Iron Faith Ulm

[SurvivalistMerc]

I just noticed how great those inquisitors are preaching against enemy dominion.

I was storming Caelum's capital. (Payback!) While seiging, I just had my priests (about 4 of them) preach for 2 rounds. With their pretender (a dragon posing as a sage) in their castle, it only took two turns to go from Dominion -6 to Dominion +3. The dragon's hps in my +3 dominion were laughable and turned it into an easy kill. When those SC pretenders drop in hps, they take afflictions quite often.

In the process of killing him, he became weakened, chest wounded, limp, and feebleminded. I'm especially happy with the "feebleminded." I wonder if those bird-brains will be smart enough to notice they are worshipping a feebleminded moron. Probably not.

[PDF]

Owl Quills ? For standard Ulm Fire Lanterns (Cons6, Fire 1) are much better (+6 RP), aren't more expensive, can be built by any smith and use (often) more readily available Fire gems.
With IF you only have "random" Fire mages, but I still think lanterns are a best bet- keep air gems for Robe of shadows or stuff like this !

[aldin]

Originally posted by PDF:
Owl Quills ? For standard Ulm Fire Lanterns (Cons6, Fire 1) are much better (+6 RP), aren't more expensive, can be built by any smith and use (often) more readily available Fire gems.
With IF you only have "random" Fire mages, but I still think lanterns are a best bet- keep air gems for Robe of shadows or stuff like this !

Owl quills are available at Construction 2. Lanterns need a hefty Con 6! Since the IF goal is to free the pretender from researching (since they're the only one who has more than research 1) Owl Quills are the best, first bet. At Con 4 you can have your pretender craft a Skull Staff to give to a researcher with a Death pick who then switches to crafting Skull Mentors (better than the lanterns anyway) and Champion's skulls. Waiting til Con 6 for your pretender to leave home puts too large a strain on searching for gem sites.

~Aldin

[SurvivalistMerc]

I've experimented a bit more with this and concluded that the templars are just distraction. It's the change to your mages that is important. And I think the same kind of rainbow sage that works with vanilla ulm works with IF. Sure...you may only have a reinvig bonus for your magi if you took earth 4 and the rest a rainbow...but you need a variety of gems to make your research work. Especially if you take drain 3 which I still find wise.

My thinking is that if you take a decent bless effect, you are in effect ignoring your nation's research or other needs. (Such as productivity/order).

Thoughts?

Well; you have to consider what you're getting. You're getting a 1 earth, 1 random mage for your mages. And you are using them to create your magic. Now I don't know how many other nations you've played successfully; but that is quite a limitation.

I personally would not play IF for it's mages. The only reason that I would play IF would be either for ****s and giggles to say I have (which I have done) or to try to create some blessing effect.

Under no circumstances would I not play (In MP) Order/Production/Misfortune. Otherwise you are not taking advantage of one of Ulm's strengths and might as well be playing a different race.

Edit: Owl Quills are excellent all around; unless you are saving your Air gem income for something specific a 5 gem Quill for 3 more research a turn is an excellent tradeoff.

[ December 21, 2003, 17:03: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Phoenix-D]

As far as taking Drain with Iron Faith goes- why not? On the Ulm description screen it says they are immune to drain. I can see this not applying to indies, though..

Only Master Smiths (base Ulm) are unaffected by the Drain scale. Anything else, including Black Priests (the IF mage), takes the full effect of the Drain scale.

[Phoenix-D]

How about the Pretender?

Pretenders are not immune either.

[Phoenix-D]

Ulm must have a special mage skill False Advertisting, then.