Question about Ulm/Armor
 

I'm still trying the demo waiting for the full to arrive in the mail and I chose iron dominion Ulm to have some fun with forging.

So I forge up some suits of black armor, a helmet and various weapons, but then when I slap them on say a Lord Guardian or Black Knight lord, his defense/protection goes DOWN from his normal equipment? Does this mean I need to just put that stuff on other, lesser troops or amy I missing something?

Thanks

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Those armors are more cumbersome ... so while they raise your protection, as counterpart due to heavy wheight they lower your defence.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which armors? the forged ones or the ones that come with the unit automatically? I guess I don't well understand the difference between protection and defense either.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Don't remember exactly, however:

Defence: is the skill of dodging, parrying and avoid strikes. When someone attacks you there's a confrontation beetween his attack skill and your defence (Att+2dd vs Def+2d6, rolls open ended - if a dice has rolled 6, it rolls again and adds the new number).

Protection: this is usually your armor, thick skin, or other type of magical defences.
If the attacker strikes successfully, he does some damage on the struck unit, and protection diminuish it.
(weapon damage + wielder strenght + 2d6 open) - (protection + 2d6 open).

Armor piercing weapons/spells halves the protection value.
Armor negating weapons/spells ignore protection value.

I hope I've been clear in explaining since I'm not a native english speaker, I'm Italian.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

If their protection went down, consider the following:

Your commanders are already wearing very good armor (they come with that when you recruit them). So, you probably made armor that was worse than what they were already wearing.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You did great! I understood it.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Yes, the armor that Ulmish commanders come with is better than the various Black Steel items that can be forged with low-level Earth magic. This might seem a bit strange, until you discover that an Earth mage for any nation, not just Ulm, can make these black steel items. For these other nations, black steel is likely to be a big improvement.

By the way, you can check out the stats for an item that a unit starts with by clicking on the name of the item in their unit display.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Except... not.

Full Plate of Ulm is actually 1 point of protection weaker than Black Steel Full Plate. In all other stats it is the same.

So if you put Black Steel Full Plate on a unit with Full Plate of Ulm (e.g. Black Lord or Lord Guardian), the total net effect is +1 to protection.

littlemute is incorrect that stats go down in those cases.

What I imagine he saw was the effect of putting Black Steel Plate (not full plate) on someone with Full Plate of Ulm. In that case, protection will go down by 5, defense will go up by 4, and encumbrance will go down (though cavalry is different from infantry for encumbrance).

That's because "Black Steel Plate" is only a breastplate, so it's much lighter than a full suit of armor.

PvK

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oops, sorry about that.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oops, sorry about that. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No problem. It gave me an opportunity to ramble about Ulmish armor! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

PvK

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Oops, sorry about that. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No problem. It gave me an opportunity to ramble about Ulmish armor! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

PvK </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hmm... I'm not understanding why someone would focus on forging then as the armour is basically the same as what your troops start with, do you place it on the preists or master smiths? What's the use of forging to Ulm at all?

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ah, well this is what I was trying to get at in my original post. The armor you are forging is available to anyone with an Earth mage. And for most nations, it offers far more protection than their basic armor. So it makes more sense for them to forge it.

Ulm, on the other hand, already has nice armor. So instead of making Black Steel items, they can focus on forging weapons and miscellaneous items, and/or researching Construction to make more and better items available for forging.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Yes save earth gems!
Your Smiths can forge great Elemental Armor ... well ... best suited for summoned commander instead of your national since they're pretty frail.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Yes. Though if you want to improve the Ulmish units, there are still plenty of things to forge to do that. Black Steel Full Plate generally isn't the best use of 7 earth gems just to get +1 protection, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'm not sure what summoned commanders are, but I still only have the demo so.

What Ulm seems to be missing, at least to me (NEWB), are fodder troops. The Ulm guys you can buy are good, but cost SO many resources. All the games I've played with ULM they have gold gold gold but not enough resources to really get a big army togther. So what I tried to do was build a fort on a land with barbarians so that I could draw the resources and make mass amounts of cheap barbarians. Then slapped the cheiftans, who are just complete fodder as well as the troops, with the black plate, helmet and a cheap 2 handed sword. Of course by this time it's turn 39... ^_^

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Ulm gets fodder by conquering indies, generally. Yes, build a castle on the kind you like. Barbarians are pretty good offensively, but they are also pricey. I rather like the tribals, because you can draft a large number of them in one turn, and get them all mostly killed the next turn. Efficient that way. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

PvK

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

You'll learn all troops are fodder ^^

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

Ulm lacks fodder? Just because a unit is expensive doesn't mean that it can't be used as a meat shield. I find that their nigh-invincibility against physical attacks makes them better tanks than Tribals or even Lobo Guard. Keep them away from armor negate though, they'll hurt.

Re: Question about Ulm/Armor
 

No, Ulm does not really lack fodder. Generally they conquer it (use indy stuff if necessary), but if they need to use national units for whatever purpose, the Maul + Chainmail infantry for 10 gold and 18 resources serves well, and is tougher than most heavy infantry anyway. However I consider them medium troops and as Ulm I prefer to have a lighter fodder eschelon as well, from independents and/or summons.

PvK

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.

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