Most powerful nation

[Hadrian_II]

CUnknown said:
Without getting into specifics (which have been covered before), I can say that when I play MA Ulm, I get this giddy feeling of power that I don't feel with other races.

This sound almost like playing singleplayer, but in multiplayer the slow armies of ulm tend to be blasted by fireballs and killed before they can reach the enemy. (or by lightning). Later on the lack of magic diversity and strong mages becomes a huge handicap.

[CUnknown]

Slow units (especially strat move-wise) and poor magic diversity are certainly weaknesses. Balanced nations should have weaknesses.

However, Ulm's forge ability is unparalleled. It's very similar to having the Forge of the Ancients global active from turn 1, assuming your pretender can forge the necessary magic boosters (i.e. all of them).

[Sandman]

For my money, the most powerful EA nation is Niefelhiem. Those giants are brutal, and they've got 5/8 magic paths as well.

Lanka I'm not so sure about. I fought against them in the Blood Bath MP game as EA Ulm, and defeatedly them quite handily. My Steel Warriors proved more than capable of holding the line against the Palankashas.

[Micah]

Using Palankashas against Steel Warriors seems like a pretty horrible idea though. Their protection value isn't really meant to take the beating dished out by a strong enemy with a 2-hander, and they're too expensive to use in a phyrric battle. The longbow apes with a screen of the Bandar warriors backed with wind guide (they have godawful base precision) would be a much better choice for dealing with Steel Warriors, at least from the looks of it. The Asaras also look like a better match, since their initial javelin volleys would do extensive damage, and they'd get to lob both of them before melee with their crazy 20-square range (beats prot by 11 points vs a unit with no shield. Ouch.) They'd have trouble against lots of other units (especially Ulm's archers), but again...monkey screen of arrow catchers. And arrow fend later.

I haven't played Lanka though, so this is just on paper, I could be mistaken. Just seems like you benefited from really good unit matchups in your example.

[Tuidjy]

Hmm... Once upon the time, in the dark days of Dominions II, someone
claimed that "Ulm isn't all that bad". I challenged him to three games
using a one on one rush map chosen to give Ulm an advantage and tore him
up with the race he thought had the least chance... no blesses or tramplers.

Now, who was that...

[Tuidjy]

By the way, I love Ulm as well. But I do not think that MA Ulm has a real chance
without turning his forging capabilities into a diplomatic advantage. Being
someone else's smith-for-hire is not my idea of fun.

Hmm... this feels like the right time to plug Sombre's Ulm Reborn mod.

[Valandil]

Which is wonderful, and not at all underpowered.

[Xietor]

MA Ulm has no redeeming qualities in mp whatsoever.

Master Enslave ftw midgame, Elephants ftw early. Resource hogs with low mr. Soul slay spam and black knights go down like snap crackle pop. Smites-same deal.

MA Ulm would need something really good to offset their vulnerability to the powerful Astral races. Any spell which "magic resistance negates" is bad news for Ulm.

[CUnknown]

Tuidjy - I have learned a lot since then!

Um... yeah.

I like forging items for other people and being a merchant in multiplayer games, to each his own, I guess.

Xietor - no redeeming qualities whatsoever?? Surely that can't be right. We are derailing this thread though, perhaps I should try to defend MA Ulm in another thread?

[Micah]

MA Ulm is horrid, but earth magic and the forge bonus are certainly redeeming qualities. Destruction, blade wind, summon earth power and magma eruption are all excellent battlefield spells. Their PD is also excellent.

OTOH being someone's forge-chump is just a way to lose slowly instead of quickly, their magic diversity is complete crap, their troops are too resource-intensive to make many expansion groups early, their morale is atrocious (especially since they have such bad combat movement that they die in droves while fleeing). The 1-space mapmove further cuts down their already-limited options, and they can't easily get the thugs or SCs that would benefit from their cheap item-forging. I think it would give them a huge boost to have some lightly-armored crossbows that didn't cost a billion resources...Marignon has em in MA, so I don't think it'd be a problem on any level to give them a useful, cheap troop. Go ahead and make them cap-only so they're not the only thing Ulm builds though. Giving them some more early expansion potential will help counteract the weakness of a schizophrenic pretender, and maybe give them the momentum to make it into late-game with some sort of hope.

Their pretender is hamstrung by having to take production-3 and no free temperature picks. The free drain is tempting, but giving up the bonus RP from a magic scale hurts them quite a bit. Plus even though the drain doesn't hurt their national mages, it means the tribal shaman they'll want recruit to get some N access will be worthless researchers. They really need an awake pretender to help them expand, especially the first turns to get resources into their cap, but they need some way to increase their magic diversity too, and it's much too expensive to do both.

And to tie it back into the thread topic: The best nation is whichever one is currently dueling MA Ulm. =)