Iron Faith Ulm

[SurvivalistMerc]

Apoger,

I myself learned (what I know) about Dominions by playing Ulm.

I haven't taken a stab at MP yet. My guess is that rainbow ulm would be more viable if your opponents couldn't see your gem income (graphs disabled). I hadn't considered that aspect...but you're right. If one of my neighbors had a much higher gem income than another...all else being equal I'd want to take over some of it.

I sort of see the managing production and limited magic as a way to teach new players about basic game mechanics of units before getting too deeply involved in magic, which with the way it is structured in non-intuitive schools with some spells requiring multiple magic types, is confusing initial yet ultimately wonderful in its complelxity.

The player knows the rigid strategy because you tell it to him when you say to try Ulm.

Of course, it's quite likely this ulm strategy won't work all that well in MP as you point out.

[aldin]

On the 'Ulm for n00bs' discussion:

As best I can tell, basic Ulm is the easiest nation to wrap your brain around. Build strong armies, research construction, go beat everyone else up. With a Combat Pretender (an MP liability I'm sure, but fine for SP) it's even simpler because you inherit the smithy goal of clothing your pretender for war. As such, I'd say it's almost Dominions Lite and imminently suitable for dragging someone into the game.

Since that's what I did, I know it works for getting into the game. It does have SERIOUS cons though. Things I'm finding as I expand out:
1) You wind up with almost no concept of what priests are supposed to do.
2) You have very little concept of what mages are supposed to do.
3) You have a skewed, high-resource perspective on what it takes to build an army.
4) You have a skewed, too-confident perspective on how hardy an infantry unit ought to be.
5) You have a skewed, too-weak perspective on how effective archery is.
6) You have a tendancy to want to look at Construction for solutions to your problems.

Still, Ulm is what got me here. Therefore I immediately abandoned my Caelum game (geh, the best troops have no mobility) and tried to set up an IF game.

I think I got a lucky start. I decided to go with a Great Sage pretender with 4 in everything but Blood. Dominion 5; Order, Production, Heat, Misfortune and Drain were mostly maxxed (Heat 2 mebbe). I got a Fortress, cheapest 30 Admin.

The goal was to use mercs to clear the surrounding territories while the Sage researched (30+/turn on Drain3) and the Templars were built. By the time the surrounding territories were cleared I had a dozen templars, a 4 Holy Prophet, and quite a bit of research accomplished.

The 4 Holy is the key. I can split the templars into two wings that get blessed with the battlefield bless. And the whole battlefield gets morale support too. The pretender is in the process of spinning through the adjacent territories and my gem income is skyrocketing. The army is unstoppable, one opponent in home siege with no other territories and another only a few turns away from the same thing (it's only turn 20 or so).

As a standard, I'd probably take five of the seven magics and try to preserve my scales a bit, mebbe upgrade to a Castle. As it is, and I think I was lucky, IF looks very viable as a nation that can rapidly build a devestating force.

~Aldin

[PDF]

Alex (apoger),
I *do* use that strategy just right now in MP, and with some serious gamers .. up to now successfully, but it's only turn 25
Obviously one also has to get wise in diplomacy and careful about the "stated" gem income - income from trade and items doesn't count !
But maybe I'm wrong and will get bLasted... Well, life will tell !

As for the "training" part, just note that it's *harder* to find a strategy with a more versatile nation... In fact when playing Ulm you discover step by step "the" strategy you can use, and so you get a grasp at how to use more "rich" nations strategy-wise.
In fact my first Dom1 game was with Pangea : I didn't succeed in anything and had no idea on how to use their troops and magic. Then I tried Man, it wasn't much better. Then Arco, I did learn much but was *very* bad with magic, because Arco has mostly "random" paths for mages. I played my first pbem with Arco, and was trounced on the first fight with another player, even with 4:1 odds on my side , just because I was waaaay behind in magic and had no idea on how to use it effectively...
Then I played Ulm, and finally was able to put it all together and define at least a strategy : units, spies, mages, items, spells - mostly because the choices were narrower, (only 2 magic paths, no sacred units, etc..) !
So my experience matches Aldin's, and I still would suggest a new player to train with Ulm !

Note : No offense taken, nor meant

[SurvivalistMerc]

I'm doing much better with IF this time.

I did wind up using those owl quills early on. If only to free up my pretender to site search. Converting 1 rp to 4 rp in a drain 3 dominion is a good thing. Well worth the 3 air gems it will cost you once you have a black priest with a random air.

I'm really enjoying getting the random picks. And I can squeeze blade wind out of these priests. The ones with two earth (due to a random earth) are going to be as good at blade wind as traditional smiths.

It does seem that it takes a while longer to get to blade wind due to slower research than with standard ulm, but I'm almost there by turn 30 or so.

I had a difficult time with Caelum as my neighbor since the AI is fairly adept at using Caelum's flying to target my least defended provinces and casts that black hawks spell quite a bit.

Looking back, I'm very glad I took picks in air since that enabled the owl quills (and it can be hard to find air sites with just a random 1 air, which you might have to build a bunch of mages to get). I'm also glad I took picks in death as the skull mentors kicking in at construction-4 really makes your research take off. And finding death gems if you have death-4 is a lot more reliable than finding sages.

The AI (Caelum) seems to have found some wizards for me. 3 random picks on those guys, and they have research-10. At around 150 or so gold each, that seems to be a better deal than sages in my dominion and will give me some new magic combinations to play with.

It is a slower start, but the more I think about not having magma bolts friendly fire later in the game once all scripted spells are cast in long battles...the more I'm starting to like IF. The slow start you can get with this nation I think makes it a bit more of a challenge.

I'd love to hear other folks' experience.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I just noticed how great those inquisitors are preaching against enemy dominion.

I was storming Caelum's capital. (Payback!) While seiging, I just had my priests (about 4 of them) preach for 2 rounds. With their pretender (a dragon posing as a sage) in their castle, it only took two turns to go from Dominion -6 to Dominion +3. The dragon's hps in my +3 dominion were laughable and turned it into an easy kill. When those SC pretenders drop in hps, they take afflictions quite often.

In the process of killing him, he became weakened, chest wounded, limp, and feebleminded. I'm especially happy with the "feebleminded." I wonder if those bird-brains will be smart enough to notice they are worshipping a feebleminded moron. Probably not.

[PDF]

Owl Quills ? For standard Ulm Fire Lanterns (Cons6, Fire 1) are much better (+6 RP), aren't more expensive, can be built by any smith and use (often) more readily available Fire gems.
With IF you only have "random" Fire mages, but I still think lanterns are a best bet- keep air gems for Robe of shadows or stuff like this !

[aldin]

Originally posted by PDF:
Owl Quills ? For standard Ulm Fire Lanterns (Cons6, Fire 1) are much better (+6 RP), aren't more expensive, can be built by any smith and use (often) more readily available Fire gems.
With IF you only have "random" Fire mages, but I still think lanterns are a best bet- keep air gems for Robe of shadows or stuff like this !

Owl quills are available at Construction 2. Lanterns need a hefty Con 6! Since the IF goal is to free the pretender from researching (since they're the only one who has more than research 1) Owl Quills are the best, first bet. At Con 4 you can have your pretender craft a Skull Staff to give to a researcher with a Death pick who then switches to crafting Skull Mentors (better than the lanterns anyway) and Champion's skulls. Waiting til Con 6 for your pretender to leave home puts too large a strain on searching for gem sites.

~Aldin