[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

What exactly do you think it go-to spells are that they can have them in 400RP?

Full army Legions of Steel is a mild improvement over regular legions of steel. And unlike CBM Ulm, BR Ulm has to actually research it and spend gems on it. (Usually 2e per cast, in fact, until they can get conjuration 3). I refuse to believe that paying gems for legion of steel on the full army and at a higher research level is broken.

It's not a mild improvement, it's a *tremendous* improvement, and it's tremendouser the larger a force you can bring to one battle (like, say, the rush for someone's cap in the first 20 turns). Being able to make an entire army very much like unkillable, with only one mage, this early in the game ? That's messed up.
It would be a great spell for many nations. For Ulm, who has superduper armour to begin with ? It's just obscene.

So, that's 200 of those 400 RPs... Iron Darts for the other 200? Which is ok, i suppose. Its no Iron Blizzard. Its sort of like hiring 10 crossbows.

I was actually thinking of the MR one. Lots of good early spells that you'd want to use against manageable numbers of very high prot dudes are MR resist (Enslave Mind, Paralyze, Mind Burn, False Fetters, Sleep Cloud, Dessication & Sailor's Death...), and BR Ulm already has excellent MR so compounding their existing advantages into the "lulz go home" range would be my first choice.
Iron Darts is neat and all, but you need a critical mass of Iron Priests to really exploit it, and if you're hiring priests and sending them on the field they're not Smiths researching and getting randoms. Also, friendly fire - silly to have unkillable dudes and kill them your own darn self

I might point out that Ulm's antimagic equivalent, in addition to costing an earth gem, also requires an E3H1 mage to cast. It may deserve to move up to Enchantment 4 to be at the same tier as regular antimagic.

Remove it entirely. I'm serious.
I don't know what (besides theme, I guess) justifies BR Ulm getting its own copy of that spell. It already has high MR, so unlike vanilla Ulm doesn't need it to shore up a weakness. If it wants antimagic, it can get diversity like every other kid in the class. Plenty of nations out there would beg for some easy to cast proprietary spell to boost their own advantages, but they don't get 'em do they ? Niefel doesn't have a cold Mass Regen, Tien Chi doesn't have a path 2 flaming arrows, Lanka doesn't have a holy antimagic.

The same goes for battlefield-wide Destruction or improved Legions of Steel. There are already spells out there, and you can already cast them. Why should BR Ulm get easier, better, exponentially more cost-effective variants ? What justifies it ?

Pythium's tower shields basically negate iron darts. So now we just have to deal with cutting through heavy armor on 800 RP. Even lightning bolts (100RP!) will handle that, but we could also forge Spirit Helms and Bows of Lightning, use Thunderstrike (360RP) even with communions (40RP), and so on.

Aaaand here's what I'm talking about. You're using one mage/turn going along with the main army. You're expecting others to use dozens to retort. You think that's just dandy. WHY ?!
Granted, some sacred nations are also able to force this kind of early lopsided investments, but then *they* can't play killer scales at the same time !

Yes, Ulm has tower shields. But its troops that actually do damage don't. The stuff people seem to be going to - Guardians, Black Plate Flails - these don't have shields at all. A fire arrows rush would also be pretty devastating against them.

Yes, but if you're expecting crossbows you're evidently going to bring a couple dozen shields and protect the whole army with them because there's no "fire at the dangerous ones dammit" order. "Anyone who can't script around archers sucks. Seriously." -- Squirreloid, 12/15/2011

Fire Arrows ? It's 8AP damage. With 25 armour that's still only 8 vs. 13. Might work over a looong time I guess.