Anyone played the Ulm Black Forest in MP ?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by mivayan:
I think rangers need to cost more, and there should perhaps be a limit on how many vampire counts can exist at the samt time, like ice devils are limited. Perhaps max 3 at the same time since you wont have several nations competing for them.

Why should rangers cost more? Stealth doesn't cost much if any extra on any other units that have it, and they have no better physical stats than any other Ulm unit.

Limiting vampire counts to three at a time would mean that you should also limit dusk elders to three at a time. After all, other than flying and immortality they both have about the same combat stats. That would totally destroy any chances that Black Forest Ulm might have, as the counts are _not_ that powerful. Magic will easily remove them from any battlefield, as BF Ulm doesn't have easy access to rainbow armor, and they are still very vulnerable to the undead destroying spells.

[ January 29, 2004, 15:43: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[Raz 24]

I just want too say I love Black Forest Ulm and
that is because it has a very uniqe playing style

The vcs arent overpowered , but are good thugs.
The rangers are awesome and the mages are cheap but mkay.

So the conclusion they are not overpowerd(dont forget the forced misfortune and death)but a very good natiob worth playing

[mivayan]

hmm.. good points... and bf ulm does not really have anything worthwile other than rangers and vampire counts. I also noticed that you can summon slightly better vampires for a bit higher cost with blood6, the difference being that blood6 takes a while.

I'll withdraw my suggestions untill someone gets some multiplayer experience with them

[Osium]

I recently played BF ulm in my nightly 3way multi game. Expansion is extremely rapid, using 2 or 3 pikeneers + 20 or so rangers, I had 3 conquering armies out soon (the first one fizzled once its infantry support died as it only had 12 rangers) and by turn 11 I had 16 or 17 provinces conquered. I had my first VC on turn 8, however I choose a vamp queen for my pretender. Im not sure I used my VC's correctly but to be honest they did not seem very powerful. With the fountain of blood, do people hunt in their home province or do they somehow teleport the fountain somewhere else? I can see that using the fountain in your home province must really cramp early expansion via rangers so I dunno if the fountain is really worth it.

I churned out 3 VC's by turn 14 I think and from then on all new VC's blood hunted. In anycase, the only thing that saved me from my Ctis neighbor to the south were my rangers. The VC's were fragile in the extreme even with barkskin luck and a horror helm.

Secondly, as far as I can tell BF Ulm has horrible infantry. Low morale on your living units means they route if someone so much as passes wind in their general direction. Mixing thralls and ghouls in with your living troops bolsters their morale, but a few turns into combat with more than a couple priests and those undead are all but wiped out.

I was essentially relying soley on rangers with whatever fodder infantry I could plant in front with VC's holding as long as possible before attacking rear.

[LordArioch]

BF Ulm reminds me of Diabolic Faith Marignon (crossbows, pikemen, etc.) but with weaker mages and an actually useful starting blood summon. However, any power of Vampire Counts is really only early game, and using blood for early game expansion isn't so great, as blood magic tends to be slow starting.
Against human players archers can destroy thralls very quickly, and I'd bet a lvl 3 priest or two hiding behind some front units can kill a Count pretty easily...he can't resist smite demon forever. I'm actually kinda curious how effective demons in general are now that there's another spell designed specifically to counter them, especially since it looks rather effective.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
Against human players archers can destroy thralls very quickly, and I'd bet a lvl 3 priest or two hiding behind some front units can kill a Count pretty easily...he can't resist smite demon forever.

You sure that a count counts as a demon?

[LordArioch]

I was pretty sure it hit all undead, but honestly I haven't checked. I probably should.

[Osium]

The main person I was fighting mostly was Ctis, he had a King turned prophet casting banish the occasional smite and never smite/banish demon on my VC's and it didnt seem like they were effected very much at all. Serpent dancers are the units that generally killed my VC's quickly. However his holy 5 prophet king was DECIMATING my thralls and ghouls. My regular troops routed almost instantly whenever they came into contact without undead backup. I was forced to rely heavily on paralyze and rangers since my melee units were only a buffer that Lasted a couple of turns behond hold position.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
BF Ulm reminds me of Diabolic Faith Marignon (crossbows, pikemen, etc.) but with weaker mages and an actually useful starting blood summon.

Are you calling Harlequins useless? No research, 1 blood slave, can be summoned by an 80 gold diabolist with no items, flying, beats most normal troops in hand to claw combat. I wouldn't call that useless. Granted they're no Fiend of Darkness, but what do you expect for 1/5 the cost?

Black Forest would love to have Inquisitors, but on the other hand, DF would love to have Rangers (more accurate than Marignon crossbows, IIRC - and stealthy to boot) and Wolfherds. To say nothing of super-durable Ulmish infantry instead of the nearly as resource intensive but much more mortal Marignon infantry.

However, any power of Vampire Counts is really only early game, and using blood for early game expansion isn't so great, as blood magic tends to be slow starting.

Unless you have a no-research blood summon and are using a strong blood pretender.

Multiple hunts in the same province will drive your unrest up quickly, but a single hunter won't do that much. Blood hunt unrest in Dom II seems to depend more on the number of hunters than on the number of slaves they collect (in Dom I it was the reverse).

Against human players archers can destroy thralls very quickly, and I'd bet a lvl 3 priest or two hiding behind some front units can kill a Count pretty easily...he can't resist smite demon forever. I'm actually kinda curious how effective demons in general are now that there's another spell designed specifically to counter them, especially since it looks rather effective.

Not all nations have effective archers - or level 3 priests, either. And practically no nations have them everywhere - isn't the VC flying and stealthy? You don't have to use a brute force approach with him (although you can, especially against independents).