Basium question

[Tielby]

For a variety of reasons, I almost never build the Mercurian Gate, but from what I've seen and what little I've played with it, Basium pretty much stays in lock-step with whomever summoned him, to the point that he will change to religions which, thematically, don't seem to fit with his supposed philosophy at all. Case in point, in my current game, he just changed to Council of Esus (which suits me fine because I'm busily trying to bring about Armageddon).

Anyway, my question is this. How can I get Basium to declare war on me, or be able to declare war on him, if I'm the one who summoned him?

It's more out of curiosity than anything else, but the info could come in handy someday.

 

[Jarrema]

You cannot, I believe. It is your permanent ally

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There is no way to break a permanent alliance. The summoner can never declare war on Basium, or (since the move to BtS) even attack him with hidden nationality units.


Adopting the same religion as the summoner is due to a stupid change made in the BtC 3.19 patch which causes players to consider the prevalence of a religion in their team's cities rather than only their own cities when deciding on a state religion. The AI tries to go for the religion that has the highest percent influence in all the cities it considers. The religion weights in FfH increase or decrease the percentages that the AI sees, but if the team has a religion in almost all of its cities this can overpower these weights even if the religion is found in none of the player's cities.



As a side note, Esus may be an evil god but he actively opposes all plans to cause Armageddon. He ordered the Svartalfar to join sides with Basium in the crusade to free the Fane of the Lessers from the Infernals, closing the greatest portal into hell and greatly hindering his fellow evil gods from stealing souls to process into demons. He tends to find demons distasteful, greatly prefering the service of living creatures. Most of the denizens of his hell are technically still alive, not true demons nor souls of the deceased mortals into demons by the great machine of hell. Basium is the archangel of life, but he holds Sucellus the current God of Life in contempt (mostly out of jealousy). The relationship between the Ljosalfar and Svartalfar reflects that Sucellus and Esus do not get along either. Basium's main goal is to fight demons, but Sabathiel has warned that he is without honor and willing to use any deception or betrayal in furtherance of this goal. If there is any evil god with whom Basium would ally, it would have to be Esus.