LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

LA Ulm got a nice upgrade with the Bane of Heresy wielding undead guys. I tried mass producing them to counter sacred hydras made by pythium. A great strat, no?

Well, everything was peachy keen until I realized that Ulm has terrible mages for commanding undead since they were originally designed without the undead in mind.

I think LA Ulm either needs a level 0-1 summon in one of Ulm's non-random paths to move around all those undead (intended to fend off quick sacred rushes), or a recruitable commander that can guide undead, or an increase in the blood/death paths available to mages.

That is all.

Jazzepi

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

LA Ulm starts with Death income. If you take pretender with Death, the earliest cheap undead commander is Ench 2, Mound King.

The earliest available commander, of course, would be the Vampire Count. A bit expensive for moving the undead around, but he can also be used as a thug, especially for defense when the fights mostly take place within flying distance from the capital.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Boo-hiss. I understand he's around, but you only get death off of fortune tellers 1/4 of the time and I'm not sure that's the mage you want to be recruiting from your cap for the first 6-7 turns of the game just so that you can get a single death random. :(

Jazzepi

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

What about your Pretender? Lots of nations (Abyssia comes to mind) get units that they have trouble summoning and using to their full potential, "out of the box". By putting a point or two of Death on your Pretender-especially if he's awake-you can summon mound kings, counts, etc. without having to worry about random picks. It's not ideal, ofcourse, but even making him asleep lets you decide whether you want to try for a random death pick (if you're close to Pythium) with those relatively inferior mages, while still knowing you have a Death mage waiting in the wings. And that choice between two ways to go can be important in the early rounds of a MP.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Fortune tellers are definitely something you want to recruit for the first couple of turns as they prevent bad luck. Something you probably have as you are playing LA Ulm.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Fortune tellers are precisely what you want to recruit, as the bonus is additive, i.e. two fortune tellers have 2x the chance of preventing a bad event of just one fortune teller. Once the sum of fortune tellinggoes past 100, no bad events can occur.

Black priests can be recruited later when you have enough fortune tellers.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

I raised this issue with ko when i took a look at LA Ulm as one of the unpicked races in Kingmaker.

Though my memory may be off, I believe he said it was not an intentional thing, that the Bane of Heresy guys were added sort of near the end. But I do not recall him saying he was going to fix it either.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

I probably did not say. I refrain from giving such unvague promises :)

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

1/4 of the fortune tellers can lead 30 of them; Ulm's Vampire Counts can lead a mass of them. Also their blood mages have a limited undead leadership. That's sufficient, IMO.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Ghoul Guardian is a bad choice against Hydras. They are not mindless and rout quickly.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Against sacred hydras they're pretty nice actually, regular hydras not so.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

They're actually a great choice against SACRED hydras as they swarm, and then fatigue, the hydras very easily. Once the hydras are fatigued they die like flies, and the undead take zero damage from the poison aura.

I also combined them with body ethereal.

Jazzepi

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Ghoul Guardians never rout quickly. They have like 20 morale.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

they're a niche unit, but good against sacred hydras. not so good against massed priests :)

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

So fortune-telling *does* add... Well, I'd like to go on the record as saying that I wish it didn't, and it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me that it should. If I've got 10 units that each have a 2% chance to nullify a bad event (1 in 50, x10), then that's still significant protection, without making the choice to take Misfortune 3 over say Misfortune 2, essentially-or atleast eventually-meaningless.

Actually, it's still just for *that* province, where the unit is located, isn't it? So maybe not so meaningless, if you're pushing your Dominion.

Still, I do wish it worked the other way.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

The reason I favor a commander like the undead general that you can buy right from the get go, is that Bane of Heresy may be what stands between you and a bless rush. While any intelligent player can find ways to lead undead troops, it would be thematic and convenient, especially for a race like LA Ulm who is far from overpowered, to have an undead general.

Sort of similar to the one that KO's Kingmaker race has. my 2 cents.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

While I originally mentioned that it isn't necessary, I've come to rather like the idea. It could be as simple as adding #poorundeadleader to one of the mages (Second Tier, perhaps?).

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

I think a good solution would simply be giving LA Ulm a Ghoul Gardian 'captain' of some sort with 40 undead ldr. One notch below the Ghoul Baron Ulrich Patrifagus.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Are you sure about this? I thought that multiple fortune tellers only added multiple checks, not adding their bonuses together for one big check: i.e. two fortune tellers with 5% have a 9.75% (1-.95^2) of stopping the bad event, not 10%.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Here is a save file that shows that the fortune teller ability does indeed stack.

I have set up 10 provinces for LA Ulm, and there are ten Fortune Tellers (who have 'Fortune Teller 10' ability) in each province, giving the obvious combined total of 100 Fortune Teller ability in each of the ten provinces. Each province should also have Turmoil 3 Misfortune 3 from the Pretender scales, designed to maximise the possibility of bad events happening.

If you click end turn a few times (apols for the lack of cash, Jomon, and the slightly lengthy turn process time) you should find that no bad events appear in any of your provinces.

Although it is worth noting that no amount of Fortune Teller ability will actually increase the likelyhood of good events happening. Misfortune3 still means there is a -39% chance of a good event happening, and even a combined Fortune Teller ability of 100 does not change this percentage chance at all. All it does is give a percentage chance to nullify a bad event should one be triggered to happen in a province. Which is more or less exactly what the description of the Fortune Teller ability says :)

Edit: Guess I should probably dig up a more relevant thread on the Fortune Teller ability for this post than one to do with an undead commander.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

more great stuff from calahan :)

While KO explicitly stated that the percents stack, it's always good to have experimental proof.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

I'm the sacred hydra wielder in this case, and those ghoul guardians are a nightmare. I thought I had it made against his E9 blessed templars, which were hammered by the hydras, but jazzepi pulled a blood marshal hero early, massed ghoul guardians and set to against my hydras. I didn't expect him to be able to field such large numbers of poison resistant troops so early. It gave him a strong edge for several turns, now its kind of a weird situation where that army kicks ***, but if I send my hydras anywhere else they have an easy job against Ulm's armies, whose high protection is largely irrelevant

I don't think an available recruitable undead commander is really necessary. As has been mentioned there are summons available, or a death pretender can be taken. Sacred hydras are a very particular threat with a lot of inherent risk, as poison resistance very very heavily neutralises the strategy, so they will typically only be very effective for early expansion (if not for that damn blood marshal! :( ). A specific unit for such a specific threat seems unwarranted to me. Anyways, a good undead leader is clearly available through luck, so the player can mitigate the risk through scale as well as pretender selection.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

Yes, this:

It makes a whole lot more sense to me that the guardians would have a leader unit than that they'd run around following some random fortune teller that can speak to the dead (and they're not mindless or anything.) Having to bust out summons or a pretender to lead your national troops is pretty lame, and I don't think Ulm is rocking its way to any OP awards.

Re: LA Ulm - Undead Commander
 

To me, the answer is simple, just look at the ghoul guardian description: "...In the ruined Keep, they still live and exercise their military code, ready to march if called by the Lord of Ulm. ..."
Exercising their military code would imply some sort of military structure, which would require commanders (that could lead them in battle). There's also the "...ready to march if called..." part, if they have no commanders of their own they clearly aren't ready to march anywhere.