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

[JimMorrison]

Well, I've spent the afternoon showing myself that no matter how I try, it's the Drain that is killing me. The difference between 5RP and 3RP is dramatic, to say the least.

[licker]

Drain is a killer to Ulm, cannot really do it methinks.

But if you don't lock yourself into the rigid O3P+ line of thinking you have many many options...

By the way, no one has really been explicit about whether their designs are vanilla or CBM. I mostly favor using CBM and my comments are geared from that direction.

T3S3C/H1 is 280 design points to play with. L3G1M1 is only 200 back, and you can talk yourself out of G if you really want to, though it does help long term to keep your income higher than it would otherwise be. Again it boils down to what you want your pretender to be, I favor the FoB with D4ish and B6ish and relatively high dominion (to give your counts some extra provinces to 'die' in).

Also jim-

Under no circumstances would I build NO HI (indy or Ulmish), you always can use some kind of a screen for your rangers or villains. My tests have however shown that you don't really need a very large screen to hammer indies with minimal losses, and you will always likely be building some kind of infantry somewhere and chugging it around. It does have some use, just that some of the discussion here seemed to imply that you actually wanted to have alot of this infantry for reasons which continue to elude me. You will be saving money from time to time to get up your next castle/lab/temple, especially with T3, but my tests have also shown, that with T3L3 you are very unlucky indeed if you do not get a nice gold event sometime in the first year (assuming you are expanding normally), which allows immediate castle construction usually. And if you are lucky you will get a BIG gold event (bigger than 400) which really allows you to warp up a couple castles in the first year.

I don't think you can do that with O3 under just about any circumstances, unless you just stop buying military for multiple turns.

[Radio_Star]

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

[vfb]

Shadow Blast, Magma Eruption, Rain of Stones. Anything that's AoE damage. Wear some earth boots and bring some blood stones; fly in some vampires with death gems if you need them too. Hire some ranger commanders and send your ranged units raiding.

Oh, and Ulm has some very nice infantry units, the Pikemen are quite good I hear. Not to mention those Ghoul Guardians!

[Dedas]

Good tips vfb!

[licker]

Originally Posted by Radio_Star

I like the guide and look forward to trying out Flying Immortal Vampire Harbingers of Doooooooom! (Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap!) but my concern is what you do when arrow fend shows up, neutering both your combat magic (iron blizzard) and ranged support in one go.

Go with SCs who laugh at puny attempts to stop your arrows. At some point the only real reason you have those bodies is to speed up sieging.

Otherwise you can look to the kind of battlefield magic vfb mentioned, use communions if you need to. Forge crystal shields for some extra boost to your black priests.

[Tolkien]

I've revamped the guide, added a unit-by-unit analysis, and changed the pretender design.

Decided that the +2 RP was more important then the +1 MR, and decided the Great Enchantress was a better rainbow chassis then the Frost Father (though the Chill Aura was fun in SP).

[Dedas]

Good work Tolkien!

Some small things though:

*Morningstars do not ignore shields (the same with flails), they do however get a +2 bonus to attack against them.

*I don't see why pikemen should have a worse time than anything else against lots of infantry. Getting hit in combat basically gets down to your defence. While pikemen has 8 defence compared to 12 of Morningstar infantry this only means that they have a disadvantage of two infantry (-2+ -2) attacks, but that is it. After that the morningstar infantry has lost their advantage while the pikeneer still got his - repel. Yes, morningstars are much better against shorter (1 and down) weapons because they will have repel as well, but it ends there. Pikeneers will never lose that advantage except to other pikes (length 6). Yes, repel gets harder and harder (-2 per repel) but takes a while for it to get impossible AND pikeneers still got their defence although 4 less than morningstar infantry.

To conclude:
I would choose Morningstar Infantry over Pikeneers if faced with the following: Missile units, very short length weapons (less than 2, daggers, claws etc), very high morale infantry 14+ (because the drn + 13 repel check), shield bearing infantry with short weapons (not spears) due to +2 attack from morningstar.

I would choose Pikeneers over Morningstar Infantry if I face the following: Over length 3 weapons (Zweihander greatswords have 3) like spears, medium (13-10) to low morale troops (9-).

I would choose Zweihanders over all the other if I face the following: High HP units with length 3 or less weapons, due to their very high protection plus repel they would normally survive the encounter.

[chrispedersen]

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Tolkien,
I'd suggest chill rather than heat, due to inclusion of undead in your mix.
However, more importantly is whose in game.

Mictlan, abysia, playing agaisnt you.. definitely choose cold.
Ermor, Utgard, Ryallah.. choose hot.

That's my point. You can tilt the heat/cold scale depending on who you're up against.