MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x

[shatner]

I am always glad to see MA Ulm getting some attention from the modding community. In fact, I created an MA Ulm Mod myself. The changes in the latest version of CBM were nice but I feel like Ulm still has some fundamental and unaddressed deficiencies:

1) Cheaper Troops: fortunately covered by CBM

2) Lower Encumbrance Values: also covered in the latest CBM

3) Magic weapons: Ulm has poor-to-average quality weaponry for its soldiers. Hammers and Mauls are given to claymen and barbarians for a reason... because they aren't very good so they are fitting for ill-equipped fodder. Ulm should have broadswords, greatswords or better yet, enchanted weaponry for their troops. Attacking Ulm should be like attacking Caelum in that your mistform and your body ethereal will do you no good there because their rank-and-file has magic weaponry. Both mechanically and thematically it fits and would be sorely appreciated.

4) Ranged Attacks: The Infantry of Ulm are slow and highly resistant to archery. They have high protection values, meaning that short bows and slings bounce off their helmets with little effect. Unfortunately, they are given ranged weapons that fire rarely and inaccurately and do a lot of armor piercing damage when they do. In short, they have one of the few ranged weapons in the entire game that you can't fire into a melee involving Ulmish infantry and expect that to go over well. Clearly, they need the opposite like a repeating crossbow: many shots, low damage.

5) Magic Diversity: Ulm needs two things on this account. The first is some way to natively summon their Iron Angel, meaning they need a reasonable chance of getting an S2 mage somehow. Also, they would really benefit from a passing amount of nature or death. This would help them be a bit more flexible in their tactics and forging.


Here's what I did to achieve those things. I don't mean to be presumptuous, nor prescriptive. I just want to offer an example of a solution to the problems I am citing, so that it might help inform a decision from the CBM team if and when they decide to revisit upgrading MA Ulm.

+++Changes - An Overview+++
The larger changes from this mod are as follows:

1) Blacksteel troops and commanders given lower encumberance and superior, magical weaponry

2) Non-blacksteel troops made no more than half as expensive as blacksteel troops (both in terms of gold and resources)

3) The arbalest was changed from a slow-firing, high-damage weapon to a rapid-firing, low-damage weapon (3 shots/round, 5 dmg each)

4) Master Smiths were given a 100% AEFS as well as 10% A, 10% F and 10% S. This is so they are more magically powerful and diverse among themselves. This is also so MA Ulm is better capable of getting access to a few but crucial A2 and S2 casters. Price raised to 195 gold.

5) Master Priests were given 210% ADN. This is to help diversify Ulm's casting capabilities, especially in the realm of forging better thug and super-combatant equipment. Price raised to 210 gold.

6) Ulm lacked a recruitable caster who could reliably summon Iron Angels (a conj 8, E5S2 spell), its late game SC chasis. The Black Priest was changed from E1H2 to E3H2 1.1 FS so that 50% of them could be equipped with boosters or minimally empowered to be able to cast this crucial spell. Price raised to 210 gold.

7) The Black Halberd was improved to make the Guardian and Lord Guardian more desirable to recruit

[Knai]

Originally Posted by shatner

+++Changes - An Overview+++
The larger changes from this mod are as follows:

1) Blacksteel troops and commanders given lower encumberance and superior, magical weaponry

2) Non-blacksteel troops made no more than half as expensive as blacksteel troops (both in terms of gold and resources)

3) The arbalest was changed from a slow-firing, high-damage weapon to a rapid-firing, low-damage weapon (3 shots/round, 5 dmg each)

4) Master Smiths were given a 100% AEFS as well as 10% A, 10% F and 10% S. This is so they are more magically powerful and diverse among themselves. This is also so MA Ulm is better capable of getting access to a few but crucial A2 and S2 casters. Price raised to 195 gold.

5) Master Priests were given 210% ADN. This is to help diversify Ulm's casting capabilities, especially in the realm of forging better thug and super-combatant equipment. Price raised to 210 gold. As for magical weapons, that seems out of place for Ulm, and cuts into the niche of the Guardian.

6) Ulm lacked a recruitable caster who could reliably summon Iron Angels (a conj 8, E5S2 spell), its late game SC chasis. The Black Priest was changed from E1H2 to E3H2 1.1 FS so that 50% of them could be equipped with boosters or minimally empowered to be able to cast this crucial spell. Price raised to 210 gold.

7) The Black Halberd was improved to make the Guardian and Lord Guardian more desirable to recruit

1) That doesn't mix well with the magical black steel equipment. I'd favor something along the lines of Reinvig 1 as a trait for all Ulmish units that use Black Steel armor, as they are already established as hardy in the description.

2) Seems about reasonable, though going under 10 gold is questionable.

3) Unless it was renamed, this makes no sense. Arbalests are essentially defined as crossbows with a high draw weight, that effectively require a cranequin. That shouldn't be faster than a bow or sling, period. Moreover, 3 ranged attacks per troop is arguably excessive, though the low damage mitigates that some. Still, with flaming arrows up this makes Ulm completely ridiculous, even relative to nations with impressive archers (e.g. Man).

4) Is this in addition to what they already had, or instead of it? If it is instead of it, the lack of guaranteed earth is questionable, if it is in addition to what they already had then they are probably too cheap even with the increased cost.

5) This removes the cheap mage-priest entirely.

6) This seems pretty reasonable, applied to Vanilla. CBM changed the spell requirements, so it is already under control.

7) Trimming the price a bit seems like a better way to handle this, particularly as their whole "magical weapons" schtick was given to every Black Steel soldier (which I'd recommend against).

[shatner]

Originally Posted by Knai

1) That doesn't mix well with the magical black steel equipment. I'd favor something along the lines of Reinvig 1 as a trait for all Ulmish units that use Black Steel armor, as they are already established as hardy in the description.

2) Seems about reasonable, though going under 10 gold is questionable.

3) Unless it was renamed, this makes no sense. Arbalests are essentially defined as crossbows with a high draw weight, that effectively require a cranequin. That shouldn't be faster than a bow or sling, period. Moreover, 3 ranged attacks per troop is arguably excessive, though the low damage mitigates that some. Still, with flaming arrows up this makes Ulm completely ridiculous, even relative to nations with impressive archers (e.g. Man).

4) Is this in addition to what they already had, or instead of it? If it is instead of it, the lack of guaranteed earth is questionable, if it is in addition to what they already had then they are probably too cheap even with the increased cost.

5) This removes the cheap mage-priest entirely.

6) This seems pretty reasonable, applied to Vanilla. CBM changed the spell requirements, so it is already under control.

7) Trimming the price a bit seems like a better way to handle this, particularly as their whole "magical weapons" schtick was given to every Black Steel soldier (which I'd recommend against).

1) I feel like Ulm would really benefit from having widely available magical melee mooks. Whether those should be the blacksteel heavy infantry or not is reason for debate but I am adamant that of all the nations that should be showing up with magic weapons, it should be Ulm.

2) The non-blacksteel troops are, in my opinion, too costly to mass (remember that if it takes 3 turns to mass those 10gold units, they are effectively 13+ gold units after you take into account upkeep) and perform too poorly in actual combat. I'm fine with Ulm have well armored chaff but I think it should be priced accordingly.

3) Yes the name does not jive with being a repeating crossbow. Rename it. There are work arounds for the flaming-arrows of doom issue. Specifically, you could make the weapon shoot twice and deal 7 dmg each OR you could give the unit two different crossbow weapons; one which shoots twice for 5 dmg each but does not benefit from flaming arrows and another which only shoots once for 5 dmg but does benefit from flaming arrows.

4) The changes here are instead of anything else they have. They would be an E2F1 + 1.0 AEFS + .1 A + .1 F + .1 S making them a 4.3 path caster in total. This still puts them behind the MA Pythium Theurg, the MA Shinuyama Bakemono Sorcerer, or the MA Jotunheim Skratti in terms of price, power or chassis, to name a few.

5) It's all a question of what you want from those mage-priests. First off, Ulm's troops are cheap gold-wise and expensive resource-wise so they can't spend all that much on troops on any given turn. Spending more on commanders is therefore possible without being exorbitant. Also, I was re-purposing the mage priest as a diversifying caster, base Ulm has it as a mini-thug and iron darts caster, and CMB was using them as a troop buff-caster.

6) Yeah, that's true. I was reluctant to change spell requirements in my mod so I had to do other things to fix it.

7) Unless you are facing jaguar warriors or knights of the chalice, I didn't find the guardians better than their peers by a wide enough margin to warrant using them. They are a move-1, non-sacred, capital-only unit so they have to be something really special for them to ever make an appearance at your front line. And that "specialness" only happens now if you are facing massed sacred troops.

[Knai]

Originally Posted by shatner

1) I feel like Ulm would really benefit from having widely available magical melee mooks. Whether those should be the blacksteel heavy infantry or not is reason for debate but I am adamant that of all the nations that should be showing up with magic weapons, it should be Ulm.

2) The non-blacksteel troops are, in my opinion, too costly to mass (remember that if it takes 3 turns to mass those 10gold units, they are effectively 13+ gold units after you take into account upkeep) and perform too poorly in actual combat. I'm fine with Ulm have well armored chaff but I think it should be priced accordingly.

3) Yes the name does not jive with being a repeating crossbow. Rename it. There are work arounds for the flaming-arrows of doom issue. Specifically, you could make the weapon shoot twice and deal 7 dmg each OR you could give the unit two different crossbow weapons; one which shoots twice for 5 dmg each but does not benefit from flaming arrows and another which only shoots once for 5 dmg but does benefit from flaming arrows.

4) The changes here are instead of anything else they have. They would be an E2F1 + 1.0 AEFS + .1 A + .1 F + .1 S making them a 4.3 path caster in total. This still puts them behind the MA Pythium Theurg, the MA Shinuyama Bakemono Sorcerer, or the MA Jotunheim Skratti in terms of price, power or chassis, to name a few.

5) It's all a question of what you want from those mage-priests. First off, Ulm's troops are cheap gold-wise and expensive resource-wise so they can't spend all that much on troops on any given turn. Spending more on commanders is therefore possible without being exorbitant. Also, I was re-purposing the mage priest as a diversifying caster, base Ulm has it as a mini-thug and iron darts caster, and CMB was using them as a troop buff-caster.

6) Yeah, that's true. I was reluctant to change spell requirements in my mod so I had to do other things to fix it.

7) Unless you are facing jaguar warriors or knights of the chalice, I didn't find the guardians better than their peers by a wide enough margin to warrant using them. They are a move-1, non-sacred, capital-only unit so they have to be something really special for them to ever make an appearance at your front line. And that "specialness" only happens now if you are facing massed sacred troops.

1) Ulm's whole concept is wrapped around minimalist magic, and while this obviously doesn't play out in the game, due to how key magic is, a massive amount of magical weapons doesn't help.

2) As of now, they are too costly to mass. Reduced resources alone should help there.

3) A crossbow that specifically avoids flaming arrows is adding needless edge cases. Better that they stay as is, as incredibly strong weapons that effectively counter heavily armored troops, but don't get a lot of shots off. That said, a precision boost to all units that use them is reasonable.

4) That seems pretty reasonable, and with the free drain scale gives Ulm a useful niche.

5) As is, the cheapness of the priests is essentially what allows Ulm to meaningful interact with dominion. Losing that for magic diversity is almost certainly a step up, but also a step away from what Ulm is supposed to be.

7) I'm honestly not sure that giving them full Awe would be that unbalancing. As long as they don't have much of it, it gives them a use as blockers - moreover, the units Awe is best at dealing with are more easily countered elsewhere, as most are low morale, poorly armored, and have rather unimpressive defense, all of which translates to flail infantry being devastating against them. Two attacks per round, that get around shields decently? Yes please.

[shatner]

Originally Posted by Knai

1) Ulm's whole concept is wrapped around minimalist magic, and while this obviously doesn't play out in the game, due to how key magic is, a massive amount of magical weapons doesn't help.

2) As of now, they are too costly to mass. Reduced resources alone should help there.

3) A crossbow that specifically avoids flaming arrows is adding needless edge cases. Better that they stay as is, as incredibly strong weapons that effectively counter heavily armored troops, but don't get a lot of shots off. That said, a precision boost to all units that use them is reasonable.

4) That seems pretty reasonable, and with the free drain scale gives Ulm a useful niche.

5) As is, the cheapness of the priests is essentially what allows Ulm to meaningful interact with dominion. Losing that for magic diversity is almost certainly a step up, but also a step away from what Ulm is supposed to be.

7) I'm honestly not sure that giving them full Awe would be that unbalancing. As long as they don't have much of it, it gives them a use as blockers - moreover, the units Awe is best at dealing with are more easily countered elsewhere, as most are low morale, poorly armored, and have rather unimpressive defense, all of which translates to flail infantry being devastating against them. Two attacks per round, that get around shields decently? Yes please.

Again, let me state that I am not holding up my revisions as some sort of magic bullet; there are several different routes we could follow to balance MA Ulm and still keep it "Ulmy". However, you have repeatedly used the justification of "how Ulm is supposed to be" as why some of my proposed changes won't fly. I really like the theme of Ulm but I think it would be useful to discuss exactly what that theme is.

Squirrelloid talks about this very issue here:

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

MA Ulm, at present, has one dominating theme, and that theme is sucking. Weak magic, weak against magic, and one of the most-deceptive bad troop line-ups in the game.

In re-imagining Ulm, I've tried to stick true to what I consider to be Ulm's dominating themes. In a lot of ways, I think this is more thematic than the old Ulm ever was.

...[cut by Shatner]...

Now, Ulm in the base game is weak to magic. This makes little sense.
-From a motivational point of view, if magic is the weakness of the people of Ulm, it would encourage the study of magic because that would be the path to power in Ulm (he who has the best magic rules). We can deduce from Ulm's rejection of magic that magic is ineffective as a tool for power within Ulm.
-From an adaptive point of view, if Ulm is weak to magic and weak at magic, it shouldn't even make it to the point of being a nation. Because magic is so powerful, not having it is a major disadvantage which gets you conquered by your neighbors and you cease to exist. Thus, we can deduce from Ulm's continued existence as a playable nation that rejecting magic must confer some equally powerful advantage.
-Basically, what i'm trying to say is that being weak at using magic and weak against magic cannot be thematic because it has no way of arising in a world, nor of continuing to exist thereafter.

As Squirrelloid said, the result of Ulm's theme can't be "Ulm sucks." So we need to find solutions to the various mechanical failings the nation has and try and keep those solutions as thematic as we can. If the theme cannot accept viable balance improvements then we need to change the theme because ultimately fluff informs, but is subordinate to, crunch... and Ulm needs some better crunch.

Look at what Llamabeast said in his breakdown of CBM v1.92:

Originally Posted by llamabeast

- Boosts to a number of weak nations. EA & MA Agartha, MA Ulm, MA Man, EA Vanheim and EA Helheim in particular benefitted. Other nations to receive some changes include Marverni, Tir na n'Og and Eriu. Great effort has been put in to make the changes interesting and thematic. For example with MA Agartha the challenge was to increase the power of the nation while maintaining an overall theme of sorrow and loss. Hopefully this has been successful. These nations should have gained not only raw power but also diversity of choices.

MA Agartha needed a boost and Llamabeast gave them that boost wrapped in the theme of the sorrow of a nation and people in decline. So I say we wrap the crunch fixes for MA Ulm in the theme of Ulm being a nation of thrift, artifice and craftsmanship. They have the most efficient forgers of magical equipment in the age. Their most lightly armed foot soldier is more heavily armed than some nations' heavy infantry (Bandar Log's, for example). Mechanically, Ulm only has one non-capital mage, the master smith. During the course of a game as MA Ulm you will recruit many, many, many master smiths. Smiths... who are masters... at forging magical gear. In CBM they have the dormant Forge of the Ancients in their basement. Why the heck SHOULDN'T they have magical weapons coming out their ears?! EA Ulm is Conan the Barbarian. LA Ulm is Gothic Horror and Germanic Folklore. MA Ulm is pretty much your generic "dwarves forging steel and wonders beneath the mountains" meets "burn the heretic. kill the mutant. purge the unclean." but with burly Teutons instead of dwarves/space marines.

Originally Posted by Knai

3) A crossbow that specifically avoids flaming arrows is adding needless edge cases. Better that they stay as is, as incredibly strong weapons that effectively counter heavily armored troops, but don't get a lot of shots off. That said, a precision boost to all units that use them is reasonable.

This is precisely wrong. Ulm already has recruitable armor piercing archers (sappers) who can be just as menacing to armored opponents as any crossbowman. In addition, Ulm specializes in producing size-2, high-strength infantry who carry high damage weapons, making them good at smashing high protection and/or high hp opponents. What Ulm needs is a way to shoot at the enemy without putting holes in the backs of their own slow, heavily armored troops. The niche the arbalest is supposed to fill is already filled. Ulm would be bettered served by longbows than by armor piercing bolt throwers. And even if the arbalests had 100 precision, for the other 90 in a 100 battles where I'm not fighting prot-17 foes, I'd rather have Bandar Log's shortbows or T'ien Ch'i's composite bows than high resource, fire-once-every-three-rounds heavy crossbows.

Think about it, Ulm loves bladewind because it shoots a whole bunch of grape shot over the battlefield. Their troops remain largely unaffected while the monkeys and militia and maenads get cut to ribbons. They would really benefit from the option of having the archer-equivalent of bladewind, not Gift from the Heavens. And a repeating crossbow happens to mesh with their theme in addition to the arbalest's sprite. Win-win!

[danm]

Originally Posted by shatner

Think about it, Ulm loves bladewind because it shoots a whole bunch of grape shot over the battlefield. Their troops remain largely unaffected while the monkeys and militia and maenads get cut to ribbons. They would really benefit from the option of having the archer-equivalent of bladewind, not Gift from the Heavens. And a repeating crossbow happens to mesh with their theme in addition to the arbalest's sprite. Win-win!

Sure, that would be more efficient, but it doesn't seem at all thematic to me. Ulm wants big. Ulm wants heavy. Who wants to carry around a big heavy crossbow all day that is completely useless against "real" (read: armored) Troops? Troops without good armor clearly are too primitive to mount a threat to the mighty metal fist of ULM! Let the melee boys sort them out. What you need a bow for is them huge trampling elephants, and big ol' monsters, thugs, and supercombattants.

Let the uncivilized indie troops keep their pathetic shortbows. Warriors of ULM deserve a REAL bow! The fact that they might be strategically better served by blowguns doesn't mean an ulmish soldier is going to devote his life to training to use such "weak" projectiles.

For better and worse, Ulm thinks armor is important, and their crafters are obsessed with both perfecting their own armor, and overcoming that of their foes. It just doesn't make sense for them to put all their effort into fielding the best armor possible, and then build their bows around killing "obviously inferior" unarmored troops. Leave that sort of thing for poncy mages, and expendable independant mercinaries.

[shatner]

If that is the "theme" of Ulm that we are agreeing to (and I'm not saying I agree) then we need to tweak things so that the mechanics support a functional and sensible set of tactical options that is on par with what other, rival MA nations have to offer. In other words, a balanced set of options that fit within the nation's theme.

The fact that Bandar Log can't be bothered to field anything with a shield larger than a buckler annoys me to no end but that nation works despite the weakness. That weakness is even part of what makes Bandar Log feel like Bandar Log (as well as being truer to it's Hindu mythological roots). If you insist that Ulm have some pathological fixation of self-defeating ranged weaponry, so be it. The onus is then on you to submit a way to make the crunch work within, and despite, the fluff.

I have submitted my interpretation which is functional and internally consistent. Squirrelloid created an excellent mod which is also functional and fluff-friendly despite going about it in a very different way. Now it's your turn, danm.

EDIT:
And besides, having an elaborate work of artifice seen no where else in the age (repeating crossbow) which mows down those too foolish or uncivilized to wear proper armor seems pretty Ulmy, even under your interpretation. Ulm isn't just about "Hit it HARDER!" otherwise they wouldn't have towershield troops with hammers; instead it'd be nothing but mauls, greatswords and battleaxes.