The MA Ulm issue.

[Burnsaber]

I've been reading these forums for a long time and this one question just keeps on popping up in several threads, and horribly derailing them. Besides, having parts of the discussion separated on 10+ threads makes it very hard for developers to see what is the community stand on the issue.

So, I made this thread for your MA Ulm discussion needs. The three important questions are;

1) Is MA Ulm underpowered?

2) If question1=true, is it so underpowered that it takes out the enjoyment from playing it?

3) If question2=true, how to fix this?

The summarized comments on the question1 on prior threads

For;
1) Ulm's troops (there are numerous arguments about this so I'll devide these a bit)

1a)Ulm's troops are slow (both and off-the field), which limits expansion and tactical possibilities. It also allows for their opponent's to blast them with numereous spells before they reach melee (see argument 1b)

1b)Their reliance on heavy armor and low-MR makes them vulnerable to both armor negating and MR-checking spells, which are numereous and easliy available to every nation. This makes their troops easily counterable.

1c)Arbalests make normally high-prot Ulmish troops vulnerable to friendly fire.

1d)Their high encumberance doesn't synergize with the high protection value since it diminishes the lasting power that high protection presents.

1e) Their troop selection (while allowing different weapon combinations) only consists of high resourcecost, highly armored troops, limiting army construction, and making their armies predictable.

1f) Ulm's troops have average morale (expect for guardians and Black Knights) and few means to boost it (see argument 6), diminishing their lasting power in combat.

2) Their weak mages can't allow them to be succesfull in mid and late-game. They're also borderline old age.

3) Their pretender desing is limited by being "forced" to take Production:3

4) Reliance on resource-heavy troops limits their early expansion since massing their troops early is difficult.

5) Their forging ability is diminished by not having a reliable Thug/SC chassis and their low magic ablity doesn't allow them to summon one easily.

6) No sacreds and priests to speak of.

Against
(I couldn't find too much of these, most posts were like "they're fine, but...")

1) Ulm's troops combination of high protection and high-damage weapons allows them blow through other nation's normal infantry and indepentends in (relatively) small numbers.

2) Ulm's troops are nearly immune to normal short-bows archers and have high resitance to longbows and crossbows.

3) Their forging powers allow them polital maneuvorability and survivalability.

4) Ulm's troops have wide selection of weapon choices, allowing them to choose right weapons for the right job.

5) Since Ulmish troops have Gold cost:Resource cost ratio of 1:2 / 1:3 they have lots of extra cash to crank out forts, which has numereous advantages.

Collected & summarized ideas for question 3:

- Give them low resource cost crossbow (like MA Marignon has) unit to ease early expansion and serve as gold sink.

- I'd like to remind you people that they are NOT getting their MR raised (developer comment).

- Make Ulmish troops generally tougher (more HP, streght, attack, etc..)

- Ease the vulnerabilites of Ulm's troops (higher morale, lower encumberance, higher tactical and stragedic speed)

- Allow for more magic divesity by meddling with Smith's random magic picks.

- Give them new national spells and/or troops to combat other nation's sacreds and mages. "mage/priest"-hater spells/troops seem to have popularity.

That's what I collected. If I missed something, bring it up.

EDIT1: Typo fixing & improved readability.
EDIT2: Added "crossbow"-fix idea

[Micah]

Excellent summary Burnsaber. I think the idea of adding a low-resource troop to their lineup so they have a gold sink may have been overlooked in your post though. (Crossbows were my suggestion, but something else could work too)

[Xietor]

Blade Wind< arrow fend

One way to help Ulm would be to make blade wind unaffected by arrow fend. Typically by the time Ulm gets summon earthpower and Blade Wind other races have arrow fend.

Because the way the game mechanics work, blade wind, because it is not aoe1, is affected by arrow fend.

Maybe a national spell for ulm similar in effect to blade wind-but aoe1.

As I said in another thread, less magical diversity and more earth. Remove extra pick and old age from smiths and give them 3e 1f and a 10 percent chance for 4e. Adding petrify/earth attack would help them.

[Baalz]

One thing that would go a long way towards helping Ulm would be to change the smiths from being 1f 2e +10%fesa to 1f 1e +100%fea +10%bsnd.

[Sandman]

A long lasting debate indeed. I've suggested many different things over the years, including magic weapons, an assassin, high MR on the elites, a 'worker' mage and a standard bearer.

These are all pretty small tweaks. We could always go for broke and give Ulm a Grand Master Smith. 3 earth, 2 fire and one random. The potential of such a mage is enormous, single-handedly turning Ulm into a top-tier nation.

[Burnsaber]

I don't think that adding any new superunit(s) will be good fixes.

Adding some superunit to magically fix Ulm's problems would just warp all of their available stragedies to that certain unit. I can see a future Ulm stragedy thread;

"How do I play the new Ulm?"
"Dude, just make Unit X accompanied by leader Y. Save the rest of the gold to make new forts for more X's and Y's"

IMHO, currently Ulmish troops have too many weaknessess compared to their strenghts. I think that some of these have to be removed or made less drastic.

[dmentd]

I think two changes could change MA Ulm sufficiently to be worth playing. Add one additional, high probability random elemental (75%) to the smiths and up their cost by 25 or 30 gold. This helps forging potential and direct combat potential. The second is to give the black lord significantly more hit points (25 hp total) using the "great endurance" rationale. This makes these guys potential thugs.

These two changes make MA Ulm a middle of the road nation and possible to play in MP. It also follows thematically with the nation. Of course, I have only played two MP games, neither of which are finished yet, so please take my suggestions with the proverbial grain of salt.

[Nikolai]

> [1) Ulm's troops combination of high protection and high-damage weapons allows them blow through other nation's normal infantry and indepentends in (relatively) small numbers.

So so. Fresh recruit infantrymen, maybe. Good national troops, no way. Almost any human nation has defense 13-16 troops, and those often have armour 15-17. And THEY have encumberance 5-7, not 7-10. Good luck killing these with Ulm... you will be crawling exhausted before that.

And anyone good kills indies without dead. Give me principles, longbowmen, defenders... not even talking about vans and centaurs.

> 2) Ulm's troops are nearly immune to normal short-bows archers and have high resitance to longbows and crossbows.

Yes. But so do anyone those with shields. The tower shield helps tons more against a crossbow that armour 20 (Ulm's best) and everyone almost gets tower shields.

> 3) Their forging powers allow them polital maneuvorability and survivalability.

Yup, it's called being client nation (smith *****). Until they decide you've done with utility, being so damn limited.

> 4) Ulm's troops have wide selection of weapon choices, allowing them to choose right weapons for the right job.

As long the job's killing small number, low defense humans - maybe. No high attack weapons, no high defense weapons. Ulm needs rediscover swords and light shields/armour.

> 5) Since Ulmish troops have Gold cost:Resource cost ratio of 1:2 / 1:3 they have lots of extra cash to crank out forts, which has numereous advantages.

Yeah. Ulm gets castles, to make more crap :-)

I am not arguing with Burnsaber, but with the positions listed. Ulm needs help.

And Burnsaber's right, giving superunits is a bad fix. Just tune the existing up, and make smiths smarter.

[Edratman]

As a minor aside, why is there such a fervent love/hate relationship with MA Ulm? It reminds me of my trips to Japan, where everyone believes that they are superior to any and all other non-Japanese, but almost eveybody has a t-shirt on with the logo of an American sports team or some other American product.

No other nation gets anywhere the number of posts that MA Ulm does. I concur that it is one of the weaker nations, but the other contenders for weakest nation honors seldom get mentioned. Was Ulm a favored nation in Dom2 and players still remember that?

[MarcusSmythe]

Ulm is a good 'jump into' nation. As far back as Dominions PPP, its focus on troops over magic and formations over SCs made it very accessible to the new player, and gives it a very different feel than other nations.

Thus, alot of us have happy early memories of Ulm.

As another thing, Ulm is the closest thing to a nation able to just 'make war'. No mutliple blesses, no SCs and hordes of mages, no 'tricks'. Ulm has its core troops as its backbone, rather than a bless rush or a giant pile of mages+clams casting various flavours of 'I win and you all die, and I get gems for it'. Thus, its very different, flavour-wise, from alot of nations, and is appealing to people who like that flavour.

Unfortunately, its a flavour that just doesnt perform well in the current environment, so alot of virtual ink is spilled discussing the problems.