Forge of Ulm

[Mightypeon]

Shinuyama has very good troops, and more importantly very varied troops.
Ulm has excellent heavy infantry, Shinuyama can pick and choose between very good heavy infantry, size 1 infantry with human stats, size one archers, Armour piercing aquatic Size 2 infantry for 1 resrouces, ok giant like troops for one gold piece.
Shinuyama also has excellent recruit anywhere mages. E2F2D2W1 Sacreds that get a guaranteed other pick and a maybe additional pick. They have better Earth access than MA Ulm since their mages have above 25% odds of being E3 (and can get native E4 sometimes), D3 allows skellie spamm and Bane Fire, F3 opens many many Evocations and Flaming arrows (and Shinuyama has some of the cost effective archers in the game too), and E3 can trollface Ulm with Destruction/Iron bane. Iron bane can be safe for Shinu to cast since they can recruit large armies in one turn that dont have artificial armour.

Having certain access to D3,F3,W2,E3,N2 from national mages (N2 coming from Ubas) allows them to get Kitsunes, who are stealthy Nature 3+ mages that can get additional picks in Air (hello rainbow armour), Earth (higher level buffs from N, some forging options), S, or combinations of those. The not unsensible choice of Having a Pretender with E4 (great for your battlemages) and A4(great for giving you A access) allows castings of Dai Tengu, who are A3E1 mages that provide even more options for Shinu.
Buff Spell Wise, Shinuyama can reliably get access to any Major buff that is not in Blood or Astral, it has all evocation options of Ulm and then some, and can get a couple of crucial summons without needing as many boosters as Ulm.

They also have the Shura, one of the most cost effective thugs of the game (Basically a Bane with more fear and Ethereal build in for 6 D gems), and their weakness in S can be dealt by Kitsunes, Shade mages and Dust Priests, all of whom are castable without needing the pretender.

If you think Jomon is strong, Shinuyama is Jomons incredibly nasty bigger brother (Shinuyama can do nearly everything jomon can better, they arent a heavy aquatic power though. If you get UW castles they still get to buy Kappas from there though), who, imho, happens to be in a "smaller" pond too. In an all ages game, I would see MA Pythium, MA Ulm, MA Shinuyama as contenders, while EA (Mict, Niefel, Sauro, Lanka, Hinnom, Acro) and LA (Mari, Mict, Atlantis, others) have a much higher amount of "heavyweights".

Compared to MA Ulm, Shinuyama has better E access, much more flexibility (they also dont have map move 1 issues at all) and can usually react very rapidly to any kind of emerging threat.
Ulm is a very powerfull force on the offense, but often has issues with reacting to sudden developments, Shinuyama is much more fluid.
Forge of Ulm is still overpowered though.