taking on ulm

[Lord_Bob]

Build magic shields to protect your mages from arrow fire. You need to stop them from dying.

[thejeff]

Shields or robes/amulets of missile protection.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Elephants are low morale. There's that short range Thaumaturgy 2 spell, Bonds of Fire, and Thau 4 spell Prison of Fire (with better range). If you're dealing with just a few elephants, a few magicians should be able to lock down the elephants with Bonds of Fire.

There's some blood spells that may be of use against Elephants. Hellbind Heart - instead of taking Elephants out of the battle, turn them to your side.

Morales' a strength of regular Ulm infantry, on the other hand. Though magic resistantce is still a weakness.

Harm is a rather long range spell, though you need a decent blood sabbath to make it effective. Both its AOE and DMG increase as your level goes up. I'm not sure exactly how the damage scales, so I can't say whether its worth it compared to your fire spells, but considered Ulm's level of armor, its worth taking a look.

If your mages are dying, the shields are definetly a good idea,and you can add some extra protection to your blood mages with Pain Transfer.

For fire... your mages won't be much use after its triggered, but Phoenix Fire can reduce your casulties during a win. Unless they're in the middle of your troops when you die- but hey, you're abysia, fire doesn't bother you, just any independents you may have picked up along the way.

[Baalz]

Hmmm, I'm not 100% sure from your posts if you're asking about Abyssian strategies to deal with EA Ulm, or more general advice. Sounds like you've got 2 main problems, elephants and archers/good infantry.

Here's a good thread with just about every effective way to deal with elephants:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...=&fpart=1&vc=1

As to the troops you've got several options to deal with arrows ranging from simple heavy, shield bearing infantry (basically ignores arrows even with no magic support, but hard to come by in EA) to battlefield enchantments like arrow fend or storm. Also, anything which just generally makes you tougher will help against arrows as well, so consider things like mass protection, legions of steel, an astral bless, etc.

Outside of the arrows EA Ulm has fairly offensive units, a lot of dual wield weapons and no shields so depending on what you've got available and what he's fielding consider things like blade wind, bows of war, archers of your own, etc. as well as the more generally effective falling flames etc. Thugs are going to get torn up from concentrated arrow fire and dual wielding swarms so they're not the best choice until you can start fielding real SCs.

[sum1lost]

Get 4 or so B4 mages, and cast bloodletting a few times in a row, with penetration boosters, after one guy has cast antimagic. His army should evaporate. Also maybe firestorm, if you have the research.

Battlefield spells are my favorite.

Another technique that has worked for me is using c'tis, and casting darkness while having sauromancers summon huge number of undead.

[Valandil]

I'm not too sure about bloodletting. That's pretty fiercely self-destructive, since it has no counter except MR.

As EA abysia, I'd just throw fire evos at the enemy under cover of Darkness/storm/ethereality/mistform/airshield/ luck (choose all that apply.) 700 troops shouldn't be more than a half dozen fire mages can handle.

[sum1lost]

NOT storm. Storm has rain as a component, and will cause your firemages to faint quickly, while dealing less damage.

Bloodletting combined with anti magic, against Ulms low mr troops is a worthwhile trade, I think. You really only need a few troops in front to screen for a turn or so while your warlocks wipe out their army. Remember, bloodletting heals the warlocks casting it.

[capnq]

I randomly got Ulm as an opponent in my first game with the demo. I wanted to try using Stellar Cascades (Evocation 5, Astral 2) against them, but the demo doesn't allow research above level 4.