MA Ulm Pretender

[AreaOfEffect]

I've been following this post for some time. Given all that has been said, I would have to say that Endoperez has so far made the wisest observation.

Personally I don't think Ulm needs an awakened SC god. Then again, 'need' is on a case-by-case basis.

I think the first thing the original poster wanted to see was if the new changes to Ulm revised most player's pretender gods. In my case it didn't. My Middle Age Ulm strategy is still an awakened blood fountain with order, production, a little growth, drain, and a little earth magic.

The second thing the original poster wanted to know has evolved into a full blown discussion of rush and anti-rush strategies. The final point of that discussion being that Ulm lacks an aggressive strategy of it's own that can be used to rush with.

Do I agree with this? Not really. However, it is hard to point out any 'big gun', like Ulm's calvary, that isn't extremely limited in production.

[Baalz]

See, the thing is I think this discussion is generally discounting the risk of rushing. Rushing has obvious advantages, which have been pointed out here. It also has *disadvantages* which are not taken into account. An elephant rush, as presented here, is not simply a bonus on top of what you were doing anyway to expand. If you're really pressing an early rush you're doing it at the expense of other expansion - pushing into another player's territory instead of taking easy indies. If you're supporting it with a pretender push you're sacrificing the other things a pretender could be doing for you. The relevant point here is that if the rush is successfully repulsed the rusher is now at a significant disadvantage. If you attack with a dragon pretender on turn 4 and I kill him, you're fairly crippled (long term). If you attack with 25 elephants and I manage to beat them with minimal losses you've just sacrificed 5+ expansion parties and all the relevant opportunity costs. The defender has several built in advantages. PD is an obvious one. Better research/income is generally another as the rusher uses mage turns and design points for rushing rather than growth. Having a chance to react is another one: if elephants attack my border territories I almost certainly have a turn or two to recruit/research specific counters before they threaten my capital. The rusher has advantages, the defender has different ones.

I think it's obvious that in a contest between equally skilled opponents you'll lose more than half the time if your opponent successfully applies a national strength (a strong early rush) against one of your national weaknesses (a slower start). I don't think this means that any nation with a slower start is horribly crippled, it's just one of the weaknesses that you have to consider in your overall plan. Some nations are fairly screwed if they are targeted by an early rush. Some nations have weak research and no astral/death magic and are screwed if they don't take an early lead. Some nations have very specific counters like anti undead/demon spells so they're very screwed if they happen to have a certain type of opponent at a certain stage of the game. Every nation has strengths and weaknesses and some of them are easier to use than others.

Not being able to rush/counter-rush does not mean a nation is crippled. In my experience there's a fairly good mix between the initial fast expander being able to translate that into a win and the tortoises being able to pass the gasping sprinters as they brightly burn out. Being the defender has it's own advantages, and if you're able to capitalize on them you can show the rusher what he's given up to be able to rush.

[Endoperez]

Baalz said:
See, the thing is I think this discussion is generally discounting the risk of rushing. Rushing has obvious advantages, which have been pointed out here. It also has *disadvantages* which are not taken into account. An elephant rush, as presented here, is not simply a bonus on top of what you were doing anyway to expand. If you're really pressing an early rush you're doing it at the expense of other expansion - pushing into another player's territory instead of taking easy indies. If you're supporting it with a pretender push you're sacrificing the other things a pretender could be doing for you. The relevant point here is that if the rush is successfully repulsed the rusher is now at a significant disadvantage. If you attack with a dragon pretender on turn 4 and I kill him, you're fairly crippled (long term). If you attack with 25 elephants and I manage to beat them with minimal losses you've just sacrificed 5+ expansion parties and all the relevant opportunity costs. The defender has several built in advantages. PD is an obvious one. Better research/income is generally another as the rusher uses mage turns and design points for rushing rather than growth. Having a chance to react is another one: if elephants attack my border territories I almost certainly have a turn or two to recruit/research specific counters before they threaten my capital. The rusher has advantages, the defender has different ones.

Turn or two of time to react isn't enough, and furhtermore, AFAIK elephant rush is very easy to convert from expansion to rush. It will take few turns to move about half of your armies (the ones expanding into the other direction) towards the rusheé, and unless your mages can teleport/cloud trapeze/fly you lose some research while they move. Unfortunately, Arcoscephale's fast-moving armies and teleporting mages aren't really slowed down.

If Cave Drakes were viable, they MIGHT work. They are big and have lots of hp, all Ulm's researchers can cast the spell, Ulm has the gems to summon them and Ulm wants Summon Earth Power any way - but spending gems on those is still a waste. 8 gems for 1? You'd probably need about as many as your enemy has elephants, and even 20 elephants would require you to spend 160 gems... Even if you did survive the rush, spending gems against gold will probably cost you the game in the long run.

EDIT: even equal numbers of cave drakes are just massacred by the elephants.

[Baalz]

Endoperez said:
Turn or two of time to react isn't enough, and furhtermore, AFAIK elephant rush is very easy to convert from expansion to rush. It will take few turns to move about half of your armies (the ones expanding into the other direction) towards the rusheé, and unless your mages can teleport/cloud trapeze/fly you lose some research while they move. Unfortunately, Arcoscephale's fast-moving armies and teleporting mages aren't really slowed down.

If Cave Drakes were viable, they MIGHT work. They are big and have lots of hp, all Ulm's researchers can cast the spell, Ulm has the gems to summon them and Ulm wants Summon Earth Power any way - but spending gems on those is still a waste. 8 gems for 1? You'd probably need about as many as your enemy has elephants, and even 20 elephants would require you to spend 160 gems... Even if you did survive the rush, spending gems against gold will probably cost you the game in the long run.

EDIT: even equal numbers of cave drakes are just massacred by the elephants.

Well, I disagree, a few turns to react is significant. If I've got 2 castles up and production-3 scales and my opponent takes 2 turns to gather his forces and 2 more to reach the point he's threatening my capital it's not unreasonable to think I've got 100+ troops recruited specifically to counter him and been able to research a level or two in one path. And again we're getting into this too perfect storm. You can't have an awake expansion pretender, a bunch of gold dumped into elephants, mages marching with the army and thaum-3 researched (teleport keeps being brought up) if you're talking about attacking me on turn 6.

Gah, I seem to have gotten sucked back into playing "in theory". I will comment though that cave drakes can be reasonably effective if you realize that they're not there to kill the elephants, they're there to trip them up and stall the charge to give smiths and arbalests time to do the killing. You don't need anywhere near 1:1 for this, more like 1:5. Elephants generally don't do so well if you can get them to hold still on the front line for just a couple turns which is where you want to aim for a counter.

[Xietor]

Like many things, there may not be a "correct" answer. But taking an awake size 6 pretender as Ulm certainly enhances Ulm's chances to see the middle game. Of that I think there can be no argument.

Likewise, taking a archmage for magical diversity is much better and gives Ulm more options in the middle and endgame. That is not disputed either.

But I maintain that Ulm is perceived as weak, and that perception will cause them to be rushed early. So I still think it is prudent when designing Ulm to keep that fact in mind.

[Endoperez]

15 elephants killed 14 of the 15 Cave Drakes in two turns. That helps, but it's nowhere as good as I had hoped.

Turn 6 rush will be different than turn 10 or 16 rush, but if you're expanding with Elephants and research with mages who can Soul Slay and teleport if you get the research done. Arcos does the same thing regardless of when it rushes.

Arcos can reach level 3 research on turn 7, with mages teleporting on turn 8, without difficulty, on Easy research, with fire dragon. So on easy research at least, starting rush on turn 6 with elephants and pretender, and teleporting in mages for the important battle, is quite doable. I'm not sure if they could have Soul Slay for that battle, but I doubt it.

It can't be done on normal research, not so quickly. Which have you been thinking about?

[B0rsuk]

Does anyone actually play on Easy research in MP ?!?! I thought many people agree evocations make other parts of the game insignificant by midgame. Why make it worse ?

[Baalz]

Endoperez said:
15 elephants killed 14 of the 15 Cave Drakes in two turns. That helps, but it's nowhere as good as I had hoped.

Hmmm, I hadn't actually tried that out, I thought they'd do better than that based on how well crushers work with that strat. I have used crushers and they work pretty darn good, just one crusher and that huge mass of of elephants looks like it runs into a brick wall - though you probably want to use a couple to keep the elephants from just going around.

[Twan]

With easy research Ulm using the awake great sage has evocation 3 + thaum 2 in turn 6 (bonds of fire, iron darts or magma bolts for the priest smiths, and the great sage can use berserkers to have some guys ignoring the dragon awe).

If Ulm turtle in his capitol and continue researchs up to turn 9 (evocation 3 + alteration 2 + thaum 3) the priest smiths can use earth meld to slow the elephants when the great sage uses spells like rage or panic.

Not to say that it's sufficient to have 100% chances to stop a rush, but I think it's far to be a totally hopeless situation.

Especially if the attack happens a little later (like it's far more probable considering Arco has to find Ulm capital first and won't risk elephants against knights without some alteration researched for body ethearal ; say they start to attack around turn 12-13 and the big battle happen in turn 16) Ulm may have conjuration 3/ alteration 2/ thaumaturgy 3 / evocation 5/ construction 4 (so a great sage with earth boots able to kill some elephants or an unlucky dragon with gifts from heaven ; and smiths with earth power) when Arco (with magic 1) has thaum 5 / alt 4 and a level 2 in another school.

(test made just counting capitol researchers, didn't built castles, just made priest smiths and astrologers, and even the dragon was set to research, some castles build early can make Arco closer in research -if they build the same number-, but I think it's hard to afford several castles + elephants, so Ulm would probably have more forts)