LA Marignon vs. LA Abyssia

[Aleph]

What are your thoughts on setup for LA Ulm? I always want at least 1 Growth on a blood hunter nation so if I feel the need for patrolling it isn't permanently biting into my blood/cash supply, and Ulm across the board looks like it requires an lot of resources so some production wouldn't be out of line (at least, to make it worth using - Mictlan has a summonable B2 for 25 blood so I'd need to take advantage of Ulm's excellent infantry to make the switch meaningful). Sleeping Vampire Queen B5 D5 Turmoil 3 Luck 3 Productivity 2 Growth 1 works, as does a sleeping rainbow crone with same scales, F2 A1 W1 N2 E2 S3 B4 D5. Or would you advise skipping sleep and try to get the blood flowing before the first year is up (something I rarely do)?

And referencing Utterdark - is that your endgame strat in general as LA Ulm? Is that kind of strat necessary to make them viable - it would seem like you'd have to do something to compound the advantage of your Vampire Counts (who, while being pretty nice, I don't see the real advantage of just yet over Marignon's excellent balance of infantry/magic/missiles/specials).

Edit: I'm trying out a game a LA Ulm with the Crone above... man, their magic is absolutely wretched. I'm using a lot of Fortune Tellers for research, which goes nicely with Turmoil 3, and I'm smashing through indeps and Atavis with Zweilanders/Heavy Infantry/Rangers/Villians, but I feel like I'm going to plateau at some point on the pure force aspect of the game and I'll need more magic to compete. Since most of my battle magic is wretched I'm just spamming Black Bows of Botulf to try to get rid of enemy spellcasters, but I doubt that has much legs. I did find a site where I can summon enchantresses... is that pretty much my best hope? And what might I do prior to summoning Spectres or Heliophagi if I didn't find a good indep?

[KissBlade]

LA Ulm's magic is really really REALLY horrible. In fact, you're pretty hosed without a good pretender with good spread in magic. Ranger + Zweihander spam can only get you so far. And forbid you go up against a SC or two. They need a disclaimer on the nation description that you MUST pick (whatever the requirement for Sanguine Heritage is ...) on your pretender or you are the screwzor if you don't get lucky with some indies.

[Aleph]

So after tooling around in the aforementioned game, I want as many magic summons as I can get. With that in mind:

Sleeping Crone
Scales: Production 2, Growth 1, Turmoil/Luck 3.
Dominion: 5
Magic: F2 W3 E3 N3 D4 B4

Skipping astral, since it's the one area I might be able to get by with my own mages (potentially S3, reliably S2). The crone will be able to summon pretty good spellcasters/crafters/all demon types, create all the gem spawning items as well as Ice Pebble Staves (a favorite item of mine for commanders), and with only moderate empowerment and good items be able to reach the highest levels of Blood and Death magic. P.S. A pretender crone will never get diseased for being old, right? It's just for her crappy stats.

I still wouldn't mind additional feedback with more explicit comparisons of LA Ulm/Marignon/Abyssia. While I see a little better that a maintenance free immortal decent spellcasting bloodhunter who throws off thralls is a good buy for 44 blood, I don't understand what I have to do to parley that into effective play. Again, I love their massed missile fire and high protection for safely bashing indeps, but other nations have nearly as good troops without being anywhere near as magically awful as Ulm.

[VedalkenBear]

Well, my thoughts on LA Ulm...

1) Rangers are very good. Everyone knows this. Moving on.
2) Your best bloodhunters (besides the Vampire Count) are B-enabled Fortune Tellers.
3) Your best Mage is, really, the Fortune Teller. You could even go with Misfortune scales to maximize the benefit of them.
4) The way to diversify LA Ulm's magic are Spectres. Vampire Counts have DD naturally, so can craft the Skull Staff, which gives them DDD to summon them. This is a very smart move. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what Dom3's Spectres have in the way of Magic picks. It seems that D is certainly fixed, but beyond that...
5) Having your Pretender able to summon in good mages (besides 4) above) while also working with your gem income would probably be the typical Lamia Queen. This generally means that you need NNNNDD on your Pretender, and you'll need BB as well for the Vampire Counts. It's generally rather funny how this directs your progress.

As far as Marignon goes:

The Goetic Master has one major weakness, and that's his old age. Unless you want to spend your blood slaves on keeping their age down, they will need to be seen as more or less expendable. As for myself, I generally do not like 'old' mages, which is a shame.

Otherwise, Marignon is fairly solid.

LA Abysia? I haven't played them enough to know, really.

If I think of any other LA Blood nations (Midgard is a very minor one, IIRC), I'll mention them later.

[Aleph]

On the Goetic Masters - Boots of Youth should arrest their aging, but I see the point; you're tacking another 10 blood onto a bloodhunter, which is getting you a bit closer to Ulm's Vampire Count. Not that I don't like boots of youth for mages, I just don't like them as a prereq to your main blood hunters - which is a point for using the diabolist, and therefore also possibly for LA Abyssia whose cheap blood hunters are better in the long run (although the diabolists have a bit more offensive punch... I'm a flipflopper, what can I say?).

For LA Ulm - I was also thinking of Contact Naiad, Faerie Court, Streams from Hades, Hidden in Snow, Troll Court, Kings of Earth, and the elemental devil mixes. On reflection, though, if I'm waiting for the Lamia Queen to begin searching for water sites it's not a reliable choice for my pretender (while I can still reliably search for holy, earth, death, blood, astral, and nature to at least level 1 with my mages). Perhaps Master Lich with Death 5 Blood 4 Earth 3 Nature 3 Dominion 6 with the above scales; he can't kick off the clam economy, but he can still call in Father Illearth and start a Blood Stone economy (possibly blood empowering some troll kings or earth kings).

I love Turmoil 3/Luck 3, but I'm pretty happy still to have the fortune tellers in this setup. You're getting a lot of random events, and some of them still turn out bad.

[Aleph]

Well, I got to the point where I could summon multiple Vampire counts in a round, but it didn't please me much. Maybe I just got spoiled with Mictlan, but I felt the need to retain a strong gold economy with Ulm to keep cranking out the troops while I was pretty comfortable switching over almost entirely to blood with Mictlan (also aided by the almost universally sacred nature of Mictlan's worthy troop and hero choices). Also, between crappier searching and lower paths I feel both like I just don't have that many things to do with the gems I do have and that what power I do have is bottlenecked by my pretender. They just feel off (probably in part because I really enjoy advancing through the tech/magic tree).

The Utterdark strat above would seem to work waaaaay better for Mictlan using Tlahuelpuchi (who may not be immortal, but as assassins can be much more dangerous). If that's where LA Ulm wants to go, I'm going elsewhere.

[Huzurdaddi]

LA Marignon is a pretty kick *** blood nation. They have crossbows which are excellent. They have easy access to flaming arrows which rocks early game. Goetic Masters have early access to hellfire which is a pretty decent spell. Their national summons are excellent. Finally they have great magical diversity ( F, A, W, E, S, B ). The only thing that they are lacking is a decent sacred troop.

Another LA blood nation is Utgard. Due to the changes in the economics they are a decent blood nation. Their troops include the most heavy infanty of the age. Their mages are solid, and have a fine cost/performance ratio, especially the skeithkona. Finally their Skratti are *excellent* in combat ( excellent may be too weak of a word, with the right equipment they are right up there with the Jarls of a by gone age in combat ).