This Guide is Primarily Focused for CBM. All comments are welcome.

LA Ulm is one of my most favored nation, and has the ability to become one of the powerhouses in any game.

Advantages: Strong Blood, astral spies, Iron Blizzard, great national troops, Vampires (specifically counts), and great magic diversity.

Weaknesses: Resource intensive for most troops, rather weak mages and research, and low magic resistance.

At first glance, the weaknesses are crippling. Bad research? Weak Mages? Low Magic Resistance? Resource intensive troops? THAT’S HORRIBLE! Your first instinct would be to pick a SC pretender to fuel early expansion (in the form of the thematic Vampire Queen), or an awake rainbow pretender to even out the research. To me, building either of those designs into viable pretenders costs some severe damage to design points.
Dormant Great Enchantress (Dominion 6)
F2A2W2E4S4D3N2B4
Order3/Sloth1/Cold(or Heat)3/Growth1/Magic1
A Rainbow pretender works wonders for LA Ulm, as it allows Black Forest to get into all the magic paths that it has available. Once you forge some boosters and get some gems flowing, your randoms can all start remote site searching for more gems, and more gems means better accessibility to a magic path. The minor blesses are also very useful (although the main point of 4S4B is for endgame astral and blood), as Ulm can use all the MR it can get, the blood adds to the utility of the Templars, and the Reinvigoration works wonders for your Priests (as it lets them spam Iron Blizzard longer). The Order is necessary to help put up as many forts as quickly as possible (as well as benefiting patrolling a bit), as well as funding massive amounts of your cheap mages and troops. Black Forest, while many of their troops do have some very high resource costs, can still expand perfectly well without a SC, productivity, or really any magic whatsoever. Instead of relying on Zweihanders, rely on Rangers of Ulm (they make great, cheap, and most importantly, massable crossbowmen, and waaaay better melee fighters then practically any other archer you’ll find) for expansion, with a few Shields to draw arrow fire and maybe some Pikeneers to repel cavalry and weaker infantry. Second, magic isn’t crucial for LA Ulm to expand, and research will really be a secondary concern to blood hunting with Second Tier members (and setting up a working blood economy), expansion, and new forts. Instead of whining about all those good spells you can’t cast because of low magic levels, focus on gathering at least 44 blood slaves for the turn your pretender awakens. I’m not suggesting you abandon research altogether: just that it isn’t critical for your survival early on. LA Ulm is equipped to repel pretty much any kind of rush you’d face. The classic Rush-Any-Era-Ulm-With-Elephants Rush? An army of Rangers and some Black Templars (with +2 Reinvigoration, +2 Strength, and +1 Magic Resistance, for a little extra oompf) are more than enough with some PD (and if they come year 2-3, Second Tier Members and Iron Priests with mind burn, paralyze, iron darts, and iron blizzard will just decimate any would-be tramplers). Supercombatants? Halberdiers make Supercombatants bleed like it’s the new hip thing to do. A typical, clichéd sacred rush? Ghoul Guardians eat sacreds, both literally and figuratively, for breakfast: and then some. And what about a giant chaff army with plenty of range (like Markatas)? Shields to deflect the arrows, pikes or halberds to repel the swarm of chaff. And this is just the beginning: we haven’t even gotten to the best part.

Ok: your ranger/shields/pike armies have won you a fairly large expansion by itself, you’ve got a bunch of forts up cranking out troops (so rangers will stop being your primary unit), and a bunch of blood slaves to summon a vampire count. Your research though is rather below average compared to other nations at this point (though above Ermor level), and people are starting to look at you for territory. This is when your pretender wakes up, and the whole game changes. Start your pretender off casting Sanguine Heritage for your first immortal harbinger of doom (as I call the Counts). Vampire Counts are going to be an essential part of your strategy from here on out. Their going to start to become your primary source of blood slaves, as well as human thralls for a bit of patrolling and high morale chaff. Plus, they can double as immortal thugs that (coupled with good dominion: I suggest putting up more then a few temples to both spread and raise your dominion level, and using your Inquisitor acolytes or priests to keep it positive) make attacking you insanely costly (if you launch kamikaze attacks or mass them together). Plus, they can summon more counts with a Skull Staff and a Brazen Vessel. From this point on, get your Pretender on research and put any new Second Tier Members onto research as well. Summon new counts as soon as you get the blood slaves to do so, and you’ll start raking in the blood slaves and the tempo starts to quicken (SDRs are a must). With your new focus on your research (with your forts now turning out researchers instead of blood hunters); you’ll start seeing your once lowly research rise in an exponential curve of pure, unadulterated epic win. Your rainbow pretender can start researching, and with 6 research from cheap Second Tiers, you can start climbing the charts quite rapidly. Assuming you have 2 forts up at the end of year one, you get 12.2x+29 as your research equation, and the area under a research-time graph equals the total research done (or the ant derivative). Using calculus, we can determine the total research to equal 6.1x^2+29x, which means 1226.4 research points by the end of year two. If you’ve put up 3 fortresses by the time your pretender wakes up, you get 18.3x+29 which anti-derives into 9.15x^2+29x which means 1665.6 research points: and this is assuming you don’t have any researchers to begin year one with, and either of the two totals are more than enough to take you to Evocation-6 and Construction-4 (on normal anyway). You might not take Bogarus in terms of research, but you’ll definitely be in the top tier. Your main focuses will be on Evocation 6 (for Iron Blizzard), and on Construction 4 (for that Brazen Vessel and Skull Staff). If you’re really being pressed hard, go for Thaumaturgy 4 and Evocation 3 for Paralyze and Mind Burn and Iron Darts. When you get you Evocation 6: you’re pretty much set in terms of battlefield magic. Iron Priests are criminally cheap for their utility, recruit anywhere, and a group of 3 or more spamming Iron Blizzard will melt away practically ANY army you face. I’m not exaggerating: it’s Blade Wind on steroids that not only increases with Earth levels, but is also armor piercing (say goodbye to those knights) and deals extra, extra damage to magic beings. Plus the fatigue cost is ridiculously low; especially if they’re earth random and use Earth Power (I mean it‘s aweful). Once you have Iron Blizzard, you’re basically set on battlefield magic. The minor earth bless also comes into play here, and your priests are able to spam even more of it. Show anyone who dares think Black Forest is weak on magics the errors of their way with your cheap and easy to use Iron Blizzard Spam. At this point, you can focus on pretty much any other school you need: more construction for artifacts, conjuration for elemental royalty and SCs, and blood for…well, it’s blood! It’s an awesome school that does so much; it can only be described as blood.

Now we have battlefield magic covered: time to get to gems and higher level magics. Your pretender will be your main source of boosters for the time being (a single thistle mace for a nature random fortune teller for example will start a chain reaction and allow you to spam remote nature searching) and a site searched to start the gems flowing. If you’d rather not spend the time manually searching with your pretender though, you can also have your Illuminated Ones mass astral search and then cast Ascahic Record (though this is inefficient). Once the gems start flowing though, Ulm’s gem income will start skyrocketing. A few magic boosters and you have easy site searching for 7 out of 8 paths (to access water, just empower a priest and forge some water boosters and Air is simply easier to empower an air random priest for searching). A few skulls of fire and a thistle mace are all you need to get it started (and a brazen vessel and blood thorn for a count to start forging blood boosters). Once that chain gets started, your pretender is free to either site search (if you really want him to), keep researching, or start doing rituals. If you really want to boost your research, forge a few skull mentors with that large pile of death gems gathering dust (since you should be able to easily death site search with death random fortune tellers). Also, a Ring of Wizardry is always a good investment for your rainbow pretender. Also, with a booming blood economy, it’ll be a piece of cake to empower an earth random priest in blood, give him a pair of earth boots, and a blood booster, and start forging blood stones (with a dwarven hammer of course. Common sense much?). Maybe I’m not making it seem important enough. BLOOD STONES ARE IMPORTANT TO ULM. Your Priests with a hammer have a 40% gem reduction (15%+25%), and blood stones are REALLY important to Ulm. Heck, why settle for one iron priest forging them? Get two, or three, or four. You’ve got the blood to forge them: the only thing you need to worry about are the earth gems. Quite the opposite from MA Ulm, where blood was the limiting factor. You should be rolling in a sea of earth gems by endgame.

Now back to the counts and your blood economy. Cordon off and patrol (wolves get a patrol bonus in 1.44, which makes them your prime candidate) as many mid-size provinces as you need to keep your blood economy strong, and you should be easily able to rival Mictlan as a blood power. Counts will start to grow exponentially as your blood economy grows, and free thrall chaff will easily provide enough bodies to keep your hard-hitting Iron Blizzards going, as well as patroller. This is where the Growth comes in: you’ll be able to build up two or three counts or Second Tier members (for the Illuminated ones, give them SDRs for 90% effectiveness) per province, with 0% taxes and a commander patrolling with thrall chaff and can still expect to keep your population growing. Now, as you start capturing more provinces and start putting up more labs (if you want to spare yourself the micromanagement), you’re blood income will increase with it. Counts are also excellent, and I mean excellent, thugs and raiders, and are especially deadly in your own dominion. Imagine this: flying, sneaky, and IMMORTAL vampires spamming Shadow Blast, Summon Lammas, Darkness, Soul Vortex, and anything else you want. With Vampire Lords…oh man. Now you get free summonable thralls (though they aren't really massable, go with regular summonings instead). Their immortality just means you can suicide them with your Lord with Soul Vortex and Attack Rear in the middle of battles. Just imagine the damage they can do to enemy mages…all casting spells at the rear. Soul Vortex makes it even more potent, because now you’re adding extra fatigue to their counters. Now imagine slapping on Medallions of Vengeances for those suicidal attacks: dead mages and commanders: rare, medium, or well done? Not only can’t they run from your flying thugs of dooooooooooom (DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!), but the fatigue will throw off any well-planned communion. Say hello to dead communion slaves (which in the magic weak Late Era, are critically important to most nations in need of heavy magically support).

By now, you can basically abandon your national units in favor of a massive chaff army of thralls and wolves (did I mention wolfherds are really, really important to mass?), you’d be stronger if you didn’t. The unit that starts to shine again (after fading into obscurity after expansion) is the Ranger. Your conventional army of wolves, shields, zweihanders, thralls, pikes, and halberds are already deadly with just priests (add in some large communions and they’ll run in terror). Now throw in STEALTHY armies of wolf chaff, rangers, vampires, and, the coup de grâce, Stealthy Illuminated One Communions (with flaming arrows and arrow fend, if you empowered, for better survivability) and endgame astral! Now your enemies don’t just fear your frontline army, they’re afraid you’ll have giant armies of unmindhuntable communioned death attacking them from the rear. Couple that with astral spies (for shutting down fortresses with ease: and also unmindhuntable), you’ll inspire more fear then ANY Ashen Emperor could ever aspire to be. Your blood economy should also be booming. Once you get to that point, you can start getting into Vampire Lords and massing armies of thralls (all immortal in friendly dominion). Now, with inquisitor priests, you don't have to worry about dominion pushes, and thus your provinces will be virtually impregnable. Sure your opponents can take one here or there, but they need to get past your strings of forts...AND immortal swarms of vampires. Heck, a few equipped with medallions of vengeances set to attack rear will decimate their commanders and mages. Now throw in buffed vampire thralls in friendly dominion. And you thought Ermor or R'lyeh can throw neverending swarms of chaff? Now see what happens when you're fighting the same swarms over and over again...that keeps growing.

Now for Supercombatants: Ulm, with its very large range of magic, has a variety of supercombatant options. Death, in the form of Tartarians, is a common option. LA Ulm can also summon quite a few of the elemental royals: and being one of the strongest blood nations in the LA, they also have a shot at Demon Lords and all those other wonderful blood summons.


Unit Critique:
Villains: you are generally never going to use them. The low morale makes them unreliable at best without Sermons of Courage. Plus the fact that short bows are useless in general in the Late Age, when armor is common. They do however fill a very useful niche. Against LA R’lyeh, you need mass missiles to fight off their unarmored chaff hordes: and whatdoyaknow, villains don’t have a reload time like Rangers. And what’s this? They have normal magic resistance (while the rest of Ulm has -1 MR)?!?! This couldn’t be useful against the mass artillery R’lyeh could field (which, lo and behold, can be negated by MR)…could it? And what’s more, they’re easy to mass with their cheap resource cost.

Rangers of Ulm: Rangers are and extremely versatile and useful lot. They might not have shields, but their mass crossbows are also easy to mass (though not to the same quantity as villains), and they make fairly decent melee fighters if need be. They are going to be your primary expansion unit in the early game, and have lots of utility after that as guerilla fighters and for harassing. Armies of these can be massed under Ranger Captains with Crowns of Commands and Scepters of Authorities and strike any province of your choosing (think EA Helheim and Vanheim for some ideas as to how you can use them), and they’re a great unit all in all, especially since with their lower resource cost makes them easier to mass then your infantry.

Pikemen: Pikes are actually very useful all in all. While they have their weaknesses (against mass archers, trample, and massive armies of troops), they have a lot of utility. They’ve got better survivability then shields against giants (because if a giant lands a hit, your shield isn’t going to keep you alive anyway, whereas repel stays useful), and they do rather well against hoplites (which carry shorter spears then Pikemen and thus lose their repel advantage) and low morale chaff. They are also useful against heavy cavalry by being able to negate the tricksy and deadly charge bonus on their lances (the shock effect of the lances is the best part of cavalry). With the lower resource cost compared to the rest of Black Forest’s infantry, they fill a very useful niche, especially against Giant nations like Utgard and Gath.

Halberdiers: Halberds fill another useful niche in Black Forest’s arsenal. With the extra castle defense bonus, they’re efficient in defending your forts, which means you’ll be able to hold whatever you take. They might have slightly less length then the pikes (which means less repelling action), but they do get a boost in damage, and lets them fill yet another niche in the already flexible Ulmish army.

Infantry of Ulm (with Shields!): These units will be your only shield bearers (unless you count Templars) and your main arrow decoys for every of your armies. Plus the morningstars they wield are devastating against other shield infantry (in that they get a bonus against shields), which makes them great combat infantry against nations that have nothing BUT shields (like, say, LA Pythium). All in all, these are another essential unit in the Ulm arsenal.

Zweihanders: These bad boys have the best protection in all of LA Ulm (along with Templars). They have great survivability thus against normal infantry and with their increased stats and Great Swords, they can deal damage like no tomorrow. They might be vulnerable against crossbows and longbows, but they‘re worth the price (except in the early game when quantity of rangers beats quality of infantry against independents). Zweihanders are just good all around, in my opinion. Also, they have the best gold-resource ratio of all of LA Ulm’s units.

Ghoul Guardians: Besides buying an occasional Templar, these will be your primary recruit at your capital once you get a fort up. They fill plenty of niches for the Black Forest, and you’re naïve if you think they’re weak. Their black halberds, besides being of a length long enough to repel most standard infantry and dealing more damage then pikes, also deal a 1 square, AOE, unavoidable, fatigue damage to all sacred units. This makes them indispensable and a must against bless-dependent nations, for example Mictlan. Against easily massable sacred troops, like Jaguar or Eagle Warriors, they’ll throttle them; against expensive and high-end bless troops, they’re practically overpowered. Not only that, they have a 2 person bonus in defending castles, and have 2 movement (whereas the rest of Ulm’s infantry has 1), and that means they’re far more flexible then any of your other infantry. To top that off, they’re stats are higher then your infantry (with +4 HP compared to Pikes, Shields, and Halberds and +3HP compared to Zweihanders, along with +2 strength, high morale, and 19(!) protection), and are undead (which means poison resistance and no supplies). They also have 14 magic resistance, which makes them extremely difficult to banish, and (throw in +4 MR from a Tempering of the Will cast by a fully decked out black priest geared to penetrate, and banish will be out of the question) without encumbrance, they can duke it out and outlast enemy infantry without fear of fatigue.

Black Templars: Templars are another niche unit. They are difficult to mass and not worth a bless strategy, but they have their uses. Against large tramplers, they’ll work splendidly (their larger size means less damage from elephants, and their shock value will poke holes in any plump pachyderm that strays by, especially with a minor blood bless), and can and should be used sparingly to confuse your enemy. They are also good in combination with the Hochmeister for a thug group (one is enough to bodyguard him). Other then that, all things that applied to Black Knights with MA Ulm applies here.

Commander of Ulm: Your basic chaff ferry, patroller, and army commander. Nothing special, although throwing on a Bow gives them some use in battle (but you can do that with any commander).

Ranger Captain: Throw on a Crown of Command and Scepter of Authority and you get a free stealthy commander for ranger raids. Also they’re cheap snipers if you need one.

Black Acolyte: Cheap Inquisitor unit for keeping your dominion high. They can bless your Black Priests and save you some script space, and the earth random ones are cheap Iron Blizzard casters.

Member of the First Tier: They’ll be cheap, easy to mass, communion slaves and also make unmindhuntable spies, which means you can shut down fortresses with unrest with impunity.

Hochmeister: They make good thugs and can bless your Templars easily. Thugging them out is probably a safer and cheaper bet then thugging out a vampire count, since it comes with 20 protection already and can be blessed fairly easily.

Wolfherd: Once you get your count production started and second fort up, these, along with fortunetellers, will be your primary capital-commander recruits. Wolves are by themselves nice chaff, but now in 1.44, they get a patrol bonus (which makes them even more useful). Plus, wolves are stealthy and can accompany your ranger armies in province raids, if you are so inclined. Their utility shouldn’t be underestimated.

Fortune Teller: they are actually more cost-efficient researchers then your Second Tier members, and are your primary access (via randoms) to death and nature. Plus, the reduced chance of bad events never hurt anyone (unless you want an earthquake or hurricane to hit your capital). They also don’t suffer from old age, which is a problem with Second Tier members and Black Priests.

Black Priest: They along with Second Tier members will be your primary battlefield mages. With the sheer amount of variety on the Black Priests, it’s difficult to find all the uses for them. For Earth Random Priests, they can be scripted to cast Tempering the Will, which really helps to cover the sorely lacking MR on Ulm (the spell is E3): give him penetration items to help ensure success. Earth Random Priests can also cast some of the more useful Earth spells with boosters (an Earth Blood stone and a pair of Earth Boots is all you need) and you’ll be casting Earthquake, Petrify, Weapons of Sharpness, Curse of Stones, Army of [insert metal here], and (if you want to) Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel (and anything else I‘m forgetting). They can also cast Iron Blizzard much longer then your other randomed priests. Fire randomed priests are useful for easy access to Magma Bolts/Magma Eruption and the other lovely Fire/Fire-Earth spells. Air randomed Priests can be given boosters to cast wind guide and arrow fend and Rain of Stones, all of which means less reliance on shield infantry. They can also spam Orb Lightning if you are so inclined along with the usual Iron Blizzard. And finally, Astral random mages. While I love the Earth random Priests, the Astral mages arguably have more versatility as they can become communion masters , which means less fatigue and no boosters then Earth randomed Priests. They are also your best non-capital only researchers (due to reduced upkeep via sacreds), (fortune tellers have the same upkeep and 80 lower intial cost).

Member of the Second Tier: Members of the Second Tier will be your primary Communion Masters. The rare randomed Second Tier Members also have great utility: fire randomed Tier members are instant access to high-end battlefield fire magic(ala communion) and the same goes for death randoms. Astral and Blood randoms just increases your already existing paths and means you’ll need less slaves to empower up to endgame battlefield astral and blood magics. The best past about Illuminated One communions is that…they are stealthy! Your enemy will have no idea if a province doesn’t have a hidden communion, and being stealthy, they can accompany your ranger/wolf armies and lay waste to provinces and forts behind enemy lines. You'll also use them to kick off your blood economy: 3-5 (I normally only need to use 3) Second Tiers in a midsized province is more than enough to get you the 44 slaves needed to kick off your vampire chain by your pretender's awakening.
Part Two

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I feel like I'm missing something..... where do I get Wraith Kings from? :shock:

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Nice writeup. I'm not really experienced enough to comment on how viable the strats are though.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Whoops:o, I completely forgot: I had Mytheology on. Oh great, now I'm going to have to remove my whole paragraph extorting their virtues.

Ah well, back to Tartarians.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Don't know about extorting anyone's Virtues.... Don't they wield Flambeaus or something? I'd be more tempted to extol one than to intimidate one into giving me gold. ;)

Interesting guide, btw.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I don't think any one thinks LA ulm has problems with resources ... Rangers are well known to be one of the best units in the game and commonly spammed.

Also a few more critiques to your guide. I think you really should explain why drain 2 is better than magic one especially because the growth seems an odd choice in the build. Honestly, I don't think growth plays a huge factor for blood hunting (I rarely find the pop loss is the deterrant as opposed to raids on your blood hunters). Even if growth does play a part, misfortune 2 and sloth 1 is easily doable considering the fortune telling. Also some parts of the guide sounds very generic and overly optimistic. The lack of research seems just sort of glazed over and there's a very large gap between "this is my pretender" to all the sudden "I have forts and evo 6". I think you got the right idea that evo's the way to go but it got a bit blanked out. It's a good start but you should address some possible counters rather than skipping about. For example, what'd you do against early battle magics, arrow fend, do you find the knights worth using, etc, good commmunion spells, etc. LA Ulm's been one of my favored nations since dom 2 so I'm just offering some critiques here. =)

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Awake fountain of blood with D3ish B6ish.

Especially for CBM, you can have your first count around turn 5 or 6 depending on luck with the 1st blood hunt he does.

Resources are mostly useless to you anyway, sloth3 is no problem, blesses are worthless and your armies will consist of as many forge priests (you can communion them, you can forge crystal shields easilly, you can basically get any battlefield spells you want) as you can pull together (recruit anywhere afterall) and whatever chaffy chaff you want to stick in front of them (empower/equip someone to B3N3 and use advanced xbreeding...). So then yeah, turmoil 3 and luck 3 is also a pretty nice combo.

And that way you can even take some magic if you really want to.

And then you have your counts running around doing whatever you need them to do. They even generate freespawn for you to throw in with your chaff, and those thralls(?) don't rout much.

Yeah, you can toss in some rangers early, and make piles of them if you really need them I suppose.

Eventually you will have immortal flying thugs, massive communion potential, or just 50 some odd iron blizzards, or gifts from heaven, earthquake, stone rain, ... You have all the blood SC summons if you even need them.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Kiss: Well, the difference between Magic-1 and Drain-2 is 120 Design Points. Black Forest units are all low on magic resistance (with Villans and Black Templars at 10, normal, and Ghoul Guardians at 14), so Drain-2 is mainly for the extra points and magic resistance. For research, the goal here is quantity over quality: just get more forts up churning out Second Tier Members. Ulm doesn’t need magic immediately, so I think the extra magic resistance and points are more important as a whole (since I‘m advocating quantity of researchers over quality). Though maybe Magic-1 is worth it, since I‘m trying to maximize LA Ulm‘s diversity. As for misfortune: I’m hesitant about picking it. Fortune Tellers do help minimize the problem, but 5% means it’ll take a bunch to negate the misfortune (I have to ask though, are the percentages additive, or does the game simply run checks against each one?), and you’re going to be alternating between wolf herds (and all that lovely, stealthy chaff) and fortunetellers at your capital. As for the growth: it probably could be dropped down to Growth-2 or Growth-1, for the points, but I personally like to keep a growing/stable population, so I don’t have to worry about moving to new provinces. Of course, I like expanding slowly, so this probably doesn’t have any meaning in MP.

And I know, the guide is generic and skimpy. I’m working on it. My time is kinda tight, though. : (
I will say this though: I don’t use knights much: they’re too expensive and getting a bless strategy with Ulm compromises the scales and dominion (and pretender) way too much. That being said, they’re more of a niche unit that you can use from time to time. The charge bonus makes them a good unit to counter elephants with rangers. Other then that: Hochimeisters can be thugged out, and a few knights are useful in keeping your enemies off balance.

Licker: I’ve always been hesitant of taking Sloth-3, since the -45% resources. But, I suppose since I’m suggesting you put up forts up as rapidly as possible: it would probably fit in with the whole build. And Luck-3/Turmoil-3: I haven’t tried it yet. I’m not completely sure about trusting my income completely to luck, especially since LA Ulm in my build would need to throw up forts rather quickly: and I just don‘t like trusting my fate to the dice. I’ll test it out though.


The build I’m trying for is to maximize on Ulm’s diverse amounts of magic paths. Ulm already can easily go into astral, blood, death, and earth. By starting gem income in all paths and forging a few boosters, you can easily expand to the other paths with remote site searching spells: and with more gems, more spell options and summons. And more battle spell combinations. You can thus keep your opponents off-balance: they’ll never know what spells you’re going to script next round. Plus, greater diversity means more summons. You’ll have a shot at pretty much all of the Elemental Royalty (the Queens will probably the hardest to get), compared to nations that don’t have a natural access to a certain path.


And I’m really grateful for the advice and comments.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well I played (and won) a game with LA ulm using t3l3, don't recall exactly where I had sloth, but it wasn't much of an issue for me ever (I know I didn't take any production anyway).

Sure you hurt a little for income from time to time, but the point being that if you are going to go big blood, and leverage your magic paths, you don't miss the income quite so much. Mostly because everything you really need to recruit is cheap anyway, since you NEVER bother with the knights unless you want/need for some reason mid to late game.

And while it's really not that good of a deal, you can always alchemize a bit if you are really cash strapped, though in my tests I found I rarely needed to do it, unless it was to just get that last 50 gold to put up another fort/temple/lab.

The key was getting count production up early, letting them do my blood hunting while I recruited forge priests to support chaffy indie hunters.

Of course you can also put together a few 100 rangers over the course of the first couple years and if you need them somewhere they can move fairly quickly (and even stealthily if you need them to).

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

nice guide, thank you for the work.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well, I'll toy around with it. Sloth though is something that doesn't work too well, considering LA Ulm has some very good heavy infantry, and you'll need some resources to mass them up.

And Kissblade: missed the Arrow Fend part. If you're into the mid-game and have put up the necessary forts and started cranking up magic research, just stop using rangers. They're good, yes, but it never really pays to be a one-trick pony (in my opinion): diversify your armies. Arrow Fend is Enchantment-6, so it's difficult to put the research, so you probably won't face Arrow Fended armies in the first 6-12 turns, especially if they weren't focused on getting it immediately. If you want strategies around it if they've got it early and you don't have evocation (and don't have any Zweihanders or other heavy infantry), there are ways to get around it. If you got Construction-4, give a ranger captain a Secepter of Authority and Crown of Command, and send an army of 85 rangers to attack his rear provinces. He can't station a mage in EVERY province, give them all enough gems to cast arrow fend, and still get enough PD to beat you in melee, and if you raid and turn taxes up to 200%, he'll draw back his main army to try and crush your guerilla force. No one wants to fight a war that will leave them badly drained monetarily and weaker then before: it leaves them ripe for others to attack. So use diplomacy to your advantage. Besides that, send a small ranger group to attack their main army and make their scripted caster use up their gems casting it on a force set to fire and retreat. If they only planned to cast it once, it means they just lost their arrow fend in the next battle. Also, bring up counts if you need to. Later in the game, you shouldn't be relying on Rangers for everything: your infantry is still excellent (if not as heavily armored as MA Ulm, at least they have Broad Swords now). Rangers make an excellent harassing force: they can do both melee and range well, and should be used as such in raiding. Really, delay and harass them until you've fully shifted to heavy infantry and got your Iron Blizzards and Counts in sufficient number.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Sloth is your friend.

You don't need that slow heavy infantry at all, or just a few shield carrying arrow catchers.

LA Ulms strength is NOT in its infantry.

Blood, blood, and more blood. And then you probably will want a side of blood to go with it.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Licker's absolutely right here. You can easily take sloth, and you should seek more leverage via luck-turmoil, or the more conservative order-misfortune.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Order misfortune is also less than optimal in my opinion.

You really don't need cash the way other nations do.

Misfortune can really screw you hard early game anyway. This is true for most nations, but I just don't see taking order when you are going to crap on your provinces with blood hunters eventually anyway being that useful.

Luck on the other hand...

LA Ulm does have a couple interesting heros, and getting members of the 3rd teir can really help you when you are missing boosters.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Agreed.
I have played with order 3/misfortune 2 in mp and lost. Gold is really not so much an issue after a certain time. Luck will give you gems from time to time which are quite nice considering that you don't have a starting gem income for most of your paths and your smiths are good forgers.

I also think Kissblade is right, drain is bad. You have only cheap mages. If you take drain it will hurt you more than a nation with expensive mages that will also try to win the research race.
Order 3 gives you +21% gold which means theoretically +21% research.
Magic 1 vs Drain 2 on the other hand gives every mage you recruit +2 rp which is +40% on a 5 rp mage, more on the lower mages.

One thing that caught my attention when reading the LA Man guide: Ulm can be pretty good at castle warfare, too, maybe even better than Man, if properly prepared. Vampires (not the counts, the normal ones) have a good strength and are flying. One summoning (22 blood slaves, 8 vamps) are almost as good as a Magister of Man in defending a castle and they are flying and stealthy right from the start. And you get lots of freespawn via stealthy commanders. So while Man needs to use valuable commanders to defend a castle you could only use troops/summons/freespawn while having your commanders research inside the castle.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I don't think we should dismiss order 3 (especially in base vanilla game) because ranger floods can be expensive and LA Ulm actually has nice non cap mages (cheapie and very useful) as a result, you can never have too much gold.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I wouldn't dismiss O3, but the advantage of T3 (besides 240 design points...) is that you get more events early, more gem diversity early when you need it most.

Ranger floods are all fine and well in a small map perhaps, but in larger maps ranger floods are just so much chaff to be brushed aside if you want to use them once counters are available, and at that point, your money doesn't help you as much because you can't buy your way out of the problem.

Well your money still goes far enough to recruit your mages at all your castles, and your castles were built when you hit luck events as well.

There is certainly a balance to be struck depending on your play style, but 240 design points is huge. At least I assume you aren't paying for your order scale by taking misfortune, because I think that would be a really bad idea for LA Ulm.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Rangers work quite well because most players don't have the sense to deploy counter archers. Remember that rangers don't have any shields, no helmets and only protection 8 leather armours. As they only shoot every other turn they get eaten by the standard tactic: one group of armoured missile units front, another group of cheap standard archers back. Trust me, I've been there. Facing shielded infantry is another thing they are bad at.
No I rather use them in small hidden groups following your army instead (ranger captain + 10 rangers). That way your enemy won't anticipate them and they can slaughter freely. The ranger captain with his high precision could also be fitted with a cool missile weapon to make him a mini ranged thugs. 4 or 5 of them with accompanying rangers. Perfect for that extra unexpected umpfh to your army.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

The only problem is that the 10g/4r basic archer is all but extinct in LA, and Woodsmen and Deer Tribe are also much less common than before.

But it's true, it seems that massed crossbowmen should have many ways to counter them. They'll get some kills, that's for sure, but a skilled opponent should be able to wipe them out - BUT, it is always always always good to make your opponent shift gears.

It's worth noting that with proper support, those Woodsmen are still pretty good against most targets (far better against shields than mere bows), while if you force your enemy to make tons of cheap archers - those men are all pretty useless against any infantry that Ulm produces.

Of course, bearing in mind that the suggestion is that you supplement your Sloth with Order so you can swarm with Rangers, and I have to wonder if the Rangers are -it-, or if there is some clever plan to get a mountain of steel crashing down on the foe as well.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Rangers have quite some lasting power compared to other troops. They're able patrollers and stealth raiders when counters start to get fielded. Plus you guys must've never seen wind guided/flame arrowed xbows because that thing gets dangerous even when something like storm gets fielded because there's just so many of those projectiles in the air. Plus Ulm has the points to field Order and Turmoil doesn't give you 240 free points because you wanted to take luck 3 with it while Order isn't necessarily 120 because Misfortune 1-2 is easily doable with Fortune Tellers.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I commented on the luck misfortune thing. I can't see Ulm doing that well with misfortune honestly, compared to the difference from taking T3L3.

Map dependent of course.

And yes rangers are useful, and can be useful moving forward, but Ulm lacks the ability (outside of the pretender) to cast wind guide or flaming arrows without boosters/empowerment. Any nation could pack a ton of xbows and achieve much the same effect (less the rangers mobility, which is very useful).

My concern is that following a ranger centric focus ignores your real strengths, especially if you are going to waste time recruiting ranger lords to lead them. If you need stealth commanders you have plenty of other options from blood summons to standard conjuration summons.

A mass of black priests can do just about anything due to you being able to get them in communions (and forge matrices...) So perhaps that is where you are going to get your flaming arrows and wind guide from? But then you still need the mass of black priests to set it up...

Clearly you can play LA Ulm different ways, I'd just be skeptical of a ranger centric strategy being as effective as a mage based strategy. And in any case, it is not as though even with T3L3 you won't be able to mass a sizeable force of rangers at some point if you really want to.

The benefit of O3 seems to only be early game, and early game you simply cannot use wind guide and flaming arrows anyway (unless you design your pretender to do it, and then you have likely handicapped your count production).

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Where do you get the idea that I was proposing a ranger centric strategy...?

One of my original points for Order 3 is that you have good non cap mages and more steady income = more mages. Ranger floods = good early game. Order 3 = better early game. Order gives you more early game to expand + threaten better => more snowball income than turmoil.

Also there's nothing from stopping Ulm from taking Order and luck anyway. Turmoil/luck doesn't pay off as much as people think nor do misfortune hurt all that much in base game.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

It is all a gamble. Massing one extreme can pay of, but against a good opponent you are taking quite the risk. If your opponent is less experienced however, you will most probably win 9 times out of 10.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I think the point that we can all agree on, is that one of Ulm's great strengths, is their cost effective, and battle ready mages. Regardless of how you staff your armies, having gobs and gobs of Black Priests will be very important to your military goals. That's one of the reasons I like to at least have 4E on my pretender, as you get very solid performance with Summon Earthpower and a bit of reinvig from the bless.

(edit) - NOTE - Each Black Priest spamming Iron Blizzard, is the equivalent (until they pass out) of 60+ Rangers (30+ AP projectiles every round), and that is a very big deal indeed.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well I may have taken a liberty in assigning the ranger specific strat to you, but you did mention a mass of rangers buffed with WG and FA...

In any case, you do not need O3 to pump out mages, especially when you don't need to pump out expensive sacreds or other pricey units. Most ulm units cost ~10g right? Now especially if you are also taking sloth (which doesn't hurt you much either, since you don't need swarms of units with upkeep...) you are probably resource limited in cranking out anything rather than gold limited. Black Priests cost ~110? Members of the 2nd tier cost ~150? Sanguine Counts cost 44 blood slaves (or 33, depending on mods right?)...

Fortune Tellers cost 90?

You don't need O3 to pump these things out. You don't even need O3 to build castles if you save from your L3 gold events until you are ready to do it.

But still, ulm is strong enough that I think it will play well either way, just that at some point you reach a point where you don't really need gold for anything particularly useful.

Units should be free spawn or summons, commanders can also be summoned, or ~1k a turn to recruit ~10 commanders (or am i completely misremembering the costs?). Upkeep will be low, Black Priests are sacred, and free spawn/summons are zero.

It comes down to play style preference at this point I think.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Yep, I agree on that. Mind you, I was only pointing out Order 3 isn't a bad pick for Ulm in my original post. Luck 3/turmoil has it's own advantages as well. (I'm actually using it with LA Ulm in one of my test games) I do think CBM makes turmoil/luck able to compete with Order. In base games, I was getting barbarian harrassed more often than not. =\

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Oh, and the other thing I forgot to mention is that if you take T3L3 you probably have room for some growth as well, so over time your income isn't as hammered as it could otherwise be.

Growth is even nice since I think some of your Black Priests come with old age, and if offsets some of the pop decline from blood hunting.

The only question left is do you take the awake fountain of blood with Death and Blood, or do you take some kind of rainbow pretender to help your lacking paths?

I can't see LA Ulm needing an SC pretender.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Remember that LA Ulm gets a production bonus in each fortress, which is a way of telling you to build many of them. Many fortresses equals many Black Priests and MotST which equals many Wolfherds and Fortune Tellers (the capital only guys). What I'm saying is that freeing up your capital means more freespawns and less bad events overall while you still get the battle mages, the troops etc. Do LA Ulm have cheap fortresses? A quick look in the manual says not really. That is why you need order, just as you did when you played MA Ulm. Not so much for the troops, but rather for the troops AND the ability to constantly build fortresses where ever you go. Also, a nation that has lots of slow troops and aims to build up a blood economy seems rather defensive to me. So turtle on and abuse that ill gotten real estate!

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well my experience says otherwise.

You can bank the positive gold luck events for when you are ready for your fortress.

Also you just don't need that much gold anyway, and you don't need to be slow.

You can play them that way, or you can play them 'fast'. Either way will likely meet with success, and become just a difference in play style.

Honestly though, if you spend your time building lots of Ulmish HI I think you are going to lose eventually. While that infantry looks great, it's not really all that tough, and the movement is horrible. So unless you have some way of 'warping' them around (and Ulm doesn't have easy access to any of those methods) they will mostly just cost you upkeep while a more agile opponent dances around them until he's ready to level them.

That doesn't mean you cannot or should not use them, it does mean you should be thinking about how quickly you can retire them...

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

That is why you need many fortresses, that way you can mass the right kind of infantry where you most need it. You also have to remember that fortresses don't cost any upkeep, on the contrary, they actually make more money in accordance with their admin value. That is why a more expensive fortress pays of in the long round (it is also more durable and generates more resources generally).
Another thing, please take a look at the Ulmish infantry. What do you see? High protection, slow movement, low gold cost, high resource cost, castle defence bonuses. What does that tell you? Their main purpose is defending your castles and hunting grounds, not embarking on long crusades against enemy players. They can do that too of course, but you rather want to have blood summons, knights and black priests (higher movement) to do that. The rangers and Tiers will infiltrate the enemy while you march. When you conquered territory let your Black Priests and Black Lords preach as they both have the inquisitor bonus (extremely effective when you have 10 BP doing it). At the same time you build a fortress on that spot, a fortress will be defended by Halberdiers (castle defense bonus) you build there. Repeat.
This way every unit is useful in some way.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

To each their own.

Playing Ulm that way is not my cup of tea. I see no reason to bother with slow infantry who will only be useful in defense! The whole goal is to not have to defend, as then your castle is useless, you cannot recruit, you cannot blood hunt, ...

I agree though that if you are going to play it that way you need more castles since you will need to constantly be rebuilding your infantry at the front. The problem is that once the front moves or disappears that infantry is now nearly useless for several turns while you reposition it.

Though the issue isn't whether or not to use the infantry, the issue is how much infantry do you need, and do you need to take O3 to accomplish this goal. You also don't need O3 to afford several castles, and anyway, you reach a point where your new castles are not ones you actually have to pay to build right...

My personal experience says you don't need O3, but that isn't to say that there is not more than one way to skin a cat.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I understand you.

You ask how much infantry you need. I say a lot but not as much as you think assigned to a defensive role. Thanks to castle defence bonus of Ghoul Guardians and Halberdiers you effectively halve (and more) that number. But it will cost you some upkeep, most of which is covered by the fortress administration bonus on income of course, but that is thanks to order.

Another question is do you need defence in your castles? I would say yes, and that is because you've built a lot of them. Else you'll be giving your intelligent opponent a safe way into your kingdom.

You think that you will mostly be needing defence in your frontier fortresses but in a game like with stealth and teleportation I would rather be safe than sorry. 20 Halberdiers (that will count as 40 with strength 11) in each fortress is not a huge cost and it will buy much needed time for you troops to reach them. Or why not just tie your enemy up while you attack their land? In the meantime you can harass the besieging enemy with nasty blood magic, Vampires or other summons.

But to answer your last question. Is order 3 needed? Well, no. But it will speed everything up for LA Ulm. That is because this dog does not do one trick only, you need a bit of everything to beat a strong opponent. Fortresses, troops, combat mages, blood magic economy, patrollers the list goes on. If you take turmoil and luck you might or might not afford what you need, that makes it hard to plan ahead. LA Ulm is all about planning ahead like almost every slow moving nation. You could try to ignore this and try to play it more extremely by focusing on one of the faster aspects like rangers but that will make you very vulnerable if the enemy has good intel (like one should).
You want to reach the point where castles cost nothing and summons rule the earth, but to do that and be best at it you need a big and stable ground to stand on. Some nations get this by speedy scream attack troops and by a nimble defence that allows them to have more room between fewer fortresses. Turmoil/Luck goes will with them as when they have gold they can ship their new troops fast to the front. Ulm however... well they need time to get to that point, and any setback they will feel double, so to make that time shorter and safer they need a lot of steady gold.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Ulmish heavy infantry moves 1.

Units sitting at home waiting for someone to attack - only help you when someone actually attacks. You lack readily available mages to transport your heavy infantry.

On top of that, ulms heavy troops generally have poor magic resistance, and are slow on the battlefield as well - ripe targets for ironbanes, acid mists, or master enslaves.

Which would you rather have.. 250 ulmish heavy infantry .. or 100vampires. Flying, move 3, immortal, stealthy, thrall summoning, Highly MR, vampires.

Until I meet Marignon in a dark ally.. I'll generally choose the vampires.

Side benefit: turmoil/luck = great chance for national heroes.

Growth scales. Blood hunt your capitol. Prophetize your first vampire count. Reanimate your unrested dead.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

My point is that you can have both. Having just one will make you too unpredictable. There are extremely good counters to undead you know, but with a mixed force your opponent need to choose.

As for Halberdiers defending your castles, they are not supposed to fight, only stop or slow down sieges.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I got that they're not supposed to fight. And while they're *not* fighting they still require upkeep.

And with that in mind.. I"m announcing the All Ulm contest. We've all had opinions - now lets test them on the field of battle! May the best vampire - um man win.

Look for Ulmish Wars under multiplayer...

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

When I find out how to get 3300 (or 4400 in vanilla!) Blood Slaves for the cost of even 250 Zweihanders, I will become a god at this game, so certainly that is what I would prefer. ;)

My question is (and I'm hoping it is "no") do Thralls cost upkeep? I didn't think they do. If they do not, then the more and faster your Count count (ha!) rises, the more you can feel free to have some of them bounce around your territory, depositing squads of Thralls to at least help slow down any sieges.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I was trying to figure out how getting vampires prevents you from accessing infantry too but I see I'm not the only one confused.

Also vampires suck ***, I assume he meant vampire counts.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

I couldn't agree less that vampires suck. Sure, their prot sucks. First, ulm has steps to redress that, should it really want to...

But more importantly.. they're immortal, and fly. And undead.
That last point is sometimes a disadvantage but it can also be used to your advantage.

Consider: Wailing winds, blood rain, darkness, nether darts, rigor mortis - all just off the top of my head are going to have reduced or *no* effect against your vampires.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well Jim, now thats an interesting proposition.
You can't buy vampires with gold. Now, 250 Zweihanders is 10,800resources. So how many turns do you think is reasonable to amass that many zweihanders - especially presuming you may be money limited - and want to buy some other units ....

And if I can show you how to amass that many vampires oh say in 40 turns - would you kow tow and admit *I'm* a dominions god <wink>

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

40 turns? :p Wouldn't that be an average of 110 slaves/turn? That's a good income, but I'm not sure about "godly". ;)

10,800 you say? I know in CBM they are 36res, which would be 9000. Not sure on vanilla. But I'll tell you what, I can do THAT faster than 40 turns, that's for sure. :happy:

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

They are 36 res in vanilla as well. Say you build around 8 fortresses in good locations, which is not unreasonable for Ulm (you can do it quite fast with order 3 and patrolling), and considering the 25% production bonus for Ulm in every castle you should have around 300 resources in each (try to build the cost effective citadel as they have high admin). 300 x 8 = 2400. 9000/2400 = 3.75 turns. And even if you had abysmal luck with terrain you should be able to build them in 5 turns.

If you want to do a search I have posted a lot about Ulm and fortress placement over the years.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

So what would be godly Jim =)


(And you're right about the 9000 - up two days on a court case doesn't do wonders for my math).

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Well, assuming a province count ~20, I would be very impressed if someone could convert 7 of those provinced (as LA Ulm, of course) to hunting provinces averaging ~20 slaves/turn, and still maintain their overall economy. So, in that sort of map scale, you'd need to hit 140 slaves/turn total, and I think that would be pretty damned shocking. Of course, in CBM, that's 4+ Vampire Counts per turn, which would be very nifty indeed.

I still don't think it hugely impacts your need for infantry, though it negates the need for infantry in the backfield for defensive purposes. Since you are not Immortal outside of your Dominion, it's going to be very hard to complete a military campaign on the backs of Vampires, eventually you either subject them to possible attrition, or you resort to other means to take provinces with heavy enemy Dominion.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

LA Ulm infantry is not bad. The lofty MR weakness that gets touted over them only comes into play against late game astral. Their h igh protection is still helpful against most other stuff. As for MR, /most/ nationals have that problem anyway so meh.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Additionally, if you want to offset the subnormal MR on LA Ulm's troops you can take a healthy drain 2. That will at least give you normal MR in your own dominion and that isn't so bad considering their slow movement. Push slow and hard, hold what you take (build fortresses there). That is Ulm for you.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

LA Ulm has easy access to anti-magic in their build anywhere Member of the Second tier.
If Astral nations are destroying you, that should be your remedy

Ghoul Guardians come with fairly good MR, though they arguably need it the most.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

And besides astral anti-magic you also have Tempering the Will that will add an additional +4 MR (if you're lucky). That is better than most nations could ever dream about.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Do Antimagic and TtW stack? I would be wary of taking drain w/LA Ulm too, as they don't have very good researchers. Do Iron priests ignore drain?

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

That's one of the effects that doesn't stack, unfortunately.

Cast Tempering first, and Antimagic will get cast on top of it, but it will just bump everyone's MR by +4, unless they already got boosted by Tempering.

Cast Antimagic first, and Tempering won't even get cast.

Ulm can build skull Mentors to make up for Drain, but it's still difficult to keep up in the research race. They get no research bonus in a drain dominion.

Re: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom!
 

Oh, didn't know that. I supposed they stacked because they are different spells. Thanks for clearing it up, vfb!