Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I've yet to come across anything that was hands-down tougher, nekkid, than an Ancient Kraken, mono-a-tentaclo.
...(tentaclo-a-mono?)

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Okay, so a Virtue isn't that good (unless you do it, which is what y'all are saying, right?). What Pretenders would make good choices for Ulm?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Which Ulm?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Middle Age Ulm

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Do you picture Ulm as the ultimate heavy-armor nation? Do you want a pretender/scales build that supports that?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

In regards to your pretender...

What type of map you playing? A premade map or random?
And what's the size of the map?

Are your opponents human or computer? What nations are they playing?

Any special/different game settings? (such as gold income at 200? or magic sites at 55 instead of 40?)

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I like MA Ulm a lot, but I mainly play for fun rather than competetiveness. However some competetive pretender choices seem to me would be:

A rainbow mage. Gives you all the paths you lack at least on the pretender, helps research and accelerates site searching.

A Ghost King can be a rainbow and a strong combattant.

A Lich or Phoenix or Vamp Queen shouldn't take as many paths, but can be defensively annoying to your foes with its immortality. Choose magic that can eventually be very nasty on the battlefield in a disposable way.

A Virtue can be a good mobile supercombattant but don't waste points on more than two (at most) paths. Plan to fully equip her with items, of course.

A strong combattant pretender (Wyrm, Manticore, or whatever you prefer) can also be good to deal with types of foes that your troops won't.

It helps to think of what the heavy infantry can't fight well at all: Giants, poison, mind burn, lightning... and develop something to throw against those threats.

Also I tend to prefer Productivity scale to Order as Ulm, because I usually have plenty of gold anyway, since the troops mainly cost resources rather than gold.

PvK

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Hmmm doesnt that forging god seem to be form-fitted to Ulm?
Cant make a useful pretender out of him?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Forge Lord is only good thematically. Why would you want to pay a bunch of points for an ability your national mages already have? Plus his paths overlap with the nationals as well, and new paths are expensive for him...Ulm is plenty good at what they do already, they're just horrible at everything else. Your pretender needs to cover at least some of those gaps, exactly as PvK said.

How does one counter lighting? Storm warriors/Gaia's blessing in combo should work, but you need an A4N6E2 pretender with Enchantment 9 for that, which seems a bit prohibitive, especially since even then you can only cover one army at a time.

Mind burn and other MR spells shouldn't be too much of a problem once you get tempering the will...you'll have to have 3-4 smiths casting it for it to get a decent amount of coverage on your army because the chances of it working on each casting are pretty bad, but it's pretty easy to spam when needed, and it should cut the damage from mind burn and similar spells down considerably.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Thats the problem with most of the thematic pretenders. As much as I want to play RPG, I cant bring myself to use them. One day I will do some research and try to find some suggestions that fit my favorite nations.