Most powerful nation

[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?

[Edratman]

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

Bandar Log is my favorite MA nation. Great troop diversity, great troop cost/resource options, recruitable anywhere sacreds, good magic paths and good magic diversity for MA nation. Troops also have good movement. The only negative is weak priests, but no nation is strong in every single catgory.

I've always been surprised that Bandar Log has not been more highly regarded in the forum. Of course I am SP only and it is obvious from the forums that there is limited correspondence between SP and MP.

[DrPraetorious]

Bandar Log is a nation that looks mediocre on paper and turns out to be quite strong.

I think that the way to fix Ulm is to give them national spells that play to their existing strengths - and to the weaknesses of existing enemies, especially astral nations and sacred troops, which, since their official job in life is to hate magicians and priests, works fine.

I put together a list of them for my spells mod, and added more - they made Ulm decently fierce, at least in tests.

[Reverend Zombie]

Edratman said:

The only negative is weak priests, but no nation is strong in every single catgory.

Not quite the only negative: MR is a serious problem for most of their recruitable troops.