Work in progress.
Overview
The Balseraphs are one of the more interesting and powerful civs in the game. Rather than being focused around a single powerful mechanic such as the Calabim are, they have a comparatively large number of unique units and buildings that support their "circus gone mad" theme.
They have a strong early game based around the special powers of their hero, Loki. Their midgame UUs have less base strength than the units they replace, but are compensated with powerful special abilities. Because the Balseraphs also lack a strong melee hero to spearhead assaults, they tend to rely more on magic than brute force. They begin with Air mana allowing them easy access to the Maelstrom spell.
Hero: Loki
Loki costs 180h and is available from the start of the game. He is unique among heroes in that he can't attack or level up. He comes with the Dance of Blades, Mutation and Charm Person spells. If you keep him with your main army you can use Dance of Blades to give them an edge with first strikes long before Adepts are available.
Mutation has about an even chance of making your units better or worse, but you can get some promotions from Mutation that you wouldn't be able to get any other way such as increases to base strength and the Cannibalize promotion. It is worth mutating most of your early military. The bad results can be consigned to garrison duty, suicide missions, or repeatedly fighting in the arena in the hope of getting enough experience to make up for their negative mutations. The good results can form a strong core of fighters to build around.
Loki's unique ability is to randomly cause revolts in enemy cities that he's in while draining 1 culture per turn from them like a gypsy wagon. This is most effective against newly founded cities or cities that just changed hands in an AI-AI war which don't have any culture yet. When the city culture is zero or less, the victim city can only work its own tile, and is extremely likely to flip to Balseraph control should a revolt occur. Taking advantage of squabbling neighbours is is a good way to get free cities, the key is to get Loki in quickly before an obelisk can be built.
Loki can also spy on rival city screens (and gives you 1 gold per turn from the gypsy wagon ability)
If you no longer have much use for Loki in the late game, you can dismiss him to allow you to build Shrine of the Champion giving all your new units 1 free promotion.
UU: Gypsy Wagon
Requires Carnival (Festivals), 90h
Drains 2 gold and 1 culture from any opposing city it's parked in. You get 1 gold back. Unlike Loki, you do need open borders, and they can't spy on the city screen or incite revolts. Their main purpose is to harrass civs you are at peace with by givinge you an edge in cultural border wars and culturally suppressing newly founded cities. 90 hammers for 1 gold per turn doesn't make these a great option for making cash early.
UU: Freak
Requires Freak Show (Festivals), 60h
This is an expensive warrior that begins mutated. You also need a 60h freak show to produce these. The trouble with the freak shows is that they give an innate 2 great bard points which you most likely don't want in the early game unless you are planning to found Fellowship of Leaves. Currently I would just skip these and use Loki's mutation ability.
UU: Acrobat
This is just a standard hunter with different graphics.
UU: Harlequin
Requires Carnival and Animal Handling, 150h
This Ranger/Mage hybrid replaces the standard ranger for Balseraphs. It begins with one less strength point but begins with Dance of Blades and Charm Person spells, and can be immediately promoted to cast Inspiration or Mutation if it starts with 2 xp.
These are excellent city defence units as they can cast charm person to hold off attackers, and maintain Inspiration in their city for 4 research in peacetime. If you want an offensive Harlequin it is best to upgrade it from a scout that has received good mutations or been through the arena for an XP headstart, as the 1 strength loss hurts quite a bit.
Can be upgraded to beastmasters and more importantly, druids while keeping their magic promotions. Always train your druids this way because they'll gain access to the Chaos and Mind spheres for Summon Pit Beast and Domination, which they can get with a much lower research and XP total than mages can.
UU: Mimic
Like the Harlequin, this unit is 1 strength point behind its standard counterpart, in this case the Champion. In return they get the unique ability to steal random promotions from enemies they defeat. The promotion stolen is totally random and they can steal spell effects (including negative ones such as Charm Person, unfortunately.) This makes the unit more suited towards building an elite core army than just mass low level unit flooding, as they start relatively weak but surpass the regular champion after winning a few combats due to their extra promotions. Low level mimics are best trained up by softening up the enemy with magic.
The best way to make use of this ability is to take promotions that your opponent doesn't use, such as taking mobility/city raider against the AI and hoping to acquire the generic Combat promotions by stealing them. High level mimics which manage to gain Hidden Nationality can become absolute monsters by going around and stealing everyone else's specialist promotions.
UU: Puppeteer
Mage replacement. Units summoned by this have the Puppet promotion, making them Not Alive and immune to poison and death. This is an extremely minor bonus. Since the balseraph palace starts with air mana, Maelstrom is most likely the route you'll want to go with tier 2 arcane anyway.
UU: Courtesan
This is a shadow with an increased chance to create a slave from combat, which is a fairly minor bonus as you probably don't need too many slaves late game, but moderately useful as you can have the slaves travel around with your stack to soak up assassination attempts.
UB: Arena
Training yard replacement. In addition to producing standard swordsmen, it lets you send units to fight in the arena. You have a roughly 50/50 chance of losing your unit or gaining a small amount of XP each time, so it's unlikely you'll produce an elite unit this way. The power level of the unit, unfortunately, does not seem to help it win fights. So don't risk your good units (or excellent mutations) this way.
The city will get a temporary +1 happiness bonus from holding arena fights, so it can be used to boost your capital's productivity a little if you're short on happiness resources.
UB: Freak Show
Requires festivals, 60h
2 Great Bard points, which can be a good or a bad thing. Enables slave cages and allows you to train Freaks.
Be careful with the great bard points on this building if you don't want early bards. Currently there is not much reason to train freaks, but later in the game these buildings are useful to build slave cages with. These convert your captured slaves into a happiness/culture source. You can build one cage for each of the four major races (human, elf, dwarf, orc)
UB: Hall of Mirrors
Requires Carnival, Alteration, 180h
This isn't currently documented, but as far as I can tell it has a random chance to spawn an illusionary summoned clone of an enemy unit near the city. It is more useful in the hands of the AI than a human player since the AI seldom has highly promoted units around.
Strategies
If you have a choice early in the game go with the melee unit line rather than horse/recon to get a head start on acquiring strong Mimics. The harlequin is better used as a defensive and support unit rather than a primary attacker.
The Balseraphs are well suited to training cheap warriors or scouts, mutating them and/or running them through the Arena, and upgrading the successes to stronger units. Later in the game they'll also want to train druids and beastmasters via upgrading from a harlequin. This can get quite expensive, so a strong economy is essential in order not to fall behind on research from upgrades.
Religion
Runes of Kilmorph works extremely well. You get extra cash to pay for your upgrades and it converts you to neutral, enabling druids. Also it's a popular religion with the AI making it easier to make friends. Their priests can also buff your mimics/harlequins to make up most of the strength gap between them and regular units.
Octopus Overlords is probably the best flavourwise fit. It enhances your already strong culture, and comes with two good midgame heroes that help fill gaps in your midgame lineup. If your likely battlefields are near water, Tsunami is a ridiculously strong area damage spell.
Ashen Veil is another strong choice. Sacrifice the weak combines well with the ability to get extra happiness from slaves, and you get the dreaded ritualists.
Overview
The Balseraphs are one of the more interesting and powerful civs in the game. Rather than being focused around a single powerful mechanic such as the Calabim are, they have a comparatively large number of unique units and buildings that support their "circus gone mad" theme.
They have a strong early game based around the special powers of their hero, Loki. Their midgame UUs have less base strength than the units they replace, but are compensated with powerful special abilities. Because the Balseraphs also lack a strong melee hero to spearhead assaults, they tend to rely more on magic than brute force. They begin with Air mana allowing them easy access to the Maelstrom spell.
Hero: Loki
Loki costs 180h and is available from the start of the game. He is unique among heroes in that he can't attack or level up. He comes with the Dance of Blades, Mutation and Charm Person spells. If you keep him with your main army you can use Dance of Blades to give them an edge with first strikes long before Adepts are available.
Mutation has about an even chance of making your units better or worse, but you can get some promotions from Mutation that you wouldn't be able to get any other way such as increases to base strength and the Cannibalize promotion. It is worth mutating most of your early military. The bad results can be consigned to garrison duty, suicide missions, or repeatedly fighting in the arena in the hope of getting enough experience to make up for their negative mutations. The good results can form a strong core of fighters to build around.
Loki's unique ability is to randomly cause revolts in enemy cities that he's in while draining 1 culture per turn from them like a gypsy wagon. This is most effective against newly founded cities or cities that just changed hands in an AI-AI war which don't have any culture yet. When the city culture is zero or less, the victim city can only work its own tile, and is extremely likely to flip to Balseraph control should a revolt occur. Taking advantage of squabbling neighbours is is a good way to get free cities, the key is to get Loki in quickly before an obelisk can be built.
Loki can also spy on rival city screens (and gives you 1 gold per turn from the gypsy wagon ability)
If you no longer have much use for Loki in the late game, you can dismiss him to allow you to build Shrine of the Champion giving all your new units 1 free promotion.
UU: Gypsy Wagon
Requires Carnival (Festivals), 90h
Drains 2 gold and 1 culture from any opposing city it's parked in. You get 1 gold back. Unlike Loki, you do need open borders, and they can't spy on the city screen or incite revolts. Their main purpose is to harrass civs you are at peace with by givinge you an edge in cultural border wars and culturally suppressing newly founded cities. 90 hammers for 1 gold per turn doesn't make these a great option for making cash early.
UU: Freak
Requires Freak Show (Festivals), 60h
This is an expensive warrior that begins mutated. You also need a 60h freak show to produce these. The trouble with the freak shows is that they give an innate 2 great bard points which you most likely don't want in the early game unless you are planning to found Fellowship of Leaves. Currently I would just skip these and use Loki's mutation ability.
UU: Acrobat
This is just a standard hunter with different graphics.
UU: Harlequin
Requires Carnival and Animal Handling, 150h
This Ranger/Mage hybrid replaces the standard ranger for Balseraphs. It begins with one less strength point but begins with Dance of Blades and Charm Person spells, and can be immediately promoted to cast Inspiration or Mutation if it starts with 2 xp.
These are excellent city defence units as they can cast charm person to hold off attackers, and maintain Inspiration in their city for 4 research in peacetime. If you want an offensive Harlequin it is best to upgrade it from a scout that has received good mutations or been through the arena for an XP headstart, as the 1 strength loss hurts quite a bit.
Can be upgraded to beastmasters and more importantly, druids while keeping their magic promotions. Always train your druids this way because they'll gain access to the Chaos and Mind spheres for Summon Pit Beast and Domination, which they can get with a much lower research and XP total than mages can.
UU: Mimic
Like the Harlequin, this unit is 1 strength point behind its standard counterpart, in this case the Champion. In return they get the unique ability to steal random promotions from enemies they defeat. The promotion stolen is totally random and they can steal spell effects (including negative ones such as Charm Person, unfortunately.) This makes the unit more suited towards building an elite core army than just mass low level unit flooding, as they start relatively weak but surpass the regular champion after winning a few combats due to their extra promotions. Low level mimics are best trained up by softening up the enemy with magic.
The best way to make use of this ability is to take promotions that your opponent doesn't use, such as taking mobility/city raider against the AI and hoping to acquire the generic Combat promotions by stealing them. High level mimics which manage to gain Hidden Nationality can become absolute monsters by going around and stealing everyone else's specialist promotions.
UU: Puppeteer
Mage replacement. Units summoned by this have the Puppet promotion, making them Not Alive and immune to poison and death. This is an extremely minor bonus. Since the balseraph palace starts with air mana, Maelstrom is most likely the route you'll want to go with tier 2 arcane anyway.
UU: Courtesan
This is a shadow with an increased chance to create a slave from combat, which is a fairly minor bonus as you probably don't need too many slaves late game, but moderately useful as you can have the slaves travel around with your stack to soak up assassination attempts.
UB: Arena
Training yard replacement. In addition to producing standard swordsmen, it lets you send units to fight in the arena. You have a roughly 50/50 chance of losing your unit or gaining a small amount of XP each time, so it's unlikely you'll produce an elite unit this way. The power level of the unit, unfortunately, does not seem to help it win fights. So don't risk your good units (or excellent mutations) this way.
The city will get a temporary +1 happiness bonus from holding arena fights, so it can be used to boost your capital's productivity a little if you're short on happiness resources.
UB: Freak Show
Requires festivals, 60h
2 Great Bard points, which can be a good or a bad thing. Enables slave cages and allows you to train Freaks.
Be careful with the great bard points on this building if you don't want early bards. Currently there is not much reason to train freaks, but later in the game these buildings are useful to build slave cages with. These convert your captured slaves into a happiness/culture source. You can build one cage for each of the four major races (human, elf, dwarf, orc)
UB: Hall of Mirrors
Requires Carnival, Alteration, 180h
This isn't currently documented, but as far as I can tell it has a random chance to spawn an illusionary summoned clone of an enemy unit near the city. It is more useful in the hands of the AI than a human player since the AI seldom has highly promoted units around.
Strategies
If you have a choice early in the game go with the melee unit line rather than horse/recon to get a head start on acquiring strong Mimics. The harlequin is better used as a defensive and support unit rather than a primary attacker.
The Balseraphs are well suited to training cheap warriors or scouts, mutating them and/or running them through the Arena, and upgrading the successes to stronger units. Later in the game they'll also want to train druids and beastmasters via upgrading from a harlequin. This can get quite expensive, so a strong economy is essential in order not to fall behind on research from upgrades.
Religion
Runes of Kilmorph works extremely well. You get extra cash to pay for your upgrades and it converts you to neutral, enabling druids. Also it's a popular religion with the AI making it easier to make friends. Their priests can also buff your mimics/harlequins to make up most of the strength gap between them and regular units.
Octopus Overlords is probably the best flavourwise fit. It enhances your already strong culture, and comes with two good midgame heroes that help fill gaps in your midgame lineup. If your likely battlefields are near water, Tsunami is a ridiculously strong area damage spell.
Ashen Veil is another strong choice. Sacrifice the weak combines well with the ability to get extra happiness from slaves, and you get the dreaded ritualists.
). That, combined with the early tech detour and the additional building costs (you still need an arena to upgrade to your freaks from the freak show) make their implicit costs a lot higher then those of the swordsman. This is why it's nearly universally better to mutate warriors and scouts. I mean if we are going to compare costs of production, they cost as much as a mimic since you essentially have to throw half of your freaks away (since statistically you only get one good freak for every 2, i.e. 120 h investment +5 gold for upgrade).
for the first 20-50 turns. Thus, there is an opportunity cost associated with acquiring festivals early and forgoing more essential techs in order to produce freaks.
