Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

IMHO taking Drain3 for IF is a mistake : you'll end up with 1 RP mages (!!), and even indy sages will have only 4... unless you take either a Sage/RB pretender or a weak dominion, but both "solutions" defeat the basic purpose of "abusing" Templars.

Overall I find IF Ulm weak ond poorly balanced : to get an effective design you need a magically strong (for bless) pretender but also needs to have it master more than one path ('cause your mages are crappy lvl 1 ...), you need Order (as everyone except undeads), Prod (Ulm is resource intensive), Magic/drain at 0 or above (as said earlier, but if you take 2 or more you blow up your MR...), Dominion, and even a decent castle (production) !
What you get are sacred lvl 1 mage-priests and sacred heavy Templars Knights, that are very expensive.
You can't count on numbers, against weak opposition they're not needed, but if faced with strong oppositions they are brittle against magic - so they are a quite risky bet !
Lastly you also lose the quite useful Forge bonus... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">One thing that buggers me with IF is you have to pass on the Guardians completely if you want to maximize Templar production. How sad.

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

I agree that IF is weaker overall than standard Ulm. But to me that just makes it more of a challenge to make it work. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

I got very unlucky in my initial battle...lost my starting troops and some barbarian mercenaries to a smaller number of independent barbarians (fewer indie barbarians than mercenary barbarians mind you). That doesn't happen every day. I didn't realize that my priests would cast that silly earth spell...throw inaccurate stones or something...instead of sermon of courage because Abyssian priests don't behave that way. Morale is a major boost for ulm troops.

Still, I've rebounded nicely. And I didn't remember that my mages with IF were earth 1, ? 1. The random pick is nice in that you will have mages capable of forging all the basic items of each sphere if you are selective about whom you send to the front lines.

I completely agree that these mages need to be able to research in a drain environment. But I'm not holding my breath. (I'm actually wondering why they can't...maybe it was an oversight...maybe it is to compensate for the wider array of magical items craftable at reduced cost in IF ulm.) I've also given thought to a death/nature pretender with this theme. Death for fear and nature for berserk (though that's going to make the defense really low on the templars). I'm also imagining life after death for ulm templars...and smiling. I just don't think ulm will support two level-9 blessings due to its other "requirements" for success as a nation.

The more I think about nature-9 the less I like its bonuses on sacred mages. I don't want my mages to turn berserk and stay on the battlefield. (Maybe this particular "bonus" could be made applicable only to non-mages?)

I also agree with those who said that a drain scale is rough for IF ulm. Ulm seems to me to be much more dependent than average on the sites you are able to find. I think that is why the great rainbow sage works so well for them.

I find myself wishing I could use a scorpion king as a pretender for Ulm. Fire-9, earth-9 would be devastating. Especially when you remember that a decent number of indie mages are sacred.

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't agree with that : Ulm is good for training as it is relatively easy to play.
I don't find it subpar , but is not flexible, you have to follow a relatively rigid strategy :
* Research/Sage pretender to keep research at a good level on early game, then to find sites
* Try to get indy sages asap
* Focus research in Construction first
* Forge Earth Boots and Dw Hammer asap to maximize item production (funny : the Hammer even works for Blood items !!)
In MP the forge bonus is also very useful to get good trades and keep allies - you build at 50% cost, can sell at 80% and get profit !
* Once your smiths have Earth boots they can use Summon Earthpower to get Earth-3 and summon Elementals, and use nice support spells.

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

Ulm:

Has major issues with production.
Has very inflexible and limited magic.

This makes Ulm poor for training (IMHO).


>you have to follow a relatively rigid strategy

And how are new players supposed to know that ridgid strategy? Hence... not good for training.


>* Research/Sage pretender

Rainbow pretenders as a training tool? Only if you want blood to drip from the players ears as their brain overloads.

How about demonstrating basic economics, military, and national magics, before exploding into this sort of complication?

Remember this is all in the context of "Training".


>* Research/Sage pretender to keep research at a good level on early game, then to find sites
>* Try to get indy sages asap
>* Focus research in Construction first
>* Forge Earth Boots and Dw Hammer asap to maximize item production

This sort of strategy in multiplayer will turn you nation into a juicy gem treasure chest which will be savaged by it's neighbors.

It's not my intention to be mean or contentious... but this (again IMHO) isn't a good way for new players to go. Arco and Man are both easily recognized human themes. They both have flexible magics and low resource troops. Ulm "looks" easy but it really isn't. The Last thing that players need is even more frustration when they get into this duanting game. I suggest Arco or Man rather than Ulm for new players.

I understand that you have found some strength in Ulm. That's all well and good. However, just becuase it's potency can be cultivated, does not equate with "good for training".

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

Apoger,

I myself learned (what I know) about Dominions by playing Ulm.

I haven't taken a stab at MP yet. My guess is that rainbow ulm would be more viable if your opponents couldn't see your gem income (graphs disabled). I hadn't considered that aspect...but you're right. If one of my neighbors had a much higher gem income than another...all else being equal I'd want to take over some of it.

I sort of see the managing production and limited magic as a way to teach new players about basic game mechanics of units before getting too deeply involved in magic, which with the way it is structured in non-intuitive schools with some spells requiring multiple magic types, is confusing initial yet ultimately wonderful in its complelxity.

The player knows the rigid strategy because you tell it to him when you say to try Ulm.

Of course, it's quite likely this ulm strategy won't work all that well in MP as you point out.

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

On the 'Ulm for n00bs' discussion:

As best I can tell, basic Ulm is the easiest nation to wrap your brain around. Build strong armies, research construction, go beat everyone else up. With a Combat Pretender (an MP liability I'm sure, but fine for SP) it's even simpler because you inherit the smithy goal of clothing your pretender for war. As such, I'd say it's almost Dominions Lite and imminently suitable for dragging someone into the game.

Since that's what I did, I know it works for getting into the game. It does have SERIOUS cons though. Things I'm finding as I expand out:
1) You wind up with almost no concept of what priests are supposed to do.
2) You have very little concept of what mages are supposed to do.
3) You have a skewed, high-resource perspective on what it takes to build an army.
4) You have a skewed, too-confident perspective on how hardy an infantry unit ought to be.
5) You have a skewed, too-weak perspective on how effective archery is.
6) You have a tendancy to want to look at Construction for solutions to your problems.

Still, Ulm is what got me here. Therefore I immediately abandoned my Caelum game (geh, the best troops have no mobility) and tried to set up an IF game.

I think I got a lucky start. I decided to go with a Great Sage pretender with 4 in everything but Blood. Dominion 5; Order, Production, Heat, Misfortune and Drain were mostly maxxed (Heat 2 mebbe). I got a Fortress, cheapest 30 Admin.

The goal was to use mercs to clear the surrounding territories while the Sage researched (30+/turn on Drain3) and the Templars were built. By the time the surrounding territories were cleared I had a dozen templars, a 4 Holy Prophet, and quite a bit of research accomplished.

The 4 Holy is the key. I can split the templars into two wings that get blessed with the battlefield bless. And the whole battlefield gets morale support too. The pretender is in the process of spinning through the adjacent territories and my gem income is skyrocketing. The army is unstoppable, one opponent in home siege with no other territories and another only a few turns away from the same thing (it's only turn 20 or so).

As a standard, I'd probably take five of the seven magics and try to preserve my scales a bit, mebbe upgrade to a Castle. As it is, and I think I was lucky, IF looks very viable as a nation that can rapidly build a devestating force.

~Aldin

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

Alex (apoger),
I *do* use that strategy just right now in MP, and with some serious gamers .. up to now successfully, but it's only turn 25 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Obviously one also has to get wise in diplomacy and careful about the "stated" gem income - income from trade and items doesn't count !
But maybe I'm wrong and will get bLasted... Well, life will tell http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif !

As for the "training" part, just note that it's *harder* to find a strategy with a more versatile nation... In fact when playing Ulm you discover step by step "the" strategy you can use, and so you get a grasp at how to use more "rich" nations strategy-wise.
In fact my first Dom1 game was with Pangea : I didn't succeed in anything and had no idea on how to use their troops and magic. Then I tried Man, it wasn't much better. Then Arco, I did learn much but was *very* bad with magic, because Arco has mostly "random" paths for mages. I played my first pbem with Arco, and was trounced on the first fight with another player, even with 4:1 odds on my side http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif , just because I was waaaay behind in magic and had no idea on how to use it effectively...
Then I played Ulm, and finally was able to put it all together and define at least a strategy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif : units, spies, mages, items, spells - mostly because the choices were narrower, (only 2 magic paths, no sacred units, etc..) !
So my experience matches Aldin's, and I still would suggest a new player to train with Ulm ! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

Note : No offense taken, nor meant http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

They do have the forge bonus on the IF main mage.
However I do agree that IF is a weak theme for a nation that is already sub par. Ulm is a very challenging nation and I wish people would stop recommending it to the new players. I suggest Arcoscephale or Man as better training nations.

Re: Iron Faith Ulm
 

I'm doing much better with IF this time.

I did wind up using those owl quills early on. If only to free up my pretender to site search. Converting 1 rp to 4 rp in a drain 3 dominion is a good thing. Well worth the 3 air gems it will cost you once you have a black priest with a random air.

I'm really enjoying getting the random picks. And I can squeeze blade wind out of these priests. The ones with two earth (due to a random earth) are going to be as good at blade wind as traditional smiths.

It does seem that it takes a while longer to get to blade wind due to slower research than with standard ulm, but I'm almost there by turn 30 or so.

I had a difficult time with Caelum as my neighbor since the AI is fairly adept at using Caelum's flying to target my least defended provinces and casts that black hawks spell quite a bit.

Looking back, I'm very glad I took picks in air since that enabled the owl quills (and it can be hard to find air sites with just a random 1 air, which you might have to build a bunch of mages to get). I'm also glad I took picks in death as the skull mentors kicking in at construction-4 really makes your research take off. And finding death gems if you have death-4 is a lot more reliable than finding sages.

The AI (Caelum) seems to have found some wizards for me. 3 random picks on those guys, and they have research-10. At around 150 or so gold each, that seems to be a better deal than sages in my dominion and will give me some new magic combinations to play with.

It is a slower start, but the more I think about not having magma bolts friendly fire later in the game once all scripted spells are cast in long battles...the more I'm starting to like IF. The slow start you can get with this nation I think makes it a bit more of a challenge.

I'd love to hear other folks' experience.