Help, I suck with Ulm!

[Huzurdaddi]

Huzardadi, were you Pythium? I really wish you hadn't quit. After seeing one of your battles with Abysia where you wiped the floor with him, and then subsequently punked Caelum's air queen, I'm quite honestly surprised that you dropped out. It looked to me like you were in a pretty good position. Having an AI in your place will really help out your hostile neighbors, which, unfortunately, are not me.

Well there are plenty more Abysian armies out there.

Sly, sorry about the confusion. I feel bad about the fate of Jotunheim. It seems like the only defense against an early dogpile is to try to convince other neighbors to attack the weak flanks of your enemies.

I have to agree with that. The only defence seems to be availiable if the diplomatic suitation is fluid. In both Jotuhheim's and My case the alliances were set and there was nothing to be done. He did fight until the Last man though. Got to give him credit. I OTOH got to attached to my empire to see it split up the hordes.

Well because Sly Frog seems to be having a little bit of a hard time finding help with Base (Yes?) Ulm, I have a few suggestions some of which may be helpful, some may not be plausible in your current or future games and some have been mentioned but I just want to list everything that I have had success with while playing Ulm:

1.) Spies. Spies provide a distractionary force as well a gold cutter. How I use them is by placing one on nearby provinces and any province that has a castle or indep capability use a dogpile of Spies to jump the Unrest immediately to 200. Usually 8 will do. Then stealth away to a nearby province either making my opponent use money for PD or near a magical attack squad so their 'retreat' orders won't leave them stranded or dead.

2.) Master Smiths. These fellows have a variety of uses. I will list a few of the common tactics with them.

• Combat Support Mages: Focus on Earthquake, Blade Wind, Destruction, Magma Eruption, Magma Bolts, Earth Meld, Strength of Giants, Legion of Steel, Weapons of Sharpness etc
• Forging Ability: Contrary to the previous posters in this thread, I have always found Black Knight Commanders properly equipped to be much more of a flanking force than the Black Knight units. Equipped with the right weapons, they can beat other mini-combatants and situational casters (Wrath for example). Also I tend to make alot of Bane Lord/Firbolgs with the proper equipment that in the proper numbers will defeat most other single SC's and armies
• Combat Mages: Give your Smiths a decent forged weapon and a pair of winged boots scripted with: Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Fire Shield, then attack. They can turn the tide of a battle especialy in masse.

3.) Everyone knows that Base Ulm has a weakness with morale. Counter that base priest morale with items, easy items to use are Horns of Valor, Herald Lances.

4.) The often underestimated Siege units. If/when the Lord Guardian gets a significant Castle Defense bonus (akin to the Siege Engineer) you can use take and hold measures. As it is right now you can use Guardians and Sappers to fortify and create large mass pushes against castle fronts. Usually 10-20 Sappers (Which I find better than Art's) is enough to drop a Castle Wall near instantly.

5.) Forge of the Ancients. The Most important Ulm spell there is. Even if all you get is one turn of this spell it drops the price of gems so low, you can create a huge stockpile of equipment for equipping waiting or on the way SC's to fill the gaps of your normal army.

6.) Your Normal Army with the aid of Support Magics should be able to take on most other normal armies, sans high strength. Even then, with Strength of the Giants, Marble Warriors and Legion of Steel they create a harsh buffer or body wall. As long as you are able to protect a good portion of them from mass battlefield spells (Wrath, Firestorm, etc) with quick reaction teams/squads (Spring Hawks, Flying Commanders, etc) it will force your opponent to engage it otherwise he will lose a good portion of income/land. As long as you know and are prepared for this, you can weigh the battle to your side.

7.) Independants are more important to Ulm than some other nations. But you will always have a chance to get Independants. Whether from Sites or from base Province type you will always have at least one province with a mage with different paths. It is important to take advantage of these as soon as possible.

8.) The pretender design for Ulm is the key component. If you're unable to fill the gaps in the magical diversity of Ulm with a Pretender then you've already lost the game since there is only so much you can do with a single 1F2E mage.

9.) Scout Blood Hunting for Ulm is still valid. While not as good as it was it still can represent a large factor in Ulm's strategy.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:

quote:

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Originally posted by Cainehill:
Given decent troops, seems like Thunderward might keep them alive long enough to kill the caster of Wrathful Skies. Caster dies, the spell dies, right?

If the caster is still *THERE*, yeah. If the caster decides to remove his august presence from the battlefield, it won't end until every Last enemy is dead.

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Hrm. That seems bogus, the spell continuing after the caster has retreated or left via spell. After all - if the spell can continue, unending, with the caster not being there, then the spell would still be going, months later. And why would it stop after the caster's army was defeated? The troops aren't keeping the spell going, so Wrathful Skies ought to just keep going and going and going until all troops are dead.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Cainehill:
Hrm. That seems bogus, the spell continuing after the caster has retreated or left via spell. After all - if the spell can continue, unending, with the caster not being there, then the spell would still be going, months later.

He didn't die, so I guess the spell keeps going. Since he now can't be killed, because he's not present anymore, it'll keep going until the battle ends. It would certainly change things if the Storm and Wrathing ended when the staffbearer and caster left. This would open up other interesting SoS tricks, though.

And why would it stop after the caster's army was defeated? The troops aren't keeping the spell going, so Wrathful Skies ought to just keep going and going and going until all troops are dead.

Presumably, the wrathing could very well continue after the caster's army has been destroyed, but since the attacker no longer has any reason to remain in that locality, and the spell probably is only over a limited area since the province's population is not decimated by it, the attacking army elects to quickly flee the scene offscreen after the battle ends. Since nobody is there anymore, I suppose the caster then no longer has any incentive to continue to maintain the spell.

[Sly Frog]

Originally posted by atul:

quote:

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Originally posted by Sly Frog:
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.

I haven't played much Ulm, but their mages were EEF, right? Two words: Magma spells.

At Evoc3 Magma Bolts, 3 bolts with 23+ AP damage, at Evoc6 Magma Eruption, area effect 23+ AP damage.

At least in theory they should work a lot better than Blade Wind against high protection.

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You'd think so, but for some reason, I've never really seen Magma Bolts do much damage. Magma Eruption seems to suffer from being a fairly high level to research in the early-midgame, and also has taken out more of my own troops when I've tried to use it than enemy troops.

[PvK]

If your Ulmish army doesn't have enough heavy infantry, build the lesser-equipped Versions until it does, then later build the more heavily-armored ones. The Plate + Shield ones are better at surviving very powerful blows, but even the guys in chainmail with no shield can survive a lot of abuse, and they can be built about twice as fast.

I bet arbalests can do some good work in storms, because (I assume) their reload time of 3 means their net rate of fire is less effected by not being able to fire for a turn or two (since reloading probably isn't interrupted (reloading isn't even interrupted by melee, even though it should be...) - just firing).

Since Ulmish heavy troops take a long time to build, it's important to keep them alive longer by including fodder in your armies. Guys who are there mainly to get killed instead of your expensive troops.

The Black Knights (and Templars) are generally too expensive to try to make your head-on force. I've had much more luck using them as a delayed flanking force, so they don't charge straight into something too dense and deadly.

Ulm should avoid using its heavy armor against foes that bypass their heavy armor - you need to find something cheaper and without the heavy armor to throw at such threats.

PvK

[Sly Frog]

All very useful advice. I guess my general problem is that black plate is supposed to be the strength of Ulm, yet it seems to not really have that much of an advantage against other factions' normal troops, particularly in light of the cost difference. Yet the other factions certainly have a major magic advantage against Ulm.

I guess if I were to suggest a juice, which as a novice I clearly cannot say is necessary, but would seem to me to fit with the Ulm theme and have an interesting impact on play, it would be to increase the ordinary Ulmish magic resistance. In this way, you would give them a bit of a boost against their magic using counterparts, and it would fit in with the Ulmish idea of a race of iron and steel resistant to magic.