Water magic on land?

[Endoperez]

Tuidjy said:Oh yeah, it is very hard to get decent scales for them. The fire pick of their mages makes them old, so you need a life scale, the esource heavy troops prevent you from taking sloth... all in all, Ulm is a sad, sad race.

The arbalests are decent infantry.


I agree about the units, mostly. They aren't useless, but they aren't good either.

However, Ulm has very nice choice of scales available to it.
Drain 3 and Production 3 effectively cancel each other out, and provide them with minor bonuses (to gold and to magic resistance of non-Ulmish units - the +1 mr effectively cancels Ulmish troops' weakness). They'll have lots of surplus gold flowing around, thanks to their cheap troops and mages, so they have less need for Order as well.

[Tuidjy]

> The arbalests are decent infantry.

Yes. If they had a buckler, they would be good infantry. Unfortunately,
that's not allowed, not for Ulm.

> I either used arbs with cheap troups, or more often infantry with cheap archers.

You have the right idea. Heavy infantry with the "resource three" archers you
get from Druid provinces is a very nice combination against indies and AI.
And of course, the druids' relief was very useful in Dominions II, where druids
could boost themselves to N3 trivially.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Tier two research for water magic?

I second the Ice Pebble Staff if you have a gem surplus.
It costs a lot less fatigue than the spell, so you can have a commander cast it around 20 times, if the battle lasts that long.

Shambler Skin armor is a big letdown, but if you have a high defense supercombatant pretender, it can do you a lot of good. Plus, you can now boost your mage with waterpower if you go underwater.

The Ice Sword is a great tool if you've got a commander you want gaining experience and heroic abilities. It is a pretty damaging weapon, and that def boost will help your commanders go around killing so you can pick and choose heroic abilities to develop.

If you've got a lot of low damage troops and are facing heavy infantry/cavalry, Dessication is a decent choice. First off, it has precision 100, though MR is a factor, so it whiffs a lot less than cold bolts. In theory, it could deal 16 fatigue a turn, though averages less. You can check out page 76 for the details on fatigue, but suffice to say, it'll give you more chances at critical hits. There are lot of situations where it is a waste, however, so I don't have this scripted by default.

If you've forged that Ice Pebble Staff, it makes a decent combination with a spellcaster casting dessication. Numbness will slow down and fatigue those troops, giving Dessication a bit longer to work.

There's a few interesting spells just a bit further down the line, but of tier 2, I think this and what others mentioned above just about covers it.

I'm interested whether anyone has ever used Ice Drakes to any affect. I tried four or five against R'lyeh once, and didn't see any return for my investment, but perhaps thats due to MR.