MA Ulm Pretender

[CUnknown]

So, it's true that an awake combat pretender helps Ulm (or really any faction) survive to the midgame. I also think it's true that Ulm has particular difficulties surviving an early elephant rush -- that sort of rush is normally difficult to stop, but for Ulm it may mean death 90% of the time if done by a skilled player and you as Ulm don't have allies to back you up.

Baalz suggests that Ulm has the tools to stop an elephant rush, and he's right, as he showed. But I still think most people agree that a different faction would stand up better than Ulm to this same rush.

But, how often does an elephant rush happen? How many elephant rushers are there in middle age, three? (Caelum, Arcos, Bandar Log) If all three of these have signed up to a game, you might want to think twice before signing up as Ulm.

But, normally, maybe only one of these three will be present. And the odds that you will be bordering them as Ulm aren't huge. And then the odds that the elephant rusher gets rushed himself or otherwise forced into a war with someone other than you..

I mean, sure maybe we've identified a weakness for Ulm. But, it's a weakness that affects only like, what, 5% of games? Is it really worth fretting so much over? At least the major rushing worry, super-blessed sacreds, has been lessened a lot for Ulm due to the current patch. So, Ulm right now has good odds for surviving most rushes, imo.

Now maybe someone should come up with a rush build for Ulm. I wonder what that would look like. Is it possible?

[Xietor]

I think Abysia is just as vulnerable as Ulm to an Elephant rush. But many races have no need to take an awake pretender.

They have tough castle bought troops that can hold out for the 1st year.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by Xietor

I think Abysia is just as vulnerable as Ulm to an Elephant rush. But many races have no need to take an awake pretender.

They have tough castle bought troops that can hold out for the 1st year.

MA Aby has Beast Trainers, who have Animal Awe+3. I took a 12-elephant indy province in MP at the end of year 1, with just 1 Trainer and minor chaff lost, using 2 Beast Trainers, 2 indy commanders wielding Rat Tails (built by Wolf Tribe Shamans I'd been hiring to try to get a D1), my starting army, some free event militia, and a few salamanders.

There was no real loss building Beast Trainers instead of mages at the second fort (actually I had 3 forts because I got a freebie from luck-3) because I'm using drain-2 scales anyway.

Aby can also build H3's at all forts, for Smite.

Edit: Whoops, sorry to have gone all OT!

[Baalz]

CUnknown said:
Now maybe someone should come up with a rush build for Ulm. I wonder what that would look like. Is it possible?

Funny thing, I was actually just looking at this based on this thread, and I decided to do it with a rainbow mage. Was going better a couple beers ago. I have managed to put together some fairly nasty stuff, but I suppose it depends on what your definition of a rush as there's no way Ulm is going to be a threat on turn 6. Turn 12 though it's not difficult to have three castles pumping out arbalests and black plate flail infantry (double attacks) backed by a significant number of smiths casting destruction and earth meld for quite the double whammy of removing both protection and defense (you've got to use earth gems for destruction initially since you've got no earthpower). You also bring whatever indie slingers and archers you can scrape together. Finally, your rainbow pretender wind guides your massed arbalests and follows that up by casting wooden warriors a couple times which stacks...nicely with black plate infantry while wind guided slings/shortbows are plenty nasty enough when falling on the victims of destruction. True this has some obvious counters if you're expecting it and doesn't have the universal application of a classic rush (its just not gonna work against some nations), but there are plenty of nations that would have a lot of trouble dealing with this very unexpectedly aggressive Ulm with research they have available on turn 12.

[Sir_Dr_D]

With Black halbreds, can you not now rush a nation that is reliant on blesses.