Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Okay, I suck with damn near anything, but I've done my share of reading the Boards, playing in some multiplayer, etc., and I just do not get Ulm. The current game, I have been generally left alone. I build up a nice force of blackplate, get my mages hooked up with Construction 6 and Evocation 4 for the cool magic items and the blade winds, and I'm ready to go, right? I search about 10 provinces that I own with my 3-3-3-3-3-3 (maybe there's one extra 3 there) rainbow alchemist. I turn up a decent gem income, but no special sites other than sages (i.e. no independent decent mages).

Wrong. I get attacked by a Tuauatha themed Man player. His mages just tear the **** out of my guys. Storm on the battle and wrathful skies, and I'm getting slaughtered. My blade wind flinging mages kill off pretty much all of his ordinary guys, but that doesn't say much. Meanwhile, my blackplate infantry, painfully built up over time, is simply blown away by his spells, and his ordinary sidhe troops are better overall than my costlier black plate knights and other units. I guess I don't get Ulm.

I wondering the following:

1. Does Ulm have a chance if it does not attempt to steamroll nearby human opponents very early on? The lack of magic and available opponent countermagic seems to bring horrible devastation to the supposedly tough blackplate infantry even at the early-midpoint of the game.

2. What the hell good is Ulm's supposedly wonderful forging skill when Ulm doesn't have any decent commanders to put the forged items on? Is researching Conjuration, to get some decent SCs, mandatory for Ulm? If so, isn't it a fair bit to ask, that Ulm get high Construction, Evocation, and Conjuration levels fairly early on to have a chance of hanging into mid-game? The best commander I can see is the black knight commander, and he is certainly no great shakes. Everything else seems to suck, particularly the generic infantry commanders who are, well, about the same as the underlying infantry.

[ July 02, 2004, 00:46: Message edited by: Sly Frog ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Welcome to the club. I can't really make base Ulm work well for me, either.

Ulm does seem slightly dependent on steamrolling people early - the problem being, Black Plate Infantries are by no means the supreme groundpounders, having a number of ordinary nationals that mow them down easily without the aid of magic.

All in all, I find that Ulm is very much dependent on finding indy mages, and Ulm's wonderful forging skill falls a little short when you realize that your smiths can only forge the same things, having no randoms. IF Ulm is slightly less constricted, but loses the drain immunity and thus either must give up the drain points, or suffer.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">An extra level of construction would give you an efficient counter to this strategy.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">An extra level of construction would give you an efficient counter to this strategy. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, I'm researching that, but level 7 construction is a long way to research fairly early in the game just to avoid being mauled.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

His Sidhe troops must have some awesome blessings... because ULM's black knights should be winning. Unless you only have two or three against 50 of his.

[ July 01, 2004, 23:30: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It wasn't only 2 or 3 against 50, but he had a fair bit more Sidhe (turn is past now, and I can't go back and see it), probably on the order of 30 to 7 or 8 black knights.

That's not the point, however; if you are playing any respectable opponent against whom you can obtain an equal number of black knights as they can get sidhe, I'd like to know your secret.


I might add that this is an issue for me because I really like the idea of Ulm; in a game of magic, having a side that is steel and drain is pretty cool, but they should be able to hang tough with the magic Users, which they seem incapable of (I understand I'm a novice player, but I so far I haven't seen any other great advice). It seems as though what is supposed to be their main strength, the much vaunted black plate infantry and knights, isn't really that great. They don't hold out that much longer (if at all, when you factor in magic), as other nations troops, particularly such as hoplites, which have pretty decent armor themselves, at a lower cost.

[ July 02, 2004, 02:19: Message edited by: Sly Frog ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Try these two Strategies.

1.) Pick a Cheap bully no magic pretender -
The Manticore is a good example
-Select a cheap fast building castle - I like the Fortress or Wizard tower.
-With all the extra points use great scales 3 prod, 3 Order, 2 growth etc...
-Build nothing but Guardians and a Morning star hvy inf
-expand like the plague using multiple armies and your bully Pretendar.
-As you expand castle as much as possible. In these castles build an army of aprox 20-30 spys (they have great stealth and can cause unrest).
-Now you must be aggressive - as soon as you see your first nieghbor send all your spys into his provinces - 2-3 spys per province. Set them on cause unrest.
-Now as unrest rises dramaticaly (you will be suprised how fast it rises) in your niegbors provinces bring up your armies. If he complains just keep denying it is you until you are ready to strike. Attack all along his border and even if you lose the majority of the battles the battle of attrition is on your side. Also keep a few Guardians in each castle they are great defenders. Soon his income will be next to nothing and he will not be able to replace his losses.
-work you other typical ulm strategies along with this like blade wind etc...
- Of course this does not work against undead nations.

2.) I am still trying this strategy out it is straight forward bless strategy with UlmIF. Ulm's biggest weakness is magic so -
-Create UlmIF with Oracle - Astral 9, Air 9
-This gives you Templar Knights with +4 MR and twist fate, Shock resistant 75, Airshield 75
-Now every single turn pump out Templars from you capital -
-10 Templars can take any level 6 inde I have faced
-By turn 20 you should have a main Knight Army of 30+ Knights backed up with mages it can be a devestating army, with twist of fate your lances will have a chance to hit everytime.
-Your only real combat weakness is with poison cold and fire, but what I found is poison and cold need time on the battle field to work but with all Templar Knight armies the fights will be very quick and bloody you will either win fast or lose fast. If you run across a fire heavy nation you will have to use your mages casting fire fend.

I do not state these are great strategies but they seem to work for me.

[ July 02, 2004, 03:21: Message edited by: Pirateiam ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Heh, it's funny that the commonly perceived strongest in our current game is complaining about being ineffective. I posted here a few days ago because I feel ineffective too. It's obviously a newbie game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Of course, I have a much better claim to ineffectiveness in the game than you. <shrug>

Anyway, I wouldn't sweat it too hard. I think the army I ran into a turn ago could do a fair number on Man. Plus, once all of his normal troops are gone, those bladewinds are going to start chewing through his elite troops. Personally, I was very impressed by your many well-equipped commanders. I think a group of 3-5 Black Knight commanders, well-equipped, along with a small supporting cast of Black Knights, could do some serious damage. Heck, even your barbarian commanders were pretty serious powerhouses with all of the equipment. I was just lucky to have black hunters with death poison.

I don't really know a good counter to Wrathful Skies, though. What does Construction 7 give? Mechanical Men? Those are pretty nice. I have had surprisingly good success with Mechanical Militia in another game. Enchantment 5 can grant Thunder Ward, but that requires you to have an Air mage to begin with.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">During early game and some of middle game the black knights are very lethal. However as mages become more powerful because of research the black knights overall become weaker and weaker because of spells which can weaken them and spells which can summon more powerful beings. When it comes to military units which are purchased time is against you unless the units can get a strong blessing.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

I can't work with base Ulm either. Everything is so goddarn expensive.

Ironically, most players reccommend Ulm to newbies. *shrug*

Were I you, I would ignore the black plate and stick with regular infantry of ulm. Also, I would forget the rainbow alchemist in favor of a combat oriented pretender

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Mechanical Mans have the benefit of being immune to Wrathing, as well as all other elemental and poison attacks, as well as being nationally constructible in bulk by Ulm.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thunderward is nearly useless: It only grants partial lightning resistance, which is insufficient to actually stop it from killing you. Unless it can stack with something else to achieve full immunity, it will not prevent everyone from dying, because in Dominions, anything which can kill you, will, when applied as indiscriminately as Wrathing is.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thunderward is nearly useless: It only grants partial lightning resistance, which is insufficient to actually stop it from killing you. Unless it can stack with something else to achieve full immunity, it will not prevent everyone from dying, because in Dominions, anything which can kill you, will, when applied as indiscriminately as Wrathing is. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrm. Well - Thunderward would stack with an air 9 blessing, except Ulm doesn't get sacred troops. Nonetheless, I have to disagree slightly.

Given decent troops, seems like Thunderward might keep them alive long enough to kill the caster of Wrathful Skies. Caster dies, the spell dies, right? If the caster brings troops (which Wrathing commanders may not), again, Thunderward allows even militia to have a chance at surviving long enough to inflict some casualties.

However - barring a nice indie site, Ulm isn't going to get Air mages. Kind of a shame, given their Earth magic strengths, that there isn't an Earth based spell for avoiding / reducing lightning damage - after all, that heavy iron / steel armor should, with magic, act as lightning rods. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Really - Earth seems like the perfect area of magic to get lightning resistance as a mass spell, while Air, I can see it giving individual lightning resistance, but for the entire army? Air magic should want to _maximize_ the effects of lightning and storms, not avoid it.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Schmoe--

I'm the one playing Ulm in our game, not SlyFrog. No, I wouldn't complain about being weak, but I'm not exactly sure if I'm the strongest. Abyssia seems pretty scary to me. Man is pretty powerful, too!

SlyFrog--

I've refined my Ulm strategy a bit since we started that game (in which you were Jotunheim), but it's mostly still the same. I make no claims to being an expert at this game (of course), but I think I can give some advice on Ulm. Here is my strategy:

Rainbow pretender (for searching, forging all those cool items the smiths can't). I took the Great Enchantress to get astral income, so I can more easily make clams to get more astral to have item-forging flexibility.

Scales: Order 2, Production 3, Misfortune 2, Drain 3. This means I have a -ton- of cash, especially in the beginning. As Ulm, you can hire every mercenary available and just crush anything close to you in the beginning. Ulm has got to be the strongest faction early on.

Castle: Fortified city. I know people would doubt that choice since they're so expensive, but with this combo, you get the best production possible in the game. Making black plates even relatively early on is no problem. Crank those suckers out. And with all your money, making another city isn't too terribly hard. Although you could always go with the Castle and make another one earlier on.

Commanders: I forge items like mad and equip all my commanders (including even some items for my priests). I love those barbarian commanders, they're cheap and they kick *** once properly equipped.

Magic: Independent mages are important, but those smiths can lay some serious smack down just by themselves. Blade wind, magma bolts.. Also the unit pumping spells like legions of steel and strength of giants can really help. Suddenly your units all have 14 str and 23-27 protection.

I'm not sure how all of this will work in the late game, but it seems to do great from the beginning to the midgame.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The problem being that due to the way resists are evaluated, your mage will balk at the prospect of casting Thunder Ward upon your troops once they are blessed. The coverage on Thunder Ward is also a bit hard to control. There's higher level alternative with much better coverage, "Storm Warriors", which does the same thing for all your units. This one is less likely to balk or miss.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If the caster is still *THERE*, yeah. If the caster decides to remove his august presence from the battlefield, it won't end until every Last enemy is dead.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Empirical evidence from the field says that this is not the case: I am unable to observe any obvious difference between an army protected solely by Storm Warriors or Thunder Ward, and an army that isn't, under wrathing. They all seem to die just the same. Maybe if your troops were exceptionally fast, some would survive, but Ulmish infantries are slow. Even if they were fast, this is not likely to change the fact that they will still be savaged! This is no way to fight!

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There *IS* an earth-gem based item, which provides this lightning rod benefit...to your commanders, anyway. I don't think that being part of the lightning rod is beneficial to your health, though.

The primary thing to remember as Ulm is that you should not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for you are flammable and conduct electricity.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

I don't play Ulm, but I play Last of Tuatha quite often, so I might shed some light on the issue from a different perspective. There seem to be several shortcomings in your strategy ...

</font>

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Sidhe ain't ordinary, they are holy, capital-only troops. Danoine Sidhe (troops) cost 35/16 (vs. Ulm inf 10/18+ and Black Knights 60/70+), the commanders are nearly prohibitive expensive. Add to this the fact that LoT has forced Luck-1 and Magic-1 and needs the magic for a decent blessing (Air-9 for lightning resistance in this case?). Result: The LoT player is hard pressed to get an decent income via order scale. But with taking order he nullifies his luck advantage. If he manages to outnumber your black knights by 30:8, you have build to few units. Did you choose order/prod scale and a high admin castle?
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">danoine sidhe have medium prot (13 - 1pt less than Blade Wind does damage), but high defense (15). With a Lvl-4 water blessing they'll be at 17, with 1-Star-Exp at 18, plus the glamour ability. Your inf has an attack of 10 (black knights 12), chances of your troops hitting his are rather slim (Check out the spreadsheet .. you'll find it on various sites).
  His attack strength isn't that great either, but with 4 units of his attacking one of yours your defense is at -3 with the 4th attack - hit almost assured.
  Conclusion: Make shure you'll have numerical superiority - this will nullify his high defense. Shouldn't be too hard, as you should have the better eco and the cheaper troops.
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Use indy shortbows firing at short range into the melee. Storm wouldn't matter much this way. They won't do much damage to your heavily armored troops, but each hit will kill the glamour of the unit hit. (chances are 10+2d6/10+2d6+2)
  Keep in mind, though, that this will cause moral checks for both sides, as there will be friendly fire incidences. so make shure you keep your morale high.
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">items on commanders
  Looks like you spend way too much mage-time on forging items for commanders which die anyway.
  Better convert your earth gems to gold to buy more troops in the beginning, so you can expand faster and with fewer losses.
  So first send your commanders into melee (bodyguards!), and if anyone survives long enough to get a heroic ability, than deck him out with items. Keep their defense high enough not to get hit by every attack. Black Plate works only on mounted commanders, which do not suffer from negative defense from armor. First priority should be to make them more survivable, killing speed comes second.
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">spells
  Blade wind is fine against fodder and ethereal summons, but doesn't do much damage against medium armored troop, if at all. Buy cheap Ulm Inf as fodder and boost them with "Legions of Steel" .. they'll soak up some arrows and javelin/spear attacks from danoine sidhe.
  Clockwork horrors are lightning resistant as mechanical men are.
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">setting up your troops
  Have your knights flank his front line and go for "attack rear". Set some fodder inf. with "hold and attack" a little bit in front of you main force, as far to the right as possible. They will be targeted first - and DOM units do not switch target before it's destroyed/routed.
  Have all others just behind them with attack orders.
  Choose their targets carefully.
  -</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">indy mages
  If you're lucky enough to find sages, make shure to keep them out of your dominion in a secluded lab where they can safely boost your research.</font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Hope this is helpful.
A.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">He just scales better than you do. Right now you are more powerful, but in the end he will be more powerful since blood scales so well.

It was an interesting game I'll give it that. Too bad I got dog piled.

BTW, I think that Daoine Sidhe are one of the best if not the best price/performance holy troops in the game. If they were not capital only they would be real terrors.

[ July 02, 2004, 06:52: Message edited by: Huzurdaddi ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

The key to winning with Ulm is keeping a steady supply of Kässpätzle and Schupfnudeln. Honestly.


Personally, I prefer large amounts of contructs (Mechanical Men, Crusher, etc) backed up by blade-wind casting mages. Add to that some cavalry and you're good. And forge as many items as possible.

Then, of course, I'm not exactly an expert in Dom2. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

@Reverend

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif Are you really from Ulm ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

City map of Ulm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Yep. You can almost see the school I went to on the starting section of that map. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

I think a heavy-duty combat Pretender helps Ulm. Obviously it helps in the early game in taking territory. But it also helps in the mid-game, because it may deter people from attacking you at a time when your national troops are not so scary. Hopefully this gets you over the hump to the point when you can summon some nice commanders to put your nifty items on. Note that it you can get an Earth/Astral mage then you can make Golems to fight for you, and skip the Conjuration school. Also, if you can get any sort of non-Earth/Fire gem income going at all then Forge of the Ancients is your friend, since it will open up lower-level items from all magic paths. Best pump a ton of Earth gems into it if you want it to Last at all, however.

With that said, it does seem to me that base Ulm is a bit lacking. It's good at forging weak Earth and Fire items. And its troops have high protection. Those are the only tricks it has, and they aren't all that good. What I think would be cool is if Ulm had some (expensive) national spells that let them make heavy weapon constructs, things like Ballistas or Catapults or Cannons.

[ July 02, 2004, 14:19: Message edited by: Vynd ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Cool.

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"></font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
I'll admit that one fault is that I did not start up the spy unrest early enough. I'm taking care of that now (I have the spies, I was not doing it for diplomatic purposes). Nonetheless, I have "built a few units." That's the problem; those other units suck; they are not worth the massive amount of resources you pay for them. The black plate infantry dies too easily. I did juice both my order and production (offset by misfortune and drain), and I have a 40 admin castle.

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"></font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
But that's just the problem. I don't have the cheaper troops. Oh, sure, they may cost less gold, but even with the high admin castles, you can pump out about 5 per turn on average (a little more in the capital, a little less elsewhere). I can't pump out anywhere near the amount to get the type of numerical advantage I seem to need.

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"></font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
Well, I had archers (admittedly not short bows firing at close range, although I'm not sure how they would have gotten to close range). Of course, when you mention "keep your morale high," you toss one right into the wheelhouse of big Ulm problems - Morale.

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"></font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
No, I didn't actually create a ton of items, because as I mentioned, I realize that Ulm's commanders suck, and the items are wasted. I agree with your general assessment, but what it amounts to is that admitting that Ulm's forge bonus isn't really that valuable for Ulm.

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana"></font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
I had some clockwork horrors, but they are so brittle. I agree that they are valuable, however, and I screwed up by losing a decent batch of them earlier in the game.

I agree with your assessment on the blade wind, but don't see alot of options for earth mages to kill high protection troops beside that.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It was. I appreciate the effort; don't take my responses as contrarian. It's just that I've been trying alot of the stuff you've mentioned, and it didn't gel. Another part of the admitted problem is that I'm stuck in the damn wasteland on this map.

[ July 02, 2004, 14:29: Message edited by: Sly Frog ]

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't played much Ulm, but their mages were EEF, right? Two words: Magma spells.

At Evoc3 Magma Bolts, 3 bolts with 23+ AP damage, at Evoc6 Magma Eruption, area effect 23+ AP damage.

At least in theory they should work a lot better than Blade Wind against high protection.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't played much Ulm, but their mages were EEF, right? Two words: Magma spells.

At Evoc3 Magma Bolts, 3 bolts with 23+ AP damage, at Evoc6 Magma Eruption, area effect 23+ AP damage.

At least in theory they should work a lot better than Blade Wind against high protection. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I will chime in on Magma Eruption. It is a beautiful spell that I've had very good success with in the past. Make sure to cast Earth power first, and the casualties will mount. Magma Bolts is a servicable workhorse of a spell, as well. I think it's one of the better low-level evocations, and I always make frequent use of it when I can.

Huzardadi, were you Pythium? I really wish you hadn't quit. After seeing one of your battles with Abysia where you wiped the floor with him, and then subsequently punked Caelum's air queen, I'm quite honestly surprised that you dropped out. It looked to me like you were in a pretty good position. Having an AI in your place will really help out your hostile neighbors, which, unfortunately, are not me.

Sly, sorry about the confusion. I feel bad about the fate of Jotunheim. It seems like the only defense against an early dogpile is to try to convince other neighbors to attack the weak flanks of your enemies.

Ulm in our game is a tough nut to crack. I'm going to do my level best, though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well there are plenty more Abysian armies out there.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I have to agree with that. The only defence seems to be availiable if the diplomatic suitation is fluid. In both Jotuhheim's and My case the alliances were set and there was nothing to be done. He did fight until the Last man though. Got to give him credit. I OTOH got to attached to my empire to see it split up the hordes.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

Well because Sly Frog seems to be having a little bit of a hard time finding help with Base (Yes?) Ulm, I have a few suggestions some of which may be helpful, some may not be plausible in your current or future games and some have been mentioned but I just want to list everything that I have had success with while playing Ulm:

1.) Spies. Spies provide a distractionary force as well a gold cutter. How I use them is by placing one on nearby provinces and any province that has a castle or indep capability use a dogpile of Spies to jump the Unrest immediately to 200. Usually 8 will do. Then stealth away to a nearby province either making my opponent use money for PD or near a magical attack squad so their 'retreat' orders won't leave them stranded or dead.

2.) Master Smiths. These fellows have a variety of uses. I will list a few of the common tactics with them.
</font>

• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Combat Support Mages: Focus on Earthquake, Blade Wind, Destruction, Magma Eruption, Magma Bolts, Earth Meld, Strength of Giants, Legion of Steel, Weapons of Sharpness etc</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Forging Ability: Contrary to the previous posters in this thread, I have always found Black Knight Commanders properly equipped to be much more of a flanking force than the Black Knight units. Equipped with the right weapons, they can beat other mini-combatants and situational casters (Wrath for example). Also I tend to make alot of Bane Lord/Firbolgs with the proper equipment that in the proper numbers will defeat most other single SC's and armies</font>
• <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Combat Mages: Give your Smiths a decent forged weapon and a pair of winged boots scripted with: Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Fire Shield, then attack. They can turn the tide of a battle especialy in masse.</font>

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">
3.) Everyone knows that Base Ulm has a weakness with morale. Counter that base priest morale with items, easy items to use are Horns of Valor, Herald Lances.

4.) The often underestimated Siege units. If/when the Lord Guardian gets a significant Castle Defense bonus (akin to the Siege Engineer) you can use take and hold measures. As it is right now you can use Guardians and Sappers to fortify and create large mass pushes against castle fronts. Usually 10-20 Sappers (Which I find better than Art's) is enough to drop a Castle Wall near instantly.

5.) Forge of the Ancients. The Most important Ulm spell there is. Even if all you get is one turn of this spell it drops the price of gems so low, you can create a huge stockpile of equipment for equipping waiting or on the way SC's to fill the gaps of your normal army.

6.) Your Normal Army with the aid of Support Magics should be able to take on most other normal armies, sans high strength. Even then, with Strength of the Giants, Marble Warriors and Legion of Steel they create a harsh buffer or body wall. As long as you are able to protect a good portion of them from mass battlefield spells (Wrath, Firestorm, etc) with quick reaction teams/squads (Spring Hawks, Flying Commanders, etc) it will force your opponent to engage it otherwise he will lose a good portion of income/land. As long as you know and are prepared for this, you can weigh the battle to your side.

7.) Independants are more important to Ulm than some other nations. But you will always have a chance to get Independants. Whether from Sites or from base Province type you will always have at least one province with a mage with different paths. It is important to take advantage of these as soon as possible.

8.) The pretender design for Ulm is the key component. If you're unable to fill the gaps in the magical diversity of Ulm with a Pretender then you've already lost the game since there is only so much you can do with a single 1F2E mage.

9.) Scout Blood Hunting for Ulm is still valid. While not as good as it was it still can represent a large factor in Ulm's strategy.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If the caster is still *THERE*, yeah. If the caster decides to remove his august presence from the battlefield, it won't end until every Last enemy is dead.
</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Hrm. That seems bogus, the spell continuing after the caster has retreated or left via spell. After all - if the spell can continue, unending, with the caster not being there, then the spell would still be going, months later. And why would it stop after the caster's army was defeated? The troops aren't keeping the spell going, so Wrathful Skies ought to just keep going and going and going until all troops are dead.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">He didn't die, so I guess the spell keeps going. Since he now can't be killed, because he's not present anymore, it'll keep going until the battle ends. It would certainly change things if the Storm and Wrathing ended when the staffbearer and caster left. This would open up other interesting SoS tricks, though.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Presumably, the wrathing could very well continue after the caster's army has been destroyed, but since the attacker no longer has any reason to remain in that locality, and the spell probably is only over a limited area since the province's population is not decimated by it, the attacking army elects to quickly flee the scene offscreen after the battle ends. Since nobody is there anymore, I suppose the caster then no longer has any incentive to continue to maintain the spell.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I haven't played much Ulm, but their mages were EEF, right? Two words: Magma spells.

At Evoc3 Magma Bolts, 3 bolts with 23+ AP damage, at Evoc6 Magma Eruption, area effect 23+ AP damage.

At least in theory they should work a lot better than Blade Wind against high protection. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You'd think so, but for some reason, I've never really seen Magma Bolts do much damage. Magma Eruption seems to suffer from being a fairly high level to research in the early-midgame, and also has taken out more of my own troops when I've tried to use it than enemy troops.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

If your Ulmish army doesn't have enough heavy infantry, build the lesser-equipped Versions until it does, then later build the more heavily-armored ones. The Plate + Shield ones are better at surviving very powerful blows, but even the guys in chainmail with no shield can survive a lot of abuse, and they can be built about twice as fast.

I bet arbalests can do some good work in storms, because (I assume) their reload time of 3 means their net rate of fire is less effected by not being able to fire for a turn or two (since reloading probably isn't interrupted (reloading isn't even interrupted by melee, even though it should be...) - just firing).

Since Ulmish heavy troops take a long time to build, it's important to keep them alive longer by including fodder in your armies. Guys who are there mainly to get killed instead of your expensive troops.

The Black Knights (and Templars) are generally too expensive to try to make your head-on force. I've had much more luck using them as a delayed flanking force, so they don't charge straight into something too dense and deadly.

Ulm should avoid using its heavy armor against foes that bypass their heavy armor - you need to find something cheaper and without the heavy armor to throw at such threats.

PvK

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

All very useful advice. I guess my general problem is that black plate is supposed to be the strength of Ulm, yet it seems to not really have that much of an advantage against other factions' normal troops, particularly in light of the cost difference. Yet the other factions certainly have a major magic advantage against Ulm.

I guess if I were to suggest a juice, which as a novice I clearly cannot say is necessary, but would seem to me to fit with the Ulm theme and have an interesting impact on play, it would be to increase the ordinary Ulmish magic resistance. In this way, you would give them a bit of a boost against their magic using counterparts, and it would fit in with the Ulmish idea of a race of iron and steel resistant to magic.

Re: Help, I suck with Ulm!
 

The heavy armor is a great advantage against most conventional troops. You just have to learn how to deploy it effectively. Again, have enough numbers, include fodder, flank with knights, and (not mentioned before here) don't have arbalests shooting into the main battle line, since they are one of the few missile types that can hurt your own men. Drain scale helps a bit with magic resistance.

While enemies may be able to out-produce your troops at first, you should generally be able to keep your troops alive longer, win more battles once you have enough of them, and they don't cost much gold, so you end up with a nice amount of extra cash, which means you can do lots of other things like hire independent mages, build castles that multiply the number of heavy ulm inf you can build, hire mercenaries, get more smiths, afford to raise and "use" a bunch of cannon fodder, hire knights, etc.

Practice makes perfect.

PvK

P.S. The other thing to realize is that like most things, Ulm units are good at some things, and not good at others. The thing to do about this is to make a point of acquiring other abilities (from research, the pretender, independents, summons, empowerment, etc.) so that you have other things with different strengths and weaknesses, so you can deal with different situations.

Removing the weaknesses will let you win without having to think (see Crusader mod), but isn't very interesting once you realize how overpowered it is. It's not a bad idea though for learning the game (a different way to give yourself an "easy" setting, I guess - just make a mod that gives Ulm units higher MR, or change Antimagic into an Earth spell. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ).

[ July 03, 2004, 21:25: Message edited by: PvK ]