Anyone played the Ulm Black Forest in MP ?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
Against human players archers can destroy thralls very quickly, and I'd bet a lvl 3 priest or two hiding behind some front units can kill a Count pretty easily...he can't resist smite demon forever.

You sure that a count counts as a demon?

[LordArioch]

I was pretty sure it hit all undead, but honestly I haven't checked. I probably should.

[Osium]

The main person I was fighting mostly was Ctis, he had a King turned prophet casting banish the occasional smite and never smite/banish demon on my VC's and it didnt seem like they were effected very much at all. Serpent dancers are the units that generally killed my VC's quickly. However his holy 5 prophet king was DECIMATING my thralls and ghouls. My regular troops routed almost instantly whenever they came into contact without undead backup. I was forced to rely heavily on paralyze and rangers since my melee units were only a buffer that Lasted a couple of turns behond hold position.

[Chris Byler]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
BF Ulm reminds me of Diabolic Faith Marignon (crossbows, pikemen, etc.) but with weaker mages and an actually useful starting blood summon.

Are you calling Harlequins useless? No research, 1 blood slave, can be summoned by an 80 gold diabolist with no items, flying, beats most normal troops in hand to claw combat. I wouldn't call that useless. Granted they're no Fiend of Darkness, but what do you expect for 1/5 the cost?

Black Forest would love to have Inquisitors, but on the other hand, DF would love to have Rangers (more accurate than Marignon crossbows, IIRC - and stealthy to boot) and Wolfherds. To say nothing of super-durable Ulmish infantry instead of the nearly as resource intensive but much more mortal Marignon infantry.

However, any power of Vampire Counts is really only early game, and using blood for early game expansion isn't so great, as blood magic tends to be slow starting.

Unless you have a no-research blood summon and are using a strong blood pretender.

Multiple hunts in the same province will drive your unrest up quickly, but a single hunter won't do that much. Blood hunt unrest in Dom II seems to depend more on the number of hunters than on the number of slaves they collect (in Dom I it was the reverse).

Against human players archers can destroy thralls very quickly, and I'd bet a lvl 3 priest or two hiding behind some front units can kill a Count pretty easily...he can't resist smite demon forever. I'm actually kinda curious how effective demons in general are now that there's another spell designed specifically to counter them, especially since it looks rather effective.

Not all nations have effective archers - or level 3 priests, either. And practically no nations have them everywhere - isn't the VC flying and stealthy? You don't have to use a brute force approach with him (although you can, especially against independents).