What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Which pretender is the one for Ulm? I have always used the Virtue for Ulm in the Dominions 2 demo, and I have always given her mastery of astral and air magics. However, some people seem to go with the master alchemist and other pretenders. I need to know if I picked the right pretender.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

There is no 'best pretender'. Some people go with an oracle with great scales, some with a cyclops(earth globals) or some other form of SC god to make use of ulms forging ability. My personal favourite is an awake/sleeping rainbow pretender with enough death magic to summon thugs(black servants, banelords, maybe even wraithlords) and forge items my smiths cant

(black servants with heavy armour, a charcoal/black steel shield, probably strength boosters and maybe antimagic amulet/lucky pendant from pretender make excellent early thugs/raiders)

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Alright, then, what about my pretender who is skilled in astral and air magics. Since Ulm uses fire and earth magics, did I create a bad pretender?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

My preferred Ulm Pretender:

Crone pretender, 3f 2a 2w 1e 3s 3d 2n. Scale: Order 3, Production 3, Heat 1, Drain 3, Dominion 4

Just fits my style best.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Master Smiths occassionally get Air or Astral randoms. Your pretender would probably have found few sites that would have generated gems, and depending on how much Air/Astral your Virtue had and how high you are in construction, you would get some magic-boosting items for your Smiths. S2 for Starshine Skullcap, Air 4 for Winged Helmet/Bag of Air... Even without Air boosters, Earth/Astral and Earth/Air item combinations can be very nice, and now you'd have the gems to use those.

Virtue is pretty expensive to take just for some magic in Air and Astral, though, because you'll have a hard time getting much use out of them. Astral 2 to 5 is enough for all forging purposes (and 4 is enough for mages with Head slot for Starshine Skullcap), and Air 4 gives you all major Air items I can think of. There are no Astral or Air spells in Construction that your virtue could cast, and very few useful things in Evocation or Conjuration. Enchantment, on the other hand, would allow you to protect your armies from lightning and give you access to Antimagic. There are only few Earth spells in Enchantment, but at least Enliven Statues can be used to great effect.

Most Ulm strategies rely on Conjuration 3 (Earth Power, +1 Earth for Master Smiths), Evocation for battles (Magma Bolts, Blade Wind, Magma Eruption, perhaps Rain of Stones, Gifts from Heaven, Phoenix Power/Falling Fires for the Smiths with randoms) and Construction for fancy items. Your Virtue won't fit this strategy, but as I said above, Enchantment-based strategy based on keeping your tough units alive might work.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

It's only a good or bad prenteder depending of wich use you want to make of him :

Sometimes you will want to use the same magic on your pretender as what you get on your national mages because you're sure to have a starting income of gems for those magics (moreover, your national mages will be able to search for more sites)

Other times you will instead prefer to use other magics, as you did, in order to eitheir get a good blessing, or get access to some spells/units or items not usually available to your nation : it will be harder to find air sites or cast air spells with only your pretender having air magic, but later in the game this might give you access for exemple to the Air Queens, that's 3 unique units that can make good SC (super combattants), and each one is a powerful air mage.

Astral has its uses too : akashic record can improve your gem income by finding all sites on your provinces, and some of the most powerful items are astral (ring of sorcery and ring of wizardry for exemple, but also the classic ring of luck, amulet of antimagic, ...)

Of course some pretenders will be easier to play that others, but whatever configuration you choose might be useful anyway (you could even have a pretender with no magic (or just its starting magic), and use the points to by a combattant prentender (a wyrm for exemple) and very good scales and/or dominion.

You will then be able to recruit (and maintain) easily very large national armies.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

It was 6 for both Air and Astral. BTW, does having a magic drain domain affect my prophet and pretender?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Master Smiths can research without Drain malus. The ability is unique to them, and pretenders or prophets who don't start with it aren't immune to it. Master Alchemist might be immune to Drain, like Master Smiths.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

So, what's the best way to use a Virtue for Ulm in order to be successful?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Use her to expand on her own after forging some black steel equip for her. High dominion to boost awe makes it less risky. Also, don't bother with astral, it costs a ton and doesn't make her much better.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

So, instead of Astral, go with something else, like Earth or Nature?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

No, extra paths are very expensive for the virtue, and don't improve her lot. If you want more versatility, pick a different chassis.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I like an E9 Cyclops and good scales. He's a pretty tough SC and once he has racked up afflictions he can summon Living Statues by droves and/or cast all the big Earth globals.

Giving him a few "something else" (a couple Fire or Water) makes him more versatile but you may have to make it Dormant.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I like dormant Pretenders. You get 150 building points and only lose your first year-a year that you can spend building up your home province, building armies, researching spells, and building magic items. You aren't immediately in a big push to expand, and you can't do a whole lot that first year, even with a Pretender available, because you'd quickly overextend yourself when your nation is weakest. Another advantage is a year of contemplation about your nation, any special events, and your surrounding neighbors. Sometimes that's worth a whole lot too.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Huh, don't ever do that in MP, you'll end up totally outclassed - it's not unusual to have 8-10 provinces by the end of the first year (even with indies at 7+) !

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Dormant or imprisoned pretenders can work fine, but that doesn't mean the nation shouldn't expand. EA Ulm doesn't need a pretender to expand quickly, because they have good units which can be recruited quickly enough. MA Ulm can expand steadily once it acquires a body of heavy infantry of sufficient size that it won't rout. LA Ulm is sort of like MA Ulm in that regard, except it can also mass produce some missile units to get started faster, but they're less durable and heavy inf.

PvK

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I'm not talking about no expansion whatsoever, I'm talking about not taking a province every single turn, which is what I usually am doing by the time I have my Pretender, unless I'm playing R'lyeh, in which case it's usually atleast 1 every 2 turns or better until I've got Wish researched and a pearl-factory set up and can start spamming demon contracts on land.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Only 1 every 2 turns with rlyeh? What era are you playing?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Early era, and I don't really have much use for provinces except as defensive bulwarks, or to take them away from an opponent, because I play ea R'lyeh with all scales except magic and luck at -3. I can usually do a lot more damage to an opponent without leaving my lands than I can for the same amount of effort/cost with an army, via globals, summons, etc.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Don't know what's best, but I had fun in SP using an awake N4 Mother of Earth and good scales.

Use the Pretender for site search until equipped. Then it became quite a lethal SC. The recruited units more than held its own without help due to the strong scales

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.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Some ideas to combat lightning as MA Ulm:

* Thin screens of cheap/light troops in front of the main army.
* Archers ordered to Fire [at] Archers [and mages].
* Blade Wind.
* Heavy cavalry commanders with shock-resist (and perhaps other items, possibly escorted by Black Knights) and ordered to Attack Rear.

PvK

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

This one is a good candidate for the optimal MA Ulm pretender. Ulm can forge heavy armor and shield without any research and that's enough for GK to start taking indies. GK can take province, search it, take next, search etc... It's obviously preferrable to use him to conquer mountain/forest/swamp provinces leaving plains and farmlands to regular ulmish troops. That should quickly establish good income of various gems. Researching Alt-2 will quickly help GK. Then after researching some invocation for battlefield magic and construction for magic boosters Ulm can concentrate on conjuration. By that time GK should finish his expansion work and start forging and later summonning to open different magic paths. That needs to be planned from the beginning because Ulm really need to get some better access to magic. I think that it's critical to get some death on GK (for spectres and thugs) and enough nature to be able to summon Ivy Kings (with boosters). Choice of other paths can vary I think, but something like W2A2F2 (or more) is good for searching, forging and buffs. A bit of astral is also an option, though it will prevent one from using GK beyond the expansion phase because of magic duel.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

A quick idea: Certain Pretenders which are thematically ideal for a specific nation-say for instance Forge Lord for Ulm, should for the same price be more powerful for that particular nation. Thus, when you pick Forge Lord for Ulm, he gains a bonus of 50% to Forging, instead of 25%. It's not a huge bonus, and it gives you a decent Pretender which fits the nation's theme. At some point, it might even allow that particular Pretender to forge magical items for free, which again wouldn't be a grossly overpowered ability for a forging nation.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Myself, I prefer Celestial Badger.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

The Forge Lord is terribly expensive for what you get. Most 125 point pretenders have 2/1 magic, but the Forge Lord just has 1/1. His forging bonus isn't that good; with a dwarven hammer he'll get items for half price, but that's still just one item a turn. Has anyone tried gaming the system and turning him into a clam factory? I tried turning him into a blood item factory for Late Era Marignon, but the discount didn't seem to affect soul contracts.

For nations with powerful, diverse magic that include fire and earth, he might be useful to jump-start item production. Machaka and Shinyuyama come to mind. Unfortunately, they don't get him.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I'm the demonic badger.

Muahahahahahahaha!

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

No one said Prince of Death with 9/10 dominion? That's my favourite. It can expand since turn 0 and archers/javelins alone pose a problem for him.

Forge him armour/helmet/shield and no indy can touch him. Also a move of three via air. Can always attack rear. And can kill pretty much most normal armies that are not supported by high researched mages or SCs. Can also single-handedly take all underwater provinces with a ring of water breathing or a similiar item - a nice bonus in a game where there are no underwater nations.

Basically I seem to love it.

Oh, and I've never lost arena with him yet. This gives nice exp boost and a trident which makes him all the more lethal (actually kills stuff instead of making everything flee:). Yup I'm aware some SCs would kick his *** in the arena, but just haven't ran into those yet.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Hmm...What about the Enchantress and the General? Are they good choices as well?

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

I have used them both and had fun with them.

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

Re: What is the best pretender for Ulm?
 

They are quite suboptimal (but that's not Ulm specific).