How to run a successful Infernal empire?

[Gray-Z]

I'm looking for some advice how to run an Infernal empire.

In couple of games I've tried controlling the Infernals when option was presented but I've found it quite hard to manage. Reloading from savegames and such I've found that most of the time you land on ice/tundra. I know you should produce as little food as possible specializing in towns/mines/specialist but when the capital is completely on ice terrain its quite hard. After some time has passed I often find myself in a position where I cant capture any nearby cities and cant found new ones and my production/research is very weak. Just sitting there waiting for the 1st one to declare war on me and wipe me out.

Any advice would be helpful.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Cheat.




Or play my modmod, where the Infernals and Mercurians are purposefully overpowered (but not as much as they will be in leter versions ).

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Here are just my 2 cents (Granted, I only played the infernals twice, but still)


1. Be careful with that slavery civic, and as bizarre as it sounds, Sacrifice the weak might not be so great for you. You're fallow. Your cities never shrink, but they never grow. The only way to expand your cities is to get Manes, and to do that, you have to kill evil units or burn cities. (You probably want to burn a lot of cities anyway, if only to raise the AC, which helps you.)

2. Cheat. (Sort of) If you're planning on playing the Infernals, race through the tech tree. You want Education, a basic military tech, more money if you can get it, (Maybe calendar for some plantations) and then run through Philosophy, Way of the Wicked, (Blanking on the name of the tech that gives you the veil itself) and then Infernal pact. Getting the Infernals out early does 2 things. There is less room for your enemies to grow, and your starting guys are relatively stronger.

3. ATTACK!!!!!! You start massively outproduced by your enemies, but if you got the pact reasonably quickly, you ought to have iron before the computer. (You don't need the tech, just a trade route to your castle, which provides Iron.) You start, IIRC, with Hyborem, 2 Longbowmen, 2 Sect of Flies, 2 Diseased corpses, a worker or two, and some manes. They, esp Hyborem, should be massively stronger than anyone you run into. Convert to the veil, and just blast out diseased corpses, who are strength 8 with Iron.

4.Load if you don't get some quick conquests. The infernals are tough to get started with, but once they get their ball rolling, they're nigh unstoppable.

5. Oh, and save Hyborem's whisper for the AV shrine city once someone built the Stigmata of the Unborn. And turn it into a hammer city. Everyone with that Stigmata promotion becomes tougher, and you want a lot of hammers to build Meshabbir.

 

[Ringtailed]

Two things I try to do if I know I'm going to be playing Hyborem:
1. Try to research Arcane Lore before switching. This allows Scholarship civic, which lets you have unlimited 4-beaker sages and also the Crown of Akharien. Without Scholarship you'll only be able to run like 2-3 sages and without any cottages built your research will be extremely slow. The easiest way to do this is to start with a philosophical or adaptive civ (I kinda like Malakim for this) and use a great sage strategy to lightbulb the magic techs.
2. Try to spread the Ashen Veil to your neighbors before switching. Particularly, you should target the Good civs so that they adopt Veil and turn evil. More evil civs = more manes for you.

Being in ice with few nearby resources is crappy, but Infernal cities can now become infinitely large right out of the box... so if nothing else, just use a bunch of citizen specialists for production. Diseased corpses work particularly well for Infernals because your demonic units are immune to the disease they spread; build a bunch and try to take better cities as soon as possible.

 

[Sureshot]

ya, the key to infernal when i play them is atleast 1 civic that allows unlimited specialists of a certain kind, and warfare tech for national epic and conquest. plus setting up your old civ to be easy to take over.

 

[Mr.Vith]

I minmax like hell when I play the infernals.
Starting out, grab OO and follow immediately with AV. Blanket your empire in farms and drive your pop up as high as you can. Keep happiness in check, but you can kinda let health slack. Build the Tower of Complacency in the AV holy city (slaves help immensely). Then move your capital to a crappy city, preferably an island. Tech up to malevolent designs with a lot of backfill, so Hyborem casts his world spell and steals a city (from you!) right when you summon them. This way, you get to meet him before the dialog box asking if you want to play as them pops and can just gift him everything you own. Give him all your cities, your palace mana, your gold. If you don't want your palace mana, go ahead and leave your palace unguarded the turn prior to completing Infernal Pact so you can just walk right in, and screw up your civics so your old civ can't do anything squirrelly with slavery or gold. I've had my old civ somehow crank out Mardero or Rosier in like 3 turns after takeover. It helps to save right before you summon the infernals, in case something gets overlooked.
Now throw your palace up in the AV holy city with no unhappiness. Go through and pave your farms (if they're still around) with workshops and cottages. Drive up the AC by razing stuff and dump all your manes on population to put priests in the capital. With the population of your previous civ and a supercity with a trillion hammers to make the Meshabber ASAP, you'll be a monster.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

The Tower of Complacency really isn't needed anymore; the Infernals now get a free UB that eliminates all unhappiness and unhealthiness in each of their cities.

 

[thFrgttn]

To have success as the infernal, evil people need to die to get manes. So you need to attack the other evil civs, if there is not enough wars going on.
Of course bribing civs to declare war on others also works.
If you are attacking evil civs don't be afraid of raising the odd city because it creates more manes and increases the AC.

The reverse is true for the Mercurians - you may need to attack good civs to get angels, which I think is pretty stupid. Really the Infernal should be rewarded for killing good people and the Mercurians for evil.

 

[MalkutX]

You can attack and level barbarian cities to get manes, too.

 

[Mr.Vith]

The Tower of Complacency really isn't needed anymore; the Infernals now get a free UB that eliminates all unhappiness and unhealthiness in each of their cities.

Nice, didn't realize patch g was out. Thanks!

 

[onedreamer]

IMO, the only tech you should really make sure to have is Smithing, in order to be able to build workshops. Save the turn before completing Infernal Pact, and if you start in a really crappy place, reload. It will work out even if it's not a good place, the Infernals are strong enough.

 

[Mewtarthio]

The reverse is true for the Mercurians - you may need to attack good civs to get angels, which I think is pretty stupid. Really the Infernal should be rewarded for killing good people and the Mercurians for evil.

Take a good look at Basium. Can't you see that guy deciding that "Good" mortals have screwed everything up, and taking it upon himself to introduce them to the purifying flames of righteousness that they may better serve heaven?

 

[Falc]

The Angels and Manes are not rewards! They are the souls of the dead who do not leave for the afterlife but stay on Erebus, due to the presence of Hyborem/Basium.

Which makes it perfectly normal that good souls become Angels and bad souls Manes.

 

[NeoParn]

This is my first play as the Infernals since Shadow and I'm having a problem with Manes. I've took out eight or nine cities in quick succession, mostly razing but capturing a few (Iron weapons and City Attack vs. mostly no metal and no City Garrison) it was all too easy.

I've only gone for evil civs, wiping out the Devalo and then going after the Calabim/Clan alliance to the North. Problem is I haven’t received any Manes; not one. So my economy is stalling, my original attack force has been whittled down and I'm now facing counter attacks. Did I miss something, is it only cities/units with AV, is the spawn rate for Manes really low, or is this a bug?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

From killing units you only get manes if the unit had the AV or OO religion (or CoE in my modmod) or death or entropy 1. Mercurians only get angels fro units wiht the Order or Runes (or Empyrean in my modmod), or units which they already owned. (note that if they own OO/AV units or units with death/entropy 1 then both civs get free units)

You should still get manes from razing evil cities. Not sure what the problem there is.

 

[eerr]

From killing units you only get manes if the unit had the AV or OO religion (or CoE in my modmod) or death or entropy 1. Mercurians only get angels fro units wiht the Order or Runes (or Empyrean in my modmod), or units which they already owned. (note that if they own OO/AV units or units with death/entropy 1 then both civs get free units)

You should still get manes from razing evil cities. Not sure what the problem there is.

both infernals and mercurians are more rewarded by attacking their own alingment than oposing or neutral alingments.

 

[xienwolf]

The way you are SUPPOSED to do it though is to get all of your alignment to JOIN YOU in fighting a war against the others. Then any unit that they lose IN YOUR CAUSE, comes back and fights under your more competent leadership.

 

[TheJopa]

I think that either more units should get 'religion' attribute or that it should be scrapped and any good or evil unit should be a candidate for mane/angel.

And don't the people on Erebus die on their own??? Of old age, murdered, accidents... Shouldn't you get few manes/angels simply as turns go by, based on overall world's population?

 

[daladinn]

success with infernals is a 2 part ordeal.

1- use your world spell to take a city from the AV founder. hehe

2- start first by eating those that brought you into the world. you get a mane for every follow of the AV thats killed. you want to kill the evil civs first (very counter intuitive).

ohh ya , and pray basium does not insta pop you.... lol

 

[it-ogo]

1. Customize your map: use aggressive AI option, put many evil civs, several good and no neutral.
2. Wait until Mercurian world spell is fixed.