Forge of Ulm

[Torin]

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

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Executor

Depends of the game size doesn't it? Definitely AN in larger games.
Though, if you cast forge, it would be enough to hold it for 2-3 turns and mass forge 150 items and than dispel it yourself or kill the caster. That won't make people attack you.
And heck, if only 2-3 neighbors can attack you, you can easily deal with them.

The situation where only 2-3 neighbors can attack you is unlikely. There are a lot of remote assassination spells, fast travel spells, province attack spells, population attack spells, so on and so forth. Sure, one person halfway across the map trying to kill you with those is mildly inconvenient, but if everyone chooses to do so you have a big problem.

[Mightypeon]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I'll just dust to dust the bane lords

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

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?

[llamabeast]

CBM is thug/SC edition of dom3

Just for reference I don't agree with this.