The MA Ulm issue.

[Sandman]

A long lasting debate indeed. I've suggested many different things over the years, including magic weapons, an assassin, high MR on the elites, a 'worker' mage and a standard bearer.

These are all pretty small tweaks. We could always go for broke and give Ulm a Grand Master Smith. 3 earth, 2 fire and one random. The potential of such a mage is enormous, single-handedly turning Ulm into a top-tier nation.

[Burnsaber]

I don't think that adding any new superunit(s) will be good fixes.

Adding some superunit to magically fix Ulm's problems would just warp all of their available stragedies to that certain unit. I can see a future Ulm stragedy thread;

"How do I play the new Ulm?"
"Dude, just make Unit X accompanied by leader Y. Save the rest of the gold to make new forts for more X's and Y's"

IMHO, currently Ulmish troops have too many weaknessess compared to their strenghts. I think that some of these have to be removed or made less drastic.

[dmentd]

I think two changes could change MA Ulm sufficiently to be worth playing. Add one additional, high probability random elemental (75%) to the smiths and up their cost by 25 or 30 gold. This helps forging potential and direct combat potential. The second is to give the black lord significantly more hit points (25 hp total) using the "great endurance" rationale. This makes these guys potential thugs.

These two changes make MA Ulm a middle of the road nation and possible to play in MP. It also follows thematically with the nation. Of course, I have only played two MP games, neither of which are finished yet, so please take my suggestions with the proverbial grain of salt.

[Nikolai]

> [1) Ulm's troops combination of high protection and high-damage weapons allows them blow through other nation's normal infantry and indepentends in (relatively) small numbers.

So so. Fresh recruit infantrymen, maybe. Good national troops, no way. Almost any human nation has defense 13-16 troops, and those often have armour 15-17. And THEY have encumberance 5-7, not 7-10. Good luck killing these with Ulm... you will be crawling exhausted before that.

And anyone good kills indies without dead. Give me principles, longbowmen, defenders... not even talking about vans and centaurs.

> 2) Ulm's troops are nearly immune to normal short-bows archers and have high resitance to longbows and crossbows.

Yes. But so do anyone those with shields. The tower shield helps tons more against a crossbow that armour 20 (Ulm's best) and everyone almost gets tower shields.

> 3) Their forging powers allow them polital maneuvorability and survivalability.

Yup, it's called being client nation (smith *****). Until they decide you've done with utility, being so damn limited.

> 4) Ulm's troops have wide selection of weapon choices, allowing them to choose right weapons for the right job.

As long the job's killing small number, low defense humans - maybe. No high attack weapons, no high defense weapons. Ulm needs rediscover swords and light shields/armour.

> 5) Since Ulmish troops have Gold cost:Resource cost ratio of 1:2 / 1:3 they have lots of extra cash to crank out forts, which has numereous advantages.

Yeah. Ulm gets castles, to make more crap :-)

I am not arguing with Burnsaber, but with the positions listed. Ulm needs help.

And Burnsaber's right, giving superunits is a bad fix. Just tune the existing up, and make smiths smarter.

[Edratman]

As a minor aside, why is there such a fervent love/hate relationship with MA Ulm? It reminds me of my trips to Japan, where everyone believes that they are superior to any and all other non-Japanese, but almost eveybody has a t-shirt on with the logo of an American sports team or some other American product.

No other nation gets anywhere the number of posts that MA Ulm does. I concur that it is one of the weaker nations, but the other contenders for weakest nation honors seldom get mentioned. Was Ulm a favored nation in Dom2 and players still remember that?

[MarcusSmythe]

Ulm is a good 'jump into' nation. As far back as Dominions PPP, its focus on troops over magic and formations over SCs made it very accessible to the new player, and gives it a very different feel than other nations.

Thus, alot of us have happy early memories of Ulm.

As another thing, Ulm is the closest thing to a nation able to just 'make war'. No mutliple blesses, no SCs and hordes of mages, no 'tricks'. Ulm has its core troops as its backbone, rather than a bless rush or a giant pile of mages+clams casting various flavours of 'I win and you all die, and I get gems for it'. Thus, its very different, flavour-wise, from alot of nations, and is appealing to people who like that flavour.

Unfortunately, its a flavour that just doesnt perform well in the current environment, so alot of virtual ink is spilled discussing the problems.

[Burnsaber]

Besides, MA Ulm is totally badass.

They fight terrible magical enemies with only steel and will. Like Conan the Barbarian, for example. It's just that their troops blow, unlike Conan.

From Dr.Praetorious
"Ulm is a nation of men, with human failings (and then some, but that's a distinct question), fighting against hordes of magic wielding demons, evil animated statues and malevolent warlocks, with only steel and sinew, and some magic available in a limited, supporting role."


EDIT; , stole Xietor's Conan analogy. Oops.

[Xietor]

You stole my Conan analogy!

Here it is from another thread:

I also agree with that concept-but KO does not.

I think mr should go to magical races like Pangaea-and to races that "shun" magic. Maybe their god is the god of war-the god of steel. Think Conan the Barbarian and Crom. Crom favors his people with great mr, morale in battle, prowess in battle-in return for not delving into magic. The forge ability ties into strong earth magic with a touch of fire.

A boost for Ulm could include limiting their magic diversity to 3 Earth 1 fire only, with a 10 percent chance to get 4 earth(petrify, earth attack), remove old age for smiths, increase hps, mr, and morale. This limits their diversity even further, but makes them stronger in Earth-which is thematic.

The nation of steel should not be subpar in combat to almost every other nation. I would give their black knights a 1h sword of sharpness as well. MA Ulm's warriors should be feared-not ridiculed.

The resource cost to make these units, and their slow speed, keep them from being overpowered.

[Micah]

Oh, Xietor, I like the sharpness idea, it's also completely thematic that semi-magical high-quality steel could be sharp enough to give AP. I'd much prefer to see the swords on a new unit instead of the knights, since they're still too expensive for their MR fragility, but the idea is excellent.

[DrPraetorious]

The dom2 history is worth a lot - people have a lot of affection for the nations that were in previous games. Also, people like Ulm for the schtick - which I think it is important to preserve.

Marverni is probably even more troubled than Ulm, but it is a strong magic nation, so the fix (better magic) is less controversial.

There is general agreement that other underpowered nations *exist*, but not what they are. I myself vascillate a lot:
- I used to think Bandar Log and MA Agartha were underpowered. In MP games I feel that I have been proved wrong IN THE FACE, which is the best way to be proven wrong, no question.
- I've lost a lot of respect for Patala. But it's in the late age, and I don't play in the late age that much.

That said, I think that Ulm and Marverni are the only nations so weak that some kind of fix is needed. There are other slightly weak nations, but good luck with a slightly weak nation puts you in a better position than average luck with a decent nation, so they are close enough to balanced.

For MA Ulm, I propose:
* A national version of Legions of Steel that benefits the entire battlefield - both sides. This punishes summoned units (natural Prot isn't boosted) to some extent, and is a good combo with...
* A national version of Weapons of Sharpness that benefits your entire army at once.
* A national version of Haste for your entire army at once.
* A spell that removes fatigue and possibly heals damage from your troops. I'm not sure how well the computer would target it so this needs experimentation.
* Efficient single target damage spells to deal with raiding supercombatants (and supercombatants generally).
* National spells that inflict feeblemind, to deal with enemy mages, evening the field in that respect.
* National spells that inflict detrimental conditions on hostile sacred units, so that they fight on an even field with your national troops.
* A national spell that puts up a City, lower research level and easier to cast than Wizards' Tower.
* "Mechanical" national summons for *non-combat roles* - ritual spell-casting, preventing bad events, protecting stacks from mindhunt, etc.

With this arsenal of spells (all located in Constr and Thaum), Ulm remains a nation of Men, but has the resourced needed to, at least theoretically, fight all the monsters and sorcerers on something of an equal footing, and with no changes in the army list *at all*.