Iron Faith: Comments and Suggestions

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Sandman:
You have to rely on getting the right random picks, as well as relying on finding sources of air, death and fire gems.

Getting the right random picks won't be very hard, since Black Priests are cheap enough that you can build multiple per turn. Getting the right gems can be done, but may take a little while for them to start showing up in quantity.

And regular Ulm can also make research items, whilst still having an average researcher to fall back on.

Regular Ulm can't make lightless lanterns till construction 6, and then they still have to find a source of air gems.

If you want variety, indy mages are a lot better. Admittedly, they're not 'guaranteed', but pretty likely, especially with a rainbow pretender.

The independent mages that you are most likely to find are probably going to be jade amazons, shaman, and druids. These can take care of nature and water searching. Your own black priests can handle death, earth and astral. That leaves only fire and air to search with in some other manner if you really want independent mages.

But with a rainbow mage you can find more, and better, independent mages, often with a free lab or even fortress. Once those indy mages are given dwarven hammers, they can keep a good supply of items coming. Regular Ulm will not gain any blessing benefit from having a caster pretender, either.

Bless effects are not going to be worth it on the black lord, unless you get both air 9 and astral 9 to cover their weaknesses.

I find rainbow mages very overrated, for any nation. It is just as easy, and usually faster, to site search with your national mages and site searching spells.

I don't think that it would. It has these two weaknesses, but it doesn't gain enough strength in other areas. A drain-immune Iron faith would still have limited mages.

They certainly aren't any worse than the standard Ulm mages, since they have much more versatility.

A 2 earth Iron faith would still suffer from drain. Plus I advocate a higher cost for the upgraded BPs, a new associated weakness. [/QB]

It's not much of a weakness, since even at 200 gold they could afford multiple mages per turn.

[Sandman]

Getting the right random picks won't be very hard, since Black Priests are cheap enough that you can build multiple per turn. Getting the right gems can be done, but may take a little while for them to start showing up in quantity.

Mass producing priests for the right random pick is horribly inefficient. You'd need multiple fortresses, for a start, which is hardly cheap.

Regular Ulm can't make lightless lanterns till construction 6, and then they still have to find a source of air gems.

That's why I use a rainbow pretender for Ulm. To find air mages and air gems (although laterns require fire gems). The rainbow pretender is much more dependable that a 1 in 8 air BP.

The independent mages that you are most likely to find are probably going to be jade amazons, shaman, and druids. These can take care of nature and water searching. Your own black priests can handle death, earth and astral. That leaves only fire and air to search with in some other manner if you really want independent mages.

I wasn't talking about searching. Whilst Iron Faith has more variety in its magic, regular Ulm can easily gain the variety they lack by employing a rainbow pretender and getting hidden mage sites. And regular Ulm has a good, dependable mage available even if nothing is found.

Bless effects are not going to be worth it on the black lord, unless you get both air 9 and astral 9 to cover their weaknesses.

????

I find rainbow mages very overrated, for any nation. It is just as easy, and usually faster, to site search with your national mages and site searching spells.

OK, well I consider a rainbow mage to be an effective way of countering Ulm's weaknesses.

They certainly aren't any worse than the standard Ulm mages, since they have much more versatility.

One random pick does not equal 'much more' versatility. They can forge low-level items cheaply, sure, but their role on the battlefield is limited to casting weak attack and buff spells at maximum fatigue, as well as priest spells.

Can you give some examples of their great versatility? How does this help their cause as much as being able to reliably cast blade wind, strength of giants, legions of steel and other powerful earth spells?

It's not much of a weakness, since even at 200 gold they could afford multiple mages per turn.

Oh come on. Cost is important.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Sandman:
Mass producing priests for the right random pick is horribly inefficient. You'd need multiple fortresses, for a start, which is hardly cheap.

Ulm can afford a second castle within 10 turns in a normal richness game, and they don't have anything else to spend their gold on, so you build black priests. I don't see how this is any different from mass producing smiths under standard Ulm. It's not like you are planning to have less than 30 or 40 as soon as possible.

That's why I use a rainbow pretender for Ulm. To find air mages and air gems (although laterns require fire gems). The rainbow pretender is much more dependable that a 1 in 8 air BP.

Or you could use an air 6, water 2 titan, and get a unit that could find all your air sites, and most of your water sites, and that would have the ability to throw massive quanties of lightning around.

I wasn't talking about searching. Whilst Iron Faith has more variety in its magic, regular Ulm can easily gain the variety they lack by employing a rainbow pretender and getting hidden mage sites. And regular Ulm has a good, dependable mage available even if nothing is found.

A rainbow pretender lacks focus, and provides no real way to deal with a strong combat pretender. It is also extremely vulnerable to attack, assasination, far slaying spells, and just about everything else that will get thrown at it. There are very few hidden mage sites that can't be found through the use of the site searching spells that IF Ulm has access to through it's priests. It can't get enchantresses, but those aren't particularly common.

Bless effects are not going to be worth it on the black lord, unless you get both air 9 and astral 9 to cover their weaknesses.

Black templars are just as vulnerable to air magic and MR based spells as any other Ulmish troop. They are too expensive to use in large numbers when they will just get decimated by orb lightning and soul slay.

OK, well I consider a rainbow mage to be an effective way of countering Ulm's weaknesses.

And for the same price you could get a combat pretender that would double your rate of expansion, then actually be useful against opposing armies. A rainbow pretender lacks focus, and a strategy can't really be planned around them.

One random pick does not equal 'much more' versatility.

Of course it does. They have access to every path of magic at a low level, whereas standard Ulm has access to _only_ earth 2 fire 1. There would be no reason to play standard Ulm if the priests had drain immunity.

They can forge low-level items cheaply, sure, but their role on the battlefield is limited to casting weak attack and buff spells at maximum fatigue, as well as priest spells.

How is this any different from standard Ulm? They gain slightly easier access to blade wind, and the ability to cast magma eruption and magma bolts.

[quote]Can you give some examples of their great versatility?[quote]

They have access to every single path of magic. Ulm doesn't. They can build every item that needs combinations of fire 1, air 1, water 2, earth 3, nature 1, astral 1, death 1, and blood 1 just through the use of path boosters that are available to them through construction research.

How does this help their cause as much as being able to reliably cast blade wind, strength of giants, legions of steel and other powerful earth spells?

Legions of steel is not a powerful earth spell. It's a fairly weak armor buff, which gives Ulm more armor, something it doesn't really need. I get annoyed every single time a smith wastes fatigue casting that spell. As for blade wind, earth boots only cost you 5 gems as Ulm, so it's not much harder to get multiple mages that can cast it.

Oh come on. Cost is important.

Cost is important, but not that important to Ulm. They will almost always have more gold than they know what to do with once past turn 10 or so. This is especially true when your mages are scared. Most nations will recruit multiple 200 gold mages per turn once they have the income to do so, and if they don't they will tend to lose magical battles.

[PvK]

Rainbow pretenders can work well for Ulm, and I'd say particularly for Iron Faith, because the RB pretender can get the Black Priests "started" with a set of power-boosting items, after which they can go to town with boosting items and manufacture just about anything.

My first try at this (and my second game of Dom2 - first was Arco and the Marignon AI wiped me out) was extremely successful. Pretender was a rainbow Ghost King, who made death gem income quite easy, thanks very much - all research is performed by lowly necromancers and revenants equipped with skull mentors and other research boost items. The above technique was used to get a "full house" of Black Priests with hammers and boost items forging and casting just about anything. I even have blood magic going on thanks to the random picks. The Ghost King can also deal with, or if needed, serve as, a supercombatant, but that wasn't really necessary.

PvK

[Cohen]

Ulm cannot have a Rainbow pretender, unless you want to be conquered by someone having an SC Pretender, or a general SC ...

Regular Ulmish troops lack of the strenght for dealing with a VQ or a Titan or something else with the right equip and buffs.

Admitted this, Ulm cannot rely on magic too for summons and other things.
Ulm now is doomed to death in all MP games not in ultra-small maps.

Bless lose efficiency too in mid late game.
Ulm needs, bot IF and default, of better troops ...

Think on, 12 Black Knights losed against 12 Fiends of Darkness ... the most elite a default Ulm can afford against a basic blood summon of Mictlan.
And when I've to face Devils? Or bigger summons? I've to go AI directly?

Just because you can't have a rainbow doesn't mean you can have a pretender with 3 good paths. Which is more than enough to get you where you need to go. IF uses this advantage by being able to forge their own bonus items with a little help.

Common Pretender for IF is a PoD with at least 4D and another magic or two based on desire. It's not easy or simplistic, but certainly not doomed in any sense of the word. I've won a couple of games using base Ulm and IF Ulm with such games and it was because of their forge ability that I did.

[Endoperez]

I though that IF Ulm could forge Ring of Lighting easily once they have the gem income, and same goes for Lead Shield and even Antimagic Amulet, IIRC right - and even those are only needed against nations who have Air/Astral. Well, I think Nature has sleep too, but in the early game mr isn't that important and later there are lots of items that help. And in their own dominion the drain would give black templars one more mr automatically.