Guide: LA Ulm: Goths Gone Wild! or, Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Dooooooooooooooom!

[licker]

Originally Posted by Dedas

It is not a matter of "doing it all", it is a matter of doing the right things at the right time and that means planning. And planning means you need to know what your enemy is up to all the time.

If you meet a beginner he might try doing just one thing, like the tank rush in C&C, but in this game that makes him weak because there is actually counters to everything. An experienced players sees what he is up to and adapts accordingly. It is easy for him to do so because the enemy is so predictable.

Then you meet an experienced player, he watches you and adapts to what you do, and you do the same. And in the end that means mixed armies. The challenge is to find the perfect mix, and deploy it at the right spot at the right time. And that means planning... and so on.

Yes it means planning, but if you are planning on having a 'mass' of strat move one infantry of different flavors to counter whatever your enemy throws at you, ...

You have no reaction time, you have no slack with that kind of a force. And that force isn't even particularly effective no matter its composition because the counters to slow moving infantry are easy, moderately cheap, and pentiful.

The counters to thugged counts (or flying thugs in general) are much less, and not always as easy for specific nations to come up with. They are also more costly in terms of opportunity cost to defend against flying thugs than to defend against a large slow army.

If you don't think equiped counts make for excellent raiders you've missed the boat somewhere. Also I did not say to use summon lamas with your raiders, you use naked counts in you dominion to attrit down a large invading army. Its rather pointless to use lamas on raiding counts, unless you are planning on throwing them all away, which is usually a desperation gambit anyway.

Infantry has a place for Ulm, just not one worth actually wasting design points on maximizing.

Income is entirely overrated for Ulm as well, so long as you understand what you are maximizing for the reduction in income flow. And anyway, while you may believe that L3 is not a good way to get gold, I think you've perhaps not studied it enough. Sure, it is not a guarenteed income flow, but with proper planning the income events (to say nothing of the mines...) allow you to behave as if you were actually getting that steady income flow.

It seems as though one should spend all their money every turn, but honestly, this is far from the case, even beyond such considerations as saving enough to put up fort/temple/lab in the next turn.

[KissBlade]

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

[Dedas]

As I find no reason to repeat myself I just point to KissBlade.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by KissBlade

How are /equipped/ counts any better as raiders than say spectres, bane lords, black servants, harbingers, succubi's, etc ad infinitum? Immortality rarely comes into play on offense in actual games, counts have poor stats and poor buffing paths. Their only real winning clauses are that they fly and stealth, one of which is replaceable by items. The excellent raider clause is a complete exaggeration. They make /ok/ raiders but that is definitely not their strength. Heck with a decent bless, even Black Lords (or Horgkluwera as they're called now) make better thugs out of the box.

I also find it odd, that you constantly assert Order 3 has to play a different style than luck 3. I'm not even sure I understand your argument on "plan for income events" but it seems to say just build less infantry. Well, as I've already repeated multiple times, you can get just as many counts by taking Order 3, I find it hard to believe that less infantry > the ability to get more castles, more mages, and more troops.

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In one sense I agree with you; that vampires counts are unimpressive stat wise. I generally only summon 2-3.

VC counts are useful in a few ways:
1. They lead ghouls.
2. With two easy boosters, they cast sanguine heritage, relieving the need of your pretender to do same.
3. They fly - which most of the other things on your list do not. And hence are the perfect thing to lead vampires.

As long as you fly and raid *in dominion* you don't care whether you win or lose the fight. Merely inflicting casualties is sufficient.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

[Micah]

Chris - Did you just argue that a count has some sort of special utility because it can do the exact same job a 20g indy scout can? (Taking a prov over after a horror attack) Seriously?

[chrispedersen]

No, thats not what I'm arguing at all.

A scout you would have to attack the province.
The vampire *doesn't have to*. With the vampire, you take one province a turn. With a scout or other .. its one every other.

[JimMorrison]

But technically dor the price of one Count, you could have a Scout in every single territory of your enemy, just waiting.

[KissBlade]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I will give you one example of how a count, not even equipped, is better than all of those others.

Stealth a vampire into a territory.
Next turn, hit it with sufficient horrors to wipe out the indy.
The vampire's free spawn occurs *after* magical combat - and wins the territory for you.

Stealth him into the next territory.

Since the vampire is stealthy, he is never attacked by the horrors, or even seen. Since he *stays* stealthy, he is not at risk for strategic spells.

4. Vampires counts are significantly cheaper than harbingers or succubi.

So you think a stealthy raider that leaves a trail of thralls to point out his location is better than the other options I've listed because it can attack indies with the help of horrors? Seems awfully inefficient to me ... Especially since the premier remote spell is Mind Hunt. If you're talking about using send horrors to bomb an opponent's pd and raid, that's already a tactic you can apply to anything. If you rely on just thralls, not only is it inefficient versus scouts (you lose the blood hunting turns of the count) but your opponent can just counter it by moving around a few recruited indie commanders on "hold, hold, retreat". Since your thralls would auto rout versus them with no commanders.

Second, Harbingers are only 20 death gems versus 44 slaves. if you value slaves lower than 1/2 a gem, then 66 slaves for a succubi versus 44 for a vamp count isn't significantly cheaper since we're talking about using them on the field rather than blood hunting. Furthermore, the poster mentioned gearing them up with gems. Once you factor that in, it swings far more in favor of other chassis with more durability.


I'll state once again, raiding with vampire counts is entirely overrated. They're good for other reasons but martially, there are more effective tools once you get going.

Lastly, I'll point out again, there is nothing that says you can't use counts if you take Order 3. If anything, order 3 is better since you quell more unrest with order (small doses) than turmoil and is far less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians.

[licker]

You are less likely to suffer brigands/barbarians if you take luck than anything Order may give you.

You also seem to completely underrate flying. Flying (and stealth on top of it) is absolutely huge when you are raiding someone. Ulm cannot get boots of flying without their pretender, or willing trading partners (which cuts both ways for any strategy) and adds an additional 10 air gems (9 or 6 with boni) to the cost of equipping your thugs.

Counts require zero research as well, any other thug summon requires some (no matter how little in some cases).

But this is all tangential to the crux of this disagreement, which is over taking O3 and how necessary that is, vs having either better scales elsewhere, or a more rounded pretender.

My contention is that Ulm is better off with an awake pretender to get some counts out year one, than they are paying for O3 with a sleeping pretender and delaying count production into year 2.

Of course you can get pretty far using infantry and rangers, but I don't think you get much farther maximizing them at the expense of the rest of your strengths.

[atul]

The one thing I don't get is so bent on order = costly equality. Order3/Misf2 is only 40 points more expensive than Turmoil3/Luck3. And when it comes to bad events, that's why the nation has those fortune tellers and stuff.