[FrankTrollman]

We had our first big fight with Ulm, and it generally went our way as far as the army vs. army portion went.

The take-home message is that having all of your troops do one thing is ultimately futile. One tactic, no matter how good, no matter how strong, no matter how many troops are behind it - can be adapted to.

Ulm sent an army composed of essentially four things:

Clockwork Horrors (240 units)
Archers (250 units)
Hydra Hatchlings (26 Units)
Warrior Smiths (26 Units)

And various sundry minor participants to round the totals out to 31 Leaders, 319 Normal Units, and 243 Magic Beings. It was slaughtered. I don't mean just that it lost 10 Leaders, 229 Normal Units, and all 243 Magical Beings - I mean that it managed to kill no leaders, no undead, and only 36 normal units (out of 151) and 1 Magic Being (out of 6).

What went wrong? The problem here was a lack of versatility. Because there were so few types of units on the field, the forces of Tien Chi were able to make a battle plan around the upcoming onslaught and severely undermined his army because it hinged on only a few effects.

Things in Dominions have counters. No exceptions. So an army of Clockwork Horrors can be countered. And army of 240 Clockwork Horrors can be countered the same way. In this case it was by casting:

Quagmire
Curse of Stones
Swarm

The combination was devastating. His Clockwork Horrors moved less far because of the swampy ground, gained extra fatigue because of the Curse of Stones, and were delayed for precious turns slicing through Dragonflies. As a result, they ran out of Fatigue before they even saw battle with my main army. When they were finally trampled to death en mass by the chariots, they didn't even hold up their hands in resistance.

Next up, the archers. A quarter of a thousand Ulmish maidens of the bow. Backed up by Fire Arrows even. Unfortunately, an entirely archery dependent army is of relatively little use when faced with an Arrow Shield. Enter Arrow Fend, a spell that grants Air Shield to the entire army. We cast it on the first turn.

The army of Ulm was destroyed. Cleaning it up won't be easy or fast, there's a hundred units retreating in various directions,a nd he still has Bane Lord Super Combatants wandering the lands killing Province Defense. It's quite an offensive.

But because the main thrust was simply the same thing repeated dozens or hundreds of times, a small collection of strange magics was able to slay his entire army with negligible losses.

The take home lesson: don't put all your Faith in one thing. Any thing. I don't care how good it is. I don't care how strong it looks. I don't care how easy it is to reiterate the same tactic over and over again. There's a counter for everything. And if your entire army is the same, your entire army can be countered by one thing. A throw together force of Tien Chi militia can analyze your force composition and put up a force less than 40% your size and slaughter you down with losses over 13 times what you dish out in return.

Really it's the same problem that Yomi had. An army of 300 copies of one thing isn't six times better than an army of 50 copies of that same thing.

-Frank