Defeating Ulm

[Come_Get_Some]

Do any of you savvy veterans have any advice on how to best defeat Ulm's armor? I'm pretty new to this awesome game and could use some input from those more experienced with what does and doesn't work against Black Knights.

[Sedna]

Magic. Much magic is armor piercing/negating. Attack fire spells are available early, and air/astral isn't much later. Earth magic has several good spells for destroying armor. Poison can be very effective. As Atlantis, it's often good to send a screen of Coral gaurds out front. The knights get poinsoned on the Guards' armor and die before the end of the battle, even if Ulm ends up winning.

[The Panther]

The best way to take the knights down is with spells:

Astral: Go up Thaumaturgy for mind burn, paralyze, soul slay, and enslave mind.

Air, Water, or Fire: Evocation battle spells

Nature: Most nature spells are defensive in nature, but Swarm (alteration 4) is cool for killing strong, non-flying troops. It's biggest problem is the 1 gem cost.

The other schools have their good stuff too.

Infantry backed by mages is a good matchup against the black knights and archers. In fact, when the knights engage the infantry, the Ulm Smiths and archers will target the melee, hurting the large knights as much as they do the small infantry. Crossbowmen, with their armor piercing arrows is very good against knights, if you can get them.

Forget using archers only. The knights will easily survive the rain of arrows and cross the battlefield quickly.

Also, make sure you don't bunch your infantry in the middle and let any knights on the flank with the attack rear command go straight to your mages.

[Jarkko]

And to take another look: How can Ulm best defend against magic?

[deccan]

Jarkko said:
And to take another look: How can Ulm best defend against magic?

I'm tempted to say: you don't. You kill them before they research the killer spells. But maybe some other Ulm veteran can do better.

[Tuna]

By basing on thugs, or small sc's, that use cheap forged equipment.

Oh, and the iron faith theme is the best ulm theme.

[condors]

for ulm:

I like the standard Version over iron faith but i really don't mass knights or have a bless based pretender.

smiths cast summon earthpower, invunerability, fireshield

iron dragons on attack rear can cause some serious problems for opposing mages.

living statues make a great front line.

in some situations flying dwarven thugs are fun (winged boots and axes of sharpness)

living statues usually make up the "meat" you get 5 earth gems a turn and can normally get earth blood deep well up very quickly giving you 25 a turn + whatever you find...put them to use

you can also summon the 2 earth kings and have them summon allies but they haven't been a real factor in my games.

[Taqwus]

Fun fact: lightning attacks are armor-negating. In other words, that high-prot Ulm black steel is useless. Since it's a physical attack and not a matter of will, MR is useless as well.

Ulm, for its part, can use Mechanical Men to form an unbreakable, elemental-proof front line, or use the IDs, or even push for blood and use hammers/smiths to get Soul Contracts, but this would take some serious empowerment on the Smiths.

[Jarkko]

Taqwus said:
Fun fact: lightning attacks are armor-negating. In other words, that high-prot Ulm black steel is useless. Since it's a physical attack and not a matter of will, MR is useless as well.

The stats for elemental armour look good to me. I was enlightened about the fact that it weights darn lot, but for thugs (look, I use acronyms like an old vet!) it should be primary choice?

[Cainehill]

Well - keep in mind that elemental armor only gives 50% resistance, not 100% like it used to be. Myself, I kind of like Rime for thugs, and an awful lot of people like Jade armor.