Questions and Comments About the Improved MA Ulm

[Edi]

The Black Priests are supposed to be marginal in MA. The Iron Inquisition has not yet risen and it is only emerging from the Black Order.

So you build a few of those when necessary and build priest-smiths the rest of the time in your capital and master smiths elsewhere. MA Black Priests are designed to be niche instead of common as dirt. Otherwise it screws up the thematics of the nation.

[Endoperez]

Sombre mentioned something on IRC that piqued my interest. I've always mainly recruited the Ulmish crossbowmen in the early game. The infantry is there to kill the survivors and to keep the independents from reaching the arbalests. Sombre said he mostly uses their infantry.

How do you expand with MA Ulm?

[Edi]

Infantry. Crossbowmen are too inefficient because the arbalests fire just once every three turns. I always recruit indie crossbows if I find them. I do use some arbalests for backup and softening the enemy up, but it's the morningstar infantry and guardians that do the heavy lifting.

[Sombre]

The other problem with the arbs is that they are tailor made to kill your own guys. I would either use 90% arbs or 100% infantry basically.

[Endoperez]

Interesting. I've always used the arbalests at "Fire" or "Fire Archers", and recruited indy archers as soon as I can find them, but generally didn't use the infantry much.

[Stryke11]

I rarely recruit arbalests, only in high resource provinces when I'm in a pinch. Since normal archers usually can't punch through Ulm armor, I usually build a castle on the inevitable cheap (i.e. unarmored) indy archer province and spam them. Their range is troublesome, as they tend to run in front of my "hold and attack" infantry to be close enough to hit the enemy.

I typically begin with the regular flail infantry for indys, and then move into the battleaxe infantry (reg and BP) if my opponent is heavily armored (Abysia in my current SP game) or the shielded flail guys (reg and BP) if my opponent has capable ranged troops. I love the idea of the pikemen, but haven't witnessed them ever do anything good. Aren't they supposed to push people away? How do the rest of you set up your differing infantry types? As was said in the other thread, I wouldn't mind ditching the shield/hammer guys and the maul guys and replacing them with a medium infantry guy with stratmove 2 and a short or broadsword.

I'm currently trying to jumpstart a blood stone factory, and I have 10 indy commanders and scouts searching in a province and in about 8-10 turns I have amassed a mighty 4 blood slaves and even without tax the province is pissed. I have blood on my pretender but he's occupied with searching sites in order to make up for the lack of magic diversity. In the blood stone guide it makes it seem like having 100 slaves by the time you reach Cons. 4 is reasonable...well...not with my guys it seems.

Is the main advantage of priest-smiths over regular smiths the fact that they are sacred and therefore cost less upkeep? I ask because it seems, with the random, that the regular smiths are better, and they are both the same relative age (with priest smiths going to be older in the next patch as per the previous thread). The 1H isn't really valuable for anything but the two new national spells. Plus the cost more to recruit, yet the consensus is that these guys are must haves, so am I missing something, or is upkeep really that important (sacreds get half upkeep, right?).

[elbnar]

Iron darts is a much more effective version of flying shards, which is a weak spell on its own and is what your regular smiths cast in the early game.

More importantly, iron blizzard takes an already fantastic spell and makes it even better. It also decimates magic enemies. Both spells get even better the more earth levels your priest smith manages to get.

The reduced upkeep is nice, but is not the reason why you recruit priest smiths instead of regular smiths in your capital.


oh yeah, if you manage to find a nice sacred indie unit such as amazon gryphon riders, that lowly 1H suddenly becomes a lot more useful.

[Meglobob]

Endoperez said:How do you expand with MA Ulm?

I use infantry. I never recruit arbalists. Ulmish infantry is excellent at taking indies if you get the composition spot on.

Indeed, if I recruit crossbows I recruit the siege/crossbows that fire 1/2 rounds, much better.

[Tuidjy]

I dislike arbalesters. They are have two things going for them. They are the
only Ulmish with enough brains to use a shortsword and wear appropriate armour,
which makes them OK infantry. Their weapons have enough power to punch through
heavy armour. Months ago, I did the math, and it shows that crossbowmen are
better than arbalests below armour 17. Well guess what - armour 17 is seldom seen
outside of Ulm's army, and never on the arrow decoys.

Arbalesters have tons of things going against them - low rate of fire, high
resource cost, low strategical move, etc... On the other hand, independent archers
as great for supporting Ulm's infantry, against the only enemy that Ulm excels
against - independents.

[Micah]

Ulm's crappy morale really benefits from sermon of courage, which is plenty of reason to get a few H2 priests around, especially since you don't lose out on any huge cap-only guys from recruiting a few.