Basium

[psychoak]

It's been bugging me for a while.

Summoning Basium sucks.

You don't share resources, you double your research costs, and you either switch and have a tard ai partner with most of the resources, or you stay yourself and basium suicides his awesome self on the first person to notice him.

Am I the only one that sees him as one hell of a negative?

 

[Kael]

It's been bugging me for a while.

Summoning Basium sucks.

You don't share resources, you double your research costs, and you either switch and have a tard ai partner with most of the resources, or you stay yourself and basium suicides his awesome self on the first person to notice him.

Am I the only one that sees him as one hell of a negative?

You dont double your research costs, teams pool their research. In general a 2 player team is much more efficient than a 1 player team with all the combined resources. Less maintenance for cities and units, plus the bonus palace for the mercurians, and increased national unit limits (which are all player based and not team based).

But Basium certainly will draw you into a lot of wars in an evil world.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You don't double the costs, but they do go up by 50% per extra member. FfH does not override this in its Global DefinesAlt.xml:

	<Define>
		<DefineName>TECH_COST_EXTRA_TEAM_MEMBER_MODIFIER</DefineName>
		<iDefineIntVal>50</iDefineIntVal>
	</Define>

(I'd recommend setting this to 0, and also setting MAX_NATIONAL_WONDERS_PER_CITY_FOR_OCC to -1.)


Also, when Basium takes his city he tends to drastically reduce his teammate's ability to research, and takes a while to regain that level of research.



I do think he needs some boost too. I tend to like giving Basium a lot more traits than most leaders (Aggressive, Raiders, Spiritual, Ingenuity, Defensive, Charismatic, Organized, etc), but still fewer than I give Hyborem (why the hell (pun intended) does Hyborem have Expansive instead of somehting he could actually use?). Giving them more traits makes it much more satisfying to kill heroes and deprive them of those extra traits.

 

[psychoak]

Basium doesn't have any research...

I've got five cities as luchiurp, pumping out 250ish research a turn. I pop Basium and my research requirements double. The amount of research I'm making drops, and the amount of research Basium is making just barely does more than make up what I lost.

It's the drawbacks of a team, but there is no team because Basium doesn't have the resources of a side, Basium has resources from your side.

Edit: You real real sure it's not double?

 

[rocklikeafool]

We ARE all quite sure. The reason prolly is you were dumb nough to put the Mercuian Gate in one of your important cities, as far as research goes anyway. Here's a tip: Never put Basium in a city that you'll want later. In other words, put him in your 5th or 6th best city.

 

[psychoak]

Actually, I built him a new one in the corpse of an enemy empire, stuck a couple great engineers in it, and popped the gate with a third before switching. It's still nerfed the . .. .. .. . out of my top research spot, even at 50%, my team is two thirds as effective at research as I was before I became a team My piddling 35 research from Basium is nothing next to the 300+ total. The military front is even worse, the AI half has killed two whole units in the last hundred turns or so against my brother. I just wiped out a city with a nice stack of defenders in it, including Mardero.

My AI has access to five cities with around 400 production between them, paladins, war chariots, crossbows and clockwork golems aren't enough for it to have any effect beyond feeding experience to my opponent.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It isn't double (200%), but 150%. That is still too much though.

 

[Sarisin]

I agree with the OP's comment, especially on the AI you have to deal with whether you decided to keep your old civ or go with Basium.

I built the Mercurian Gate in my 8th (and last) city. Basically, the Mercurians made my Research for something like Mercantilism go from 8 turns to 16 turns. Of course, scoring-wise you both get the points when the research is done.

The AI is just pathetic for Basium and the Mercurians. For about 50 turns Basium sat in a city (wars being declared allover the place as there were 5 AV civs). Then, in a stroke of genius, out he goes ALONE and is killed in a few turns. In this game, Hyborem is gone, and there are no Good civs so dead units don't produce much (Angels or Manes). I find myself having to defend not only my cities but the Mercurian cities as well. The building strategy of the Mercurians is just bizarre.

One question related to this on the scoring:

If you play all the way through a game to a Time Victory, it seems Basium's score is counted for the victory, but not counted for your individual score. I was wondering if that is true also when you have Minister Koun on your team?

 

[Minor Annoyance]

Well it must be the AI because I had a good run as Basium.
Basium shouldn't really do any research when he first arrives. He needs to conquer an empire first, and considering how dire losing the Basium unit is, it should really have a 99% odds before attacking.
I was going to attach a screen shot of an event where I had the option of execution a unit for torturing prisoners, and the unit was Basium but it's just a black screen for some reason. This was probably because of the bug where events would always target the first unit made.

 

[Sureshot]

the research penalty doesnt bother me as much as the GP threshold increases from team members

 

[Fafnir13]

I had Bassium march with a proud army of 1 angel to assault my empire. He got smished. I've never seen Hyborem do that, although the horned one's course of action isn't much better. All I've ever seen him do is expand with settlers as much as possible and turtle in Dis until I decide he needs offing.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Recently I found the Basium AI to be a big threat to me, attacking with advanced units in one and conquering a small part of my empire in another.
I think a good idea would be to not summon him if there isn't much good religion spread in the world, but if there is that and lots of wars, he'll probably be an asset.

 

[Darksaber1]

The Weakest I've ever seen Basium was in a game where Cardith Lorda Summoned him in the CENTER of his empire. It was odd, since Lorda wasn't in any wars, I was beating the snot out of Alexis and Hyborem, and Lorda gave up one of 5 overly close cities to summon him. I don't think he ever promoted another city. The only time I saw a Mecurien unit was When I walked past the City. Course, I was soon at was with a Veil Varn Gossam, A Veil Keelyn, and a RoK Tasunke, and not using any units, so Basium wasn't getting many angels anyway.

 

[Svantotvit]

I recently summoned Basium for the first time ever and the research penalty nearly finished me. my own fault though. I had Empyrian (spelling?) as state religion and had erronously started research on Fanaticism because I had forgotten that this is for the Order hero not the Emp one. I only realized my mistake after like 15 turn and decided to finish the research and then switch to the correct one. And tadaaa, Basium arrives and suddenly Fanaticism (which, again, I didn't really need) was a long, long time away again.

And Basium of course declared war on three of my neighbours which, without the religious hero, got kind of dangerous real quick

 

[Alzara]

Why the hell (pun intended) does Hyborem have Expansive instead of somehting he could actually use?

I've always wondered this. Hyborem's traits aren't very demonic. I still play with compact enforced nowadays. Don't see the need for Basium or Hyborem in the game; they just aren't interesting enough!

Al

 

[rocklikeafool]

Actually, I built him a new one in the corpse of an enemy empire, stuck a couple great engineers in it, and popped the gate with a third before switching. It's still nerfed the . .. .. .. . out of my top research spot, even at 50%, my team is two thirds as effective at research as I was before I became a team My piddling 35 research from Basium is nothing next to the 300+ total. The military front is even worse, the AI half has killed two whole units in the last hundred turns or so against my brother. I just wiped out a city with a nice stack of defenders in it, including Mardero.

My AI has access to five cities with around 400 production between them, paladins, war chariots, crossbows and clockwork golems aren't enough for it to have any effect beyond feeding experience to my opponent.

It sounds to me like all of your real problems were due to bad plannin.

 

[rocklikeafool]

It isn't double (200%), but 150%. That is still too much though.

Where'd ya find that out?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml

(I found out it is too much by playing the game a few times )

 

[rocklikeafool]

Ok, but that applies to all alliances, as that's a BTS specific file and not new to FfH.

So, psychoak, your problem is Firaxis' fault, not Kael's. Therefore, either edit it yourself in the file Magister specified or complain to Firaxis. Good luck.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

You could also override any define found in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Assets\XML\GlobalDefines.xml in C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Civilization 4\Beyond the Sword\Mods\Fall from Heaven 2 032\Assets\XML\GlobalDefinesAlt.xml. That way the main game and other mods would not be effected, but FfH would.