Anyone played the Ulm Black Forest in MP ?

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by Coffeedragon:

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Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

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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.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by mivayan:
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.

Why should rangers cost more? Stealth doesn't cost much if any extra on any other units that have it, and they have no better physical stats than any other Ulm unit.

Limiting vampire counts to three at a time would mean that you should also limit dusk elders to three at a time. After all, other than flying and immortality they both have about the same combat stats. That would totally destroy any chances that Black Forest Ulm might have, as the counts are _not_ that powerful. Magic will easily remove them from any battlefield, as BF Ulm doesn't have easy access to rainbow armor, and they are still very vulnerable to the undead destroying spells.

[ January 29, 2004, 15:43: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[Raz 24]

I just want too say I love Black Forest Ulm and
that is because it has a very uniqe playing style

The vcs arent overpowered , but are good thugs.
The rangers are awesome and the mages are cheap but mkay.

So the conclusion they are not overpowerd(dont forget the forced misfortune and death)but a very good natiob worth playing

[mivayan]

hmm.. good points... and bf ulm does not really have anything worthwile other than rangers and vampire counts. I also noticed that you can summon slightly better vampires for a bit higher cost with blood6, the difference being that blood6 takes a while.

I'll withdraw my suggestions untill someone gets some multiplayer experience with them

[Osium]

I recently played BF ulm in my nightly 3way multi game. Expansion is extremely rapid, using 2 or 3 pikeneers + 20 or so rangers, I had 3 conquering armies out soon (the first one fizzled once its infantry support died as it only had 12 rangers) and by turn 11 I had 16 or 17 provinces conquered. I had my first VC on turn 8, however I choose a vamp queen for my pretender. Im not sure I used my VC's correctly but to be honest they did not seem very powerful. With the fountain of blood, do people hunt in their home province or do they somehow teleport the fountain somewhere else? I can see that using the fountain in your home province must really cramp early expansion via rangers so I dunno if the fountain is really worth it.

I churned out 3 VC's by turn 14 I think and from then on all new VC's blood hunted. In anycase, the only thing that saved me from my Ctis neighbor to the south were my rangers. The VC's were fragile in the extreme even with barkskin luck and a horror helm.

Secondly, as far as I can tell BF Ulm has horrible infantry. Low morale on your living units means they route if someone so much as passes wind in their general direction. Mixing thralls and ghouls in with your living troops bolsters their morale, but a few turns into combat with more than a couple priests and those undead are all but wiped out.

I was essentially relying soley on rangers with whatever fodder infantry I could plant in front with VC's holding as long as possible before attacking rear.