Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Honestly, I never understood why Bogarus was supposed to have a poor early game. Yes, their troops are pure crap, and so they would be on the lower end for expansion rate unless they take an SC pretender, but it's pretty insane to rush them as anyone except Abyssia or maybe Pythium. With Starets, they can pull out flaming arrows and a communion to cast it on turn 9 assuming magic 1 in vanilla, combined with cheap easily massed shortbows. Unless the map is ridiculously close, I don't think even Mictlan can do enough damage before their Jaguars get annihilated by the sky raining fire.

They are better rush targets in CBM since flaming arrows get pushed back to turn 11, but it's still crazy risky.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Yea I do consider Bogarus as a decent early, decent middle and strong late game nation(just because of the ways that have been found to play them competitively). Patala on the other hand is a nation I'd say with weak early game(elephants don't make up for anything after the initial expansion) weak-to-decent middle game and decent-to-strong late game.

If you have weak early game you still should loose to any (well executed) sacred rush. The point here is to look like a hedgehog to fend off attackers(to make them think that there are easier targets)

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

@BBZ or others,

Since it was mentioned, what makes patala stong in mid and late game?

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

I wouldnt say strong in mid game. Mid game is sort of non existent. Late game they have freaking awesome mages that can cast pretty much any water earth nature spell at high level. Falling frost with at w7-8 mage is nothing to laugh at, while if there are some pesky SCs gifts from heaven is going to deal with them. Also if you manage to get into blood you get awesome blood summons from Lanka, and you also have Amazing astral summons that diversify you into any path of magic(although they come late) So you can say that Patala has a big magic diversity for late game and thats all you need. + cheap communion slaves, and good communions.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Honestly, not a whole lot. Patala used to be super good at clamming, and was a hidden blood nation thanks to its access to the efficient Dakini. Combined with really good national summons in both astral and blood (other people have to Wish for Rudras and Mandehas), a Patala given time to both clam and build up its blood economy is unstoppable.

In CBM though, clams are gone and Dakinis got nerfed. With that, astral summons are pretty much unuseable, and it takes forever to build up a blood economy. Pretty much all Patala still has going for it are its really good for the LA cap only mages. There are some neat late game tricks they can pull like teleporting Earthquaker with enough hp to survive, but being cold blooded, they aren't actually useable in battle late game. People talk about their communion potential, but they are no Arco, Marignon, or Bogarus. Dinky S1 communion slaves need to be present in huge numbers to not die from the high level earth and water spells you want Nagarishis to cast. Fortunately, your enemies are likely to solve the problem for you by casting Wolven Winter and making your communion masters keel over simply from encumbrance before they can kill your slaves.

I'd actually say Patala is reasonable early. Those strong cap only mages means Patala dominates early game battle magic. Rust mist and a horde of markatas eats heavily armored elites. Strength of Giants on light Bandars gives surprisingly decent archers that are also quite capable in melee. CBM also gives them pretty solid but cold blooded and cap only sacreds. Eventually though, someone will be both able to attack weak monkey MR and cast wolven winter, and then Patala would be screwed until really late when the blood summons start showing up in number.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

To counterstate the "ULM is OVERpowered" crowd:
-Any Serious Earth Nation eats MA Ulm. Ulm has NO counter to Iron Bane until Alteration 9.
Just to illustrate the difference of desurction, imagein 10 Black Knights charing 50 small Bakemono Archers. First turn, the Bak Sorc Buffs himself, the archers fire, hit, do nothing. Second turn, he casts destruction. Assuming he hits, the Black Knights die in 1 volley.
-Some MR spells like False Fetters, which works great against Ulm, actually come quite early.
-Enemie should use superior map move to interedict Ulms reinforcement routes. Ulm is forced to use Map mvoe 1 guys for the most part, make them pay for it
-If you have F/W , Rust mist is great. W also has other MR negates stuff that works ok.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Tempering The Will comes as early as Thaum-1.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Everyone has mapmove 1 when it comes to offensive moves. Except Caelum, I guess. Since reinforcement routes are by definition within Ulmish territory and behind the frontline, it's not really feasible for most nations to disrupt them until they have access to flying thugs (which Iron Angels eat for dinner anyway).

The exception would be stealth troops (and to a lesser extent sailing troops), but they don't affect Ulm particularly worse than they would other nations, in fact you could even say they affect it less since the Ulmish reinforcements only ever move 1 space anyway. By comparison, cutting off the province a mapmove 2/3 reinforcement party was planning on skipping through costs them 3 turns since it cancels the original move.

On top of that, Ulm has some of the best PD in the game, so good luck light stealth troops.

It's also not true that Ulm has to wait for Army of X to counter Destruction/Iron Bane: Marble Warriors works fine, so does Wooden Warriors (N indies are a dime a dozen), and if you have a lot of mages in the field then Iron Warriors can do in a pinch too. Also, Mechanical Men, Living Statues, Iron Angels again.

Besides, outside of Shinuyama (which can rain acid and banefire on Ulm anyway), which serious Earth powers are you talking about ? Agartha, Pangea, Arcoscephale, Atlantis don't have any national archers, and if they're recruiting some indies while on the warpath with Ulm it's a dead giveaway what they're aiming for. Bandar can summon Yakshas, but there again you see them coming from a mile away. If you get caught with your pants down by Destruction, you can only blame yourself.

As for MR spells, Tempering the Will comes even earlier (Thaum 1) and brings the Ulmish MR to a respectable 13 (14 in dominion), battlefield-wide. It's MR resist, but since Ulm has crap MR before it goes off, it typically only takes 2-3 casts to affect the whole army.

Look, nobody's saying Ulm is positively unbeatable. Of course they are. But they're much tougher to beat than anyone else in the first 30 turns or so. Which puts them in a great place when they shift gears and start drowning the world in thugs. They're pretty weak in the late game when counters abound for large infantry armies and the Iron Angels start getting outclassed by self-buffing SCs... but by that time any decent Ulm player will already own a sizeable piece of the pie. And nothing precludes Ulm from having said self-buffing SCs either - Cyclops & Mech Men are a given, but F4D on your god also puts you in Ember Lords and Zmeys ; W3 is enough to find the W to empower a smith and give him boosters for Grendels ; A4 gives you self-summoning Asynjas.
Plus unlike many other nations, for the most part you don't need to spend gems on battlefield casting. Your dudes don't need Darkness, or Army of Lead, or Antimagic, or PotS/LotNS, or Relief, or Mass Regen, or Storm... to lop heads and fill the air with cold iron day in, day out.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

You need Conjuration 3 to get summon earthpower. Otherwise Ulm cannot reliably get E3 casters. It's awful inefficient to burn earth gems to counter a spell like false fetters. LA Ulm definitely has a hard time bring out Tempering the Will early since only 1/4 black priests have E2 and has no E income. Personally, I think it should be an E/H spell like Ulm's other national spells. It seems like the kind of thing produced by the Iron Cult as a part of their general anti-magic thing.

Rust Mist indeed does terrible things to Ulm for anyone with the E/W crosspath at Evo 2. Acid Rain too, but that messes up everything and hardly anyone can do it.

Re: Ulmish Drain magic spell
 

Pangea has centaurs, and they are great archers, indeed.
Or, you can just research construction, which you are going to research, anyway. :)