Is black plate worth it?

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Out of curiousity, which works better:
30 Wolf Tribe Warriors supporting 10 Black Plate Infantry w/Pikes, or 30 Wolf Tribe Warriors supporting 10 Infantry of Ulm w/Pikes?

The opposition would be standard level 5 indies.

As another comparison, Liazarden or Falchioneers, with two attacks per unit against 30 Black Plater or Full Infantry with Flails?

[Burnsaber]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Out of curiousity, which works better:
30 Wolf Tribe Warriors supporting 10 Black Plate Infantry w/Pikes, or 30 Wolf Tribe Warriors supporting 10 Infantry of Ulm w/Pikes?

The opposition would be standard level 5 indies.

As another comparison, Liazarden or Falchioneers, with two attacks per unit against 30 Black Plater or Full Infantry with Flails?

The black plate infantry would be better with the Wolf Tribe Warriors as they can take the arrows better. But if I had access to Wolf Tribe warriors as damage dealers, I'd probably recruit the morningstar + shield guys to act as meat shield. Flails and Wolftribes have the same niche (completely obliterating lightly armored troops), so they're probably not that good of a match. 2-h flailed infantry nukes shielded infantry, though.

[CUnknown]

Sombre, I guess I am saying that even if the Black Plates didn't do better in terms of kills/losses against the heavy cav, I would still prefer them to the chainmail guys. Because I believe that they would last longer against the cav, in terms of rounds, before they broke. Honestly, that is all I care about, their use as a meatshield. I'm never really expecting my black plates to actually be my damage-dealers.

Edit: But, I should test this to be sure. If they didn't last longer in a meat-shield situation, they would for sure be totally worthless.

[Baalz]

Without delving into the whole 'MA Ulm is worthless' discussion (that I strongly disagree with) let me address the original question about black plate. Just like almost everything in this game when it's usefulness is situational, but I find it quite useful for the simple fact that on a per gold basis the black plate infantry is some of the best meat shields available in a lot of circumstances. You throw a legions of steel on them and they do ignore all but very heavy attacks, and there is very little that can take them down without several hits apiece. Just try and face them with spears or light lances. This is a 10 gold unit.

Any time that you are gold constrained (a state I find myself in a good portion of any game) it's black plate all the way. Ulmish infantry is not there to deal damage, forget about the pikes and weapon choices as none of that is going to be terribly effective against anything but indies anyway. Ulmish infantry has one role - stand there and get hit over and over again, and it's a job they do well and a job the black plate boys do even better.

If you take production-3 and place your castles intelligently you'll have 3-400+ resources and with no real expensive stuff you should be able to crank 'em out steadily. Just realize that they are there to get hit, not to kill your opponents and bring something else to deal damage. Even as research progresses black plate infantry remains cost effective for this roll for quite a while because of their cost. Sure, laying down some thunderstrikes is gonna explode that black plate infantry but I'd much rather have that falling on my 10 gold infantry than 70 gold Vans. The thunderstrikes will end soon enough and at that cost I'll still have infantry left.

What do you do while the bad guys are flailing away ineffectively at your plate? Heck, Ulmish smiths are custom made to be effective combat mages. Real cheap, so you can have a bunch of them and not cry too much if some fall. Summon earth power so they've got reinvig. Destruction + blade wind = uuuuugly. Magma eruption (black plate guys are tough enough to even take a bit of friendly fire without dying). Earth meld those pesky water blessed troops. The Ulmish knights also can pack quite a wallop, just script them to hold and attack so they ride in on the flank after everybody is tied up on the infantry.

Heck, even in the late game the black plate infantry can be fairly effective, 30-40 of the flail guys backed by 2 smiths who cast respectively army of lead/gold + weapons of sharpness along with whatever other buffs you like is gonna be a *damn* effective squad for the cost - you can field dozens of these all day long without slowing whatever your main strategy is (bonus your boosted smiths can also cast petrify once they're done buffing the troops - fear no SCs teleporting in on you).

As far as the forgeable black plate it has one very important feature (same theme as the black plate infantry) - it's dirt cheap. Pesky opponent earthquaking your communions? Put black plate on all your mages and their survivability goes waaay up.

[jaif]

With that handy-dandy spreadsheet someone linked me to, and the wonderful rulebook, I took a look at what the fatigue penalty meant in practical terms. Note that the plate/chain prot values are 20/17, and the enc values are either 8/6 or 10/8, depending upon exact equipment. Note also I'm doing this from memory now, so please double check the numbers.

Working with the 10/8s...

Code:

---

round 1: no fatigue

round 2: plateboy has -1 def

round 3: plateboy has -2 def, -1 att, -1 crit

         chainboy has -1 def, -1 att, -1 crit

round 4: plateboy has -3 def, -1 att, -2 crit

         chainboy has -2 def, -1 att, -1 crit

round 5: plateboy has -4 def, -2 att, -2 crit

         chainboy has -3 def, -1 att, -2 crit

round 6: plateboy has -5 def, -2 att, -3 crit

         chainboy has -4 def, -2 att, -2 crit

round 7: plateboy has -6 def, -3 att, -4 crit

         chainboy has -4 def, -2 att, -3 crit

---

Again, note that plate vs chain is +3 prot, -3 def to start, unless I've missed something else. Note also that spears include repels, which makes combats go longer, which makes life worse for the unfit plateboys.

I don't see how you can justify spending 10 more resources for those units.

-Jeff

[jaif]

Btw, at a higher level this point is pretty much moot anyways, at least when it comes to ULM's power. Let's pretend that black plate is highly worthwhile, and thus ULM has better infantry and arbelists.

It doesn't matter. This factor is not going to make up for:

a) poor magic.
b) poor priests.
c) average regular commanders.

If you want to keep the theme of a magic-poor, steel-based civ, you really need to flesh out the non-magic units. More mechanical constructs at a lower level, more "thuggable" commanders (as someone here but it), more special commanders (patrol bonus, asssassins). Simply having better regular troops is not enough.

FWIW, I believe that Tien Chi's regular army is superior to ULMs. Heavy enough units, better choices, more flexible commander layout (with eunuch). I could probably make the same claim about a lot of armies.

-Jeff

[CUnknown]

Hehe, let's please not talk about the rest of Ulm, but just about the black plates. We have beaten that topic to death.

Baalz said:

Any time that you are gold constrained (a state I find myself in a good portion of any game) it's black plate all the way.

I pretty much agree with this, but that's the whole discussion here is to figure out if this is true or not. People are arguing that Chainmail guys are superior in just about every conceivable situation.. an assertion that I'm having trouble disproving. I really thought that the black plates would have done better against the spearmen in my tests.

But there are other tests, like against powerful units, and other measures of success rather than just kills/losses. I'm thinking about putting them up against maybe giants or heavy cav and seeing how many rounds they can survive without breaking. If they don't survive longer than the chainmail guys, I'm going to accept that Black Plates suck.

Can you think of any other situation in which Black Plates might be better than Chainmail guys? If so, let's test it and prove these guys wrong.

[jaif]

Ok, you're right. The whole point to my starting this thread was to focus. My bad.

How about a test against armor-piercing stuff? Low-level evocation fire spells, crossbows. Maybe it's more useful there.

Pikes vs those invincible elephants?

How about against hoplites, or some other early-game heavy infantry. In general if you fight someone early w/o magic you are putting your inf vs their inf with missile fire around you.

-Jeff

P.S. I mean test chain vs these then plate vs these.

P.P.S. I don't mean to sound bossy, I just have no idea what it takes to setup these tests myself.

edit: just thought - why not a grudge match if that can be arranged? ulm plate vs ulm chain. :-)

[Baalz]

jaif said:
How about against hoplites, or some other early-game heavy infantry. In general if you fight someone early w/o magic you are putting your inf vs their inf with missile fire around you.

Egad, this is the situation which leads people to conclude MA Ulm sucks. This is a very bad way to use Ulmish infantry and really should only ever come up against indies during your initial expansion. Think of Ulmish infantry like longdead - they're not there to win the fight, they're there to get in the way of the enemy while somebody else wins.

In a real game you're not going to have "no" research done by the time you get in a fight, and some fairly low level research amplifies Ulm's combat significantly. A simple legions of steel helps a lot, and Ulm will usually have construction research prioritized anyway. Depending on who you're fighting blade wind or destruction are often going to be available before heavy fighting is joined - and they absolutely dominate many kinds of foes. Heck, even if you insist on no magic, sending infantry in alone (with no knights or anything to deal damage) is just asking to be killed. Throw in a couple black lords with cheaply forged fire brands or anything to deal damage.

[Baalz]

Sure, try it with legions of steel cast - this is hardly a rare situation for Ulm. Towards the end of the curve extra protection is exponentially more effective because of the distribution curve of blows which will pierce it.

Look at it this way, a 10 str guy with a spear that does 3 damage will do 13 + open d6 damage. Very rough math here, but ballpark to do damage to a 20 protection unit the roll would have to be 8 over the die roll for the protection, so about 8% of hits will deal damage. To damage a 24 protection unit the roll will have to be 12 over, so a bit over 2% will inflict damage. So, adding 20% to the protection reduces the damaging blows by a factor of around 4.

Its not the rare colossal damage hits which bring down heavy infantry in numbers, it's the adding up of the 1 and 2 point hits as they get swarmed.