[Squirrelloid]

Regarding Ulm:
I think the 'boosts' Ulm got almost entirely miss the point.

Ok, the armor rebalancing is probably a good thing. Although Ulm's infantry still has a serious problem - their base stats are straight 10s. For a professional military, I'd expect *some* infantry soldiers with better than basic stats. EA Ulm has them, why doesn't MA Ulm? I'm not convinced the armor rebalancing does enough for Ulm's troops, since they were actively bad before, and now they might just not lose to tall grass, but i still have to couch that cautiously. Don't be fooled into thinking the armor changes make Ulm's infantry actually good.

Iron Angels should not be Ulm's focus, its troops should be. And with thugs nerfed pretty hard by the loss of hammers, i'm not convinced making them easier to acquire helps them all that much. But then, its been so long since i've actually seen one, I can't remember what they do.

Finally, FotA available at level 0 is laughable. On the one hand, there's little worth forging without construction research anyway. Otoh, casting FotA take a lot of E gems - gems they can't afford to spend very early anyway (or even if they do, then what gems are they going to forge with?). And since I expect Ulm will roll over and die pretty easily even with the armor buff, its just another reason to kill them early. (Not that a second capital is ever a bad reason to kill someone).

Regarding SDRs:
SDRs are a gem gen. They needed to go. The heims probably need to be looked at following their removal to help their chronic blood hunting problem, but no one else should be overly affected in an adverse manner. All the other real blood powers either have cheap(ish) B1 hunters, or B2+ hunters readily available.

Regarding Hammers:
I think this is a change that hasn't been thought through very carefully, and many nations need adjustments, potentially dramatic adjustments, to account for the change. Eriu went from bad to unplayable. TNN and the heims are also in pretty bad shape. The real winners? Nations like Mictlan who didn't really have a good way to get hammers before (because they took a non-E bless chassis and had no E national mages). Mictlan, of course, had no need of a buff, stealth or otherwise. (And no, loss of SDRs doesn't really harm Mictlan very much).