[Valerius]

Something worth keeping in mind is that Ulm is not restricted to using only its national troops. Of course later in the game national troops will at the very least be supplemented (if not replaced) by summons but even earlier in the game you can use indies to complement your national troops (this would obviously not apply on a NI map but the majority of games do allow indies and CBM has to balance things with the most common MP settings in mind).

So, for instance, one drawback to Ulm's troops is map move 1. But the important thing is your mages are map move 2 (having map move 1 mages is a major drawback). Ulm lends itself to production (and in 1.92 prod scales are more appealing than ever) so even in unforted provinces you should have no problem massing indie troops (especially since the map move 2/3 indies tend to be lower resource units). And of course you can apply the exact same buffs to those troops as your national ones. So you've got your heavy hitters for your main offensive force (which is going one province at a time anyway) combined with a more rapid response map move 2 force of indies. I've also noticed that Ulm players in particular tend to spam forts so later in the game map move may not matter much when responding to raids since almost every province may be neighbored by a fort.

And if someone wants to play the destruction/iron bane game I think Ulm can compete. Sure, you might have to change your troop mix but that's an important part of the challenge and fun of the game.

I also wanted to make a comment about another Ulm weakness - slightly lower than average MR. This is something that will kill you late game if you get hit with master enslave pre-buff. But the thing is, that will devastate even nations with good MR units (one of the great things about demons is that their base MR is 16/17). For much of the game tempering the will means your effective MR over the course of a battle will frequently be as good as the good MR nations. Now nations with good MR troops can cast antimagic but if they are not astral nations and they are fighting an astral nation (a time when you'll really need that MR boost) your opponent can likely afford to risk mages to magic duel more than you can.

Something I haven't heard mentioned and that I'm not fond of is the holy Iron Fears Not Fire/Lighting/Ice spells. Lightning having its damage cut in half from the beginning of the game is in bad enough shape but fire and ice, which are AP at best at low levels, basically become unusable against Ulm's high prot troops. I understand the idea of giving Ulm elemental resist spells that are hard for them to come by with their mages but I think these should be made earth spells and require some degree of research.

It has also occurred to me that the removal of hammers helps Ulm. For instance, Ulm's cost to forge a 5 gem item with a hammer has gone from 2 to 3 gems. Other nations (ones without a forge bonus of course) had their cost increased from 3 to 5. It's a relative advantage for Ulm - your forge costs have gone up but not as much as most other nations.

Also, a comment about master smiths. While they aren't the most powerful mages around there's something to be said for a cheap, recruit everywhere, tougher than average mage who, either by using gems or earth boots, can add punch to any force by casting weapons of sharpness (imo the single best troop buff because it lets you take down targets that would otherwise not be threatened by normal troops).

So I agree with Executor's assessment that there were just too many boosts that added up to the nation becoming OP. Ulm wasn't the only nation that got boosts in 1.92 so it's inevitable there will be a review of how things played out for all of those nations and if some things should be nerfed. And I'm not really surprised that Ulm stands out as having become particular strong since they were weak for such a long time (enough so that they actually got a boost in an IW patch) and they've had a lot of player support to help them out.

I'd say it would make sense to implement a couple of nerfs to MA Ulm and see how it goes - definitely don't want to go crazy and overnerf them.

I'd should also say that when boosting weak nations I prefer to aim for average/somewhat above average power level rather than top tier. Partly because I like to tone down the power level rather than ramp it up but also because you'll just eventually end up with the previously mid-range nations become the new underpowered ones and then you'll have to boost them up. Pythium has been a power for a long time and I can live with them and the other top flight nations keeping their position without adding more nations to their group.