EA Ulm advice wanted
 

For an upcoming Multiplayer game I'll be taking control of EA Ulm, and wondering if anyone has any specific information about how to wield them properly and how to design a Pretender for them.

I've played as them before, but I always feel that in EA they're extremely bland. I've predominantly beaten the computer using them through sheer force of Blesses, but against possible W9?9 Helheim and Vanheim in this upcoming multiplayer game, I won't have as exploitive an advantage over a human player as I did over AI.

Which leads me to ask, what are EA Ulm's big advantages, big weaknesses, and how can I design an army and a Pretender to let me do my best?

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Pray, pray very hard you do not start next to Kailasa.

There's been a recent 'fun' tactic of trample Ulm to death with massed elephants before turn 15, going on.

This as happened with Bander Log vs Ulm and Patala vs Ulm.

Ulm does'nt stand a chance against this tactic, because his largest unit is size 3 and elephants are size 6. Also 120 crossbows/archers all set to target large monsters does not work either...

Might be a good idea to take a awake, tough pretender, just to make sure your not rushed and crushed early on.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Thaumaturgy;

Sleep and Panic.
Bonds of Fire (morale-dependent, so it should REALLY slow those elephants down!).

Alteration:
Earth Grip/Earth Meld might work. False Fetters has a much better chance of working, but Air 2 is rare.

Perhaps Great Bears from Conjuration. They are size 4.

However, I still haven't been able to use tramplers to as good effect as (seemingly) everyone else, so I might undervalue elephants.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

You have to remember how pitiful Ulm's mages are. Unless I take a fire-casting Pretender I am likely not going to be able to reliably field any variety of fire magic whatsoever. Ulm gets only meager earth and nature spells by default! With no real mages, it's hard to pull off strategies like that.

Plus, although being trampled by Elephants would indeed be a lousy state of affairs, there's also the Van/Helheim bunch nearby. I need to have less dedicated strategies, and more effective ones overall.

IE, the information I'm seeking is more general. I see many terribly redundant troops, and many unnecessarily expensive ones (Mountain Warriors vs. Normal Warriors... no real benefit to upgrading), and a very odd Sacred that I'm just not sure what to do with.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Saw MA Ulm use Bonds of Fire, he had 6-12 dwarven smiths (this was his final stand vs Bander Log in his capital fortress), while they did effect the elephants, they only seemed to slow them 1 or 2 rounds, so not really effective.

Others may be useful, not seen them used or tried them to stop a elephant stampede.

The tactic seems to be to amass 10-20+ elephants in one large mass, mix in some higher morale apes/other units. Very simple, more deadly than a multi-blessed nation to any nation with size 3 or smaller units.

Also its usually backed up with 20 - 40+ longbows just for added pain.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

My bonds of fire(it was my capitol http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif) slowed them down and, i honestly believe that if i had a larger number of troops and better mage placement(maul barbarians and my flail men come to mind) i could have crushed the elephants as, even with only a few troops i inflicted a couple of casualties before going down.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

I just started a large game with EA Ulm and chose a Dragon awake pretender with a high Domain to try and avoid that. With the Awe + Fear and my breath weapon I hope to make people pause before rushing me. The breath will help alot with the Van/Hel (though probably not enough). I get to expand very fast which is a big plus as well.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

I felt kinda bad for doing it Shovah, but I just had to.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Elephants can squash anything smaller than themselves almost no matter what it is... until they get hurt and panic and trample their own men. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Bunches of archers are one counter that can work...

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

You haven't been the only one that did it to him, and Patala/Kailasa pretty much has to do it in the early game. Or at least, it's the easiest strategy.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

EA Ulm can be very powerful, especially early on before they have to worry about nasty magic.

Of their national troops, I prefer the female warriors with shields (skilled, shielded, good value for gold and resources), and archers. Armored archers in front of unarmored archers.

Blessable two-handed sword guys can be good too, especially depending on the blessing.

The axe throwers can be ok - a blizzard of axes can be deadly, but they are vulnerable.

Warrior Smiths are of course nice. Sometimes they can make nice combat participants in various unexpected ways.

PvK

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

PvK, what sort of blesses are worth stacking on their sacreds? And what function to the Warrior Smiths have? I usually just made as many standard Warriors as possible (10/10 is as cheap as Ulm gets, really). When I was playing against AI's, a F10 bless on the Steel Warriors was good at slicing right through Glamour, but I felt it may have been overkill.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

A low level nature bless on the steel warriors makes them a lot more durable since regen reduces the chance of afflictions by a large margin. It's especially good since they don't have shields.

I also used primarily warrior maidens and archers in absolute masses. First unarmored but later armored archers, and hordes of warrior smiths. The best kind of battle mage warrior smiths are the E3, E2F1 and F2E1 types, because when you give them earth boots and a girdle, they will be brutal at casting blade wind, magma eruption and fireball respectively. Magma eruption is easily my favorite of those, it REALLY gets rid of the annoying enemies in quantity even if they have shields.

Shamans and antlered shamans are good for casting panic and those should be the best against big low morale things like elephants.

Edi

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

News of happiness: Kailasa doesn't have elephants. Does anyone actually have elephants in EA? There are trologdytes(?), but they are... probably... not as bad.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

No, not as bad. Worse.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Ick. And I know there IS an Agartha in the upcoming game.

This lack of Cavalary or shield use is really pretty distressing. If I use massive amounts of the Warrior Maidens, who seem to have much better accuracy than the cheaper archer gals, would flaming arrows be a must? Seems a tad risky to bet so hard on such an easily negated form of combat, but like I said in the beginning, Ulm is really pretty hamstrung in EA.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Troglodytes are size 5 tramplers and have far better morale than elephants, but not as many hit points. 47 is still tough, though.

Flaming arrows is good, but you need a fire booster to get it going. Fortunately the shamans have FEDN randoms so it's just a matter of time before you land one who gets both F and D from those, allowing you to make a skull of fire for one of your F2E1 warrior smiths. If you put a F9N4 bless on your steel warriors, they can and will hurt anything that comes up against them rather brutally. An air bless would not be bad either, because the steel warriors WILL be taking fire from archers, both enemy and your own.

Massed warrior smiths and strong evocation is the way to go. Something like trogs and elephants are really NOT going to like magma bolts, fireballs, and magma eruption and blade wind is a staple.

One of the strengths of EA Ulm is that even though its mages are not very powerful, they are very versatile. Also, except for your mountain, iron and steel warriors and warrior smiths, all of your units are stealthy and every single one of them has both mountain and forest survival. So you have excellent raiding potential. Lots and lots of scouts should give you eyes to see and warrior chiefs with lots of archers and warrior maidens should make for good raiding groups that can take care of most PD garrisons easily since the otehr players will be using their money for mages and troops.

You will probably want to take at least some production scale since EA Ulm needs lots of troops quickly and that requires comparatively more resources than money.

Edi

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

If you want to keep your sacreds alive, a single lvl 9 astral bless is good. It gives twist fate. Working very well on my Marverni sacreds. Also its a very, very cheap bless, so you can have good scales. It also means you have a pretender with lvl 9 astral magic which gives you access to alot of nasty late game spells.

It won't help much against tramplers, but hopefully you will not start any where near Agartha.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Ulm has fairly strong archers, but these are one of the easiest types of units to negate. They also have axemen with throwing axes--which do a suprisingly heavy amount of damage.

Mixing unit types leads to stronger armies, but the real question is, what do you mix with what? To my knowledge, it seems like the Axemen are the most lethal, since they can throw axes on approach and then use these high-damage weapons to hack up troops when they get into melee, striking twice a turn.

But there's no real reason to use the advanced soldiers, is there? A little bit of armor for half again as much cost?

Also, much was said of the warrior smiths. Besides the smithing bonus, what help are they? They have a little bit of command skill, but the shamans also get priest spells, and stealth. They also cost fewer resources, which is Ulm's main limitation.

I think EA Ulm's sacreds are pretty worthless in any major strategic sense. Being that they're Capitol Only and rather basic (and without shields), there's not much worth to the added cost. The chance to drop a high bless on them is tempting, but I think it's more tempting to heavily tip the scales and produce more units. What do you guys think?

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Most of the Ulmish warrior units are useless. The ones with throwing axes may do some good but the rest are rubbish. The reason why they are rubbish is because they have a basic attack of 10 or 11 that gets cut down to 8 or 9 due to ambidexterity penalties, meaning that the first time they go up against any high defense medium armor units like almost everything EA Ermor, Vanheim or Helheim and possibly other have, they will accomplish precisely nothing.

If you want to use double attack melee units, use the Steel Maidens. Twin short swords mean only a penalty of 1 to a base attack higher than that of the various warriors and mixing them in with the Shield Maidens will give them some more durability. The Steel Maidens have fairly high defense for line units and are tougher than most other national infantries anyway.

The Steel Warriors (sacred) do suffer from one pretty severe limitation and that is slow movement with mapmove 1. So they will become more or less obsolete as soon as you expand more than five provinces outward (assuming you get that far, of course). Takes too long to get them to the front and you don't have any astral mages (or means to get them unless you get Athalwolf the Maker of Heroes) to gate them to a friendly lab in the frontlines. So instead of a ?9 bless, you can go the route of several minor blesses, which would also give you magical versatility. The main problem there is that the most useful minor blesses would be E4F4W4N4 and you get rather the abundance of those magics already. D4 doesn't do much but gives you death magic and S4 likewise for astral. A4+ gives them some survivability against arrows and you and you need that much to produce the air boosters. A4E4 will give a couple of minor blesses and allow you to construct the more useful type of elemental staff later on. B4 will also help your sacreds, but it's a waste of points since you're not a blood nation. Astral and death is where you really hurt nationally. You can get a fairly cheap N4W4 bless with a dormant Lady of Springs if you're so inclined and have good scales left over.

Several minor blesses or rainbow picks to patch up your magical deficiencies and good scales, especially production, is the way to go.

Edi

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Let's assume that we don't even use the blesses for anything. What then is the purpose of our Pretender? Do we go with a SC to take out starting Indies, or with some kind of researcher/mage to compliment our magic summons?

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

If you want blesses, I think the best for Ulm would be S9A4, more Air if you can afford it. This gives +3 MR, Twist fate and some arrow defense. If you go with a Dormant Oracle, you could easily go S9A6 and still have plenty left over for scales. Astral/Air bless covers your sacred's greatest weakness, no shield, and terrible MR (all of EA Ulm's units have 8), having twist fate also allow them to live longer, which is always a plus.

If you don't want blesses, the best path is to go for scales and/or an SC. My choice would be an awake D4 Prince of Death with 9 dominion. For scales, I'd go with a 2 Drain (to help your low MR troops), 3 production (to make lots of troops), 1 cold (your preference), the rest into order/growth (depends on how you like to play).

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

I hadn't noticed that about the Ulmish warriors. Seems like they're in drastic need of a rebalance (with more #ambi bonus).

Personally I wouldn't consider playing EA Ulm without strong positive scales - you need to be able to crank out hordes to make up for dodgy sacreds and lack of magic firepower.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Something to keep in mind about units with 2 attacks: -> 2 chances to score a hit. Someone could do math on whether or not that is worse than 1 attack with a little more attack rating.

That said, another problem they have is the lack of shields. Anyone can round up some some kind of missile force, so shields will often be the better choice.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

The thing about the Ulmish warriors is that they have an attack of 10 for warrior and axe warrior and 11 for forest and mountain warrior. Axe and forest warriors have 2 axes and a throwing axe while warriors and mountain warriors have axe and broad sword.

Penalties, 2 axes:
-1 attack on axe, axe+axe = ambidex penalty of 2, making for a total penalty of 3. Subtract ambidex rating of 1 and final penalty is 2, for 2 attacks at 8. This means that the second attack can be treated as if it were attack 10 against the target's normal defense.

Penalties axe + broadsword
lengths 1+2=3, axe -1 and broadsword 0 and ambidex reduces penalty by 1, Final result is attack ratings axe 7, broadsword 8 for a unit with base attack 10. Meaning attack 7 + attack 10 against normal defense of target. Not exactly something that fills you with confidence.

Then take a look at Steel Maiden: Attack 12, 2x shortsword and ambidex 1. Length 1+1=2, reduced to 1 by ambidex, gives you two attacks at base 11. The steel maiden is more heavily armored than the basic warrior and has only 2 points less body prot than the forest and mountain warriors, much better attack and defense, has a strat move of 2 plus stealth, whereas neither forest nor mountain warrior is stealthy and both have strat move of 1.

Shield maidens swap one short sword for a shield, giving them one attack at 12 and a def of 15, 11 without shield. Shield maidens, steel maidens and warrior maidens (the armored archer) all cost 13 resources to the warrior/axe warrior's 10 or forest/mountain warrior's 16.

Can ANYONE please tell me why anyone could possibly want to buy anything but shield, steel and warrior maidens as EA Ulm unless they really intend to use the axe warriors for shock effect with the throwing axes and then to soak up damage from the enemy while the women do the actual fighting and killing. Mixing half steel and half shield maidens will give some punch and improve overall squad survivability and lessen the morale effects of a rain of arrows.

E.g. Ermorian units eat Ulmish warriors for breakfast, but the maidens are a different story.

Edi

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

One thing to keep in mind is that successive attacks in a round reduce the victim's defense value by 2 for each attack, so the second Axe Warrior attack will effectively 2 points higher. The extra defense penalties stack very nicely if your warriors outnumber high defense enemies, allowing them to hit their foes easily.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Why bother with the axe warriors when the steel maidens can do the same thing for melee more effectively? And last longer because they substantially higher defense and better protection to boot. You might want them for the throwing axes, but then they will be reaching melee later because they pause to throw the axes first, and you can't make EA Ulm work solely with axe/forest warriors because their low defense gets them killed too quickly.

The difference of defense between steel maiden and the warriors is between 2 and 5 and shield maiden and warriors is between 5 and 8. You do the math.

Edi

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

The sword warriors are pretty worthless. The axe guys are only minorly use it as cheap 10/10 axe-chuckers, but even then you gott ask yourself if a short-range axe chucker is worth the cost of an archer. Their accuracy is bad too.

Against most basic infantry the Steel Maidens are much more useful. Their weapons do more than enough damage to mangle troops, and they consistantly double-hit. If you divide them up into small groups instead of large lumps they can swarm over troops and really cut them up badly. Sending in a small pile of axemen is possible... but why?

It'd be better to use the Shield Maidens. Same cost, better use. So shield blockers with steel maidens on the sides.

Also, something that's rarely mentioned are the Iron Warriors. Attack of 12 with a Maul, they have excellent to-hit characteristics with high damage output. As always they lack shields and aren't exactly stealthy, but if you need to attack targets that are too durable for Steel Maidens, sending in Iron Warriors is a good alternative. They have heavy armor and can fend off attacks, and do serious damage to things. They're basically as good as the Steel Warrior sacreds, and your best mass-produced alternative to high-durability units outside of summons. They're also relatively cheap. But the Steel Maidens are still superior against most units due to their efficent 2-strike combos.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Howdy,

So, it seems agreed that EA Ulm does not like elephants and many of their units are less than ideal. Let us get to the good stuff, what are they good at!

Seems to me that you need high scales for this nation, as gold and resources are most helpful. Their mages are not too exciting, but do have a range of paths and a forge bonus. I was thinking of researching conjuration and building up some thugs with cheap items.

Nature seems the only path you can get going without a pretender, so the usual Thistle Mace, empowerment, Gift of Health and mass protection have worked for me before. Others mentioned Panic. What other combat type spells can you roll out with this nation?

Where do you see taking this nation after the initial expansion?

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

EA nation is a very strong nation, in my opinion. Steel Maidens are very strong with good defense, protection and attack.

Warrior Maidens are powerful archers...

In midgame, you should focus on diversifying your magic through constant site-searching to find powerful independent mages. Your steel maidens, shield maidens and warriors maidens can take most other nationals on a troop-for-troop basis... spells like flaming arrows, blade wind, strength of giants and others can help even the odds against tougher nations. Use your stealth to your advantage, raiding if you must... hiding in your own territory to confuse the enemy about your numbers is also helpful.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

I've been able to get practically all the magic paths I want with EA Ulm, even without pretender magic. They have plenty of random paths and can cheaply forge boosters.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Astral is the one path they need a pretender for unless the player gets lucky and gets Athalwolf the Maker of Heroes or gets lucky with some elemental site that provides mages with astral or finds a lizard province.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

The more I play, the more I like Luck. Lots of free gold and gems and the natinoal heroes are a nice bonus. In this case, they bring something you can not get otherwise.

So, would people say this is a fairly strong nation, but a fairly straightforward one?

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

In the early game, EA Ulm is very straightforward, relying on national troops to kill stuff. late game you can path up like crazy, diversifying your magic through your access to most magical paths... and that is much more complicated, giving you access to a wide variety of summons and battlefield spells.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

With a high astral pretender(possibly with other, booster forging paths you may not have access to) EA Ulm can have some insane magic diversity(their mages+summoned mages+path booster+rings of wizardry/sorcery)

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Wow, I was looking around for a strategy guide about EA Ulm, and this is the thread most similar to a guide that we have? oouch ^^

I've tried EA Ulm lately in SP, with CBM 1.3, I gotta say the thing that worked the best for me was a F4 dormant Dragon with great scales, rushing for Flaming Arrows... the cheap short bows Ulm have can do well this way IMHO, Ench 5 (4 in vanilla), should be ready or so for the time the Dragon awakens, he can cast it (takes 3 gems so he needs to go around searching for sites a bit before, if you didn't get any F1 randoms), change shape and burn people around with its breath.

I used to divide my forces into 2 kind of armies, one with mapmovement 1 and no stealth for the heavy work (the sacred units, the warriors with the maul and the cheap archers), and one with the mapmovement 2 stealthys for the raiding (steel and shield maidens, dire wolves, the most expensive kind of archers and some axe throwers). I think Ulm has a great raiding potential with N2 E2 stealthy mages with 40 leadership and stealthy commanders with 80 leadership, in 2/3 turns you can build a 120 well-buffable force (expecially in CBM where Legions of Steel are Const-1 so the most of your shamans can cast it soon with an E gem, and you have many with Ulm). Of course you have easy access to many other nice spells with all that magic power and diversity, earth might first, blade wind, strength of giants and so...
I admit I have still to organize a good endgame strategy anyway, even if high nature + bonus at forging + random access to death and many death gems... say mostly one thing to me ^^

Someone can give me better advices after this year and a half from the last post? :D

Peace

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

No. I was partly successful with E9F6 bless and killed one neighbor in MP, but then got attacked by 2 others who had much better research... :( I was able to hold until game ended, but not to counter-attack in any force.
What I've found is that there are good diplomatic possibilities with EA Ulm forging bonus - you can sell items with discount and still gather gems... I'm still thinking about it and plan to test the results in MP one day, but this probably has to wait for some time...
Bless may be good enough strategy in SP, by the way, but not in MP due to the fact that their sacreds are capital-only and Move 1.

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

I didn't even try a big bless in SP. EA Ulm's sacreds are nothing special. Heavy infantry with two-handed swords. They're tough, and they hit hard. Those points are good. They're also slow, and their lack of shields makes them very vulnerable to massed missile fire. Those points are bad.

Honestly, I thought EA Ulm was a bit dull, so I only played one game with them. In that game, I chose a Great Enchantress (free pearls!) with E4N4S4 and good scales. It worked alright ... but nearly anything can work in SP.

I saw two strengths for EA Ulm:

• Sacred Mages - Maybe a Death-blessed Blade Wind (the killer spell of EA) would be good? :eek:
• Lots of Stealth - Raiding, raiding, and more raiding. :viking:

I'm not an EA Ulm expert. Heck, I'm not even a dabbler. But those are the points that seemed interesting to me....

Re: EA Ulm advice wanted
 

Well, the new CBM 1.4 improves the various male warriors ambi to make them at least passable in attack. You're still probably going to have issues hitting anything with high defense. I know the Maidens are good, but who wants to play a lumberjack nation with nothing but girls. (no offense intended) They really should make the sacreds recruit anywhere IMHO, that would be pretty cool, a bless rush Ulm...

They really need a Baalz guide :rolleyes: