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| Several minor blesses or rainbow picks to patch up your magical deficiencies and good scales, especially production, is the way to go.
-> If you want blesses, I think the best for Ulm would be S9A4, more Air if you can afford it. This gives +3 MR, Twist fate and some arrow defense. If you go with a Dormant Oracle, you could easily go S9A6 and still have plenty left over for scales. Astral/Air bless covers your sacred's greatest weakness, no shield, and terrible MR (all of EA Ulm's units have 8), having twist fate also allow them to live longer, which is always a plus. If you don't want blesses, the best path is to go for scales and/or an SC. My choice would be an awake D4 Prince of Death with 9 dominion. For scales, I'd go with a 2 Drain (to help your low MR troops), 3 production (to make lots of troops), 1 cold (your preference), the rest into order/growth (depends on how you like to play). -> The thing about the Ulmish warriors is that they have an attack of 10 for warrior and axe warrior and 11 for forest and mountain warrior. Axe and forest warriors have 2 axes and a throwing axe while warriors and mountain warriors have axe and broad sword. Penalties, 2 axes: -1 attack on axe, axe+axe = ambidex penalty of 2, making for a total penalty of 3. Subtract ambidex rating of 1 and final penalty is 2, for 2 attacks at 8. This means that the second attack can be treated as if it were attack 10 against the target's normal defense. Penalties axe + broadsword lengths 1+2=3, axe -1 and broadsword 0 and ambidex reduces penalty by 1, Final result is attack ratings axe 7, broadsword 8 for a unit with base attack 10. Meaning attack 7 + attack 10 against normal defense of target. Not exactly something that fills you with confidence. Then take a look at Steel Maiden: Attack 12, 2x shortsword and ambidex 1. Length 1+1=2, reduced to 1 by ambidex, gives you two attacks at base 11. The steel maiden is more heavily armored than the basic warrior and has only 2 points less body prot than the forest and mountain warriors, much better attack and defense, has a strat move of 2 plus stealth, whereas neither forest nor mountain warrior is stealthy and both have strat move of 1. Shield maidens swap one short sword for a shield, giving them one attack at 12 and a def of 15, 11 without shield. Shield maidens, steel maidens and warrior maidens (the armored archer) all cost 13 resources to the warrior/axe warrior's 10 or forest/mountain warrior's 16. Can ANYONE please tell me why anyone could possibly want to buy anything but shield, steel and warrior maidens as EA Ulm unless they really intend to use the axe warriors for shock effect with the throwing axes and then to soak up damage from the enemy while the women do the actual fighting and killing. Mixing half steel and half shield maidens will give some punch and improve overall squad survivability and lessen the morale effects of a rain of arrows. E.g. Ermorian units eat Ulmish warriors for breakfast, but the maidens are a different story. -> One thing to keep in mind is that successive attacks in a round reduce the victim's defense value by 2 for each attack, so the second Axe Warrior attack will effectively 2 points higher. The extra defense penalties stack very nicely if your warriors outnumber high defense enemies, allowing them to hit their foes easily. -> Why bother with the axe warriors when the steel maidens can do the same thing for melee more effectively? And last longer because they substantially higher defense and better protection to boot. You might want them for the throwing axes, but then they will be reaching melee later because they pause to throw the axes first, and you can't make EA Ulm work solely with axe/forest warriors because their low defense gets them killed too quickly. The difference of defense between steel maiden and the warriors is between 2 and 5 and shield maiden and warriors is between 5 and 8. You do the math. -> The sword warriors are pretty worthless. The axe guys are only minorly use it as cheap 10/10 axe-chuckers, but even then you gott ask yourself if a short-range axe chucker is worth the cost of an archer. Their accuracy is bad too. Against most basic infantry the Steel Maidens are much more useful. Their weapons do more than enough damage to mangle troops, and they consistantly double-hit. If you divide them up into small groups instead of large lumps they can swarm over troops and really cut them up badly. Sending in a small pile of axemen is possible... but why? It'd be better to use the Shield Maidens. Same cost, better use. So shield blockers with steel maidens on the sides. Also, something that's rarely mentioned are the Iron Warriors. Attack of 12 with a Maul, they have excellent to-hit characteristics with high damage output. As always they lack shields and aren't exactly stealthy, but if you need to attack targets that are too durable for Steel Maidens, sending in Iron Warriors is a good alternative. They have heavy armor and can fend off attacks, and do serious damage to things. They're basically as good as the Steel Warrior sacreds, and your best mass-produced alternative to high-durability units outside of summons. They're also relatively cheap. But the Steel Maidens are still superior against most units due to their efficent 2-strike combos. -> EA nation is a very strong nation, in my opinion. Steel Maidens are very strong with good defense, protection and attack. Warrior Maidens are powerful archers... In midgame, you should focus on diversifying your magic through constant site-searching to find powerful independent mages. Your steel maidens, shield maidens and warriors maidens can take most other nationals on a troop-for-troop basis... spells like flaming arrows, blade wind, strength of giants and others can help even the odds against tougher nations. Use your stealth to your advantage, raiding if you must... hiding in your own territory to confuse the enemy about your numbers is also helpful. -> With a high astral pretender(possibly with other, booster forging paths you may not have access to) EA Ulm can have some insane magic diversity(their mages+summoned mages+path booster+rings of wizardry/sorcery) 8.34.1.2 EA Ulm - Flying Conans of Doom Article Author: Baalz Baalz, what is best in life? Playing a nation that keeps making you exclaim ¿cool!¿ every time you look at a new facet. I hadn¿t really taken a close look at EA Ulm, but once I had I wonder why this is not a nation who is more universally feared. They¿ve got so many solid things going for them, this is a nation you should be watching closely the whole game. Steel Warriors. These guys are smaller/cheaper sacreds and cap only so you can¿t really base your whole strategy on them, but they are totally awesome and you should use as many as you can get. Let me paint a picture for those of you thinking Ulm is a nation where the women call the shots. You¿re going to want to take a major earth bless (bear with me) which turns these guys into near unstoppable juggernauts (well, by the human scale at least). They start out with a 12 protection. Add an earth bless. Add legions of steel. Add wooden warriors. Now let¿s add in a minor nature component to the bless so that your mid 20¿s protection can really go the mile. Add in a 13 defense on a size 2 guy, plus a length 3 weapon with a 13 attack skill (which works as a poor man¿s awe against most guys wielding weapons who have a chance to get through your protection) and realize you¿ve got a net 1 encumbrance. But wait, that¿s just half the bundle of joy. Let¿s look at what we¿re laying out on the offense. That 13 attack skill (which is going to rack up stars before you know it) is delivering a 13 strength plus 9 damage weapon plus strength of giants comes to 26. That¿ll spit some shields and kneecap some giants! These guys are worthy of the name Conan and half the justification for springing for such a nice blessing. To prove the gods love Conan they also gave these guys 75% frost resistance ensuring that there¿s no giants they can¿t slay. Drop a winter ward on them then use freezing mist for a nasty combo. Of course, they¿re also plenty nasty enough with nothing but that blessing for indie clearing, particularly with their backup singers. Now, there is some truth to the fact that the women of Ulm carry much of the weight. The men give you important power concentration, but the women are going to provide the bulk of your armies. Why? Because they kick ***! There¿s not much reason at all to recruit any male troops other than steel warriors, these vicious vixens have you covered. The shield maiden and steel maiden are both excellent infantry units, you¿ll use depending on what you¿re facing. Shield vs double sword, I¿ll leave that choice as an exercise for the student, but also realize that these ladies are stealthy. This is one of the things that you should not loose sight of. Much like Vanheim or Pangea, EA Ulm is a stealth nation with fearsome raiding potential. You¿ve got very solid stealthy units, and stealthy archers to back them up no PD is safe. Did I mention you¿ve also got stealthy combat mages? Speaking of your archers, the warrior maidens can also only be described as incredible. Its medium infantry plus an archer all wrapped up in a stealthy package for a reasonable price. What¿s not to love? Unless you¿re fighting someone practically immune to archers (Abysia, etc.) you¿ll probably want to recruit mostly these lovely lasses by default because they¿re very effective switch hitters. You should end up with some double air warrior smiths (wind guide) and some double fire ones (flaming arrows) fairly early so massive amounts of archers should be something that elicits a wicked grin. Alright, now let¿s take a look at your mages. You might, at this point be thinking that I spent too much on the blessing for a nation with cap only sacreds. But you don¿t have cap only sacreds. You¿ve got sacreds you can recruit from every single fort. I¿m speaking, of course, of the shaman. Again, let me paint a picture for you. Earth bless. Summon earth power. Boots of the messenger. On a unit cheap enough to be spilling out of every fort you put up, who can cast¿.magma eruption, destruction, blade wind, falling fires, raise skeletons, bane fire (don¿t be afraid to pass out a couple gems to get the guys who are close to casting the spells you really wanted to cast). Oh, and with some boosters - relief because your reinvig wasn¿t enough already. The potential magic output is staggering¿.near unending skellispam blocking for a rain of evocations that never quits (with none of the risks of communions), all on mages who bless up to a 13 protection with regen even if you¿re too lazy to self buff them, take the time to apply ironskin and the enemy can¿t even hurt them if they make it to the back. Oh, did I mention they also potentially self buff eagle eyes? Go with wind guide for the bigger battles, your evocation slingers will thank you. Oh yeah, and eyes of aiming are only 2 gems, look into that. But wait, there¿s more. Those paying attention will probably already know where I¿m going with this after reading my MA Ulm guide. Sacred earth mages. Well now, we¿ve got potential thugs coming out of our ears and a nice forge bonus. Blessing, earthpower, ironskin, plus some nice options not available to MA Ulm like elemental fortitude. Toss in some good armor (along with some bracers of defense to double up on that earth blessing), a fire brand and a shield of beaten gold and start carving away with your almost 30 protection, high defense and regen. By good armor I mean elemental armor. Stick that on top of your elemental fortitude and stick an evil grin on top of that. In fact, it¿s amazing how much better the warrior smiths of EA are compared to MA. The stuff you can apply that forge bonus to without empowering now runs the range from bottles of living water to winged boots to rune smashers and you can even get up to staffs of elemental mastery with a little work. What¿s even better is you¿ve got the mages to site search fire, water, earth, air, death and nature so if you do this right you¿ll have plenty of gems to leverage in the gem rich EA. You have a good spread of magic, but you¿ll potentially have a hard time casting the larger spells so let¿s plan for that. Your bad *** infantry would really like some nice fog warriors and mass flight, and it¿d be nice to be able to lay down a grip of winter when the situation merited it for your 1 encumbrance 75% CR Conans. Staffs of elemental mastery are pretty expensive and hard to get, much easier is adding a touch of astral to your pretender so that he can forge crystal shields. A2 smiths with a crystal shield can cast mass flight (think that might work well with a swarm of buffed Conans and dual weapon steel maidens?). 2 A2s working together can storm -> storm power -> fog warriors. A F2 with a crystal shield and fire skull can drop a firestorm (hmmm, mechanical men anyone?). A W2 with a shield, robe and bracelet can drop demon cleansing (haha, just try it Lanka/Yomi). A F/W one can drop acid storm - awesome late game as there¿s no way to get a resistance and it does AP damage. Use this in combo with, say, high reinvig skelispamers (buffed with ironskin and regenerating from their blessing), swarm, elementals, etc to tie up the bad guys. Nature has it¿s own booster which does a better job than the shield, but don¿t neglect the nice stuff you can get up to in that path from mass protection to gai¿s blessing (did I mention you can drop almost every battlefield wide elemental damage spell?). It could probably go without saying that earth buffs should also be ubiquitous, Conan with weapons of sharpness, quickening and mass flight will chop up anything from demon lords to tartarians and look stylish doing it. Steel maidens aren¿t that much less scary and you¿ll have a couple orders of magnitude more of them. What your opponent can possibly do once you're regularly dropping all this stuff together I'm not sure. Leverage fairy trod and cloud trapeze for some nasty surprises nobody would expect out of Ulm, even your PD is pretty damn nasty with these buffs. Don't forget the really nice stuff you can drop with no particular effort to, this is a nation just begging for half an excuse to drop a rain of stones or thank you for your thoughtfulness in bringing thugs into their battery of charm spam. I did mention rune smashers were cheap, and your mages tough enough to sit on the front line right? Now, you¿ve got almost no astral, no blood (other than hopefully boostrapping up to blood stones), and fairly weak death magic. On first glance you might think this means you¿re going to struggle late game. Hell no you're not. Why? Because you don¿t need most of the things you get from these paths late game. Sure they¿d be nice, but they¿re not necessary and you can be very competitive without them. If flying Conans of Doom aren¿t mobile enough for your needs and even your stealthy Fox Force Five ninja chicks are having trouble just remember that you¿re crapping out a steady stream of very configurable thugs every turn. Your neighbor set up an early tartarian factory? Conveniently enough you¿ve now got two dozen guys equipped with flying boots and holy scourges. Or demon banes. Or serpent kryss. Or whatever the hell it is your opponent really wishes you weren¿t forging quite so cheaply and sticking on the reasonably priced guys streaming out of all your forts. Who needs SCs when you¿re swimming in anti-SCs and some of the best combat mages in the game who are immune to everything while dropping the really nasty stuff from under double digit reinvig? Your recruitable units and mages scale up to the degree they¿re competitive with the stuff everybody else wanted death and blood for and with a bit of cleverness all that stealth, flying boots and cloud trapeze goes a long way towards mitigating the lack of astral flexibility. True, you¿re not going to be wishing for what you want or spamming ghost riders, but if you can¿t be hella scary with the tools in your chest then you¿re just not trying very hard. You probably don¿t even want to spend many gems on summonings/rituals, with that fat forge bonus and all the hammers you¿ve built up by now forging stuff to stick on your mages/thugs is probably the most efficient thing you can do. Alright, now we¿re cooking with butter. Here¿s how I maintain my title of evil bastard. You¿ll want to shoehorn into bloodstones just as much as MA Ulm, it¿s a tough call weather the extra boosters for your combat mages are more useful or the extra gems but the good news is you don¿t have to decide, you get both (meaning all those shamans can use boots of the messenger and summon earthpower). You should slide into late game with a respectable earth income. Save up your gems over a couple turns and use your pretender to drop forge of the ancients. With forge of the ancients up your smiths forge items normally costing 5 gems for 1 gem apiece without using a hammer. Shields of beaten gold and fire brands for 2 gems apiece. The implications of crapping out 50 items a turn without exhausting your gem income combined with a virtually unlimited supply of self buffing thug chasises is mind boggling. Even if the forge is dispelled the very next turn you got so much of a return on investment it¿s not even funny. If the fools you¿re playing with *don¿t* dispel it¿.I have a hard time imagining how you¿d manage to lose. Now I haven¿t really talked too much about your pretender or scales, just some magic paths you¿ll probably want. Strong earth, weak nature and astral. There¿s a couple different ways to go from an awake SC to an imprisoned amazing scales guy, or you could stack some more stuff on that Conan bless. Adding minor water and/or blood blessings would be welcome additions and get you pretty easily into clams and blood stones, while air will let you forge those boosters which can be significant boon. Lots of different reasonable ways to spend your points. So, what else can I say? You can easily be immune to whatever your opponent likes to do while dropping whatever he really wishes you wouldn¿t and at the end of the day Conan and all his friends have your back. What more could you want? 8.34.1 MA Ulm 8.34.1.1 Guide Guide to MA Ulm MA Ulm is a nation with large advantages and large disadvantages. It¿s possible that their disadvantages outweigh their advantages, making them one of the weaker nations in most people¿s opinion. Regardless, in a situation like this, it¿s even more important than usual to make the most of the advantages you do have. Major Strengths: Item Forging. Cheap, heavy-duty national troops. Major Weaknesses: Slow, resource-expensive troops. Poor magic diversity. No sacreds. Poor magic resistance. My thoughts on Pretender design:
Additionally, Ulm generally has an easy time dispatching average-strength independents due to its powerful infantry, so an awake SC pretender isn¿t a must. This combination of factors seems to lead to the selection of a Rainbow Pretender, although an SC god could be equipped with items from the very beginning of the game and be quite potent, if you choose to go that route. Ulm gets a special Rainbow Pretender called the Alchemist, and I imagine he is very good for certain Ulm strategies. However, his major advantage is the conversion of earth or fire gems to gold, and Ulm typically does not need a lot of money to operate, but they do need a lot of earth and fire gems, so this Pretender is not my first choice. I typically select the Great Enchantress. The Great Enchantress is an ideal choice in my opinion for one reason: her focus on astral magic. Not only does she get 1S to start (making it not too expensive to bump her up to 4 or 5S), she also gets 1 astral pearl per turn. These can be saved for a Ring of Wizardry to boost Ulm¿s magic diversity, an absolutely key item. I typically take at least 2 of every path, except for Blood and Astral. Blood I generally take just 1, and Astral I take 4-5. I favor an awake pretender to immediately begin site searching, but a dormant one would work fine as well.
Production 3 (for Ulm¿s resource-intensive troops) Misfortune 1, 2, or 3 (to pay for the Order) Drain 3 (Ulm¿s smiths are immune to Drain) Dominion strength 3-5 (enough to avoid getting dominion killed and spread your scales) National Troops: Arbelest A top-notch missile unit nearly on par with the longbowman. Arbelests are cheaper than longbowmen and have a good protection. They have a long range and do absolutely devastating amounts of damage, especially to heavily-armored units. However, they have poor map move, magic resistance, and are resource-intensive like most of Ulm¿s units. Infantry of Ulm Available with a variety of armaments specialized for different foes, the Infantries of Ulm are in the top tier of non-sacred heavy infantry units in the game, considering their cost. Black Plates Also available with a variety of armaments, Black Plate Infantry are without a doubt the best 10 gold unit available in the game if you ignore their resource cost (which is huge). Their protection is high enough so that they even take very little damage from crossbow bolts the only missile weapon that can do significant damage to them is Ulm¿s own Arbelest (typically make sure your arbelests are doing something besides ¿firing closest¿). However, their defense is low and their encumbrance high, so they are not invulnerable in melee, just very tough. Black Knights One of the best non-sacred calvary in the game. They can crush enemy infantry and take very little damage in the process due to their high protection. Sappers An expensive crossbowman. Sappers are nitch units their main use is to break down stubborn enemy castle gates, not so much to actually fight. However, they do have a map move of 2, something rare for Ulm, so they can also be used as missile support for Black Knights. Guardians A strong heavy infantry unit. They have much better morale than the standard Infantry of Ulm, but they are twice as expensive. They gain a bonus when defending castles, so they are useful in that respect. If you have money to burn, these might be a good option as meatshields in the mid-late game. Commanders:
Very effective at..um.. spying.. and also causing unrest in enemy provinces. A great unit! Commander of Ulm Available with different weapon choices and protection values just like the other Ulm infantry. These Commanders are superior to the standard indy commander for the same price. Lord Guardian A Guardian unit turned into a commander. They seem to offer very little for the increased price tag over the standard Commander of Ulm. Black Lord Just slightly more expensive than the Lord Guardian, these commanders are mobile, well protected, and pack a nice punch. When equipped with magic weapons, they are often used in the early-mid game as thugs. Siege Engineer These commanders have low protection and leadership ability, so they are rarely used for anything other than their prime function: breaking down enemy castle gates. In this limited function they are quite good for the price. Master Smith The only Ulm mage, the Master Smith is researcher, item-forger, and battlemage of Ulm. They are focused on earth and fire, without much diversity (although they do have a 10% random chance in A, E, F, or S). They are pretty cheap to purchase, and they are effective at all three of their functions. Battlemagic: Master Smiths are quite effective mages on the battlefield. Their paths allow for army buffing spells like Legions of Steel, Strength of Giants, Iron Warriors, Marble Warriors, and Weapons of Sharpness. They can also cast evocation spells such as Blade Wind, Magma Bolts, and Magma Eruption. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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