Is black plate worth it?

[jaif]

Btw, at a higher level this point is pretty much moot anyways, at least when it comes to ULM's power. Let's pretend that black plate is highly worthwhile, and thus ULM has better infantry and arbelists.

It doesn't matter. This factor is not going to make up for:

a) poor magic.
b) poor priests.
c) average regular commanders.

If you want to keep the theme of a magic-poor, steel-based civ, you really need to flesh out the non-magic units. More mechanical constructs at a lower level, more "thuggable" commanders (as someone here but it), more special commanders (patrol bonus, asssassins). Simply having better regular troops is not enough.

FWIW, I believe that Tien Chi's regular army is superior to ULMs. Heavy enough units, better choices, more flexible commander layout (with eunuch). I could probably make the same claim about a lot of armies.

-Jeff

[CUnknown]

Hehe, let's please not talk about the rest of Ulm, but just about the black plates. We have beaten that topic to death.

Baalz said:

Any time that you are gold constrained (a state I find myself in a good portion of any game) it's black plate all the way.

I pretty much agree with this, but that's the whole discussion here is to figure out if this is true or not. People are arguing that Chainmail guys are superior in just about every conceivable situation.. an assertion that I'm having trouble disproving. I really thought that the black plates would have done better against the spearmen in my tests.

But there are other tests, like against powerful units, and other measures of success rather than just kills/losses. I'm thinking about putting them up against maybe giants or heavy cav and seeing how many rounds they can survive without breaking. If they don't survive longer than the chainmail guys, I'm going to accept that Black Plates suck.

Can you think of any other situation in which Black Plates might be better than Chainmail guys? If so, let's test it and prove these guys wrong.

[jaif]

Ok, you're right. The whole point to my starting this thread was to focus. My bad.

How about a test against armor-piercing stuff? Low-level evocation fire spells, crossbows. Maybe it's more useful there.

Pikes vs those invincible elephants?

How about against hoplites, or some other early-game heavy infantry. In general if you fight someone early w/o magic you are putting your inf vs their inf with missile fire around you.

-Jeff

P.S. I mean test chain vs these then plate vs these.

P.P.S. I don't mean to sound bossy, I just have no idea what it takes to setup these tests myself.

edit: just thought - why not a grudge match if that can be arranged? ulm plate vs ulm chain. :-)

[Baalz]

jaif said:
How about against hoplites, or some other early-game heavy infantry. In general if you fight someone early w/o magic you are putting your inf vs their inf with missile fire around you.

Egad, this is the situation which leads people to conclude MA Ulm sucks. This is a very bad way to use Ulmish infantry and really should only ever come up against indies during your initial expansion. Think of Ulmish infantry like longdead - they're not there to win the fight, they're there to get in the way of the enemy while somebody else wins.

In a real game you're not going to have "no" research done by the time you get in a fight, and some fairly low level research amplifies Ulm's combat significantly. A simple legions of steel helps a lot, and Ulm will usually have construction research prioritized anyway. Depending on who you're fighting blade wind or destruction are often going to be available before heavy fighting is joined - and they absolutely dominate many kinds of foes. Heck, even if you insist on no magic, sending infantry in alone (with no knights or anything to deal damage) is just asking to be killed. Throw in a couple black lords with cheaply forged fire brands or anything to deal damage.

[jaif]

We agree that you don't toss in infantry by themselves. But if ulm's plate can't stand up to a hoplite mano-a-mano then why pay the extra resources for a plate? Just go with chain.

-Jeff

[Baalz]

The answer is because there are lots of common scenarios where the plate troops will last longer. Fighting hoplites mano-a-mano with no magic support may or may not be one of them.

Try walking into withering flaming arrow/crossbow fire - who lasts longer?

Try (as I mentioned) most melee after legions of steel has been cast? Measure not how many things they can kill, but how long they can hold off a superior force. These are linebackers, after all.

Test survivability against evocation spells - an extra bit of protection goes a long way even against AP damage because of the damage distribution curve I mention above.

Comparing the killing power of the Ulmish infantry is in my opinion missing the point. They're not there to kill stuff.

[jaif]

I grant those scenarios. I said one of them myself - let's see what difference black steel makes against AP.

But black steel does not go the distance. If I'm reading the manual right, after 10 swings the person falls unconscious. After 6 swings, they have a -6 defense (essentially hit every time), and -4 crit (half protection 10/36 of the time).

Meanwhile, you are fighting people who have better magic ability than you do, who know they have to defeat armor so they bring poison/fear/lightning/acid/whatever to the battlefield.

-Jeff

P.S. Honestly, after reading the endurance rules the key is to bring stun damage or to otherwise wear out the black plate troops.

[Baalz]

Sure, try it with legions of steel cast - this is hardly a rare situation for Ulm. Towards the end of the curve extra protection is exponentially more effective because of the distribution curve of blows which will pierce it.

Look at it this way, a 10 str guy with a spear that does 3 damage will do 13 + open d6 damage. Very rough math here, but ballpark to do damage to a 20 protection unit the roll would have to be 8 over the die roll for the protection, so about 8% of hits will deal damage. To damage a 24 protection unit the roll will have to be 12 over, so a bit over 2% will inflict damage. So, adding 20% to the protection reduces the damaging blows by a factor of around 4.

Its not the rare colossal damage hits which bring down heavy infantry in numbers, it's the adding up of the 1 and 2 point hits as they get swarmed.