Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Untrue. Not all troops ultimately degrade to fodder-class: Elite special-forces units often retain their jobs throughout the game: Vans, for instance, pretty much never go out of style. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Let's discuss semantics for a second.

Fodder to me is light infantry, those lizard slaves, barbarians, etc that you want to chew up the hits from archery while they and hopefully your shock is able to hit the enemy.

Meat is somewhat steadfast troops to protect your archers/mages whatnotall that attack from behind them. Fodder can work as meat, but since it gets taken out so fast and then routs, it's better to have more solid meat there that can withstand close combat a bit.

Shock troops can be your flanking cavalry or your giants/ettins/bonegiants, etc that you screen with your fodder yet are too good to just be meat. They break units.

So that said, where does the ulm infantry fit in? Well, they aren't shock and work well as meat, however, since they take so little damage from archery of most kinds, I would say they were in the fodder class too. Hmm, now I'm right back where I started.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

You're missing a class or two, which is where Infantry of Ulm fit in.

Essentially, they are the Main Body of an Ulmish force, until perhaps later on when you have much stronger things to be your main force.

They are not fodder because they tend to survive and kill things quite well. The Maul/Chain Versions I mentioned can be used as fodder through because they are slightly faster than most of the others, take the fewest resources, and they are in some senses the weakest and most vulnerable fighters Ulm has as nationals.

Of course, depending on what you are fighting, the roles can change, in which case they can be worse than fodder because they are effective units in some cases, and take a long time to build, but are very ineffective against some things (e.g. poison gas).

I think barbarians are somewhat misused as fodder because they are expensive and can be effective sometimes, but are sitting ducks for archers.

One sign of good fodder is something that you're glad if it is getting hit by lots of enemy attacks. If arrows hit my barbarians, I'm not happy because they will get hurt and may flee, and they were sort of expensive and I bought them in hopes they might chop something. If arrows hit my Infantry of Ulm, it's ok because it won't do much, but I'm not particularly happy about it because it will attrite them, they represent a time & experience investment, and I would prefer they remain as intact as possible until they meet an enemy head on. If my Tribal Warriors or Soulless get hit by arrows, I am glad becuase that's why I brought them along, and my worthwhile units are not getting hit.

PvK