Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Great Ideas for more themes. I highly agree that all races should have SOME choices although we dont have to rush on that. It allows the game to grow staying ahead of player boredom. (boredom? Ive been playing Dom for 3 years. Oh well, you know what I mean)

Arco, well, I don't really have any bright ideas on that one yet. Maybe some great change comes about as a result of the astrologers seeing a great calamity and that empire changed in the resultant chaos.

Arcos seems to be the nation of choice for researchers. And it has always struck me as being also very strong in units. Pulling back on magic would take it toward the other nations which probably isnt needed.

Maybe a theme where it goes even further into research. Lots of variety in mages and sages and alchemists. But then make it so weak in units that it is FORCED to use independents alot. That would make it useful for people who want to play with magic. And useful for large-map games but probably suicide on small fast ones. It would be a niche.

Of course, someone could also mod these. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
I think some really good mods should end up being adopted as themes. That would be nice.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

BF Ulm does have national heroes, including the one mentioned below: Burkhard Nachtzehrer, the Blood Marshal. He's ethereal, can fly, is immortal, regenerates, and is a beserker. He's also got Blood 2, making him a nasty customer.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Did I miss something? The spell "Sanguine Heritage" is pre-researched. Reuqires 3 blod and 3 death to cast. But says "no desciption". My rainbow pretender discovered it for Black Forest.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">With its phalanxes, elephants and chariots, Arcoscephale reminds me a lot of the Seleucids. Maybe fast forward a couple centuries to the Parthian era? Light horse archers and ultra-heavy cataphracts with a barbarian flavor. Or, a bit later, the Persian empire, more civilized, with devout fire cultists. Or, even later, the 1001 Nights era - now that one would be cool, djinns, efreetis, mages on flying carpets and lascive houris sent to seduce enemy commanders.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

It has no description.

The Ghoul Guardians are weak in the old MR department, but that's fine since you have a astral readily availiable and casting Antimagic isn't a chore at all.

It comes with the classic 'Ulm has low MR' weakness, but when you can field twice as many troops as you could normally because you went hog wild on provinces (and thus income, and thus research) you can field massive armies frighteningly quick.

You have cheap xbows (reminding me of Marignon) in the Ranger. Ghouls don't rout (a Ulm problem) and you have more spell catchers than you can shake a stick at (with wolves/etc) You also have Pikeneers, Halberdiers, Morningstar Infantry of Ulm and Zweihanders if you are feeling 'Ulmy' and want to throw some high armored men at a situation.

Not the cheapest communion in the world, (Illuminated Ones = 80 gold, 1 Res, stealth) but pretty close. And the Fortune Tellers have 1 random, so you can have your pick of spells to cast.

Note: For my test I played on Indep 6. The effect of the Vampire Counts would be *more* pronounced on higher indeps.

[ January 13, 2004, 18:41: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

As you say, Vampire Counts gives the theme rather quick access to Vampire Counts. You are also right in presuming that the theme hasn't gone through extreme playtesting. Thats your job http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

Keep posting your findings. We're listening.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

Next theme is an Arcoscephale theme. It is missing descriptions, heroes and some other stuff, but they are in the works. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon6.gif

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">huhu, from another company it would irritate me to be treated like a paying beta-tester. Now for IW, it makes me smile and a special treatment can be made http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif
Seriously, some of the forumers (no I'm not speaking of me) are rather good as betatesters, perhaps you should give to them the patch a week before general release (Psitticine is still around, sometime Daynarr too, but I think they have their hand rather full). On top of my head, in no particular order : Cherry, Gandalf, Keir, Apoger.

Re: Black Forest - Ulm
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The difficulty is, you don't have any good leaders (non-stealth ulm commander is best at 25 all others are only 10)so your armies will be set into many (...many,many!) small TF unlikely to go unknoticed. (I assume multiple TF easier to detect than one large...?)

It's a very interesting theme, I just fear there's only one way to play it. (Bloodblitz!)

Rabe </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It seems to be a very powerful theme even without the Vampire counts ...

Cheap crossbow, archers. And they're all sneaky. I imagine that you can have a super-fast early expansion with them alone. You can use the simplest early strategy of a Wyrm at front (or Green Dragon if you're more risk-taking) and a whole bunch of archers behind. Some of its infantries can be even called decent!

The shortcoming is a *very* limited choice of national magic, even though most mages are very cheap. With these mages and a magical scale, your research will be fast but you still need somebody to cast the spells http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

You need the pretender to compensate. A rainbow mage is usable but in most competitive MP game, it's kinda suicidal to use it. Also, you probably want death 3 and blood 3 on your pretender, which would also tied up a lot of nation points.