MA Ulm Pretender

[CUnknown]

Baalz -- I'm glad we agree! Us Ulm players have to stick together.

Twan -- I agree that rushing to artifacts is risky. I wouldn't do it every game, but as Ulm a nice bonus as Baalz pointed out is Weapons of Sharpness at Const-7. One of the best buffs, and Ulm can cast it with no problem.

However, I think I am inclined to agree with those like Xietor who say that Ulm is extremely weak when faced with a strong early game elephant rush, esp. backed with astral mages. Not that there is no hope if you are creative, but generally you will be in a world of hurt.

I just disagree that you should base your whole strategy with Ulm around defending against an elephant rush.

I am not surprised that you aren't generally an Ulm player, Xietor. You don't seem to think like an Ulm player, hehe (some people would take that as a compliment). Criticisms of Ulm really are valid, Ulm has weaknesses, and if you are concerned about them, the best way to avoid them is to not play Ulm, lol.

Arcosephale and Caelum pose big problems for Ulm, so why not play Arcosephale or Caelum instead?

When I pick a faction, I do so because I am excited about something, some strength they have, not because I'd like to minimize a weakness they have.

I look at Ulm and see, wow, they are the best forge race in the game, how can you max that out to full effect? And I might get stomped by elephants. But that is life.

[Xietor]

Actually my goal is now to play every single ma race. I played MA Pangaea for years(going back to dom II), and they certainly are not one of the elite mp races. I just like their theme.

But I am now playing pythium and arcos for the 1st time, and in future mp games will play every MA race I have yet to play.

So far in mp I have won mp games with Shinuyama, Pangaea, and did very well in the Big Game with Ctis that ended due to unit limit being reached. I owned 7 capitals at that time and likely was about 4th or so in power rankings.

So I have done pretty well with the nonelite ma MP races. Time will tell how I do with pythium and Arcos. Eventually I will get around to playing Ulm, but I am in no rush.

When I do, however, I will have an awake size 6 pretender who is not vulnerable to solar rays.

[Sir_Dr_D]

i vote for a Prince of Death expanded into at least one other path of magic, either nature or astral. Here is why.

1) You can expand almost right away using it. And from my experience it takes a couple turns longer to really start expanding with a nation that relies on production. It needs that boost from the pretender.

2) After you have a fast enough expansion using knights, you can use the pretender as a site searcher, to expand into the addiontal paths.

3) In order to best make use of ulms forging abiliity, you need chasis' to to put the items on. Death provides the best summons for that. In particular with ulms heavy earth forging, you can put heavy encumbrance items on undead. Earth forging isn't as good for thugs that get fatigued.

4)Elephants don't like princes of death.


The only problem with this is a prince of death is very unthemetic for ulm. Ulm breaks away from Ermor to follow an anti magic, anti sacred, anti everything, cult, and then worships a prince of death?

[Xietor]

Did you not just play Ulm in Fallacy Sir_Dr_D? And were they not one of the 1st races to die? That is not a slight to you, you are a good player. But in every single MP game I have been in with Ulm present, they were either the 1st to die, or very close to it.

Have yet to see MA Ulm make it to middle game in any MP game I have played in.

A funny memory i have in the Big Game was talking early to some of the players i knew to see if any of them were close to me, and several said they had their scout out looking for MA Ulm. It was like a winning lottery ticket to start out near MA Ulm. If memory serves Frank Trollman(LA Atlantis) found them 1st and they definitely were the 1st of the 65 races to die.

When the perception exists in the mp community that a race is weak early, then you can expect an early attack.

[Sir_Dr_D]

I was the first to die in that game, for more reasons then just playing Ulm. I hadn't practiced that nation enough. In that game I tried to expand too fast, and ended up dying against indies. The ulm infantry weren't as invinsible as i thought. Even with production three I could not build troops fast enough to take most indies. Which is why I am saying now that an awake pretender is important. In that game I did have a cyclops, but I messed it up. Another mistake I made is I should have been expanding using knights not ifantry. The knights can expand significantly faster then the infantry.

But I agree that in order to win as ulm, you need to get lucky. You could face off an elephant rush as ulm for example, as long all that is the force is elepants. If you need to face elephants backed by mages,elephants made ethereal, or awake pretenders as well, you don't stand much chance. I see this thread as, how you can do as much damage as possible as ulm before dying.

In the game I had to face Shinuyama. Shinuayama, has a lot of powerfull low resource troops. Because they are low resource, Shinuyama can expand much faster. And because their troops are all high strength, ulms armor doesn't help much. I have also found it slow to reasearch as ulm. You need to build a lot of castles before you get going on research. Which means in the early game, anyone you face will likely have higher magic then you. Even if I didn't make those mistakes in the game, I don't think I would have stood much of a chance.