MA Ulm Pretender, because I'm crazy

[13lackGu4rd]

I'm not sure "unorthodox" is the right word. "moronic" I can't say, as I have yet to get inside your head and figure out what is it you're trying to do with this pretender design. yes, it definitely does seem "moronic" on first site, but maybe it is some clever design that allows you to achieve the impossible, to dominate the world with MA Ulm!

so anyway, without understanding what you're trying to do here, F7E4 on a Red Dragon. hmmm... Red Dragon is an early game SC without useful item slots for later on. you have full slots on his human form which is a mere mage. both Fire and Earth are accessible on your Master Smiths, the only mage you get to work with as MA Ulm. so taking both of these paths on your pretender seems very counter intuitive and counter productive. moreover fire is 1 of the weakest magic paths, not much to do late game with fire7 besides spamming Flames from the Sky or something, which isn't a very good use for your pretender... earth4 is useful, and in mage form you can theoretically boost it up to 7(earth boots, staff of elemental mastery, ring of wizardy) which opens up all the good earth globals(earth blood deep well and forge of the ancients). however this can be easily achieved by a Troll King or something, starts with E3, a single empowerment and you're at 4, same as your pretender and same slots.

so, you got an awake SC pretender with MA Ulm, the standard and rather newbish path, but alright. your magic choice as I've said above is awkward. now, your scales... Order2 should certainly be 3, that's like your most important scale throughout the game... Productivity3 helps your early game expansion, but than again, you got an awake SC Dragon for it... later on when you get some more forts up Productivity scale loses a lot of its value, as gold becomes the bottleneck not resources. Heat2 on a human nation without any temperature preference nor heat immune units is ill advised. it's not like you crucially need the points either, you've just wasted them elsewhere. Drain3 is ignored by your main researchers(Master Smiths) and it improves your troops' otherwise horrid MR as long as they're in your dominion, so for MA Ulm it's a sound choice. Dom4 however is way too low for these scales to really affect you, and leave you dangerously vulnerable to dom kill strategies, especially without the ability to blood sacrifice nor solid priests to even preach. also, if you want an awake SC pretender might as well give him awe with dom9, but than again the Dragons start with dom1, so getting it all the way to 9 is way too expensive.

so, to conclude this gigantic wall of text, as far as I can figure your build it's completely useless. however, maybe I'm missing something which you can enlighten us on, say why exactly you choose this very awkward build and what you expect to achieve from it.

[Tyr_Doshan]

The short answer to all of this is that, as an SP player (so far), I've been more or less focused on theme and personal enjoyment of the game rather than over elaborate strategies and very fine tuned Pretender creation. I am aware that dragons are more or less total crap as SCs (Not enough item slots or natural powers to compensate for the lack of item slots), the magic selection is purely thematic (Fire + Earth = Volcanic theme.. I enjoy making provincial mountains pop like lava filled zits on a 15 year old's face) and the low strength Dominion comes specifically from the fact the AI doesn't tend to attempt dominion kill.

The more strategic choices derive from the specific weaknesses/strengths of Ulm. Drain 3 is an obvious choice due to the aforementioned fact that the researchers of Ulm are immune to it. Productivity 3 stems from the fact Ulm's units are resource intensive to an extreme.. I've usually got enough gold to handle whatever comes my way, but resources always seem to be an issue.. which is how it should be with these hulking Black Knight wannabes. The heat exists merely to offset the cost of Order, plus I also tend to consider the fact that late game with high construction means a ton of mass produced, unliving machines will fill the ranks of my legions. I don't think they care about the heat.. not sure.

For the most part the pretender exists for my personal enjoyment and I certainly would expect to see it eaten alive in an MP game. I guess the one advantage it might produce is against this elephant weakness I've heard of.

Naturally I would scrap this design in MP and work on something entirely different.