Mod: Ulm: Order of the Black Rose v0.301b

[Morla]

thx, fixed.

[Squirrelloid]

If you're trying to use another CBM version, please don't use the version that bundles CBM 1.84 with MA Ulm. I might recommend the MC version (which is linked from teh dom3mods thread). I will get around to updating this threads dls at some point... promise.

[Squirrelloid]

Version 0.30b released

-Tweaked PD to make it a little weaker.
-Stopped CBM 1.9x MA Ulm encumbrance change from being grandfathered in.
-I think I fixed the duplicate weapons on the heroes bug.

[Mightypeon]

Hoi Squirrel,

some further feedback:
-The various Black Lords can make capable antithugs with minimal equipment, although kitted harbingers are a bit too much, which imho is fine, being quite able to punk a Bane with Fire Brand/Awe shield yes, punking a 60ish gem harbinger thats fully kitted no. Use Iron Angels or special troops for the big guys.
-Unmakers are very powerfull if combined with an Icon of the Forge, Etheral and elemental immunity is nothing to sneeze at. However, 15ish unmakers with one Super smith cost 30 Earth and 45 Astral, so they better pack some punch. One can counter unmakers with Skellispam (they rack up fatigue quite quickly), some elemental resistance ignoring evocation and stellar cascades, one can also avoid them.
-Forging of unmaking is perhaps too strong for alteration 6, even though it needs alteration 6 and construction 6 and a summon in practice. I have won several battles against Pythium with grossly one sided results (the kind you would expect from SP) due to it, although it may be wad that the Super Smith did more damage/prevented more damage in these battles than a SC would have done.
Without armour, pretty much anything in Ulms arsenal will one shot human enemies.

While Mist Warriors, Army of Gold, Mass Protection and Army of Lead can to an extant counter the spell, everyone who does not have this is quite strongly messed up.

[Squirrelloid]

15s for 5 troops is quite a lot. You expect high performance from that kind of investment. And there's still plenty of options in the spell arsenal that splat them, even with elemental immunity.

Think of them like super mechanical men. They come one level earlier (but as you pointed out, construction 6 is basically required to summon them) and cost twice as much in raw gem cost, and its S instead of E so its more like 4x as much. Oh yeah, and they have fatigue as a disadvantage relative to mechanical men.

I don't think anyone thinks mechanical men are overpowering... i certainly hope no one does.

Might I suggest that anyone who's still using regular troops by the time Ulm gets to Alt 6 Const 6 is *doing it wrong* and deserves to get steamrolled?

[shatner]

Let me preface all this with the admission that I am a noob, especially once the game shifts more to a gem economy and less from a gold economy. Part of the point of the game Mightypeon is playing is to test Squirrelloid's Ulm mod. As such in the following paragraphs it is important to attempt to distinguish between me playing poorly and Black Rose Ulm being too strong or weak.


I'm the Pythium player who was doing it wrong and being steamrolled. I found BR Ulm to be an implacable opponent who beat me in every major engagement. This is at least partly due to Mightypeon being a clever player who rarely engaged my main forces without softening them up first with anti-communion earthquakes, assassination attempts or other shenanigans. However, another part to it was my inability to find a way to blunt the main BR Ulm advance.

The standard BR Ulm grunt has a base MR of 14 and an armor value that starts at 17. There are spells (global legions of steel, various anti-magic effects, etc.) and higher caliber recruitables (blacksteel infantry vs. baseline) who move those numbers up from there. Furthermore, with the right summoned commanders on the field, all of Ulm's army was enjoying +50% elemental resistance and the reinvigorating effect of the Relief spell. When facing an army of MR 19+, Prot 20+, 50% resistances, reinvigorating, better-stats-than-average troops, I found it really hard to find a good counter. Evocation spam? No. Fatigue? Not really. Stalling spells? Astral save-or-die spells? MR and Moral all too high for those kinds of things. Then you add in BR Ulm's various mage artillery platforms (spamming iron darts/blizzard, magma spells of various sizes, bladewinds, etc.) and you have a force which I, at least, couldn't find a way to meaningfully forestall. While I would almost certainly have lost our engagements after a bloody and protracted battle, having all of my armor preemptively ruined turned the battle from "slugfest" to "slaughter".

Before the war, Ulm and I were about equal in terms of research, gem income, gold income and so on. The war was mine to win, or lose, from the very beginning. My primary tactics were to have a wall of principes acting as a barrier between Ulm's army and my communion. Said communion would lay down some battlefield altering spells and then commence evocation spamming of one variety or another. While the particulars of each battle were unique, the main difference for Pythium was in mage scripting, not in force composition. The war raged on long enough for me to try lightning, cold and astral spams alone and in groups against the forces of Ulm, with and without spam critters (phantasms, false horrors, elementals), with and without battlefield enchantments (quagmire, wind guide, mist, storm, etc.), and never did it really help. I tried massed assassinations, seeking arrows and mind hunts, all to very limited success.

I summoned and equipped a bunch of harbringers and they proved very effective at raiding around Ulm's armies but never effective at facing the army itself. Eventually Ulm was able to cheaply field a number of counters (mainly anti-magic being black lords with lycanthrope amulets) forcing me to further constrain my harbringer forces. Between Ulm's cheaply summoned, magically armed troops and their evocation spam, mistform and body ethereal proved ineffective as buffs for troops or commanders. I didn't really see any good mass-summonable troops that could have faced up to Ulm, though that is almost certainly because of my lack of skill rather than a lack of options.

I would really appreciate some feedback here on where I went about this the wrong way, as well as whether BR Ulm is such that is is imbalanced, at least when facing a nation like MA Pythium. Aside from being helpful to me as a player, it would be revealing for this game to show whether and to what extant Squirrelloid's Ulm mod needs to be tweaked.

[Mightypeon]

I this war, I also a significant number of spies operating in Pythium which were busily reducing income in a decentralized manner.

A fairly important part in all this was my cunning trick with secretly allying with Mictlan(who you were conquering), while preparing a gigantic trap at mictlans Capital. Given that I moved on Mictlan after you asked me to do, while actually being in collusion with them, I managed to inflict a very severe first strike with that Earth Quake attack. If Mictlan wouldnt have been sleeping, it would have wiped out most of your standing army in the inital turns of war.
This did allow me to seize the initiave, and rapidly conquer former Mictlan (with some help from Mictlan itself, although I could argue that they were more of a hindrance, As Napoleon said, fighting a coalition is often easier than being in one). You had to recruit new troops and rush those to the front, which preempted any coordinated action against my Spy Corp. In the opening moves, I seized a significant advantadge in money income which became greater as overtaxing and induce unrest succesfully destroyed Pythiums economic basis.
The whole build up to the war as quite important as I could, and did, plan my force composition about 3 to 5 turns in advance, I later discovered that getting armies in place while being raided by harbingers is quite difficult. Ulm can only recruit its troops in its own castles (as you need high scales and your own dominion for castles to be productive), and they are still Map move one for the most part, although I was makig large use of knights and Sappers for strategic mobility.
I was quite amazed at how shockingly effective Ulms troops are when fighting Pythium too. In the early turns of the war, I had Pythiums mainly mage less army, with still 300ish Principes, encircled in Mictlan. Since Sallying forth happens last, I was moving my surrounding armies into Mictlan in order to prevent Pythium from getting away.
To my suprise (my goal was to stop them from moving), my 80ish black plates with I think 12 Mages totally and utterly murdered the principes suffering only very slight casulties, and, despite having no gems left, inflicted severe casulties on Mictlans sallying army too.
In this battle, I was using the MR and the Armour buff, further increasign S with strength of giants and otherwise relyign on destruction and Iron Blizzard. I had nearly no casulties from Principes, and these not exactly bad troops more or less melted upon impact.
Basically, if you use destruction in tandem with Flail troops that have strength of giants on them, everything with destroyed armour instantly dies upon getting in combat.

[shatner]

Originally Posted by Mightypeon

To my suprise (my goal was to stop them from moving), my 80ish black plates with I think 12 Mages totally and utterly murdered the principes suffering only very slight casulties, and, despite having no gems left, inflicted severe casulties on Mictlans sallying army too.
In this battle, I was using the MR and the Armour buff, further increasign S with strength of giants and otherwise relyign on destruction and Iron Blizzard. I had nearly no casulties from Principes, and these not exactly bad troops more or less melted upon impact.

Again, some, if not much, of your success is because of your forethought, diplomacy and cunning. That is undeniable and laudable; cheers to a superior opponent and his well earned victory! But the reason this conversation is relevant to this thread is whether or not the rest of your success was because Black Rose Ulm is, or is not, too strong. During our conflict I was utterly unable to find anything to face you with in the field. Sure I was able to make life a bit more difficult for you logistically, and I like to think the mind hunts and scores of seeking arrows hurt at least a little, but the fact remains that I was never able to muster an army which could ever do meaningful damage to your troops in the field when they were adequately supported by your battlefield-boosting commanders. Regardless of scripting, regardless of placement... defeat.

Yes, superior Ulmish troops with adequate magic support will make an almost unlimited number of principes vanish into a fine red mist. That isn't a point under contention, nor even the larger point of this discussion. What could I have done to actually have faced off against your forces? If the answer to that is "not much" or "not much without first researching [high level stuff here]" then we should take this as a sign that Black Rose Ulm is imbalanced. If the answer is instead "oh, just spam [reasonable research goal here]", "fight around my main army with [reasonably cost-equivalent army and/or summons] until my economy collapses", or something similar then we can see that my defeat is due to my own shortcomings and not because of anything wrong with Squirrelloid's mod.

So, again, what could I have done to actually blunted your invasion? Where our roles reversed, what would you, MightyPeon, have done as Pythium facing the steel avalanche of Black Rose Ulm?

[Mightypeon]

I think it is also possible to defend Communions (at least the communicants) against Earth Quakes with a crystal matrix and a high id master casting a fist turn mistform.
During the confrontation over Mictlan, I would have placed a signficant force in a reserve in a place where they could not be simply sieged.
You would have actually hurt me severly without the thunder bow bug issue, your assasins "actually" killed the relief guy, and that would have made f.e. stellar cascades quite usefull. It would have also screwed up my own advances rather severly by killing commanders that were leading troops.
The fact that my "cunning and unexpected" plan worked (earthquake suprise attack) while your equally "cunning and unexpected" plan (assassins with Thunder Bows, I did not expect that at all) did not for absolutly no fault of your own was huge.
Without thunderbows, your assasins were very managable with bodyguards. If they had the thunderbows, I propably would have needed to patrol while moving, which would have given you time to reorganise, research and root out my own spies.

It was in the beginning an open matchup, until you were hit by the bug (which invalidated at least 30 A gems, quite significant by turn 30ish), subsequently lost battles because my commanders didnt get killed (somethign you propably and with good reason planned to have happening), this meant that the outcome was much close to my initial plan than to yours, and, as Clausewitz states, friction increases the faster the more you already have of it.
If you had a communion with some protection for earthquakes, my own 30ish E gems burned on the suicde attack would have been largely wasted, and the early monomentum could have been in your favor.
I didnt have to reconsider my own plans until Harbingers.
As a note, I was attacking with Alt 6, Evo 6, Enchantment 3, Conjuration 3, Construction 6, Thau 2, and had been in a number of early wars. Given that Pythium does have better research, Having Conjuration 6 for Harbingers (they are 6 right?), Construction 4 for gear and Evo/Alt whatever 6 for battle magic should have not been impossible. I think you made a "mistake" in sending too many mages after Mictlan, it was overkill against them, but also put a lot of your assets in on place where I could very efficently attack them and also reduced your research.


Hindsight is of course 20/20...

[Squirrelloid]

The following things stand out to me:
(1) You were even in research with Ulm. As pythium. You should have been *leaps and bounds* ahead of him in research. You should have been matching his Alt6/Const6 with Alt 9, artifacts, and high conjuration or evocation. Pythium has no excuse for being only tied with Ulm in research.

(2) Fatigue spam definitely works. Specifically the 'no MR' kind. Thunderstrike is pretty good (<100 SR is not enough). But Solar Cascades is the real star here, and *every single pythium mage worth a damn* can cast it without communioning.

(3) Losing your armor? Marble Warriors/Army of Gold/Army of Lead is the best response. And you should have the research advantage to pull this off. If you're still relying on regular troops by the time Ulm has multiple 6 level research, you absolutely need at least one of these spells in every fight. Being able to drop AoG/L round 1 can also pre-empt earthquake to a large degree.

(4) Fog Warriors. Every fight.

(5) Mist of Deception could also be a pretty disruptive spell.

(6) Summons to use:
-Manifest Vitriol (can you tell I love alteration yet?)
-undead like Wights can work (admittedly not so much for pythium). Anything less than 100CR is going to fatigue out, and wights are pretty solid infantry otherwise.
-Mechanical Men or Living Statues make for a resilient frontline that isn't especially vulnerable to armor destruction.
-Thugs with good defense, good magic armor, and AoE weapons.

(7) Other spells of note:
-Acid spells are relatively accessible to Pythium, and ignores all elemental resistances, and damages armor!
-Your armor getting destroyed? Return the favor! Destruction isn't full battlefield, but its still brutal.
-Magma Eruption is only half fire. The other half doesn't care about elemental resistances.
-Ice Strike is *not* cold damage, and with high W level (you are communioning right?) it has a decent AoE.

(8) Communions!
-Use master matrices to start your master(s) communioned. They can spend their first turn casting a defensive spell, which will apply to all the communion slaves that cast before it gets to him. This can help with earthquake survival. (If you drop Twist Fate on all your mages turn 1 via communion, that earthquake isn't going to do much).
-Use communions to boost variable AoE spells into uber territory.
-Even spamming something simple like Enslave Mind or Soul Slay will overcome Ulmish MR, however slowly.

(9) Don't limit yourself to fighting during the battle phase
-Combats in the magic phase can prompt gem use, exhausting key mage's supplies before the main engagement
-Flames from the Sky / Fires from Afar / Seeking Arrow / Murdering Winter can potentially take out key leaders or wreck army formations. Fires from Afar is a 25+ damage ap fire attack that will hit without the benefit of those pesky OBSes - if it hits a mage the mage is toast, and even Ulm's troops are going to risk death from a hit.

(10) Ranged weapons
-Xbows, commanders with bows or xbows, or otherwise apply range pain. The non-tower shield infantry are vulnerable to missile fire.
-Fire Arrows