Help, I suck with Ulm!

[Sly Frog]

Okay, I suck with damn near anything, but I've done my share of reading the Boards, playing in some multiplayer, etc., and I just do not get Ulm. The current game, I have been generally left alone. I build up a nice force of blackplate, get my mages hooked up with Construction 6 and Evocation 4 for the cool magic items and the blade winds, and I'm ready to go, right? I search about 10 provinces that I own with my 3-3-3-3-3-3 (maybe there's one extra 3 there) rainbow alchemist. I turn up a decent gem income, but no special sites other than sages (i.e. no independent decent mages).

Wrong. I get attacked by a Tuauatha themed Man player. His mages just tear the **** out of my guys. Storm on the battle and wrathful skies, and I'm getting slaughtered. My blade wind flinging mages kill off pretty much all of his ordinary guys, but that doesn't say much. Meanwhile, my blackplate infantry, painfully built up over time, is simply blown away by his spells, and his ordinary sidhe troops are better overall than my costlier black plate knights and other units. I guess I don't get Ulm.

I wondering the following:

1. Does Ulm have a chance if it does not attempt to steamroll nearby human opponents very early on? The lack of magic and available opponent countermagic seems to bring horrible devastation to the supposedly tough blackplate infantry even at the early-midpoint of the game.

2. What the hell good is Ulm's supposedly wonderful forging skill when Ulm doesn't have any decent commanders to put the forged items on? Is researching Conjuration, to get some decent SCs, mandatory for Ulm? If so, isn't it a fair bit to ask, that Ulm get high Construction, Evocation, and Conjuration levels fairly early on to have a chance of hanging into mid-game? The best commander I can see is the black knight commander, and he is certainly no great shakes. Everything else seems to suck, particularly the generic infantry commanders who are, well, about the same as the underlying infantry.

[ July 02, 2004, 00:46: Message edited by: Sly Frog ]