Iron Faith Ulm

Alright now that I'm done, and I've had a chance to think about it.

I'd either go all out for a bless effect or I wouldn't play IF.

Since Black Templar already have high protection (24) I wouldn't really worry about that. They have lower hit points (15) and other minimal stats 13 str, 11 att, 10 def, 10 mr.

My choice would be either to go for a Water, Fire, or Nature blessing of 9.

Nature
+3 Berserk and Regen/Poison resist nets you with a Templar with 3 hp Regen a turn (out of 15) 27 Prot, 16 str, 14 att, 7 defense.

Fire
+4 Att and Flaming weapons (8 AP damage). That means 15 att and 3 Attacks first round 2 attacks second round with 8 AP damage included.

Water
+4 Defense and Quickness (50%). That means 14 Def, 5 attacks first round, 4 attacks second round.

Now those don't really mean anything unless you decide how you are going to use your Black Templar. they are too expensive to make a majority of your force, and considering the investment into a Bless Effect they have to be able to stand up to summons as you will have only clockworks and maybe some crusher/Iron Dragons late in the game. Even if you invested in 9 Astral you'd only get +3 MR for a total of 13 so you are still weak against magic.

You can chance it and take Water9 and use your templars as rear killers and hope to get a commander if not tear up archers.

Be safe and take Fire9 and use your templars to kill summons, though you are going to have a problem with fire summons.

Play the stat game and go Nature9 and hope that high protection will save you enough each round for you to regen.

None of them look very promising and for that reason it's hard to play IF. Maybe if the Priests had Drain immunity like the smiths; but as it is; they are IMO useless for anything but sermoning.

And no matter which I took I'd take Order 3, Production 3, Misfortune 3, and Drain 1 (at minimum) and a Castle. With such expensive Sacreds, you are probably not ever going to be able to make more than 4 or 5 a turn.

[ December 19, 2003, 03:21: Message edited by: Zen ]

[apoger]

>I'm taking IF for a different reason...because the first time I took it...I did very, very poorly. And I want to redeem myself.

Perfectly good reason.


>I do have one question regarding your setup: Why take growth? For the gold bonus?

Absolutely. Ulm needs every ounce it can get. It doesn't win with it's magic.


>I know the great mother is a good pretender. I just can't get past the way she looks, though. Hehe.

As an easy alternate you could go with a Dragon (take fire-9 or nature-9) with just one less dominion strength.

[PDF]

IMHO taking Drain3 for IF is a mistake : you'll end up with 1 RP mages (!!), and even indy sages will have only 4... unless you take either a Sage/RB pretender or a weak dominion, but both "solutions" defeat the basic purpose of "abusing" Templars.

Overall I find IF Ulm weak ond poorly balanced : to get an effective design you need a magically strong (for bless) pretender but also needs to have it master more than one path ('cause your mages are crappy lvl 1 ...), you need Order (as everyone except undeads), Prod (Ulm is resource intensive), Magic/drain at 0 or above (as said earlier, but if you take 2 or more you blow up your MR...), Dominion, and even a decent castle (production) !
What you get are sacred lvl 1 mage-priests and sacred heavy Templars Knights, that are very expensive.
You can't count on numbers, against weak opposition they're not needed, but if faced with strong oppositions they are brittle against magic - so they are a quite risky bet !
Lastly you also lose the quite useful Forge bonus...

[apoger]

They do have the forge bonus on the IF main mage.
However I do agree that IF is a weak theme for a nation that is already sub par. Ulm is a very challenging nation and I wish people would stop recommending it to the new players. I suggest Arcoscephale or Man as better training nations.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by apoger:
However I do agree that IF is a weak theme.

One thing that buggers me with IF is you have to pass on the Guardians completely if you want to maximize Templar production. How sad.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I agree that IF is weaker overall than standard Ulm. But to me that just makes it more of a challenge to make it work.

I got very unlucky in my initial battle...lost my starting troops and some barbarian mercenaries to a smaller number of independent barbarians (fewer indie barbarians than mercenary barbarians mind you). That doesn't happen every day. I didn't realize that my priests would cast that silly earth spell...throw inaccurate stones or something...instead of sermon of courage because Abyssian priests don't behave that way. Morale is a major boost for ulm troops.

Still, I've rebounded nicely. And I didn't remember that my mages with IF were earth 1, ? 1. The random pick is nice in that you will have mages capable of forging all the basic items of each sphere if you are selective about whom you send to the front lines.

I completely agree that these mages need to be able to research in a drain environment. But I'm not holding my breath. (I'm actually wondering why they can't...maybe it was an oversight...maybe it is to compensate for the wider array of magical items craftable at reduced cost in IF ulm.) I've also given thought to a death/nature pretender with this theme. Death for fear and nature for berserk (though that's going to make the defense really low on the templars). I'm also imagining life after death for ulm templars...and smiling. I just don't think ulm will support two level-9 blessings due to its other "requirements" for success as a nation.

The more I think about nature-9 the less I like its bonuses on sacred mages. I don't want my mages to turn berserk and stay on the battlefield. (Maybe this particular "bonus" could be made applicable only to non-mages?)

I also agree with those who said that a drain scale is rough for IF ulm. Ulm seems to me to be much more dependent than average on the sites you are able to find. I think that is why the great rainbow sage works so well for them.

I find myself wishing I could use a scorpion king as a pretender for Ulm. Fire-9, earth-9 would be devastating. Especially when you remember that a decent number of indie mages are sacred.

[PDF]

Originally posted by apoger:
They do have the forge bonus on the IF main mage.
However I do agree that IF is a weak theme for a nation that is already sub par. Ulm is a very challenging nation and I wish people would stop recommending it to the new players. I suggest Arcoscephale or Man as better training nations.

I don't agree with that : Ulm is good for training as it is relatively easy to play.
I don't find it subpar , but is not flexible, you have to follow a relatively rigid strategy :
* Research/Sage pretender to keep research at a good level on early game, then to find sites
* Try to get indy sages asap
* Focus research in Construction first
* Forge Earth Boots and Dw Hammer asap to maximize item production (funny : the Hammer even works for Blood items !!)
In MP the forge bonus is also very useful to get good trades and keep allies - you build at 50% cost, can sell at 80% and get profit !
* Once your smiths have Earth boots they can use Summon Earthpower to get Earth-3 and summon Elementals, and use nice support spells.