Iron Faith Ulm

[PvK]

Sounds like I'm an order of skill magnitude below you, Keir. My (newb-ish) reasons for choosing level 4 have been:

1) Because I heard that site searching required up to 4. I haven't seen the master list of sites, but it sounds like you're saying the level-4 ones are less worthwhile than the ones that are combos of levels 1-3.

2) To get level-4 bless effects. I actually think 2 or 3 level-4 bless effects look better than many of the level-9 bless effects. (e.g., I'd rather have templars blessed by Attack +2 and Defense +2, than have one of 75% Shock Resist, Twist Fate, 50% anti-poison, or Death Curse). Of course, with a level-9, you also get an improved level-4, but you can get a few level-4's for the cost of a level-9, and having several level-4's gives better site searching and spell variety, too.

3) So the pretender will be a fairly good mage in these areas, rather than something I could get pretty easily with a mortal mage plus an item or empowerment. Again with IF Ulm, the pretender with level-4's can (I thought - may be wrong) better help the Black Priests out with items to get them boosted with items matching their random picks.

PvK

[aldin]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
I've experimented a bit more with this and concluded that the templars are just distraction. It's the change to your mages that is important. And I think the same kind of rainbow sage that works with vanilla ulm works with IF. Sure...you may only have a reinvig bonus for your magi if you took earth 4 and the rest a rainbow...but you need a variety of gems to make your research work. Especially if you take drain 3 which I still find wise.

My thinking is that if you take a decent bless effect, you are in effect ignoring your nation's research or other needs. (Such as productivity/order).

Thoughts?

I've just finished a couple of plays with IF and I'd come to more or less the same conclusions. Standard Ulm has three glaring problems, devestating production costs, little magic flexibility and morale issues. IF provides solutions for the Last two. With the right items, Black priests can easily be 2E2?. That's plenty powerful. And sermon of courage cannot be overemphasized in it's ability to keep those heavily armored troops on the battlefield where they do some good. I'd want to toy with it a lot more, but I think Templars are just one component to IF Ulmish Mage/Priest led armies.

By the way, I think the most important unit with regard to Bless is the Black Priests themselves. Air Shield and Reinvigoration both look pretty good on a magic user...

Originally posted by PvK:
1) Because I heard that site searching required up to 4.

3) Again with IF Ulm, the pretender with level-4's can (I thought - may be wrong) better help the Black Priests out with items to get them boosted with items matching their random picks.

PvK

1) It does, but there is only ~1 lvl 4 site for each sphere.

3) Usually level 3 is good enough.

~Aldin (who also bumps his pretender to 4s and is certainly more of a n00b than PvK)

Black priests can easily be 2E2?

I can't stress this enough! Don't spend too much on paper mages. Don't do it! Don't get in the habit. Otherwise you will be like a Toys 'R' Us and everyone else is coming to you for christmas and artillery spells and assy squads will make you cry. This is only applicable to MP but ... don't do it!

I reiterate! Don't do it!

On average you only need 2 in any path to be a decent searcher. Low level sites are much more frequent than high level sites. I know the feeling of wanting to maximize your searching for all those delicious gems; but sometimes it's okay not to have every site in every province you own found. Especially if anyone has spies.

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

I'm looking at 60% as the standard now days -

From what I've seen in most of my games; with very few exceptions is that 50% is the standard (which I'm fine with), Independants 6, Random Events Common.

Barring personal preference and people wanting to play different sorts of games. What do people usually play?

[SurvivalistMerc]

I find that with earth boots and summon earthpower I can still get blade wind out of the IF black priests.

I don't usually make my black priests 2 E, 2 of their random pick. I usually only give additional earth power to the priests I'm using for blade wind. Now, I do take really good care of my priests that end up with earth as a random pick. Because they are really, really good at blade wind...just like your traditional smiths. And they don't ever cast those annoying magma bolts when you end up massing HI against supercombatants.

A lot of folks don't like to use eyes of aiming on their good commanders. I sprinkle them liberally on my blade winders. (But not everyone casts blade wind. About half the priests get scripted with Sermon of Courage.) The ones with blade wind get earth boots and eyes of aiming. I don't think that really makes them look like Toys R Us. Because you have to have earth magic to use the boots...and that isn't all that common among the other races' magi. Sure...Pangea and Vanheim will like earth boots, but they don't really need them.

And I would love to watch a powerful assassin get two eyes of aiming. Of course, the owner of the assassin could prevent that by just having two misc items on the assassin already...but if the assassin dies I will get those.

The variety of items your IF priests can craft, especially with items that increase their random, is astounding.

You can get into blood magic with random blood magi. It's really cool to play IF once you get your research up a bit. And independent magi are still as good as they always were.

The only picks I would go up to 4 in with IF are earth (2 benefits: reinvig for your magi and makes your pretender immune to the air spell that takes commanders to the caster) and death (lesser fear on the black templars is nice and I think you will pick death 3 anyway to make sure you find the death sites because you really need death gems for research).

IF may not work that well in MP, but it's really enjoyable in SP. A lot of the nicer spells in certain spheres, such as air, do not require more than 1 level of skill. Orb lightning. That false horror spell.

One question: can rocks attack? Or just defend? Because the preaching of IF is so good against hostile dominion that you can easily put a rock in +3 (for you) dominion to reduce his hps and kill it.

[ywl]

My experience ain't much - but I'll weigh in my two cents just for the fun of it . Some random points:

1) The additional 1 fire for the Master smith is quite critical because it gives you access to "Magma Bolt", "Magma Eruption" and forging "Elemental Armor". All are very useful.

2) Rainbow mage works only when you play with non-aggressive players. You need the help of the pretender for early expansion in most games - even for Ulm. If you need to add variety to the standard Ulm theme, it's better to pick a durable pretender with Blood, Death or Nature on it.

3) I don't think that IF is very weak. The Mastersmith is nice but the additional magic variety from the Black Priest could be a big boost. And they're cheap and could be built anywhere. If you could get Earth Boot, and have some lucky pick (not very hard because the Priests are cheap), you won't lose that many spells. As SurvivalistMerc said, you can always get "Blade Wind" with Earth Boot and "Summon Earth Power", not hard with the large Earth Gem income for Ulm.

4) I don't think IF should pick drain 3.
Drain 1 is too much . The nation points is attractive but the research will be too slow.

5) Black Templars are fun for SP but seem to be expensive to be practical. I'll be happy to be proved wrong on this...

[aldin]

Zen,

The 2E2? was mostly a grins and giggles comment. I only boost mages when I need to for certain functions (1D to 2D for Skulls is an IF MUST).

ywl,

May as well do drain 3. You HAVE to do drain 1 to access IF. Since your mages are gonna be stuck at 1 research regardless, take the 3 and the points.

~Aldin