Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

So I've had a bug in my ear around LA Ulm since Frank Trollman mentioned them as an excellent LA bloodhunting nation in a post of mine. I've tried a couple different starting builds for them but am always frustrated by their high resource costs + the need for an awake/dormant pretender (since you need a blood/death 3 pretender to kick off your vampire count chain), + my own need to have growth for a blood hunting nation. Their bless troops don't mass well, their mages are awful... and yet I keep wanting to give them one more shot. Any advice?

I've had the best luck playing dormant crone with great scales (order 3/growth 2/production3/magic 1/misfortune 2) and b4/d4/e4. What do people who have a clue what they are doing use?

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

At the _very_ first, just to get started, recruit many of the reasource-cheapest units for earliest expansion (maybe mainly just for the provinces adjacent the capital). IIRC it is the Ranger Crossbowmen who can be recruited so quickly it doesn't matter if they die. Then start to work up to the higher-resource units with longer life expectancy. Secure the provinces adjacent the home province ASAP to get the resources for the better-equipped troops.

PvK

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

For your army mass rangers, use a few indies for meatshield and when you get a good flow of resources into your capitol make a mix of rangers and the guys with greatswords(dont make me spell their name http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif)

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

1. Zweihanders over the heavy infantry with tower shields? I'd think the latter has much more survivability in most cases - are the Zweihanders there as super meatshields or to actually do damage?

2. Uses of pikemen? I've seen people talking about them as a counter to giants.

3. Uses of villains besides archer screen for rangers? They are definitely your cheapest unit, but are they worth using?

4. Is my pretender design fairly normal for LA Ulm? I can't really justify the expense of a Vampire Queen given the number of vamps I'll be hoping to throwing around, and I want a mobile pretender just so I can bloodhunt somewhere besides my capital. E4 is for forge (minimizing your need to empower your S2B1 mages in order to get sorc/wiz rings, as well as opening up Thistle Mace production for N enabled Fortune Tellers) and getting someone to kick off boot production for your capital-only priests (since their pitiful E skill is as good a battlemage as you get, I'm looking to boot->earthpower my way into some legions of steel and bladewinds).

5. Finally and here's an issue I've been pondering for a while - is there any consensus at all on what a good blood/gold conversion rate is? For some reason, I've been thinking about MA Abysia's Demonbreds vs. Vampire Counts - which is a better deal for their cost, and which one is actually cheaper? Obviously, Vampire Counts cost more if you're playing Order, as lost revenues from bloodhunting are greater, but I'm still not sure about the basic conversion.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

I recently played LA Ulm in a MP and I agree that this nation is excellent, it is potentially very, very powerful. Sadly I started on a island with Patala, who rushed and crushed me with elephants by turn 13, so I will probably never find out.

I am of the opinion, that its too hard to have a high bless strategy with this nation. The black templars are just too damn expensive and the other sacred is undead and therefore too easily destroyed. So forget a bless strategy.

I think your design points should be concentrated in good scales and your pretender.

What really got me excited was the astral magic wielding spy who has +20 stealth. This one unit, recruitable from any castle can virtually single handly win you the end game if used correctly and you have the economy to churn loads out.

The other excellent unit, sadly capital only, is the wolf trainer, who only costs 50 gp and can summon 2 free wolves a turn. Unlimited free chaff, excellent for patrolling your provinces well you blood hunt, add bulk to your armies and later on you can buff them up to make them more dangerous in battle.

Then the whole vampire, limitless blood magic going on as well, with immortal vampire SC's to give you one of the best late game defense ever...well wow...really WOW, this is the most powerful Ulm ever...

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Didn't get my pretender right last time, quoting from memory - hag was e2 n2 for boots/mace. Thinking about massing wolfherds instead of earth priests, now am trying

Master Lich
Dormant
Dominion 5
Order Production 3 Growth 2 Magic 1 Misfortune 2
Blood 3 Death 5 (IIRC?)

He's not much more expensive than the Hag if you're going for decent dominion, and his immortality/immunity to afflictions and x3 misc slots will give him some good options in the late game. He's not as good a blood hunter as I would have liked him to be, but he won't be doing that for long.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

That actually sounds like a nice build but theres one big problem: you have almost no magic versatility other than spectres/rare non-feeble minded tartarian commanders. Without those undead mages all you really have is death, blood and minor astral.

edit: indies are also possibilities but are generally weak or rare.


One thing ive noticed during my tests is the power or rangers. They are great just in a regular army-base precision 12, crossbow adds 2 and with all precision over 10 being doubled they are basically firing precision 18 crossbows. They can also defend themselves against melee troops with low defence(armour isnt too dangerous to them as they have their crossbows, strength 11 and axes) and can be used as raiders commanded by wolfherds and illuminated ones.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

You shouldn't really be using your pretender for blood hunting. There are far better things for a pretender to do.

I seem to remember doing my bloodhunting with mages who got blood 1 or so every now and again.

With the wolfherders, I wait till you get 40 wolves then give them all to a indie commander who goes to where your blood hunting and patrols. You quickly amass loads of those armies, a useful reserve in case of trouble and when you are getting hordes of them, just start chucking them in combat as fast as possible. A enemy will kill loads but 10 wolfherders can summon 20 a turn, 20 wolfherders 40 a turn etc...

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

My blood economy works like this:

Before turn 12:Members of the second tier hunt for blood slaves until i have atleast 44

Turn 12-whenever i get boosters so a count can summon more counts: My counts and possibly members of the second tier hunt for slaves to make yet more counts and dousing rods

Once i get a D3B3 count: Only regular counts with dousing rods searching, count production really steps up

Rather than use wolves to patrol i use thralls, they are auto-summoned by the counts so an indie commander in the province with the counts can just take command of them and patrol.

For my pretender, rather than maxing out scales and taking enough magic to summon a count i like a versatile(often 4-5 paths ranging from level 2-4), sleeping master lich with average scales(order3, growth1, misfortune2, magic1) though im definitely no LA Ulm expert so this could be a complete mess(a big bonus is being able to get nicely equipped counts)

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

With LA Ulm its really all about getting time to develop, get your vampire/wolf/thralls/blood economy going and it just multiplies into a awesome totally unstoppable juggernaut from turn 30'ish onwards.

Your troops are really there just there to forge a reasonable sized empire out and defend it until this happens. LA Ulm benefits considerably from peace and diplomacy early in the game. Try to sign NAP's with everyone of your neighbours.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Yea, i know what you mean but still, how do you get you magic versatility up to scratch?

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

For any blood nation, you can't go wrong with a pretender that can forge Soul Contracts without boosters. They are only Construction 2, but require high paths to make, so your pretender is perfect for the job.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Well personally, I think blood can stand on its own against the other spheres of magic.

But, I also like to do the following with any astral nation.

Get arcane probing, hit every province you own. Get the highest priest level you can out site searching. You are trying to get as many astral pearls as possible. Research to Arcashic record when possible. Hit every province you own with this spell. You will need to empower a lvl 2S mage to cast it for LA Ulm or get lucky like I did and find the 2S2E crystal forgers site with astral probing. They can make the crystal coin naturally. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Yes, I know its expensive and long term. But its worth doing as a dual strategy alongside blood, blood is always no.1 priority however. Only try this when sites are high like 45+, most MP have 50.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

We must have different research priorities. I personally go straight for construction so i dont need any empowerment, just a second tier mage forging himself a skullcap(const 6, s2). I guess that massed acashic record could get you various indy mages but i dont see you getting many, atleast not many that will help your magic as much as needed.

Instead of taking a master lich(although i do like him) how about a fountain of blood? You can get a sleeping F2W3E4D3B6 Fountain of Blood with Dom8, order3, sloth2, cold2, growth3, misfortune2, magic1. The dom9 makes your vampire counts alot more flexible in what they can do(More dominion spread means more places to use them), the scales are pretty good for your playstyle(growth helps in lategame and with bloodhunting, sloth dosnt bother your undead armies) and the magic on the pretender can do a variety of useful things such as: Summon vampire counts, summon all unique blood summons other than demon lords, forge soul contracts, cast infernal forces/forces of ice/infernal crusade and, of course, forge a variety of useful items, boosters and artifacts.

edit: ive found another nice use for the vampire counts with a very simple script: summon lammashtas, attack closest. In friendly dominion you have nothing to use but a single death gem per caster, 5 counts produce 10 lammashtas(fear causing, flying, wraitsword wielding undead angels for those who dont know) at the cost of 5 death gems. Even if your counts rout for some reason the lammashtas keep fighting and if they dont and they end up dying, no big loss, you'll have them back at your capitol ready to re-use.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

I think Death magic can get him Spectral Mages (who have some random magic skills) which can (eventually with luck and forged boosters, maybe via Streams from Hades?) get him Unfrozen mages and maybe an Ether Lord.

Zweihanders vs. heavy shield infantry - the shield infantry are the sturdier block, but Zweihanders can do higher damage to penetrate with. I tend to use a few Zweihanders starting behind the main body of shielded troops.

Pikemen are faster to recruit and good for staving off lower-morale troops, so yes they might be a reasonable choice against giants. Better than the shielded heavy infantry, anyway.

Villains? Faster to recruit than the crossbowmen, and usable for light stealthy raiders. Their low morale and protection are major weaknesses though.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Very, very nice or nasty I should say shovah32, I am stealing this idea... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Villians are inferior to rangers against almost every late era unit(due to shortbows sucking vrs armour). They are also less survivable and worse in close combat.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

True, but against light independents and weak PD, they can still sneak in and pick and choose their fights, taking provinces for cheap.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

True but the same could be said for rangers.

Feel free meglo. Other options are summon lammashtas, retreat(since the lammashtas keep fighting) which is useful in enemy dominion and summon lammashtas(this would probably need 2 gems to keep fatigue down/only some counts summoning lammashtas) followed by skele spam.

If your short on gems a regular flying, stealthy, immortal skelespam defensive raiding tactic is nice and flying in to cast things such as mass dust to dust vrs undead armies or decay+desintigrate vrs SCs can be helpful.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Thanks very much, all - a lot of good material here, everyone contributing something different. Spectres are definitely a good pickup for Ulm, making me think about prioritizing conjuration more than I had initially been.

The sleeping master lich sounds good, and the lammashtas trick is brutal.

I'm not really in love with an immobile pretender with paths that I don't have anyone else capable of searching for/casting spells to search for. I don't see how to get started with such paths, although I suppose you could get lucky on indeps, or alchemy -> searching spells. On reflection, though, I could definitely see throwing F2N2E2 in as a nice boost to catalyze boots/mace production to get your E priests and N enabled fortune tellers able to cast their site spells, kicking off fever fetish spam, enabling soul contracts, and for the late late game having Infernal Prison to enable continued casting while under the affects of Astral Corruption.

I also cringe at seeing sloth and cold on Ulm, since I'm having trouble getting solidly established early - I need those resources. Maybe I'm missing the point (and Meglobob's sleeping giant premise implies that I might be) but it seems to me that you need to take advantage of Ulm's excellent high resource cost troops in order to "get" them. They have awful conventional magics in exchange for strong blood economy, hard as nails troops, two kinds of freespawn, and excellent stealth capabilities. I realize that good players can probably dominate without relying on all of these, but it just hurts my brain to have such good troops and cripple them with -40% production rates.

I'll think about what I'd have to give up to have a B6D3N2F2E2 master liche.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

One of the big reasons i suggested the fountain as an option was the high start dominion and blood magic(high dom really helps counts) and for your starting problems do NOT use LA ulms high resource troops atleast at the start. Use your starting army as a meatshield set to hold and attack with rangers on fire closest/archers/cavalry and keep churning out rangers at your capitol. If your starting army takes too many losses use indies for your meatshield instead. The rangers(firing basically with precision 18 due to all above 10 being doubled) with their crossbows do serious damage and arent too bad in melee against medium or low defence troops(armour isnt too dangerous to them in melee due to high strength and axes)

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Shovah - on reflection, thanks for the pickup on fountain. I've been running a B6D3F2N2E2 Dom 7 sleeping fountain with Order 3 Misfortune 2 Growth 2 Magic 1 and he's working pretty well.

I totally forgot about blood stones in my last posting, but in game they work exceptionally well. Your earth priests + boots + blood stone -> Troll King + boots + blood stone -> Forge, and empowering with blood to get a few priests capable of forging blood stones isn't so bad given the ease of picking up blood slaves. It's certainly far easier than getting someone else capable of fever fetish spamming.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Also, even with your cheap counts summoning a few vampire lords(77 slaves iirc) can be worth it. Instead of auto-summoning thralls they can use summon allies to get vampires. They also have +1 to a few stats and +1 on both types of magic(cant summon more counts without boosters and can cast soul vortex in battle)

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

I definitely use a mix of Vampire Lords and Mound Fiends for my D3 needs. It's 77 blood for the Lord, vs 65 blood and 10 death for an item boosted Count to reach the same levels, the Lords obviously have the free item slots, and in addition blood is always easier to come by. Still, I use mostly Counts for light raiding (and thanks to your Lammashta trick, army smashing), bloodhunting, and their freespawn.

I now kind of enjoy LA Ulm's slow build to magical dominance via death/blood/earth - it makes their starting crappy picks almost enjoyable. I suspect I would get annihilated before I ever got out of the gate in MP, but I haven't played a nation yet that changes so much from beginning to end. It's particularly sweet to boost a mage of the second tier (+1 astral and blood empowerment, + items galore) to cast Astral Corruption and shut down everyone else's magic while your endless Vampire Counts just keep growing and growing.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

I tend to stick with counts too as they work just as well in most cases but, if im going to completely equip some-one(and dont have any unique blood summons) it will probably be a vampire lord due to the slightly raised stats and the ability to cast soul vortex.

Im glad you liked the fountain, at the start i was set on using a master lich but when i realised i was taking blood higher than death and that a high dominion score made the vampire strategy more flexible/offensive i switched to the fountain.

Also, aswell as your counts, lords, uniques and items dont be afraid to splash out some gems for a bunch of regular vampires-if you can get a good amount of them and only use them within friendly dominion they can be a very nasty suprise(and can provide some extra punch/meatshield for the raise skeleton/summon lammashta tactic.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Followup - I find that the vampire troop types invariably tangle with the Lammashtas, diluting the punch of either approach. On the other hand, troopless Vampire Counts invariably run away after casting Lammashtas regardless of what orders I give if there are two or less of them (you'd think immortal troops would get an extra morale bonus in friendly dominion). I don't mind, though - there's still a lot of killing going on, and I'm not the one who is dying...

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Sometimes my counts flee too, not always though. The vampire troops can get in the way of lammashtas but they will go in, do some damage and then either die or rout and either way, provided you stayed in friendly dominion, all you lose is the death gems for the lammashtas.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Up. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

I'm actually giving a try at this nation. What do you think of that pretender ? Are there some big flaws for that design ? (I'm a very average player).

Fountain of Blood

Dominion 9 (Not really useful for recruiting sacred on the capitol for their huge ressource cost, but great for playing immortal units (?) ).

Emprisonned (I've started a game with an asleep one, but on turn 12, I'm far from having the blood economy allowing the summoning of vampire counts, neither do I have Const 4 for forging dousing rods. So it permits less lousy scales for early expansion plus some points on magic).

Scales :
- Order 3, Prod 1 (for recruiting many heavy troops on early game).
- Cold 1 ( 40 points http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif )
- Growth 3 : Virgins must flow. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif
- Misf 2 (OK with order 3)
- Magic 1 (There are only weak researchers. I'm afraid drain 2 will harm research too much).

Magic :
- F1 - For soul contracts + AD with a booster.
- A2 - For Infernal Tempest. Maybe another path is as useful and more thematic ?
- E2 - Bloodstones, Infernal crusade, Hammers
- D4 - Vampires http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif
- B5

For early armies, I don't think there's much choice : lots of rangers on the rear, heavy infantery just before on hold & attack, and when available, wolves as first line chaff.

Research : usually, I'm searching sites with dedicated spells (Auspex, Haruspex, etc...), but I'll try the acashic records technic that was told on previous posts. So it begins with Evo 2 (arcane probing), Constr 6 (rods + skullcap), then Conj 5 (Acashic records).

Is this a survivable design ? Summonin counts only on turn 36 is maybe a bit risky ? But I don't see how to summon many at turn 12 ?

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

@Olive and how do you start your Vampire count factory with an Emprisonned Pretendant ?
a major drawback isn'it ?


ps : sorry for the up, But I need ideas about LA Ulm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

I'm really liking LA Ulm. Just to be different I went with this pretender:

Great Sage (Body 251, 10 hits)
Magic: Fire 1 Earth 2 Astral 4 Death 4 Blood 4
Dominion 6
Scales: Turmoil 3 Growth 1 Fortune 3 Drain 2
Awake

The Sage researches Thaum 2, Enchant 1, Const 4, Enchant 3, and would also kick off blood hunting except with Luck 3 I always get a hero early enough to do that with the hero instead. S4 is dangerous, actually overall the god is weak, but he's a scholar, not a fighter. S4D4B4 is a pretty meh bless for the ghouls, but they're just a little bonus with higher MR, the real focus is on getting xbows, a few more shields if I need them, and Counts Counts Counts! And more Counts!

I grab fortune tellers to start, totally cancels the few bad events I might get from turmoil. Plus the rangers are cheap enough in both gold and resources, and pack enough punch that I can still take a province a turn at the start.

Thaum 2 is for the S2s to Mind Burn anything spectacularly nasty I might run into early.

Drain 2 is nice for the points and for MR. My death gems go into skulls to make up for the low research on my fortune tellers.

I don't recruit a whole lot of 2nd tier dudes, mostly I stick with the fortune tellers. And I find I'm hiring a lot of the H2 priests after the first year to ensure I've got positive dominion everywhere. I haven't managed to find a good use for the massive stealth on the mages yet. Any ideas there?

I could probably drop the F1 since I never end up making Soul Contracts when I could be making another Count. But I've got 10 free points in the build, so ... there it goes.

I've tried a Dom7, Drain3 variation of this too, and it's not bad either.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

@vfb but your research is very slow, with drain 2 or 3 !
You have poor researchers yet, your sage is enough to counterbalance the drain scales ?

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Yep, the great sage is awake and generating 24 points of research a turn. Recruiting one fortune teller a turn, that's a total of 522 research after 12 months. Const 4 is only 360 points, but I am getting Thaum 2 and Enchant 1 first, for a total of 500 points needed.

Once I've got Const 4, it's 1 turn for the sage to forge a skull staff and hand it to a S1D1 fortune teller to make skulls every 4 or 5 turns. The staff gets borrowed by the first Count out the gate when he needs to make more Counts.

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

The stealthy mages are spies, right?

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Thanks! I never noticed that. Yep, they give commander reports and can instill uprisings. Cool, even the cheap 80 gold 1st tier (S1 illuminated ones) are spies. Unmindhuntable spies! (pardon my German).

I was already happy with LA Ulm's raw army power, Counts, and inquisitor priests. Spies just makes them even cooler!

Re: Starting setup for LA Ulm
 

Personally, given their write-up and the fact that it's hard to justify wasting mages on spying, I should think that they should get a 'genderless' seduction ability. Think of it as Mind Control. It would also be a way for them to diversify their magic.