Despite my years of playing I always had it in my head that it was a minus for every path, yet after testing yep you're right! And here I was thinking it was just a bug for Dominions 6, guess it was just wishful thinking! Thanks for pointing that out and I'll try and get your comment to the top so others will see it!

Agreed, honestly I massively appreciate the level of effort Chazzy puts in to the videos, It's nice to have someone who puts in the extra effort to edit out the silence, makes it much easier and more pleasant to watch/listen too.

MA Ulm has been the standard faction to recommend new players for as long as I can remember, just purely because they have good troops and simplish mages, so you can get used to the basic mechanics of the game. Once you have a good grasp of the games basics then you can get into the more obscure parts of the nation or move onto others as you see fit! Glad you enjoyed the video!

Hey glad to hear they've been helpful! That's exactly what I wanted them to do, be helpful for newer players or people that were put off by the games lack of a tutorial. The fact they helped you is fantastic! Gotta love a rainbow pretender, and good on you for using them! There's a lot of choices when you have that much magical access, but at the end of the day, try everything, see what you like and most importantly have fun! Of course I intend to keep going for some time now! If you haven't seen them already, check out some of the other creators, Zan, BabelBuilder, AOReaper, LucidTactics and the others for different views on the game, they'll help you learn as well! Thanks for watching!

@@ChazzyBurger I will check their content! Thanks again!

Hi Kirk, glad you enjoyed it! What content are you looking for? I have a few national overviews up for some of the nations in the game, otherwise if you haven't had a look, check the quick tips or deep dives playlists for some additional explanations on some of the mechanics. If you're looking for something else, let me know and I'll get back to you!

Yeah it's very effective if you've made a caster bless, or something that will help mages perform, especially with the astral access you have!

Or MA Nidavangr... to keep on the theme, i still don't know how to deal with their sacrades and am trying them as a horde nation to some success...

Yeah that's the inherent weakness of Ulm, lack of easily accessed magical phase attacks and overall troop movement. You need to think multiple turns ahead in order to not be stuck moving your armies chasing foes. Good point on the petrification! A hard spell to cast but as you said with the randoms can be very effective. I usually find with Ulm casting spells the opponent doesn't think you can will always catch them off guard and usually win you a fight or two. Gifts is a fantastic spell, I love it, though I always remember a mp game as MA tien chi where I killed half of my troops due to some of my mages losing their eyes and having no precision, which was fun! Earth Snek is not a great pretender I agree, but I find him to be the most forgiving and fire and forget out of the monsters just because of his tankyness, he'll beat pretty much any province except large barbarians in my experience. Green Dragons are good but the nerfs to barkskin are pretty tough for getting it's protection high enough to expand willynilly. Overall the Dom 2 categories with their -1 to forging does make them quite a bit weaker I find for forging in comparison. Thanks for watching!

You are right indeed! If I can workout how to make a popup on the video I'll add that in, I was sure that was the way it worked previously but it was not!

I wish you good luck in your game, hopefully it goes well! For the Son of the Sea, his sailing is really the biggest benefit to Ulm, being able to move your normally slow troops multiple provinces in a single turn can really catch people off guard, especially if they're not expecting it. Obviously the limits are to coastal provinces which makes it not an auto take but it is a nice to have. The largest benefit that the Son of the Sea has in my mind is the fact that he can take troops underwater, and while your troops aren't very good down there, it does give you a way of at least giving underwater nations pause for thought for just bullying your coastline, something that's fairly difficult to get as Ulm. The mother of the storms is also decent at this though, that extra air gem income will let you make a barrel of air or other item to get troops under the water if you need to. If you can find any indie water mages, just going down there with water elementals will make up for your not so great troops, at least enough to bloody an UW nation's nose so that they leave you alone.

Thrice horned boar is a good pretender for expansion, I agree! It does hurt a little if you want to use more sappers or black knights due to only having order 1 for your forts, but he has a little more late game potential than earth snek due to his nature path. If you wanted a potentially more useful pretender than that, an awake earth mother with E6 N4 D5O2P3H2G0L0D3 hardskin reinvig could be a better shout, you have full slots to use with her for giving her the items you forge, she has inbuilt regen and can trample the same as a boar. She has 14 natural protection with hardskin and earth magic, but you can give her a full black plate to even that out, and she can cast personal regeneration for 20% regen a turn total while having even more hp. She can't go beserk, but that means she's harder for the enemy to break script with as well, so she can do more later in the game. Because she can hold all items, she can use the thistle mace into treelords staff to get you to the point of nature 6 spells and if you're really wanting to push the envelope, give her a copper arm to hold both at once and boom, you've got a gift of nature's bounty caster should you want it. As for growth on Ulm, sure it's a nice to have but I think you are better off spending the points for either more magic diversity or scales, it just doesn't do quite enough. If it had more immediate effect on income I'd suggest it, but it's too late into the game, and as Ulm you want to be getting ahead sooner rather than banking on coming back later. As for your archmage, it's a decent build I agree! Though I'd prefer to get some astral on your pretender to secure iron angels, to help you remain in play in the later stages of the game, and to help bootstrap your master smiths ability to form Sky Matrix Crystals and Slave crystals, at least until you get some astral randoms, so you can use communions more. I'd suggest instead of the arch mage using the master alchemist dormant with F4A1W2E4S4N2G3 Inspirational Presence 3x reinvig and farcaster with D4O2P3C2G2L2D3 as a better idea. He gives you more magic diversity, which is always nice, farcaster for your priest smiths and evocations and let's you craft the fire, water, astral, nature and glamour boosters for himself to play around with. It also opens up death access for you through fay princes if you want to with the Unseelie. His scales are a little worse with C2, but for the magical access you can get later into the game to stay relevent I think its worth it, your income isn't negative and it should hurt your early expansion as the turns will turn to summer for the extra heat scales before winter, so you should expand well enough in the first couple of turns to cover that gold loss in the later part of the year. But choose whatever you think is best obviously, my opinion is just one of many! The Svartalf mastersmith I love, he's great in that he's always in play, you just need to carefully decide how powerful you want him to be vs how good your scales are. He's an expander and a dormant sitesearcher/forger/researcher rolled into one, but he'll never be good as either choice in their respective field. I still love him though. Good luck in your next game!

@@ChazzyBurger whoa that was detailed, thank you. :D Great Mother is interesting, I actually had something like that saved in pretender creation! Very interesting trade-off to delay expansion few turns, and in return you get all that. Could be worth it! For the rainbow my issue in my test games so far has been that I've struggled to find any other gems than Earth and Fire for the most part. I tested a site searcher rainbow, but he was being overworked since he was the only one capable of casting the rituals. All in all for MA Ulm I think I might prefer not taking Growth at all and just play it aggressive with an awake expander or dormant titan, focusing only on 2-3 magic schools. I won't lie though, Astral would be brilliant to have... but can't have everything! :)

MA Ulm always has a special place in my heart for this exact reason, definitely the best fire and forget in terms of your units, the depth's there if you really want to min max it but it has a low skill floor if you don't! I would say that in a sense there's been some indirect buffs for Ulm in Dominions 6, the increase of population and gold means it's easier for them to mass troops because they're much less likely to be recruitment point blocked and changes to resistances giving a percentage reduction to overall damage means that the army buffs for things like flame ward do a lot more for the Ulmish troops. I do think that black knights are currently very strong and have the advantage of not being sacred so not needing a high dominion to pump out. Very terrain dependent though, if you can get a fort with high recruitment points and resources they're very good against normal troops. Additionally I think black lords as well are quite a bit better on their mounts and are slightly better at a light thugging role than before, just due to the cheap costs of items for Ulm and their good base equipment. If you wanted a nation that's different but still slightly similar to MA Ulm that needs a little more thought I've always been partial to MA Machaka, who are actually surprisingly good now with their black hunters and have a lot more magic diversity than Ulm so you can do more fun stuff with scripting!

@@ChazzyBurger Thanks for the suggestion! I did play MA Ulm as my first game of Dom 6, and I had so much money, I didn't know what to do with it. Heh, heh. As you say, the increase in population made it just ridiculous.

A nice build, I do wish the Allfather didn't give the +1 limit to magic scales, i quite enjoyed using him as a fairly wide magic path titan in Dominions 5, just can't squeeze out the points anymore!

That is true, but it's trade off, personally I'm happy enough to risk potentially losing gems later in the game if I can help pay for my production scales, obviously it sucks when it happens though and you wish you never took it!

Not an issue Joe, we have already played a series as MA Ulm for dominions 6 as a series targeted for new players, so I wanted to put this out just as a continuation of that. I have a new series planned to start soon that should hopefully be a better stepping off point to go into some higher skill level game play. Though this will have to wait to get properlly started as I'm out in the hills at the moment! Glad you've enjoyed the videos so far!

lol, too late... What is this about Ulm being boring, Ulm is one of the nations that stands out: an anti-magic anti-bless nation in a game mostly about magic and blesses.

From a purely mechanical point of view, Ulm is very out of the box. Your starting units can expand without issue and they can mostly avoid the more complicated mechanics (like magic) and just punch away. Meanwhile the harder mechanics, like blood, astral, communions, death and summon-heavy or squishy standing army nations don't get a spotlight in guides. :) Thankfully that's changing a bit now in the new series

I saw your new video drop on the Nidavangr, and I'm super excited for it. Very curious to see more complicated concepts like blood and magic