Dud nations

[DrPraetorious]

HoneyBadger - through careful editing, I added the Black Cauldron as a *replacement* for Soul Gate. It makes Cauldron Born throughout your dominion.

I don't think it's possible with current modding to give Druids death curse. I *could* give them a nasty national spell that curses people (more efficient/powerful than existing curses.)

As for the intelligent rocks and trees - to an extent, the Monolith pretender and the Tree Lords already cover that schtick - but I could certainly add national versions for Marverni (after all, Black Forest Ulm gets a national vampire lord and there are already vampire lords for everyone else.)

[HoneyBadger]

Thanks DrPraetorious, I'm glad someone liked my ideas.

[CUnknown]

I just saw this thread and wanted to speak up for my favorite nation, MA Ulm. Perhaps Ulm isn't the best nation in the game, but they are surely not one of the worst. I'd say they are at least average. My reasoning:

1) Their infantry -are- among the best in the game. At least as far as non-sacreds go. They cost 10 gold, people, I dare you to find any other infantry that can stand up to their 20 protection for the same price. And despite what others have said, they are easy to mass with productivity 3 and Ulm's production bonus.

2) Arbelests are among the best archers in the game. 45 range and massive armor piercing damage? I've killed equipped SC pretenders in their own dominion just by using abelests before. They pack a mean punch. Just script them to fire archers or something so they don't hit you in the back.

And speaking of friendly fire, I love using masses of indy archers to fire closest -- they have no chance of hurting my black plates.

3) Huge amounts of available gold. Their infantry are cheap and cost lots of production. Their mages are also cheap (no 300 gold options available here). That means you buy up -all- the mercenaries and expand quickly, even without using your pretender.

4) Forge bonus. I think this has been seriously underestimated in the discussion so far. This is huge. I play Ulm as merchants, selling off dwarven hammers and making nice profits. Or you can sell to your allies at cost -- and since diplomacy is worth so much, I don't think this advantage can be overstated.

5) Research. Once you reach midgame, your research shoots up dramatically by mass forging lightless lanterns, tying you at least temporarily with the game's best. This is something no other race can do as cheaply or as well (2 fire gems per lantern). I would say Ulm has above average research overall.

6) Thugs. People have mentioned Ulm lacks thugs, but I typically base my mid-late game strategy on them, and the wealth of items forged by my smiths. It's not that hard to summon Bane Lords or those Firbolg guys.

So, their late game isn't so hot. I have a habit of coming in 2nd or 3rd with Ulm, but come on -- half the other races wouldn't even have made it that far. Ulm has a killer early -mid game, even if you take into account all those crazy bless strategies out there. Sure, you can beat Ulm in the early game with a dual-bless, but why on earth would you chose Ulm as one of your first targets? You'd have rocks in your head.

Ulm is the best ally to have in the game, and very tough to crack early on. It's my opinion that they should just about always survive to the late mid - endgame, at which point they lose. But, hey, that's life.

[Micah]

MA Ulm is horrid, sorry.

1: Toe to toe, sure, they have excellent infantry, I don't think anyone would dispute that, but they're incredibly slow and have pretty subpar morale on the battlefield. If their morale breaks you can expect to lose a LOT of them while they retreat and get hit in the back repeatedly. Also, mapmove 1 = awful. Getting that stand-up fight you want so badly is pretty difficult when your opponent forces you to split up your forces to stop raiders and you can't reassemble them quickly.

2: firing every 3 turns is pretty bad. Normal crossbows or flaming arrow indies are going to do comparable amounts of damage because of their rate of fire, and their range advantage is minimal, especially if the opponent is expecting them and puts his own archers further forward...the length of the battlefield usually isn't more than the range on a normal Xbow. If they had a resource-light version of them I think it would help Ulm out a lot, but they compete for resources in a major way.

3: Other nations can always choose not to spend money on their troops too, it's just a bad plan. Ulm also HAS to spend money building castles for resources.

4: The bonus is nice, but most of the nice stuff they can make is tailored for SCs that they can't easily access, since it tends to be armor, weapons, and shields. Hammers and earth boots are major sellers, and trading is a major plus, it's true, but the variety of items they can make is extremely limited. Indie mage recruitment to expand your forge selection either means a lot of really bad researchers if you took drain, or a lot of pretender points sunk into not taking drain, which hurts because Production 3 is non-optional.

5: Lightless lanterns are nice, but you have to hit construction 6 before you can make them which takes a while. You're also, again, forced to make a pile of them to stay competitive, so you burn a lot of gems just to avoid falling behind.

6: No national paths to summon either of the guys you mentioned. N4 and D2 aren't exceptionally difficult to get, but you'll probably need a ring of sorcery to do so unless you're using your pretender.

Ulm also has a ton of mismatches. Flaming arrows will cut through arbalests and any non-shielded ground troops. Jotunheim's infantry is problematic for Ulm. Massed tramplers are a nightmare. Shadow blast decimates them. Granted FA and SB kill lots of stuff really effectively, but it takes Ulm a long time to recover their losses on the front line. The front castles can only make 20 or so troops per turn, maximum, and with a 1 mapmove castles in the rear aren't going to be able to get help up to the fight for a while.

[Gandalf Parker]

On of the few good things about threads like this is that they debunk the idea of bad anything in the game. You say something general like there are bad nations, or units, or spells.. and you get a lot of head nodding. But in a thread like this you find out that there isnt much agreement on just what those are.

[Sombre]

That doesn't mean that there aren't bad nations (as in underpowered). Some of the people here (me included) just don't have the experience to make those calls. There are people who have made pretty watertight cases for things in the game being bad - there's no need for discussion in those cases.

The position that there's nothing 'bad' in the game is so ridiculous to me there's no way I'd ever bother arguing with it. All games have things that aren't balanced or just weren't quite thought through by the devs.