Holy Shnaickies Basium is a tough.

[DarkxL0rd]

with a pretty nasty stack of doom it took me about 15 turns of standing outside of his capital. literally every unit i had had just got done leveling up after fighting wars on another continent. 4 immortals, 4 marksmen, 4 archmages, 4 liches, 4 phalanx, 4 shadows, 4 beastmasters, 10 assassins and a slew of sorceresses, yvain (hopped up on nature mana), and promo'd up champions. nearly everyone had blitz and full movement points so i was getting max attacks and 3 high priests healing after every turn. maelstroms, fireballs, haste, poison blades, fire arrows- you name, i had it. 40-50 kills a turn, not to mention the 8-9 he would throw at me on his turn. his ally enion kept throwing guys at my other cities so i think that was giving him troops too. but geez! I can't imagine these kinda powers in the hands of a human. and why do heralds get 18 base strength? on deity, they were spawning with like 7 promos and strength 18-able to kill an immortal on the turn they spawned! luckily they were...well...immortal. but had i not had throw away troops that got a free ride back to my capital i don't think it would have been doable. I'm not yelling nerf or anything but what are some things you guys do to tame the mercurians. (beside summon them yourself)

 

[Jet]

1. turn him off
2. find a way to not be his enemy
3. spread evil religions
4. go after him early
5. be evil, maybe summon Hyborem (not that it will help much)
6. block Kilmorph from spreading all over the world (not that you usually can)

I think he's pretty badly balanced, especially in conjunction with the rate of Kilmorph spread.

 

[DarkxL0rd]

what does kilmorph have to do with basium? i thought he followed order. Ok, i guess i was asking for strategies. not how to not fight him. 2 and 5 totally contradict each other, were you really trying to help or be funny? all those suggestions don't seem viable in the least.

 

[Jet]

Kilmorph because dead Kilmorph units are the most common source of angels.

I didn't mean that you can do them all in the same game. I meant the numbers to show relative effectiveness rather than the order you should do them in.

Yes, they are hard. That's why he's badly balanced.

 

[ArkhanTheBlack]

I think the main problem is that the Mercurians profit a lot from the insane cheating boni of high difficulty AI's. A herald requires a level 4 angel to upgrade, and humans don't get these boni as easy a the AI does. Especially when the other civs don't have the right religions.

 

[Neomega]

Ive had a game or two I considered "in the bag" destroyed by Basium. Those heralds are tough. (Nox Noctis did me no good against Angel and herald SoDs.... )

 

[Monkeyfinger]

He needs a really lucky setup in order to get that many angels. Not only must there be good civs, there have to be some people for them to fight, and they have to be strong.

If the world's all good, everyone's friends, and no one fights wars, meaning no one gives him angels. If all evil guys are weak, they don't get kills on the good guys, which means.... no angels.

On deity, both Basium and Hyborem get a lucky run like that and become huge powers maybe 5-10% of the time. Rest of the time they're pussycats.

 

[DarkxL0rd]

yeah i killed off the elves and dwarves pretty quick, the elves in 40 turns and the dwarves by 80 or so. so order spread first and far. everyone was good but 3 civs and tsunke was on the map so there was lots and lots of fighting.

 

[Domingo]

Maybe go after the Elohim first to cut off his supply of new units?

 

[JonathanStrange]

In this game he sounds insanely tough and I'd be at a loss at how to handle him then. Most of my games, he never approaches being even a moderate threat before the Mercurians disappear back into the void. Heh, in this particular case, can he be beaten? Doesn't sound likely.

 

[cabbagemeister]

I'd say AVOID killing Elohim units; if you can, keep hitting the Elohim with direct damage spells to encourage them to stay in their cities and heal. Put all your effort into slogging through Basium's units. Remember, every Elohim unit you kill before Basium's eliminated will have to be killed twice (and will be much stronger the second time). Every Elohim unit you kill after Basium's dead will only have to be killed once.

 

[Tasunke]

best way to deal with Mercurians is to kill him ASAP when he spawns. Just ignore their armies, and go straight for their cities. Normally their unit management is sooo bad, you can kill them quite easily in this way.

 

[Jet]

This is not uncommon in my games. You're going to lose if you don't build the Mercurian Gate yourself. (Assuming you're playing for Domination, which I always do, because otherwise the AIs will just sit around while you win a different victory condition.) That's why in my games the Mercurian Gate is grotesquely overpowered and stinks.

 

[Bad Player]

maybe go back to the olden times when basium could only come after hyborem? why did that change i cant remember?

 

[Chip56]

Because if you wanted to play as basium in singleplayer you had to summon hyborem yourself. The Ai just (almost) never summoned him.

 

[Bad Player]

you couldn't just weight evil civs (sheiam, etc) to preferentially research the appropriate tech to summon the infernals??

 

[Korias]

Wait a sec Jet- how can Basium already be in play (Attached to Cardith) and you still have 12 turns left on your own Mercurian gate?

As for the infernal summon, I remember that if an AI switches to AV then they try to beeline Infernal Pact, thereby summoning Hyborem.

 

[Lone Wolf]

As for the infernal summon, I remember that if an AI switches to AV then they try to beeline Infernal Pact, thereby summoning Hyborem.

They did, but it was removed in the patch where AI beelines were removed.