taking on ulm

[Edratman]

I am inferring from your post that you are playing a head on head blitz game.

I would use the Neif giants to stop this Ulm tactic. Amass 7 or 8 squads of 4 man sacred giants (nature and earth bless of course). Have your prophet with them and script him for the big bless, then the big bravery spell,smite, smite, smite, spells. Put 2 squads on each flank, one slight staggered behind the other with hold and attack archers and attack rear orders on one of each. Scatter the other four squads around the middle with attack closest orders. This should draw the melee troops to the four center squads clearing the flanks for the other four to get around them.


Anything else depends upon how long you are into the game before you meet your friend regarding spells, buffs and equipment. But it sounds to me that you are about 10 turns into the game.

[MezMerrick]

Thanks for all the advice. No, the last time his Ulm trounced me was end-game, with numbers in the 600-700's. I was Abysia and despite burning over a 1/4 of his army down and sending almost a 100 of those bat flying things to his rear I was still trounced (of course him picking up Elephants in one of his conquered countries didn't help me much). I expect by the endgame of this one he will have stolen someones elephants again, confounding the problem even more. Still, I'm going to implement your strat recommendations and see where this goes.

[Edratman]

If he has elephants, the most effective spell is to spam soul slay. But if you are Abysia, you have trouble getting access to it and I am not familiar enough with them to help. There's one guy with astral plus an astral random, but IIRC you have trouble forging astral boosts.

Soul slay is an level 3 astral spell that seems to always target the largest opponent and is a guaranteed killer of elephants, or anything else. It requires a MR check, but it kills, it does not do partial damage and it has 100% precision IIRC. I love it. A coin and a star cap can get any minor one astral mage up to casting it. Throw in a crystal shield and 2 pearls apiece and 5 or 6 six buffed up 1 astral mages placed in the back row will evaporate virtually any trampling army and also get the large sized commanders as a bonus.

But it is also like everything else in DOM3, that is, it has its time and place where it is great but times where it is the wrong thing. When you are facing hordes of skelly spam you will lose your mages and equipment, as one example.
Of course that is why this game is so much damn fun. In CIV, tanks are always tanks and always work the same way.

[Sombre]

Boosting an S2 caster to use soul slay isn't worth it. Just use paralyze - they're effectively dead when that hits them, just a formality for your troops to chop them up.