Looking for Pretender suggestions for Ulm

[blackwulf]

I'm looking for Pretender suggestions for Ulm.

-Blackwulf

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by blackwulf:
I'm looking for Pretender suggestions for Ulm.

Ulm/standard
Prince of Death air+2, water+2, death+4
Order, Production, Growth, Drain, Misfortune +3
Dominion 7
Wizard's Tower

Build Guardians in the capital, HI or BK in your other castles (build some, the WT is cheap).

You can forge cheap yet decent equipment for the pretender (main gauche, Charcoal shield, Horror helmet, black steel or elemental armor, crusher boots - an amulet of AM adn a ring of regen would be also nice), in combat have him cast Quickness/Mistform/Mirror Image and attack.

[Nerfix]

If you are using Iron Faith, i suggest taking a god with 9 fire. Black Templars are INSANE with the fire 9 blessing.

[Joonie73]

What does flaming weapons let you do?

Originally posted by Nerfix:
If you are using Iron Faith, i suggest taking a god with 9 fire. Black Templars are INSANE with the fire 9 blessing.

[Taqwus]

Flaming weapons count as magical, I think (at least the flaming arrows generally have). I'd conservatively estimate the description to mean additional 8 AP fire damage for every melee weapon.

[Dekent]

In short, lets em slaughter pretty much any other standard troop out there.

[PvK]

If flaming counts as magical, then it would also handle the pesky ethereal units.

I think high Astral 4 is tempting with Iron Faith too, to get a blessing to magical resistance.

My first Iron Faith game uses a Prince of Death with Death/Blood/Fire/Earth all at 4, and air and water at 2. This gives four bless effects to my Templars, and gives me good searching and forging/casting possiblities. Blood was kind of silly, until I moved into the Mictlani capital...

My sentimental favorite is still a dragon. I think the main point though is to get the magic you want to have on the pretender, especially in the regular flavor Ulm, since they have no random spheres in their national units. For Iron Faith, consider bless effects, and realize there is a basic random sphere pick unit available.

PvK

[SurvivalistMerc]

I am a total newb. So take this with a grain of salt.... It represents only 1 game's worth of experience, and that game is not even over.

40 Admin Castle, Great sage, Order 3, production 2, growth even, misfortune 3, drain 3.

3 in every magic skill but blood. 2 in blood. This doesn't work well with iron faith as there are no bless effects. But with standard ulm it rocks. Your great sage will start out with 30 research points. And with judicious use of smiths, you can actually be ahead in research in a drain 3 dominion.

[PDF]

Until now, in Dom1 & 2 (demo), I like to play Rainbow Mage with Ulm - the best one IMHO being the Sage (in Dom2Demo the Alchemist still costs 100 pts, it should be fixed in the next patch).

Ulm doesn't really need a fighting pretender in the early game, and having a good researcher (even with Drain3 a Sage has 20+ RPs) gives you the edge in magic initially.
So I hurry Research for Cons4, then make Earth Boots, Dwarven Hammer (forge -50% total with Smiths), and go straight to Conj4 to get Fall Bears. All this is done by turn 15. Then the Pretender goes searching for sites, letting Smiths conjures thes Bears and hopefully indy sages make the research (Evocation then Enchantment), while he makes a tour of the realm. With this Ulm now has one of the best income, forges many items at half cost, and the smiths can now accompany armies casting cool spells like Legions of Steel, Earth Elementals or Fireballs...
Eventually when facing a SC it can be pretty hard, but Ulm units are quite resistant and often can manage that (I've seen -in a solo game- an enemy Cyclops fall to my garrison crossbowmen thanks to a bolt in the eye ! )
Anyway it's pretty fun and interesting

[LordArioch]

I'd second the prince of death suggestion...throw some black steel plate on him and he routs armies easily and is hard for standard troops to hurt. He's probably the most powerful suggestion here, but rainbow mages are fun for the large variety of magic you get to play with.