[Sombre]

Well just to start things off, I want to point out that I always intended this nation to be hard to play. I don't want them to be very underpowered, but they're supposed to be challenging and to force decisive gameplans. As a result the AI sort of sucks uing them. From the get go I set my sights on a nation that /really/ wants;

High Dominion for spawns and widescale sacred production.
Resources and an economy focused on national recruits (so production and order)
A high earth bless for the super-armoured sacreds.
A bless suitable for the swarms of sacred chaff (ie, not earth)

So even at the creation stage you're faced with some hard choices. You obviously can't have all of these things. On the other hand if you specialise completely your plan can easily go very wrong.

On the other hand, you have made a couple of very good points about Ulm Reborn's weakness on a larger map (over 120 or so provinces). I didn't intend for them to just fall over and die if the map is big, so this is something I'm interested in rectifying.

Point by point:

1) They are meant to be capital centric, but I do take your point. I am happy for them to be just about as capital centric as a nation can be in dom3, but not to the point where it's very frustrating for the player. I am willing to make Black Priests available everywhere in the next version. This allows frontline chaff production (although it's decided by dominion, unlike the white priests). I will also be giving the black priest an earth random so you'll get H2E2 ones maybe 40% of the time. This allows them better site searching, earthpower etc. Cost might go up a smidge. They are still there to be priests and penitent gatherers, but with some E2 you'll get a bit more research and whatnot from them.

2) Well the national summons give you some more magic. I think I'll stick a 10% or so random extra astral on the white priests, but this is always going to be a very weak nation magically, apart from the E3 that is. I mean they're like LA Ulm only with even LESS magic. It's intentional.

3) I played one game focusing on penitent and one game focusing on Anchorites and reborn guard. They were about equal - once the penitent machine gets going they can do impressive damage, but I was lucky enough to be fighting Ctis so archer mayhem wasn't really a factor. With black priests available out of capital the penitent should be more useful/nyumerous. Beware of the fact that they still cost upkeep though.

4) Yep, I wanted more hard decisions in the nation regarding gold usage. I think the white priests are priced ok, but maybe the reborn guard could do with being a bit cheaper.

5) I totally agree. They were designed with that in mind. On the other hand if this makes them too painful to play maybe I need to rethink a couple of things. I didn't find drain hosed my research /that/ bad because of white priest immunity, but it's hard to get very far up the tree, that's for sure.

6) Again, it's hard choices. You have to use the astral search spell, but that burns up precious pearls, cuts into research etc. I think I might need to reduce the cost of the 8 sternkind spell though or people won't want to summon them and wil go for the Stern/Sturmheld instead.

The mindless magic units are Anchorites - when they die a pissed off penitent falls out of the sealed armour and starts smacking things. I believe the bless remains on him too, although for me that was generally an earth bless so didn't help. I think some people have used them to great effect, although they might need a slight cost reduction because they almost always get killed off. Regardless they're sacred and not cap only, which means you should have some of them out there at some point.

Oh before I forget - were you using regular Ulm Reborn or CBM Ulm Reborn? They aren't crazy different, but the balance is obviously changed.