MA Ulm Pretender

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I wonder if CUnknown is actually one of my alter egos I'm not aware of. Your thinking on Ulm is spot on my own. I was going to write a MA Ulm guide until I saw you had written one and it covered basically all the points I would make. I think people really underestimate how effective Ulm's advantages can be in mid game. Focusing on construction early? How weak are those swarms of cheap dudes when buffed with weapons of sharpness and strength of giants while your enemies are earth melded? Magma eruption is arguably the strongest mid-line evocation spell and every one of your 140 gp mages can cast it. Destruction is brutal when cast by several mages in a battle and you should have *lots* of smiths. Then there's that little forge bonus...

As to being defenseless against elephants, I again call phooey. Obviously this boils down to player skill, but a couple reasonable counters come to mind depending on what you've got available- again, keeping in mind what Ulm does have going for it. With Ulm you should have a couple castles up pretty fast and plenty of smiths to field if you're rushed. Magma bolts. Bonds of fire. Body ethereal (from pretender, smith randoms, mercenaries, lizard shamans, sages - you only need a couple S1 mages) cast on 12 or so Black Knights can easily take out a similar gold cost of elephants. Assuming you took a rainbow pretender depending on your research paths you can combine the above with panic/terror and all the classic MR check counters. My preference is also the enchantress for Ulm and I find it very viable.

Personally, I research some of the above spells for exactly this reason before I begin focusing on construction. If you do end up being rushed, push through for destruction or magma eruption depending on what's coming at you. With just those spells a handful of smiths can beat back some pretty strong advances by just hiding behind PD meatshields.

[Twan]

Between prod 2 and prod 3 the difference isn't big for early expansion. Having a forest or a mountain near your capitol makes more difference (and anyway if you have only farmlands/swamps around Ulm is screwed). I prefer growth to reduce the old age affliction chances of the priest smiths (and heat... I always take 1 heat or 1 cold as temperatures varies with seasons anyway) and offer a little increase of income as we speak about a long game on big map.

Then I prefer the great sage because it give the edge on research even against other rainbows, and for some more turns against magic nations, but I agree the enchantress is a good choice too (probably better if you aren't lucky with site searching).

I find rushing straight to construction 8 risky. With the new evocation spells I find more logical to learn some battle magic first, and gnome lore is a must have since early game too.

Then my choice of searching conjuration 6 before construction 8 is discuttable, as someone really rushing the artefacts may beat Ulm. But I prefer to summon some spectres as early as possible to have more than one mage with death, to search sites or summon bane lords (of course if I have no death income by turn 20 I'd rather skip this phase, trolls kings don't worth the effort as you have hordes of earth mages).

[jaif]

For my own amusement, I made a 10 space random map and played a little test between arcos and ulm. I built 7 ulm black knights and set them on the front lines with attack nearest. I built 4 elephants and did the same command. The commanders I left on the back lines with "stay behind troops" so they wouldn't interfere.

Ulm wiped the floor with them twice, killing 3 than 2 with no losses. I tried a 3rd time, and ulm lost 5 knights out of 7, kill 2 elephants. Ulm routed, the elephants routed, and the arcos commander won the fight.

Obviously 3 quick fights aren't a wonderful test case, but the shock from black knights is enough to kill elephants pretty easily. Also obviously, support forces and tactics can change the equation, but that works both ways.

-Jeff

P.S. 7 knights - 385 gold. 4 elephants - 400 gold

[ComTrav]

Little OT, but:
The Father of Winters design actually looks appealing for EA Ulm. You get points for Cold anyway, and EA Ulm has a variety of magic but no high paths.

[Xietor]

The elephant rush will have elephants mixed with high morale hyperists, and 4-5 astrologers, all casting mind burn-or worse.

A good elephant rush will have 20 elephants, not 3-5. And it will be backed by numerous astrologers, many whom teleport to the front lines to reinforce. In my experience, ulm's troops do not stand up well to mind burn/soul slay a bit later on.

Father of Winters and the scales were off the top of my head. I am sure a better awake sc/scales could be devised to stop elephant rushes. Especially since I would never have considered playing Ulm mp before the changes. So I have no real expertise in designing a pretender for them.

Having conquered them though, i have good ideas about their weaknesses in mp.

[jaif]

An good elephant rush will have 20 elephants, not 3-5. And it will be backed by numerous astrologers, many whom teleport to the front lines to reinforce. In my experience, ulm's troops do not stand up well to mind burn/soul slay a bit later on.

a) I just wanted to see if ulm had a unit to counter elephants. The forum wisdom is that ulm has nothing that can beat an elephant. Nothing. But gold-cost equivalents did fine in my limited testing.

b) I specifically mentioned that support troops change things, but that it goes both ways. So you now need some smiths in the mix as well.

c) 20 elephants is 2000 gold. How many is "numerous" @180 apiece? I assume hyperiasts are hypaspists - how many of those? How much gold are we working with here?

d) what does a rush mean, exactly? That hardly sounds like a rush to my ears - it's a strong, prepared attack force. What turn do you expect to have that on?

-Jeff

[Baalz]

Admittedly I haven't been on the receiving end of an elephant rush orchestrated by you, that might be fun to try as I have beat back other rushes playing Ulm. Ignoring castle-recruitment constraints for a second, for the price of 3 elephants you get 2 smiths plus change. Obviously this isn't scalable because you can only recruit one smith per castle, but still given Ulm's typical early gold advantage and urgent castle building it's not unreasonable to expect to be able to field 10-12 smiths by the time you're looking at a 20 strong elephant force threatening you - and without permanently crippling your research curve. Assuming you marched a force as you describe into my territory at the end of year one I'd counter by trying to catch you as you attacked (shouldn't be hard) so you're running into about 40 PD backed by the dozen or so smiths leading whatever of the halberd wielding infantry I could scrape up over a couple turns from my multiple castles and prod-3 edge (likely in the 100-120 man range). Your initial elephant charge will be broken by 7 or 8 smiths spamming Bonds of Fire. It won't stop them all but they'll trickle in several at a time rather than in one overwhelming mass as even the ones not hit will have to run around those that are. While causing some damage, they'll quickly be surrounded and hacked to pieces by halberds. Meanwhile my remaining smiths begin raining magma bolts down into the elephants strung out by the fire bonds while my black plate keeps friendly fire from being too much of an issue. All the while your astrologers are popping 4-5 of my infantry per turn out of probably close to 200. By the end of the battle you've killed mostly my PD (which were in the front) and are out close to 2000 gold of elephants.

Would it work that well in practice? Perhaps, that's debatable (or better yet testable), but you'd have a hard time arguing that it'd have no chance. My point is that Ulm isn't helpless, you just have to use what you have at your disposal. Cheap troops, cheap mages, lots of gold/castles.

[Xietor]

I am not an elephant rush player. In fact I am just playing arcos. for the 1st time in EH II. And I took a rainbow pretender.

Gameextremist always played arcos. and was king of the elephant rush. I have seen good players not playing Ulm fall to his elephant rush tactics. Somehow he always had 20 elephants very early in the game, back by mages. I suspect
he set taxes high, patrolled, and used his dragon to expand.


He did take an awake dragon, so you can forget about building a 2nd castle unless you had enough troops building it to defeat his dragon. So against a good rush player, you not only have elephants/mages to deal with, but an awake dragon.

[CUnknown]

Baalz -- I'm glad we agree! Us Ulm players have to stick together.

Twan -- I agree that rushing to artifacts is risky. I wouldn't do it every game, but as Ulm a nice bonus as Baalz pointed out is Weapons of Sharpness at Const-7. One of the best buffs, and Ulm can cast it with no problem.

However, I think I am inclined to agree with those like Xietor who say that Ulm is extremely weak when faced with a strong early game elephant rush, esp. backed with astral mages. Not that there is no hope if you are creative, but generally you will be in a world of hurt.

I just disagree that you should base your whole strategy with Ulm around defending against an elephant rush.

I am not surprised that you aren't generally an Ulm player, Xietor. You don't seem to think like an Ulm player, hehe (some people would take that as a compliment). Criticisms of Ulm really are valid, Ulm has weaknesses, and if you are concerned about them, the best way to avoid them is to not play Ulm, lol.

Arcosephale and Caelum pose big problems for Ulm, so why not play Arcosephale or Caelum instead?

When I pick a faction, I do so because I am excited about something, some strength they have, not because I'd like to minimize a weakness they have.

I look at Ulm and see, wow, they are the best forge race in the game, how can you max that out to full effect? And I might get stomped by elephants. But that is life.

[Xietor]

Actually my goal is now to play every single ma race. I played MA Pangaea for years(going back to dom II), and they certainly are not one of the elite mp races. I just like their theme.

But I am now playing pythium and arcos for the 1st time, and in future mp games will play every MA race I have yet to play.

So far in mp I have won mp games with Shinuyama, Pangaea, and did very well in the Big Game with Ctis that ended due to unit limit being reached. I owned 7 capitals at that time and likely was about 4th or so in power rankings.

So I have done pretty well with the nonelite ma MP races. Time will tell how I do with pythium and Arcos. Eventually I will get around to playing Ulm, but I am in no rush.

When I do, however, I will have an awake size 6 pretender who is not vulnerable to solar rays.