Questions and Comments About the Improved MA Ulm

[Meglobob]

Endoperez said:How do you expand with MA Ulm?

I use infantry. I never recruit arbalists. Ulmish infantry is excellent at taking indies if you get the composition spot on.

Indeed, if I recruit crossbows I recruit the siege/crossbows that fire 1/2 rounds, much better.

[Tuidjy]

I dislike arbalesters. They are have two things going for them. They are the
only Ulmish with enough brains to use a shortsword and wear appropriate armour,
which makes them OK infantry. Their weapons have enough power to punch through
heavy armour. Months ago, I did the math, and it shows that crossbowmen are
better than arbalests below armour 17. Well guess what - armour 17 is seldom seen
outside of Ulm's army, and never on the arrow decoys.

Arbalesters have tons of things going against them - low rate of fire, high
resource cost, low strategical move, etc... On the other hand, independent archers
as great for supporting Ulm's infantry, against the only enemy that Ulm excels
against - independents.

[vfb]

Tuidjy said:...
Arbalesters have tons of things going against them - low rate of fire, high resource cost, low strategical move, etc... On the other hand, independent archers as great for supporting Ulm's infantry, against the only enemy that Ulm excels against - independents.

As Skaven I had to fight against an Ulm who had lion tribe indies. Ulm can really pump out a lot of low-resource archers, and of course has an excellent infantry shield to protect them. Nations without high protection/shields or good archers of their own can have trouble countering this in the early/mid-game.

[Jazzepi]

vfb said:

As Skaven I had to fight against an Ulm who had lion tribe indies. Ulm can really pump out a lot of low-resource archers, and of course has an excellent infantry shield to protect them. Nations without high protection/shields or good archers of their own can have trouble countering this in the early/mid-game.

This is exactly what I do. Hire as many of the low protection indie archers as possible. They do virtually zero damage to your own troops, but slaughter low protection enemies.

Later on you can use summon earth power, and spam destruction + blade wind off of your smiths.

Jazzepi

[CUnknown]

Just to be contrary to majority opinion, I might as well throw out my 2 cents. You probably don't want to listen to me, because everyone else disagrees.

I -love- Arbelests!!!

I normally use about a 1:1 ratio of arbelests to infantry, because I do like meat shields for them. Although as people have pointed out, the arbelests don't do that bad in melee.

I think Arbelests are hands-down the best missile weapon in the game, at least against high-value targets. So Tuidjy doesn't burst a vein, I will add that this opinion has already been disproven by him. Heh.

I just remember the time when I killed an enemy SC god with nothing but 100 arbelests. This god had a high protection, luck, and an air shield active. This is the way the combat went:

Turn 1-5. Arbelests fire from long-range, doing slight damage. SC god buffs out.

Turn 6. SC god flies into the mix of my arbelests, killing a couple of them.

Turn 7. Arbelests fire at point-blank range, all hitting and killing the god, lol!!!

That combat made me forever a complete devotee of arbelests. They have my vote from now until the end of time as "best missile unit ever."

I don't think that 100 crossbowmen would have been up for the task, since the high protection value of that god would have mostly negated the damage dealt by them. Arbelests do -much- more damage per hit than x-bows, especially against high-value (high-protection) targets, i.e. the ones you -care- about. X-bows can kill 12 protection infantry better than arbelests, but who cares??

[Sombre]

Arbalests are better than crossbows against high prot targets. Tuidjy talked about that quite a bit when he was testing. You say those are the only targets you -care- about. Other people clearly disagree, or indy archers wouldn't be so popular.

It's quite telling that the arbs have basically no synergy with Ulmish troops, while shortbows have plenty.

Btw: did the SC have a shield? A good shield + airshield + luck should have stopped every single shot.

[CUnknown]

I know people disagree, that is why I prefaced my response like I did. By all means, do not listen to me.

But, I'm not saying not to recruit indy shortbows. It's just that they are sort of a throw-away add-on unit whereas your arbelests are your core, heavy-damage-dealing unit.

I only care about doing damage to high-protection targets because the indy shortbows do great against the low-protection ones. They have that covered already. We are talking the targets they don't have covered, those are the only ones that matter.

I think this "synergy" argument is a little misplaced. I don't think it's very relevant here. Lack of synergy is a minor side-effect of having a missile unit that is so astoundingly effective that it can actually harm your own extremely tough units. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Attempting to paint that as a bad thing strikes me as a little odd, honestly. I mean, you'd rather they do less damage?

Or you'd rather Ulm have indy-shortbow style units to recruit rather than arbelests? That's a joke. You can recruit indy shortbows anywhere, arbelests are unique to Ulm. Revel in Ulm's unique POWER!!!

edit: I can't remember about the shield, in all likelihood that pretender was not carrying one. It was a while ago.

[Sombre]

Ulm would be better if it had indy shortbow units as recruitables, yes. It would speed up the Ulmish early game.

And yes, Arbalests doing so much damage is a bad thing in the context of Ulm. Your troops have heavy prot, your enemy's will generally speaking have medium or light prot. Against light prot shortbows are better, against medium crossbows are better. Arbalests are basically designed to kill shieldless Ulm infantry.

Obviously I'm not saying arbalests would be better if their damage were reduced to crossbow levels and the fire time remained 1/3. What I'm saying is that they're worse than crossbows most of the time.

You seem to be making the same mistake as the guy in the thread before (perhaps it was you, I forget). Yes Arbalests do more damage per hit. No that doesn't mean they're better or more effective. They have to be taken in context. If the usual enemy was heavy prot shieldless infantry they'd be great. But that isn't the case. In this thread people are specifically talking about their use against indies too, for the most part.