Dominions 3 Middle Age "GROGHAMMER" game [running]

Started by JasonPratt, April 03, 2013, 10:16:14 AM

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undercovergeek

Quote from: ScottWAR on May 30, 2013, 09:45:33 AM
Yeah I have to agree,....so many players forming an alliance is kinda lame.....makes me consider only joining games with no diplomacy allowed.  BUT this is my first MP game,....SO...Lets se how it plays out. If it goes the way I expect,...yeah no more games with alliances allowed for me.

you beat me to it - i didnt know why the last game i joined was no diplomacy at all, no contact allowed and youre kicked if discovered - now i do

byrdman57

Well apparently everyone has decided that Eriu is the enemy. And W8taminute, what a weaselly scoundrel you are. You come at me with all these overtures of peace, and meanwhile you're secretly negotiating an alliance with Atlantis, and already had one with Ashdod. No worries though. I'll crush all you knuckledraggers at once.

undercovergeek

Quote from: byrdman57 on May 30, 2013, 10:02:32 AM
Well apparently everyone has decided that Eriu is the enemy. And W8taminute, what a weaselly scoundrel you are. You come at me with all these overtures of peace, and meanwhile you're secretly negotiating an alliance with Atlantis, and already had one with Ashdod. No worries though. I'll crush all you knuckledraggers at once.

join the club, apparently our randomly allocated geographical location has upset some people because they dont get to win easily

ScottWAR

Im not complaining,....Agartha has me cornered,...and it appears he is stronger at the moment, but not strong enough to actually worry me,...just enough that I see its going to make us both very weak if I try to push through him.....

So it doesn't effect me,...but I have been wondering how being able to from alliances is going to work out. I was,..and still am, concerned that it was going to make the actual gameplay much less important than populari.......I mean forming alliances. Typically allowing alliances lets you find who are friends or know each othrer more than the rest of the players......because that's what alliances in wargames usually end up boiling down to, who knows who.....and why they are usually only allowed if the game itself has mechanics for them,....so it cant be abused.

  The game undercover joined that did not allow alliances,......I remember the guy creating it saying the reason he wanted no diplomacy was because diplomacy played too large a part in the games that allowed them.

 

elitesix

#859
My analysis of diplomacy:
-In free for all games in general, diplomacy is often the most important factor.
-In a dominions 3 ffa games, per veterans from the Sharpnel forum, diplomacy is one of the most important factors.
-In a dominions 3 ffa game that allows for shared alliance victories, I believe that diplomacy is probably the single most important thing you can do.

Diplomacy, of course, is interrelated to the actions you take in the game. You can't cast a few of the armageddon-type global enchantments and expect to not be seen as a target for all nations (Utterdark, Burden of Time are the most popular ones).  You can't expect to expand and block multiple nations in and expect to not been seen as a target for that group of nations. You can't be lagging in research, income, and military and expect to not be seen as a juicy nation to gobble up by your neighbors.

All in all, as long as one realizes diplomacy is a huge part of the game, it makes for some very interesting games.

------

p.s. And for the record, I think Jason and the others use the term ally loosely. We should probably distinguish between "allies" and "shared alliance victory allies." I have not agreed to a shared alliance victory with anyone. Of course, given the rules that a shared alliance victory can be made at any time, and given my distaste to managing huge empires of over 75+ territorties, if I last till endgame I will likely extend a shared alliance victory offer to other players.

W8taminute

You gotta look at it from my point of view before calling me a weaselly scoundrel, which I agree with by the way for reasons I'm about to explain.  But first, it's all good guys, I'm not holding any grudges, I'm just role playing a story from the point of view of a 3rd rate nation.

Now to explain my weaselly skullduggery.  I will try to show that there is nothing personal here, I'm not trying to insult anyone in real life.  I hope we're all mature enough to understand that this is just a game.  In no way am I going to hold a grudge with anyone involved in our game for the rest of my life.  That's just crazy. 

Hello my name is W8taminute and I'm going to play a strategy game to win it.  Am I going to be a richard weed about it and screw people over?  No.  I will however engage in misdirection, diplomatic honesty as well as perhaps in some cases the with-holding of certain key facts, in order to gain an advantage over a militarily superior foe.  I suggest you read Sun Tzu's "The Art of War" or Machiavelli's "The Prince".

Perhaps you will crush all three of us combined but it is precisely that reason you should expect me to play like a scumbag because I want to win baby!!!  Had we been of equal military power I would have come out and declared war formally and we could have duked it out like gentlemen, but puhleez exqueeze me for being a little guy who will do whatever it takes to win or in this case just to survive.




In all honesty however, this is a fun game and part of the enjoyment is the diplomacy.  You guys are all good players and remember I am not holding any grudges here.  I really do want to play with you all again when we're done with this game. 
"You and I are of a kind. In a different reality, I could have called you friend."

Romulan Commander to Kirk

JasonPratt

Quote from: undercovergeek on May 30, 2013, 03:45:39 AM
So errr when there's just atlantis, ulm, eriu and tien chi left - then what?

We either declare joint victory or we agree to start slugging it out among ourselves. Kind of depends on how we feel about it at the time I guess. If by then we want to go play another game, that'll be as good an excuse as any, but if we want to continue I'm sure we'll come up with some reason to do that, too.

Quote from: undercovergeekjust because you have a poncey, made up, fancy sounding alliance  it doesnt disguise or detract from the fact that youre attacking me without any provocation

Just like real diplomacy!  ;D (Although someone who takes the spidery nation should really expect to be attacked without provocation because spiders. In fact, someone who wants to play the game without any diplomacy at all should really really REAAALLY expect to be attacked without provocation. ;) )

Quote from: OgaburanAshdod feels the "League of nations" are dancing around the the real issue.

Didn't the LoN result in WW2? I'd say the comparison is quite apt.  8)

As in real life, alliances work better when there's only one or two or maybe three members. (Note the "one". ;) ) After that, the confusion and grudges come out, because two sides at war suddenly find themselves in an alliance with nations who are similarly allied with each other.

World War One triggered from a ton of alliances in a fragile web mousetrapping off.

Quote from: ScottWARThe game undercover joined that did not allow alliances,......I remember the guy creating it saying the reason he wanted no diplomacy was because diplomacy played too large a part in the games that allowed them.

That is an entirely feasible and accurate observation. If players don't want diplomacy for that reason, they should agree no diplomacy on the front end.

I will note as an aside that I tried to set up the game so that the water players, who have disproportionate advantages, should be banned from any alliances (myself included as Oceania), but since a number of players wanted those alliances to be possible, and no one agreed against it, I allowed water alliances. So the first thing out of the gate, once I was back in the game as Ulm? -- forge an alliance with Atlantis. I have no regrets. :) {waving at the Kraken as he crawls past my pretender this past turn!}

Quote from: Undercovergeekim role playing someone who doesn't understand the point of 4 nations joining together to defeat everyone else and then just sitting for eternity never finishing the game

I'd say beating the developers themselves rather counts as a point.  ;D


Having said all that: I do feel sorry for U'geek, because this is clearly a case of the stronger attacking the weaker, and I wouldn't want to be in his place. Which is why I wouldn't do that in real life. The Golden Rule isn't that he who has the gold rules, and the Golden Rule isn't that there is no Golden Rule.

However, by the same token neither am I going to be much swayed by complaints that the stronger are beating up on the weaker from someone who wants to play a game which is totally devoted to the idea of the stronger beating the weaker. ;) One way to get stronger in-game is to develop alliances. Alliances have a tendency to fracture on the other hand due to the nature of the game. If players manage to get through the game and survive to be the last ones standing in a shared victory alliance (particularly in a very large game like this), then if they want to put down their swords and put away their blood magic and fondle teddy bears, that's their choice -- they earned the license to end the game however they choose because they were more successful at getting stronger and effectively applying that strength, just as if a single player managed to work his way up to astral 9 and wished his opponents out of the game. (...not that I'm attempting to do that in this or any other game...)

Social Darwinism isn't any coherent base for morality, and this is a game of social Darwinism. Mutations in the environment have occurred, and natural selection is about to follow. It's fair in a purely neutrally mechanical and impersonal sense; it isn't fair ethically in the sense of {dikaiosunê} fair-togetherness, except maybe in the sense that it's fair for people in favor of that to put out of the game people who don't want fair-togetherness in the game. (And even that wouldn't be fair unless the goal in doing so was to bring even them into {dikaiosunê} eventually, so that there's no hopelessly final defeat for them. But now I'm digressing into metaphysics. ;) )


I'm not saying any of this to gloat either. For one thing, we haven't succeeded in taking out Machaka and still might not! For another thing, I myself was put out of the game soon after the starting bell, and had no guarantee of being able to get back in, despite going to all the trouble of setting up the game. Was that {dikaiosunê} fair?--no, but that's how things rolled out. My opponent took his opportunities, played them appropriately for his goals, I did my best to fight back, and I lost. That's the game -- I have no grudge against him. He beat me fair and square. Had I won, I'd be RPing a pretender (for this game) who wouldn't care about alliances and wouldn't enter into any, preferring to war against the world instead. (Thus by the way handicapping his position for the sake of people on land playing against him.) He most likely would have been rolled out of the game by an alliance eventually.
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Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
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Huw the Poo

I will crush you all!

Oh sorry, wrong game!  I'm nice in this one. :D

undercovergeek

Quote from: JasonPratt on May 30, 2013, 12:51:36 PM
Social Darwinism isn't any coherent base for morality, and this is a game of social Darwinism. Mutations in the environment have occurred, and natural selection is about to follow. It's fair in a purely neutrally mechanical and impersonal sense; it isn't fair ethically in the sense of {dikaiosunê} fair-togetherness, except maybe in the sense that it's fair for people in favor of that to put out of the game people who don't want fair-togetherness in the game. (And even that wouldn't be fair unless the goal in doing so was to bring even them into {dikaiosunê} eventually, so that there's no hopelessly final defeat for them. But now I'm digressing into metaphysics. ;) )

heres some diplomacy for you - total bollocks

you pretend to the play the game in the spirit of the game - the spirit of the game as you so accurately pointed out in the 'trading gems' discussion is to be the one and only pretender, there isnt a chance in hell (game spirit upheld) that 2 or more of the 'i must be the only winner here' Pretenders is going to sit round the fire and discuss sharing victory - thats you and any number of other people warping the games interface for your own ends whilst pretend to role play the game and your pretender. Theres no accurate role play here, you are a god, the one true god, the only god, your believers believe there is only you - there is no 'hey populace of wherever - theres actually 4 gods and we all get on so well were having a picnic and ruling all at the same time'

booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

this has nothing to do with Machaka, me, you or any games weve played or will play BTW - its about pretending to be something youre not to win the game

JasonPratt

Quote from: elitesix on May 30, 2013, 12:16:05 PM
My analysis of diplomacy:
-In free for all games in general, diplomacy is often the most important factor.
-In a dominions 3 ffa games, per veterans from the Sharpnel forum, diplomacy is one of the most important factors.
-In a dominions 3 ffp.s. And for the record, I think Jason and the others use the term ally loosely. We should probably distinguish between "allies" and "shared alliance victory allies." I have not agreed to a shared alliance victory with anyone.

Well, it isn't that I'm using it loosely, I just tend to press in favor of an SVA, even when the actual status of the alliance is unclear. Part of the diplomacy game in itself.

For example, by suggesting publicly that we are in one I (1) gave people reasons to act in particular ways toward us; and (2) opened an opportunity for you to clarify our alliance status either publicly or privately (according to how you saw best fit your goals).

I took a bit of a risk that I might be embarrassed if you publicly declined we were in an SVA, but I got more information out of the exchange than I had before, and I'll adjust appropriately. :)

But regardless if someone denies being in an SVA with me after I've prompted for that option, obviously angling for as many SVAs as possible is (as you observe) the single most important strategy of a Dom3 game. Balancing that with role-playing isn't easy: is Ulm (a notorious anti-magic faction) likely to go for any alliances at all, and if so under what restrictions or rationales? Since Ulm took a strong rainbow mage pretender, I infer that their stance against magic is more of an ideal goal than a zealous stance on principle; but even then they aren't likely to ally with strong death and/or blood magic users. (Especially since the pretender has neither of those types.) I expect they respect orderly culture, especially orderly human culture, and most especially orderly human culture related to their own respected history.

So while an SVA with Atlantis would be ideal (and I'm still angling for that in various ways), it's a bit more of an alliance of convenience (even if an SVA) than with T'ien Chi, and Eriu. I was never going to ally with Machaka, and while I'm willing to ally with Vanheim (and btw an alliance of recognized independence is basically the same as an SVA, Elitesix, since if you start fighting him later you're denying his right to independence and so breaking your alliance), I probably won't intentionally ally with Jotenheim. Yet again I'm willing to ally with Atlantis, but wouldn't have allied with my previous pretender in Oceania (because he was going for a strong death magic build) and won't ally with R'yleh.

On that basis, Ulm does see Machaka as a threat, even though Machaka has not been aggressive toward us yet: Machaka is a nation of deathy blood spider worshipers. OF COURSE they're a threat! Ulm is honorable enough to hold to the letter of the previously negotiated NAP3, and allow Machaka fair warning before hostilities start, but Machaka was always going to be a target sooner or later. And if I'm surrounded by allies, well I'll just work on building up my infrastructure, providing aid to my allies on the front lines, and maybe look for ways to snag an expansionary territory in an enemy of my allies by long distance effects.

(Had Gamin survived, I would have played him very differently.)
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

JasonPratt

Quote from: undercovergeek on May 30, 2013, 01:00:50 PM
you pretend to the play the game in the spirit of the game - the spirit of the game as you so accurately pointed out in the 'trading gems' discussion is to be the one and only pretender, there isnt a chance in hell (game spirit upheld) that 2 or more of the 'i must be the only winner here' Pretenders is going to sit round the fire and discuss sharing victory - thats you and any number of other people warping the games interface for your own ends whilst pretend to role play the game and your pretender.

On one hand, I did say we might decide to fight it out after everyone else is down. That's a typical supervillain plotline.

On the other hand, there's nothing stopping many of these pretenders from just being mages who aren't that ambitious. Flavor text only dictates so far; what a person chooses and what they do is what defines them.

On yet the other hand, there's also nothing preventing some of the mages from deciding that the next Pantokrator ought to be of a different character than previous ones, and so struggling to win by acclamation and rational mutual agreement rather than by total annihilation of all other pretenders.


As to having one player with the power and authority to arbitrate trade agreements: what exactly would all the players agreeing to this from the outset be fighting for? It's one thing to start the game with the possibility of alliance if a player so chooses along the way, and so to share power among themselves if that's what they choose; it's another thing for ALL the players to agree from the outset they WON'T be fighting over who has the greatest power and authority among themselves. It would be like ALL the players agreeing from the outset to be in the same alliance. Be that as it may, my main complaint about doing it was that, as a matter of practical fact, it would be impossible for me to investigate claimed breaches in any decisive way.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

undercovergeek

Quote from: JasonPratt on May 30, 2013, 01:43:02 PM
Flavor text only dictates so far; what a person chooses and what they do is what defines them.

"The object of Dominions 3 is to be the last pretender standing, at which point you
ascend to godhood and lord it over the world of Dominions, which by that time has been
pretty much trashed by all the fighting, arcane magicks, and whatnot."

this is the only relevant 'flavour text'

it should have been pointed out at the start of the game if we were playing the peace loving, hippy, hand holding mod

i dont know whether you dont understand what im saying or youre choosing to ignore it - craptastic alliances to defeat someone who would defeat you on your own is not in the spirit of the game, it is clear it wasnt written that way, above are the designers words, to deviate from that is to make this a game it wasnt and drag us all along for your ride

Ogaburan

Quote from: undercovergeek on May 30, 2013, 01:56:58 PM
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 30, 2013, 01:43:02 PM
Flavor text only dictates so far; what a person chooses and what they do is what defines them.

"The object of Dominions 3 is to be the last pretender standing, at which point you
ascend to godhood and lord it over the world of Dominions, which by that time has been
pretty much trashed by all the fighting, arcane magicks, and whatnot."

this is the only relevant 'flavour text'

it should have been pointed out at the start of the game if we were playing the peace loving, hippy, hand holding mod

i dont know whether you dont understand what im saying or youre choosing to ignore it - craptastic alliances to defeat someone who would defeat you on your own is not in the spirit of the game, it is clear it wasnt written that way, above are the designers words, to deviate from that is to make this a game it wasnt and drag us all along for your ride

Oh god, can you be any more bitter?

You do realize you are plying a ~30man game using a map of Faerum?
Vanilla Dominions 3 was quite clearly not meant to be played in such an environment competitively.

The writing was on the door...
Quite literally!

QuoteVictory Conditions: Whoever reaches 14 victory points first. Victory points are only found in capitols, and the player must hold all 14 simultaneously. A shared victory alliance is also allowed: all remaining factions have agreed to share victory and not continue the game. (Note that as a dominating faction approaches 14 points, the remaining factions may request an extension if by alliance or alliances they still think they have a chance against someone who has probably already taken 2/3 of a very large map.)

The door you opened willingly.
Too late to change the rules of the game.
Keep arguing with the admin about how his game should or should not be played... makes allot of sense.
If you dont enjoy this type of game, dont join any more of them in the future.
Why make a scene coz you are ganked, deal with it and show more sportsmanship about it.

Im not in the best positions myself, but I do find all the diplomacy and intrigue very entertaining.
Even my early war with Pangea, who I think wrote one of the funniest replies ive ever read after i offered him a NAP;
Quote from: tkati on April 24, 2013, 09:23:18 PM
Thanks for your treatsy sir. We are poor and simple minded harvesters of earth's bounties and have rocks between our ears. We have precious need of toiletries and your treatsy shall come  in handy when our misaligned bowels push out those precious gems your are seeking...Wait, sorry, those were only false rumors, we don't shtz out gems...That would have been cool though ay.

We do not negotiate with false gods for there is only one, and he is, umm what's our god again, Morgule....yes, I think that's right... Morgule. The one true ruler of the land. Well he's more of demigod than a real god...and even that is incorrect because he's not human. He's more of a pet who thinks all should catter to him....slobbers all the time, and gets these awful afflictions whenever one of those mean people poke him with those pointy sticks. He doesn't like magic much either, with those evil hocruxes and curses.

As you can see, those who worship Morgule have terrible humor. Good, well mannered, educated, and gracious neighbors such as yourself, would soon be wroth with such unpleasant, miss-mannered companions such as ourselves.

We thank you for your time, for of all loses, time is the most irrecuparable, for it can never be redeemed.

Will probably lose the game, but the story about the Invading "vermin form the forest" will stay with me for quite some time.

This is the kind of game i singed up for, and this is the kind of game i got.
Wining is just a bonus.

Im not part of said alliance, but i see no problem in 2, 3 or 4 gods "wining" in a 20man game.
Polytheism rules! And is quite thematic IMHO.

As for "craptastic alliances to defeat someone who would defeat you on your own is not in the spirit of the game", I wholeheartedly disagree with you.
Check some LA nations, its quite clearly designed so that one nation will be stronger then others at certain points of the game.
You live in a dreamworld if you think people will just sit there in a line while you butcher them one by one, or aggressively expand early game.

I think giving a thematic reasoning behind whats basically "im going to try and kill you in this game" is more then welcome!

Cheers,
Oga

JasonPratt

Quote from: undercovergeek on May 30, 2013, 01:56:58 PM
it should have been pointed out at the start of the game if we were playing the peace loving, hippy, hand holding mod

Quote from: JasonPratt on April 03, 2013, 10:16:14 AM
Victory Conditions: Whoever reaches 14 victory points first. Victory points are only found in capitols, and the player must hold all 14 simultaneously. A shared victory alliance is also allowed: all remaining factions have agreed to share victory and not continue the game. (Note that as a dominating faction approaches 14 points, the remaining factions may request an extension if by alliance or alliances they still think they have a chance against someone who has probably already taken 2/3 of a very large map.)
Diplomacy Policy: None; do as you wish, keeping in mind consequences in future games, as well as later in that game (if you stab someone early, any alliance later in that game is likely to prove less trustworthy). Trades should be fulfilled

To be fair, I can't prove it was there from the beginning, but it was definitely included before the game started and I recall it being there early. We discussed various alliance types and how to go about doing them (since the game engine doesn't allow them) as early as April 8 (five days after I started the thread) in reply to Claes. By "we" I mean "you and me together". You didn't complain back then that any kind of alliance, especially SVA, was foreign to the intention of the designers.

A couple of days later I was suggesting that water nations (including myself) should be required to play contra mundum (against the world, no alliances allowed) in order to help balance out our advantages. That notion wasn't generally accepted.

The same day (10th) was when I set up the VP capitol win condition, so the discussion of alliances in-game and how to go about them occurred before the VP portion of the Victory Condition was set up.

Claes was announcing his intention to form strategic alliances on the 11th.

On the 12th shortly before gamestart, while explaining to completely new players what to expect, I mentioned they shouldn't feel bad about having little or no diplomacy early since the game is set up to take some time for discovery (with moderately strong buffering independents), but that they could already forming alliances pre-game for various reasons.


So yes it was discussed before game start and you didn't have a problem at that time.
ICEBREAKER THESIS CHRONOLOGY! -- Victor Suvorov's Stalin Grand Strategy theory, in lots and lots of chronological order...
Dawn of Armageddon -- narrative AAR for Dawn of War: Soulstorm: Ultimate Apocalypse
Survive Harder! -- Two season narrative AAR, an Amazon Blood Bowl career.
PanzOrc Corpz Generals -- Fantasy Wars narrative AAR, half a combined campaign.
Khazâd du-bekâr! -- narrative dwarf AAR for LotR BfME2 RotWK campaign.
RobO Q Campaign Generator -- archived classic CMBB/CMAK tool!

elitesix

#869
Quote from: JasonPratt on May 30, 2013, 01:14:16 PM

But regardless if someone denies being in an SVA with me after I've prompted for that option, obviously angling for as many SVAs as possible is (as you observe) the single most important strategy of a Dom3 game. Balancing that with role-playing isn't easy: is Ulm (a notorious anti-magic faction) likely to go for any alliances at all, and if so under what restrictions or rationales? Since Ulm took a strong rainbow mage pretender, I infer that their stance against magic is more of an ideal goal than a zealous stance on principle; but even then they aren't likely to ally with strong death and/or blood magic users. (Especially since the pretender has neither of those types.) I expect they respect orderly culture, especially orderly human culture, and most especially orderly human culture related to their own respected history.

....

(Had Gamin survived, I would have played him very differently.)

Just a role-playing observation that I'm sharing because you substituted in for Ulm:

Role-playing Pretenders in Dominions 3, in my opinion, comes from two main areas: (1) The nation's preferences (2) The pretender's preferences. Sometimes these two things clash, sometimes they are in sync, sometimes one dominates the other. Notice how in your discussions of role-playing the Oceania pretender Gamin, your personality and persona stem purely from the Gamin personality. Backstab, Untrustworthy, etc. When you look at the nation of Oceania, they don't even have stealthy troops. It's clearly a case where the pretender's personality drives the role-playing.

The reason I point this is out is that with Ulm, it seems as though you're ignoring your pretender's preferences a bit, at least in your public discussions. Sure, Ulm is basically anti-magic humans. But there's more to the equation. I observe that your domain scales have Death 3. There is something very dark about the God that Ulm currently worships, such that the land is dying. Babies are stillborn. The trees are withering. The young succumb to minor illnesses more often than they should, and being middle aged is a death sentence. The air literally saps the life out of people, plants, and creatures in your land. (If your Pretender doesn't have death or blood magic, perhaps this is because of water magic and the cold). This is fairly significant in my opinion, and would imply that in the current incarnation of the Middle Age Ulm, a truely dark cult has taken power in the priesthood. I think it would be both fun (and accurate) to roleplay a darker Ulm, because your pretender's scales certainly point in that direction.