MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Greetings,

while this is not a full guide, I nevertheless wish to post some points concerning MA Ulm in the new CBM version.

1: Ulms National troops got a boost, less encumberance, in some cases more attack. For a rush defense (where Map move one is not that important), this is a significant boost. If you are rushing someone with them, it is a boost too.
2: Ulm gets an extra 50 resources. This further amplifies their early game potential.
3: Ulm gets more randoms from Mage Smiths. Which is very very usefull.
4: Ulm get some quite usefull national priest spells. While the "Iron fears not..." are not very usefull early game due to low AOE, "Hold XXX" is a major boost to Ulmish PD against certain raiders.


In my opinion, these early game boosts decrease the need for an awake Rainbow Pretender, and an asleep Rainbow with better scales/more Magic becomes much more feasable.

With an awake Pretender, rushing certain targets imho become possible too.
While Ulm is not Niefelheim or Mictlan, Ulm can easily conquer castles with Map move 2 Siege Bonus 5 Sappers, its Mages/Priests only need very limited Research to be "effective", and Black Guards allow for some very quick early expansion.

Imho, the first priority should be evocation 3, followed/supported by (depending on the situation) Conjuration 3 (Earthpower, Banes), Construction 2(Crystal Shield! Put one on a Black Priest and you get Blessing of Iron. It also boosts his Iron Dart spamming, and allows him to cast Earth Power) or Thaumaturgy 2.
Against certain nations Alternation should be taken over evocation, but imho evocation gives Ulm more.

Imho, for a sacred recruit cost of 140, and with a Construction 2 Item costing you only 3E and 3S, Black priests with Crystal Shields are highly costeffective battle mages. Giving those cheap Shield to Mages with S randoms can get you gifts from heaven, and air mages can cast usefull things such as Arrow Fend, Storm, etc.
Of course, Priest Smiths with Crystal Shields are usually even better.

Those extra design points can either be invested in luck scales, one could attempt to take Drain 2 instead of Drain 3 (which opens research from Indie mages), or get some signifiant growth, which will also help in the late game.

I do not neccesarly think that making mellee thugs out of Priest Smiths is particularly wise as a general strategy (although it certainly has a suprise factor), in most cases, blowing things up with gratitious evocations is less risky than getting close with a still fragile low HP human, who does not have a very high attack skill.
At the time when the items/spells needed become available, one can also go for Banes or Sleepers.
However, a flying cadre of Priest Smiths with Fly boots, Crystal Shields and perhaps an eye of aiming/feather/burning skull/Ring of Earth can add a lot of firepower very quickly.
Against Armies, comparably Cheap 2+1(Crystal Shield) +1 (Earth Power)+ 1 (Earth Ring)=5 E guys are jumping around spamming lots of blade winds/Blizzards etc.
SCs will risk comparably quick petrification.
Once you got a F2 Mage empowered in Death, a steady Supply of Flaming Skulls (whih can be combined with ubiquitos Crystal Shields) allows Fire 4 Casters (Phonix Power + Crystal Shield + Flaming Skull). Add in a Fire Helmet and and even normal Mages can potentially cast the really high end F evocations.

Ulm can get crystal shield, Earth Boots, Earth Rings and later on Fire Skulls (after the empowering) cheaper than anyone else, and transporting magic items does not care about Ulms comparable slowness. Last but not least, all of Ulms casters are very very cheap in both money and upkeep, are decent combat mages without equipment and very good combat mages with equipment.

Imho, MA Ulm is no longer "sub par" with the new CBM.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Imho, you didn't say imho enough times in this mini-guide. Otherwise, some good observations here. :P

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

;P
Well, I have a total experience of one finished and 3 running mulitplayer games, and I am only playing MA Ulm in one of those. I thus felt an uncharacteristic need to write "imho" a lot.

There are also some another new option with an awake research Rainbow Pretender, a very early move to the Forges of Ulm.
One needs to clear conjuration 3, construction 4 and likely evocation 3 before turn 16. This is possible while still sitesearching a fair bit with the research pretender. If pulled out succesfully, Ulm can get early Banes/Sleepers with Flame Sword + Shield of gold + Some armour for 4 Death, 1 Earth and 2 Fire gems. If you got an early S random (chances are 7% per smith, so in turn 16 there is an ok chance to have gotten one), one can add cheap luck and antimagic amulets. With more luck, there are also Fly boots for I think 3 gems.
If one has multiple of those before turn 20, one can indeed pull out a very strong attack.
However, it is not assured that one finds Fire, Astral and Death/Nature income. While trading can alliviate some of these troubles, one is by no means guaranteed to have a "Bane factory" in turn 20.
One should also not that Outfitting those Banes requires between 2-6 Mages forging, meaning that Mages, not gems, may be the actual bottleneck.
One can also thug out Priest Smiths, this will require an N4 bless and Alteration 2 for stone skin.
Thugging out Black priests does not work.
Thugging out Black Knights is possible, but one must stay cheap, and it is difficult to get the "critical mass" the would need to be effective (after all, the bottleneck is Mage turns, and recruiting Black Knights cuts into the number of mages one can recruit).

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I am always glad to see MA Ulm getting some attention from the modding community. In fact, I created an MA Ulm Mod myself. The changes in the latest version of CBM were nice but I feel like Ulm still has some fundamental and unaddressed deficiencies:

1) Cheaper Troops: fortunately covered by CBM

2) Lower Encumbrance Values: also covered in the latest CBM

3) Magic weapons: Ulm has poor-to-average quality weaponry for its soldiers. Hammers and Mauls are given to claymen and barbarians for a reason... because they aren't very good so they are fitting for ill-equipped fodder. Ulm should have broadswords, greatswords or better yet, enchanted weaponry for their troops. Attacking Ulm should be like attacking Caelum in that your mistform and your body ethereal will do you no good there because their rank-and-file has magic weaponry. Both mechanically and thematically it fits and would be sorely appreciated.

4) Ranged Attacks: The Infantry of Ulm are slow and highly resistant to archery. They have high protection values, meaning that short bows and slings bounce off their helmets with little effect. Unfortunately, they are given ranged weapons that fire rarely and inaccurately and do a lot of armor piercing damage when they do. In short, they have one of the few ranged weapons in the entire game that you can't fire into a melee involving Ulmish infantry and expect that to go over well. Clearly, they need the opposite like a repeating crossbow: many shots, low damage.

5) Magic Diversity: Ulm needs two things on this account. The first is some way to natively summon their Iron Angel, meaning they need a reasonable chance of getting an S2 mage somehow. Also, they would really benefit from a passing amount of nature or death. This would help them be a bit more flexible in their tactics and forging.


Here's what I did to achieve those things. I don't mean to be presumptuous, nor prescriptive. I just want to offer an example of a solution to the problems I am citing, so that it might help inform a decision from the CBM team if and when they decide to revisit upgrading MA Ulm.

+++Changes - An Overview+++
The larger changes from this mod are as follows:

1) Blacksteel troops and commanders given lower encumberance and superior, magical weaponry

2) Non-blacksteel troops made no more than half as expensive as blacksteel troops (both in terms of gold and resources)

3) The arbalest was changed from a slow-firing, high-damage weapon to a rapid-firing, low-damage weapon (3 shots/round, 5 dmg each)

4) Master Smiths were given a 100% AEFS as well as 10% A, 10% F and 10% S. This is so they are more magically powerful and diverse among themselves. This is also so MA Ulm is better capable of getting access to a few but crucial A2 and S2 casters. Price raised to 195 gold.

5) Master Priests were given 210% ADN. This is to help diversify Ulm's casting capabilities, especially in the realm of forging better thug and super-combatant equipment. Price raised to 210 gold.

6) Ulm lacked a recruitable caster who could reliably summon Iron Angels (a conj 8, E5S2 spell), its late game SC chasis. The Black Priest was changed from E1H2 to E3H2 1.1 FS so that 50% of them could be equipped with boosters or minimally empowered to be able to cast this crucial spell. Price raised to 210 gold.

7) The Black Halberd was improved to make the Guardian and Lord Guardian more desirable to recruit

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

In latest CBM, any S Mage Smith can summon Iron Angels with a Boot and an Earth Amulet.
And its conjuration 6.

The changes you propose solidly put them into top contender for MA, although some of them (Arbalests) are actually interesting.
Please note that Sappers are incredibly awesome.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

1) That doesn't mix well with the magical black steel equipment. I'd favor something along the lines of Reinvig 1 as a trait for all Ulmish units that use Black Steel armor, as they are already established as hardy in the description.

2) Seems about reasonable, though going under 10 gold is questionable.

3) Unless it was renamed, this makes no sense. Arbalests are essentially defined as crossbows with a high draw weight, that effectively require a cranequin. That shouldn't be faster than a bow or sling, period. Moreover, 3 ranged attacks per troop is arguably excessive, though the low damage mitigates that some. Still, with flaming arrows up this makes Ulm completely ridiculous, even relative to nations with impressive archers (e.g. Man).

4) Is this in addition to what they already had, or instead of it? If it is instead of it, the lack of guaranteed earth is questionable, if it is in addition to what they already had then they are probably too cheap even with the increased cost.

5) This removes the cheap mage-priest entirely.

6) This seems pretty reasonable, applied to Vanilla. CBM changed the spell requirements, so it is already under control.

7) Trimming the price a bit seems like a better way to handle this, particularly as their whole "magical weapons" schtick was given to every Black Steel soldier (which I'd recommend against).

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I don't know what you mean by an earth amulet. If you are referring to a crystal coin (E2S2), then yes but that still requires someone to have S2 to forge it in the first place. Ditto for the Starshine Skullcap.

CBM chose to take a page from Squirrelloid's book (specifically, his Order of the Black Rose mod), and gave Ulm more army-wide buffs. That's a perfectly valid route to go and Squirrelloid's mod is very impressive. However, CBM hasn't taken things as far as the Order of the Black Rose so there is still a few pain points that can be addressed. I was merely offering an example of how I chose to address them.

If you feel like my changes are excessive, that's fine. I present them so they can be used as a basis for conversation about how to improve MA Ulm. Also, so they can be sampled from a la carte.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

1) I feel like Ulm would really benefit from having widely available magical melee mooks. Whether those should be the blacksteel heavy infantry or not is reason for debate but I am adamant that of all the nations that should be showing up with magic weapons, it should be Ulm.

2) The non-blacksteel troops are, in my opinion, too costly to mass (remember that if it takes 3 turns to mass those 10gold units, they are effectively 13+ gold units after you take into account upkeep) and perform too poorly in actual combat. I'm fine with Ulm have well armored chaff but I think it should be priced accordingly.

3) Yes the name does not jive with being a repeating crossbow. Rename it. There are work arounds for the flaming-arrows of doom issue. Specifically, you could make the weapon shoot twice and deal 7 dmg each OR you could give the unit two different crossbow weapons; one which shoots twice for 5 dmg each but does not benefit from flaming arrows and another which only shoots once for 5 dmg but does benefit from flaming arrows.

4) The changes here are instead of anything else they have. They would be an E2F1 + 1.0 AEFS + .1 A + .1 F + .1 S making them a 4.3 path caster in total. This still puts them behind the MA Pythium Theurg, the MA Shinuyama Bakemono Sorcerer, or the MA Jotunheim Skratti in terms of price, power or chassis, to name a few.

5) It's all a question of what you want from those mage-priests. First off, Ulm's troops are cheap gold-wise and expensive resource-wise so they can't spend all that much on troops on any given turn. Spending more on commanders is therefore possible without being exorbitant. Also, I was re-purposing the mage priest as a diversifying caster, base Ulm has it as a mini-thug and iron darts caster, and CMB was using them as a troop buff-caster.

6) Yeah, that's true. I was reluctant to change spell requirements in my mod so I had to do other things to fix it.

7) Unless you are facing jaguar warriors or knights of the chalice, I didn't find the guardians better than their peers by a wide enough margin to warrant using them. They are a move-1, non-sacred, capital-only unit so they have to be something really special for them to ever make an appearance at your front line. And that "specialness" only happens now if you are facing massed sacred troops.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

1) Ulm's whole concept is wrapped around minimalist magic, and while this obviously doesn't play out in the game, due to how key magic is, a massive amount of magical weapons doesn't help.

2) As of now, they are too costly to mass. Reduced resources alone should help there.

3) A crossbow that specifically avoids flaming arrows is adding needless edge cases. Better that they stay as is, as incredibly strong weapons that effectively counter heavily armored troops, but don't get a lot of shots off. That said, a precision boost to all units that use them is reasonable.

4) That seems pretty reasonable, and with the free drain scale gives Ulm a useful niche.

5) As is, the cheapness of the priests is essentially what allows Ulm to meaningful interact with dominion. Losing that for magic diversity is almost certainly a step up, but also a step away from what Ulm is supposed to be.

7) I'm honestly not sure that giving them full Awe would be that unbalancing. As long as they don't have much of it, it gives them a use as blockers - moreover, the units Awe is best at dealing with are more easily countered elsewhere, as most are low morale, poorly armored, and have rather unimpressive defense, all of which translates to flail infantry being devastating against them. Two attacks per round, that get around shields decently? Yes please.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Again, let me state that I am not holding up my revisions as some sort of magic bullet; there are several different routes we could follow to balance MA Ulm and still keep it "Ulmy". However, you have repeatedly used the justification of "how Ulm is supposed to be" as why some of my proposed changes won't fly. I really like the theme of Ulm but I think it would be useful to discuss exactly what that theme is.

Squirrelloid talks about this very issue here:
As Squirrelloid said, the result of Ulm's theme can't be "Ulm sucks." So we need to find solutions to the various mechanical failings the nation has and try and keep those solutions as thematic as we can. If the theme cannot accept viable balance improvements then we need to change the theme because ultimately fluff informs, but is subordinate to, crunch... and Ulm needs some better crunch.

Look at what Llamabeast said in his breakdown of CBM v1.92:
MA Agartha needed a boost and Llamabeast gave them that boost wrapped in the theme of the sorrow of a nation and people in decline. So I say we wrap the crunch fixes for MA Ulm in the theme of Ulm being a nation of thrift, artifice and craftsmanship. They have the most efficient forgers of magical equipment in the age. Their most lightly armed foot soldier is more heavily armed than some nations' heavy infantry (Bandar Log's, for example). Mechanically, Ulm only has one non-capital mage, the master smith. During the course of a game as MA Ulm you will recruit many, many, many master smiths. Smiths... who are masters... at forging magical gear. In CBM they have the dormant Forge of the Ancients in their basement. Why the heck SHOULDN'T they have magical weapons coming out their ears?! EA Ulm is Conan the Barbarian. LA Ulm is Gothic Horror and Germanic Folklore. MA Ulm is pretty much your generic "dwarves forging steel and wonders beneath the mountains" meets "burn the heretic. kill the mutant. purge the unclean." but with burly Teutons instead of dwarves/space marines.


This is precisely wrong. Ulm already has recruitable armor piercing archers (sappers) who can be just as menacing to armored opponents as any crossbowman. In addition, Ulm specializes in producing size-2, high-strength infantry who carry high damage weapons, making them good at smashing high protection and/or high hp opponents. What Ulm needs is a way to shoot at the enemy without putting holes in the backs of their own slow, heavily armored troops. The niche the arbalest is supposed to fill is already filled. Ulm would be bettered served by longbows than by armor piercing bolt throwers. And even if the arbalests had 100 precision, for the other 90 in a 100 battles where I'm not fighting prot-17 foes, I'd rather have Bandar Log's shortbows or T'ien Ch'i's composite bows than high resource, fire-once-every-three-rounds heavy crossbows.

Think about it, Ulm loves bladewind because it shoots a whole bunch of grape shot over the battlefield. Their troops remain largely unaffected while the monkeys and militia and maenads get cut to ribbons. They would really benefit from the option of having the archer-equivalent of bladewind, not Gift from the Heavens. And a repeating crossbow happens to mesh with their theme in addition to the arbalest's sprite. Win-win!

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Sure, that would be more efficient, but it doesn't seem at all thematic to me. Ulm wants big. Ulm wants heavy. Who wants to carry around a big heavy crossbow all day that is completely useless against "real" (read: armored) Troops? Troops without good armor clearly are too primitive to mount a threat to the mighty metal fist of ULM! Let the melee boys sort them out. What you need a bow for is them huge trampling elephants, and big ol' monsters, thugs, and supercombattants.

Let the uncivilized indie troops keep their pathetic shortbows. Warriors of ULM deserve a REAL bow! The fact that they might be strategically better served by blowguns doesn't mean an ulmish soldier is going to devote his life to training to use such "weak" projectiles.

For better and worse, Ulm thinks armor is important, and their crafters are obsessed with both perfecting their own armor, and overcoming that of their foes. It just doesn't make sense for them to put all their effort into fielding the best armor possible, and then build their bows around killing "obviously inferior" unarmored troops. Leave that sort of thing for poncy mages, and expendable independant mercinaries.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

If that is the "theme" of Ulm that we are agreeing to (and I'm not saying I agree) then we need to tweak things so that the mechanics support a functional and sensible set of tactical options that is on par with what other, rival MA nations have to offer. In other words, a balanced set of options that fit within the nation's theme.

The fact that Bandar Log can't be bothered to field anything with a shield larger than a buckler annoys me to no end but that nation works despite the weakness. That weakness is even part of what makes Bandar Log feel like Bandar Log (as well as being truer to it's Hindu mythological roots). If you insist that Ulm have some pathological fixation of self-defeating ranged weaponry, so be it. The onus is then on you to submit a way to make the crunch work within, and despite, the fluff.

I have submitted my interpretation which is functional and internally consistent. Squirrelloid created an excellent mod which is also functional and fluff-friendly despite going about it in a very different way. Now it's your turn, danm.

EDIT:
And besides, having an elaborate work of artifice seen no where else in the age (repeating crossbow) which mows down those too foolish or uncivilized to wear proper armor seems pretty Ulmy, even under your interpretation. Ulm isn't just about "Hit it HARDER!" otherwise they wouldn't have towershield troops with hammers; instead it'd be nothing but mauls, greatswords and battleaxes.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

1) Small Reinvig on all troops, with more on Black Plate troops. Say 2 and 3, and maybe even 4 on all sacred units.
2) Increase Arbalest range to 50. Increase precision of all Arbalest units. This gives it another niche, as it is able to pepper troops from a distance that exceeds even long bows.
3) Increased mage power, as discussed earlier.
4) New national spells. Blade wind is glorious, but only kicks in at high levels, and Iron Darts doesn't really supplement that much. I'm not sure about the specifics here, but an enchantment spell that gives a whirling blade equivalent to poison cloud could work, particularly if the damage was kept low. 6 non AP damage will barely harm Ulmish troops at all, but those who get close to them while unarmored will get cut down.
5) Everyone wielding a black halberd gets actual awe, not a cheap imitation.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

So do you guys actually think that MA Ulm is still weak in CB 1.92? I'm not sure that it is.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

While I am not the most avid player of CBM and disagree with a number of changes I have the utmost respect for the work put in and the intention to balance things while keeping as much as possible of original theme and feel for each nation. The changes suggested in this thread have very little in common with that.

You essentially propose a nation with wide access to recruitable, powerful, low-encumbrance troops with magic weapons, reliable access to at least 2 levels of every magical path except water and blood and on top of that some extra national spells.

Can you truly not see a balance problem here?
Not to mention the idiosyncrasy of giving a supposedly magic-hating nation one of the broadest magic-bases in the MA.


I am sure that those with more experience of CBM can provide better advice, but I will offer some of my own.

Adding N and D to the MA Ulm magic base is not advisable. If you feel the need for more magic - which should not be necessary with the latest CBM changes - you should limit it to the paths already present. For reference, human nations having access to "only" four paths is not uncommon in the MA - look at Ermor, Machaka, Man, Marignon or Pythium.

Adding magic weapons to ordinary troops is something of which you should be wary. Ulm already has very well armoured troops with good attack and damage as well as good morale and low encumbrance. Ulm already has a magic weapon wielder in the guardian and it is a quite good one. Against ordinary troops, the other troops in the Ulm roster is better, but against sacred troops (of which there are a lot more than the two examples brought up), for popping mistform and for ignoring etherealness, it is a top-notch unit.



A few other things:
The calculation of troop costs are off. Upkeep is 1/15th of purchase price, so waiting 3 turns would add 2 to the price. Of course, this would only be true for 1/3 of the troops that wait. Average price increase for waiting troops would be 4/3gp. Also, you have to ask yourself why you are not building more castles. With production 3 and the Ulm production bonus, you should not have to wait 3 turns to have a decent number of your "lightly" armoured troops as long as you build an adequate number of castles.

Arbalests with their high damage, long range and decent precision are a good addition to MA Ulm. If you want ordinary arrows there are plenty of independent variants available in the MA, but arbalests are much better against heavily armoured troops than the also commonly available independent crossbows (or ulm's own sappers). While ulmish troops do decent damage, they do not do that much against some of the heavier infantry available to some nations. Especially since quite a few nations can easily add things like protection to the mix. Sure, in a vacuum ulmish heavy infantry will eventually win, but heavy infantry is often used merely as a delaying tactic. Ask yourself if you really want to try to whittle down arcoscephalian hoplite hp one at a time, while a communion of mystics sit in safety behind them. As Ulm you have tower shields and probably a lower encumbrance as well as better protection than the opposing heavy infantry. Arbalests will hurt them considerably more than you.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Lest people panic that I will implement the suggestions here verbatim, I'm not currently planning any additional changes to MA Ulm (except for a small improvement to the AOE of the Iron Fears Not... spells). For the moment it is not clear to me that they need any additional boosts.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I can tell you this llama. They are *WAY* strong in the early game now. And if they leverage that early game right they should have no problem in the mid and late game.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Ulm is definitly no longer weak. The boost from CBM 1.92 is not as "big" as the one from "Order of the Black Rose", but it is enough to be competetive although not overpowering.
Although this depends on other factors, such as Diplo being allowed (Helps Ulm a lot).

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

As an actual change for the next CBM, at the moment, Sappers are by far better choices than Arbalests for nearly everything:
reasons:

Arbalest fires every 3 turns, does 14 AP damage, range 45 precision 1.
Crossbow fires every 2 turns, does 10 AP damage, range 30 precision 2. It also has 2 more shots.

Already here, the Crossbow is imho a better weapon, after 6 turns, the "total damage" of the Crossbow is already better (since 3 Crossbow Bolts likely deal more tha 2 Arbalest Bolts), the crossbow is more precise which is usefull. The Arbalest has some uses when it comes to strong alpha strikes, and against masses of units who are resistant to 10 AP. Which is not a lot of units.

But the most important things in favor of the Sapper:
Map Move 2 and Siege Bonus of 5.
In Sieges, each Sapper is worth 5 Arbalest guys. A modest amount of 40 Sappers (something 2 normal forts can get in a single turn) is enough to instapop most 150 def forts, a main army with a contingent of 100 sappers will blow through any non Pan fortification in a shockingly quick way.

Imho, increasing the precision of the arbalest and or reducing the Siege Bonus of the Sapper would be nice for internal balance.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Mightypeon, arbalests outrange most mages. With some careful placement you could outshoot a lot of enemy combat mages. (Mages that will never ever move forward, lazy gits).

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Hmm interesting idea, I did not really try that yet as I usually wanted my heavy infantry to close in ASAP with minimal buffs.
However, the range differential between most mages (30ish) and Arbalests is 15, it may be difficult to squeeze in the infantry into that.
Also, Ulms Mages are not neccesarily longer range, although the first 2-3 turns can be spend on buffing.

But thanks, I did not truely consider long range shootouts with Ulm yet.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Hmm interesting idea, I did not really try that yet as I usually wanted my heavy infantry to close in ASAP with minimal buffs.
However, the range differential between most mages (30ish) and Arbalests is 15, it may be difficult to squeeze in the infantry into that.
Also, Ulms Mages are not neccesarily longer range, although the first 2-3 turns can be spend on buffing.

But thanks, I did not truely consider long range shootouts with Ulm yet.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

The sapper is a great unit, no doubt about it, but you might want to look over your calculations again.

As Soyweiser mentioned, the massive range of the arbalest opens up for some interesting tactics. When it comes to ammunition, arbalests fire every third round, so they are good for 30 rounds as opposed to the sapper crossbow, whose ammunition make them good for 24 rounds. Contrary to what you seemed to imply, the arbalest comes out ahead here.

When it comes to damage, the arbalest lower fire rate means that it must do half again as much damage as a crossbow per shot to be on even ground. The break-point is at 4 protection (12 and 8 damage respectively). Higher protection than that and the arbalest comes out ahead. Protection values over 4 are not exactly uncommon.

Now, the crossbow higher fire rate makes for a better damage distribution, which is a point in its favor, but as protection rises, the extra damage of the arbalest makes up for that in spades. As protection creeps upward, the extra damage of the arbalest will be an ever larger part of the total damage done.

Consider some 10hp infantry with 14 protection (not exactly uncommon in MA). Crossbow and arbalest damage, not counting DRN, would be 3 and 7 respectively. If you do consider DRN and the resulting distribution in case of a hit, you see that about 1/12 of the crossbow bolts will kill the unit instantly, while about 1/4 of the arbalest bolts will do the same. The numbers for a unit emerging unscathed is exactly the opposite.

On top of this you have the price difference of the sapper and arbalest.

If you want to take out heavy infantry or infantry helped with protection increasing magic - wooden warriors perhaps - arbalests are clearly better at it than crossbows.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

The point about interesting tactics opened by improved arbalest range is well taken, yet I do have to add something else:

There is another important breakpoint:
At Protection 20, Crossbows do an average damage of 0 (no bonus to the DRN rolls), while Arbalests still do a damage of 4.
Protection 20 is nearly exclusive to Plate units and heavy cavalry.
Many of Ulms mellee troops (everything wearing Blacksteel) have Protection ratings in this area (21 to be exact, meaning that Damage is DRN comparison -1), and are thus "resistant" to Crossbows but not Arbalests, which is also a reason to favor them over the protection 17 troops under most circumstances.
So, while the Arbalest does more damage to Protection 10 troops tangling with Ulms mellee, the crossbow does a bit less damage to those enemies, yet nearly no damage to Ulms own forces. Against enemies engaged in mellee with Ulms national troops, Crossbows are better.
Due to range, and the fact that an Arbalest will propably one shot archers with 10 HP and less than 8 protection, Arbalests are better for targetting archers, but Sappers do this job quite nicely too.

Friendly Fire from Crossbows is further reduced by crossbows beeing 1 more (actually 2 since precision above 10 counts double) precise.
Also, Crossbows are better point blank weapons with a "no deviation range" of 5 squares.
Now, if I had the choice of Sappers with Arbalests or Sappers with Crossbows, I would pick the Arbalests in many cases, and the crossbow in other cases.
But if you add Map Move 2 (which is rare and thus highly usefull for MA Ulm) and the Siege Bonus to the bargain...

Also, in my opinion the gold cost difference (iirc 10 for the arbalest and 14 for the Sappers) exists but both of those troops only cost 1 upkeep. And the lower resource cost on the Sappers allows you to buy more superior Blacksteel heavies for your mellee line.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Mightypeon, I think upkeep keeps fractions. So 10 is actually 10/15 gold in upkeep. Not 1. But I'm not sure. (Easy to test btw). Brb.

Edit: Done, upkeep for 10 10 cost units: 7 gold per turn. Upkeep for 10 14 gold units, 10 or 9 gold.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Soyweiser covered the upkeep well. As for the rest, your argument leaves out a few important things.

I specifically pointed out heavy infantry or infantry with heightened protection as reasonable targets for arbalests. A protection of 10 does not fall into that category. Again, look at my earlier example of 14 protection, which is quite common in MA. Smack on protection and you have 21 protection here, as well. Even without magic, plenty of nations can field troops with protection in the 16-17 range (frequently with even better head protection). These same units frequently have 11-12 hp, meaning you need an average of 5-6 crossbow bolt hits to kill one unit. You need 2 arbalest bolt hits to do the same.

Friendly fire from arbalests hurt more, that is true, but if that is the only thing you are after, you should not field any sort crossbows, at all. You also have to consider what the opposing army does while you are attacking its front line to rather little effect. Presumably that player has some sort of plan. And since that player is not playing Ulm, but against it, you can be pretty certain that the plan is not to just throw masses of Ulm-inferior heavy infantry at you and hope for victory. You need to go through the opposing infantry as quickly as possible.

To protect yourself from the arbalest bolts that manage to do this reasonably well, you do not only have better protection, you also have towershields.

I hope that it is clear that I am not trying to say that the arbalest units are always better units than sappers, but instead that arbalests fill an important niche in the Ulm roster.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I think we may be partly talking past each other here.
Yes, the effect that crossbows have in a battle can diminish greatly with Protective Magic, yet in my opinion, the same happens with most if not all national units.
Movement 2 and the Siege Bonus are never truely outdated however.

But then, I have not been in the situations where Arbalests are most heavily desired yet and I cannot comment on the full scape range 45s tactical abilities so it is well possible that I underestimate Arbalests.

Would you agree with the statement:
If you wish ranged fire support as MA Ulm, usually go with Sappers unless there is a direct reason to go with Arbalests?

I also want to thank Soyweiser for correcting me about upkeep.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

The biggest problem imho with the Arbalest is the same as with all expensive crossbowmen. They are not spammable! Ranged units rely on getting critical mass and then maybe back up numbers with some buffs. Arbalesters cost as much resources as Ulms normal infantry! (21?) Compare that with say Marignions Crossbowmen at 11 resources and you'll see the problem. Not to mention LA Ulms rangers at 8 res.

Outside of PD you'll never have enough of them to mater.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Higher liability to friendly fire and inability to mass effectively: two reasons why the arbalest unit is bad that have already been identified.

Also: flaming arrows applies to crossbows but i'm reasonably sure it doesn't apply to arbalests. While the 'ap' bonus won't matter, this does make the weapons magical (+2 to avoid shields), and does add bonus fire damage. Just a little bit of magic makes crossbows much more effective than arbalests.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I'm telling you, repeating crossbow/scatter shot FTW.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

According to the Wiki, flaming arrows should indeed apply to Arbalests. With them, they reach something like 22 AP damage and partly enter the realm of overkill against Humans.
What about the following unit proposal:

Pavise arbalest: Wears an Ulmish towershield/Ulmish Pavise (great parry values and protection, but reduces attack and defense, adds encumberance) in addition to his Arbalest, has excellent head protection and size 3.
Slow, very difficult to damage with arrow fire and even resistant against deflectable evocations, yet not your best choices when you want a lot of Arbalest shots quickly.

Those could be backed up by unarmoured arbalests (costing less resources), getting a certain combined arms feature.
Imho, the Arbalest could also get a precision increase. IIRC, Arbalests tend to be more precise than crossbows not the other way round.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

While we are at it, apart from slightly lower resource cost, is there any benefit Mauls have on Battle Axes? Currently it seems like you get 1 defense for 2 resources.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I do not want to be difficult, but that statement is rather odd. If I wish ranged support as MA Ulm, I want it for a reason. That reason determines what kind of ranged support I will invest in. What I can agree to, is that in most games I will probably have recruited more sappers than arbalest-wielders in the end, but both types of units will have been of use.


I readily admit that I am not that good a player and CBM is not my prefered way of enjoying Dominions, so I try not to be too hard to convince in discussions of this kind, but here it is not even close. I understand that a number of you think the ulmish crossbowman with his arbalest is a bad unit, but the arguments presented here so far are less than convincing.

To repeat my stance, I find arbalests useful against heavily armoured units, which includes units getting their good armour score from protective magics.

Yes, magic can make a lot of units obsolete - this includes arbalests - but this does not take away from the fact that arbalests are useful under some circumstances where the usefulness of ordinary crossbows is questionable. It is easy to add protection to units by way of magic - up to a point. Legions of Steel is available at construction 1 and protection at alteration 3, to take two early examples. You do not need a ton of research to apply this - plenty of nations can use it in the first year.

For a lot of nations it is rather easy to bring a good number of units to protection values in the early twenties, but very few - if any - can reach as high 28 without trouble.


The danger posed by arbalests to your own troops is overstated in this thread. Apart from having the heaviest armour around, ulmish troops also have towershields available in combination with good attack scores and decent damage.

Regarding the resource cost, it is important to keep things in perspective. I find the comparison to the LA ulmish ranger totally inappropriate - even aside from everything else, units from different ages cannot be compared in such a fashion - and the marignon crossbowman is the cheapest around in MA. The independent crossbowmen I find mostly seem to be the of the 17 resource variant (2 less than the sapper). Yes, the arbalest-wielders are slightly expensive resource-wise, but they are not EA Arcoscephalian units, they are MA ulmish units. MA Ulm is pretty much a poster nation for production 3 and has a production bonus to boot. Castles with about 300 production per turn should be common - meaning 12 crossbowmen or 15 sappers per turn per castle. And Ulm wants lots of castles anyway. Producing a good number of arbalests per turn should not be a problem.

Now, to illustrate, let me take you through a comparison between
sappers and the ulmish crossbowman. The sapper costs about 4/5 of the resources of a crossbowman and fires 3/2 times as fast. Since the sapper has an extra point of accuracy, we can add another 1/4 of damage and thereby require that the arbalest should do double the damage per shot. The break-point for this is at protection 12. And this is ignoring the fact that the gold cost of the sapper contingent is 7/4 of that of the crossbowman contingent.


The siege bonus and the better map move of the sapper are certainly points in its favour, but the impact of the latter is somewhat diminished by the fact the ulmish infantry has the same map move as the arbalest unit, and the former does not influence in-battle performance.


Finally, before you start planning too much about improvements to MA Ulm, I suggest you play around with it a bit in its latest incarnation. I do not seem to be alone in the opinion that MA Ulm is quite strong in the opening game.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I heavily disagree that map move does not influence battle performance.
Map move defines how many troops will be present (some special situations in which you have only 1 fort and it will be besieged soon excluded), and will often be more important for "massing" purposes than difference in gold/resource cost. As Tamerlane said, "it is better to be on hand with 10 man than absent with 10 thousand".
If you are reinforcing your advancing army from 2 castles, reinforcements of Sapper will eventually catch up with the army, reinforcements from Arbalests much less so. For 2 Ulmish castles, this can easily be 30 Sappers more in the important battle.
In addition, the speed with which you can storm castles influences the size of the relief force, and the size of the garrisson if the enemy has summoning abilities.
If you are sieging someone, with each turn, the size of the possible relief force (or rather, the area from which a relief force can be recruited by the enemy and arrive in time) increases.
However, if you have enough Sappers to "one shot" the castle (and that number is not very high), the enemy has to stop you with what he has at hand right in that area, and any blocking summons he may conjure in haste will not be organized and thus quite useless in the castle battle. This reduces castle taking casulties more than people commonly imagine.
Also, if you are attacking someone, chances are that there will be viable and important targets for Sappers on the Battlefield.

Dominions 3 has several resources, and a successfull strategy is commonly aimed at exploiting the limiting resource of the enemy.
In Dominions, those resources are gold, gems, resources and time. Sappers are highly efficient in "time" warfare, as Map Move 2 gives you a greater freedom/ greater recruiting area to react to a sudden threat, and secondly, they directly reduce the time the enemy has in responding to threats of your own.
There are situations in which time is not that much of an issue, such as getting rushed with only a single castle, but time, or rather, a turn advantadge will never go "out of fashion" as ressources and to a lesser extent Gold do.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

That wasn't what he said. He said that siege bonus doesn't affect battle performance.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Ups, I read that wrong, sorry for this.
Yet still, even the Siege Bonus may drastically influence what people can throw at your sieging force under some circumstance.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Do not worry about it, Mightypeon, such things happen (and thank you, llamabeast).

When it comes to the siege bonus, I have a hard time seeing it as something that should be considered an in-battle effect. In a certain sense it is, of course, but in a similar manner so is everything else in the game (and I mean everything). The springing point here is that for the siege bonus to actually effect a particular battle, a number of conditions outside the battle has to be met. And a number of those are not something you control.

In the end, however, it is just a question of choice of term, and not really important to the actual argument.

Let me try to put it another way:

You need to win battles to be able to siege a castle and you need to win a battle to actually take the castle once you have breached the walls. Arbalests are not there to provide a siege bonus, but to help win those battles.

Certainly, the sapper map move is better than the crossbowman's, but since you are able to bring infantry to the front-line, you are also able to bring arbalests to the front-line. Once there they outperform the sapper given the right - and rather easily predictable - circumstances. It is as easy as that.

To go up a level, a real problem with the argument against the arbalest in this thread, is that it looks like a popularity contest, where the winner is crowned "bestest ranged unit ever" and the loser gets to go home and be forgotten, never to be used again. This is just not appropriate for a strategic evaluation of units in Dominions. Hiring sappers does not prevent you from hiring ulmish crossbowmen in the future and if you then do hire crossbowmen, nothing prevents you from going back to hiring sappers again at some later date. In fact, nothing prevents you from hiring both sappers and crossbowmen at the same time (50/50, 70/30 or whatever) for those occasions where you know you will have use for them both in an impending battle.

If I point out situations where arbalests are better than sappers in order to show that arbalests are sometimes a better choice than sappers, pointing out another example - however elaborate - where the converse is true is not a counter-argument. It is simply an argument to the effect that sappers are also sometimes useful. To the best of my knowledge, though, none in this thread have tried or even wanted to argue that sappers are never useful.


Finally, it may be of use for you to consider a situation when you are not playing Ulm, but instead playing against it. Go through the exercise for a couple of nations and consider what you would and could easily do against Ulm at different stages of the game.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Well, thanks for the usefull post, I am actually using more Arbalests than before this argument now.
Yet there is also the time angle to consider.
In some situations, Sappers and Arbalests may be performing exactly the same (as in f.e. doing nothing) on the tactical map. There are also situation in which an Arbalest heavy approach is a "safer" choice while sapper get stuff done quicker but with greater risk of failure.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

Some further arguments concerning the choice of awake or asleep rainbow:
-The Awake rainbow basically costs you 3 scales and some dominion.
Asleep, one can have O3P3L1G1D3 with a neutral Temp Scale, awake one gets closer to O3P3D1H1D3, likely with less Dominion thrown in.
I also believe that the benefit of getting one Bane thug per turn actually is not that great, as early on your research will suffer horribly, and getting the D gems relies on site searching luck.
In my opinion, the actual forging fun starts more at research levels 6 and 8, research 6 gets you very cheap lanterns and other gear (fire ball staffs etc.), and 8 should give your Pretender monopoly on most artificats.

Re: MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x
 

I have linked a hopefully usefull version into the wiki:
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Forge...F_MA_Ulm_guide