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[USEC_OFFICER]

Is it just me, or has MA Ulm become awesome now?

High stat/Prot troops, resource bonuses, cheap and effective chaff (War Dogs), great forging....

I think I'm in love.

You're forgetting the part where they have some of the worse paths in the game. F1E2 with a 10% chance of FAES does not a good caster make.

[Mindmaker]

Thought the same about Marignon, but then you realize that they are a one-trick pony and easy to counter.
Doesn't make them any less fun to play though.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Thought the same about Marignon, but then you realize that they are a one-trick pony and easy to counter.
Doesn't make them any less fun to play though.

The difference being that MA Marignon's trick is fire magic, and thus is harder and takes longer to counter than 'Heavy troops with good protection'. Lots of spells/equipment negate or ignore armour, while fire resistance requires specific paths and more research to counter.

[Culise]

Indeed.  Like MA Ulm, MA Marignon also gets some pretty nice troops, but unlike MA Ulm, that encompasses both sacred and non-.  Massed crossbowmen launching Armor-Piercing Flaming Arrows (bolts?) are nasty unless you have Air magic, while Flagellants, though extremely fragile, are pretty devastating.  A sacred build also gives good synergy with F9 pretenders, and Marignon also has a surprising late-game SC chassis in the form of the Seraph, who also comes with eminently thuggable Harbingers and Angels, all of which are themselves sacred and thus subject to bless.  If a player shoots for Heavenly Choir, the path requirements will make their forces quite effective at resisting anything that calls for an MR-save, while a more conventional bless (relying on Grand Masters for path boosting in Astral) puts the emphasis on their sacreds.  I wouldn't put Marignon a top-tier nation, but I'd argue it better than Ulm and pretty dangerous in its own right, for all that they have some pretty severe weaknesses due to the lack of variety in their mage paths. 

[Delta Foxtrot]

MA Ulm gets higher than average encumbrance and lower than average MR. Not fun things to have. While their magic is limited to a fault, I'd disagree with USEC_OFFICER since I think E2 is one of the better X2 paths to have. Earth boots are easy to forge for your key casters for +1E, earthpower is available to everyone for another +1E. E3 can throw a lot of nasty spells and E4 gets a few more good battlefield wide spells. FE crosspath also has the devastating magma spell line. Ulm may be lacking in magic, but it doesn't show that much on the battlefield. But magic IS their weakpoint as a nation.

Ulmish troops are good versus other troops, they can stand toe to toe against most others early on. Their pikes in particular are nasty. Not sure how they handle sacreds (I've heard guardians are good, never seen'em in action though) and they definitely get plastered by good magic. They also have map-move 1 almost across the board which I really dislike. Give me strategic mobility or give me death!

It's not a great nation but some people say it can be worked with. It's fairly one dimensional, looking at it from the outside. They have strong points, but those strong points are few and unflexible which isn't good in a prolonged match up. But in that case lucky indies and good pretender design can alleviate it to some degree.

Of course neither MA Ulm nor Marignon are considered particularly strong nations in the current meta.

[moghopper]

Honestly, my favorite nation is MA Pythium.

Great Infantry, Same awesome Angel summons as Marignon, Easy communions, Good mages, etc...

I think my top three nations for each era are:

EA- Maverni, Ermor, Ulm

MA- Pythium, Ulm, Marignon

LA- Marignon, Jomon, Bogarus

How about you all?

[Delta Foxtrot]

I've had a few good games with MA Pangaea. Cheap forest recruit mages for research/minor spell spam. Pan's are expensive but E2N4/E3N3 provide some great rituals and battlemagic. Troopwise you have durable hoplites, cheap berserking revelers, more expensive berserking centaurs and almost everyone is stealthy so you can raid the enemy where he doesn't expect it. They only lack affordable ranged combat (25g longbows are a bit much) and heavy hitters (minotaurs hit hard but aren't that good or cheap). Pans can easily cast destruction to remove enemy armour so lack of heavy hitters isn't that pronounced. All troops also have recouperation, so you don't have to fret about afflictions at all.
They get cap-only blood mage that I haven't really tried, but I imagine that provides some good diversity to them if used properly. With that they also have the paths to forge a lot of N/E/B reinvigoration gear. Slap those on a Pan and you get +10 reinvigoration pretty fast if you calculate earthpower in.

I'm playing Jomon in a game here right now, it's alright. Some very good things, some ok things, a very capable nation in the right hands.

I've been eyeing quite a few nations lately, not sure which will get some good MP time next. Monkeys of all ages look fun with their cheap plentiful S mages and strong sacreds. LA Midgård, T'ien Ch'i and Gath all look very appealing too.

[Shadowlord]

I've only tried a few different nations and only in singleplayer so far, but my favorite thus far has been MA Ulm. In my current SP game (my second game as Ulm, still learning to play them - the first was against only one opponent, this is on a 14-16 player map (apparently I only had 5 AIs on it)), I militarily crushed everyone I ran into except for Ermor and Mictlan (Edit: Eriu still existed too). Mictlan lives only because I stopped trying to kill them to focus all of my attention on Ermor. Apparently, the Ermor AI is smart enough nowadays to cast Burden of Time, then recast it again with even more gems if you manage to dispel it once. I dispelled it once, but was unable to dispel it after they re-cast it, despite three attempts with increasing amounts of gems each time. They're dead now, but only because my dominion overpowered them from the other side of the map.

6-12 months before Ermor ceased to be, I blitzed an army straight through Ermor's territory all the way to the castle their God was hiding in, only to have the entire army drop dead of old age within a month of reaching the castle - Although I had provided them with bags of supplies, I didn't have (at the time) any way to protect them from the aging effect. By the time Ermor ceased to be, I had discovered elixers of life and made several for my commanders, and had started pushing into Ermorian territory all along our border. Then they just went poof. I was a little disappointed since beating them didn't actually require doing anything except waiting for my dominion to overpower theirs.

Edit: Mictlan and Eriu just ceased to exist as well. I never even met Eriu. Looking at the scoregraphs, it's pretty obvious why... My dominion dwarfs everyone else's.

[Frumple]

I've been eyeing quite a few nations lately, not sure which will get some good MP time next. Monkeys of all ages look fun with their cheap plentiful S mages and strong sacreds. LA Midgård, T'ien Ch'i and Gath all look very appealing too.

LA Mid has a delicious early game, iirc. Skinshifters steamroll a great deal of things until mage support really starts rolling in, and by that point you've got your own leverages. I... I'll admit I'm kinda' terrible with them past that point, though.

[Boksi]

Of course neither MA Ulm nor Marignon are considered particularly strong nations in the current meta.

I don't think you've been paying enough attention to the current meta, then. MA Ulm got a massive boost in between 3 and 4. It was weak back in 3, yes, but a lot of changes in 4 benefit them. Their troops have gotten stronger: Reworked repel mechanics benefit their pikemen, the ability to pierce shields benefits their crossbowmen, not to mention that the encumbrance of their infantry has been decreased. The introduction of StR and the increase of research costs means that their strong troops stay relevant longer, especially since all their mages are non-StR. Their smiths can construct a five-gem item for one gem - that's a huge bonus! Get some air income going and recruit a lot of smiths for that tasty air random - mass produce owl quills to turbocharge your research! Not to mention that you can take as much drain as you want. Your smiths can also mass-produce a lot of other items, like bows of war, eyes of aiming, fires in jars, lightless lanterns, shrouds of the battle saint(if you want an Ulmish bless strategy), eyes of the void and spell foci. Not to mention that they're not too shabby in a fight. With Summon Earthpower they have E3 and reinvig, and with a fire in a jar they've got F2 from phoenix power; they've got access to magma eruption, rain of stones, blade wind, legions of steel, earth meld, destruction, strength of giants and their national iron foo spells, to name a few useful ones. Plus, their guardians can shut down sacreds hard, and they're seriously massable because they're not sacred and your smiths can add more resources to a province, so even if they're capital-only you can still recruit hordes of them.

[Frumple]

Maaaaaaan. You know what D4's missing?

Gattai. How awesome would it be to summon up a fire elemental, summon up an air elemental, and then watch as they slam into each other and turn into a Raging Sirocco? Trigger for adjacent enemy of a particular ID, probably a battlefield one, too. Maybe even a check flag for surrounding abilities -- demon dog that turns into frothing doomtitan when near mindless enemies? Yessss...

[Shadowlord]

The word "thug" is not in the manual, but I keep seeing it mentioned in connection to Dominions 4. What does it mean?

[Mindmaker]

The word "thug" is not in the manual, but I keep seeing it mentioned in connection to Dominions 4. What does it mean?

A commander who with some items and support spells can take out provinces by himself.
Not the be confused with a SC (Super Combatant) who can do the same without items and spells.

[USEC_OFFICER]

The word "thug" is not in the manual, but I keep seeing it mentioned in connection to Dominions 4. What does it mean?

It's a type of unit that can clear out Province Defence on its own. An individual unit, mind you, not when used enmass. Usually involves forging them some good gear so that they don't get ganked.

A commander who with some items and support spells can take out provinces by himself.
Not the be confused with a SC (Super Combatant) who can do the same without items and spells.

Damn it, beat me to the punch.

Also, I'm pretty sure that a Super Combatant still needs items and spells to be effective. The major difference is that they can take out entire armies by themselves (hence the term Super Combatant).

[PrimusRibbus]

Another big difference between Thugs and SCs is that you should be able to recruit and gear up at least one Thug (preferably more) per turn. Thugs are cheap enough to be expendable, SCs are not.