MA Ulm Pretender

[Baalz]

Admittedly I haven't been on the receiving end of an elephant rush orchestrated by you, that might be fun to try as I have beat back other rushes playing Ulm. Ignoring castle-recruitment constraints for a second, for the price of 3 elephants you get 2 smiths plus change. Obviously this isn't scalable because you can only recruit one smith per castle, but still given Ulm's typical early gold advantage and urgent castle building it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to field 10-12 smiths by the time you're looking at a 20 strong elephant force threatening you - and without permanently crippling your research curve. Assuming you marched a force as you describe into my territory at the end of year one I'd counter by trying to catch you as you attacked (shouldn't be hard) so you're running into about 40 PD backed by the dozen or so smiths leading whatever of the halberd wielding infantry I could scrape up over a couple turns from my multiple castles and prod-3 edge (likely in the 100-120 man range). Your initial elephant charge will be broken by 7 or 8 smiths spamming Bonds of Fire. It won't stop them all but they'll trickle in several at a time rather than in one overwhelming mass as even the ones not hit will have to run around those that are. While causing some damage, they'll quickly be surrounded and hacked to pieces by halberds. Meanwhile my remaining smiths begin raining magma bolts down into the elephants strung out by the fire bonds while my black plate keeps friendly fire from being too much of an issue. All the while your astrologers are popping 4-5 of my infantry per turn out of probably close to 200. By the end of the battle you've killed mostly my PD (which were in the front) and are out close to 2000 gold of elephants.

Would it work that well in practice? Perhaps, that's debatable (or better yet testable), but you'd have a hard time arguing that it'd have no chance. My point is that Ulm isn't helpless, you just have to use what you have at your disposal. Cheap troops, cheap mages, lots of gold/castles.

[Xietor]

I am not an elephant rush player. In fact I am just playing arcos. for the 1st time in EH II. And I took a rainbow pretender.

Gameextremist always played arcos. and was king of the elephant rush. I have seen good players not playing Ulm fall to his elephant rush tactics. Somehow he always had 20 elephants very early in the game, back by mages. I suspect
he set taxes high, patrolled, and used his dragon to expand.


He did take an awake dragon, so you can forget about building a 2nd castle unless you had enough troops building it to defeat his dragon. So against a good rush player, you not only have elephants/mages to deal with, but an awake dragon.

[CUnknown]

Baalz -- I'm glad we agree! Us Ulm players have to stick together.

Twan -- I agree that rushing to artifacts is risky. I wouldn't do it every game, but as Ulm a nice bonus as Baalz pointed out is Weapons of Sharpness at Const-7. One of the best buffs, and Ulm can cast it with no problem.

However, I think I am inclined to agree with those like Xietor who say that Ulm is extremely weak when faced with a strong early game elephant rush, esp. backed with astral mages. Not that there is no hope if you are creative, but generally you will be in a world of hurt.

I just disagree that you should base your whole strategy with Ulm around defending against an elephant rush.

I am not surprised that you aren't generally an Ulm player, Xietor. You don't seem to think like an Ulm player, hehe (some people would take that as a compliment). Criticisms of Ulm really are valid, Ulm has weaknesses, and if you are concerned about them, the best way to avoid them is to not play Ulm, lol.

Arcosephale and Caelum pose big problems for Ulm, so why not play Arcosephale or Caelum instead?

When I pick a faction, I do so because I am excited about something, some strength they have, not because I'd like to minimize a weakness they have.

I look at Ulm and see, wow, they are the best forge race in the game, how can you max that out to full effect? And I might get stomped by elephants. But that is life.

[Xietor]

Actually my goal is now to play every single ma race. I played MA Pangaea for years(going back to dom II), and they certainly are not one of the elite mp races. I just like their theme.

But I am now playing pythium and arcos for the 1st time, and in future mp games will play every MA race I have yet to play.

So far in mp I have won mp games with Shinuyama, Pangaea, and did very well in the Big Game with Ctis that ended due to unit limit being reached. I owned 7 capitals at that time and likely was about 4th or so in power rankings.

So I have done pretty well with the nonelite ma MP races. Time will tell how I do with pythium and Arcos. Eventually I will get around to playing Ulm, but I am in no rush.

When I do, however, I will have an awake size 6 pretender who is not vulnerable to solar rays.

[Sir_Dr_D]

i vote for a Prince of Death expanded into at least one other path of magic, either nature or astral. Here is why.

1) You can expand almost right away using it. And from my experience it takes a couple turns longer to really start expanding with a nation that relies on production. It needs that boost from the pretender.

2) After you have a fast enough expansion using knights, you can use the pretender as a site searcher, to expand into the addiontal paths.

3) In order to best make use of ulms forging abiliity, you need chasis' to to put the items on. Death provides the best summons for that. In particular with ulms heavy earth forging, you can put heavy encumbrance items on undead. Earth forging isn't as good for thugs that get fatigued.

4)Elephants don't like princes of death.


The only problem with this is a prince of death is very unthemetic for ulm. Ulm breaks away from Ermor to follow an anti magic, anti sacred, anti everything, cult, and then worships a prince of death?

[Xietor]

Did you not just play Ulm in Fallacy Sir_Dr_D? And were they not one of the 1st races to die? That is not a slight to you, you are a good player. But in every single MP game I have been in with Ulm present, they were either the 1st to die, or very close to it.

Have yet to see MA Ulm make it to middle game in any MP game I have played in.

A funny memory i have in the Big Game was talking early to some of the players i knew to see if any of them were close to me, and several said they had their scout out looking for MA Ulm. It was like a winning lottery ticket to start out near MA Ulm. If memory serves Frank Trollman(LA Atlantis) found them 1st and they definitely were the 1st of the 65 races to die.

When the perception exists in the mp community that a race is weak early, then you can expect an early attack.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I was the first to die in that game, for more reasons then just playing Ulm. I hadn't practiced that nation enough. In that game I tried to expand too fast, and ended up dying against indies. The ulm infantry weren't as invinsible as i thought. Even with production three I could not build troops fast enough to take most indies. Which is why I am saying now that an awake pretender is important. In that game I did have a cyclops, but I messed it up. Another mistake I made is I should have been expanding using knights not ifantry. The knights can expand significantly faster then the infantry.

But I agree that in order to win as ulm, you need to get lucky. You could face off an elephant rush as ulm for example, as long all that is the force is elepants. If you need to face elephants backed by mages,elephants made ethereal, or awake pretenders as well, you don't stand much chance. I see this thread as, how you can do as much damage as possible as ulm before dying.

In the game I had to face Shinuyama. Shinuayama, has a lot of powerfull low resource troops. Because they are low resource, Shinuyama can expand much faster. And because their troops are all high strength, ulms armor doesn't help much. I have also found it slow to reasearch as ulm. You need to build a lot of castles before you get going on research. Which means in the early game, anyone you face will likely have higher magic then you. Even if I didn't make those mistakes in the game, I don't think I would have stood much of a chance.

[Baalz]

Baalz said:
Admittedly I haven't been on the receiving end of an elephant rush orchestrated by you, that might be fun to try as I have beat back other rushes playing Ulm. Ignoring castle-recruitment constraints for a second, for the price of 3 elephants you get 2 smiths plus change. Obviously this isn't scalable because you can only recruit one smith per castle, but still given Ulm's typical early gold advantage and urgent castle building it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to field 10-12 smiths by the time you're looking at a 20 strong elephant force threatening you - and without permanently crippling your research curve. Assuming you marched a force as you describe into my territory at the end of year one I'd counter by trying to catch you as you attacked (shouldn't be hard) so you're running into about 40 PD backed by the dozen or so smiths leading whatever of the halberd wielding infantry I could scrape up over a couple turns from my multiple castles and prod-3 edge (likely in the 100-120 man range). Your initial elephant charge will be broken by 7 or 8 smiths spamming Bonds of Fire. It won't stop them all but they'll trickle in several at a time rather than in one overwhelming mass as even the ones not hit will have to run around those that are. While causing some damage, they'll quickly be surrounded and hacked to pieces by halberds. Meanwhile my remaining smiths begin raining magma bolts down into the elephants strung out by the fire bonds while my black plate keeps friendly fire from being too much of an issue. All the while your astrologers are popping 4-5 of my infantry per turn out of probably close to 200. By the end of the battle you've killed mostly my PD (which were in the front) and are out close to 2000 gold of elephants.

I tried this out to see how it worked.

Team Arco:

25 elephants : 2500 gold
20 hypaspists : 300 gold
5 mystics : 900 gold
total : 3700 gold

Elephants and hypaspists in one large group, all the way forward. Mystics scripted to mind burn X5

Team Ulm:
12 Master smiths: 1680 gold
90 chainmail + battleaxe infantry = 900 gold
16 arbalests (had them sitting around from initial expansion) = 160 gold
40 PD = 820 gold
total : 3560

Infantry set just back and flanking PD on each side.
All smiths set to magma bolt X2, bonds of fire X3

Round 1: Magma bolts & arbalests kill 4 elephants and severely damage many more as they charge across the open ground. A couple Ulmish infantry popped by mind burn.

Round 2: Several more elephants dropped by magma bolts and over half of them are at least down to 2/3rds HP, elephants hit PD and cause minor damage having used most of their movement to close so only a little trampling.

Round 3: About a third of the remaining elephants are trapped by bonds of fire and another third killed by the infantry (many of the elephants were quite low on HP from the magma bolts). Arco breaks, but most of the elephants are trapped by bonds of fire and killed by the advancing infantry.

Final tally (excluding PD deaths):
20 elephants killed (the 5 that got away were badly afflicted)
6 hypaspists killed
0 astrologers killed

14 Ulmish infantry killed


So, there's a fairly concrete response to those who claim Ulm has no chance against elephants. This is a simple case and I'd expect the Arco player to pull a trick or two, but it's clearly not impossible for Ulm to win.

[Xietor]

Good analysis Baalz. Give Ulm a try.

But Arcos will use astrologers, not mystics. And by the time Ulm has magma bolts, arcos will have soul slay.

Other issue is Ulm is not likely to get that build up if it faces an awake dragon raiding its lands, while its pretender is asleep, or is a 10 hp arch mage. The dragon may just be sitting on Ulm's capital on turn 3 or 4 and how do you get it off with a sleeping pretender and infantry?

[Tuidjy]

Baalz: Ha ha ha!