MA Ulm - you called me a forge what?

[Baalz]

No, you want the black steel plate, the 5 gem one with 2 encumbrance. Alternatively you can go with fire plate for essentially the same thing. The one with 4 encumbrance is a bad idea, the point of the extra reinvig is not to have a net 0 encumbrance, it's to have a high negative net encumberance so you can recover the fatigue from your buffs before many people start trying to make critical hits on you. That's why you want to stick to summon earthpower, then blessing, then invulernability, then wait twice before attacking rather than stacking on a fireshield or some other buff.

[Wrana]

Excellent as usual. I wonder how much of this is applicable to EA Ulm...
Certainly this would call for using Shamans as thugs (somewhat counterintuitive...). Also, Evocation probably shouldn't be first priority there...
(sorry for OT, I just interested in making that nation work more than in case of MA)

[Baalz]

Yeah, one thing I didn't mention but probably should, your initial mages you're recruiting should be master smiths, not holy smiths. The upkeep on the holy smiths is lower, and there's a few extra spells they can cast (iron blizzard, etc), but you really want to get those 10% randoms fairly early. Once you've got 3+ castles cranking out smiths and you've got a couple of the randoms you need you can switch to making holy smiths from your capital every turn so you'll have them when you want them for thugs or those spells.

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Baalz

Yeah, one thing I didn't mention but probably should, your initial mages you're recruiting should be master smiths, not holy smiths. The upkeep on the holy smiths is lower, and there's a few extra spells they can cast (iron blizzard, etc), but you really want to get those 10% randoms fairly early. Once you've got 3+ castles cranking out smiths and you've got a couple of the randoms you need you can switch to making holy smiths from your capital every turn so you'll have them when you want them for thugs or those spells.

I somewhat disagree. I've been experimenting with EA Ulm lately and found out that strong bless and thug holy smiths is a workable combination*. But going for this requires that the holy smiths (shamans) be recruited earlier than the smiths.
Also it is more efficient to start recruiting smiths en mass once you've hit high const. and have significant gem income. This way you'd be recruiting them when they're guaranteed to do what they are good at - forging.

* Actually, I didn't find a lot working for EA Ulm so it was kinda nice surprise to learn that bless and shaman thugs is workable.

[Executor]

Excellent guide, However I disagree on the scales a little. order/death is good for smaller map, but in a bigger game I'd go with luck to compensate money loss by death and to get those extra gems from the start.
But than again I just like luck.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Executor

Excellent guide, However I disagree on the scales a little. order/death is good for smaller map, but in a bigger game I'd go with luck to compensate money loss by death and to get those extra gems from the start.
But than again I just like luck.

I like luck too. But remember, you've got drain and I'm pretty sure that cuts deeply into those extra gem events.

[OmikronWarrior]

Originally Posted by thejeff

I like luck too. But remember, you've got drain and I'm pretty sure that cuts deeply into those extra gem events.

This has not been my experience. I'm not saying there is no difference, but I found plenty of gem generators with drain scales, but a lot less with misfortune scales.

[AreaOfEffect]

I'm going to side with Baalz here. The randoms generated from the regular smiths are way more game changing then a few extra thugs and dollars.

[Endoperez]

Even with Drain, Luck does give gems. It might lower the amount of gems you get slightly, and/or make good events more rare, and I'm pretty sure item events are much more rare. But yes, it does give gems, and when few gems are all you need for an item, it can be nice.

As I said before, I'd still take Order 3 for MA Ulm and Luck only if I already had the important stuff like good magic for the pretender, maxed Order/Production, perhaps a pick of Growth to keep the Smiths from getting diseased etc.

[BesucherXia]

A somewhat related topic: I just met some problems using Magma eruption.

I had an army of round 60 regular units(hold and attack), leaded by serveal master smiths.
All smiths were scripted with Summon Earth Power - 4x magma eruption. But when they met a single SC (mistform - mirror image - attack close using winged shoes) on the battlefield, all of them refused to use that spell. They even perfered a melee attack with the enemy, which made that battle simply a total slaughter.

What's wrong with them? The SC has 50% fire resistant and 20 protection. Should that be the reason for my smiths to change their mind? Any comments will be sincerely appreciated.