Re Ulm for training.
I think there is some virtue to learning with Ulm - its simple as long as you don't use a Rainbow mage. Rainbow mages are very confusing.
I don't really agree Alex that Arco and Man are particularily suited to learning based on my early experiances. Sure Arco kicks butt and makes Ulm look like a bot of a joke (better troops, better magic) but I found the magic so overwhelming (all the random picks) that I rapidly moved on when I was learning Dom1. As for Man it was the first race I tried and it was not at all good for learning for me - I found Man tricky and the friendly fire casualties very annoying.
For me Abyssia was the race I really learnt to play Dom with as the combination of good priests, decent magic in a small range of fields, and good HI gave me a good feel for how to cause carnage. The major drawback is the blood but I just ignored that to begin with.
I think the best thing to do for learning dom is to pick the race you are most enthusiastic about and work from there. Sure your first pick may not work but hopefully the enthusiasm will carry you on to the next race.
In terms of simple learning races Vanheim is fairly straightforward and multi-faceted. However the truth is in Dom nothing is really straightforward and simple so if you can't handle all the twists and turns you are not going to get far with Dom.
I'm really not sure on the best approach to IF as I don't think you can make the Templers work as the basis for your race.
I have had a number of goes at making sacred knights work but in my experiance the lack of hitpoints ruins the whole deal. The simple fact is a bunch of poxy low level astral indie mages will slaughter your Knights and thats just one of the many magical threats to a very expensive dude with ~15HP's. Vanheim suffers from this a bit as the Van cost alot but the lower resource cost and the fact that you can build them everywhere overcomes the problem. If you can only build 5 Templers a turn you aren't likely to get a really large force and once full on war is engaged loses will make the build up insignificant. One bad battle and its all over for the Templers. Playing with Vanheim MP in Dom1 I found myself building ~20 Van a turn plus plenty of Hirdmen to take the casualties - someone has to die.
Why do people take level 4 in a magical skill for Rainbow mages? A mixture of 2&3 would seem far more affordable and 4 doesn't improve site searching and seldom confers worthwhile bless benifits.
Cheers
Keir
[ December 21, 2003, 20:05: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]
Re: Iron Faith Ulm
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