EA Ulm advice wanted

[PvK]

I've been able to get practically all the magic paths I want with EA Ulm, even without pretender magic. They have plenty of random paths and can cheaply forge boosters.

[Edi]

Astral is the one path they need a pretender for unless the player gets lucky and gets Athalwolf the Maker of Heroes or gets lucky with some elemental site that provides mages with astral or finds a lizard province.

[Saxon]

The more I play, the more I like Luck. Lots of free gold and gems and the natinoal heroes are a nice bonus. In this case, they bring something you can not get otherwise.

So, would people say this is a fairly strong nation, but a fairly straightforward one?

[johnarryn]

In the early game, EA Ulm is very straightforward, relying on national troops to kill stuff. late game you can path up like crazy, diversifying your magic through your access to most magical paths... and that is much more complicated, giving you access to a wide variety of summons and battlefield spells.

[Shovah32]

With a high astral pretender(possibly with other, booster forging paths you may not have access to) EA Ulm can have some insane magic diversity(their mages+summoned mages+path booster+rings of wizardry/sorcery)

[Tifone]

Wow, I was looking around for a strategy guide about EA Ulm, and this is the thread most similar to a guide that we have? oouch ^^

I've tried EA Ulm lately in SP, with CBM 1.3, I gotta say the thing that worked the best for me was a F4 dormant Dragon with great scales, rushing for Flaming Arrows... the cheap short bows Ulm have can do well this way IMHO, Ench 5 (4 in vanilla), should be ready or so for the time the Dragon awakens, he can cast it (takes 3 gems so he needs to go around searching for sites a bit before, if you didn't get any F1 randoms), change shape and burn people around with its breath.

I used to divide my forces into 2 kind of armies, one with mapmovement 1 and no stealth for the heavy work (the sacred units, the warriors with the maul and the cheap archers), and one with the mapmovement 2 stealthys for the raiding (steel and shield maidens, dire wolves, the most expensive kind of archers and some axe throwers). I think Ulm has a great raiding potential with N2 E2 stealthy mages with 40 leadership and stealthy commanders with 80 leadership, in 2/3 turns you can build a 120 well-buffable force (expecially in CBM where Legions of Steel are Const-1 so the most of your shamans can cast it soon with an E gem, and you have many with Ulm). Of course you have easy access to many other nice spells with all that magic power and diversity, earth might first, blade wind, strength of giants and so...
I admit I have still to organize a good endgame strategy anyway, even if high nature + bonus at forging + random access to death and many death gems... say mostly one thing to me ^^

Someone can give me better advices after this year and a half from the last post?

Peace

[Wrana]

No. I was partly successful with E9F6 bless and killed one neighbor in MP, but then got attacked by 2 others who had much better research... I was able to hold until game ended, but not to counter-attack in any force.
What I've found is that there are good diplomatic possibilities with EA Ulm forging bonus - you can sell items with discount and still gather gems... I'm still thinking about it and plan to test the results in MP one day, but this probably has to wait for some time...
Bless may be good enough strategy in SP, by the way, but not in MP due to the fact that their sacreds are capital-only and Move 1.

[SlipperyJim]

Bless may be good enough strategy in SP, by the way, but not in MP due to the fact that their sacreds are capital-only and Move 1.

I didn't even try a big bless in SP. EA Ulm's sacreds are nothing special. Heavy infantry with two-handed swords. They're tough, and they hit hard. Those points are good. They're also slow, and their lack of shields makes them very vulnerable to massed missile fire. Those points are bad.

Honestly, I thought EA Ulm was a bit dull, so I only played one game with them. In that game, I chose a Great Enchantress (free pearls!) with E4N4S4 and good scales. It worked alright ... but nearly anything can work in SP.

I saw two strengths for EA Ulm:

• Sacred Mages - Maybe a Death-blessed Blade Wind (the killer spell of EA) would be good?
• Lots of Stealth - Raiding, raiding, and more raiding.

I'm not an EA Ulm expert. Heck, I'm not even a dabbler. But those are the points that seemed interesting to me....

[Trumanator]

Well, the new CBM 1.4 improves the various male warriors ambi to make them at least passable in attack. You're still probably going to have issues hitting anything with high defense. I know the Maidens are good, but who wants to play a lumberjack nation with nothing but girls. (no offense intended) They really should make the sacreds recruit anywhere IMHO, that would be pretty cool, a bless rush Ulm...

They really need a Baalz guide