Ulmish Drain magic spell

[Shangrila00]

Also Agartha has very easy access to Rust Mist, Atlantis only slightly less easy, and Arco the same plus access to acid rain.

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Or, you can just research construction, which you are going to research, anyway.

At Construction 4? It's not as if summon earthpower isn't also a big deal for Ulm. The point is False Fetters is available in a year 1 war, but Tempering the Will is not, at least not for Ulm who has one of the slowest research starts.

[Shardphoenix]

and the Iron Angels start getting outclassed by self-buffing SCs

They still have their strengths - flying, best MR in game, special anti-sacred attack vs national summons...

[Shardphoenix]

It's awful inefficient to burn earth gems to counter a spell like false fetters.

Dead pretenders don`t have use for gems, anyway. And it`s awful efficient to forge firebrands with Master Smiths when Forge is up.

[Corinthian]

False fetters is only range 15(+?) though. You can just start your troops in the back and the enemy mages wont reach them.

As for Agartha and rust mist, I actually faced an about equal sized agartha with a veteran player with the latest MA Ulm. He did use rustmist and darkness heavily. And you know what? Under cover of darkness, were Ulm and Agartha have the same amount of troops and mages and were Agarthan mages use rust mist, ulm will virtually always win. We had many battles and agartha had to bring almost 50% extra troops and mages to win battles reliably. Under darkness.

Why? Because troops dont really mater much in the mid-game. Mages does. And my ulmish smiths with eruption and iron blizzard simply killed agarthas troops faster than agarthas mages could kill mine. Black plates make for excellent chaff all around. Can take a fireball to the face like a boss! How well they fight does not really factor in to it at that point.

Interestingly, from the threads perspective, I never actually cast the Drain magic spell during that entire game. Not even vs R'lyeth! Why? Because irom blizzard tended to kill most thing long before any fatigue would have become relevant! Same with temper the will. Its a waste of a mages time to cast it. You should have the mage spam evocations instead. Who cares if some dweeb get him mind fried. Black plates cost only 11 gold!

They really should cost atleast 15-17g as they are now, IMHO.

[Shangrila00]

Rust mist comes out at Evo 2, and performs admirably at neutering Ulmish troops at that magic level.

You are talking about a magic dominated battle with level 6 evocations where troops are nothing but chaff. I seriously doubt the marginal advantage of blackplates in the purely chaff role is what played the decisive role. I mean, why was Agartha wasting mage turns with rust mist when he has Alt 6 and thus iron bane?

[Kobal2]

Maybe he had better things to do with his E gems ? Can't imagine what Agartha could be doing with them

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Kobal2

Maybe he had better things to do with his E gems ? Can't imagine what Agartha could be doing with them

That might be part of the problem. I mean golems are nice and all, but magical beings get absolutely murdered by iron darts/blizzard.

[Shardphoenix]

That might be part of the problem. I mean golems are nice and all, but magical beings get absolutely murdered by iron darts/blizzard.

And that`s why you don`t use them against Ulm, but cast Iron bane instead, right?

[Snacktime]

I'm a fairly noobish player here, so take this with a big grain of salt. I'm in a noobie MA game and Ulm (parone) is running away with it. In planning to fight him, I must say I'm a bit amazed at the range of "Ulm-only" spells that he's got in CBM. Which is funny because before this game I had never looked at CBM 1.92 and had always thought MA Ulm was kinda crappy.

But as I gear for war with Ulm I see that in CBM 1.92 he's got a BF, not-hard to cast spell that cripples demons (drain or whatever-its-called). Low-fatigue iron blizzard spamming. Nation-only buffs to MR and elemental resistance. The MR and encumbrance problems of his "chaff" troops don't seem to be there any more, but they still cost 11 gold and have protection in the 20s. My high protection (which is like 16 for me) troops cost 20g (and also have map move 1). He also has an easy-to-summon thug/SC chassis (iron angel) for 20 gems. He has effectively a 25% forge bonus on most items. And his own forge-of-the-ancients spell if that bonus strikes him as insufficient.

Not taking anything away from parone for playing well and our game isn't over at all. But I will say as a relatively new player, I am not a big fan of CBM creating balance by giving a nation a bunch of new spells. Why not just adjust their existing troops somehow? I know nation-only spells are in vanilla too. But the new nation-only spells just make it even harder to learn strategy, and I find it frustrating that I basically can't think of a realistic counter to his range of strengths.

[Soyweiser]

Yeah, cbm 1.92 went a bit overboard on improving ma ulm. It went from one of the weakest nations to being one of the strongest.

But, general remarks regarding CBM modding should be made in the correct thread. Pick a CBM mod thread for that (really do, this always needs more feedback). I think it was already discussed in dom3mods. But, I forgot what the ulm plan was.