Questions and Comments About the Improved MA Ulm
 

Just had a chance to work with these guys.

I'll be honest, I wish the devs decided to borrow the idea from the Black Steel of Ulm mod to give the Smiths a 20% chance of random picks instead of 10%. I mean, they have not much else going for them, and even with the 20% I rarely got a random.

What happened to the Smith sprite? He looks more suited to EA now than MA...I liked the powerful looking armored guy.

Also, what is the point of the new units? The Priest-Smith and the Black Priest are both ok, but don't they compete? I mean, they are practically the same. Why does the priest even have magic if they hate magic, wouldn't he technically be a priest-smith then? If he had to have magic it would have been nice for it to be something that wasn't earth http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (astral, astral, astral...). I like the Priest-Smith because he's drain resistant, and can build temples and labs. But I can't find any use at all for the Black Priest...am I missing something?

I think the new Guardian Commander's anti-sacred ability looks really cool, but haven't had a chance (and probably won't likely be able to, as I'm playing against AI) to see it in action. Unless it's way overpowered, though, I don't see why ALL guardians can't have it. That would be really cool, a crack anti-sacred squad. As it is now, cool or not, I can't imagine a Guardian Lord taking down Van's or anything, that is, being in a situation where he can use his power before getting destroyed.

Anyone know what specifically the special ability "Bane of Heretics" or whatnot that the haldberds have does?

I haven't summoned an Iron Angel yet but am really looking forward to it. Nor have I seen the effect of the new battlefield holy/earth combo spells.

All in all, I rate this as a good improvement to MA Ulm, but I still think some of the things addressed in the Black Steel mod (Black Duke's as freespawn generating thugs, and the 20% chance of random) were better. But then again, I may have missed something, so I wanted to share my observations with all of you and see what everyone else thought.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA Ulm
 

The holy/earth spells are like Blade Wind x1.5. You should take advantage of the new priests and give them a try.

The Guardian Lord's strength lies in the fact that they don't have to land a blow in order to deal the AOE damage. When you mass them, the stun damage accumulates quickly. It's a decent anti-bless rush defense.

There's a thread somewhere that went into much more detail about the pros and cons of the changes, if you have the inclination to use the search function.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I would like to point out that the normal, capital only guardians also get the same affect in a different way. Look at their halberds, they fatigue sacreds which is really powerful.

Also the advantage of black priests is something you are overlooking, they are holy2 which is a big deal for ulm which didnt have that before. And the Priest Smiths can cast very powerful versions of the new Ulm only evocations because + path bonus.

And The Iron Angels a great thug right out of the box, and any items you give it make it just that much better. Overall I would say these changes to make a difference. Explore more :p

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Haha, just read that thread your referenced. I'm sad the general consensus is that even with the improvements the nation is still underpowered.

I did like that Edi had basically the same suggestion as I did in regards to upping the random magic %. He's like a mod here so maybe his opinion will carry weight for the next patch.

One thing I'm still not sure of is if the new guardians are worthless against regular troops and just exceptional against sacreds, or if they are good all around to recruit?

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

The new guardian still has an assload of protection so he's fairly durable. I also had the great misfortune in one SP game of running into an AI Ulm that had been massing guardians. I was running a bless based Eriu and encountering him on turn ten or thereabouts with hard research on and the impossible AI getting a 60% resource bonus on top of the 25% Ulm already gets, it wasn't pretty. My army was wiped out in a single battle against a foe they outnumbered two or three to one. And that was his secondary army...

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

What about changing the starting army of MA Ulm? Currently, they start with 16 shieldless infantry, while most other nations start with mixed infantry/archer force. 9 pikeneers/9 arbalests would help them quite a bit IMO.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I really think black priests are rubbish for MA Ulm. The only thing they have going for them is that they are holy 2, as pointed out. But they are also cap only and you will almost always want to build something else to rush your research, since Ulm needs its key spells in a hurry. Namely the priest-smith, who is alos cap only and for the most part is simply better than the black priest.

Black priests are great for LA Ulm though.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Access to H2 is good enough, IMO. You won't recruit more than few, but those few for the early game armies not lead by your prophet help keep your units from suiciding. Retreating heavy infantry almost always dies before they get anywhere...

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

The inquisition bonus is quite nice when sieging castles in enemy dominion.

Oh, and iron darts and iron blizzard is awesome against magic beings. Quite good on normal units as well.
What makes them good is the high precision, good range and "boostability". Iron blizzard is 30+ effects.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Sure, but priest smith is your guy for those spells, not black priest, iirc.

The inquisition bonus on the very few black priests you might actually build is a very minor consideration. I guess they would be a unit you'd build every turn if someone was domkilling you, to preach in your cap. That's another very minor niche.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

The Black Priests are supposed to be marginal in MA. The Iron Inquisition has not yet risen and it is only emerging from the Black Order.

So you build a few of those when necessary and build priest-smiths the rest of the time in your capital and master smiths elsewhere. MA Black Priests are designed to be niche instead of common as dirt. Otherwise it screws up the thematics of the nation.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Sombre mentioned something on IRC that piqued my interest. I've always mainly recruited the Ulmish crossbowmen in the early game. The infantry is there to kill the survivors and to keep the independents from reaching the arbalests. Sombre said he mostly uses their infantry.

How do you expand with MA Ulm?

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Infantry. Crossbowmen are too inefficient because the arbalests fire just once every three turns. I always recruit indie crossbows if I find them. I do use some arbalests for backup and softening the enemy up, but it's the morningstar infantry and guardians that do the heavy lifting.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

The other problem with the arbs is that they are tailor made to kill your own guys. I would either use 90% arbs or 100% infantry basically.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Interesting. I've always used the arbalests at "Fire" or "Fire Archers", and recruited indy archers as soon as I can find them, but generally didn't use the infantry much.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I rarely recruit arbalests, only in high resource provinces when I'm in a pinch. Since normal archers usually can't punch through Ulm armor, I usually build a castle on the inevitable cheap (i.e. unarmored) indy archer province and spam them. Their range is troublesome, as they tend to run in front of my "hold and attack" infantry to be close enough to hit the enemy.

I typically begin with the regular flail infantry for indys, and then move into the battleaxe infantry (reg and BP) if my opponent is heavily armored (Abysia in my current SP game) or the shielded flail guys (reg and BP) if my opponent has capable ranged troops. I love the idea of the pikemen, but haven't witnessed them ever do anything good. Aren't they supposed to push people away? How do the rest of you set up your differing infantry types? As was said in the other thread, I wouldn't mind ditching the shield/hammer guys and the maul guys and replacing them with a medium infantry guy with stratmove 2 and a short or broadsword.

I'm currently trying to jumpstart a blood stone factory, and I have 10 indy commanders and scouts searching in a province and in about 8-10 turns I have amassed a mighty 4 blood slaves and even without tax the province is pissed. I have blood on my pretender but he's occupied with searching sites in order to make up for the lack of magic diversity. In the blood stone guide it makes it seem like having 100 slaves by the time you reach Cons. 4 is reasonable...well...not with my guys it seems.

Is the main advantage of priest-smiths over regular smiths the fact that they are sacred and therefore cost less upkeep? I ask because it seems, with the random, that the regular smiths are better, and they are both the same relative age (with priest smiths going to be older in the next patch as per the previous thread). The 1H isn't really valuable for anything but the two new national spells. Plus the cost more to recruit, yet the consensus is that these guys are must haves, so am I missing something, or is upkeep really that important (sacreds get half upkeep, right?).

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Iron darts is a much more effective version of flying shards, which is a weak spell on its own and is what your regular smiths cast in the early game.

More importantly, iron blizzard takes an already fantastic spell and makes it even better. It also decimates magic enemies. Both spells get even better the more earth levels your priest smith manages to get.

The reduced upkeep is nice, but is not the reason why you recruit priest smiths instead of regular smiths in your capital.


oh yeah, if you manage to find a nice sacred indie unit such as amazon gryphon riders, that lowly 1H suddenly becomes a lot more useful.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I use infantry. I never recruit arbalists. Ulmish infantry is excellent at taking indies if you get the composition spot on.

Indeed, if I recruit crossbows I recruit the siege/crossbows that fire 1/2 rounds, much better.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I dislike arbalesters. They are have two things going for them. They are the
only Ulmish with enough brains to use a shortsword and wear appropriate armour,
which makes them OK infantry. Their weapons have enough power to punch through
heavy armour. Months ago, I did the math, and it shows that crossbowmen are
better than arbalests below armour 17. Well guess what - armour 17 is seldom seen
outside of Ulm's army, and never on the arrow decoys.

Arbalesters have tons of things going against them - low rate of fire, high
resource cost, low strategical move, etc... On the other hand, independent archers
as great for supporting Ulm's infantry, against the only enemy that Ulm excels
against - independents.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Ulm's crappy morale really benefits from sermon of courage, which is plenty of reason to get a few H2 priests around, especially since you don't lose out on any huge cap-only guys from recruiting a few.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

As Skaven I had to fight against an Ulm who had lion tribe indies. Ulm can really pump out a lot of low-resource archers, and of course has an excellent infantry shield to protect them. Nations without high protection/shields or good archers of their own can have trouble countering this in the early/mid-game.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

This is exactly what I do. Hire as many of the low protection indie archers as possible. They do virtually zero damage to your own troops, but slaughter low protection enemies.

Later on you can use summon earth power, and spam destruction + blade wind off of your smiths.

Jazzepi

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Just to be contrary to majority opinion, I might as well throw out my 2 cents. You probably don't want to listen to me, because everyone else disagrees.

I -love- Arbelests!!!

I normally use about a 1:1 ratio of arbelests to infantry, because I do like meat shields for them. Although as people have pointed out, the arbelests don't do that bad in melee.

I think Arbelests are hands-down the best missile weapon in the game, at least against high-value targets. So Tuidjy doesn't burst a vein, I will add that this opinion has already been disproven by him. Heh.

I just remember the time when I killed an enemy SC god with nothing but 100 arbelests. This god had a high protection, luck, and an air shield active. This is the way the combat went:

Turn 1-5. Arbelests fire from long-range, doing slight damage. SC god buffs out.

Turn 6. SC god flies into the mix of my arbelests, killing a couple of them.

Turn 7. Arbelests fire at point-blank range, all hitting and killing the god, lol!!!

That combat made me forever a complete devotee of arbelests. They have my vote from now until the end of time as "best missile unit ever."

I don't think that 100 crossbowmen would have been up for the task, since the high protection value of that god would have mostly negated the damage dealt by them. Arbelests do -much- more damage per hit than x-bows, especially against high-value (high-protection) targets, i.e. the ones you -care- about. X-bows can kill 12 protection infantry better than arbelests, but who cares??

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Arbalests are better than crossbows against high prot targets. Tuidjy talked about that quite a bit when he was testing. You say those are the only targets you -care- about. Other people clearly disagree, or indy archers wouldn't be so popular.

It's quite telling that the arbs have basically no synergy with Ulmish troops, while shortbows have plenty.

Btw: did the SC have a shield? A good shield + airshield + luck should have stopped every single shot.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I know people disagree, that is why I prefaced my response like I did. By all means, do not listen to me.

But, I'm not saying not to recruit indy shortbows. It's just that they are sort of a throw-away add-on unit whereas your arbelests are your core, heavy-damage-dealing unit.

I only care about doing damage to high-protection targets because the indy shortbows do great against the low-protection ones. They have that covered already. We are talking the targets they don't have covered, those are the only ones that matter.

I think this "synergy" argument is a little misplaced. I don't think it's very relevant here. Lack of synergy is a minor side-effect of having a missile unit that is so astoundingly effective that it can actually harm your own extremely tough units. That is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Attempting to paint that as a bad thing strikes me as a little odd, honestly. I mean, you'd rather they do less damage? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Or you'd rather Ulm have indy-shortbow style units to recruit rather than arbelests? That's a joke. You can recruit indy shortbows anywhere, arbelests are unique to Ulm. Revel in Ulm's unique POWER!!! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

edit: I can't remember about the shield, in all likelihood that pretender was not carrying one. It was a while ago.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Ulm would be better if it had indy shortbow units as recruitables, yes. It would speed up the Ulmish early game.

And yes, Arbalests doing so much damage is a bad thing in the context of Ulm. Your troops have heavy prot, your enemy's will generally speaking have medium or light prot. Against light prot shortbows are better, against medium crossbows are better. Arbalests are basically designed to kill shieldless Ulm infantry.

Obviously I'm not saying arbalests would be better if their damage were reduced to crossbow levels and the fire time remained 1/3. What I'm saying is that they're worse than crossbows most of the time.

You seem to be making the same mistake as the guy in the thread before (perhaps it was you, I forget). Yes Arbalests do more damage per hit. No that doesn't mean they're better or more effective. They have to be taken in context. If the usual enemy was heavy prot shieldless infantry they'd be great. But that isn't the case. In this thread people are specifically talking about their use against indies too, for the most part.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I'd like to add to that. I've tried expanding without arbalests, and it's much easier. I'm not quite certain how many infantries I need to beat an indep force, but it's less than half. I'd need almost equal numbers of arbalests to do the same, for similar resource cost.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Of course, I agree. More options is always a good thing. But surely you don't mean -instead- of arbelests? Why would you want to give up the option to recruit an extremely-heavy hitting unique unit in exchange for a dime-a-dozen throw-away that you can recruit anywhere?

I wish the opposite, I'd rather have a unit that does 25 armor-negating area-effect damage, even if it caused mass friendly-fire causulties. You seem to be in a position of arguing that a unit sucks because it 'does too much damage', something that is very counter-intuitive.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Early game, Ulm would benefit much more from recruitable shortbows and recruitable arbalests, and it can easily take turn or two to get both 20 archers and a commander for them in the early game even if you get lucky. You could have second expansion army starting turn 3 instead of turn 5, and your initial army would have taken fewer losses, if Ulm could recruit cheap archers.

Having access to arbalestS is nice if you have to counter something that has high protection and no shield, but other nations can do the same easier with their battle mages. There aren't that many nations that are going to send something like that against you - in MA, only Ulm and Abysia come immediately to mind, and Abysia has tower-shielded units to put to the frontline to draw the worst fire.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Because shortbows are more useful. This position has already been explained. They are available in indy provinces but in the early game particularly you'd be able to mass them far faster if they were recruitable at the fort, particularly given Ulm's high level of resources. Players who don't use arbalests much, particularly when it comes to expansion, would obviously benefit from them being swapped for shortbow archers.

You wish the opposite of what? Are you suggesting I'm saying arbalests would be better if they did less damage? That's odd, I could have sworn I said:

"Obviously I'm not saying arbalests would be better if their damage were reduced to crossbow levels and the fire time remained 1/3. What I'm saying is that they're worse than crossbows most of the time."

I also don't recall claiming that arbalests suck in this thread. I just said I don't use them for expansion and that crossbows and shortbows are generally better, especially for Ulm (due to friendly fire issues).

Your attempt to put words in my mouth is transparent and rude. You have no argument other than the facile "No you're wrong, arbalests do more damage/are extremely-heavy hitting/are powerful". It's true if you ignore absolutely everything else in the crossbow/shortbow/arbalest comparison but damage, they win and so do you. Congratulations.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Sure, but it's just as obvious to say that players who don't recruit Vans as Vanheim would benefit by having them swapped for militia.

I mean, I would rather arbelests do more damage (say, 20 ap) and have a still reduced rate of fire (say once every 4 turns). At that point, they would mow down thugs and SCs with ease, and these are the units that most people say Ulm has difficulty dealing with.

I'm sorry, maybe I misunderstood your position. But.. isn't this what you're saying? You are touting indy shortbows, which are missile weapons that do less damage. It seems as if you prefer these sorts of weapons over the larger, slower firing ones. I personally think that indy shortbows border on uselessness at times, even in the early game.

I apoligize if I was putting words in your mouth, I didn't mean to.. it just seemed like that's what you were arguing to me.

People are saying "indy shortbows are better for expansion than arbelests", but I don't generally make arbelests to help with expansion. I make them from turn 1, but I am mostly doing that just to get them experience stars, for use later on. I suppose I'm not as concerned about rate of expansion as some other people.

It's certainly not always true that faster expansion = better expansion. Okay, now I'm the one switching to counter-intuitive arguments.

I'll grant that indy shortbows may give faster expansion potential than arbelests. But, I still submit that arbelests are a far better choice in the early game. Shortbows will give you provices, but then I'd like to have them all jump off a bridge, unless I have access to flaming arrows, anyway. They are not worth their upkeep cost past maybe turn 10.

Arbelests will nearly always give you bang for you buck, unless the spell Storm is in play.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I'm convinced, you gotta be the same guy from the thread before.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I like arbalests. I like having variety, even if they are not competetive with crossbowmen. I find them to be rather effective when massed. If they need a buff I suggest making them AN or upping the damage. The ROF is thematic and good so should not be tweeked.

If you read thier Wiki description sounds like they should be AN, as they often killed heavily armored knights in one shot.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Yeah, I think I am the same guy.

Cor2 - a slight buff sounds great, for example, I am always confused when I remember that arbelests only get +1 precision whereas crossbows get +2. Arbelests should get +2. And maybe make them 10 AN, or 15 AP, too, if people are convinced they are underpowered.

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

Arbalests are great counter archers. But I rather use shortbows up close against light infantry (who are supposed to tire your heavy infantry).

Re: Questions and Comments About the Improved MA U
 

I like the sapper crossbowmen a lot. They are a bit overpriced, but they fire faster, do a lot less damage to your own guys, and have mapspeed 2... good if you are making a rapid-response defense squad.