Black Forest - Ulm

[Kristoffer O]

There are events tied to the presence of particular creatures at the moment, such as a dragon pretender munching up a few bloodslaves.

[Jasper]

Cool! I'd never noticed one of those happening.

[neurosis#5]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Next theme is an Arcoscephale theme. It is missing descriptions, heroes and some other stuff, but they are in the works.

That's great! Arco is already one of my favs.

On a side note, I should have remembered the AI uses themes after the Last game fighting Miasma C'tis (shudder). Sometimes I have a hard time remebering which is the "main" theme!

[Pocus]

About a core team of betatesters:

I know Zen that one week cant be sufficient to test all aspects of new themes, and even more if you take into account MP.

But its better than the current situation, where there is overbooked IW, and thats pretty all. The aim would be to filter out the biggest loopholes (like having the possibility of getting a vampire count at turn 8). Sure some issues would still be there, but hopefully of less importance. Old MP veterans here (Pepe Mus, George McGinn, Nagot Gick Fel (Jacques Vidal), Alexander Poger, etc.) have sufficient insight to be able to spot issues even without playing actually. Give them a themes with all the parameters attached, and they can pretty well round down what can be abusive just by looking at it.

As of now we get a patch which can have big issues or exploits, and we will have to wait some time before having it fixed (no disrespect mean to IW, they dont have 8 arms...).
I say, elect a squad of people which are on a special mailing list that IW read, and lets them debate about what a patch change before releasing it.

Alright, as I played with this more I can offer maybe a little more input (other than just the quick Counts).

Banishment should target the greatest chance of success. As of right now the Ghoul Guardians that people say are up the Gangi's without a paddle can be kept alive with even 9 MR by using the Vampires.

A Vampire Count with just an Amulet of Anti-magic will often outregenerate (and definitely out life drain) 4-5 banishments a turn from 3 Holy Priests (so I would guess they could resist 2 5 Holy Preists laying down the banishment). As the targeting is right now and with the Vampires Ability to fly, they can shotput to the rear (as close as they can get) or a flank and all banishments will target them while the Ghoul's close and mess up almost everything they find. Not to mention that with an Antimagic cast on them Ghouls resist (or have enough HP) Banishments greater than I expected.

Commanders are not an issue at all, since the best one you can recruit has 25 Leadership, you just use Indies since they are just as good and split your forces up into multiple commanders

The Rangers are like Longbowmen for Crossbows. They move 2, have good precision and are 12 gold, 8 resource. For an already resource rich Ulm you can make these by the metric ton. Also when fighting Independants you only need 1 (or possibly 2) Heavy Infantry in front and a crew of 20+ (240 Gold, 160 Resources) of the Rangers behind to mop up even Heavy Cav provinces (on Indep 6) and take minimal losses. Most rout before they ever get to look at the xbows.

In my just early tests I was able to get a Count on Turn 8 with Equipment (Construction 2, Enchantment 2) and have 8 Provinces 3 out of 5 games I played. The other 2 I placed a little off and only got 6 and 7 respectively.

Later in the game the Heavy Troops become more of a factor as you need 'mop up' crews. I haven't found the Zweihander to be very unique in this aspect (mostly because he is one slow motha).

[ January 14, 2004, 17:46: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Saber Cherry]

You can get Counts on turn 5 with a Fountain of Blood... and level 0 equipment, of you want. The unrest kinda bites you, though, with no patrollers. However, Counts beget Counts...

The Count hero gets a huge bloodhunt bonus too.

Not bothering with making mages or SDR's, never expanding, and hunting with only the Fountain and counts, I could make a count per turn by turn 22 (with an empowered count).

[ January 14, 2004, 08:27: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

Yes you can But you sacrifice alot to do it and it's not as 'safe'.

Maybe we can give the "Beta Discussion Group" or at least IW an acceptable time frame of X conditions.

Like the Triple T (Ten Turn Test) and see what is and is not acceptable in that timeframe as far as resources (gems, gold, resources, provinces, castles, research, supercombatants, items) and potential abuse.

Because if you could get a Count by turn 5 but had 80+ unrest and no cheap patrollers (like Normal Ulm theme does, and Niefelheim Jotun) then it might be more acceptable and requires less tweaking than if you have 8 Provinces, 10~15 Unrest, 1 Count (with equipment noted below), 120 Research points, 10 Blood Slaves, 70+ Rangers of Ulm, 6 Heavy Infantry, 10 Indy "Commander", 1 turn of 2 complete on a Wizard Tower ... etc, etc by turn 8.

Edit: My main reasoning behind this is so we can bring up some of the more lackluster nations up to par with whatever the IW concept of Balance is OR tone down the nations that are above it.

[ January 14, 2004, 08:43: Message edited by: Zen ]

[PDF]

Originally posted by Dekent:
If you want to pay to be a beta tester, try out Knights of the Old Republic by bioware, that has to be the buggiest pile of goo I have ever played...there is NO WAY that thing had more then an hour of QA...if even!

(OT - KotoR discussion)

Uh ? I've been playing it quite intensively these Last days, and had a only a couple crashes (one during a quicksave , another when switching to the arcade-Ebon Hawk game). And the plot works, I haven't seen an nonworking quest or been stuck without the "necessary" item/info/etc...

That's with patch 1.01. Maybe you rather have some compatibilty problems with your hardware or drivers...

OT - I beat KoTOR a week ago (for PC), had 1 crash the entire game. Enjoyable game but very little replay value after you've tried each 'side'. Very linear game, but pretty

[ January 14, 2004, 09:53: Message edited by: Zen ]

[ywl]

Originally posted by Zen:

The Rangers are like Longbowmen for Crossbows. They move 2, have good precision and are 12 gold, 8 resource. For an already resource rich Ulm you can make these by the metric ton. Also when fighting Independants you only need 1 (or possibly 2) Heavy Infantry in front and a crew of 20+ (240 Gold, 80 Resources) of the Rangers behind to mop up even Heavy Cav provinces (on Indep 6) and take minimal losses. Most rout before they ever get to look at the xbows.

The Black Forest Ulm is not particularly research rich. I don't see any resource bonus site in the capital. Did I miss anything? But I'm not belittling the Rangers. They're some nasty critters and very good buys.