MA Ulm in CBM 1.9x

[Soyweiser]

Mightypeon, I think upkeep keeps fractions. So 10 is actually 10/15 gold in upkeep. Not 1. But I'm not sure. (Easy to test btw). Brb.

Edit: Done, upkeep for 10 10 cost units: 7 gold per turn. Upkeep for 10 14 gold units, 10 or 9 gold.

[Mightypeon]

I think we may be partly talking past each other here.
Yes, the effect that crossbows have in a battle can diminish greatly with Protective Magic, yet in my opinion, the same happens with most if not all national units.
Movement 2 and the Siege Bonus are never truely outdated however.

But then, I have not been in the situations where Arbalests are most heavily desired yet and I cannot comment on the full scape range 45s tactical abilities so it is well possible that I underestimate Arbalests.

Would you agree with the statement:
If you wish ranged fire support as MA Ulm, usually go with Sappers unless there is a direct reason to go with Arbalests?

I also want to thank Soyweiser for correcting me about upkeep.

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Mightypeon

Would you agree with the statement:
If you wish ranged fire support as MA Ulm, usually go with Sappers unless there is a direct reason to go with Arbalests?

I do not want to be difficult, but that statement is rather odd. If I wish ranged support as MA Ulm, I want it for a reason. That reason determines what kind of ranged support I will invest in. What I can agree to, is that in most games I will probably have recruited more sappers than arbalest-wielders in the end, but both types of units will have been of use.


I readily admit that I am not that good a player and CBM is not my prefered way of enjoying Dominions, so I try not to be too hard to convince in discussions of this kind, but here it is not even close. I understand that a number of you think the ulmish crossbowman with his arbalest is a bad unit, but the arguments presented here so far are less than convincing.

To repeat my stance, I find arbalests useful against heavily armoured units, which includes units getting their good armour score from protective magics.

Yes, magic can make a lot of units obsolete - this includes arbalests - but this does not take away from the fact that arbalests are useful under some circumstances where the usefulness of ordinary crossbows is questionable. It is easy to add protection to units by way of magic - up to a point. Legions of Steel is available at construction 1 and protection at alteration 3, to take two early examples. You do not need a ton of research to apply this - plenty of nations can use it in the first year.

For a lot of nations it is rather easy to bring a good number of units to protection values in the early twenties, but very few - if any - can reach as high 28 without trouble.


The danger posed by arbalests to your own troops is overstated in this thread. Apart from having the heaviest armour around, ulmish troops also have towershields available in combination with good attack scores and decent damage.

Regarding the resource cost, it is important to keep things in perspective. I find the comparison to the LA ulmish ranger totally inappropriate - even aside from everything else, units from different ages cannot be compared in such a fashion - and the marignon crossbowman is the cheapest around in MA. The independent crossbowmen I find mostly seem to be the of the 17 resource variant (2 less than the sapper). Yes, the arbalest-wielders are slightly expensive resource-wise, but they are not EA Arcoscephalian units, they are MA ulmish units. MA Ulm is pretty much a poster nation for production 3 and has a production bonus to boot. Castles with about 300 production per turn should be common - meaning 12 crossbowmen or 15 sappers per turn per castle. And Ulm wants lots of castles anyway. Producing a good number of arbalests per turn should not be a problem.

Now, to illustrate, let me take you through a comparison between
sappers and the ulmish crossbowman. The sapper costs about 4/5 of the resources of a crossbowman and fires 3/2 times as fast. Since the sapper has an extra point of accuracy, we can add another 1/4 of damage and thereby require that the arbalest should do double the damage per shot. The break-point for this is at protection 12. And this is ignoring the fact that the gold cost of the sapper contingent is 7/4 of that of the crossbowman contingent.


The siege bonus and the better map move of the sapper are certainly points in its favour, but the impact of the latter is somewhat diminished by the fact the ulmish infantry has the same map move as the arbalest unit, and the former does not influence in-battle performance.


Finally, before you start planning too much about improvements to MA Ulm, I suggest you play around with it a bit in its latest incarnation. I do not seem to be alone in the opinion that MA Ulm is quite strong in the opening game.

[Corinthian]

The biggest problem imho with the Arbalest is the same as with all expensive crossbowmen. They are not spammable! Ranged units rely on getting critical mass and then maybe back up numbers with some buffs. Arbalesters cost as much resources as Ulms normal infantry! (21?) Compare that with say Marignions Crossbowmen at 11 resources and you'll see the problem. Not to mention LA Ulms rangers at 8 res.

Outside of PD you'll never have enough of them to mater.

[Squirrelloid]

Higher liability to friendly fire and inability to mass effectively: two reasons why the arbalest unit is bad that have already been identified.

Also: flaming arrows applies to crossbows but i'm reasonably sure it doesn't apply to arbalests. While the 'ap' bonus won't matter, this does make the weapons magical (+2 to avoid shields), and does add bonus fire damage. Just a little bit of magic makes crossbows much more effective than arbalests.

[shatner]

I'm telling you, repeating crossbow/scatter shot FTW.

[Mightypeon]

According to the Wiki, flaming arrows should indeed apply to Arbalests. With them, they reach something like 22 AP damage and partly enter the realm of overkill against Humans.
What about the following unit proposal:

Pavise arbalest: Wears an Ulmish towershield/Ulmish Pavise (great parry values and protection, but reduces attack and defense, adds encumberance) in addition to his Arbalest, has excellent head protection and size 3.
Slow, very difficult to damage with arrow fire and even resistant against deflectable evocations, yet not your best choices when you want a lot of Arbalest shots quickly.

Those could be backed up by unarmoured arbalests (costing less resources), getting a certain combined arms feature.
Imho, the Arbalest could also get a precision increase. IIRC, Arbalests tend to be more precise than crossbows not the other way round.

[Mightypeon]

While we are at it, apart from slightly lower resource cost, is there any benefit Mauls have on Battle Axes? Currently it seems like you get 1 defense for 2 resources.

[Mightypeon]

I heavily disagree that map move does not influence battle performance.
Map move defines how many troops will be present (some special situations in which you have only 1 fort and it will be besieged soon excluded), and will often be more important for "massing" purposes than difference in gold/resource cost. As Tamerlane said, "it is better to be on hand with 10 man than absent with 10 thousand".
If you are reinforcing your advancing army from 2 castles, reinforcements of Sapper will eventually catch up with the army, reinforcements from Arbalests much less so. For 2 Ulmish castles, this can easily be 30 Sappers more in the important battle.
In addition, the speed with which you can storm castles influences the size of the relief force, and the size of the garrisson if the enemy has summoning abilities.
If you are sieging someone, with each turn, the size of the possible relief force (or rather, the area from which a relief force can be recruited by the enemy and arrive in time) increases.
However, if you have enough Sappers to "one shot" the castle (and that number is not very high), the enemy has to stop you with what he has at hand right in that area, and any blocking summons he may conjure in haste will not be organized and thus quite useless in the castle battle. This reduces castle taking casulties more than people commonly imagine.
Also, if you are attacking someone, chances are that there will be viable and important targets for Sappers on the Battlefield.

Dominions 3 has several resources, and a successfull strategy is commonly aimed at exploiting the limiting resource of the enemy.
In Dominions, those resources are gold, gems, resources and time. Sappers are highly efficient in "time" warfare, as Map Move 2 gives you a greater freedom/ greater recruiting area to react to a sudden threat, and secondly, they directly reduce the time the enemy has in responding to threats of your own.
There are situations in which time is not that much of an issue, such as getting rushed with only a single castle, but time, or rather, a turn advantadge will never go "out of fashion" as ressources and to a lesser extent Gold do.

[llamabeast]

I heavily disagree that map move does not influence battle performance.

That wasn't what he said. He said that siege bonus doesn't affect battle performance.