Dud nations

[KissBlade]

MA TC = MA Ulm but worse. And that's just horrible.

[PvK]

It doesn't seem to me that MA TC is much like MA Ulm. TC has much more varied magic, sacred national summons, varied cavalry, decent light infantry with StratMove 2, immortal heroes, good composite bow archers who can fight in melee... and it has no drain thing nor low MR, no forge bonus, etc...

As for the comment someone made earlier about MA Ulm getting elephant-rushed... I'm more worried about trampling when I'm EA Ulm (especially from Caelum). As MA Ulm, just send in the arbalests, set to fire at large monsters...

[SelfishGene]

MA TC also has 12 morale Imperial troops, crossbows/composite bows, light and medium cavalry, ect.

If you look at a nation and say "what kind of casters does it have", and that's what determines if this nation is "hot or not", yea, you might be dissapointed with MA TC vs. EA TC. But then, you'll not ever be playing a national-troop themed nation, ever, anyways .

[VedalkenBear]

Really, one way to 'fix' Ulm's 'issues' would be to implement 'national items' like other national spells. This, unfortunately, cannot be done AFAIK in a mod etc.

Closest would be to create national summons of 'normal' commanders that already have the equipment load-out you desire, correct?

[SelfishGene]

Oh, and Bandar Log isn't even close to Marverni in suckiness. Bandar warriors are versitile and can fill multiple roles. Vanara infantry are cheap and you can spam an army of them quickly. You get a 3 Astral caster by default.

[Xietor]

I played a good bit of a game with endoperez mod.

I like the noble used as a prophet, and the warlord, but the low mr is the main problem and that is not addressed. And the warlord is a bit slow. Even with a the small upgrade in the mod, I do not think i would ever enjoy playing Ulm.

[Arralen]

Be patient, my Ulm mod is 78% finished ... ;-)

[Sombre]

You could just play an infantry nation that doesn't have low MR as a theme.

[PvK]

Once again, it seems to me that a large part of the disagreement comes from a problem of definitions and perspectives. You and Gandalf don't, I think, mean the same thing when you say "bad" or "dud nations" (if Gandalf ever affirms those terms ). I think Gandalf's concern is that people new to the game or new to the topic may get the wrong idea, and that he's trying to supply the contexts and provisos that others are leaving out when they comment about things in a negative way. Of course there are also cases where people haven't considered the good sides of something, or haven't learned the good uses of things (e.g. Agarthan amphibians, Sidhe assassin, human heavy infantry).

[CUnknown]

Responding to Micah's rebuttal:

1) Agreed. I'm glad you agree that Ulm's infantry are truely excellent. I certainly agree that Ulm armies having a strat move of 1 is a horrible disadvantage -- I think it's the worst thing about Ulm, honestly, but this wasn't mentioned in the earlier discussion. I was de-bunking the idea that Ulm's infantry aren't 1st class, and I think at least that part of my argument holds. All heavy infantry is 1 strat move, I believe, but Ulm is forced to rely on them. Admittedly, a major problem.

2) I just disagree here. Let's keep flaming arrows out of this equation and focus on the unit itself with no buffs. Let's take an average protection rating of 12 and go from there, discounting the range bonus of arbelests.

Short bows doing damage of 10, firing every turn. Using the dominions probability table from the manual, they do 1 point of damage only on a 24% chance, and they're doing 5 points of damage on a 6% chance. So, one archer hitting his target three times has a pretty good shot of doing a point of damage (if I'm understanding this right).

A crossbow doing 10 ap damage will do 1 damage 76% of the time. On average, I guess they'll do 4 damage, and 11% of the time they will do 10 damage, potentially enough for a 1 shot kill.

An arbelest doing 14 ap damage, on average, will do 9 damage to that poor fool. That's more than double the x-bow, so even if we say the crossbow fires twice as often as the arbelest, the arbelest is -still better.- In fact, the arbelest bolt will kill a 13 hp, 16 protection heavy calvary in one shot 8% of the time (the x-bow would do it only 3% of the time).

Not only that, but it is a clear advantage to front-load your damage, that's less guys shooting back at you.

3) If Ulm had a 300 gold mage option, they would be the best faction in the game. Just like if -any- other race had Ulm's forging abilty, -it- would be the best faction in the game. I'm not sure how you can view Ulm's having tons of cash on hand as anything other than a nice advantage.

4) Often, I empower my smiths so they have a wider selection of forgable items. At least I did this in dominions 2, in dominions 3, 10% of my smiths will have an extra random path, something I am salivating over.

5) Construction 6 doesn't take that long, given my research priorities. Or priority, as the case may be. That would be Construction 6. Spending a pile of gems to stay competitive, you say? I think I mentioned they only cost me 2 per lantern, if I make 10, that's only 20 gems. And often I sell them for 5-6 gems a pop, that's over 100% profit. Lightless Lanterns -make- gems, they don't cost gems! Oh, and usually I use them for a couple turns before selling them, the buyer is none the wiser they're getting used goods (shhh!).

6) Yeah, this is a problem. Yet, it's a problem that can be solved by the pretender.

About Ulm's mismatches, the one I agree with more than anything is the elephants. Arcosephale kicks the ever living crap out of Ulm -- they have elephants, infantry to rival Ulm's, astral mages to dominate my poor Ulmish minds, and to top it off, they have better research and will kill me in the lategame. But, I'd say that every well-balanced race has at least one mismatch out there, waiting for them. I'm not trying to argue that Ulm is super-awesome, or one of the top tier of factions.

One thing I didn't mention before is the access to spies. I love spies.