Strategy Primer: LA Ulm Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

Primer: LA Ulm

I'm writing a "Primer" series of guides - each covering a specific nation - with the intent of giving new players an overview of the key strengths and capabilities of a nation.

Ulm, at first glance, is a weak nation. It only has a "standard" human army, with no real powerhouse units. It has very weak (but diverse) magic from its recruitable units - all you get is a maximum of 1 path in Nature, Blood, Death, Air, and Fire. Astral and Earth are a little better, giving you a max 2 for both. Even LA Ulm's unique summon - the Vampire Count - doesn't seem to help matters much being "only D2B2", but there's one quality of Ulm that people seem to keep missing:

Its "Illuminati" mages are recruit-anywhere.

Now, you may wonder, "So what?! That just means I don't need a fort to recruit some S1 mages that cost 75 gold! How can that be good?"

First, consider that forts now take a longer time to build, often taking five turns at least for LA. What this means is that while everyone else is still building a fort for their second mage recruitment center, you are ALREADY recruiting a mage once you've taken your second province and built a lab in it. That gives you at least four more turns of recruitment compared to the guy still building forts, so you get at least four more mages than the other guy.

But that's only because we're assuming that your infrastructure cost outlay is the same. In reality, the fort-based nations are spending around 1,500 gold (500 for the lab, 1000 for the fort). You're just spending 500 gold for the lab. This means for the same price, you can have three recruitment centers up and running for the same price as somebody else's sole recruitment center!

What this means is that LA Ulm can mass mages like no one else. If you set your sights on it, you can be producing four or even five mages per turn by the end of year one, when most other nations will be lucky to produce 3. In fact, Ulm is probably the only nation that will be constrained by gold when producing mages - so make sure you don't overheat the Ulmish economy by building too many labs when you don't have the money for it.

With this enormous pile of mages, you can start cranking research up to utterly obscene levels, especially with Magic scales. I've been able to break 300 research per turn by the end of year one with Magic 2 scales using this nation. And note: That is research PER TURN. In one turn you can research level 1 of six different paths, and quickly climb up to level 4/5/6 earlier than others will think is possible.

But it gets even sillier when you realize these mages are actually pretty usable in combat too. Your basic recruit is going to be the 75 gold S1 dude - not too cheap, but reasonably priced and highly versatile, which can fulfill a number of key roles:

a) They can serve as communion slaves, particularly to your Fortune Tellers and eventually the Vampire Counts. LA Ulm can get communions up faster than anyone else bar none, because they can actually mass-produce mages that can serve as communion slaves. You can have them out and running even before the communion counters come out!

To be more specific, Fortune Tellers always come with S1 and either Astral, Nature, Death, or Blood Magic. S2s and S1B1s can be used as combat mages which will be covered in the next section. S1D1s can spam Terror and, once spammed to really high levels, undead blockers. S1N1s have Panic and various Nature buffs.

b) They can serve as combat mages, by either taking advantage of a communion or some boosters like Light of the Northern Star. Astral sucks for combat you might say? Well, sure, it doesn't have the killing power of Fireball, but consider: You are pumping out enough research to easily hit Evoc 5 by early Year 2. And with change to spare to get Thaum 1 for Communions, Blood 1 for Reinvigoration, and maybe even Conjuration 3 for power of the spheres.

Create a Communion. Get a mix of slaves and master S1s (around 1-2 masters per slave depending on your risk comfort level). Those S1s now become S3 and start throwing down Stellar Cascades enmasse. Every four casters basically takes out an Area 5 worth of units per round. And you're producing four more of these guys every turn. That's an utterly scary level of evocation magic, enough to leave an entire battlefield full of twitching, unconscious enemies.

Worried about fatiguing your slaves for big fights? No worries - just add a B1S1 Fortune Teller and reinvig away all the slave's fatigue!

c) They serve as pretty damn good spies, which also gives them a role later on when communions lose their power. And unlike most spies, they're immune to Mind Hunt!

d) They do a fair job of defending the provinces they're researching in, particularly against raiders and thugs. Once you have four S1 dudes in a lab and Thaum 2, just script 2 to be slaves and 2 to be masters, and the masters can Mind Burn the thug to death (Beware high MR thugs though!). Just garnish with some PD to distract the thug for a while (and to help patrol for unrest for Phase 2 of Ulm's master plan - more on this later).

Later on, when you start spreading Vampire Counts everywhere, they can support the Vamp Count too! Make the Vamp Count your Sabbath Master, and let him spam high-level death spells.

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Put together, the implications of recruit-anywhere S1 mages are simply quite astonishing, making Ulm one of the most unique (and possibly strongest) factions in the game. With the exception of EA Ermor, nobody else gets a recruit anywhere that is so cheap, relatively research-efficient, and versatile. You actually want to be able to mass these guys, as opposed to Ur's expensive recruit-anywheres or MA Man's research-hindred dudes. Even EA Ermor's recruit-anywheres are not as efficient (requiring a temple and a lab) nor as versatile (F1 mages are more limited in what they can do - just mass fire spam and that's it)

But massive communions aren't the only thing Ulm can do. They also get a unique summon - the Vampire Count.

The Vamp Count a fairly good caster (with Death 2 and Blood 2) that can be summoned at a relatively cheap cost. Now, this may not seem like a huge upgrade from the recruitable Death 1 and Blood 1s, especially when you consider none of your units can actually summon them so your Pretender is all but required to have at least D3 and B3, but the Vamp Count is much more than just his magic abilities.

The first and most important thing to realize about the Vampire Count aside from magic is that he doesn't cost maintenance once he comes out. This means, unlike other Blood Hunters, he can just keep on Bloodhunting forever and give you "free" slaves. True, unrest increases when you blood-hunt, but the Vampire Count also provides steady stream of free units (peasants) who you can use to patrol the unrest away. Your end goal is to eventually have a Vamp Count (equipped with an SDR) in each province bloodhunting (with a second commander patrolling, using the Count's peasants), earning you an enormous blood income. And if you have Growth scales, you'll barely feel the population loss and have no real loss in income.

Secondly, with just a few items (+1 Death item and a +1 Blood item), a Vamp Count is able to summon another Vamp Count on its own. This frees your Pretender from Vamp-Count summoning duties, allowing him to do other things.

Finally, the Vamp Count is no slouch in combat. He's Invulnerable and is Immortal in friendly dominion. If you have Vamp counts everywhere bloodhunting (but scripted to cast spells to support the PD) it becomes relatively difficult for thugs to raid your provinces.

Thus, LA Ulm's Vamp Counts can potentially turn the nation into a very secure land that produces an enormous blood slave income, without the usual income problems of "traditional" blood hunting nations. You pay less maintenance because your Vamp Counts don't cost upkeep, and you patrol away the unrest caused by blood hunting using the Vampire Count's free chaff.

The only real problem is that you don't start with good bloodhunters, don't start with a mage that can summon Vampire Counts, and have no real way of consuming an enormous blood income and turning it into game-winning tools (e.g. summoning demons). All this must be fixed by your Pretender.

As a suggestion, here are some things you may want on your Pretender to synergize with your Vamp Counts:

1) You definitely want D3B3 to summon Vampire Counts, but it doesn't mean you can't add some more ranks to it. You can make Blood boosters at Blood 4, 5, and 5. Blood 5 lets you cast a good spell that brings out five demons per casting (Ritual of Five Gates). I personally think having B5 is the minimum, though you could always empower if needed (it takes time though)

2) Adding a point of fire lets you forge Flaming Skulls, which improve your Fire by +1. With Fire 2 and enough blood, you can get Devils and Archdevils. This opens up Fire to your nation.

3) Adding two points of cold lets you summon the Ice Devils

4) Growth is VERY good paired with Vamp counts. With enough growth you might not even still gain population even with bloodhunting and patrols

In short, while your S1 mages research and defend your nation, your Pretender, Vampire Counts, and massive Blood income push you over the top in the late game. That said, you really do need to fight for those unique blood summons - you don't have outstanding national mages for the late game as a fall back.

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Now, LA Ulm is already looking pretty ridiculous (I did say how it may be the most powerful nation in LA), but we're also forgetting one aspect that is a classic part of Ulm: Forging.

See, aside from the Illuminati (and Fortune tellers) Ulm also gets Black Priests. They get E1+AFES, which lets them forge quite a number of cheap items that become even cheaper due to forge bonuses. But beyond this, Black Priests also make pretty damn good combat mages once you get Iron Blizzard. This spell fires off 30 shots per casting - it's basically like a whole platoon of crossbowmen on its own!

That, coupled with the fact that your E1S1s can also join communions for massed earth spells, gives Ulm some extra toys to play with for wrecking massed armies.

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Finally, here's some quick notes about the Ulmish army. Ulm gets a pretty standard army of humans with armor, which should do well in expansion.

Your starting commander is actually decent, commanding 3 squads at +1 morale. The Ranger Captain has no morale bonus but critically he can ferry 40 guys. You can actually make your commander the prophet, while the Ranger shuttles reinforcements to him.

Your main ranged troop (and main troop in general) is the Ranger - armed with a precision 12 crossbow for long-ranged shooting (with essential armor-piercing in armor-heavy LA) and an axe for close encounters. They are possibly, gold for gold, the best crossbowman of LA. Villains also exist with shortbows, for times when you really need to just put more arrows in the air against unarmored foes.

You have one infantry with a tower shield, which moves only at 1 but is good enough for most purposes. I generally recruit these as my main line-blockers against enemies with crossbows and archery (which is almost everyone in LA).

If they don't have archers, you can use Pikeneers or Halbrediers instead. The former almost always gets a repel attempt, the latter does more damage for kneecapping giants.

Hence, the standard Ulmish army should look something like this: A line of Rangers being defended by a block of infantry or pikemen set to hold/attack. Most indies can be beaten by this army relatively easily so long as you have slightly superior numbers.

Zweihanders are a specialty item, when you need a high-damage unit that can also shrug off longbow fire (crossbows still hurt them though). For my money, more infantry or pikes is better.

Guardians you should consider recruiting from time to time, when facing enemies who use a lot of sacreds. They're good line blockers and their weapon does extra irresistable stun damage against sacreds. They're not holy so you can recruit as many as your resources allow, but do remember they need a commander with undead leadership (and banishent can hurt them)

Black Knights are a situational unit. Having a few serve as flankers may help in bigger combats.

That said, Ulm's second fort tends to go up a bit later than others, because you're actually spending money on labs and mages (unlike everyone else, who tends to enter the middle of Year 1 with a huge glut of money because their recruitment centers can't eat it fast enough). Being a little late is okay, but you should still make it a priority because otherwise your troops will be outnumbered. Besides, you need a fort so that you can recruit Black Priests - who are also pretty damn good mages who otherwise compete with Fortune Teller production.

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Please post if you have any errors / suggestions to add to this guide, and if you have any other nations that you think needs a guide.

Thanks!

- Zine

As a note, Crystal Matrixes (forgeable on your ES Priests) also allow non-S Priests to join communions, and with the number of slaves you have, that means decent access to Fire and Air evos/enchs/alts (so you do have the option of flaming arrows+wind guide with rangers(/villains against really chaffy chaff like LA R'lyeh, and they have have normal MR for such purposes). I would also champion the use of the wolfherd, as he becomes a recruitable freespawn generator to supplement your vampire freespawn. Once you have decent amounts of fortune tellers, they're an attractive choice to bolster your standing chaff+patrols.

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

I've played late Ulm in SP in dom 3, I think units didn't changed much from that time.
Most important thing, which I think is especially important in MP and especially good in dom 4 - late Ulm has good stealthy mages which can instill uprisings. Uprising commanders also synergies with blood magic. That can make trouble for any opponent, and I think it can be quite deadly when you plan an attack against nation which depends from capitol-only units or commanders. You an hide several uprising mages in capital in turn 1, in turn 2 cast several blood rains (or what spell increases uprising), and command your hiding mages also to instill uprising. Your enemy suddenly see that he can not recruit anything in his capital, and he needs large army to search for your uprising mages because unrest in his capital is already high. Meanwhile he also see that he needa an army on his borders because you start to attack him.

Late Ulm also do have a summoning wolfs commander. Wolfs best used as patrollers for blood economy.

Late Ulm has both undead and living highly protected heavy hitting infantry, it is possible to mix that infantry to make area-affecting spells utilizing living or undead status about two times les effective.

Inkvisitors can be used to enforse dominion changing in your favor, once dominion in a province you fight for is yours, you generally would have an upper hand fighting for it by sending immortal vampire counts in it.

As a pretender I think blood fountain able to summon vampire counts is good. You can take good scales with it, you can still have enough points to take it awake or dormant for some excellent scales, it can initially blood hunt in your capital (you can get free wolfes for patrolling as you remember), you do not need bless as you do not have good sacreds, and you do need one SC because you can summon many thuggish and immortal vampire counts.

StannisdaMannis wrote: As a note, Crystal Matrixes (forgeable on your ES Priests) also allow non-S Priests to join communions, and with the number of slaves you have, that means decent access to Fire and Air evos/enchs/alts (so you do have the option of flaming arrows+wind guide with rangers(/villains against really chaffy chaff like LA R'lyeh, and they have have normal MR for such purposes).

Great point, as Crystal Matrixes are also relatively cheap for Ulm to pick up. That said, I think going Evoc 5 is a bit faster than Con 4/Ench 4/ Alt 4, and you can also spam strong spells like Magma Blast with Evoc 5. (OTOH, Ench 4 gives you skelly spam with Death Fortune Tellers...)

I would also champion the use of the wolfherd, as he becomes a recruitable freespawn generator to supplement your vampire freespawn. Once you have decent amounts of fortune tellers, they're an attractive choice to bolster your standing chaff+patrols.

I'm a bit torn on this one since Fortune Tellers are also pretty damn efficient mages from the research perspective, and you're probably already getting lots of freespawn from Vamps anyway. Have you tried using them for their animal awe ability BTW, perhaps as a wrinkle against Elephant rushes?

Kref wrote: I've played late Ulm in SP in dom 3, I think units didn't changed much from that time.

The units didn't, but the recruitment capacity due to non-fort mages is a huge change.

Most important thing, which I think is especially important in MP and especially good in dom 4 - late Ulm has good stealthy mages which can instill uprisings. Uprising commanders also synergies with blood magic. That can make trouble for any opponent, and I think it can be quite deadly when you plan an attack against nation which depends from capitol-only units or commanders. You an hide several uprising mages in capital in turn 1, in turn 2 cast several blood rains (or what spell increases uprising), and command your hiding mages also to instill uprising. Your enemy suddenly see that he can not recruit anything in his capital, and he needs large army to search for your uprising mages because unrest in his capital is already high. Meanwhile he also see that he needa an army on his borders because you start to attack him.

Yup, this is why those S1 mages are such a great buy - even after communions become obsolete due to mass-kill spells they're still spies that can't be killed using the conventional anti-spy spell (Mind Hunt). The implications of the no-fort recruit thing in particular makes Ulm very capable of massing these mages for espionage shenanigans - their only real constraint is gold (making Ulm unique in being one of the nations constrained by gold as opposed to recruitment capacity) - which means that a huge Ulmish nations = an enormous number of spies coming out every turn that can't be matched by anyone unless it's very late in the game and there are forts in every province.

As a pretender I think blood fountain able to summon vampire counts is good. You can take good scales with it, you can still have enough points to take it awake or dormant for some excellent scales, it can initially blood hunt in your capital (you can get free wolfes for patrolling as you remember), you do not need bless as you do not have good sacreds, and you do need one SC because you can summon many thuggish and immortal vampire counts.

In my current game I went with a Blood Fountain as well, with Death, Blood, and very good scales. I can see how other options may be feasible though, but the important bit really is a strong blood focus so that they can nab the lategame blood summons.

Edited by: Zinegata

Zinegata wrote:

StannisdaMannis wrote: As a note, Crystal Matrixes (forgeable on your ES Priests) also allow non-S Priests to join communions, and with the number of slaves you have, that means decent access to Fire and Air evos/enchs/alts (so you do have the option of flaming arrows+wind guide with rangers(/villains against really chaffy chaff like LA R'lyeh, and they have have normal MR for such purposes).

Great point, as Crystal Matrixes are also relatively cheap for Ulm to pick up. That said, I think going Evoc 5 is a bit faster than Con 4/Ench 4/ Alt 4, and you can also spam strong spells like Magma Blast with Evoc 5. (OTOH, Ench 4 gives you skelly spam with Death Fortune Tellers...)

I would also champion the use of the wolfherd, as he becomes a recruitable freespawn generator to supplement your vampire freespawn. Once you have decent amounts of fortune tellers, they're an attractive choice to bolster your standing chaff+patrols.

I'm a bit torn on this one since Fortune Tellers are also pretty damn efficient mages from the research perspective, and you're probably already getting lots of freespawn from Vamps anyway. Have you tried using them for their animal awe ability BTW, perhaps as a wrinkle against Elephant rushes?

It's Animal Awe is a a valid option though I've never tried it yet (they're still squishy and die to elephant escorts, however). While you do get lots of chaff, it takes some time for LA Ulm to set up the vamp chain, and extra freespawn is always good. Fortune Tellers are efficient yes, but less so compared to Dom3 due to autocalc (now, Priest-Smiths do better upkeep-wise, when previously it was effectively the same upkeep), and with anywhere rec Illuminated Ones, there's less of a research need to recruit Fortune Tellers, and Tier 1 Illuminated are more efficient with just 1 point of Magic. That greatly opens up cap recruitment for other cap-only recruits, specifically the Wolfherd, but also situationally the Ghoul Guardian commanders, and Hoches.

I do feel that LA Ulm benefits greatly from a rainbow, though it eats away at other scales. Given the high path diversity/low magic levels, having a diverse pretender can help boost their magic potential mid/late game. Biggest investment I would think would be in Astral in addition to Blood and Death, as well as a level or two in fire/water (helps enable blood summons, and Rune Smashers). There isn't a need for nature, as a RoS will enable Thistle Mace into Moonvine for Fortune Tellers, and the same applies for Earth (unless you want a cheap bloodstone forger, but it'd be simpler to just empower an E2 smith in blood), and Air is generally too hard/too heavy an investment to seriously break into (2A may be enough with a RoW+Elemental Staff, but assumes you can hit F4W4 comfortably: you'd need 2F+1W, as a minimum on your pretender, however, or W2+F1 on a Crone).

Edited by: StannisdaMannis

S6D3B3 Oracle would be something to consider, it brings RoW to the table with the bare minimum for vampires, also it's a fortune teller. Beyond that extra diversification seems just too expensive when you need an awake and good Dom score too so the vampires have more territory. Also you can't sitesearch much with your pretender when you rather just keep on hunting with it for a good period.

You can save a couple of points by going with an Idol of Sorcery instead of the Oracle, but the Idol doesn't quite have the same appealing Fortunetelling ability. More health and cursing attackers might not be enough to make up for that, even with the extra points. The face on the idol, though? Worth at least a 100 points.

Hey Man,
Thanks a ton for this guide. I am really excited about reading all of your upcoming guides. This was a tremendous help to me. I would love to see you do a nation that you deem to be the strongest mage nation. I think a full blood nation could we fun as well.

Nice guide, mostly agree.

I've tried going with turmoil-luck + production and growth scales. The addition of an undead recruitable commander makes the guardians a lot mote useful early, and having one or two expansion squads of ghoul guardians is a good deterrent to sacred rushes. I figure ulm can handle turmoil with all the patrollers and luck is nice for the gems and awesome heroes (ghoul baron and Nebuchadnezzar)

The allfather looks like a very good candidate for dormant La ulm pretender, it's cheap to add blood to him and with his air, astral, death paths he gives you vampires, horrors, storm demons, rings, robes of sorcery, air boosters, teleporting midgame sc, sailing commander, army buffer (fog warriors, darkness, doom...) and flying stealthy site searcher. Not bad for a 50pt chassis.

I usually recruit wolf herders during all of year 1, they pay off better the earlier you buy them, and the saved up money pays for the second fort and a couple labs. This seems even more rational in dom 4 where the nonfort mages catch up research so quickly. This way there is also plenty of patrollers ready for you god to blood hunt when waking up. It seems to make sense to actually lead wolves with wolf herders in combat now, they boost the wolves to a whopping 15 morale.

I should point out that without a major morale boost Wolves are so easily repelled that they are almost unable to hit anything, even quite soft targets. All it takes is a len 1 or 2 weapon to ruin their day.

Fortunately most archers do have daggers which are len 0.

@ Fantomen: as a newcomer to the long proud tradition of Dominons pedantry i would just like to add that the allfather is now 100 points, making him significantly less flexible.

Also, i really want to run a Vampire queen with LA Ulm it's just so damn thematic, but with her costing a whopping 175 points i feel there's no way i can make her work, and it makes me sad any suggestions?

Allfather is 100 points, not 50, so stuffing all that magic to him gets expensive fast. But maybe it can be done.

sapientum wrote: Also, i really want to run a Vampire queen with LA Ulm it's just so damn thematic, but with her costing a whopping 175 points i feel there's no way i can make her work, and it makes me sad any suggestions?

Use a blood fountain and pretend there is a vampire behind her. The VQ is inherently too unreliable for my taste.

sapientum wrote: @ Fantomen: as a newcomer to the long proud tradition of Dominons pedantry i would just like to add that the allfather is now 100 points, making him significantly less flexible.

Also, i really want to run a Vampire queen with LA Ulm it's just so damn thematic, but with her costing a whopping 175 points i feel there's no way i can make her work, and it makes me sad any suggestions?

Oh, missed that change. A blood fountain does look like the most viable choice then. I agree the vampire queen is a bit too expensive, but a significant change from dom 3 is that she can now expand naked from turn 1 thanks to the invulnerability. I'd put her at 125pts or so to be competitive.

She can try to expand naked, but you can have nasty surprises and affliction this way (because she can die or lose her head or other nasty afflictions on a string of bad luck pretty easily, even without taking into account the poptype she can't easily deal with). I highly dislike taking an awake pretender and being depending on luck for her to work like I want, so I'd better take something better at expanding like a dragon or expand with national troop.

Edited by: Ohlmann

She's Immortal? Any unlucky battle you might have is just a minor setback. So it's basically impossible to really get unlucky.

Edited by: DegenerateArt

I don't know how this would work longer term in actual multiplayer but I've done some LA Ulm test games in single player (played first 15 turns or so) with awake dom9 d3b3 vampire queen (turmoil3/sloth3/cold3/growth3/luck3) and have been enjoying it quite a bit. Early game has been an absolute cakewalk in all aspects.

DegenerateArt wrote: She's Immortal? Any unlucky battle you might have is just a minor setback. So it's basically impossible to really get unlucky.

First, not being able to take a province is not a minor setback. I don't spend 125 point (surcost of the VQ compared to a regular titan) plus 150 point (awake instead of sleeping) to fail at taking province.

Second, it imply you have to only attack province with no opposing candle on them. Murphy law is in full force for me : if I try to attack a province without dominion, I have a 100% odds at her dying and not resurrecting. (if they have no dominion candle at all, AFAIK you have an automatic candle before the battle, if there is not another dom spread that happen at the same turn on the same province)

Third, affliction don't disappear automatically between each turn. So a nasty set of affliction can put your vampire queen out of expanding for several turn, the time she heal.

Edited by: Ohlmann

I agree that Ulm doesn't get enough out of the vampire queen for the
price. You're going to have tons of vampires anyway, so why waste points
on one that's just slightly better? I'd rather take a freak lord or
other tiny mage with at least D3B3 and with better scales.

Someone wrote: It
seems to make sense to actually lead wolves with wolf herders in combat
now, they boost the wolves to a whopping 15 morale.

The
wolves are incredibly useless compared to what they were in Dom 3, even
for freespawn. Not only are they weaker but you need to waste a
wolfherder just to lead them now.

Someone wrote: See, aside from the
Illuminati (and Fortune tellers) Ulm also gets Black Priests. They get
E1+AFES, which lets them forge quite a number of cheap items that become
even cheaper due to forge bonuses. But beyond this, Black Priests also
make pretty damn good combat mages once you get Iron Blizzard. This
spell fires off 30 shots per casting - it's basically like a whole
platoon of crossbowmen on its own!

The air randoms should be
scripted to cast Aim, which affects not just the caster but the other
two mages in the square as well. A black priest with boosted precision
is a lot more effective than just 30 crossbowmen.

Edited by: KateMicucci

Thanks for the guide, Zinegata ! Please write about other nations too !

Two small thoughts on your pretender: I like an earth four to six both for the mid lvl earth magic and items and the reinvig bless. I know LA Ulm doesn't benefit as much as MA but if I run low on nature gems it is nice to have the option of using astral for a shroud to toss reinvig down. YMMV
The second is if you really want to use vamp queen(and believe me, I understand that feeling) she's much better as a disciple, especially for Maringon. Blood magic and Inquisitors FTW! *humor conveyed through being overly exited* That....sounded better in my head. Stupid text not conveying emotional content.

@Ohlmann: I completely agree that the vq isn't worth the points she currently costs, but when I test her out she expands very reliably. So I don't share the impression that she is a "luck based" expander, she's a very good awake expander that is just too ridiculously overpriced to be usable.

Good then, seems i'm not the only one unable to make her really work, oh well, back to the blood fountain. excellent guide btw, Zinegata, i especially like the conversational style

@katemicucci: why would you take a freak lord over the fountain? dom 4 and blood 3 saves you ALOT of points if you buff blood to 5 or 6 for big rituals and dom to 7-8. Or do you find the early blood hunting is more important and want a mobile pretender?

Early blood hunting is important to get that vamp maching running but you don't need a mobile pretender for it.

Isn't blood-hunting your capital really costly? Even if you're patrolling, you still take an unrest hit to income on that turn. Furthermore, blood-hunting + patrolling greatly reduce the population, and hence long-term income, from your capital. I'd much rather go wreck a 6000 pop province instead. (But maybe the difference isn't big enough to justify the point-cost of a mobile pretender? Hard to say, I guess...)