Recruitable Unit Rebalance Version 7.51 Released.

[FrankTrollman]

This series of changes does a lot to Ulm, but a lot of it seems really counterproductive. The fact that various units have Cold, Fire, or Shock resistance is a nice trick, but since it's not consistent across the army, it ends up being very hard to plan ahead.

And the increase in resource price seems to take the BP units completely out of contention. Even with order 3 and productivity you can't afford 2 Black Knights a turn, and that means that you can't conquer neutrals in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Even a 3 turn build-up will just get smacked down by level 6 neutrals, and that's not cool. (Interestingly, you will have a big pile of money left over in a pile, not that it will do you any good).

I suggest an increased money cost (like you have it), with a decreased resource cost. And you should make the resistances on all the BP units the same. The setup in which your axemen are resistant to one thing and your hammermen are resistant to another and your guardians to still another is a non-starter.

The problem with Ulm is that they can't get a big pile of BP units in fast enough to take territory fast enough to actually make their "good" units matter. They need a random elemental pick on the Smith, and they need a reduced resource cost on the BP units. Until they get that, it almost doesn't matter what their units have and do.

Although on that score, is there any reason why BP units shouldn't just use actual BP? The whole impetus for having them use inferior BP has always been lost on me.

-Frank

[Ironhawk]

FrankTrollman said:
Even with order 3 and productivity you can't afford 2 Black Knights a turn, and that means that you can't conquer neutrals in any kind of reasonable amount of time. Even a 3 turn build-up will just get smacked down by level 6 neutrals, and that's not cool.

After just having finished a game with SC's mod while playing Ulm, I can tell you that Black Knights are not the initial way to go vs indies. Just use about twenty or so of the ultra-heavy morningstar inf and you are ready to rumble. Which, by the way, can be done - given your starting force and a turn or two. Once you have all the provs surrounding your capital captured (for the production boost) then you can begin building BK's for your 2nd indy-killer force.

Additionally, its the choice of castle, not prod scales that effects production most. So as Ulm, in any non-blitz game, you would want to pick a Wizards Tower, since it is cheap/fast to build and has good production. This allows you to ramp up the total production of your empire far more than any prod scale. The only nuisance is that you have to muster your troops from many forts (easy for BKs, hard for footsoldiers)

They need a random elemental pick on the Smith

Iron Faith

PDF said:
Just build Arbalests, shielded chainmail units, back them with the Prophet casting SoC and it's done ...

PDF, how can you suggest to anyone that Arbalests be used? Ever? Thier rate of fire is so terrible as to make them usless. Unless thier accuracy or ROF has changed in the latest version of the mod?

[FrankTrollman]

BTW, if you really want a Soul Slay effect that only works once per battle, couldn't you just make an additional attack that had a very negative "#ratt" value? It could do zero damage and have an on-hit Soul Slay effect, and it would go off once per 50 turns or so, which means that he Valkyries would cough it up on the first round of combat and not afterwards.

-Frank

[Saber Cherry]

FrankTrollman said:
BTW, if you really want a Soul Slay effect that only works once per battle, couldn't you just make an additional attack that had a very negative "#ratt" value? It could do zero damage and have an on-hit Soul Slay effect, and it would go off once per 50 turns or so, which means that he Valkyries would cough it up on the first round of combat and not afterwards.

-Frank

Yes, that would sort of work. Thanks for the idea... I might try it.

[quantum_mechani]

One change I cannot understand is upping the cost of serpent priests to 200. The theme is already regarded almost universally as weaker than base, why make it worse?

[PDF]

About Arbalests : Ulm *only* has Arbalests as missiles at start, so even if they're bad they're better than nothing.
Additionally a critical mass of arbalests can rout indies outright, or break a charge (on their 2nd volley on round 4).
Even in middle game, Arbalests are the only weapon able to pierce the more common high-protection units.
So they're not that bad IMHO.

[Huzurdaddi]

Another question about Abysia: Do you think it was wise to increase the combat stats of the slayer to match those of human assassins? The slayer has 17 HP and 9 prot. He is very tough. And when I say very tough I mean Indep commanders have a rediciliously low chance of taking him out.

Everyone should have a chance to play Abysia at least once in this mod. It's comical!

[Saber Cherry]

PDF said:
About Arbalests : Ulm *only* has Arbalests as missiles at start, so even if they're bad they're better than nothing.
Additionally a critical mass of arbalests can rout indies outright, or break a charge (on their 2nd volley on round 4).
Even in middle game, Arbalests are the only weapon able to pierce the more common high-protection units.
So they're not that bad IMHO.

Well... except Ulm now has Sappers, who carry crossbows. At 20g, they are not a good generic missile unit in my opinion, but for example Ironhawk employed them effectively as his main missile unit in the Test game, and their sapping ability came in very handy. Arbalests are certainly much more effective against high-protection units like Knights, HC, and Dragons, though, whether original (14ap) or modded (12ap sn).

[Alneyan]

Am I the only one who actually likes militia and slingers for specific purposes? They seem the best deal to me whenever I only need fodder, and more specifically, some troops for sieges. Slingers in particular can be raised in most provinces very quickly, and they are as good as any other kind of infantry for this purpose.

They are, of course, very weak for anything else, but they seem decent enough for "giving some muscle to those mages in siege", and they are the cheapest mundane troops for this purpose (though Call of the Wind is very good for the same thing).

[Saber Cherry]

Alneyan said:
Am I the only one who actually likes militia and slingers for specific purposes? They seem the best deal to me whenever I only need fodder, and more specifically, some troops for sieges. Slingers in particular can be raised in most provinces very quickly, and they are as good as any other kind of infantry for this purpose.

Archers - which seem overpriced to me, considering their effectiveness - are about the same price as slingers, and vastly superior in every way. Militia with shields or LI are much more effective per unit gold as a meat shield / fodder than spear-only militia... do you ever buy unshielded militia?

I might run a little simulation to demonstrate how utterly crappy unshielded unts are. I'll post the results soon =)