MA Ulm Pretender Strategies

[1337Dude]

Lately I've been playing with a rainbow Allfather (Air 3, Earth 7, Astral 1, Death 1, Nature 7, Dom 4, Fortune 3, Drain 3)) . I like him because he's versatile: wide range of spells, has sailing, strong regen+hard skin bless, and can forge most unique artifacts using boosters he can forge.

But was wondering what other pretenders people like to use. I figure Ulm benefits the most from scales and the least from bless-focused Pretenders (due to lack of Sacreds). I couldn't help but wonder if Quickess + Swiftness + Precision x2 + Far Caster bless would be effective on massed Master Smiths (Sacred w/ Shrouds). Probably would be more for fun than actually effective.

What Pretender strategies do people use with MA Ulm?

[1337Dude]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

I also think any strategy revolving around shrouds is doomed to fail. It's a nice trick IF you get an S random early enough. Which I never got on turn 40, and empowering a smith in S in order to forge cheap shrouds is just silly (in my case I could use crystal amazons, but sages, lizard shamans are also quite common - it would be cheaper to use these until you've forged 25 shrouds).
As for lord guardians, I don't think buying even one of them is worth it unless the situation is really exceptional. One half of a priest smith, with his volleys of iron blizzard, will kill way more opponents than whatever a lord guardian can put on the table.

I agree. Any strategy revolving shrouds would be doomed to fail. But we haven't really discussed any strategy where the prime goal is to pump out shrouds. If the situation allows for it, I'd pump them out (which just happens to have been every time I've played). The shrouds are simply one aspect of having a versatile Mage Pretender. And I'm not sure where people are getting the idea that this is a rush tactic. It's the opposite. It's just another way to make my Smiths stronger and more resilient later mid-game and endgame. But just because it's not the main aspect of the strategy doesn't mean I'm not going to talk about potential blesses.

Really with Ulm I've noticed that my Pretender takes more a backseat to other aspects of Ulm. So far I've noticed that as long as I've got the right scales, it's hard to go wrong. That's why I just like to see what people have experimented with

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by Mardagg:

This is very wrong.
Your indie commander gets killed most of the time .
You can either have him sit in the back and getting killed by fast indie troops bypassing slow guardians or you can try to have him move with the guardians...unfortunately with different movement speed.
The Lord guardian can perfectly fine move and attack with the group AND has better leadership in addition which is very important for small expansion forces.
And by small expansion forces I mean really small(less than a dozen).
Your answer tells me that you dont have enough experience using small expansion forces in Dom 5.

I definitely don't have that much experience with small expansion groups, but from my quick tests, indie commanders don't die most of the time at all. It may have been that before the patch which changed the attack rear behavior though, since even units in the same group tended to target the rear.
I understand these guardians can be used for expansion, but that's for really early game. I see the point of getting one by turn 2 or 3, because at that time, they can net you one more province and the income you get from that is great. But after turn 5, you should have cleared your capital ring and they will take a lot of time to get anywhere in small groups.
I don't like parties of 5-6 because I find them unreliable. I guess your small expansion groups can just stop when they have nowhere to go except heavy cavalries & barbarians, and build a fort, though, but bringing reinforcements takes a while.
Like you, I send some smiths to site search. Although I'd rather send a master smith with a random, so I prefer to recruit some master smiths in hope of getting a random, and alternate master and priests early game. I just don't need many priests to site search. I think two from the capital are enough, and they can build a lab later where other site searchers are recruited (and a temple too if needed).
Regarding lords vs. indies, the moving to the capital part is fairly irrelevant. Since you will move a smith out to site search, he may as well bring some soldiers with him, to be picked up by the indie you recruited in the province he'd search. And once you've set up a stream of indie commanders to capital if you want one, there is no delay left.
Overall, I think a lord on turn 1, to have 2 expansion parties, makes some sense. But after turn 5, I think they are a bit far and you build more troops so it's not useful to have such a heavily armored commander.

[Mardagg]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

Originally posted by Mardagg:

This is very wrong.
Your indie commander gets killed most of the time .
You can either have him sit in the back and getting killed by fast indie troops bypassing slow guardians or you can try to have him move with the guardians...unfortunately with different movement speed.
The Lord guardian can perfectly fine move and attack with the group AND has better leadership in addition which is very important for small expansion forces.
And by small expansion forces I mean really small(less than a dozen).
Your answer tells me that you dont have enough experience using small expansion forces in Dom 5.

I definitely don't have that much experience with small expansion groups, but from my quick tests, indie commanders don't die most of the time at all. It may have been that before the patch which changed the attack rear behavior though, since even units in the same group tended to target the rear.
I understand these guardians can be used for expansion, but that's for really early game. I see the point of getting one by turn 2 or 3, because at that time, they can net you one more province and the income you get from that is great. But after turn 5, you should have cleared your capital ring and they will take a lot of time to get anywhere in small groups.
I don't like parties of 5-6 because I find them unreliable. I guess your small expansion groups can just stop when they have nowhere to go except heavy cavalries & barbarians, and build a fort, though, but bringing reinforcements takes a while.
Like you, I send some smiths to site search. Although I'd rather send a master smith with a random, so I prefer to recruit some master smiths in hope of getting a random, and alternate master and priests early game. I just don't need many priests to site search. I think two from the capital are enough, and they can build a lab later where other site searchers are recruited (and a temple too if needed).
Regarding lords vs. indies, the moving to the capital part is fairly irrelevant. Since you will move a smith out to site search, he may as well bring some soldiers with him, to be picked up by the indie you recruited in the province he'd search. And once you've set up a stream of indie commanders to capital if you want one, there is no delay left.
Overall, I think a lord on turn 1, to have 2 expansion parties, makes some sense. But after turn 5, I think they are a bit far and you build more troops so it's not useful to have such a heavily armored commander.

On turn 1 I wouldnt recommend a Lord, since you just prophetize your starting commander and use your starting army at turn 2 to conquer first neigbour province. I would not build guardians, but instead e.g. pikeneers on turn 1. Send out spy to the province that potentially has best resources. Ideally you can attack this province on turn 2 ,if not build some more basic troops.Once you have better resources,start building guardians.
It wont take too long until you can build a decent number per turn, thats where I usually switch to priest smith+ Lord Guardian:
6-8 Guardians and a Lord Guardian are enough for most minor to medium indie provinces.
If you are up vs Barbarians or Heavy Cavalry, joining 2 expansion parties is enough.
I dont know any other non sacred regular infantry that fares equally well vs barbarians or cavalry in MA,often I dont lose a single guardian vs cavalry provinces. Indies you hate the most are the tribe indies, guardians dont like to be up vs many archers or masses of double attack indies. In general, with small expansion forces consisting of very tough units, you fear numbers the most. It doesnt matter too much if you are up vs quality as long as you are not outnumbered by a decent margin.

Initial expansion can be very fast this way.
You are right that before the patch it was even more important to use good commanders. But still,even after the patch, if you attack with such low numbers, it will happen that some indies get to your commander...which means certain death always in case of indie commanders + all guardians get massacred when retreating. I sometimes use 1 indie commander in the back with 5*hold and 1 guardian lord moving with the troops, this way getting 1 commander killed wont be an insta rout.

I wouldnt alternate master smiths with priest smiths.Always recruit the cap only precious priest smith...but then since I recruit Lord Guardians I have to keep an eye on that matter more than you, so well :)
That 1 Holy level though is important imo for early site searching.
All obviously depends on pretender choice as well, this is something we didnt talk about so far :)

[forrestomintero]

the important thing to remember with MA ulm is that none of your worthwhile units are blessable until i think conjuration 9 when you can summon iron angels. the only holy unit that's worth anything is the priest smith, whose main value is casting iron darts, and iron darts don't really cost enough fatigue to bother priotizing fatigue regen from bless. that means there's pretty much no point going for any level of bless. (not when you can spend one gem to get fatigue regen items) go heavy scales, and/or a rainbow site-searcher pretender to feed your crafters. The only other thing that's worthwhile is putting some points into a path in order to craft or cast a specific thing, but you definitely want to make sure it's worth the opportunity cost of the scales/other paths you give up in exchange.

[1337Dude]

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

the important thing to remember with MA ulm is that none of your worthwhile units are blessable until i think conjuration 9 when you can summon iron angels. the only holy unit that's worth anything is the priest smith, whose main value is casting iron darts, and iron darts don't really cost enough fatigue to bother priotizing fatigue regen from bless. that means there's pretty much no point going for any level of bless. (not when you can spend one gem to get fatigue regen items) go heavy scales, and/or a rainbow site-searcher pretender to feed your crafters. The only other thing that's worthwhile is putting some points into a path in order to craft or cast a specific thing, but you definitely want to make sure it's worth the opportunity cost of the scales/other paths you give up in exchange.

In my current game I'm at turn 30 and every single one of my Smiths are blessed. I'm using Shrouds - it costs 1 astral pearl with a hammer.

So I have a Pretender who has heavy scales, blesses, rainbow magic (great for crafting most end-game artfiacts). Unfortunately I'm going to win my game before I can even use him.

[jojeck]

Son of the Sea was my first pretender. Using his natural paths and raising them to A4W4D4 gives modest blesses to him and any of the smith priests or commanders with shrouds. Chose Swiftness x2, Defence +2, Cold resist and Undying x4 as bless which are useful for him but not stellar for other commanders. The main reason for the magical paths was to add considerable diversity for site searching, summoning and forging using A, W and D paths which Ulm doesn't have access to.

The pretender has excellent abilities that make it a SC (with buffs and arts) or a major battle leader and caster. The chassis has good inherent equipment and HP and the sailing (999 size 6) and water breathing (75) adds incredible leadership abilities for attacking over water and under water and moving a large number of the slow Ulm troops very quickly. A4 gives Mistform, Cloud Trapeze and even Mass Flight and Fog Warriors (with booster). W4 gives access to many buffs for caster or troops and ability to summon and forge anything using water gems. D4 gives full access to death magic summons and booster and Soul Vortex in combat.

So he adds a great deal of capability, taking him as Dormant allows fair scales. I took Dom 7, O1,P3,h0,G1, L0, Drain3 but they can be shuffled for personal preference.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by jojeck:

Son of the Sea was my first pretender. Using his natural paths and raising them to A4W4D4 gives modest blesses to him and any of the smith priests or commanders with shrouds. Chose Swiftness x2, Defence +2, Cold resist and Undying x4 as bless which are useful for him but not stellar for other commanders. The main reason for the magical paths was to add considerable diversity for site searching, summoning and forging using A, W and D paths which Ulm doesn't have access to.

The pretender has excellent abilities that make it a SC (with buffs and arts) or a major battle leader and caster. The chassis has good inherent equipment and HP and the sailing (999 size 6) and water breathing (75) adds incredible leadership abilities for attacking over water and under water and moving a large number of the slow Ulm troops very quickly. A4 gives Mistform, Cloud Trapeze and even Mass Flight and Fog Warriors (with booster). W4 gives access to many buffs for caster or troops and ability to summon and forge anything using water gems. D4 gives full access to death magic summons and booster and Soul Vortex in combat.

So he adds a great deal of capability, taking him as Dormant allows fair scales. I took Dom 7, O1,P3,h0,G1, L0, Drain3 but they can be shuffled for personal preference.

Now I want to try this with boots of the behemoth and a charcoal shield.

Only thing that bugs me about this pretender is you have no N capacity. I guess you can use indie guys but there are too many N items I want to forge like Vine Shields and Broth Cauldrons.

N1 indies can make Wineskins (and aren't they a better supply return than Broth Cauldrons?), but I dunno. Too many great items for me to pass up.

[jojeck]

Agreed access to nature is very usefull for Ulm especially in late game or versus Ermor, but you can't have everything. This pretender adds many other useful abilities that outweigh easy access to N paths.

In my game the Throne of Earth gave access to gnomes with N2E2 paths and I'm getting 4 N gems per turn, but there were 3 other provinces with witchdoctors and 3 more with shamans that could have given N1 site searchers. Wineskins are all you need for supply purposes and are very efficient if forged with hammers.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

I also think any strategy revolving around shrouds is doomed to fail. It's a nice trick IF you get an S random early enough. Which I never got on turn 40, and empowering a smith in S in order to forge cheap shrouds is just silly (in my case I could use crystal amazons, but sages, lizard shamans are also quite common - it would be cheaper to use these until you've forged 25 shrouds).

I think you've just demonstrated why expecting to be able to shroud is not foolish. Despite your awful luck on smith randoms in that game, you could still forge shrouds with amazons if you wanted to.

It's no different really from taking a pretender with air paths in order to get an air income. You could get unlucky and find no air sites in a given game, thus making your air magic a "waste"--but it won't usually turn out that way. Taking a bless intended to benefit your master smiths is a minor gamble, but not foolish.

It's not like master smiths are cap-only and 4 commander points, after all. They're ubiquitous.

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by wilson.max:

It's no different really from taking a pretender with air paths in order to get an air income. You could get unlucky and find no air sites in a given game, thus making your air magic a "waste"--but it won't usually turn out that way. Taking a bless intended to benefit your master smiths is a minor gamble, but not foolish.

Yes it is different. You have to site search to get the gems you'll turn into shrouds, too. So the sie-searching exists in both cases. Here, you add the fact that you may never be able to site search. In the end, it's just a metter of preferences I suppose. You think it's worth gambling on getting an S random smith early enough, or finding an indie S province. I think it's a bad idea and wouldn't base a strategy around that.
Now, if you pick high paths on your pretender for other reasons (like being able to cast some global or whatever), and you get some S mages, definitely building shrouds can be a good idea. But spending design points to get a good bless is too luck-dependent to my taste.

[1337Dude]

Originally posted by LDiCesare:

Originally posted by wilson.max:

It's no different really from taking a pretender with air paths in order to get an air income. You could get unlucky and find no air sites in a given game, thus making your air magic a "waste"--but it won't usually turn out that way. Taking a bless intended to benefit your master smiths is a minor gamble, but not foolish.

Yes it is different. You have to site search to get the gems you'll turn into shrouds, too. So the sie-searching exists in both cases. Here, you add the fact that you may never be able to site search. In the end, it's just a metter of preferences I suppose. You think it's worth gambling on getting an S random smith early enough, or finding an indie S province. I think it's a bad idea and wouldn't base a strategy around that.
Now, if you pick high paths on your pretender for other reasons (like being able to cast some global or whatever), and you get some S mages, definitely building shrouds can be a good idea. But spending design points to get a good bless is too luck-dependent to my taste.

As I mentioned a few times, I don't believe this strategy is necessarily focused around shrouds and the bless. Nobody is taking the bless and ignoring the other advantages that come with having a mage with higher magic paths. It's about having access to more powerful rituals, having a significantly more powerful pretender, AND the bless. And of course, the bless won't just extend to the shrouded Smiths, but your Pretender, Sacred mercenies, summonables, etc. leaving a lot of room open to experimentation (which I find to be more fun than doing the classic Thrice-horned boar rush).

Perhaps it depends on the context of the game (amount of players, map, etc.) but out of my dozen or so 1v1 Ulm games I've yet to experience failing to attain a Smith with an astral point within the first 15 turns. For being a gamble, I've experienced it to be relatively low risk but with potentially decent reward. Between mercenies, random events, empowerment, and Smith recruiting - I honestly have a difficult time imagining not being able to get an S1 mage and magic site. I always have luck in at least of one, if two or three of those avenues.

And it's worth mentioning again that with the Dwarven Hammer, shrouds are dirt cheap (costs only 1 pearl!) and can be crafted very early in the game. Unless you've been avoiding site-searching altogether, it's an easy investment, even if it means converting some exra gems laying around to Pearls.

To me, the real risk is what other people mentioned: simply wasting the points getting to level 4 of any magic when those points could be invested in scales, diversifying magic paths (for site searching and artifacts), and an Awake start. But at that point I suppose it depends how difficult you anticipate the match being early game. I'm sure if you're playing against a bunch of experienced players, you'll want the strongest early-game you can muster. As for me, I'm just playing against friends and the AI in SP. I've already been winning so I'm looking more to experiment than crush their will to play against me.

[LDiCesare]

Originally posted by 1337MechaHitler:

And it's worth mentioning again that with the Dwarven Hammer, shrouds are dirt cheap (costs only 1 pearl!) and can be crafted very early in the game

I keep disagreeing with you on this.
As for me, in my current MA Ulm MP game, I have zero master smith with a random S by turn 45. Ok, I' ve been unlucky. I have S mages, but any nation can have them. Sure, I can empower a smith for 50 gems in order to get a return on investment 25 turns later, but that's not dirt-cheap.
Shrouds are only dirt cheap if you get a master smith with a random S. Since your capital will be building priest smiths mostly (and maybe some guardians or some master smiths), you may nto have any S master smith before you've built your second fort. One smith out of 20 is S. So yes, you're likely to have one by turn 15, very likely to have one by turn 20, but you may have none at all, which is the case in my current game. This is why I say it is a gamble I won't risk.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by forrestomintero:

the important thing to remember with MA ulm is that none of your worthwhile units are blessable until i think conjuration 9 when you can summon iron angels.

Nitpick: Iron angels are not sacred.

[Mardagg]

@1337Mechahitler

To be honest, I completely fail to see why shrouds should be taken into account at all when designing the pretender for MA Ulm :

- it is some kind of a gamble as LDICesare repeatedly mentionend.

- even at 1 astral pearl, you first need the hammer you then need a smith to forge the shroud ,which costs a game turn...a turn he could have forged something else or be on research duty.

- you need astral pearls, even at 1 pearl per shroud . Most S random master smiths or indie S mages are better off site searching asap and/or casting the site search spell.
I usually use my pearls to forge other items, which I want for my thugs, e.g. amulet of magic resistance because of low MR. Also ,at some stage I tend to preserve all my pearls to be able to cast dispel. And I need my pearls to forge astral boosters which help in battles and/or to forge better items.

I usually have 4-8 hammers and all smiths equipped with these hammers have more important things to forge every turn than shrouds.

I simply fail to see what 20 shrouded master smiths can do a lot better than non shrouded ones , not to mention that if you dont build priest smiths at all in your cap , I can simply go with 20 non shrouded priest smiths getting the same result.

I know you dont want me to tell you about LA Ulm, but I give you this example:

I am currently playing 3 MP games overall, one as MA Ulm and one as LA Ulm.

With LA Ulm, we are at around turn 48 and I got more than 100 "Priest smiths" sitting around(+ I lost some in a big war).,by now I am getting about 6-8 more every single turn.
When I designed my pretender I took into account that later in the game I will have huge numbers of these guys, which are sacred and all of them can cast Iron Blizzard(only 25% of them though at Earth Level 2 before summon earh power). All of these guys are low upkeep and thanks to my magic scale are pretty good researchers in addition.
I based my whole mid and late game strat around these guys, of course I have some more things running like very good blood magic and such and I have no worries that I can stay strong also in the Late game.

Compared to LA, MA Ulm is better in other things but definitely not concerning sacred casters.
One of the big strengths, to me at least, is being able to take Drain 3 and lots of free design points . This way its totally doable going awake sc pretender while still having good scales or going dormant rainbow with best possible scales.
If you go SC pretender, magic paths should be taken to support him, if you go dormant rainbow, choice of magic paths to diversify in this area is important, bless effects are only a minor side effect . Actually, not choosing any bless effects at all even with points to do that , wouldnt make much difference for me ...at least the way I play MA Ulm.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Only thing that bugs me about this pretender is you have no N capacity. I guess you can use indie guys but there are too many N items I want to forge like Vine Shields and Broth Cauldrons.

N1 indies can make Wineskins (and aren't they a better supply return than Broth Cauldrons?), but I dunno. Too many great items for me to pass up.

In order to make N items, you need to site-search N anyway, which means you will recruit N1 tribal shamans and make them search everywhere. For the price of three Vine Shields you can empower N1 -> N2, who can make Thistle Maces for other N1s.