Worldbuilder to start as Mercurians

I'm looking for a way to start a new, random game with the Mercurians as one of the civs. I want to play the Mercurians from the beginning of the game. It's OK if the game starts with the Mercurian city already settled.

I tried editing the Worldbuilder save from the second turn (after settling on the first turn and hitting Enter) to replace civ 0 with the Mercurian civ, but then when you load the save, the Mercurians don't show up in the civ selection window, and if you try to play one of the other civs instead, you get a You Have Been Defeated.

If I had to make a mod for the purpose of setting the game up, I could do that, but I want to actually play the game using unmodded FFH.

Thanks.

You can do that in both FF and RifE, by manipulating the 'Set Random Civs' gameoption. When you select it, a dialog opens up asking you if you want a civ to be blocked, blocked for AI, or open. Select Open, and you can have them spawn.

If you open assets\XML\Civilizations\CIV4CivilizationInfos.xml and set bPlayable to 1 you can start a game as Basium. Don't expect it to work 100% since the Mercurians weren't designed to be playable from turn 0.

Rather, IIRC, the Mercurians from a turn 0 start begin with an adept, and angel, and not much else. No leader traits, no angel-spawning, you can't even build warriors. You're supposed to sit in your city with your strong angel and get to the point where you build the Mercurian gate yourself, which activates all your abilities.

That's just in FF and RifE, possibly Orbis. Xienwolf added that as a way to limit them from being used early... Infernals are under the same limitations. Possibly worse, as they aren't at peace with Demons until they should be summoned in, and they still spread hell, which spawns said demons.

Here is a useful "cheat" to do it. Start out as your favorite civ (I like the Lunan cause that way you get pearls). Found your first city. Choose a location and (World Builder) the Fanaticism Tech, Your 2nd city, and place 1 engineer (maybe 2). Go out of W.B. start building the gate and use your engineers to rush it. Wait one turn and there ya go. If you want to make it fair (as much as can be with Basium from turn one) go back to WB and get rid of the Fanaticism tech. To play without an ally just delete them in WB.

...or start as Lurcuirp in medieval era. You start with two settlers. settle 'em. Use Gift of Nantosuelta. Settle both hammers in the 2nd city - your future mercurian gate city. civic pacifism and play til engineers pop out - 2.( one is not enough) Now you can hurry mercurian gate.

Or use a game option to start as Mercurians and WB a Mercurian Gate in your first city. Lots of options.

Run the game as any civilization, then open worldbuilder and save. Go to your worldbuilder saves folder, and open the save with notepad. Scroll down to Civilization 0 and switch all mentions of civilization to Mercurians. Reopen the save and it should work.