Iron Faith: Comments and Suggestions

[Sandman]

Iron Faith is a rather weak theme. It's certainly playable, but needs improving, in my view.

At first glance, Iron Faith seems to be a reasonably powerful theme. It has every single Ulmish unit apart from the master smith, as well as a 1 earth, 1 random, 3 holy mage-priest with a forge bonus and the inquisition ability. It also has a powerful sacred knight, the black templar.

However, by losing the smith, Iron Faith has made two large sacrifices. The drain immunity of the smith makes drain 3 a no-brainer for regular Ulm, liberating design points. The increased magic resistance and fatigue on non-smiths is also helpful. Iron Faith is forced to take drain 1, but the black priests are not drain-immune, so their research ability is dreadfully weak. A higher drain scale would make them even weaker, so it's not really viable. This means that compared to normal Ulm, Iron Faith has, for all intents and purposes, a cost of 80 design points.

The second sacrifice is the lack of mage with 2+ in any field of magic. Sure, there's a chance of a 2 earth black priest, but only 1 in 8. 2 earth opens the gateway to all sorts of neat stuff: earth boots and then dwarven hammers, assorted earth summons and lots of useful spells that are reasonably synergistic with the units of Ulm: blade wind, legions of steel, strength of giants, gnome lore and the very handy earth power.

Apart from the 2 earth black priests (which are very valuable), other black priests are left casting personal/one-square buffs or very limited attack spells, with no fatigue reduction. Iron Faith's default spell is still legions of steel, despite having to research to con-4 or conj-3 to have any hope of casting it. In terms of magic, then, Iron Faith is weaker than the default. IIRC, it's the only theme without a mage with a guaranteed level 2 in any path of magic.

What advantages does Iron Faith have? They have better priests, obviously, able to cast sermon of courage and better banishments. Killing more undead and preventing routing is an obvious improvement on Ulm, which is weak in these areas. Unfortunately, the black priests seem prefer casting personal buffs, rather than sermon of courage.

The random magic pick combined with the forge bonus means that Iron Faith can make a huge variety of low level items, compared to regular Ulm. Although this is somewhat offset by the relative ease by which default Ulm can acquire dwarven hammers and give them to indy mages.

The usage of sacred units allows bless effects to be usefully employed, as well as reducing gold spent on upkeep. Two black priests cost the same upkeep as one smith, which is just as well, because they have only one more research point between them.

The bless effects cost points, however, and also replace the usual rainbow pretender for Ulm, unless you go for a rainbow/bless hybrid with 4 levels in several areas. Additionally, compared to other nations, Iron Faith has only an average blessable selection.

Without a rainbow mage, Iron Faith adopts a chaotic approach to searching, sending black priests out searching normally, as well as using astral, death or 2-earth BPs for site-searching spells. This seems to work reasonably well.

As well as the templars and the priests, there's also the rather useless black acolyte. He costs 10 less than a normal priest, but is otherwise identical. I suppose he keeps your army colour coordinated.

Suggestions for improvement:

Either give black priests 2 earth or drain-immunity, accompanied by a modest increase in cost. These are the two areas where Iron Faith really loses out to normal Ulm, and IMO, altering one of these will only serve to balance, not overpower.

Replace the Black Lord with a Black Paladin. This is as much a flavour thing as anything else, but it seems unfair to have a nation which demands a bless-effect, and is influenced by Marignon, not to have a blessable melee commander.

Create a cheaper earth 3 pretender. The earth bless is decent for sacred units and mage-priests, is synergistic with Ulm's starting gem income and research goals, and is by far the most thematically correct of the bless effects. The Cyclops is pretty pricey for a nation that needs decent scales and a good fortress.

"By faith in iron shall Ulm survive" Give Iron Faith special holy spells that reflect their religion. A holy Version of legions of steel or strength of giants, for example, to offset their lack of earth 2. Maybe even make the effects of these spells dependent on the amount of armour the unit is wearing. It certainly fits with the theme. But it violates the convention that holy spells are the same for every living nation; only the dead nations have variation in their unholyness. It could also be hideously overpowered.

Black acolytes could be made more useful by being stealthy; this fits in with the influence of Marignon on the theme.

A more powerful, capital-only, Version of the black priest would also help reduce Iron faith's magical limitations. Say 2 earth, 2 random, 3 holy. This unit would have to be expensive to reflect the general magic weakness of Ulm.

Additional sacred troops are another possibilty. The obvious candidate is the Guardian, who I can see little reason to build as Iron Faith, when sermon of courage is readily available, and black templars are more powerful.

Comments?