Starting setup for LA Ulm

[Shovah32]

One of the big reasons i suggested the fountain as an option was the high start dominion and blood magic(high dom really helps counts) and for your starting problems do NOT use LA ulms high resource troops atleast at the start. Use your starting army as a meatshield set to hold and attack with rangers on fire closest/archers/cavalry and keep churning out rangers at your capitol. If your starting army takes too many losses use indies for your meatshield instead. The rangers(firing basically with precision 18 due to all above 10 being doubled) with their crossbows do serious damage and arent too bad in melee against medium or low defence troops(armour isnt too dangerous to them in melee due to high strength and axes)

[Aleph]

Shovah - on reflection, thanks for the pickup on fountain. I've been running a B6D3F2N2E2 Dom 7 sleeping fountain with Order 3 Misfortune 2 Growth 2 Magic 1 and he's working pretty well.

I totally forgot about blood stones in my last posting, but in game they work exceptionally well. Your earth priests + boots + blood stone -> Troll King + boots + blood stone -> Forge, and empowering with blood to get a few priests capable of forging blood stones isn't so bad given the ease of picking up blood slaves. It's certainly far easier than getting someone else capable of fever fetish spamming.

[Shovah32]

Also, even with your cheap counts summoning a few vampire lords(77 slaves iirc) can be worth it. Instead of auto-summoning thralls they can use summon allies to get vampires. They also have +1 to a few stats and +1 on both types of magic(cant summon more counts without boosters and can cast soul vortex in battle)

[Aleph]

I definitely use a mix of Vampire Lords and Mound Fiends for my D3 needs. It's 77 blood for the Lord, vs 65 blood and 10 death for an item boosted Count to reach the same levels, the Lords obviously have the free item slots, and in addition blood is always easier to come by. Still, I use mostly Counts for light raiding (and thanks to your Lammashta trick, army smashing), bloodhunting, and their freespawn.

I now kind of enjoy LA Ulm's slow build to magical dominance via death/blood/earth - it makes their starting crappy picks almost enjoyable. I suspect I would get annihilated before I ever got out of the gate in MP, but I haven't played a nation yet that changes so much from beginning to end. It's particularly sweet to boost a mage of the second tier (+1 astral and blood empowerment, + items galore) to cast Astral Corruption and shut down everyone else's magic while your endless Vampire Counts just keep growing and growing.

[Shovah32]

I tend to stick with counts too as they work just as well in most cases but, if im going to completely equip some-one(and dont have any unique blood summons) it will probably be a vampire lord due to the slightly raised stats and the ability to cast soul vortex.

Im glad you liked the fountain, at the start i was set on using a master lich but when i realised i was taking blood higher than death and that a high dominion score made the vampire strategy more flexible/offensive i switched to the fountain.

Also, aswell as your counts, lords, uniques and items dont be afraid to splash out some gems for a bunch of regular vampires-if you can get a good amount of them and only use them within friendly dominion they can be a very nasty suprise(and can provide some extra punch/meatshield for the raise skeleton/summon lammashta tactic.

[Aleph]

Followup - I find that the vampire troop types invariably tangle with the Lammashtas, diluting the punch of either approach. On the other hand, troopless Vampire Counts invariably run away after casting Lammashtas regardless of what orders I give if there are two or less of them (you'd think immortal troops would get an extra morale bonus in friendly dominion). I don't mind, though - there's still a lot of killing going on, and I'm not the one who is dying...

[Shovah32]

Sometimes my counts flee too, not always though. The vampire troops can get in the way of lammashtas but they will go in, do some damage and then either die or rout and either way, provided you stayed in friendly dominion, all you lose is the death gems for the lammashtas.

[Olive]

Up.

I'm actually giving a try at this nation. What do you think of that pretender ? Are there some big flaws for that design ? (I'm a very average player).

Fountain of Blood

Dominion 9 (Not really useful for recruiting sacred on the capitol for their huge ressource cost, but great for playing immortal units (?) ).

Emprisonned (I've started a game with an asleep one, but on turn 12, I'm far from having the blood economy allowing the summoning of vampire counts, neither do I have Const 4 for forging dousing rods. So it permits less lousy scales for early expansion plus some points on magic).

Scales :
- Order 3, Prod 1 (for recruiting many heavy troops on early game).
- Cold 1 ( 40 points )
- Growth 3 : Virgins must flow.
- Misf 2 (OK with order 3)
- Magic 1 (There are only weak researchers. I'm afraid drain 2 will harm research too much).

Magic :
- F1 - For soul contracts + AD with a booster.
- A2 - For Infernal Tempest. Maybe another path is as useful and more thematic ?
- E2 - Bloodstones, Infernal crusade, Hammers
- D4 - Vampires
- B5

For early armies, I don't think there's much choice : lots of rangers on the rear, heavy infantery just before on hold & attack, and when available, wolves as first line chaff.

Research : usually, I'm searching sites with dedicated spells (Auspex, Haruspex, etc...), but I'll try the acashic records technic that was told on previous posts. So it begins with Evo 2 (arcane probing), Constr 6 (rods + skullcap), then Conj 5 (Acashic records).

Is this a survivable design ? Summonin counts only on turn 36 is maybe a bit risky ? But I don't see how to summon many at turn 12 ?

[mathusalem]

@Olive and how do you start your Vampire count factory with an Emprisonned Pretendant ?
a major drawback isn'it ?


ps : sorry for the up, But I need ideas about LA Ulm

[vfb]

I'm really liking LA Ulm. Just to be different I went with this pretender:

Great Sage (Body 251, 10 hits)
Magic: Fire 1 Earth 2 Astral 4 Death 4 Blood 4
Dominion 6
Scales: Turmoil 3 Growth 1 Fortune 3 Drain 2
Awake

The Sage researches Thaum 2, Enchant 1, Const 4, Enchant 3, and would also kick off blood hunting except with Luck 3 I always get a hero early enough to do that with the hero instead. S4 is dangerous, actually overall the god is weak, but he's a scholar, not a fighter. S4D4B4 is a pretty meh bless for the ghouls, but they're just a little bonus with higher MR, the real focus is on getting xbows, a few more shields if I need them, and Counts Counts Counts! And more Counts!

I grab fortune tellers to start, totally cancels the few bad events I might get from turmoil. Plus the rangers are cheap enough in both gold and resources, and pack enough punch that I can still take a province a turn at the start.

Thaum 2 is for the S2s to Mind Burn anything spectacularly nasty I might run into early.

Drain 2 is nice for the points and for MR. My death gems go into skulls to make up for the low research on my fortune tellers.

I don't recruit a whole lot of 2nd tier dudes, mostly I stick with the fortune tellers. And I find I'm hiring a lot of the H2 priests after the first year to ensure I've got positive dominion everywhere. I haven't managed to find a good use for the massive stealth on the mages yet. Any ideas there?

I could probably drop the F1 since I never end up making Soul Contracts when I could be making another Count. But I've got 10 free points in the build, so ... there it goes.

I've tried a Dom7, Drain3 variation of this too, and it's not bad either.