Forge of Ulm - Page 2

Mightypeon · #1 February 8th, 2012, 01:03 PM

The thing is, forge of Ulm can be cast early, before a lot of cross map mobility happens, and if you only border 4 guys, one of those being in a war already, you can bribe at least one of the other 3, and team up with him to eat the attacking neighbours. Also, if its cast early, it objectivly is not as much as a gamewinning threat as casting it later. And you can get away with some funny lightless lantern rushing if graphs are off.
That early, its not awfully likely that someone has an astral stash with your name written on it either. Nor is it particularly easy to get rid of a rainbow in his own dominion very early in the game.

Torin · #2 February 8th, 2012, 02:57 PM

I think the forge its not half a treath as arcane nexus. Early mother oak is menacing too.

Mightypeon · #3 February 11th, 2012, 04:54 AM

The thing with Forge is, Ulm can cast it turn 18 or so.
At that time, people are usually in some kind of early war, dont tend to have a lot of remote attack spells or the gems to use them.

Executor · #4 February 11th, 2012, 06:50 AM

Assassination spells require a huge amount of investment. Take mind hunt for example;
Crystal Coin + Astral Cap + Eye of Void + Rune Smasher = 55 gems.
Besides, assassination spells usually only work the first turn around. After that you'll be sure to protect your good mages and if the enemy keeps attacking your lesser mages all the better.
Most province attack spells are easily dealable, with the exception of GR, which usually takes a lich and two boosters which total 65 gems. So nobodys gonna have too many of those.
Fast travel spells are unreliable and cost a heck of a lot of gems to organize. And time too. You usually need to take a province, farsummon a fort, build a lab and gateway in troops which is immensely expensive. Don't get me wrong, I love doing it but it's a very risky form of attack.

Of course you'll get killed in the end if everyone joins up but I still think you'd have a very good shot of defending against even 4 nations with the forge up.

Not sure what my point was anyway... Forge is OP for level 0?

Knai · #5 February 12th, 2012, 04:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Executor

Assassination spells require a huge amount of investment. Take mind hunt for example;
Crystal Coin + Astral Cap + Eye of Void + Rune Smasher = 55 gems.
Besides, assassination spells usually only work the first turn around. After that you'll be sure to protect your good mages and if the enemy keeps attacking your lesser mages all the better.

I see that you assumed a 2S mage, and no higher. The nations that are actually likely to use Mind Hunt probably have a 3S mage, and furthermore, given that, can probably work decently without an Eye of the Void and Rune Smasher. Moreover, others are much cheaper (e.g Manifestation, Earth Attack) for the nations good at them, and Forge of the Ancients is the sort of thing that warrants spending lots of gems as a countermeasure anyways. Plus, if you do invest in an assassination strategy as a counter, you will still have most of the investment after it.

Rejakor · #6 March 27th, 2012, 02:03 AM

I'd prefer to just shank my neighbour who is busy gatewaying his armies and spending all his gems to kill ulm.

As long as ulm doesn't have ~30%+ of the land on the map, forges isn't a huge deal. Especially since most people have no idea what to use it to spam.

Valerius · #7 March 27th, 2012, 02:50 AM

FotA is no big deal? I think that's the first time I've heard that. So I guess it will be you and Ulm vs. the rest of players?

Rejakor · #8 March 27th, 2012, 05:32 AM

CBM is thug/SC edition of dom3, but you don't gain that much as ULM from getting up forges. Even if you have a pretender and the research to whack out bane lords or whatever you still have crappy mages that suck and need a crystal shield in battle and a lightless lantern out of battle to even register as 'a mage'.

I'll just dust to dust the bane lords and use battlemagic and master enslave to take/kill the armies after i've eaten 2-3 other players who spent all their resources on the 'ulmish threat'. Ulm in CBM is a earlygame or midgame threat at best. If the PLAYER playing ulm is known as a good player I might consider using some remotes or sending people he's fighting gold or gems so he doesn't run over them and end up on my doorstep before I get out the lategame big guns, but otherwise meh.

The only player i've ever seen use ulm properly is mightypeon, and he always overexpands so basically you can just get all his neighbours to gank him when destruction/anti heavy armour spells become available in early midgame.

Shardphoenix · #9 March 27th, 2012, 06:02 AM

Quote:

I'll just dust to dust the bane lords

Try dust2dusting Iron Angels while eating Iron Blizzard spam from non-caponly Black Priests.

Quote:

I'll just dust to dust the bane lords and use battlemagic and master enslave to take/kill the armies

Why bother with armies when you can have a gajillion of cheap SCs?

Shangrila00 · #10 March 27th, 2012, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Try dust2dusting Iron Angels while eating Iron Blizzard spam from non-caponly Black Priests.

Iron blizzard gets stopped by arrow fend. It's nice, but it's like the Ulmish version of flaming arrows. Devastating from when you get it to when the enemy gets the counter, and mostly useless thereafter. It's certainly not likely to be a big deal when Iron Angels are in the field.