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Arker said:
I think one problem was spending too much on local defense.
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Was this the game where you had provinves where you had more than 20 defense? If so, then you spent too much.
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when I have three fortresses, two at least are pumping out troops as fast as their resources will allow, and I have spare cash, why not buff up the local defenses on border provinces?
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Buy mages instead of province defense. You should be buying a master smith in every single province that has a castle every single turn. If you still have more gold, buy more castles, they double the amount of resources available in a province, so you do not lose anything by putting them close together. (Unless you happen to want as many guardians as possible in your capital.) Buy temples and labs as well if you have extra gold.
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The big limitation I ran into with ulm was resources. The troops are great, but even when gold is no problem there just aren't enough resources to pump them out at a rate above agonisingly slow.
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This is why you want a high administration castle and productivity 3.
A pretender that can work against the AI with Ulm, but would be hopelessly weak in all but the longest multiplayer games is a great sage with 2 in every magic path, a castle, dominion strength of 6, order 3, productivity 3, misfortune 2, and drain 3. This pretender should start site searching as soon as possible.
An even better pretender to use against the AI is a Ghost King with Water 4, Earth 4, and Death 4. Pick a castle, dominion 6, order 3, productivity 3, misfortune 2, and drain 3. Then, research up to alteration 3 as quickly as possible. Have your pretender cast quickness, ironskin then attack archers. Forge him a cheap one-handed earth weapon. Then research enchantment 2 so you can add breath of winter to your script. Then research up to construction 4 for black steel plate mail (not full plate), a lead shield, and other items. Your early game research targets are thus alteration 3, enchantment 2, construction 4, conjuration 3 (Summon Earthpower), evocation 4 (Blade wind) and thaumaturgy 2 (Gnome Lore). After that, there are a number of spells that you can go for, such as invulnerability at alteration 5, and soul vortex at alteration 6. You'll also want to research magma eruption at some point. There are any number of ways to make this pretender even more powerful, but this is a good start.