This Guide is Primarily Focused for CBM. All comments are welcome.
LA Ulm is one of my most favored nation, and has the ability to become one of the powerhouses in any game.
Advantages: Strong Blood, astral spies, Iron Blizzard, great national troops, Vampires (specifically counts), and great magic diversity.
Weaknesses: Resource intensive for most troops, rather weak mages and research, and low magic resistance.
At first glance, the weaknesses are crippling. Bad research? Weak Mages? Low Magic Resistance? Resource intensive troops? THAT’S HORRIBLE! Your first instinct would be to pick a SC pretender to fuel early expansion (in the form of the thematic Vampire Queen), or an awake rainbow pretender to even out the research. To me, building either of those designs into viable pretenders costs some severe damage to design points.
Dormant Great Enchantress (Dominion 6)
F2A2W2E4S4D3N2B4
Order3/Sloth1/Cold(or Heat)3/Growth1/Magic1
A Rainbow pretender works wonders for LA Ulm, as it allows Black Forest to get into all the magic paths that it has available. Once you forge some boosters and get some gems flowing, your randoms can all start remote site searching for more gems, and more gems means better accessibility to a magic path. The minor blesses are also very useful (although the main point of 4S4B is for endgame astral and blood), as Ulm can use all the MR it can get, the blood adds to the utility of the Templars, and the Reinvigoration works wonders for your Priests (as it lets them spam Iron Blizzard longer). The Order is necessary to help put up as many forts as quickly as possible (as well as benefiting patrolling a bit), as well as funding massive amounts of your cheap mages and troops. Black Forest, while many of their troops do have some very high resource costs, can still expand perfectly well without a SC, productivity, or really any magic whatsoever. Instead of relying on Zweihanders, rely on Rangers of Ulm (they make great, cheap, and most importantly, massable crossbowmen, and waaaay better melee fighters then practically any other archer you’ll find) for expansion, with a few Shields to draw arrow fire and maybe some Pikeneers to repel cavalry and weaker infantry. Second, magic isn’t crucial for LA Ulm to expand, and research will really be a secondary concern to blood hunting with Second Tier members (and setting up a working blood economy), expansion, and new forts. Instead of whining about all those good spells you can’t cast because of low magic levels, focus on gathering at least 44 blood slaves for the turn your pretender awakens. I’m not suggesting you abandon research altogether: just that it isn’t critical for your survival early on. LA Ulm is equipped to repel pretty much any kind of rush you’d face. The classic Rush-Any-Era-Ulm-With-Elephants Rush? An army of Rangers and some Black Templars (with +2 Reinvigoration, +2 Strength, and +1 Magic Resistance, for a little extra oompf) are more than enough with some PD (and if they come year 2-3, Second Tier Members and Iron Priests with mind burn, paralyze, iron darts, and iron blizzard will just decimate any would-be tramplers). Supercombatants? Halberdiers make Supercombatants bleed like it’s the new hip thing to do. A typical, clichéd sacred rush? Ghoul Guardians eat sacreds, both literally and figuratively, for breakfast: and then some. And what about a giant chaff army with plenty of range (like Markatas)? Shields to deflect the arrows, pikes or halberds to repel the swarm of chaff. And this is just the beginning: we haven’t even gotten to the best part.
Ok: your ranger/shields/pike armies have won you a fairly large expansion by itself, you’ve got a bunch of forts up cranking out troops (so rangers will stop being your primary unit), and a bunch of blood slaves to summon a vampire count. Your research though is rather below average compared to other nations at this point (though above Ermor level), and people are starting to look at you for territory. This is when your pretender wakes up, and the whole game changes. Start your pretender off casting Sanguine Heritage for your first immortal harbinger of doom (as I call the Counts). Vampire Counts are going to be an essential part of your strategy from here on out. Their going to start to become your primary source of blood slaves, as well as human thralls for a bit of patrolling and high morale chaff. Plus, they can double as immortal thugs that (coupled with good dominion: I suggest putting up more then a few temples to both spread and raise your dominion level, and using your Inquisitor acolytes or priests to keep it positive) make attacking you insanely costly (if you launch kamikaze attacks or mass them together). Plus, they can summon more counts with a Skull Staff and a Brazen Vessel. From this point on, get your Pretender on research and put any new Second Tier Members onto research as well. Summon new counts as soon as you get the blood slaves to do so, and you’ll start raking in the blood slaves and the tempo starts to quicken (SDRs are a must). With your new focus on your research (with your forts now turning out researchers instead of blood hunters); you’ll start seeing your once lowly research rise in an exponential curve of pure, unadulterated epic win. Your rainbow pretender can start researching, and with 6 research from cheap Second Tiers, you can start climbing the charts quite rapidly. Assuming you have 2 forts up at the end of year one, you get 12.2x+29 as your research equation, and the area under a research-time graph equals the total research done (or the ant derivative). Using calculus, we can determine the total research to equal 6.1x^2+29x, which means 1226.4 research points by the end of year two. If you’ve put up 3 fortresses by the time your pretender wakes up, you get 18.3x+29 which anti-derives into 9.15x^2+29x which means 1665.6 research points: and this is assuming you don’t have any researchers to begin year one with, and either of the two totals are more than enough to take you to Evocation-6 and Construction-4 (on normal anyway). You might not take Bogarus in terms of research, but you’ll definitely be in the top tier. Your main focuses will be on Evocation 6 (for Iron Blizzard), and on Construction 4 (for that Brazen Vessel and Skull Staff). If you’re really being pressed hard, go for Thaumaturgy 4 and Evocation 3 for Paralyze and Mind Burn and Iron Darts. When you get you Evocation 6: you’re pretty much set in terms of battlefield magic. Iron Priests are criminally cheap for their utility, recruit anywhere, and a group of 3 or more spamming Iron Blizzard will melt away practically ANY army you face. I’m not exaggerating: it’s Blade Wind on steroids that not only increases with Earth levels, but is also armor piercing (say goodbye to those knights) and deals extra, extra damage to magic beings. Plus the fatigue cost is ridiculously low; especially if they’re earth random and use Earth Power (I mean it‘s aweful). Once you have Iron Blizzard, you’re basically set on battlefield magic. The minor earth bless also comes into play here, and your priests are able to spam even more of it. Show anyone who dares think Black Forest is weak on magics the errors of their way with your cheap and easy to use Iron Blizzard Spam. At this point, you can focus on pretty much any other school you need: more construction for artifacts, conjuration for elemental royalty and SCs, and blood for…well, it’s blood! It’s an awesome school that does so much; it can only be described as blood.
Now we have battlefield magic covered: time to get to gems and higher level magics. Your pretender will be your main source of boosters for the time being (a single thistle mace for a nature random fortune teller for example will start a chain reaction and allow you to spam remote nature searching) and a site searched to start the gems flowing. If you’d rather not spend the time manually searching with your pretender though, you can also have your Illuminated Ones mass astral search and then cast Ascahic Record (though this is inefficient). Once the gems start flowing though, Ulm’s gem income will start skyrocketing. A few magic boosters and you have easy site searching for 7 out of 8 paths (to access water, just empower a priest and forge some water boosters and Air is simply easier to empower an air random priest for searching). A few skulls of fire and a thistle mace are all you need to get it started (and a brazen vessel and blood thorn for a count to start forging blood boosters). Once that chain gets started, your pretender is free to either site search (if you really want him to), keep researching, or start doing rituals. If you really want to boost your research, forge a few skull mentors with that large pile of death gems gathering dust (since you should be able to easily death site search with death random fortune tellers). Also, a Ring of Wizardry is always a good investment for your rainbow pretender. Also, with a booming blood economy, it’ll be a piece of cake to empower an earth random priest in blood, give him a pair of earth boots, and a blood booster, and start forging blood stones (with a dwarven hammer of course. Common sense much?). Maybe I’m not making it seem important enough. BLOOD STONES ARE IMPORTANT TO ULM. Your Priests with a hammer have a 40% gem reduction (15%+25%), and blood stones are REALLY important to Ulm. Heck, why settle for one iron priest forging them? Get two, or three, or four. You’ve got the blood to forge them: the only thing you need to worry about are the earth gems. Quite the opposite from MA Ulm, where blood was the limiting factor. You should be rolling in a sea of earth gems by endgame.
Now back to the counts and your blood economy. Cordon off and patrol (wolves get a patrol bonus in 1.44, which makes them your prime candidate) as many mid-size provinces as you need to keep your blood economy strong, and you should be easily able to rival Mictlan as a blood power. Counts will start to grow exponentially as your blood economy grows, and free thrall chaff will easily provide enough bodies to keep your hard-hitting Iron Blizzards going, as well as patroller. This is where the Growth comes in: you’ll be able to build up two or three counts or Second Tier members (for the Illuminated ones, give them SDRs for 90% effectiveness) per province, with 0% taxes and a commander patrolling with thrall chaff and can still expect to keep your population growing. Now, as you start capturing more provinces and start putting up more labs (if you want to spare yourself the micromanagement), you’re blood income will increase with it. Counts are also excellent, and I mean excellent, thugs and raiders, and are especially deadly in your own dominion. Imagine this: flying, sneaky, and IMMORTAL vampires spamming Shadow Blast, Summon Lammas, Darkness, Soul Vortex, and anything else you want. With Vampire Lords…oh man. Now you get free summonable thralls (though they aren't really massable, go with regular summonings instead). Their immortality just means you can suicide them with your Lord with Soul Vortex and Attack Rear in the middle of battles. Just imagine the damage they can do to enemy mages…all casting spells at the rear. Soul Vortex makes it even more potent, because now you’re adding extra fatigue to their counters. Now imagine slapping on Medallions of Vengeances for those suicidal attacks: dead mages and commanders: rare, medium, or well done? Not only can’t they run from your flying thugs of dooooooooooom (DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!), but the fatigue will throw off any well-planned communion. Say hello to dead communion slaves (which in the magic weak Late Era, are critically important to most nations in need of heavy magically support).
By now, you can basically abandon your national units in favor of a massive chaff army of thralls and wolves (did I mention wolfherds are really, really important to mass?), you’d be stronger if you didn’t. The unit that starts to shine again (after fading into obscurity after expansion) is the Ranger. Your conventional army of wolves, shields, zweihanders, thralls, pikes, and halberds are already deadly with just priests (add in some large communions and they’ll run in terror). Now throw in STEALTHY armies of wolf chaff, rangers, vampires, and, the coup de grâce, Stealthy Illuminated One Communions (with flaming arrows and arrow fend, if you empowered, for better survivability) and endgame astral! Now your enemies don’t just fear your frontline army, they’re afraid you’ll have giant armies of unmindhuntable communioned death attacking them from the rear. Couple that with astral spies (for shutting down fortresses with ease: and also unmindhuntable), you’ll inspire more fear then ANY Ashen Emperor could ever aspire to be. Your blood economy should also be booming. Once you get to that point, you can start getting into Vampire Lords and massing armies of thralls (all immortal in friendly dominion). Now, with inquisitor priests, you don't have to worry about dominion pushes, and thus your provinces will be virtually impregnable. Sure your opponents can take one here or there, but they need to get past your strings of forts...AND immortal swarms of vampires. Heck, a few equipped with medallions of vengeances set to attack rear will decimate their commanders and mages. Now throw in buffed vampire thralls in friendly dominion. And you thought Ermor or R'lyeh can throw neverending swarms of chaff? Now see what happens when you're fighting the same swarms over and over again...that keeps growing.
Now for Supercombatants: Ulm, with its very large range of magic, has a variety of supercombatant options. Death, in the form of Tartarians, is a common option. LA Ulm can also summon quite a few of the elemental royals: and being one of the strongest blood nations in the LA, they also have a shot at Demon Lords and all those other wonderful blood summons.
Unit Critique:
Villains: you are generally never going to use them. The low morale makes them unreliable at best without Sermons of Courage. Plus the fact that short bows are useless in general in the Late Age, when armor is common. They do however fill a very useful niche. Against LA R’lyeh, you need mass missiles to fight off their unarmored chaff hordes: and whatdoyaknow, villains don’t have a reload time like Rangers. And what’s this? They have normal magic resistance (while the rest of Ulm has -1 MR)?!?! This couldn’t be useful against the mass artillery R’lyeh could field (which, lo and behold, can be negated by MR)…could it? And what’s more, they’re easy to mass with their cheap resource cost.
Rangers of Ulm: Rangers are and extremely versatile and useful lot. They might not have shields, but their mass crossbows are also easy to mass (though not to the same quantity as villains), and they make fairly decent melee fighters if need be. They are going to be your primary expansion unit in the early game, and have lots of utility after that as guerilla fighters and for harassing. Armies of these can be massed under Ranger Captains with Crowns of Commands and Scepters of Authorities and strike any province of your choosing (think EA Helheim and Vanheim for some ideas as to how you can use them), and they’re a great unit all in all, especially since with their lower resource cost makes them easier to mass then your infantry.
Pikemen: Pikes are actually very useful all in all. While they have their weaknesses (against mass archers, trample, and massive armies of troops), they have a lot of utility. They’ve got better survivability then shields against giants (because if a giant lands a hit, your shield isn’t going to keep you alive anyway, whereas repel stays useful), and they do rather well against hoplites (which carry shorter spears then Pikemen and thus lose their repel advantage) and low morale chaff. They are also useful against heavy cavalry by being able to negate the tricksy and deadly charge bonus on their lances (the shock effect of the lances is the best part of cavalry). With the lower resource cost compared to the rest of Black Forest’s infantry, they fill a very useful niche, especially against Giant nations like Utgard and Gath.
Halberdiers: Halberds fill another useful niche in Black Forest’s arsenal. With the extra castle defense bonus, they’re efficient in defending your forts, which means you’ll be able to hold whatever you take. They might have slightly less length then the pikes (which means less repelling action), but they do get a boost in damage, and lets them fill yet another niche in the already flexible Ulmish army.
Infantry of Ulm (with Shields!): These units will be your only shield bearers (unless you count Templars) and your main arrow decoys for every of your armies. Plus the morningstars they wield are devastating against other shield infantry (in that they get a bonus against shields), which makes them great combat infantry against nations that have nothing BUT shields (like, say, LA Pythium). All in all, these are another essential unit in the Ulm arsenal.
Zweihanders: These bad boys have the best protection in all of LA Ulm (along with Templars). They have great survivability thus against normal infantry and with their increased stats and Great Swords, they can deal damage like no tomorrow. They might be vulnerable against crossbows and longbows, but they‘re worth the price (except in the early game when quantity of rangers beats quality of infantry against independents). Zweihanders are just good all around, in my opinion. Also, they have the best gold-resource ratio of all of LA Ulm’s units.
Ghoul Guardians: Besides buying an occasional Templar, these will be your primary recruit at your capital once you get a fort up. They fill plenty of niches for the Black Forest, and you’re naïve if you think they’re weak. Their black halberds, besides being of a length long enough to repel most standard infantry and dealing more damage then pikes, also deal a 1 square, AOE, unavoidable, fatigue damage to all sacred units. This makes them indispensable and a must against bless-dependent nations, for example Mictlan. Against easily massable sacred troops, like Jaguar or Eagle Warriors, they’ll throttle them; against expensive and high-end bless troops, they’re practically overpowered. Not only that, they have a 2 person bonus in defending castles, and have 2 movement (whereas the rest of Ulm’s infantry has 1), and that means they’re far more flexible then any of your other infantry. To top that off, they’re stats are higher then your infantry (with +4 HP compared to Pikes, Shields, and Halberds and +3HP compared to Zweihanders, along with +2 strength, high morale, and 19(!) protection), and are undead (which means poison resistance and no supplies). They also have 14 magic resistance, which makes them extremely difficult to banish, and (throw in +4 MR from a Tempering of the Will cast by a fully decked out black priest geared to penetrate, and banish will be out of the question) without encumbrance, they can duke it out and outlast enemy infantry without fear of fatigue.
Black Templars: Templars are another niche unit. They are difficult to mass and not worth a bless strategy, but they have their uses. Against large tramplers, they’ll work splendidly (their larger size means less damage from elephants, and their shock value will poke holes in any plump pachyderm that strays by, especially with a minor blood bless), and can and should be used sparingly to confuse your enemy. They are also good in combination with the Hochmeister for a thug group (one is enough to bodyguard him). Other then that, all things that applied to Black Knights with MA Ulm applies here.
Commander of Ulm: Your basic chaff ferry, patroller, and army commander. Nothing special, although throwing on a Bow gives them some use in battle (but you can do that with any commander).
Ranger Captain: Throw on a Crown of Command and Scepter of Authority and you get a free stealthy commander for ranger raids. Also they’re cheap snipers if you need one.
Black Acolyte: Cheap Inquisitor unit for keeping your dominion high. They can bless your Black Priests and save you some script space, and the earth random ones are cheap Iron Blizzard casters.
Member of the First Tier: They’ll be cheap, easy to mass, communion slaves and also make unmindhuntable spies, which means you can shut down fortresses with unrest with impunity.
Hochmeister: They make good thugs and can bless your Templars easily. Thugging them out is probably a safer and cheaper bet then thugging out a vampire count, since it comes with 20 protection already and can be blessed fairly easily.
Wolfherd: Once you get your count production started and second fort up, these, along with fortunetellers, will be your primary capital-commander recruits. Wolves are by themselves nice chaff, but now in 1.44, they get a patrol bonus (which makes them even more useful). Plus, wolves are stealthy and can accompany your ranger armies in province raids, if you are so inclined. Their utility shouldn’t be underestimated.
Fortune Teller: they are actually more cost-efficient researchers then your Second Tier members, and are your primary access (via randoms) to death and nature. Plus, the reduced chance of bad events never hurt anyone (unless you want an earthquake or hurricane to hit your capital). They also don’t suffer from old age, which is a problem with Second Tier members and Black Priests.
Black Priest: They along with Second Tier members will be your primary battlefield mages. With the sheer amount of variety on the Black Priests, it’s difficult to find all the uses for them. For Earth Random Priests, they can be scripted to cast Tempering the Will, which really helps to cover the sorely lacking MR on Ulm (the spell is E3): give him penetration items to help ensure success. Earth Random Priests can also cast some of the more useful Earth spells with boosters (an Earth Blood stone and a pair of Earth Boots is all you need) and you’ll be casting Earthquake, Petrify, Weapons of Sharpness, Curse of Stones, Army of [insert metal here], and (if you want to) Strength of Giants/Legions of Steel (and anything else I‘m forgetting). They can also cast Iron Blizzard much longer then your other randomed priests. Fire randomed priests are useful for easy access to Magma Bolts/Magma Eruption and the other lovely Fire/Fire-Earth spells. Air randomed Priests can be given boosters to cast wind guide and arrow fend and Rain of Stones, all of which means less reliance on shield infantry. They can also spam Orb Lightning if you are so inclined along with the usual Iron Blizzard. And finally, Astral random mages. While I love the Earth random Priests, the Astral mages arguably have more versatility as they can become communion masters , which means less fatigue and no boosters then Earth randomed Priests. They are also your best non-capital only researchers (due to reduced upkeep via sacreds), (fortune tellers have the same upkeep and 80 lower intial cost).
Member of the Second Tier: Members of the Second Tier will be your primary Communion Masters. The rare randomed Second Tier Members also have great utility: fire randomed Tier members are instant access to high-end battlefield fire magic(ala communion) and the same goes for death randoms. Astral and Blood randoms just increases your already existing paths and means you’ll need less slaves to empower up to endgame battlefield astral and blood magics. The best past about Illuminated One communions is that…they are stealthy! Your enemy will have no idea if a province doesn’t have a hidden communion, and being stealthy, they can accompany your ranger/wolf armies and lay waste to provinces and forts behind enemy lines. You'll also use them to kick off your blood economy: 3-5 (I normally only need to use 3) Second Tiers in a midsized province is more than enough to get you the 44 slaves needed to kick off your vampire chain by your pretender's awakening.
Part Two
Threaded Mode