Ulmish Drain magic spell

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by llamabeast

Drain Magic is meant to allow "fair fights" between mundane troops. Nations which rely heavily on demons, undead or constructs should see Ulm as a challenging opponent. This makes a lot of sense to me thematically. The "counter" is to use a different tactic, for example mundane troops, sacreds, living summons or (best of all) lots of battlefield evocations. Or raiding!

Llama, first just want to emphasize that you are doing a great job at what is by no means an easy task.

I guess the problem I have with the particular spell that were discussing is that its just so easy for Ulm to cast. Its an extremely powerful spell that's basically castable by every single cheap mage that ulm will have plenty of. Its E4 with a cost of two gems.

E2 mage + summon E power + 3 gems
E2 mage + cheap E boots + 3 gems

So it makes it very tough to get around it with say, raiding. They can deploy it everywhere and anywhere. Spells of equivalent power usually seem to require a more specialized or cap only mage.

And the problem with the other two counters, battlefield evo and mundane troops, is that this is exactly where MA Ulm wants to fight. What you're saying is that one counter to an unresistabel spell that any one of Ulm's mages can cast is to use mundane troops against the nation with the most powerful mundane troops in the game? So yes, technically this is a counters, but it's a pretty bad one. It basically requires any nation fighting Ulm to bring significantly more resources to bear than Ulm itself is committing.

Battlefield evocs are a little better, but Ulm is not exactly a slacker when it comes to this area either. They're going to have loads of cheap summon E-power mages who just love to spam Iron blizzard, magma eruption, blade wind, earthquake, etc.

On a broader note. I think the big problem with the changes to MA Ulm is that they just all came too fast and in one big lump. Ulm went from being underpowered to crazy OP in one leap.

The biggest problem is probably the reduced encumbrance and increased attack on their troops without an equivalent cost increase. Bump the gold price up to actually be comparable to other troops of their quality and you would have much better balance in the early game.

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Torgon

The biggest problem is probably the reduced encumbrance and increased attack on their troops without an equivalent cost increase. Bump the gold price up to actually be comparable to other troops of their quality and you would have much better balance in the early game.

I'm against that. Ulm is supposed to have the best regular troops around. It's balanced by low MR, everybody being slow, and Ulm having limited magic access and no sacreds.

It makes perfect sense if Ulm can come close to a sacred rush without actually using sacreds, and the counter would be exactly the same: battle magic. The capital resource site probably does need to go though, so it doesn't get too easy to have way more numbers than sacred rushers typically have.

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

I'm against that. Ulm is supposed to have the best regular troops around. It's balanced by low MR, everybody being slow, and Ulm having limited magic access and no sacreds.

It makes perfect sense if Ulm can come close to a sacred rush without actually using sacreds, and the counter would be exactly the same: battle magic. The capital resource site probably does need to go though, so it doesn't get too easy to have way more numbers than sacred rushers typically have.

Although If you are talking about early game MR doesnt come to play then, most of the usefull MR-checking spells come later in the game so its not such a big disadvantage early game. So I think you have to keep this in mind.
I by all means don't mind Ulm Having strong regular troops almost-Sacred rush like Its just I playtested some games and their national spell Stopped something like 60 morrigans(that is 120 death gems plus the cost of having to go for a bless for them with no benefits to diversity).(50 of them with faigue +100) so I was a bit concerned about that.

Because as we said then you get a good early game nation with really good late game. You are most likely going to go for a rainbow since you dont need an SC pretender to fend off rushes. That means you have better diversity than most Sacred rush nations and forging bonus for late game + easy accest to thugs SC with cheap items. Then you get a spell that stops everything that some nations can offer. (demon and undead) As I said I still need to check if it has a similar result on demons and normal magic units. But yea.

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

I'm against that. Ulm is supposed to have the best regular troops around. It's balanced by low MR, everybody being slow, and Ulm having limited magic access and no sacreds.

It makes perfect sense if Ulm can come close to a sacred rush without actually using sacreds, and the counter would be exactly the same: battle magic. The capital resource site probably does need to go though, so it doesn't get too easy to have way more numbers than sacred rushers typically have.

So the problem is that it's a sacred level rush without all the tradeoffs that come with using a sacred level rush, mainly tanking your scales. And I'm not saying make the black plate cost 30 g. What i'm saying is make them equivalent in price to other national elite infantries: 15-20 gold rather than 11.

And as long as ulm has level 2 tempering the will the weak mr argument is not really true.

And the whole problem with ulm is that, as you said, they have limited magic access. Making them into even more of an early game powerhouse does nothing to mitigate this problem, it just makes them not fun to play or play against for the first 30 turns.

[Shangrila00]

The gold cost is fine. Ulm pays for it by being forced to take production 3, and building high admin forts placed for maximum access to resources rather than other factors. The Ulmish war machine is incredibly slow to get rolling or react to the unexpected since all their major troops are move 1 and resource limitations means armies are made up of trickles drawn from every fort rather than massed at the target border. This is also highly thematic, and if necessary, resource costs can be bumped up even higher on blackplates to further emphasize it. I doubt it though given the nerfs we know are coming.

Though given that the theme of blackplates is that they are just regular troops with superb equipment, their stats really ought be bumped back to standard Ulmish except for the morale. It's unthematic for them to have any stat advantages not derived from equipment.

[llamabeast]

It's good feedback, I appreciate the post.

Incidentally I think Drain Magic has an additional effect for each of the magic being, undead and demon tags. So Bone Fiends (undead demons) would suffer double fatigue. You weren't using Bone Fiends were you?

[Squirrelloid]

Regarding MR-resists spells that matter early...

Given Ulm's troops require a significant resource investment, and are thus fairly limited in number, a mind burn spam defense would be fairly effective. I've hosed EA Abyssia sacred attacks with it, and those have real MR. It should just massacre Ulmish troops.

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I think all this whining about Ulm being OP is pretty reactionary. I agree the early Forge is uncalled for, and the available from turn 1 full army Legion of Steel is a bit much, but otherwise? Still in the lower half of MA nations imo.

[Corinthian]

How many games have Ulm won since 1.92 was released? Was it 5? Out of how many games? I'm sure they have won at least 3. Thats more victories in this short while than several nations have in the hall of fame, period. Ulm is crazy powerful now.

[bbz]

Sorry guys I didnt mean to start a Useless thread just stating Ulm is too OP nerf!!!

The purpouse of the thread is to help llamabeast into his work (well actually, it was initally for me to find any sort of counter to that spell and the mechanics of it but I already did that ). So refrain yourself from posting just empty comments saying ulm is too OP. If you feel that something is wrong, state your reasoning behind it. If you feel that nothing is wrong state the reasining behind it aswell. I think this way we can communicate better and find out some solution or at least help in directing towards it.

[parone]

all i can say is, as a newbie, Ulm is a great fit for someone starting off. i love cbm ulm. i have no idea if they are TOO good, since i have no idea what i am doing, but i would be sorry to see them overly nerfed.

also, i wonder, if you make some of their spells available only to level 4 priests, how would they use them?