Most powerful nation

[Xietor]

MA Ulm has no redeeming qualities in mp whatsoever.

Master Enslave ftw midgame, Elephants ftw early. Resource hogs with low mr. Soul slay spam and black knights go down like snap crackle pop. Smites-same deal.

MA Ulm would need something really good to offset their vulnerability to the powerful Astral races. Any spell which "magic resistance negates" is bad news for Ulm.

[CUnknown]

Tuidjy - I have learned a lot since then!

Um... yeah.

I like forging items for other people and being a merchant in multiplayer games, to each his own, I guess.

Xietor - no redeeming qualities whatsoever?? Surely that can't be right. We are derailing this thread though, perhaps I should try to defend MA Ulm in another thread?

[Micah]

MA Ulm is horrid, but earth magic and the forge bonus are certainly redeeming qualities. Destruction, blade wind, summon earth power and magma eruption are all excellent battlefield spells. Their PD is also excellent.

OTOH being someone's forge-chump is just a way to lose slowly instead of quickly, their magic diversity is complete crap, their troops are too resource-intensive to make many expansion groups early, their morale is atrocious (especially since they have such bad combat movement that they die in droves while fleeing). The 1-space mapmove further cuts down their already-limited options, and they can't easily get the thugs or SCs that would benefit from their cheap item-forging. I think it would give them a huge boost to have some lightly-armored crossbows that didn't cost a billion resources...Marignon has em in MA, so I don't think it'd be a problem on any level to give them a useful, cheap troop. Go ahead and make them cap-only so they're not the only thing Ulm builds though. Giving them some more early expansion potential will help counteract the weakness of a schizophrenic pretender, and maybe give them the momentum to make it into late-game with some sort of hope.

Their pretender is hamstrung by having to take production-3 and no free temperature picks. The free drain is tempting, but giving up the bonus RP from a magic scale hurts them quite a bit. Plus even though the drain doesn't hurt their national mages, it means the tribal shaman they'll want recruit to get some N access will be worthless researchers. They really need an awake pretender to help them expand, especially the first turns to get resources into their cap, but they need some way to increase their magic diversity too, and it's much too expensive to do both.

And to tie it back into the thread topic: The best nation is whichever one is currently dueling MA Ulm. =)

[Velusion]

MA Ulm really does need a boost. I'm pretty sure that if a poll was taken of MP players of the worst nation MA Ulm would be in the bottom three nations - if not the very bottom.

I think simply making them have excellent MR and morale stats (instead of the the crappy ones they have now) would even things out dramatically and even work thematically. It'd be kinda cool to see a nation that produces troops with a very high natural MR.

[Tuidjy]

The developers have said, repeatedly, that Ulm's low magic resistance is here to
stay. A friend of mine says that Ulm is the way someone is working out his
frustration with Germany and Germans :-) MA Ulm needs help, more than anyone else.

Here is what I would do, and I am not sure it would be enough, anyway.

1. A boost to some basic stats - strength, hit points, morale, and endurance.
The last means low basic encumberance - they're hardy and carry their armour well.

2. A bonus to the specific Ulm equipment. Lighter armour, more damage to weapons.

3. Recruitable troops that are not burdened by heavy equipment.

4. All restrictions lifted from the extra magic pick. Let them have everything but blood.

5. An extra 10% earth pick.

[Rytek]

They could lose the old age on their mages too.

[Aethyr]

Am I the ony one that thinks Bandor Log (MA)is seriously under rated?