MA Ulm Pretender

[Baalz]

Yeah, I just ran 2 tests out of curiosity.

Test 1: 20 elephants + 20 Hypaspists (~2400 gold) vs 100 arbalests + 20 PD(~1200 gold). Elephants all the way back (behind hypaspists) set to hold then attack, arbalests set to fire large enemy monsters. Elephants break with heavy losses, Ulm takes no non-PD losses.

Test 2: 30 elephants (3000 gold) set to charge straight forward vs 100 arbalests, 20 PD and 6 priest smith's set to spam iron darts from the back row (~2400 gold). Elephants break with heavy losses, Ulm takes no non-PD losses.

I shudder to think about slapping a wind guide on top of that with your pretender, as you were researching alt-4 for destruction anyway.

[JimMorrison]

I just have to comment - Iron Darts is really a sick, sick spell. I've taken some hideous losses against comparatively weak forces (should have walked over them), with 5-6 smiths spamming Darts - and they do cut through Elephants like Ginsu cuts tomatoes - fast and juicy.

[HoneyBadger]

So no word on the Virtue?

[JimMorrison]

Doing an SP right now with a Virtue, cause I love her. Something that occured to me when she came out - whatever you take, must have Earth on it, or you will require an immense investment of gems to get anyone ready to put up any of the globals that you have access to.

Honestly at this point, I'm trying to figure out what to even go with, that suits my playstyle and what I'd want from a pretender for Ulm, that is affordable with the kinds of scales that I like for them. The problem with the Virtue there, is that she is 80 path cost, which is insane - that's 152 just to get to 4E, but you'd want to spend the 192 for E5 so you can do Deep Well with just boots, but? That's 5 scales right there, kinda rough.

So really, seems to me the only pretenders that can be in any way cost effective (assuming that you -want- E5 along with whatever else) -

Oracle
Wyrm (probably with nothing but E5?)
Titan
Great Mother
Forge Lord
Lord of War (only in CBM, at 0 cost?)
or a Rainbow chassis with whatever combination of paths you prefer.


Honestly, looking more and more to me like Rainbow is your only real answer, but you can't really Imprison, because you need to be out to increase your diversity.


So, what I get then (with CBM) is a Dormant Enchantress, Dom6, Prod3/Luck3/Drain3 - F3/A2/E5/S5/D2. Obviously you can swap the Luck for Order, but I figure since your baseline expenses are low, and you want to minimize unlucky magic events, this is probably a better way to go.

Hmmmm. Compared with (bear in mind, in CBM again), a Dom7 Virtue (it hurts me to not boost her Awe, makes me saw "awwww") with the same scales, with 4A/5E/4A. So, less cost effective to boost her Astral, and you don't get the synergy of high Fire access via Skull + Helmet, but..... it's a Virtue with very useful paths. The lack of an Awe boost isn't terrible since you're not using her for your primary expansion. (Going Dom10 with her Awake is -not- even remotely doable.) You can drop her to A2/E5/S2, and dip into Turmoil2 if you really want her Awake, but I don't think that's necessary, and I think it's scary to use Virtue for expansion with only the Awe4 and no buffs, she's too fragile.

[vfb]

You've got Boots, Blood Stones, and a Ring of Wizardry from your Virtue. With an E3 mage (10%), that's all you need isn't it?

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

So really, seems to me the only pretenders that can be in any way cost effective (assuming that you -want- E5 along with whatever else)

So, what I get then (with CBM) is a Dormant Enchantress, Dom6, Prod3/Luck3/Drain3 - F3/A2/E5/S5/D2. Obviously you can swap the Luck for Order, but I figure since your baseline expenses are low, and you want to minimize unlucky magic events, this is probably a better way to go.

Ulm should have access to AT LEAST two Earth boosters. Besides boots, the pretender should be able to forge Blood Stones, Stave of Elemental Mastery, or Ring of Wizardry. I wouldn't go higher than Earth 4, and if I'm taking a rainbow, I won't take any Earth unless I take Astral too.

I thought Ulm could do well with Luck, but I was told otherwise. Ulm's baseline expenses are low, but it's better to use that to build several forts in the first year. The goal is to recruit troops and mages from several castles and still have enough money over to build one more. Even Order1/Luck3 doesn't get the first fort up fast enough.

I'm still experimenting with Ulm pretenders, trying to find something that's more suitable for multiplayer. I try to get access to the kind of magic that makes the build-everywhere Master Smiths more potent in whatever I want to do with them. I usually try to get at least F3 A3 W2 D2 B2. Death or Blood can be dropped to 1 if you're hungry for points, but it slows down diversification into that path. This lets you:

- build Staves of Elemental Mastery with the pretender (F/W: flaming skull, water bracelet, robe of the sea) and Master Smiths with Air randoms. The first Smith requires the F/W staff, Earth Boots and two Air boosters, and he can't use Dwarven Hammer since the staff takes both hands. Still, it does free the pretender for other duties.

- hunting 50 blood Slaves, to empower a young Master Smith to continue hunting. This gives you access to Blood Stones (Earth booster AND produces gems!) and, eventually, high-level Blood items such as contracts.

- Flaming Skulls. A F1 Smith with a Skull gets to F3 with Phoenix Power, and the pretender can forge a Flaming Helmet to give better forging ability as well. F2 Smiths with both Fire boosters can be quite a surprise for your opponents, and you can use a Staff of Elemental Mastery to reach F5 rituals.

- Revenants/Black Servants. Revenants can cast Dark Knowledge, and Black Servants are ethereal life-drainers with enc 0, and one of the better options for early thugs - and can be equipped by the Master Smiths.

- Water has some nifty items, and Water/Fire even more so. Staves of Corrosion are excellent, Rune Smashers make Petrify Spam even more deadly. Ability to forge Rings of Tamed Lighting/Shock Resistance, Copper Plates, Frost Brands etc is also a great help early on.


I'd also like to mention that Master Smiths get more out of empowerment than most other mages. 50 gems for a single-level empowerment isn't cheap, but you can get some incredible discounts this way. Water gives Staves of Corrosion and Rune Smashers mentioned above, Nature gives ultra-cheap Fever Fetishes. Just remember that two-handed boosters won't work with Dwarven Hammers, so it's hard to get e.g. Standards of the Damned at 50% price.

[Baalz]

Yes, a bootstrap blood economy works very well for Ulm. When you're empowering your smiths I like to use one with an air random. You're forging those air boosters anyway, might as well open the door to robes of the magi (awesome for getting that boost with free hands for a hammer). Robe + ring of wizardry + every path has a least one non-hand booster puts almost everything at full discount, and of course the robe does wonderful things if you're using a rainbow pretender.

Ulm's ability to forge cheap boosters open up some fantastic flexibility that most people don't associate with Ulm.

Astral cap + crystal coin = every smith with an astral random should be ready to teleport at a moment's notice and throw down an antimagic for those guys hoping to take advantage of your MR. Throw in a crystal shield and...what's that? Ulm is dropping doom and will of the fates on top of army of lead and weapons of sharpness in every fight? Stack a light of the northern star on top and you've got solar brilliance. Throw some rune smashers in and spam enslave mind, or an eye of aiming and drop gifts from heaven on that SC thinking Ulm is a unmaneuverable easy target.

Blood stones + earth boots = every smith (after earthpower) can spam petrify, weapons of sharpness, army of lead, and invulnerability/earthquake (go ahead and chain 10 together round 2!). With an earth random (or an elemental staff) they can spam earth attack, crumble, and melancholia (which is great for the price against anybody with resource intensive troops)

Fire helm + fire skull (death empowering a smith is a very good idea) + crystal shield = every smith can drop a Flame Storm. Go ahead and chain 10 together turn 2! Alternatively, Fire Storm works fabulously with army of gold and Ulm's heavy armor.

1 air booster = every air random smith is a cloud trapezing rain of stone dropper.

Also consider that slave matrixes can be mass produced for 4 gems apiece. Magma eruption's AOE and damage scale with mage power. Earth boots + blood stone + crystal shield + earthpower + leading an 4 man communion = +6E. Use 2-3 earth random smiths and you're dropping 9E magma eruptions that never stop. Talk about a battlefield clearer...

[JimMorrison]

I guess I'm just having a really hard time wrapping my head around accomplishing all of this with the pretender. There are massive amounts of gems being thrown around in these plans, and no real way to get the incomes going, other than indies, or manual site searching with the pretender. Manual site searching, it will take 2 years of game time to search 12 provinces, which will probably net ~30 gems/turn or so, depending on site frequency, and of course dispersed between the available paths.

This leads me to three conclusions -

The first being, that you need to narrow the focus of the pretender, to be able to assume actualization of your intent, in most games. You can plan for minimum needed to accomplish what you want with maximal use of boosters, but ultimately this means you are either searching with pretender, or relying on indies. But you get the indies whether or not you have the path on your pretender, and if you don't get any indies, you are unlikely to leverage your pretender's paths into doing anything really large scale in a diversification path.

Second, this means drop the Blood. Again, you're either Blood Hunting with your pretender (hard to do while they are crawling around, site-searching, and vice-versa), or you are relying on indies/0Bs to do your hunting. In the former case, your pretender just has too much on their plate, and in the latter, you are hunting with someone else, to empower someone else. Your pretender hardly has time to forge a Blood Stone a turn and do anything else useful, so this is a sideline for other people, no?

Which brings us to third, Astral will get you further than most paths, as you can use RoS/RoW to boost mages on a task specific basis. Also indies with Astral are more common than anything other than Nature, so while you could build up a Lizard Shaman to do what you need, I would consider it better to have someone ready to rock already, so that you can get the most bang out of your Pearls.


All of these other things sound good in theory, and probably work like gangbusters in SP, but they appear to need perfect luck, and perfect circumstance to have viability in MP, in the timescale of a competitive game. I know I must be crazy to be arguing these points with Baalz and Endoperez, but I've never been afraid to put my balls where my mouth is.... errr.....

[Endoperez]

I did say I'm still experimenting. I know there are problems. I'd love to take Luck, for the gems, but when I try Ulm without Order, I have hard time getting extra forts up, the rainbow is needed in early game to boost research and look for gems, and you just don't have points for everything. It could work great - or not. I haven't tried it out in MP.


Ulm NEEDS Blood and Blood Stones. With just Boots, vanilla Master Smiths are E3F1, or E4F1 with Earthpower. Blood Stones give EVERY Smith Petrify, and at the same time "clamming", each item forged with 50% forge bonus! Not to mention that if you can spare 50 Nature gems, you can do the same for Fever Fetishes.
The pretender only needs to gather 50 slaves. After that, you empower a young Master Smith once, and your pretender won't need to bloodhunt ever again. I takes several turns even when I'm recruiting Scouts to do supplementary bloodhunting, but Blood Stones are too good to miss, and you'll need lots of slaves to empower the smiths unless you spend the design points and pretender time to forge boosters.

[JimMorrison]

I'm really struggling with this too, not trying to be a naysayer.

Just seems like Ulm demands high scales because of the resource demand of their troops, and the necessity that creates for additional castles (not to mention the castles needed to get any kind of decent research). At the same time, they suffer from a horrendous lack of magical diversity, so need some serious help there, and can't have an Imprisoned pretender, because they need the help soon. The scales need is so great though, that to me it's unthinkable to be Awake, meaning that without that first year, your pretender is going to be crunched for time.

So, I agree that Blood Stones are amazing, and are immensely valuable for Ulm. But what I'm wondering is if it's worth it to worry about on your pretender, just to pop out and Blood Hunt for 5-6 turns to empower 1 guy.

And still, you find yourself torn between Staves of Elemental Mastery, Blood Stones, Clams, Fever Fetishes, Robes of the Magi, Flaming Skulls..... It just seems like while these are all obvious options for how to potentially bolster Ulm for the late game, that it's an awful lot to ask for all at once. I mean, you don't often get that much done even with nations who can do -some- of it with national mages. Especially when to accomplish it, you need so many paths, and so many gems, that you'll have to manually site search for years to get what you want.

I think I'll start a game with an A/E/S pathed pretender, and experiment with the B0 hunters, see if I can get enough slaves to make something interesting happen.