EA Ulm advice wanted

[Covenant]

Ulm has fairly strong archers, but these are one of the easiest types of units to negate. They also have axemen with throwing axes--which do a suprisingly heavy amount of damage.

Mixing unit types leads to stronger armies, but the real question is, what do you mix with what? To my knowledge, it seems like the Axemen are the most lethal, since they can throw axes on approach and then use these high-damage weapons to hack up troops when they get into melee, striking twice a turn.

But there's no real reason to use the advanced soldiers, is there? A little bit of armor for half again as much cost?

Also, much was said of the warrior smiths. Besides the smithing bonus, what help are they? They have a little bit of command skill, but the shamans also get priest spells, and stealth. They also cost fewer resources, which is Ulm's main limitation.

I think EA Ulm's sacreds are pretty worthless in any major strategic sense. Being that they're Capitol Only and rather basic (and without shields), there's not much worth to the added cost. The chance to drop a high bless on them is tempting, but I think it's more tempting to heavily tip the scales and produce more units. What do you guys think?

[Edi]

Most of the Ulmish warrior units are useless. The ones with throwing axes may do some good but the rest are rubbish. The reason why they are rubbish is because they have a basic attack of 10 or 11 that gets cut down to 8 or 9 due to ambidexterity penalties, meaning that the first time they go up against any high defense medium armor units like almost everything EA Ermor, Vanheim or Helheim and possibly other have, they will accomplish precisely nothing.

If you want to use double attack melee units, use the Steel Maidens. Twin short swords mean only a penalty of 1 to a base attack higher than that of the various warriors and mixing them in with the Shield Maidens will give them some more durability. The Steel Maidens have fairly high defense for line units and are tougher than most other national infantries anyway.

The Steel Warriors (sacred) do suffer from one pretty severe limitation and that is slow movement with mapmove 1. So they will become more or less obsolete as soon as you expand more than five provinces outward (assuming you get that far, of course). Takes too long to get them to the front and you don't have any astral mages (or means to get them unless you get Athalwolf the Maker of Heroes) to gate them to a friendly lab in the frontlines. So instead of a ?9 bless, you can go the route of several minor blesses, which would also give you magical versatility. The main problem there is that the most useful minor blesses would be E4F4W4N4 and you get rather the abundance of those magics already. D4 doesn't do much but gives you death magic and S4 likewise for astral. A4+ gives them some survivability against arrows and you and you need that much to produce the air boosters. A4E4 will give a couple of minor blesses and allow you to construct the more useful type of elemental staff later on. B4 will also help your sacreds, but it's a waste of points since you're not a blood nation. Astral and death is where you really hurt nationally. You can get a fairly cheap N4W4 bless with a dormant Lady of Springs if you're so inclined and have good scales left over.

Several minor blesses or rainbow picks to patch up your magical deficiencies and good scales, especially production, is the way to go.

Edi

[Covenant]

Let's assume that we don't even use the blesses for anything. What then is the purpose of our Pretender? Do we go with a SC to take out starting Indies, or with some kind of researcher/mage to compliment our magic summons?

[Kalin]

If you want blesses, I think the best for Ulm would be S9A4, more Air if you can afford it. This gives +3 MR, Twist fate and some arrow defense. If you go with a Dormant Oracle, you could easily go S9A6 and still have plenty left over for scales. Astral/Air bless covers your sacred's greatest weakness, no shield, and terrible MR (all of EA Ulm's units have 8), having twist fate also allow them to live longer, which is always a plus.

If you don't want blesses, the best path is to go for scales and/or an SC. My choice would be an awake D4 Prince of Death with 9 dominion. For scales, I'd go with a 2 Drain (to help your low MR troops), 3 production (to make lots of troops), 1 cold (your preference), the rest into order/growth (depends on how you like to play).

[Sombre]

I hadn't noticed that about the Ulmish warriors. Seems like they're in drastic need of a rebalance (with more #ambi bonus).

Personally I wouldn't consider playing EA Ulm without strong positive scales - you need to be able to crank out hordes to make up for dodgy sacreds and lack of magic firepower.

[Teraswaerto]

Something to keep in mind about units with 2 attacks: -> 2 chances to score a hit. Someone could do math on whether or not that is worse than 1 attack with a little more attack rating.

That said, another problem they have is the lack of shields. Anyone can round up some some kind of missile force, so shields will often be the better choice.

[Edi]

The thing about the Ulmish warriors is that they have an attack of 10 for warrior and axe warrior and 11 for forest and mountain warrior. Axe and forest warriors have 2 axes and a throwing axe while warriors and mountain warriors have axe and broad sword.

Penalties, 2 axes:
-1 attack on axe, axe+axe = ambidex penalty of 2, making for a total penalty of 3. Subtract ambidex rating of 1 and final penalty is 2, for 2 attacks at 8. This means that the second attack can be treated as if it were attack 10 against the target's normal defense.

Penalties axe + broadsword
lengths 1+2=3, axe -1 and broadsword 0 and ambidex reduces penalty by 1, Final result is attack ratings axe 7, broadsword 8 for a unit with base attack 10. Meaning attack 7 + attack 10 against normal defense of target. Not exactly something that fills you with confidence.

Then take a look at Steel Maiden: Attack 12, 2x shortsword and ambidex 1. Length 1+1=2, reduced to 1 by ambidex, gives you two attacks at base 11. The steel maiden is more heavily armored than the basic warrior and has only 2 points less body prot than the forest and mountain warriors, much better attack and defense, has a strat move of 2 plus stealth, whereas neither forest nor mountain warrior is stealthy and both have strat move of 1.

Shield maidens swap one short sword for a shield, giving them one attack at 12 and a def of 15, 11 without shield. Shield maidens, steel maidens and warrior maidens (the armored archer) all cost 13 resources to the warrior/axe warrior's 10 or forest/mountain warrior's 16.

Can ANYONE please tell me why anyone could possibly want to buy anything but shield, steel and warrior maidens as EA Ulm unless they really intend to use the axe warriors for shock effect with the throwing axes and then to soak up damage from the enemy while the women do the actual fighting and killing. Mixing half steel and half shield maidens will give some punch and improve overall squad survivability and lessen the morale effects of a rain of arrows.

E.g. Ermorian units eat Ulmish warriors for breakfast, but the maidens are a different story.

Edi