Guide: Pretender design for Ulm enigma of Steel

[Torin]

Ulm, the enigma of Steel

Pretender(CBM):

Dom 10 Blue Dragon

Magic: Water 9

Scales:

Turmoil 3 & Luck 3
(Point cost=0, and sinergy both between them and with your dom 10 awake expander. Quick expansion and dominion spread means you actually have enough provinces eligible to have a positive event)
Cold 3 & Death 1
(I dislike death but actually you have no old mages so its not a big deal. Cold 3 is bad for economy but you will be rich even then and your units are immune to the extreme cold wich otherwise fatigue units and mages)
Sloth 2
(you could actually take 3 with the regular units but im also recruiting capitol only steel warriors and aim to recruit 10 of them each turn. To be absolutely sure you can you can take Sloth 1 instead)
Magic 0
(I would like to afford magic 1 but I cant. Still its better than drain researchwise)

snowball

This setup is single minded. An awake monster or a blessing setup will buy you fast expansion.
But what if you take both of them?
Very fast expansion.

Expansion
Leave the normal indies to your steel warriors and the tough ones to the dragon. You can actually tell wich province wields the best gold income since your dominion spreads fast, those will be targets.

Early Magic
You need to site search fast specially for water sites. Next death sites. Once youre at that recruit shamen. They have a chance of death 2 and since youre researching construction you can actually forge skull mentors. Theres a death 3 hero that you can get thanks to luck but you cant rely on that one. Eventually you want to site search for everything. You hardly have to use magic in you first wars since you are suposed to have the upper hand early on.

Dealing with human opponents
Early expansion. Early forts like mushrooms. Core army of tough steel warriors.
This early force means no one would like to invade you.
It also means you can pick your friends as most would like your help to defeat their opponents.
Think carefully who you choose to ally with, youre not pressed and this is the main choice in middle game.

Regarding fort sites. Probably you can start with the temple. While you are waiting for the fort to complete hire as many regular priests, these are far better than your mage priests or lvl 2 priests to steel warriors as they can only bless and thats what you want.
In the next one you can first build the fort and delay the rest using that time to recruit warrior chiefs (leadership 80 and stealthy), these are supposed to lead any ulmish troops (recruit only stealthy ones) but steel warriors. Sneaking inside your provinces make them effectively invisible to other players, even a force of 400 units.

Magic
Construction is a good thing because you have forge bonus. But it also gives you legions of steel.
Enchantment gives you stenght of the giants.
Conjuration gives you summon earthpower and if you got a nice death mage bane lords cheapely kitable.

But the main event is evocation, you want to go for it as soon as posible (maybe is critical to get const 6 for the lamps).
Evoc 8 gives you maelstrom wich your pretender can cast and thats why you need water sites.
If you pull it up quickly enough you will be actually storing a good amount of water gems. Those gems are best spent in conj 6 Sea kings court. Each casting is 55 gems but gives you a bunch of tough amphibian soldiers you may give a use like invade water provinces. But the best part is the troll mage that gives you a water gem each turn. Theres also a snow ball effect here as you get to the point that you have enough troll mages is like having a second maelstrom cast and 55 gems will be like paying less gems, to the poing they will be practically free. Maybe feels abusive but the endgame need a constant fuel of gems.

[Radio_Star]

troll /thread

[Torin]

???

[Doo]

Seems like you would be lacking in funds. Turmoil 3 (-21%), Sloth 2 (-6%), Cold 3 (-15%) and Death 1 (-3%). Dismissing the fluctuating temperature effect on funds your looking at -45% money?

Where is the cash coming from to fund the rapid expansion party losses and mushroom castles?

[Ferrosol]

the problem with EA Ulm is that your chance of getting a 2 in the elemental paths except E is damn near impossible. I must have recruited in total about 100 Smiths in my last game and did not get a single A2 and only about 2 F2s. So relying on your smiths for battle magic is a chancy thing. Also your pitiful MR makes you horribly vulnerable to things that target MR so armies are out after the early game. Generally I would go with a Rainbow/scales build perhaps a great sage so you can begin churning out thugs and using your smiths to equip them as that is your only chance at surviving through the mid game. Even then though you are pretty crippled due to your lack of Astral and Death magic (yeah you can get D2 once in a blue moon on your Shamans but that is it.)

[Curious Yellow]

Having played EA Ulm in two MP games now, one vanilla and one CBM, I have to concur with Ferrosol. You depend too much on getting the right randoms on your mages. Both games I chose a bless build, with E9 as base so I could thug out my shamans. Playing the mage lottery every turn in the hopes you get the rare E3s, A2s, W2s, D2s or F2s gets frustrating. There are also a lot of dual paths you'd like. If I had to play EA Ulm again (which I hope I won't for a while), I would go with a rainbow build to ensure that you can get your magic diversity going. They seems to really get rolling once you get access to a variety of booster items.

[Torin]

Maybe you are anxious for the randoms. They come eventually and in every test game I played i got the national heros who come with nice paths that you lack of. First will be conquer and second magic.

Money: comes from provinces and not froms scales, more provices=more gold.
If you dont believe me just play a test game.
"Seeing is believing"

Besides you get more income and free mages with turmoil+luck. You dont have to use my build if you dont like it. In my recent game with Arcoscephale i used a Wyrm with turmoil+luck and I was the leader in gold for a good while. EA Arco has much worse troops than EA Ulm.

[Eximius Sus]

Originally Posted by Torin

Money: comes from provinces and not froms scales, more provices=more gold.
If you dont believe me just play a test game.
"Seeing is believing"

Money comes from taxes. Your statement is misleading. More provinces = more people to tax. More scales = more taxes per person. Both work.

[Curious Yellow]

Originally Posted by Torin

Maybe you are anxious for the randoms. They come eventually and in every test game I played i got the national heros who come with nice paths that you lack of. First will be conquer and second magic.

Far as I know there is only one hero that does anything for your magic diversity - Athawolf the Maker of Heroes. Eburhart is nice but he only gives higher nature magic and a lvl 3 priest (maybe EA Ulm gets better heroes with worthy heroes?). Anyway, Athawolf is good and all, but you can't really depend on him arriving to open up astral for you.

Besides you get more income and free mages with turmoil+luck.

I don't think you get more income with turmoil plus luck than with order. Sometimes you might, most times you won't - especially as your empire grows and you start hitting the four random events per turn limit.

You dont have to use my build if you dont like it.

Of course not, but that's not very helpful. Presumably you posted your build to get input and raise discussion about this rather interesting nation. I see how your build might get decent results in the early game, but in a competitive MP environment it seems you're going to peter out unless you get lucky. Due to the steel warriors being capital only and map move 1, a heavy bless tailored for them seems inadvisable. Your proposed W9 bless will make them quite fierce against independents and in small skirmishes, but in longer battles they will have fatigue issues.

In a CBM game I'm playing now I went with an imprisoned master druid, E9N4A4D2, Order 3 Cold 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 1 Magic 1. The idea was to use the bless to let your E2 shamans be nice thugs (equip them with a brand, shield of gleaming gold and bracers of protection and they can take most PD with a script of blessing, summon earth power, ironskin). As as side bonus, steel warriors become quite survivable with this blessing, and small groups of them can expand effectively in the early going. The A4 was to let him forge air boosters and staves of elemental mastery, and the D2 was there to allow him to summon lamia queens to diverify into death and blood.

Anyway I would not recommend using my exact build. Lamia queens and cold 3 scales don't mix well due to their being cold-blooded, which I had not considered. And the growth scale wasn't really necessary, none or your guys are old. Also I think astral on the pretender would be better than air. So if you're going for the shaman bless strategy then something like an imprisoned master druid with E9N4S3D3, dom 7 and Order 3, Cold 3, Misfortune 1 and Magic 1 might be good.

But as I said earlier, I'd probably go with an awake or sleeping rainbow type pretender if I were to play them again. I really like the steel/shield/warrior maidens and think you can get a decent expansion based on them rather than the slow steel warriors.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by Curious Yellow

But as I said earlier, I'd probably go with an awake or sleeping rainbow type pretender if I were to play them again. I really like the steel/shield/warrior maidens and think you can get a decent expansion based on them rather than the slow steel warriors.

Sure, you can get a pretty solid expansion using these. I was going with an o3/p3/g3/l3 imprisoned oracle in one mp game, and during testing I managed 27 provinces and 2 forts with a third on the way. So technically speaking, a fairly impressive land grab is possible. I'm not sure that's the best way to play ulm in a normal game, but...