New patch??

[Xietor]

Allowing a Lord Guardian to enter the Forges Of Ulm and train an elite warrior, at a rate of 1 per turn would help. He could have decent mr gear, so he would not be 1 smited, and perhaps wield a 2hed sword of sharpness.

Given the slow rate of fire of arbalests, allowing smiths to start with the ability to cast earth meld would help a bit also.

Since Ulm is a thematic race of forgers, perhaps taking their capital should be really painful. Of course if your capital is being sieged, your income is lost and you are likely just delaying the inevitable.

Many good players take astral races, and MA Ulm has few answers to many of the potent spells that "magic resistance negates."

[Kristoffer O]

> Okay, then. I guess I thought they had a different theme, but "susceptible to and afraid of magic" works too. Hmmm.

Why else ban magic and kill magic users?

Fear is a strong incentive to do stupid stuff

[MaxWilson]

Large numbers of cheap (but effective) troops are a form of answer to many of the MR-negates spells. Soul Slay hurts relatively less if it only kills a 10-gp warrior.

-Max

[jaif]

I would love to see MA ulm get a bonus to dominion spread. Make people struggle to keep the commoner's fear of magic out of their territories.

-Jeff

[Xietor]

An off the wall idea-

Let ulm's PD at level 1 have a bonus of a mechanical man commander and 5 mechanical men. Or allow the construction of crushers or mechanical men in their capital.

Crushers are size 6 and highly effective at stopping size 6 tramplers from charging into your mages.

I am not sure being a smith means being an expert at building
mechanical beings, but it may be thematic.

[lch]

I love Ulm for their weaknesses. Don't take the fun out of the game. They already have a production bonus in all their forts. Their LA variant has the inquisitors (bonus on dominion spread), and astral mages (including prevention for bad events) that have been mentioned.

[Xietor]

We are discussing MA Ulm only. None of my statements, at least, cover the other 2 ages of Ulm.

[Tyrant]

There's a couple of things that have always bugged me about ULm. One is that they get arbalasts in their PD. This sounds good on paper, but on the battlefield it means that their own PD is one of the few things that their super heavy armor troops fear and you have to be carefull not mix field armies and PD for fear of friendly fire casualties. Meanwhile the low fire rate makes them kinda so-so as general purpose PD.Another is that the black plate guys have so much encumbrance that the benefit of the armor is easily countered by tiring them out. Given the low numbers they usually come in, this is easy to do. I think adding some sort of low cost hard hitting troop to their roster would help them out. Would berserkers with two handed weapons be thematic?

[lch]

Xietor said:
We are discussing MA Ulm only.

I know, I do aswell. You may skip the last sentence where I was commenting about the thematic flavors of Ulm if you want. Suggesting magic-driven PD for a magic-impaired and -fearing nation is probably never going to make it into the game, IMHO.

[Xietor]

Magic impaired, but not when it comes to construction and forging.