Starting setup for LA Ulm

[Shovah32]

Yea, i know what you mean but still, how do you get you magic versatility up to scratch?

[Teraswaerto]

For any blood nation, you can't go wrong with a pretender that can forge Soul Contracts without boosters. They are only Construction 2, but require high paths to make, so your pretender is perfect for the job.

[Meglobob]

Shovah32 said:
Yea, i know what you mean but still, how do you get you magic versatility up to scratch?

Well personally, I think blood can stand on its own against the other spheres of magic.

But, I also like to do the following with any astral nation.

Get arcane probing, hit every province you own. Get the highest priest level you can out site searching. You are trying to get as many astral pearls as possible. Research to Arcashic record when possible. Hit every province you own with this spell. You will need to empower a lvl 2S mage to cast it for LA Ulm or get lucky like I did and find the 2S2E crystal forgers site with astral probing. They can make the crystal coin naturally.

Yes, I know its expensive and long term. But its worth doing as a dual strategy alongside blood, blood is always no.1 priority however. Only try this when sites are high like 45+, most MP have 50.

[Shovah32]

We must have different research priorities. I personally go straight for construction so i dont need any empowerment, just a second tier mage forging himself a skullcap(const 6, s2). I guess that massed acashic record could get you various indy mages but i dont see you getting many, atleast not many that will help your magic as much as needed.

Instead of taking a master lich(although i do like him) how about a fountain of blood? You can get a sleeping F2W3E4D3B6 Fountain of Blood with Dom8, order3, sloth2, cold2, growth3, misfortune2, magic1. The dom9 makes your vampire counts alot more flexible in what they can do(More dominion spread means more places to use them), the scales are pretty good for your playstyle(growth helps in lategame and with bloodhunting, sloth dosnt bother your undead armies) and the magic on the pretender can do a variety of useful things such as: Summon vampire counts, summon all unique blood summons other than demon lords, forge soul contracts, cast infernal forces/forces of ice/infernal crusade and, of course, forge a variety of useful items, boosters and artifacts.

edit: ive found another nice use for the vampire counts with a very simple script: summon lammashtas, attack closest. In friendly dominion you have nothing to use but a single death gem per caster, 5 counts produce 10 lammashtas(fear causing, flying, wraitsword wielding undead angels for those who dont know) at the cost of 5 death gems. Even if your counts rout for some reason the lammashtas keep fighting and if they dont and they end up dying, no big loss, you'll have them back at your capitol ready to re-use.

[PvK]

I think Death magic can get him Spectral Mages (who have some random magic skills) which can (eventually with luck and forged boosters, maybe via Streams from Hades?) get him Unfrozen mages and maybe an Ether Lord.

Zweihanders vs. heavy shield infantry - the shield infantry are the sturdier block, but Zweihanders can do higher damage to penetrate with. I tend to use a few Zweihanders starting behind the main body of shielded troops.

Pikemen are faster to recruit and good for staving off lower-morale troops, so yes they might be a reasonable choice against giants. Better than the shielded heavy infantry, anyway.

Villains? Faster to recruit than the crossbowmen, and usable for light stealthy raiders. Their low morale and protection are major weaknesses though.

[Meglobob]

Shovah32 said:
ive found another nice use for the vampire counts with a very simple script: summon lammashtas, attack closest. In friendly dominion you have nothing to use but a single death gem per caster, 5 counts produce 10 lammashtas(fear causing, flying, wraitsword wielding undead angels for those who dont know) at the cost of 5 death gems. Even if your counts rout for some reason the lammashtas keep fighting and if they dont and they end up dying, no big loss, you'll have them back at your capitol ready to re-use.

Very, very nice or nasty I should say shovah32, I am stealing this idea...

[Shovah32]

Villians are inferior to rangers against almost every late era unit(due to shortbows sucking vrs armour). They are also less survivable and worse in close combat.

[PvK]

True, but against light independents and weak PD, they can still sneak in and pick and choose their fights, taking provinces for cheap.

[Shovah32]

True but the same could be said for rangers.

Feel free meglo. Other options are summon lammashtas, retreat(since the lammashtas keep fighting) which is useful in enemy dominion and summon lammashtas(this would probably need 2 gems to keep fatigue down/only some counts summoning lammashtas) followed by skele spam.

If your short on gems a regular flying, stealthy, immortal skelespam defensive raiding tactic is nice and flying in to cast things such as mass dust to dust vrs undead armies or decay+desintigrate vrs SCs can be helpful.

[Aleph]

Thanks very much, all - a lot of good material here, everyone contributing something different. Spectres are definitely a good pickup for Ulm, making me think about prioritizing conjuration more than I had initially been.

The sleeping master lich sounds good, and the lammashtas trick is brutal.

I'm not really in love with an immobile pretender with paths that I don't have anyone else capable of searching for/casting spells to search for. I don't see how to get started with such paths, although I suppose you could get lucky on indeps, or alchemy -> searching spells. On reflection, though, I could definitely see throwing F2N2E2 in as a nice boost to catalyze boots/mace production to get your E priests and N enabled fortune tellers able to cast their site spells, kicking off fever fetish spam, enabling soul contracts, and for the late late game having Infernal Prison to enable continued casting while under the affects of Astral Corruption.

I also cringe at seeing sloth and cold on Ulm, since I'm having trouble getting solidly established early - I need those resources. Maybe I'm missing the point (and Meglobob's sleeping giant premise implies that I might be) but it seems to me that you need to take advantage of Ulm's excellent high resource cost troops in order to "get" them. They have awful conventional magics in exchange for strong blood economy, hard as nails troops, two kinds of freespawn, and excellent stealth capabilities. I realize that good players can probably dominate without relying on all of these, but it just hurts my brain to have such good troops and cripple them with -40% production rates.

I'll think about what I'd have to give up to have a B6D3N2F2E2 master liche.