Balseraphs Strats Theorycrafting

Slvynn

Slvynn

Duke Vector fon Pixel
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Apr 3, 2005
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as title says, i'd be glad to discuss Mad clowns strats, religion pick synergies.
according to start i am almost beelining OOs (after i have necessary starting techs and carnivals and bronze working), and afterthat getting KoE/Necromancy/Deathnodes/adepts/Skeletons, building Mokka (that rise my defence alot) and then puppeters, as well geting cultists and traveling in my neightbours lands (those i have open borders with) and casting Burning Blood lol (instane style gameplay)
If you more less sure that certain neigbour not going decalre war on you in close time and he is one who you plan backstab soon this is a strategy - that will lesser his military powers alot .
also puppeters rock, obvious to say
 
OO was best for them before Shadow, but now I think that their best religion is probably the Council of Esus. Of course, founding both religions would be good too.
 
Perpentarch or Keelyn? Very different choices & Strats there.

If Keelyn, I would ask why you are getting Skeletons. Total waste of time for her really.
 
What are Balseraph specificity? Many culture and happiness buildings. Slave cages. Freak shows and bard points.

If you are going to cultural victory usually the best is supposed OO with its cultural bonus from temple. But bonus is not so big really so it is no matter.

If you are not going to cultural victory still you sooner or later get Great Bard so no problems with Song of Autumn but overall sinergy is not so big.

Their military power is the best: freaks are owesome. And having arena assumes high production possibilities. So I thing RoK is the best for them as no problems with culture usually. Stonewardens can cure freaks from some unwanted mutation phenomena. RoK and Revelry allows to build strong empire and start conquest at midgame - your neighbours one by one. Magic support: charm and dance of blades - very efficient, one Loki can help much. Neutrality is the best for diplomacy. Loki is also is a very good to improve relations with AI: capture someone's small city with Loki and liberate back, capture and gift... For slave trade Undercouncil is enough but it is usually not needed as too late.

And with Perpentach I am usually able to build command posts in time.
 
i played only as Perpentach , and found combo of mages/puppeters (with death and chaos - contamnent, chaos marauders/wraiths each turn) quite usefull as well as army of skeletons and cheap warriors that are converted to drowns at cheap 65 gold cost if urgent defence needed, also hemah replaces my catapults (in combo with contamnent casting mages)
Also yes, freaks abit, some cultists for healing and stuff, alot of culture, bards , SE
 
And don't forget those lovely Harlequin/Druids.
 
So I have been playing exclusively as the Belseraphs so far (as they are by far the most interesting and unique civ in the game) and the one thing I have discovered is that Loki is rediculously powerful. I think in my last game I only built like three settlers the entire game because Loki could steal me a city whenever I needed one.
 
thewyrm said:
So I have been playing exclusively as the Belseraphs so far (as they are by far the most interesting and unique civ in the game) and the one thing I have discovered is that Loki is rediculously powerful. I think in my last game I only built like three settlers the entire game because Loki could steal me a city whenever I needed one.
Click to expand...

What difficulty level are you playing at?

Just curious, not implying anything.
 
I usually play on noble. Occasionally on Prince. I'm not really a good enough civ player to step it up to monarch.
 
playing on monarch, was quite ok, didnt finished party, atm 2nd in score, only Elves above me, gotta gather army, fleet, and sail to their continent to rape soma cities (playing as OO Perpentach, Hyborem already killed by Basium, Lanun and co (Hyborem spawned on other, FoL continent, and was smashed quite quickly).
have big army of water traveling mages/archmages/cultists/hemah, as well some puppeters, atm on defence cause i only owner of my continent for now.
Water/Death/Mind/Enchantment/Body mostly.
most used: All water sorcery spells, Haste, Contagion, Domination, Inspiration, Charm (you move stack close to enemy units, cast charm 2ce (ensurance), cast damaging spells, next turn you cast haste, chase enemy stack if it moves, cast damaging spells, and then attack very damaged enemy stack with mages :)))) ),
enchantment widely used too , death summoning .
Aslo good to have 1 archmage having Air lvl 3, Maelstrom helps.

Afaik Keelyn should be used with different strat, more sumnonning , prolly AV instead OO.
 
Yeah definately, Keelyn has far more synergy with the AV then OO. Ritualists can be seriously poweful under a leader with the summoning trait
 
Runes is the way for Balseraph/Loki strat, imho. It gives money and gets you the neutral alignment you want in the long run. This has worked for me up to Emperor (I expect past that as well; I just haven't tested it):

Start out with a normal opening (food techs if needed, festivals, warriors/workers), pick up Hunting for Acrobats and build Loki. You'll need to concentrate on building roads so your stuff can get around faster.

Start flipping cities with Loki. The opponents will frequently box themselves in. Every new city builds a Marketplace to keep your economy from tanking. Use wagons to stall new cities until Loki can be freed up. One of the tough things is just building enough units to garrison the cities as fast as you flip them (not to mention enough workers to keep hooking them all up).

Meanwhile, tech to Runes. Split new tech research after that between econ and recon.

Recon units are decent defense and with the cow-tapults can usually do more than enough conquest to supplement Loki-flipping or to hold off a civ's expansion while Loki is eating up someone else's border. Eventually you'll want to use the Harlequin->Druid and Harlequin->Beastmaster upgrades.

Econ techs to keep your patchwork economy from collapsing.

Aiming for Esus later to supplement the Recon emphasis has obvious utility, but in the early game, RoK is much more valuable.
 
I'm currently playing a Belseraph game as Perpentach and am stuck on an continent with Varn, Carditha and Sandalphon. And all three have been, individually and in pairs, waging war on me and my merry little Octopus Overlords empire throughout the bulk of the game. I was originally going for a builder strategy so when the Sidar and Kuriotates initially declared war I was caught unprepared.

After assessing my build options (str 3 warriors at 25 hammers (I had no metal), str 4 Drown at 90 hammers, str 3 freaks at 60 hammers, str 5 Cultist at 120 hammers or str 4 swordsman at 60 hammers) I realized that a freak is really just an expensive warrior who comes pre-mutated so I started making a LOT of warriors. My cultists would mutate them then I would do one of several things depending on the mutation results. If the promotions gained were really good (Strong, Heroic Strength/Defense, Mobility) then I'd drown the unit (in this way I got a couple of strength 6 units for 25 hammers and 60 gold). If the promotions were middling then I'd just throw it into combat as is and if they were crappy I'd have the unit try the arena a couple times until it either died or became worth while. This gave me a surprisingly powerful army very quickly since the only limiting factors were my ability to train warriors and pay for the drowning of the good ones (markets and cottage-spam FTW). In fact, to upgrade a warrior into a swordsman (str 3 -> str 4) costs 75 gold but drowning said warrior only costs 60 while still giving me a str 4 unit. Warriors are ridiculously easy to produce so having one in six or so get a nasty mutation combination was not really a problem.

I guess this is mostly an endorsement of the OO religion but the arenas really helped whenever I had a weakened or dangerous unit (in the case of Crazed and Diseased) result from the mutation. The arenas kept the war wariness at bay AND turned a few of the cannon fodder into effective units.

As an aside, my traits have been unchanged for over 200 turns now. I find this odd, especially since I thought the event that changed them had a cumulative probability. Anyone else notice this or is it simply a fluke?
 
I agree with you about Drown, for 60 gold, they are really cost effective. If you think you're gonna get hit, like in the above scenario you outlined, a really good tactic is combat 5 (either as drown or as the "raw material") then Fear. At 37xp, that promo, early in the game, is really powerful and the AI doesn't know how to counter.
 
You can take your Freaks down the recon path, too, you know.
 
If you have Mokka's Cauldron technology from the Necromancy technology any unit that dies in the city becomes a flesh golem. The golem keeps upgrades but can gain no exp.

Arenas let you test a unit, sometimes it dies sometimes it gains a lot of exp.

You can take a city and mass produce warriors. Send them to the Arenas, keep ones above level 3 and upgrade them, grind down and combine the others.

Endless Golem Army.
 
actually, i think that it is a small chance of becoming insane each turn as perpentach. Once, I was ruling coz of organised and the cheap civics, and spritual. Then, They changed and I had to survive without research for 30-40 turns. That sucks
 
Forgot to mention mega powerfull Druids, that should be upgraded from Harlequins. (+ chaos sphere)
In order to get that you need to turn Neutral, which is painfull, but not so complicicated.
You need at least 1 city with : RoK, Empyrean and Order, if you founding OO/CoE or converting to them.
RoK > Neutral
Empyrean > Neutral
Order > Good (Only if going OO/CoE)
-----------------
Convert back to OO/CoE/FoL.
With using this strat FoL is extremelly powerfull with Bals, so best suited path is recon path> commune,
Best way is to found FoL, get 1 city with RoK/Emp, convert to become Neutral and then 10 turns later convert back to FoL.
 
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