Help, I suck with Ulm!

[Pirateiam]

Try these two Strategies.

1.) Pick a Cheap bully no magic pretender -
The Manticore is a good example
-Select a cheap fast building castle - I like the Fortress or Wizard tower.
-With all the extra points use great scales 3 prod, 3 Order, 2 growth etc...
-Build nothing but Guardians and a Morning star hvy inf
-expand like the plague using multiple armies and your bully Pretendar.
-As you expand castle as much as possible. In these castles build an army of aprox 20-30 spys (they have great stealth and can cause unrest).
-Now you must be aggressive - as soon as you see your first nieghbor send all your spys into his provinces - 2-3 spys per province. Set them on cause unrest.
-Now as unrest rises dramaticaly (you will be suprised how fast it rises) in your niegbors provinces bring up your armies. If he complains just keep denying it is you until you are ready to strike. Attack all along his border and even if you lose the majority of the battles the battle of attrition is on your side. Also keep a few Guardians in each castle they are great defenders. Soon his income will be next to nothing and he will not be able to replace his losses.
-work you other typical ulm strategies along with this like blade wind etc...
- Of course this does not work against undead nations.

2.) I am still trying this strategy out it is straight forward bless strategy with UlmIF. Ulm's biggest weakness is magic so -
-Create UlmIF with Oracle - Astral 9, Air 9
-This gives you Templar Knights with +4 MR and twist fate, Shock resistant 75, Airshield 75
-Now every single turn pump out Templars from you capital -
-10 Templars can take any level 6 inde I have faced
-By turn 20 you should have a main Knight Army of 30+ Knights backed up with mages it can be a devestating army, with twist of fate your lances will have a chance to hit everytime.
-Your only real combat weakness is with poison cold and fire, but what I found is poison and cold need time on the battle field to work but with all Templar Knight armies the fights will be very quick and bloody you will either win fast or lose fast. If you run across a fire heavy nation you will have to use your mages casting fire fend.

I do not state these are great strategies but they seem to work for me.

[ July 02, 2004, 03:21: Message edited by: Pirateiam ]

[Schmoe]

Heh, it's funny that the commonly perceived strongest in our current game is complaining about being ineffective. I posted here a few days ago because I feel ineffective too. It's obviously a newbie game Of course, I have a much better claim to ineffectiveness in the game than you.

Anyway, I wouldn't sweat it too hard. I think the army I ran into a turn ago could do a fair number on Man. Plus, once all of his normal troops are gone, those bladewinds are going to start chewing through his elite troops. Personally, I was very impressed by your many well-equipped commanders. I think a group of 3-5 Black Knight commanders, well-equipped, along with a small supporting cast of Black Knights, could do some serious damage. Heck, even your barbarian commanders were pretty serious powerhouses with all of the equipment. I was just lucky to have black hunters with death poison.

I don't really know a good counter to Wrathful Skies, though. What does Construction 7 give? Mechanical Men? Those are pretty nice. I have had surprisingly good success with Mechanical Militia in another game. Enchantment 5 can grant Thunder Ward, but that requires you to have an Air mage to begin with.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Sly Frog:
I might add that this is an issue for me because I really like the idea of Ulm; in a game of magic, having a side that is steel and drain is pretty cool, but they should be able to hang tough with the magic Users,

During early game and some of middle game the black knights are very lethal. However as mages become more powerful because of research the black knights overall become weaker and weaker because of spells which can weaken them and spells which can summon more powerful beings. When it comes to military units which are purchased time is against you unless the units can get a strong blessing.

[HotNifeThruButr]

I can't work with base Ulm either. Everything is so goddarn expensive.

Ironically, most players reccommend Ulm to newbies. *shrug*

Were I you, I would ignore the black plate and stick with regular infantry of ulm. Also, I would forget the rainbow alchemist in favor of a combat oriented pretender

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Schmoe:
I don't really know a good counter to Wrathful Skies, though. What does Construction 7 give? Mechanical Men?

Mechanical Mans have the benefit of being immune to Wrathing, as well as all other elemental and poison attacks, as well as being nationally constructible in bulk by Ulm.

Enchantment 5 can grant Thunder Ward, but that requires you to have an Air mage to begin with.

Thunderward is nearly useless: It only grants partial lightning resistance, which is insufficient to actually stop it from killing you. Unless it can stack with something else to achieve full immunity, it will not prevent everyone from dying, because in Dominions, anything which can kill you, will, when applied as indiscriminately as Wrathing is.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

---

Originally posted by Schmoe:
I don't really know a good counter to Wrathful Skies, though. (...) Enchantment 5 can grant Thunder Ward, but that requires you to have an Air mage to begin with.

Thunderward is nearly useless: It only grants partial lightning resistance, which is insufficient to actually stop it from killing you. Unless it can stack with something else to achieve full immunity, it will not prevent everyone from dying, because in Dominions, anything which can kill you, will, when applied as indiscriminately as Wrathing is.

---

Hrm. Well - Thunderward would stack with an air 9 blessing, except Ulm doesn't get sacred troops. Nonetheless, I have to disagree slightly.

Given decent troops, seems like Thunderward might keep them alive long enough to kill the caster of Wrathful Skies. Caster dies, the spell dies, right? If the caster brings troops (which Wrathing commanders may not), again, Thunderward allows even militia to have a chance at surviving long enough to inflict some casualties.

However - barring a nice indie site, Ulm isn't going to get Air mages. Kind of a shame, given their Earth magic strengths, that there isn't an Earth based spell for avoiding / reducing lightning damage - after all, that heavy iron / steel armor should, with magic, act as lightning rods.

Really - Earth seems like the perfect area of magic to get lightning resistance as a mass spell, while Air, I can see it giving individual lightning resistance, but for the entire army? Air magic should want to _maximize_ the effects of lightning and storms, not avoid it.

[CUnknown]

Schmoe--

I'm the one playing Ulm in our game, not SlyFrog. No, I wouldn't complain about being weak, but I'm not exactly sure if I'm the strongest. Abyssia seems pretty scary to me. Man is pretty powerful, too!

SlyFrog--

I've refined my Ulm strategy a bit since we started that game (in which you were Jotunheim), but it's mostly still the same. I make no claims to being an expert at this game (of course), but I think I can give some advice on Ulm. Here is my strategy:

Rainbow pretender (for searching, forging all those cool items the smiths can't). I took the Great Enchantress to get astral income, so I can more easily make clams to get more astral to have item-forging flexibility.

Scales: Order 2, Production 3, Misfortune 2, Drain 3. This means I have a -ton- of cash, especially in the beginning. As Ulm, you can hire every mercenary available and just crush anything close to you in the beginning. Ulm has got to be the strongest faction early on.

Castle: Fortified city. I know people would doubt that choice since they're so expensive, but with this combo, you get the best production possible in the game. Making black plates even relatively early on is no problem. Crank those suckers out. And with all your money, making another city isn't too terribly hard. Although you could always go with the Castle and make another one earlier on.

Commanders: I forge items like mad and equip all my commanders (including even some items for my priests). I love those barbarian commanders, they're cheap and they kick *** once properly equipped.

Magic: Independent mages are important, but those smiths can lay some serious smack down just by themselves. Blade wind, magma bolts.. Also the unit pumping spells like legions of steel and strength of giants can really help. Suddenly your units all have 14 str and 23-27 protection.

I'm not sure how all of this will work in the late game, but it seems to do great from the beginning to the midgame.