Anyone have an effective Mercurian Strategy

I'm new to FFH, and I haven't figured out how to play them effectively, they have a couple of problems strategy wise

1. My cities with enough production to build the Mercurian gate in a reasonable amount of time tend to be in the middle of my empire, giving them no room to expand (they're surrounded by me)

2. I can't exactly see the strategic benefits of giving up a high production city

3. Even if I have a border city that I can afford to give up but can still build the gate in less than 100 turns, it tends to have another empire next to it, still leaving the Mercurians with no room to expand.

Has anyone found solutions to these problems? What would be an effective strategy for playing the Mercurians or using them as an ally?

it's best to save a Great Engineer to complete the Gate in one turn and try to make them spawn as close as possible to a place full of evil guys, they are best when they can fight evil ASAP. and try to protect their cities when they are still weak

If I'm going to summon them, I do several things. Consider that they are muscle. They're not likely to ever add much to you as an ally aside from military strength so treat them like a rabid dog you're going to sick on people.

1) Make the call about summoning them early so a lower-production city can start the gate way ahead of time. Their military is not dependent on production and you give up a relatively low value city.

2) Position them close to a likely hostile border and/or someplace with room to expand so the AI doesn't do something stupid instead of going to war.

3) Prepare for war. They will drag you in. If you want to boost them right out of the gate, set up a war with a Good civ right before they pop. That way you have a steady stream of Good units dying to provide them Angels.

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OTOH, if I plan to switch to Mercurians...

1) Pick the most valuable city to build the Mercurian Gate in so you can take it when you switch to playing the Mercs. A holy city and/or something with massive production is best.

2) Start a war as above. Pull your units back from the border so the cities fall quickly.

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Edit: The point of #2 is so that the original civ loses cities that the Mercs can re-conquer after you switch over.

Gifting conquered cities to your mercurian ally is also helpful in getting the most out of them.

If you just want a strong Mercurian Ally, play the Luchuirp. Pop out the Gifts of Nantosuelta early, and use a hammer to put an engineer in a city, which will get you a Great Engineer fairly quickly (If it is your first great person).

Then you can build the gate in basically any city when you get the tech.

If you want to PLAY the Mercurians, then put all your hammers in one city, and build the Gate there (Maybe with the Great LIbrary too). This will get you a few great people (Found them in the city, but save an engineer for the gate). When the city changes hands to the Mercurians, they'll be considered to have made 0 great people, and all the specialists the city has (From library and Engineers) will cause them to pump out a few new ones very quickly.

For the Mercurians:

Either you will play as them or have them as an ally.

If you're using the Mercs as an ally, your first decision on most maps is whether or not to give them a port city. Usually, you want to give them a port city so they can expand.

Sometimes, you just want them to sit nowhere and not contact any other civs and force you into declarations of war. In that case, use a Great Engineer to give them a city in your hinterlands.

If you're using the Mercs as an ally, you want them to have a reasonably viable economy or they'll run 90 % gold and 10 % science for most of the game. You can give them a holy city but it seems to me that giving them a food city with some towns helps a lot.


If you want to play as the Mercs, your strategy is completely different. You want to give them a holy city (preferably order, natually). Build up one city, preferable the Order or RoK holy city if either are yours and give decent hammers or food. The Altar is also useful. Wonders help. Settle all the great people that you generate in the city that will become the Mercurians' capital. When the Mercurians appear, as Zechno notes, the GP counter is reset to zero, and you can obtain one or more GPs quite rapidly. In most cases, you will either want Priests (for the altar or for holy cities) or Engineers (to insta-build wonders). If you get a GP on the outlying percentage (i.e. you have a 50% chance of a prophet and 40% chance of an engineer but you get a Merchant) you can use that person to start a golden age.

The Raiders promotion is far better in FFH than in FF, because Commando gives you powerful options.

If you play as the Mercs, you want to eliminate evil players of course, but you also want your ally involved. As your ally loses units in war, those units become your angels.

Your ally will give you any resources that they have extras of, so expect extra happy and health from all the resources that you gathered for your builder civ.


Heroes. It may be difficult to get heroes for the Mercurians because if you've run under Order for long enough, you've already built VP and probably Sphener as well.


Has anyone tried an Empyrean Mercurian strategy? That might get you an extra hero (and an extra vote on the Overcouncil from that hero plus another vote from your ally). If you pursue this strategy and Malakim are around, you may need to fight them in order to control the overcouncil.


The Mercurians need war, and lots of it. Builder strategies don't usually work for them unless the city you built them in generates a stupendous amount of food or hammers.

A lot of good advice here...

Honestly, I seldom summon the Mercurians in my game anymore. The hit your tech takes and the absolutely bizarre AI you get either with the Mercurians or your former civ if you decide to take over as Basium is just too much for me.

However, one piece of advice is to have a look at the civs that are in the game. If there are a ton of Evil civs, do NOT summon Basium. You will have every civ at war with you, and, worst of all, when you kill units they will not come back as Angels for Basium - the Infernals will get them if they are in the game.

If there are a good number of Good/Neutral civs and a few Evil civs, then it is a good time to summon Basium.

I always tried to summon him in a city that is a holy city so he can take advantage of the extra gold from the holy city wonder there.

However, now, as I said, until the ally AI improves, I just say no to Basium.

btw, in 0.34 the tech hit for having a permanent alliance was axed. so summoning Basium will be waaaaay better than before

Well, playing as CoE calabim, i found Mercurians to be a great assett while invading Bannor. Since i already had a lot of good cities, i used one of the high populated cities of the illians, which i had just wiped out before, to build the Mercurian Gate in ~20 turns. When Basium spawned, i declared war against Bannor and proceeded the to attack Bannor, which was about 200 points under me in score.

All their cities were order. I only declared this war to get them out of the game, since they tend to not like me. Since they had no good resources, apart from mana which i could trade afterwards, i used the cities as food for my vampires and then gave them to basium. That way i didn't have to defend the conquered cities, didn't have to pay maintenance during the war and Basium got a lot of nice cities and angels to help me in coming wars against einon and Os-Gabella.

If you like offensive warfare, Basium is a very good defender.

the great library doesn't give the extra research point to the scientists if you build it prior to the completion of the gate..... the wonders do not work for the basium after you summon him. they only work if they are built after the summon.

in my opinion the most important part is research/economy. later angelic units can be very strong, especially when upgraded from very experienced angels (only the flying ones are quite bad as they do not benefit from streets and the raider trait).
heralds or fire angels are very potent and should be first targets.
as the upgrading is very cheap you always have your full t4 units to support you.

i played the luichirp-gambit and think it is overrated. production is nice to have, but getting only great engineers is not that good imo and, on higher difficulties, you have to take the luichirp a totally different way and may have problems to survive. if you go for golems most likely an AI will build the gate.
the luichirp also make a very bad ally as the golems are too complex to be played by the AI properly.

the next time i aim for playing basium - which was a lot of fun btw, i would seriously consider lanun, elves or another commerce oriented leader. you will get plenty of units (if there are enough good civs) but you have to pay for them and get some important technologies before you can really start going for the big players.

Getting a huge stack of good religion units to suicide right when he spawns is helpful, but if you're playing as him, don't build any the religious heroes

Also, make sure your ready for a locked alliance, if the other team gets an adept that knows a spell like haste, the AI will not hesitate to cast it ever...single...turn

And you get to listen to the sound effects!

Basium is a great ally for the Kuriotates. Just gift all your worthless settlements to him and you have a powerful defensive screen. It helps that Basium can work the cities as full cities too.

Mailbox said:

Basium is a great ally for the Kuriotates. Just gift all your worthless settlements to him and you have a powerful defensive screen. It helps that Basium can work the cities as full cities too.

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I can't believe I never thought of that. I'll try that next time.

The last time I used Basium, I was on Pangaea, Large and I gave him one of my better coastal cities, the one without wonders. That city worked great for him, but he did not share borders with any enemies, so I had to to all of the inital conquering for him and then gift the cities to him. That game ended up great because the three superpowers on the continent were all good, meaning all the wars would make him stronger. After 50 turns of war with my neighbors, he was near the top of the power chart.

Have the Mercurians been changed? I built the Mercurian Gate in a recent game and decided to play as Basium. The city that built the gate was not turned into a Mercurian city. Bassium started with a stack Angels, a settler, and a couple of workers. It seems that it would have been more useful if he kept the city that built the Gate.

Mesix said:

Have the Mercurians been changed? I built the Mercurian Gate in a recent game and decided to play as Basium. The city that built the gate was not turned into a Mercurian city. Bassium started with a stack Angels, a settler, and a couple of workers. It seems that it would have been more useful if he kept the city that built the Gate.

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You have to use his spell which takes over the city he's in if it has the mercurian gate.

As for the Kuriotates thing - I just decided I had to share an absolutely hilarious anecdote. My first ever game of FfH I played as the Kuriotates (Erebus map, it was Monarch or maybe Emperor) back in 0.34. (I was interested in the 3-radius cities and otherwise they didn't seem to have any special disadvantages/crazy mechanics- a pretty good first civ). Well, the Bannor were my neighbors and summoned Basium; however, I was going for a cultural victory and was building up massive pressure on that city (and some others). I flipped (and razed) their one and only city and killed the Mercurians by culture .

As for Basium as an ally, I unfortunately have not tried it out except in the scenarios. However, I expect one thing is very similar to PA's in civIV in general - at higher difficulties your AI ally gets massive production bonuses. Basium gets his whole own set of national units and at immortal/deity builds them at half the cost of you - so I'd think setting him up with a few strong cities would be nice. Plus the angels' units like heralds are already some of the strongest non-world units in the game - I've fought him enough when evil to know that.

One other thing that I've been looking forward to trying is declaring war against a weak Civ on another continent, taking a few of his cities and then building the Mercurian Gate on that other continent so that I can gift the rest of that continent's cities to him as I/we take them. Reduced Maintenance + My AI ally doesn't have to figure out intercontinental warfare.

Oddly enough, declaring war on "good" civs first is an advantage since their deaths give you free Angel units.

popejubal said:

Oddly enough, declaring war on "good" civs first is an advantage since their deaths give you free Angel units.

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so totally true!
I have won a game as mercurians on a map filled with "good" or "neutral" civs.
Who cares about right and wrong?
I just wanted those extra units from my victims

The mercurians can build living units on their own. So they do not really need to wipe out good civs. They get their own units back as angels when they are killed.