Is black plate worth it?

[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]

Yes, just as your enemies know what your weaknesses are, so do you and you should plan around them. With magical support on one or both sides it's a rare fight that lasts more than three or four rounds of the infantry slugging it out - you rarely need to worry at all about your infantry passing out from fatigue. What you need to worry about is them collapsing under the initial charge, being decimated by artillery/archery before they engage, and being flanked. If you can buy the time for your mages to go through all 5 spells you've scripted, and maybe lob a couple more on their own you've already blown 80% of your load - generally the battle's decided at that point.

As to the lighting/poison/whatever argument - I don't buy it. Your argument is that there are some situations which black plate is no better than chainmail. No arguments, my retort is that they cost the same gold which is usually the limmiting factor on how many you can get. At the end of the day I'd rather have 40 black plate infantry than 40 chainmail ones because there are lots of situations where the black plate is better.

[jaif]

Sounds like we have opposite situations. :-) My fights often go the distance, and gold is rarely an issue. Gems - sure. Resources - sometimes. But gold? Only on desperate turns (e.g. need to build that castle and field an emergency force on the wrong end of the map).

One thing I noticed - I never build black lords. It costs too much to lose them. You and I seem to do that different, so maybe that's a tactical change that I need to try.

-Jeff