MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x

[danm]

Originally Posted by shatner

Think about it, Ulm loves bladewind because it shoots a whole bunch of grape shot over the battlefield. Their troops remain largely unaffected while the monkeys and militia and maenads get cut to ribbons. They would really benefit from the option of having the archer-equivalent of bladewind, not Gift from the Heavens. And a repeating crossbow happens to mesh with their theme in addition to the arbalest's sprite. Win-win!

Sure, that would be more efficient, but it doesn't seem at all thematic to me. Ulm wants big. Ulm wants heavy. Who wants to carry around a big heavy crossbow all day that is completely useless against "real" (read: armored) Troops? Troops without good armor clearly are too primitive to mount a threat to the mighty metal fist of ULM! Let the melee boys sort them out. What you need a bow for is them huge trampling elephants, and big ol' monsters, thugs, and supercombattants.

Let the uncivilized indie troops keep their pathetic shortbows. Warriors of ULM deserve a REAL bow! The fact that they might be strategically better served by blowguns doesn't mean an ulmish soldier is going to devote his life to training to use such "weak" projectiles.

For better and worse, Ulm thinks armor is important, and their crafters are obsessed with both perfecting their own armor, and overcoming that of their foes. It just doesn't make sense for them to put all their effort into fielding the best armor possible, and then build their bows around killing "obviously inferior" unarmored troops. Leave that sort of thing for poncy mages, and expendable independant mercinaries.