

LA Ulm PD is great against barbarians. 15 will stop it nearly all the time, 12 stops it most of the time, unless you get unlucky with a huge horde.

LA Ulm PD gets pikes and archers (not crossbows), and archers are better against barbarians because of the higher rate of fire. I'm talking about CBM with better pikes BTW, so they repel a lot of the barbarian attacks.

When you have castles spaces so they aren't adjacent (adjacent castles is a terrible plan anyway since adjacent castles waste resources), you will have armies and mages in these castles which are very capable of taking back provinces the next month from indy events when you add one turn of recruitment. Even against knight events.

[JimMorrison]

Ulm cannot get boots of flying without their pretender, or willing trading partners (which cuts both ways for any strategy) and adds an additional 10 air gems (9 or 6 with boni) to the cost of equipping your thugs.

I will agree that using Winged Shoes does increase costs of thugs.

But I have to absolutely disagree 100% that LA Ulm can't get the Shoes without their pretender. You have national mages that at least get 1 Air. If you can't get one of the Mercenary Air mages, then you at least have someone that can manually search some mountains until you are getting a few a turn. (and there is -always- significant chance of a crosspath site, Singing Stones, anyone?) From there it's a short matter of time before you can empower someone to A2, and you should be able to find your way from there.

Diversifying rarely has to be as hard as "use your pretender". If you can get even a random pick in a path, it's not that hard to gear into it. LA Ulm will never be an Air power, but they have no excuse at all to go without.

[licker]

You're right jim, I overstated that.

However, you are taking a big a risk at getting into air without some kind of 'assistance'. You may get there 'quickly' you may not. To guarantee it you need to make a sacrifice somewhere.

But why would you? You don't need air for anything do you (other than what you already can do with the EA combo or communions)? Use your innate advantages (which are your counts) and run with it. Is it easier for Ulm to forge some Boots of Stone or Marble armor than it is to find a way to A2 and air gem income (since you already burned 35 of them...) to get reliable flying onto other thugs?

Anyway diversifying into air is clearly much more difficult than the other paths.

[JimMorrison]

It's 30 for level 2. :p But still, you're going to want Air sooner or later, for battlefield enchants, and those all take gems to cast.

Personally, I do agree that in many cases, the Vampire Count is a superior thug chassis choice for LA Ulm. I just couldn't swallow poor Air access as a primary reasoning for it. ;)

But bear in mind, that the Vampire Count *is* the easy way, and it *is* the expected answer. Especially if you let your opponent know (by using them) that you have Vampires, you might well give him a big surprise when your other choices start making appearances.

Generally, I try to make a point of always diversifying into every path (other than Blood, often too big a bother) during the course of a game. Taking your opponent off guard by introducing weapons that he didn't think you had any access to, can be a priceless advantage. Or in some cases, waiting until your enemy comes at you with his "secret weapon", only to find that with a little effort, you are already prepared to drop a Storm Warriors on your army. Honestly, for the small amount of actual effort required to diversify most paths (a couple of Priests manual searching, they're doing Holy as well anyways), I tend to feel that even just access to a few items you otherwise couldn't get, justifies the expense. Then I let the gems pile up, even at 4-5 a turn, you will have enough to pull off some interesting surprises eventually, and a couple of stray items won't tip off your opponent, as they could have come from victories in combat, or random events.

[Dedas]

Jim is absolutely right, and that is what makes Dominions so great. If this game was linear like: you should only build that unit because the other sucks, or you should only use this spell instead of any other, I would have stopped playing it years ago. I can sense a lesson in this thread, don't be so rash in judging good from bad. There are of course things that are better to use in some situations, but that depends on the, well, situation. So much work must be put to anticipating those situations or creating them yourself. And that is hard work.

[licker]

This is all sound advice, but has little to do with the actual question of how necessary O3 is.

As some of you have been want to tell me, you can summon counts with O3, well guess what?

You can summon and forge whatever you like more easily with L3! (and don't forget the fun of improved cross breeding for even more free chaff, some of it actually very useful, and very able to provide resistances and abilities your opponent may not easily counter).

So unless you want to go back to discussing how Order and production scales (since you need the production more if you plan on massing ghouls or other HI) the rest of this is largely just us agreeing with each other.

That is, no where have I said that Ulm should rely on anything? What I have said is Ulm should look first to their strengths (as should any nation). And Ulms ultimate strengths are NOT in infantry, as such there is no reason to play a strategy which involves massing them more than you may want to to have some of them around for whatever purpose they wind up serving.

What is going to to be your late game bread and butter and how are you going to get to it? Astral? Death? Blood? No matter how flexible you want to be, you have to make some choice in this matter from the start, at least to minimize the expense (or reliance on luck in finding sites) of actually making your A9, D9, B9 mage to pull out the big summons.

The late game is certainly not going to be 100s of HI moving around at a snails pace.

[chrispedersen]

Jim, (or anyone with an ax in this argument) We need one more for ulmish civil wars...

Whose theory reigns supreme... who takes it....

[JimMorrison]

I was very tempted by that game, I love this nation and have been wanting to play it in MP for awhile..... But I'm trying to slim down my roster a little (currently back down to 8 games atm, woo?), and it's not proving easy. And as I mentioned before, I haven't gotten my timing down for the transition to later game stuff..... in SP tests so far, getting my Blood started has been especially slow for some reason. (largely due to dealing with overzealous AI neighbors, surely, but still)

As far as Order/Misf vs Turmoil/Luck - I'll let one thing out of the bag - my current concept build uses 2Death AND 2Drain, so Misf is certainly out of the question, for me at least. :p But it's a tricky build, to say the least. I think that while Ulm can survive through leaner times than some nations, that it doesn't truly thrive unless it can afford to build a lot. I'd argue that while you aren't going to be pumping out massive amounts of infantry all game, it's unwise to just ignore the "Steel Tide", and thus without Production scales, you probably want to very much maximize your castle construction, so you are supplanting your need for resources/castle, with a need for gold/turn to optimize your opportunity to use your national troops as much as necessary.

I suppose that since my Shinuyama SP that I was fooling around with just got ruined by an AI casting BoT, I can get around to that promised test of primarily using Rangers for the early game. But honestly, I would feel more comfortable facing a human player that was relying almost entirely on Rangers, than a human who had large amounts of Ulm's heavy infantry. I mean, you'll need foot troops all game for some things, unless you intend to utilize thugs with Gate Cleavers to take down gates, and other thugs who somehow manage to get full immunities so your enemy can't just send a few Frozen Heart (et al) spammers to ruin your entire military capacity.

[chrispedersen]

Cool beans - welcome aboard. I can't imagine how you handle 13 games.... or 8..

This will be 5 for me- the most ever.

[JimMorrison]

Well, I've spent the afternoon showing myself that no matter how I try, it's the Drain that is killing me. The difference between 5RP and 3RP is dramatic, to say the least. ;)

[licker]

Drain is a killer to Ulm, cannot really do it methinks.

But if you don't lock yourself into the rigid O3P+ line of thinking you have many many options...

By the way, no one has really been explicit about whether their designs are vanilla or CBM. I mostly favor using CBM and my comments are geared from that direction.

T3S3C/H1 is 280 design points to play with. L3G1M1 is only 200 back, and you can talk yourself out of G if you really want to, though it does help long term to keep your income higher than it would otherwise be. Again it boils down to what you want your pretender to be, I favor the FoB with D4ish and B6ish and relatively high dominion (to give your counts some extra provinces to 'die' in).

Also jim-

Under no circumstances would I build NO HI (indy or Ulmish), you always can use some kind of a screen for your rangers or villains. My tests have however shown that you don't really need a very large screen to hammer indies with minimal losses, and you will always likely be building some kind of infantry somewhere and chugging it around. It does have some use, just that some of the discussion here seemed to imply that you actually wanted to have alot of this infantry for reasons which continue to elude me. You will be saving money from time to time to get up your next castle/lab/temple, especially with T3, but my tests have also shown, that with T3L3 you are very unlucky indeed if you do not get a nice gold event sometime in the first year (assuming you are expanding normally), which allows immediate castle construction usually. And if you are lucky you will get a BIG gold event (bigger than 400) which really allows you to warp up a couple castles in the first year.

I don't think you can do that with O3 under just about any circumstances, unless you just stop buying military for multiple turns.

[Radio_Star]

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

[vfb]

Shadow Blast, Magma Eruption, Rain of Stones. Anything that's AoE damage. Wear some earth boots and bring some blood stones; fly in some vampires with death gems if you need them too. Hire some ranger commanders and send your ranged units raiding.

Oh, and Ulm has some very nice infantry units, the Pikemen are quite good I hear. Not to mention those Ghoul Guardians!

[Dedas]

Good tips vfb!

[licker]

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

Go with SCs who laugh at puny attempts to stop your arrows. At some point the only real reason you have those bodies is to speed up sieging.

Otherwise you can look to the kind of battlefield magic vfb mentioned, use communions if you need to. Forge crystal shields for some extra boost to your black priests.

[Tolkien]

I've revamped the guide, added a unit-by-unit analysis, and changed the pretender design.

Decided that the +2 RP was more important then the +1 MR, and decided the Great Enchantress was a better rainbow chassis then the Frost Father (though the Chill Aura was fun in SP).

[Dedas]

Good work Tolkien!

Some small things though:

*Morningstars do not ignore shields (the same with flails), they do however get a +2 bonus to attack against them.

*I don't see why pikemen should have a worse time than anything else against lots of infantry. Getting hit in combat basically gets down to your defence. While pikemen has 8 defence compared to 12 of Morningstar infantry this only means that they have a disadvantage of two infantry (-2+ -2) attacks, but that is it. After that the morningstar infantry has lost their advantage while the pikeneer still got his - repel. Yes, morningstars are much better against shorter (1 and down) weapons because they will have repel as well, but it ends there. Pikeneers will never lose that advantage except to other pikes (length 6). Yes, repel gets harder and harder (-2 per repel) but takes a while for it to get impossible AND pikeneers still got their defence although 4 less than morningstar infantry.

To conclude:
I would choose Morningstar Infantry over Pikeneers if faced with the following: Missile units, very short length weapons (less than 2, daggers, claws etc), very high morale infantry 14+ (because the drn + 13 repel check), shield bearing infantry with short weapons (not spears) due to +2 attack from morningstar.

I would choose Pikeneers over Morningstar Infantry if I face the following: Over length 3 weapons (Zweihander greatswords have 3) like spears, medium (13-10) to low morale troops (9-).

I would choose Zweihanders over all the other if I face the following: High HP units with length 3 or less weapons, due to their very high protection plus repel they would normally survive the encounter.

[chrispedersen]

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

[Tolkien]

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

That's my point. You can tilt the heat/cold scale depending on who you're up against.

[chrispedersen]

Ok.. 22 games played to the end of year 3.

Three competeing philosophies:

1. Mine: Heavy blood/nature awake pretender. Luck scales.
2. Licker: Moderate awake pretender. Luck scales.
3. Dedas/Tolkien: Sleeping pretender. Order scales.

So here is what I found - all things considered, I thought my strategy was the hardest, with the slowest ramp up. Plus sides on mine:

A. Fully kitted out SC: Blood thorn, armor of souls, horror helmet, Eyeshield, Luck amulet, Boots of quickness, Amulet of MR.
Prophet.

HP: 55+. MR 30 ish; mid 20's. Regen like 13. With the blood thorn shredded even beat 4-6 bless niefles.

Occassional game breaking luck events: Each of the games got Incredible luck events. I have seen the 3000 gp event almost once per game. Magic item events - ring of wizardry!
Animists, and sometimes frost fathers.

B. National heros. More than 400 blood in the bank. Highest research.

2: Better gem income. Better scales meant better early expansion, 1 more castle than option 1. Still, slow slogging first year.

3. Much easier first year expansion. Magic averaged 280 pts less research than option 1. Gems in the bank was comparable to #1, due to luck events for #1 - however per turn income was higher due site searching with asleep pretender (when it awakened)

More than *twice* as many castles on the average - with 13 at the end of year 3. However, I still had yet to cast my first sanguine heritage; no vampires no counts, and no real blood economy. No national heros.

The question is - how would it fare against human opponents.

In my games - I always try to transition to SC's. Yet I have to say, that I think the transition happens to early in my strategy.

So overall, I am convinced that despite the design challenges of coming up with the extra 40 points, an asleep rainbow pretender with order scales is probably the best strategy.

I'd like to offer a small refinement to Tolkien: Obviously you wish a pretender with death access for your sanguine heritage spell. However, also valuable early on for your ability to lead
your ghoul guardians.

So, in short. I was wrong. I still think my strategy cool, neat and nifty. Just not optimal.

[chrispedersen]

For the sleeping pretenders, I used a crone with accross the bord 4's except earth and air. Dominion 5.

Fire is important for flame arrows.

[Tolkien]

Ferrying around Ghoul Guardians? I would use Counts for that, since your pretender is better used for research/searching/forging boosters: ferrying around ghouls is something for the common commanders to do, not a god :P . Also, if you delay major research in the first year, you should come up with enough blood slaves with Second Tiers for a count. Once you get a count up, your blood economy should scale up nicely from that point: much slower as compared to having an awake blood pretender searching, however. You won't overtake Mictlan, but you'll still be in the running: and unlike Mictlan, you aren't sacrificing everything else just to be top dog in blood.

I'll go back to refining my strategy.

[chrispedersen]

Mictlan doesn't sacrifice anything (well except virgins) to be the top dog in blood = ).

In the first year, you are *very* busy with capital intensive commanders. With your build, in my best attempts, I was *never* able to get my blood economy going in any serious way in year 1 or 2.

[licker]

Interesting analysis Chris.

A couple questions, was this with CBM or vanilla? Was the pretender used in my test case a true rainbow or the DB FoB?

[Tolkien]

Mictlan doesn't sacrifice anything (well except virgins) to be the top dog in blood = ).

Touche.:p

As for the blood part: I've gotten the slaves. To do it, you'll be spending your time recruiting mostly Second Tiers in your first year (as wolfherds and fortunetellers come up after you get your new forts up, because we need reliable blood mages and they have +1 RP over the fortunetellers; even if the FTs are more cost-effective) and patrolling your capital, but I've done it. I get enough slaves with 4ish (give or take one) blood hunters on my capital or mid-sized provinces with a bit of patrolling to summon a count by the time you wake. Once that is done, you can start sending your Second Tiers to research.

I'll do some trials on it tomorrow when I get some free time.

[chrispedersen]

Yeah, I have no question you can do it - but the cost is falling even farther behind on research.

[Tolkien]

Well, Magic 1 helps, but the main thing is that even if you focus all of your mages to research from Turn 1, it isn't going to be extremely significant.

Alright, working hypothetically: We're building 4 Second Tiers in the first four turns and sending them blood hunting. Assuming a mid-sized province without unrest (or capital with patrolling), each has a 50% chance of getting d6+1 slaves (at least 2).
Turn 1: No Blood Hunting.
Turn 2: 1 Blood Hunter. (patrolling as we wait for another turn of rangers)
Turn 3: No Blood Hunting. (move the Second Tiers to capture a mid-pop province with your commander).
Turn 4: 2 Blood Hunters, 2 50%. (we move the next two hunters to another province).
Turn 5: 3 Blood Hunters, 3 50%.
Turn 6-12: 4 Blood Hunters, 4 50%.
(you can also just use your capital and patrol that, which speeds up expansion, but means you can get unrest in your cap if you get lucky with the d6 of hunting, and that can hurt abit).

I've also just run a couple (lost count, a few dozen) test runs in SP, up to the end of year 1 following this.
Depending on how luck goes, you should easily be able to pull up 44 slaves by the end of turn 12. I've done a few test runs and 4 might even be too many: I've pulled up 44 by turn 7 (with a bit of luck on the d6+1) on a few trials and always gotten the 44 by the time my pretender awakens. That still means you have 8 turns to recruit mages for research or commanders to lead expansion armies.

The research lost isn't too important at all. Ulm in Year One isn't dependent on magic to expand: you aren't Bogarus with the crappy troops and where research is ESSENTIAL to your survival: your main blood goal, Vampire Counts, for much of the earlygame/early midgame, can already be summoned. Your troops are good enough to kick off expansion, and you're just putting off your signature battlefield spells (in evocation, Iron Blizzard and to a lesser extent, Shadow Blast) and Construction-4 to near the end of Year Two. It would indeed be nice to have these spells earlier, but by sacrificing a few turns without Iron Blizzard and other magics, you're setting yourself up to be a major midgame/endgame power. You can make up the research lost with the increased mage production from new forts. Using Calculus, you can get roughly 1226 RP from Year 1 to Year 2 with 2 forts turning out researchers and your Pretender (and assuming no researchers to begin with and you should have some mages available to be transitioned into research role by the end of year 1): enough to get you to Evo6 and Cons4, and that is discounting even more forts coming up and experience. With more forts, your research curve grows sharper, so it makes up for you research (or lack thereof) in year 1. The research you get in year 1 isn't significant anyway. If you devote your capital to nothing but research from turn 1, you get a graph of 6.1x (again discounting experience and new forts), of which the area is equal to 3.05x^2 and that means you end up with 439 RP. This is assuming you aren't turning out commanders for expansion. It's enough to get you to Cons4, but not even close to enough for Evo6, which is really more important than Cons4 (as it means access to Shadow Blast and Iron Blizzard).
Again, building up more forts means you can make up this gap in the long term.

[JimMorrison]

It's a good theory, I like it. I personally try never to train Second Tiers, due to the upkeep, but using them to get your Blood started ASAP, isn't a bad trick.

The only problem with this as far as my own style, is that I like an Imprisoned rainbow, and to work this, you need to only be Dormant, so you can summon your count(s), correct? Also I would be sorely tempted to just Blood Hunt the capital, and Patrol, so I'd probably want Growth, further impacting available points for a good rainbow pretender.

I think in my case, I'd find the happy medium by letting it take just a couple more turns to get the hunting started, in order to optimize the targeted province, the scales, and the disposition of forces. My inability to sacrifice "economy" for "horsepower" borders on OCD. :shock:

[Tolkien]

Well I favor patrolling when you're expanding anyway: the only problem is, having enough spare troops to actually patrol the provinces. Honestly, you don't even need to use two provinces if you are patrolling: if you are, setting one to 0% taxes and patrolling should suffice. Patrolling though is the #1 killer of population when it comes to blood hunting, and 0% taxes on a few mid-sized provinces don't hurt that much: they give 40-75 gold on 100 gold. Blood is basically based on turning gold into slaves. Since the amount of gold in the game and army sizes have increased from Dom2, the conversion rate doesn't hurt your income as much as it use to, and it means blood is actually better.

Personally, I like Second Tiers. They're more cost-effective (and recruit everywhere) researchers then the Iron Priests all in all: though the sacred part on the Priests does decrease total upkeep. Second Tiers are what you'll be using for most of your blood hunting needs until your Counts are in numbers, they're good for getting research up, and stealthy communions are %#*(ing awesome.

[licker]

Well I favor patrolling when you're expanding anyway: the only problem is, having enough spare troops to actually patrol the provinces. Honestly, you don't even need to use two provinces if you are patrolling: if you are, setting one to 0% taxes and patrolling should suffice. Patrolling though is the #1 killer of population when it comes to blood hunting, and 0% taxes on a few mid-sized provinces don't hurt that much: they give 40-75 gold on 100 gold. Blood is basically based on turning gold into slaves. Since the amount of gold in the game and army sizes have increased from Dom2, the conversion rate doesn't hurt your income as much as it use to, and it means blood is actually better.

Personally, I like Second Tiers. They're more cost-effective (and recruit everywhere) researchers then the Iron Priests all in all: though the sacred part on the Priests does decrease total upkeep. Second Tiers are what you'll be using for most of your blood hunting needs until your Counts are in numbers, they're good for getting research up, and stealthy communions are %#*(ing awesome.

Which is why taking order is so counter to your actual end game goals...

If you can survive the early game with a reasonable nation size the transition into blood is incredibly quick and painless.

And if you actually plan on early counts to handle your blood hunting you do not have this upkeep or recruiting problem either.

[chrispedersen]

Interesting analysis Chris.

A couple questions, was this with CBM or vanilla? Was the pretender used in my test case a true rainbow or the DB FoB?

Hey licker - I tried two approaches with yours:

Couple, where I went full rainbow, and the rest where I went your exact db Fob build.

It still boiled down that with luck you are trading income for events - and while the events are sometiems money, and soemtimes just awesome - in general the income and ease of expansion was significantly below taking order.

CBM1.44 (Mine).

[vfb]

Instead of using Counts, SD Fortune Tellers can lead 30 Ghoul Guardians, and support them with Nether Bolt or Nether Darts. I really like the Fortune Tellers, and I'm not so crazy about wolves. You should be able to recruit at least 10 Ghoul Guardians a month with sloth-1 or neutral production scales. A train of 30 Ghoul Guardians leaving your capitol every four months towards the front provides additional quick response to bad events or raids. This also helps spread your Fortune Tellers out, since more than 10 in your capitol is suboptimal for bad event mitigation.

But Order-3 Misfortune-2 is annoying with plenty of barbarians and brigands and ill omens all interfering with blood hunting, so Misfortune-1 seems like it's the max misfortune I'd want to take now. It seems a pity not to take any Misfortune at all with a Fortune Teller nation.

[Tolkien]

D random fortune tellers are one in four, but for the most part I agree with you, both with Misfortune and the Guardians. The problem is, you won't be able to get enough D-random FTs to lead them all, whereas you should have a veritable army of counts. It depends on the situation, and what you have to spare, really. Besides, I use d-random FTs to remote sight search for me: at least, the first couple. I also wish you could pick more then Misfortune-1, but the bad events are rather painful. They don't matter as much in the mid/endgame, since you should have a veritable army of immortals defending you (and thus being able to deal with any barbarians or such), but it can seriously cripple your expansion, and you need a good expansion for more forts (hence more research and more conventional units).

I just like wolves. Stealthy makes them great chaff for your Illuminated Ones when they go on their seasonal communionable stealth ambushes of death, as well as for accompanying rangers (if need be). Wolves also complement your thrall (human) production.

[chrispedersen]

I'm glad you like the wolves Tolkien, the improvement was made for exactly this reason - to make them more interesting.

I thought of making them more feral as well, but I am leery on balance issues.

[Tolkien]

Drats, I've reached my character limit on the guide. :(

Time to link Part two to this post then...

PART TWO
Finally:
Vampires. Ah yes, vampires. One of the primary themes of LA Ulm. Baalz has recently written a stellar guide to vampires (Here (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=42402)), but I'd like to go abit into Counts and how it all fits together with the rest of Black Forest. LA Ulm has the best capacity to carry out a massive vampire swarm: every one of those counts you've built can summon thralls (though do it with blood boosters for more thralls). So you not only have NATURAL access to all forms of vampires (with a pretender to kick the chain off), but you've got a great blood economy to boot. Forget 50 thralls as a minimum, you could max out your Counts and Lords with hundreds upon hundreds of thralls...every turn. LA Ulm transitions into an unassailable juggernaut once midgame sets in and you start summoning thralls (and the other blood goodies), you won't have to worry about practically anything. LA Ulm has swarms of inquisitors (who you should've been massing for research in non-cap forts) to keep up dominion inside your territory, and as long as you are fighting in your own dominion, it's suicide for practically anyone to attack, with SCs or Armies. You could swarm ANYTHING with hundreds (or thousands, depending on how late the game is) of vampires with the usual battlefield spells up. That doesn't include your Illuminated One Communions and Iron Priests (casting all those lovely Earth Buffs and Spells. Army of Gold/Marble on a Vampire Horde? BRILLIANT!).

In summary: When playing Ulm, get into the World War One mindset. Think trench warfare. The goal with LA Ulm is Bite and Hold. You're able to hold any province you take easily: with mass inquisitors to change dominion in a blink of an eye, and swarms of vampires to defend them. Slow advances are preferable to all out attacks. The latter will leave you machine-gunned in No Man's Land. The only problem with LA Ulm is difficulty spreading dominion. You've got great inquisitors: but no stealthy preachers or blood sacrifices (unlike LA Marignon or Mictlan). You can spread dominion with massive numbers of stone idols and temples and juggernauts, but it is much more difficult (leaving your vampires on a primarily defensive role). On the other hand, you've got an innate access to vampires (so you can field far, far more), and your national armies and mages can carry out your carefully planned assaults on enemy dominion. Bite and hold, mate, bite and hold (and yes, it is a pun).

In conclusion: LA Ulm is one of the under appreciated underestimated powerhouses of the Late Age. There are too many things going for them for their weaknesses to stand out. A solid expansion, impressive magic diversity, cheap research overall, stealthy communions and spies, solid national troops, plenty of chaff, and an extremely strong blood economy all come together to form a nearly impregnable and invincible dreadnaught of a mid/endgame.