Mercurian No-Show + Elohim Oddities

[orgonebox]

As per the title, I recently had a game going as the Elohim where I built the Mercurian gate and the Mercurians didn't appear. I'm baffled as to what happened, and I've gone well past the autosave. There are two possibilities:
One is that Falamar cast raging seas around the same time that I built the gate. However, as much as I hate the Lanun world spell, I'm not sure it would kill every Mercurian unit.

The other possibility is that I had recently killed off the Infernal, and kept one of their cities. Could it be that possessing an infernal city negates the mercurian appearance? Still, I think I've heard of other players building the Mercurians with the infernals, so I'm not sure.

The other odd thing about this game is that after I built two conquered civ palaces, I was no longer able to build any other palaces - including the Elohim. My thought is that you must possess two of the conquered civ's cities in order to be eligible to move the palace, and that building a conquered civ's palace when you only have one of their cities results in no longer being eligible to rebuild the palace. Any thoughts, code wizards?

 

[Arcite36575]

As per the title, I recently had a game going as the Elohim where I built the Mercurian gate and the Mercurians didn't appear. QUOTE]

Yup, the exact same thing happened to me while playing as the kurotates. I built the Mecurian Gate, and Basium didn't take the city, although he had a small army appear, as well as a score of 0.

I got around this by starting a trade with Basium and giving him a city.

 

[Valerarren]

As per the title, I recently had a game going as the Elohim where I built the Mercurian gate and the Mercurians didn't appear. QUOTE]

Yup, the exact same thing happened to me while playing as the kurotates. I built the Mecurian Gate, and Basium didn't take the city, although he had a small army appear, as well as a score of 0.

I got around this by starting a trade with Basium and giving him a city.

I saw something similar in a game in a previous patch for FF 0.43 (unless it was in Vanilla 0.34?). But it was Hyborem. However, I gave him a city and it seemed to work.

 

[Kael]

As per the title, I recently had a game going as the Elohim where I built the Mercurian gate and the Mercurians didn't appear. I'm baffled as to what happened, and I've gone well past the autosave. There are two possibilities:
One is that Falamar cast raging seas around the same time that I built the gate. However, as much as I hate the Lanun world spell, I'm not sure it would kill every Mercurian unit.

The other possibility is that I had recently killed off the Infernal, and kept one of their cities. Could it be that possessing an infernal city negates the mercurian appearance? Still, I think I've heard of other players building the Mercurians with the infernals, so I'm not sure.

The other odd thing about this game is that after I built two conquered civ palaces, I was no longer able to build any other palaces - including the Elohim. My thought is that you must possess two of the conquered civ's cities in order to be eligible to move the palace, and that building a conquered civ's palace when you only have one of their cities results in no longer being eligible to rebuild the palace. Any thoughts, code wizards?

The only thing I can think of that would cause this is if you have to many players in the game. You would have had to have stuff a ton of extra players in the game (over 30) to cause this. But if the game can't find an empty player slot it cant spawn the mercurians.

As per the title, I recently had a game going as the Elohim where I built the Mercurian gate and the Mercurians didn't appear. QUOTE]

Yup, the exact same thing happened to me while playing as the kurotates. I built the Mecurian Gate, and Basium didn't take the city, although he had a small army appear, as well as a score of 0.

I got around this by starting a trade with Basium and giving him a city.

Thats a different problem, and does rarely happen. I need to figure out a way to keep that from ever happening.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Why do you need to figure out a way to keep that from ever happening? Frankly, I much prefer it when Basium doesn't use his Convert spell to take the gate's city, letting you gift him less developed cities close to you enemies instead of such an integral part of your core empire (as less important boarder cities often don't have the production to finish before a rival can, the gate pretty much has to be built far from you enemies unless you have a spare great engineer).


(In fact, in my version I changed it so that the AI cannot use the spell, and so that a human controlled Basium can take over any city his teammate owns except the capital. The restriction that the Mercurian Gate must not be built in the capital was lifted too. Now that I think of it, perhaps I should still let the AI Basium use the spell when he has no human ally, at least to take over the Mrcurian Gate city and Kuriotate Settlements.)

 

[orgonebox]

The only thing I can think of that would cause this is if you have to many players in the game. You would have had to have stuff a ton of extra players in the game (over 30) to cause this. But if the game can't find an empty player slot it cant spawn the mercurians.

Nope, there were only eleven players. Maybe even ten - I had killed off a couple of them. I think raging seas killed off the whole mercurian forces.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Well if raging seas kills the settler, they might be 'whiped out'. Basium is a hero, and has spell resistence of one, so I strongly doubt he was killed by the world spell.

 

[Sarisin]

Why do you need to figure out a way to keep that from ever happening? Frankly, I much prefer it when Basium doesn't use his Convert spell to take the gate's city, letting you gift him less developed cities close to you enemies instead of such an integral part of your core empire (as less important boarder cities often don't have the production to finish before a rival can, the gate pretty much has to be built far from you enemies unless you have a spare great engineer).


(In fact, in my version I changed it so that the AI cannot use the spell, and so that a human controlled Basium can take over any city his teammate owns except the capital. The restriction that the Mercurian Gate must not be built in the capital was lifted too. Now that I think of it, perhaps I should still let the AI Basium use the spell when he has no human ally, at least to take over the Mrcurian Gate city and Kuriotate Settlements.)

I really like this idea. In my games I tend to have only a few large cities with plenty of Wonders, etc. instead of a sprawling empire of small cities. I hate to give up the city (usually one with a lot of goodies) to the Mercurians, so I don't build them.

Also, as mentioned, often choosing one of my better cities (which Basium moves into) land-locks him and prevents any rational expansion (you get plenty of the other kind with Basium!).

It would be much better if you could build the Mercurian Gate in one city and then choose where Basium will take up residence. It adds a bit of strategic planning to the game too.

 

[Arcite36575]

I really like this idea. In my games I tend to have only a few large cities with plenty of Wonders, etc. instead of a sprawling empire of small cities. I hate to give up the city (usually one with a lot of goodies) to the Mercurians, so I don't build them.

Also, as mentioned, often choosing one of my better cities (which Basium moves into) land-locks him and prevents any rational expansion (you get plenty of the other kind with Basium!).

It would be much better if you could build the Mercurian Gate in one city and then choose where Basium will take up residence. It adds a bit of strategic planning to the game too.

I'm sure I'm in the minority here, but I actually prefer the current system that Basium take the city which has the Mecurian Gate. The Mecurians civ as a whole, has received some major boosts over the last few versions such as:

1) angels using weapons
2) no tech sharing penalty
3) weaker Basium suicide AI

They quite a major force now. If the player could choose the city where to allow the Mecurians to take, then I think that players would be summoning the Mecurians in almost every game. Now, at least, you have to consider a significant tradeoff before deciding whether or not to build the gate: either give up a major city, or use one of your great engineers (if you can get one) to gain a major ally in a frontier city.

 

[SkyWarp]

I have also had the Mercurians not appear. It asked if I wanted to take them over or not (and chose not too), but they never appeared. I was wondering if my culture could have erased them on their first turn? Somehow my culture was eating up a vasals cities left and right and the Mercurians were in the same area.

 

[Vorpal+5]

Same here, Basium did not take over the city where the Mercurian was built. Now I also got another problem: he rushed himself against a well defended city and got killed on first turn.

So my remark would be: can't the AI be taught to be MUCH MORE prudent with heroes units???