Halt Heretic - Opinions

[Sombre]

I'm confused. Ulmish infantry already have hp 12 and str 11, yet I've seen people talking about giving them str 11 in a couple of places.

I think str 12 for black plate guys would be over the top. They aren't supposed to be elite and str 12 is pretty elite by human soldier standards.

[Edi]

There's regular human and there's Ulm. Stronger and more durable, suck at resisting magic. As far as the str goes, I'm fine with it. Though 12 would not be out of line, it'd just be +1 to normal Ulm strength but the later eras are supposedly softer than their barbarian past. Hell, the EA Ulm women have str 11 and warriors 12, with the elites 13.

Black Knights have str 13, no reason why Guardians should not as well. Black plate infantry should probably stay at str 11. Even getting the full helmet swapped for blacksteel helmet would be an immediate +1 def.

The thing is that people often forget the str when talking about combat stats, which are usually the same across the line.

[Endoperez]

Edi said:
The thing is that people often forget the str when talking about combat stats, which are usually the same across the line.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure most people haven't even noticed Machakans have lower base encumberance than other humans, for example. Point of strength isn't as useful as one more attack or defence, though, in most cases.

[Edi]

Machakans also have a higher base mapmove, they are the only nation to have mapmove 3 normal human infantry. And with forestry to boot.

[B0rsuk]

Some more thoughts on new Ulm...

1. I don't like the whole concept of Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard. Was the intention to make Ulm into something they oppose - an evocation-based nation ? I think Ulm should get spells which are more fitting. Buffs, summons, etc. Ulm already has hard-hitting ranged units - Arbalests. They may not be very efficient as archers, sadly, but they can hold their own in melee. Today 20 of my ulmish PD stopped the earthquake+troglodytes event. If you want to give Ulm ranged weapons, just make Arbalests reasonable investment. How about making arbalests pierce shields ? They are supposed to be Heavy crossbows !

2. Priest Smith is a bit too good. 9 out of 10 master smiths are strictly worse than a priest smith. I would switch their paths - make Priest Smith FFE instead of EEF . From thematic point of view, it could be said they're burning with faith or something equally corny. That would 1) make them older, giving Master Smiths an advantage 2) widen the difference between the both 3) Make each of them distinctive 4) Give Ulm slightly wider choice of magic.
As it is, MA Ulm is THE Iron Faith of Dom3. The Priests are significantly stronger in MA than MA.

3.bug: PD gets usual priest instead of black acolyte. Ulm can't even recruit a regular priest anymore.
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Old stuff:

Ulm has a bad choice of weapons. It makes them distinctive, yes, but why would I recruit infantry with hammers ? Length 1 ? A lot of their attacks will get parried, and each such attack adds what, 9 fatigue ? What good is Heavy armour if you can't deal damage ? I can see the point of black plates for unshielded infantry, but I think shields on black plates is overkill. You're going to use those shields mostly against archers anyway. You sacrifice too much weapon power by equipping a tower shield.

Battleaxes and mauls (len 3) are nearly identical. I think one of them should go. Battleaxe is better because it doesn't have -1 to defence. But it also costs 2 res more. Ulm soldiers are so clumsy they (probably) are getting hit all the time anyway, so it's probably better to recruit mauls. If it was up to me, I would remove battleaxe Ulm infantry.

I think my complaints about Ulm weapons come from one source: in my opinion, weapons cost too few resources. Armour should cost less (to balance it), and weapons - more. That would make weapon choices more meaningful. I would consider hammers if they costed quite a bit less resources than morningstars, but as it is now, why bother ? You can usually get much better weapon for marginal increase in resources.

[Endoperez]

B0rsuk said:
Some more thoughts on new Ulm...

1. I don't like the whole concept of Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard.

2. Priest Smith is a bit too good.

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Old stuff:

Ulm has a bad choice of weapons. It makes them distinctive, yes, but why would I recruit infantry with hammers ? Length 1 ? A lot of their attacks will get parried, and each such attack adds what, 9 fatigue ? What good is Heavy armour if you can't deal damage ? I can see the point of black plates for unshielded infantry, but I think shields on black plates is overkill. You're going to use those shields mostly against archers anyway. You sacrifice too much weapon power by equipping a tower shield.

Battleaxes and mauls (len 3) are nearly identical. I think one of them should go. Battleaxe is better because it doesn't have -1 to defence. But it also costs 2 res more. Ulm soldiers are so clumsy they (probably) are getting hit all the time anyway, so it's probably better to recruit mauls. If it was up to me, I would remove battleaxe Ulm infantry.

1) Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard are the first steps towards Malediction and LA Ulm. They ARE steps away from what Ulm represents. However, they are on the exact same levels as Magma Bolts and Magma Eruption, which Master Smiths would use any way - so they don't actually do that much more.

2) Priest Smiths is capital-only, so the difference isn't that great. In addition, Priest Smiths will get a bit older in the next patch, whenever it comes. The problem, if there is one, was noted in the beta, but the patch was released without the alterations (to Priest Smith and some descriptions) to fix the scale bug mk 2.

Weapons:
- I regularly choose Battleaxes over Mauls. Every point helps, IMO, and units with heavy weapons or high strength aren't usually that accurate. Difference between 3 higher and 4 higher attack is 6%, or about one in 20 hits being a miss.
- I also regularly choose shielded troops over unshielded. Morningstars are good against enemy shields, and they're pretty good weapons any way. Hammers are very poor in Dominions because they can't deal enough damage to penetrate armor. AFAIK, real-life mauls weren't used as battlefield weapons, and real-life warhammers looked more like picks that punched through the armor. Maces and such had enough momentum to crush bones through armor (enough damage to deal damage through protection).

I'd like to see shields' protection values weakened a bit (perhaps -5 across the board), and damage of all "heavy" weapons increased a bit (3-4 points). 12 damage battleaxe + 11 strength against 14 prot +10 shield would be able to deal damage, but knights' 18+10 shield would still be quite safe.

Plate Armor was changed towards what Arralen had done in his mod, so perhaps instead of talking we should do competing "better armor balance" mods and stary lobbying.

[johan osterman]

B0rsuk said:
Some more thoughts on new Ulm...

1. I don't like the whole concept of Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard. Was the intention to make Ulm into something they oppose - an evocation-based nation ? I think Ulm should get spells which are more fitting. Buffs, summons, etc. Ulm already has hard-hitting ranged units - Arbalests. They may not be very efficient as archers, sadly, but they can hold their own in melee. Today 20 of my ulmish PD stopped the earthquake+troglodytes event. If you want to give Ulm ranged weapons, just make Arbalests reasonable investment. How about making arbalests pierce shields ? They are supposed to be Heavy crossbows !
...

Who said that Ulm opposes evocations?

[B0rsuk]

johan osterman said:
Who said that Ulm opposes evocations ?

Ulm has a small number of small(tightly packed) and expensive units. This means that an area spell covers much larger percentage of their army than it would be the case for another nation(relying on higher number of units). This is further amplified that Ulm infantry moves very slowly on the battlefield. So not only enemy mages get more out of their area spells, but are also able to cast more of them before both armies clash.
Small number of units also makes them more vulnerable to single target spells.
Bottom line: Ulm would be vulnerable to magic even without explicit -1 to MR. I think the penalty is just an overkill.
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There's something wrong about EA Ulm. Nowhere does it say (Not even unit descriptions !) that EA Ulm fears magic. In fact, EA Ulm is affected by Drain ! EA Ulm has quite high magic and lots of randoms, even on smiths. Lots of variety. And... 8 MR ? Why ? In EA Ulm, mages seem to be easily accepted part of the society. If anything, MA Ulm should have lower MR than EA Ulm, because they've lost lots of their magic, Drain is coming, etc.
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Ulm progression through eras is really strange. I think MA Ulm -> LA Ulm is ok from thematic point of view. But if I was new to Dom3, my guess would be that Transylwania Ulm belongs in MA and Tin Can Ulm is from LA. LA Ulm has more magic, light and medium infantry, as well as heavies. But ok...
Now look at EA Ulm -> MA Ulm. Almost no sense of connection except for smithing discount ! Very different tactics (ambushes), magic, military, even weapons used. It would be hard to guess they're ancestors of MA Ulm. 1 Era later, Ulm is radically transformed AND already abandoning the "old ways" of "no magic" ? Master smiths already falling out of grace and Black Priests quite prominent ? I think MA Black Order looks stronger than the one from LA.
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Endoperez:

Battleaxes might be a little better in some cases (and certainly better against elephants) but the difference is quite marginal. 6% you say ? About 1/20 . If you choose cheaper mauls over battleaxes, 2 resource less per soldier means you get 13 maulers per 12 battleaxes. Also quite marginal. My main point is, it's too redundant and it would be much more interesting to have entriely different weapon in its place. MA Ulm is interesting because they don't use any swords...how about a kopesh ? ;-)

What's really bad about hammer infantry is that, to my knowledge, they are affected by the same parry laws as everyone else. Infantry in very heavy armour AND with heavy shields shouldn't be so afraid of enemies with longer weapons. They have biiig shields to parry and unusually heavy armour. Yes, I know blck plates have +1 morale now(and it helps against longer weapons) but LOTS of units of other nations have morale this high or even higher, so it hardly matters.

By the way: If I remember correctly, either JK or KO said that morningstars work a bit different in Dom3. Instead of "piercing" shields, they substract 4 from shield defense, or something. But I was mainly offended by hammer infantry. Hammer infantry tires quickly, deals low damage, and costs a LOT.