Forge of Ulm

[WraithLord]

FWIW I agree w/ Executor mostly. I just think ma ulm is OP now. With the forge up there only two options:
Either all the other nations immediately gang ulm and then possibly stop it or MA ulm wins. I'm looking fwd to a quick fix of some sort in CBM, until which I plan to ban ulm from my games.

[Mightypeon]

I think Ulm is fine without the forge, things can indeed get somewhat silly if they get it without getting dragged in wars.
I disagree heavily with them being the strongest MA nation, that is imho Shinuyama by a fair margin.
They are however up there with pythium and Shinu, and Shinu has a number of hard counters to MA ulm.

[Executor]

Originally Posted by Mightypeon

I disagree heavily with them being the strongest MA nation, that is imho Shinuyama by a fair margin.

Really? Would you mind explaining why you feel so? I'm kind of interested. Never played Shiny myself though Jomon is definitely strong and quite to my liking.

[Mightypeon]

Shinuyama has very good troops, and more importantly very varied troops.
Ulm has excellent heavy infantry, Shinuyama can pick and choose between very good heavy infantry, size 1 infantry with human stats, size one archers, Armour piercing aquatic Size 2 infantry for 1 resrouces, ok giant like troops for one gold piece.
Shinuyama also has excellent recruit anywhere mages. E2F2D2W1 Sacreds that get a guaranteed other pick and a maybe additional pick. They have better Earth access than MA Ulm since their mages have above 25% odds of being E3 (and can get native E4 sometimes), D3 allows skellie spamm and Bane Fire, F3 opens many many Evocations and Flaming arrows (and Shinuyama has some of the cost effective archers in the game too), and E3 can trollface Ulm with Destruction/Iron bane. Iron bane can be safe for Shinu to cast since they can recruit large armies in one turn that dont have artificial armour.

Having certain access to D3,F3,W2,E3,N2 from national mages (N2 coming from Ubas) allows them to get Kitsunes, who are stealthy Nature 3+ mages that can get additional picks in Air (hello rainbow armour), Earth (higher level buffs from N, some forging options), S, or combinations of those. The not unsensible choice of Having a Pretender with E4 (great for your battlemages) and A4(great for giving you A access) allows castings of Dai Tengu, who are A3E1 mages that provide even more options for Shinu.
Buff Spell Wise, Shinuyama can reliably get access to any Major buff that is not in Blood or Astral, it has all evocation options of Ulm and then some, and can get a couple of crucial summons without needing as many boosters as Ulm.

They also have the Shura, one of the most cost effective thugs of the game (Basically a Bane with more fear and Ethereal build in for 6 D gems), and their weakness in S can be dealt by Kitsunes, Shade mages and Dust Priests, all of whom are castable without needing the pretender.

If you think Jomon is strong, Shinuyama is Jomons incredibly nasty bigger brother (Shinuyama can do nearly everything jomon can better, they arent a heavy aquatic power though. If you get UW castles they still get to buy Kappas from there though), who, imho, happens to be in a "smaller" pond too. In an all ages game, I would see MA Pythium, MA Ulm, MA Shinuyama as contenders, while EA (Mict, Niefel, Sauro, Lanka, Hinnom, Acro) and LA (Mari, Mict, Atlantis, others) have a much higher amount of "heavyweights".

Compared to MA Ulm, Shinuyama has better E access, much more flexibility (they also dont have map move 1 issues at all) and can usually react very rapidly to any kind of emerging threat.
Ulm is a very powerfull force on the offense, but often has issues with reacting to sudden developments, Shinuyama is much more fluid.
Forge of Ulm is still overpowered though.

[Corinthian]

I do think that Shinu have become rather powerful in CBM, but while shinu is much more diverse than Ulm, they can't really match Ulms streamlined and cost effective MIGHT! For all their diversity, Ulmish troops can still counter all of shinus troops in the early game while spending much less money doing so. And in the mid game when mages dominate the battle field, Ulm still have the advantage of better chaff. And although shinus mages are just plain better on paper, they are also incredibly old and will thus have much more encumbrance than their ulmish opponents. And because Ulms troops are so much cheaper, ulm can afford much more forts and mages to compensate. And this is a place were quantity have a quality all of its own.

So in short, Ulm is still much more powerful than shinu.

[Mightypeon]

But Ulms chaff has map move 1, and Shinus chaff is avaialble on very short notice. If they play their cards right, they will be able to attack Ulmish troops with sizeable local superiority. They also have Stealth, something Ulm once again totally lacks.
Also, Destruction can be available early on (Shinus mages being old does not stop them from being great researchers) and makes it very easy for Shinuyama to defeat Ulmish troops on a cost efficient basis.
Given that Shinu is also a very good archery nation, destruction really makes it very very easy to kill Ulms stuff from afar. Pangea can also counter Ulm using destruction and archery, but is much less powerfull in general.
And Shinu also has room for much more variability in Pretenders as it does not need much from one (other than preferably awesome scales, to an extent, Drain 2 is a very good choice for them due to Shinuyamas researchers not caring that much about loosing an RP)
It should also be noted that Shinus mages are sacred and all of them can cast earthpower. Given that a A4E4 Celestial General is rather popular for Shinu, reinvig 6 in major battles (where the prophet is available) is not awfully uncommon.

This does not mean that Forge should not be changed, but I seriously see Shinuyama as stronger, especially in a direct matchup.

[rdonj]

Why are we discussing this in terms of a direct matchup, a direct matchup is pretty useless to figure out which nation is stronger in this game. That'd be like saying ma vanheim is stronger than vanilla ashdod because ashdod has no easy way to handle air magic.

[Mightypeon]

Well, I think most would agree that Shinuyama and CBM MA Ulm are both very strong nations, and in such a situation in may be worthwhile to look at the direct matchup, as their respective "strongness" makes them more likely to end up fighting each other directly (before after or while they kill everyone else).

Ulm is better at forging, Ulms has great troops, Ulm has reliable and cheap but effective battlemagic.
Ulm is slow, Ulm has issues reacting rapidly to new situations, Ulm cannot rely on National Mages/recruits to do the thugging.

Shinuyama has good troops, some of the best mages in the game, but neither of those is cheap. It has unmacthed flexibility, stealth and a high degree of mobility. It has access to very cost effective Thugs, but cannot equip them as cheaply as Ulm can.
Both Shinuyama and Ulm can counter enemy heavy infantry very well, but Shinuyama does not have to rely on heavy armour due to its flexibility, while Ulm does.

[Valerius]

Something worth keeping in mind is that Ulm is not restricted to using only its national troops. Of course later in the game national troops will at the very least be supplemented (if not replaced) by summons but even earlier in the game you can use indies to complement your national troops (this would obviously not apply on a NI map but the majority of games do allow indies and CBM has to balance things with the most common MP settings in mind).

So, for instance, one drawback to Ulm's troops is map move 1. But the important thing is your mages are map move 2 (having map move 1 mages is a major drawback). Ulm lends itself to production (and in 1.92 prod scales are more appealing than ever) so even in unforted provinces you should have no problem massing indie troops (especially since the map move 2/3 indies tend to be lower resource units). And of course you can apply the exact same buffs to those troops as your national ones. So you've got your heavy hitters for your main offensive force (which is going one province at a time anyway) combined with a more rapid response map move 2 force of indies. I've also noticed that Ulm players in particular tend to spam forts so later in the game map move may not matter much when responding to raids since almost every province may be neighbored by a fort.

And if someone wants to play the destruction/iron bane game I think Ulm can compete. Sure, you might have to change your troop mix but that's an important part of the challenge and fun of the game.

I also wanted to make a comment about another Ulm weakness - slightly lower than average MR. This is something that will kill you late game if you get hit with master enslave pre-buff. But the thing is, that will devastate even nations with good MR units (one of the great things about demons is that their base MR is 16/17). For much of the game tempering the will means your effective MR over the course of a battle will frequently be as good as the good MR nations. Now nations with good MR troops can cast antimagic but if they are not astral nations and they are fighting an astral nation (a time when you'll really need that MR boost) your opponent can likely afford to risk mages to magic duel more than you can.

Something I haven't heard mentioned and that I'm not fond of is the holy Iron Fears Not Fire/Lighting/Ice spells. Lightning having its damage cut in half from the beginning of the game is in bad enough shape but fire and ice, which are AP at best at low levels, basically become unusable against Ulm's high prot troops. I understand the idea of giving Ulm elemental resist spells that are hard for them to come by with their mages but I think these should be made earth spells and require some degree of research.

It has also occurred to me that the removal of hammers helps Ulm. For instance, Ulm's cost to forge a 5 gem item with a hammer has gone from 2 to 3 gems. Other nations (ones without a forge bonus of course) had their cost increased from 3 to 5. It's a relative advantage for Ulm - your forge costs have gone up but not as much as most other nations.

Also, a comment about master smiths. While they aren't the most powerful mages around there's something to be said for a cheap, recruit everywhere, tougher than average mage who, either by using gems or earth boots, can add punch to any force by casting weapons of sharpness (imo the single best troop buff because it lets you take down targets that would otherwise not be threatened by normal troops).

So I agree with Executor's assessment that there were just too many boosts that added up to the nation becoming OP. Ulm wasn't the only nation that got boosts in 1.92 so it's inevitable there will be a review of how things played out for all of those nations and if some things should be nerfed. And I'm not really surprised that Ulm stands out as having become particular strong since they were weak for such a long time (enough so that they actually got a boost in an IW patch) and they've had a lot of player support to help them out.

I'd say it would make sense to implement a couple of nerfs to MA Ulm and see how it goes - definitely don't want to go crazy and overnerf them.

I'd should also say that when boosting weak nations I prefer to aim for average/somewhat above average power level rather than top tier. Partly because I like to tone down the power level rather than ramp it up but also because you'll just eventually end up with the previously mid-range nations become the new underpowered ones and then you'll have to boost them up. Pythium has been a power for a long time and I can live with them and the other top flight nations keeping their position without adding more nations to their group.

[Mightypeon]

Iron fears not has AoE one, and priests that are using them do not spam iron Blizzard, I am not sure that spamming indie priest to get it is very viable either.
And only 20% of Ulms mages can cast weapons of sharpness too