[Burnsaber]

I took some time today to make some experiments regarding Ulmish Infantry. I wanted to test how they fare against the current heavy infatry favourite (Pricipe) mano'a'mano.

I bidded 20 Ulmish Black Steel troops with different weapons against 20 Pythium Pricipes. The Pricipes lost most of the fights (expect against shielded infantry), but when the Pricipes lost they inflicted heavy (7-9) casualties, and all Principes that fled, survived (expect a couple of cripples). Losses were usually 5-7 Blacksteels to 10-14 Priciples.

Then I made a bit more "realistic" test of 30 principes against 20 Blacksteel (due to resource cost you can build 1,5 principes for each blacksteel guy, gold cost is *much* less limitng factor when building troops than gold). It was brutal, not even Guardians had anything against Priciples in this case. The losses were usually 13-17 blacksteels to 8-12 Priciples.

So what does this mean? Ulmish Infantry doesn't *suck*, exactly (they have some results against *the heavy infatry*, but only when magic and resource complications are stripped) , but they're nothing too amazing either. Personally (I have nearly zero experience with Pythium/MA Ulm previously) from watching the fights, I'd take Principles over Blacksteels anyday -> They don't run away so easily, you can make more of them, they move faster, have javelins..

And I think that this is wrong. Ulmish infantry should be awesomely good and badass, since it's pretty much all they've got outside capitol. Not medicore, especially with their magic weakness. While I look at their stats I see base attack & defense 10, they're just your regular infantry in extremely heavy armor. I don't think that it would be at all unbalancing nor unthematic to give them some training bonuses. a mere +1 attack, +1 defense, -1 encumberance, +1-2 action points and +1-2 morale would proabably go a long way to make Ulmish infantry something to actually mention when talking about Ulm's strenghts.

And about Master Smths. CUunknown has a point. They don't excatly *suck* as mages. They're just not enough to give anykind of late-game power (and late-game power is the power you need to have to have chances at winning), taking a heavy-magic pretender can only take you so far. There have been many suggestion regarding twiddling with their randoms and I wholly support them.

Hmm, I just had another idea. How about giving them a slighly tweaked LA Ulm's fortune teller (without the blood pick, perhaps)? Ulmish people are a superstitious folk, afterall. It would allow a lot easier diversification.