Help, I suck with Ulm!

[Sly Frog]

Originally posted by Arralen:
I don't play Ulm, but I play Last of Tuatha quite often, so I might shed some light on the issue from a different perspective. There seem to be several shortcomings in your strategy ...

Cool.

• Sidhe ain't ordinary, they are holy, capital-only troops. Danoine Sidhe (troops) cost 35/16 (vs. Ulm inf 10/18+ and Black Knights 60/70+), the commanders are nearly prohibitive expensive. Add to this the fact that LoT has forced Luck-1 and Magic-1 and needs the magic for a decent blessing (Air-9 for lightning resistance in this case?). Result: The LoT player is hard pressed to get an decent income via order scale. But with taking order he nullifies his luck advantage. If he manages to outnumber your black knights by 30:8, you have build to few units. Did you choose order/prod scale and a high admin castle?
  

I'll admit that one fault is that I did not start up the spy unrest early enough. I'm taking care of that now (I have the spies, I was not doing it for diplomatic purposes). Nonetheless, I have "built a few units." That's the problem; those other units suck; they are not worth the massive amount of resources you pay for them. The black plate infantry dies too easily. I did juice both my order and production (offset by misfortune and drain), and I have a 40 admin castle.

• danoine sidhe have medium prot (13 - 1pt less than Blade Wind does damage), but high defense (15). With a Lvl-4 water blessing they'll be at 17, with 1-Star-Exp at 18, plus the glamour ability. Your inf has an attack of 10 (black knights 12), chances of your troops hitting his are rather slim (Check out the spreadsheet .. you'll find it on various sites).
  His attack strength isn't that great either, but with 4 units of his attacking one of yours your defense is at -3 with the 4th attack - hit almost assured.
  Conclusion: Make shure you'll have numerical superiority - this will nullify his high defense. Shouldn't be too hard, as you should have the better eco and the cheaper troops.
  

But that's just the problem. I don't have the cheaper troops. Oh, sure, they may cost less gold, but even with the high admin castles, you can pump out about 5 per turn on average (a little more in the capital, a little less elsewhere). I can't pump out anywhere near the amount to get the type of numerical advantage I seem to need.

• Use indy shortbows firing at short range into the melee. Storm wouldn't matter much this way. They won't do much damage to your heavily armored troops, but each hit will kill the glamour of the unit hit. (chances are 10+2d6/10+2d6+2)
  Keep in mind, though, that this will cause moral checks for both sides, as there will be friendly fire incidences. so make shure you keep your morale high.
  

Well, I had archers (admittedly not short bows firing at close range, although I'm not sure how they would have gotten to close range). Of course, when you mention "keep your morale high," you toss one right into the wheelhouse of big Ulm problems - Morale.

• items on commanders
  Looks like you spend way too much mage-time on forging items for commanders which die anyway.
  Better convert your earth gems to gold to buy more troops in the beginning, so you can expand faster and with fewer losses.
  So first send your commanders into melee (bodyguards!), and if anyone survives long enough to get a heroic ability, than deck him out with items. Keep their defense high enough not to get hit by every attack. Black Plate works only on mounted commanders, which do not suffer from negative defense from armor. First priority should be to make them more survivable, killing speed comes second.
  

No, I didn't actually create a ton of items, because as I mentioned, I realize that Ulm's commanders suck, and the items are wasted. I agree with your general assessment, but what it amounts to is that admitting that Ulm's forge bonus isn't really that valuable for Ulm.

• -
• spells
  Blade wind is fine against fodder and ethereal summons, but doesn't do much damage against medium armored troop, if at all. Buy cheap Ulm Inf as fodder and boost them with "Legions of Steel" .. they'll soak up some arrows and javelin/spear attacks from danoine sidhe.
  Clockwork horrors are lightning resistant as mechanical men are.
  

I had some clockwork horrors, but they are so brittle. I agree that they are valuable, however, and I screwed up by losing a decent batch of them earlier in the game.

I agree with your assessment on the blade wind, but don't see alot of options for earth mages to kill high protection troops beside that.

Hope this is helpful.
A.

It was. I appreciate the effort; don't take my responses as contrarian. It's just that I've been trying alot of the stuff you've mentioned, and it didn't gel. Another part of the admitted problem is that I'm stuck in the damn wasteland on this map.

[ July 02, 2004, 14:29: Message edited by: Sly Frog ]