Anyone played the Ulm Black Forest in MP ?

[Jasper]

I'm with YWL and PhilD. I simply don't see Black Forest as overpowered, or even one of the best factions.

[ywl]

A few random thoughts:

1) BF Ulm *is* powerful. But to me, it's more because of the cheap (and stealthy!) crossbow, free wolves and other good units. VCs are more like icing on the cake. But on the other hand, I'm not very good with Blood. My estimation could be off.

But still, all of these advantages are from regular troops which are more useful in early game. With the weak mage of BF Ulm, the late game is hard to say. Balance in late game is very hard to test with solo as AIs don't have enough varieties of tactics.

2) In most MP games I played, most indies were taken before turn 20. So, I don't know how well IKerensky's expansion speed will manage in such situation.

3) BF Ulm doesn't have cheap blood hunters. The Second Tier has one Blood and cost 190 gold. It's reasonable but far from cheap. You might get one Blood with Fortune-Teller but the chance is 1/4. But for course, I agree that Fortune-Tellers are good units even though they're vulnerable to "Mind-Duel"

4) VCs are not really very good platform for super-combatants. They have too few hitpoints and immortality doesn't help because you want to fight under enemy dominions. Moreover, even when he's immortal, any temporary kill will cost you the items on him (if you didn't win the battle). It's not a small loss.

More importantly, you want your super-combatant to actually *kill* your enemies, rather than routing them. A VC doesn't kill fast enough with Life Drain. You can make him reasonably powerful using the "Snake Poison Bladder". Doable for BF Ulm and not a bad idea at all (just Construction 4). "Soul Vortex" is great but it's Alteration 6.

But still, a VC should be easily overwhelmed by unroutable undeads, vine creatures or earth magic constructs. All of these are lifeless - do anybody know how much they're affected by the VC's lifedrain?

Moreover, if your enemies have "Flaming Arrows", "Flaming Weapons" from blessing, body ethereal won't help. All Ice weapons of Caelum should (still) be considered magical. Your VC will be sitting duck versus a few Caelum infantries, provided that they don't rout . Etherealness doesn't help versus most spells neither, one "Blade Wind", a few "Orb Lightning", "Solar Ray" or a single "Fireball" could easily wipe out your puny 25 hitpoints.

These are all the basic vulnerablity in additional to those specially for the undeads... A single VC is reasonable powerful but it won't be a juggernaut versus any non-indies. Ten might be different - but well, with 440 blood slaves, you could have 17 "Horde from Hell", 8 Ice Devils. All are mighty armies.

The reason that the VC is powerful in my mind and should be illustrated is because it requires no research to get. The multiplayer dominance is not because of one VC against them. but 4, 5, and on and on, shotgunning all over your territories tearing down economy, before they have a chance to field anything similiar.

Scouts = Blood Hunters I'm sorry if I didn't illustrate it well enough. And you can use the 2nd Tier for initial blood hunting to get your first few VC's.

Flaming Arrows, Curse, Paralyze, Blindness, Low MR and being banished, Vengance of the Dead, etc, etc.

What it does do is provide a basis of hyper-expansion that will let you build massive armies of Rangers and Infantry (your real army) and masses of Raiding Vampires.

I can't say late game against a human opponent, but I've almost always found a very strong initial expansion provides you with the resources for a stronger mid-to-late game. And it's hard to say in large games if you won't fubar your diplomacy or look the wrong way and get double or triple teamed. How else could we consider 'balance' for any other nation based on 'length'?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by ywl:
But still, a VC should be easily overwhelmed by unroutable undeads, vine creatures or earth magic constructs. All of these are lifeless - do anybody know how much they're affected by the VC's lifedrain?

You can't drain life from lifeless things like elementals, constructs, etc. One of the more obvious and effective counters.

The relatively low stats on Vampire Counts, plus the plethora of counters makes them not big deal IMHO. Many nations can put equipment on one of their leaders, and end up with a "supercombatant" at least as good as a Vampire Count, especially if they have good bless effects. An equipped Vanadrotte, Tuatha, or Jotun Jarl would destroy a Vampire Count for example. Hell, even a Centaur Heirophant could probably do the job.

Black Forest is good, and the best Ulm variant by far, but I just don't see enough bang per buck out of the Vampire Counts for them to be even close to overpowered. They make decent raiders and fodder generators, but they don't exactly strike fear into my heart.

Plus, there's not a very long window betwen the point you can field them equipped, and when people start fielding things like Ice Devils, which are definitely superior.

[diamondspider]

Originally posted by Zen:
.... but I've almost always found a very strong initial expansion provides you with the resources for a stronger mid-to-late game. And it's hard to say in large games if you won't fubar your diplomacy or look the wrong way and get double or triple teamed. How else could we consider 'balance' for any other nation based on 'length'?

Well said! I've never seen a TBS game where rapid initial expansion wasn't the most important aspect of the game by far.

Anything that allows this to be sped-up, even a little, is a huge advantage in general.

[ January 29, 2004, 05:11: Message edited by: diamondspider ]

[Coffeedragon]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
Can the Priest line (esp Marignon) not handle them?

Priests are only good against massed weak undead, like longdead and soulless. They are too inaccurate for single powerful targets.

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But, iIrc, Grand Inquisitors and Inquisitor Prophets can smite.

[LordArioch]

Don't overlook the new smite demon spell. Now it only takes level 3 priests to smite when fighting undead such as VC's. I can see that causing them some injury.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:

quote:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

quote:

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Originally posted by Coffeedragon:
Can the Priest line (esp Marignon) not handle them?

Priests are only good against massed weak undead, like longdead and soulless. They are too inaccurate for single powerful targets.

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But, iIrc, Grand Inquisitors and Inquisitor Prophets can smite.

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No, it takes Holy 5 to smite.

Carmont the Cardinal (Marignon national hero) can smite, and so can a High Inquisitor Prophet, or one using the Sword of Justice. But no nation can get very many smite-capable priests.

On the other hand, if you just have to deal with a couple of Vampire Counts with few or no supporting troops, Smite might work quite well. You might also consider Incinerate (if the VC doesn't have a fire immunity item), but that takes research.

[mivayan]

I lost an unequipped vc against about 10 indep militia, so they are not that strong unequipped.
But they are immportal and stealthy and flying, hard to pin down with an army... should do well as raiders. Marignon should be able to kill them easily with their starting spell holy pyre.

Ice devils are cool, but there can never be more than 7(?) in the game. There can be endless amounts of vcs.

The rangers have 12 hp, 12 base precision, crossbows have a +2 pre modifier, and stealth. The best missile troop in the game I think. They are better than longbows or marignon crossbows... on the other hand, those have easy access to wind guide / flaming arrows which might compensate.

Late game fun: 100 unequipped vampire counts in friendly dominion with orders to cast blood vengeance, cast soul vortex, attack

I think rangers need to cost more, and there should perhaps be a limit on how many vampire counts can exist at the samt time, like ice devils are limited. Perhaps max 3 at the same time since you wont have several nations competing for them.

Otoh they are not that good later on... so something to lower the early effectiveness might be better. Maybe fewer equipment slots, can anyone think up a thematic reason for this?

[ywl]

Originally posted by mivayan:

Otoh they are not that good later on... so something to lower the early effectiveness might be better. Maybe fewer equipment slots, can anyone think up a thematic reason for this?

We can't even agree on whether or how much VC is overpowered here yet. We need some MP game to test it before limiting its power .

Afterall, without the VC, BF Ulm is very limited in magic. Their mages did worse than the standard Ulm in battle except for those astral-death fortune tellers, which you can get only 1/4 of the time. The Earth-Fire combination of the standard Master Smith is very powerful in battle.