FFH2 Loki question

I have just played a game as the Balseraphs, and I user Loki to Disrupt enemy cities, but I noticed no effect. When I looked into the city, all that seemed to have happend was that 1 unit of culture was removed. 1 unit of culture. It did not add unhappyness or anything else, despite what the civilopedia states.

I have the following build (it says this is the latest release when I try to update)
Civ version: 319
Save version: 302
Build version: 3.1.9.0 (128100)
Build date: Thu May 14 16:17:10 2009
Build: Final release

Have anyone else this problem? What to do about it? Now Loki is just some kind of merchant who sells happiness to other cities (I assuse the gold is NOT taken from the rival civ, is this correct?), doubling as a spy. He poses no other threat to mature cities. Is this intentional?

Also, unless you have the summoners trait (which only one of the leaders have), his (and every other) puppet is rather useless, right?

Puppets are useful in that they have a strength, which Loki does not have. So, if you have enemies trying to kill him, the puppet makes a weak shield before they can get to him. Puppets are also useful when you have a mage hero (ie, Hemah or Gibbon) with Twincast. You'll get 2 puppets, who can then each cast a spell.

Puppets are also a fantastic anti marksman tool! If you have, say, twenty mages, you'll need 21 assassins (who succeed with their attacks) to kill one of your mages.

My question was about Loki, no about the puppets. That was just an afterthought.

Loki can take over cities using disrupt if the culture of the owner is 0.

I know you said the thread was about loki, but the puppets are one of the MOST powerful units in the game. Get your mages to mind 3 and your puppets will all have the domination spell - if they fail summon them again. This keeps your mage safe from ever losing that spell. On top of that Kael has said that this was not a bug but intentional. The Bals. are the civ of the mind sphere of magic.

Loki on the other hand shines during early game if you can follow settlers around till the found a city. Then once the game has progressed - find the biggest city you can and park him, the gold does add up.

Now in my little mod mod the Sheiam Fanatics can use the disrupt ability and it's useful, but its best to force your enemies to declare war on you so that your defense agreements will still work (another words you want to go to war, but want your "allies" to join the disrupt spell may force them to declare on you). I would reckon this works with Loki as well.

What I mean is, that in the description it says that he is terrible to play against. How? He gives the biggest of my cities a happiness boost OR he takes away ONE unit of culture? Seems to me something is wrong here.

Also, ok I may have been wrong about puppets in general, due to domination, but LOKI'S puppet is totally useless IF your leader is not a summoner?

The reason I wrote this thread is because I was dissapointed at Loki. But, since he is unkillable, having him causing a permanent disruption (as in causing a riot in the city) or unhappiness seems unfair. But having the bad stuff being to take away ONE unit of culture is totally stupid, especially since the description on the Disrupt ability states that he also causes unhappiness.

Why not have him to take away a percentage of the culture of the city instead, like the spies did? Say he removes, unless bribed, 5% of the citie's culture, or two units of culture, whichever is greatest, as well as blocking further increases of culture. That way, he will devastate small cities, but still make a difference in large ones. Either the city is stripped of culture and taken over in a maximum of 20 turns, or the ruling city can bribe Loki for the cost of 8 gold, from their own treasury, to make him not cause any harm.

This way, both abilities will be usefull. Either you get (potentially large sums of) money for happiness, or you get money from the owners treasury in order not to cause any harm to the city.

Have you tried disrupting a city with no culture? I don't know how you can say that isn't powerful.

YOu are playing it wrong.

I was able to win a OCC game of deity. Because my Loki was running around an area of Sentry 2 scouts and destroyed ANY enemy city without me declaring war. For me it seems to be too cheap, but whatever . At least creative leaders are safe.

Loki is very useful in the early game. You have to move him around to find newly-founded opposing cities, then send him in to cause unhappiness. In a new city with no culture, he will cause the city to revolt and flip to you. I've been able to capture several rivals' cities this way.

Later in the game, of course, most cities will have too much culture for Loki to be able to flip them.