Is black plate worth it?

[NTJedi]

I also see very little difference between Fire Plate and Red Dragon Scale Mail...

Fire Plate = 5 Fire gems
Red Dragon Scale Mail = 10 Fire gems, 1 less encumberance and 25% better fire protection.

[Shovah32]

Well, unless you're facing alot of crossbows(and even then it isn't as bad as it could be) or giant/formorian javelins you're blackplate pikemen shouldn't really have to worry about missile weapons but still...

I agree with Meglo.

[Stryke11]

I've always felt Black Plate should provide some magic resistance. If Ulm is so anti-magic, then they should have some defense against it. Plus, just the imagery of Black Plate - black absorbs all light, reflecting none - absorbs magic. I dunno, seems thematically right to me.

If the weakness of MA Ulm is no magic, then their strength should be that they negate magic. I would also love to see an assassin type unit that's a mage-killer, like in the Malazan novels by Stephen Erickson, where there is this one person, the Adjunct or something who had a sword that made it impossible for mages to cast spells. Or even an inherent ability where the more Ulmish troops there are together, the harder they make it on the battlefield for mages to cast spells (it can be modeled by increasing fatigue for casting and raising spell failure).

This would benefit Dominions strategically, as since it is so focused on magic, especially in the late game, an Ulmish strategy would negate the advantage of magic, forcing high magic/weak troops nations to find some way to compensate. It's the equivalent to the "tech" victory in a game like GalCiv, a nice refrain from the typical style of play.

[Velusion]

Stryke11 said:
I've always felt Black Plate should provide some magic resistance. If Ulm is so anti-magic, then they should have some defense against it. Plus, just the imagery of Black Plate - black absorbs all light, reflecting none - absorbs magic. I dunno, seems thematically right to me.

If the weakness of MA Ulm is no magic, then their strength should be that they negate magic. I would also love to see an assassin type unit that's a mage-killer, like in the Malazan novels by Stephen Erickson, where there is this one person, the Adjunct or something who had a sword that made it impossible for mages to cast spells. Or even an inherent ability where the more Ulmish troops there are together, the harder they make it on the battlefield for mages to cast spells (it can be modeled by increasing fatigue for casting and raising spell failure).

This would benefit Dominions strategically, as since it is so focused on magic, especially in the late game, an Ulmish strategy would negate the advantage of magic, forcing high magic/weak troops nations to find some way to compensate. It's the equivalent to the "tech" victory in a game like GalCiv, a nice refrain from the typical style of play.

I have argued the same points - specifically that MA Ulm should have a high MR instead of a lower MR. Other posters have mentioned that KO has ruled out such MR changes (though I haven't seen a post from KO stating such anywhere).

Give the Ulmish really good MR instead of really bad MR and they suddenly don't suck near as bad.

[Chris_Byler]

But they already basically negate most mundane weapons. If they negated magic *too* they'd be invincible (except for trample).

Don't forget that they can push drain-3, which raises MR and increases fatigue costs for enemy casters. (Are their own mages immune to the fatigue penalty as well as the research penalty?) And they have Tempering the Will for MR, if you know you're going to need it.

It would be nice if they had some national spell that was like Curse of Stones for mages only, though. All magical energy becomes more difficult to access and spellcasting becomes 50% more fatiguing for the remainder of the battle. (And their own mages have earthpower to partly compensate...)

[CUnknown]

I did a test like so:

40 Ulm Inf (w/ morningstars) v 40 Man spearmen
I did that 3 times.

40 Ulm Black Plates (w/morningstars) v 40 Man spearmen
I also did this one 3 times.

Results:

The Ulm Inf killed an average of 20.33 spears and lost an average of 3.67 inf.
The Ulm Black Plates killed an average of 14.0 spears and lost an average of 5.33 black plates.

Ulm won all 6 battles.

I actually prefer the black plates, myself, but my data here sure doesn't support that conclusion. I predict that it's the encumbrance value that's bringing down the black plates, because this sort of fight is of the long, tedious beat-down sort. Against something like heavy cav, the Black Plates would do much better, I'd imagine. Maybe I'll run that test later.

But, still, I was surprised the black plates did so poorly here. They should be better than Inf of Ulm in every case, I think.

[Velusion]

Chris_Byler said:
But they already basically negate most mundane weapons. If they negated magic *too* they'd be invincible (except for trample).

I couldn't disagree more strongly. It's already been proven that Ulmish infantry is not all that great.

[Arralen]

Surely it looks like a bad/poor plug, but I would really like to recommend my mod to you all, as I've done quite a bit of the things you're talking about:

- improved base MR

- improved Black Steel Armor (for Ulm only)

- thug-able Sergeants of Ulm

- better thug-able Black Knights and Black Dukes of Ulm

- allied-summoning units

- improved smithes

- special, unlimited generic heros for thugging

Runs some tests/games and we'll see if this all helps at least somewhat, or if more creativity is needed to make Ulm at least somewhat en par with the other nations.

[Ewierl]

NTJedi said:

I also see very little difference between Fire Plate and Red Dragon Scale Mail...

Fire Plate = 5 Fire gems
Red Dragon Scale Mail = 10 Fire gems, 1 less encumberance and 25% better fire protection.

I believe RD scale armor provides a larger moralte boost.

But I think, in some fairly-frequent circumstances, the 1 less encumbrance makes a significant difference. If you're trying to protect a spellcaster, the double-encumbrance-from-armor really adds up; if you have the gems to spare, you want to save every point of fatigue you can muster.

[Sombre]

There have been a few mods altering MA Ulm to strengthen them and make them more interesting.

I plan to add my own take on MA Ulm to the pile in the future. It will feature some nice antimagic as well as better (more interesting and usable) troops.

I'm going with a sort of Waffen SS / Death Metal feel.