[Pirateiam]

Try these two Strategies.

1.) Pick a Cheap bully no magic pretender -
The Manticore is a good example
-Select a cheap fast building castle - I like the Fortress or Wizard tower.
-With all the extra points use great scales 3 prod, 3 Order, 2 growth etc...
-Build nothing but Guardians and a Morning star hvy inf
-expand like the plague using multiple armies and your bully Pretendar.
-As you expand castle as much as possible. In these castles build an army of aprox 20-30 spys (they have great stealth and can cause unrest).
-Now you must be aggressive - as soon as you see your first nieghbor send all your spys into his provinces - 2-3 spys per province. Set them on cause unrest.
-Now as unrest rises dramaticaly (you will be suprised how fast it rises) in your niegbors provinces bring up your armies. If he complains just keep denying it is you until you are ready to strike. Attack all along his border and even if you lose the majority of the battles the battle of attrition is on your side. Also keep a few Guardians in each castle they are great defenders. Soon his income will be next to nothing and he will not be able to replace his losses.
-work you other typical ulm strategies along with this like blade wind etc...
- Of course this does not work against undead nations.

2.) I am still trying this strategy out it is straight forward bless strategy with UlmIF. Ulm's biggest weakness is magic so -
-Create UlmIF with Oracle - Astral 9, Air 9
-This gives you Templar Knights with +4 MR and twist fate, Shock resistant 75, Airshield 75
-Now every single turn pump out Templars from you capital -
-10 Templars can take any level 6 inde I have faced
-By turn 20 you should have a main Knight Army of 30+ Knights backed up with mages it can be a devestating army, with twist of fate your lances will have a chance to hit everytime.
-Your only real combat weakness is with poison cold and fire, but what I found is poison and cold need time on the battle field to work but with all Templar Knight armies the fights will be very quick and bloody you will either win fast or lose fast. If you run across a fire heavy nation you will have to use your mages casting fire fend.

I do not state these are great strategies but they seem to work for me.

[ July 02, 2004, 03:21: Message edited by: Pirateiam ]