Dud nations

[Edi]

For an indepth analysis of EA Ulm units, see this thread.

I do not consider EA Ulm weak. It has some problem with its magics, namely low levels but good versatility. It has good units as long as you only use the female units and archers and possibly the iron and steel warriors.

Marverni could conceivably be a good nation to play, but it requires production scales to be able to pump out the good units. Ambibate Noble Warrior is one of the best EA infantry units. If you also have a F9 bless, the boar warriors provide with quite the shock potential early on.

I must say that I have not played very many nations at all, though I have a fair idea of strengths and weaknesses due to my familiarity with the units from making the DB.

I will also note that if some nation does not suit a particular player's play style, chances are that the player will suck with even a strong nation compared to something that does suit him.

[Gandalf Parker]

EA Ulm has 6 stealth units and 4 non-stealth. And 3 stealth leaders with 1 non-stealth. Heavy on forest and mountain skills w/ defense against cold. That all seems built heavily into the theme. I suspect that discussing its pros and cons while ignoring that is going to miss the point.

If all nations are going to be compared on the basis of army-to-army open warfare then you will be able to seperate nations into great or duds but I dont think the comparison will mean much to the game in general.

[HoneyBadger]

I think EA Ulm is fine-it's got a lot of character, and I know it's armored barbarians with great smiths but not a lot of magic. Very easy to understand.

I was thinking about Middle-Era Ulm though, and why not have units equipped with the really excellent weapons that gave Romans so much trouble-like the Dacian Falx/Thracian Rhomphaia or the Falcata/Machiara, for instance.

Commanders could be equipped with useful low-power magical weapons-with the most powerful being a warrior weilding a herald's lance and riding a plate-armored elephant.

[normalphil]

I think MA Ulm is pretty much in its zone (even if the MR lowering got excessive; why are they below-average MR that national spells and drain-scales bring up to average? Shouldn't they be average MR that national spells and drain scales bring up to above average? How does a race of humans all of a sudden become suceptable to magic on a genetic level? Nobody else is.), but there's something that just never made sense to me; it's like there's this small hole in the faction-concept. No 'banner' units or commanders. Not even a hero with that effect. Everybody and their mother gets a unit like that, and in a faction when it fits without being in anyway a stretch, there isn't one.

[Endoperez]

If MA Ulm should get a bonus, I'd suggest making the Black Plate armors and helmets instead of Full Helmets and Full Plates of Ulm. Magical armor is immune to armor destruction, which would let the Master Smiths use Armor of Achilles/Destruction without having to worry about hitting their own units, and the Black Steel Helmet doesn't have a defense penalty, giving all better units of Ulm 1 more defense.

MA Ulm has many good abilities;
- Crossbowmen prot 14, 12 hp, 10 att +1 from shortsword and an arbalest for just 10g/24r. They can go toe-to-toe with many other nations' infantry troops.
- Flails and Morning Stars, making them deadly against all shield-bearers. The flails' multiple attacks also lower enemy defence quite fast, enabling the heavy hitters to strike down hard-to-hit foes as long as Ulm has the advantage in numbers.
- Black Knights and Sappers to act as a mapmove 2 army. Sappers are too expensive to be used this way except in emergencies, but if you haven't happened to find anything else, you'll be glad to have them.

Their weaknesses are:
- Very few ways of increasing morale. Pikeneers have morale 11, Guardians morale 14, Black Knights morale 15, and mixing those with your normal units is about all you can do.
- Slow armies: slow to make, slow to move, slow in killing their enemies due to no high att/high dam units
- No easy access to summons that'd make good thugs, and little reason to use commanders other than Black Lords as thugs.
- Heavy armor and the normal encumberance of 3. They'd benefit from having encumberance 2 of the Machakans in addition to their +2 hp and +1 str.


There were few mods back in DomII that boosted Ulm. The Master Smiths have since received that 10% random, but if you think something is still needed I can warm up my old Ulm Upgrade mod. Noblemen with prec 12, Warlords equal to Lord Guardians (and recruitable everywhere), slightly cheaper Lord Guardians... and perhaps the Full Plate of Ulm to Black Steel Full Plate change as well.

[Arralen]

(MA) Ulm

As Endo correctly points out, the discussion about the "standard" Ulm goes back to the days of Dom 2.
Check out my "Ulm beefed up" mod and thread from 2004.

Interestingly enough, the improved smithes I did in the mod got taken over to vanilla Dom 3 by the devs. Armor got some improvements in general, and the "Full Plate of Ulm" even more so.

Not enough IMHO, though, therefore I'm going to revamp my mod for Dom 3.
Thanks for reminding me of it - stay tuned, shouldn't take too long.

Keep adding suggestions here...

[Sombre]

Well that's given me some ideas for a balance mod I'm working on based on the CB template.

[Endoperez]

I'm almost finished updating my old Ulm Upgrade mod, so I guess we'll have 3 "make Ulm better" mods floating around soon!

[DrPraetorious]

I do not believe that units that default to black steel armor are actually immune to destruction - or that the game even keeps track of which default armor is "magic". The description may refer to magic-items-as-armor, which are not removed from inventory. You can get the broken-armor icon anyway, not sure what it actually does to you.

I propose a fourth fix to Ulm. My preference would be to give Ulm national spells that encourage it to use the units it already has.

- effective, low-research, low precision, non-armor-piercing damage spells for the smiths. Improved versions of Magma Bolts, basically. These would be deadly spells if you have tough units, because you need not worry about friendly fire.

- since Ulm despises both magic and organized religion, they should have anti-type spells for magic beings and for sacred units.

- spells to give haste (not quickness!), recuperation and offensive bonuses to large numbers of infantry. Further boosting the protection of your stuff is deeply pointless.

I'm also working on new and powerful national spells for Marverni and ME Agartha, but I'm waiting for the new patch at the moment.