Early Game, Mid Game, and End Game... What's the goal of each?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
I like Ulm, and they aren't all that bad magically, just rather severely limited in scope. Plus they are great at item-making, which compensates for a lot. It's not a nation I would choose to play against humans, but against AIs they are fine.

I don't find their item-making prowess THAT wonderful, given their lack of randoms that would increase the variety of forge targets. Forge of the Ancients as an early goal can help, but invariably I find that the inflexibility of their national magics, coupled with their high point demands for early production of their resource-expensive units, leaves me too thin on magic for my tastes. My best study of Ulmish behavior to date has been Condors....and he asks *ME* for advice. I do okay against the AI, but I am far from the master of Ulm.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
My best study of Ulmish behavior to date has been Condors....and he asks *ME* for advice. I do okay against the AI, but I am far from the master of Ulm.

Heh. I felt the same way when Charon was asking me for my opinions on R'leyh. I'd've done a R'leyh AAR a fair bit different than he has (even had I chosen the same map), but I do not think I would have done *better*. Just different. I know for certain most players would not do Jotunheim as I do if for no other reason than it's a blood nation and I don't use blood magics (I like the spells, but I refuse to hunt and sacrifice virginal girls. )

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Arryn:
I know for certain most players would not do Jotunheim as I do if for no other reason than it's a blood nation and I don't use blood magics (I like the spells, but I refuse to hunt and sacrifice virginal girls. )

Meh. Hunting and sacrificing virgins is nothing compared to global genocide.

Like my sig says....

[ywl]

The advantage for Ulm, at least for standard theme is 120 free nation points, with no string attached.

Most of the other nations who have free points, such as Abysia or Caelum, requires a strong dominion to avoid income penalty and/or to fight effectively. For Ulm, the drain -3 is optional. It helps your defense slightly but you can live perfectly well without it.

Consequently, you can afford an expensive pretender, and more importantly use a pretender with low dominion strength (e.g. mage or dragon).

This is the advantage in additional to the production bonus and very decent infantries, availability of crossbow (sappper, somewhat expensive with seige bonus). Their smiths have no random pick. But with your better pretender, you can easily get around of that limitation.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Blood-Ulm, or Ulm with lots of scouts harvesting blood slaves, makes for one mean devil-factory through forging Soul Contracts. Takes a while to get going unless you have a blood pretender to forge the initial contracts and make blood enhancing items, but once you have a decent blood income it isn't all that expensive to empower a smith to L3 in blood and boost him to L5 with items (Armour of Souls, Brazen Vessel), give him a dwarven hammer, and forge Soul Contracts for 40 blood slaves apiece.

It can even work in MP against the unwary opponent who does not consider Ulm a blood nation, if you just make sure to hide your devils really, really, well until you have a high production going.

[Cainehill]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
Well, in that case, first, I'd suggest taking a nation that is fairly conventional, so you'll get a decent level of exposure to how the game works, and is also fairly difficult to attack. Try Atlantis, or R'lyeh. That will impede the AI's ability to rush you, and you'll be able to experience a full game without being swarmed. Once you get that down, try and go faster. Then move onto land.

For single player, I've found the ocean provinces are great even for land based nations (demo nations, default indie strength). Either of the aquatic mercenaries (Fishermen / Shipwreckers(?)) are capable of taking lightly defended territories; reinforced by the common local tritons, they take more heavily defended ones. Better yet, the leader of the Shipwreckers is a priest - thus letting you build water-based temples next to enemy dominion / territory.

Even without the mercenaries, a decent amount of Water magic seems to allow several of the nations (Jotuns, Abyssians, Machaka especially) to go underwater with enough strength to, again, take a lightly defended water province and then build local aquatic reinforcements - tritons are cheap (resource-wise) and fly in the water. Disposable water cavalry.

Of course, this changes if your SP game includes Atlantis or R'lyeh as opponents.

If Atlantis / R'lyeh aren't in game, though, the water areas have great benefits. Secure temples (if nothing else, a priest with appropriate magic item building them), secure gold incomes, frequent source of nature gems even without searching (Kelp Fortress), and with a rainbow pretender, lots of magic gem sources that probably won't be taken by the enemy.

Again - predicated on Single Player games.

[Cainehill]

Spacepain:
I tried Mictlan a few times and was repeatedly whomped, same goes with Machaka, Vanheim, Ermor (all 3 themes), etc...

Machaka I've played several times and (after initial confusion) done pretty well against the easy AI, up until the demo turn limit kicks in at least.

One thing that helped me was figuring out that Machaka's best spider units (Hunter Lords / Black Hunters - the others, imo, need a priest for morale) are great, especially with any half-decent blessing bonus. Great morale, armor, movement rates, and the Hunters are sacred, so cheap to maintain even if expensive to buy.

Machaka's Bane Spider assasin/scouts are also great - the heaviest armored assassins I've seen in the demo, good weaponry and morale. Quite capable of dealing with most commanders (cavalry are one notable exception - Bane Spider on a stick).

I'm not huge yet on the magic myself - haven't forged an item in 50+games, and limitted magic. Still - some summonables are grand - Summer Lions (Conjuration 4, requires Fire Magic 3) for example. But mostly magic has been in a supporting role to melee combat.

Good luck.

[Taqwus]

Vanheim's Van units are actually rather brutal, considering halfway good prot of 14 plus Glamour. I tried them out with a Water-9 dragon to assist; the dragon, a Vanjarl prophet, Vanlade the Hero and roughly a dozen Vans whomp independent forces of 3 commanders plus 80-90 HI/militia quite handily. If I'd bothered bringing along air gems for Arrow Fend, perhaps casualties would be zero instead of ~1-2.
'course, it was basically game over when the Ancient Presence event apparently killed approximately 26000 people in my capital, but that's beside the point.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by ywl:

Consequently, you can afford an expensive pretender, and more importantly use a pretender with low dominion strength (e.g. mage or dragon).

Low dominion strength can potentially be risky for Ulm, as a poor dominion can leave you rather vulnerable to being priested or dominioned. I ended up having my dominion creeping into Condors' territory despite making no real attempt to push it simply because Ulm isn't any good at maintaining dominion, and a low dominion score just exacerbates the problem.

[condors]

in sp its a different world than mp.

The way i play ulm, I learned strickly with earth magic and earth gem income. I had a thing for cyclops pretender. This may have slanted my tactics and view of things. I see any other gem income as a bonus. With the added gems coming in there are alot of things avaible to ulm but none of them can be counted on. Using those gems with summoned/indy/empowered mages gives ulm its flexibility. I just won a sp karan all nations impossible ai using fetishes to create an aboundance of fire gems, Ermor who normally dominates sp was delt with easily giving me 9 hall of fame smiths with my pretender. Mecanical men and a fire ring is easy access for ulm, battlefield/large area fire spells worked wonders.