Mercurians and Infernal

[mo123567]

I was just reading the world spell thread about which ones are too powerful and it seems that a lot of people, including myself, don't like to bring the Mercurians or Infernal into the world.

I don't want the Infernal to take one of my cities and I don't necessarily want the Mercurians as permanent allies. Last time I brought Basium in he traded my tech advantage away.

I would rather see the Mercurians enter as a vassal. The problem is how do these civilizations go about getting a city to start with? In most of my games the map is full by the time they enter but I don't want to give up my precious cities.

One idea I had would not only make good and evil civs want to bring these civs into the world, it would make them race to do it.

If you bring in the Mercurians or Infernal, instead of taking one of your cities they take another player's smallest or newest city. The Mercurians would take a good civs city, the Infernal an evil one. If no good or evil civs were availabe then they would take your smallest or newest city.

Of course, I'm not a modder so I don't know if any of this is possible and the Infernal would need a new world spell. Any ideas?

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

If you bring in the Mercurians or Infernal, instead of taking one of your cities they take another player's smallest or newest city. The Mercurians would take a good civs city, the Infernal an evil one. If no good or evil civs were availabe then they would take your smallest or newest city.

I think someone mentioned this, but the problem would be that you'd have Basium sitting in the middle of a very very angry enemy civ and he'd get wiped out right away. Ditto for the Infernal.

 

[mo123567]

Good point but It would start a war with Basium's master civ and, since you're good, most likely ruin your relations with an ally. As far as single player games, I'm sure the AI doesn't hold a grudge unless there is a negative relationship modifier. Most likely the good civs will have a positive relationship with Basium.

 

[Marchwik]

If you bring in the Mercurians or Infernal, instead of taking one of your cities they take another player's smallest or newest city. The Mercurians would take a good civs city

Not necessary because Infernals build own capitol named DIS and not take one of player city.I think that there are more usable than Mercurians.Mercurians takes a one of best player cities who build them and they are relatively much later than Infernals.They need a late technology Fanaticism and Mercurian Gate cost U many hammers,it is not fair .It will be great I think,that player when build Mercurian Gates have possibility to choose which cities must take Mercurian.Now more valuable solution is not build Gates because this hammers are more useful for unit or buildings to boost your economy.

Mercurians needs also possibility to build them earlier (I think when U discover Order)
Now it is situation : good nation to choose are less than evil and they are not that powerful like evils.

 

[westamastaflash]

It's relatively easy to beeline to fanaticism and get the mercurians earlier. But it's not very viable since then your tech rate goes to the shizznit because of the team...

 

[Pike the Hands]

I love summoning and switching to the Infernals, or even not switching; it's not hard to take a city back if it becomes absolutely necessary, especially if his main force spawns a continent or two away. Better yet, just kill him (or at least the hero unit Hyborem) before he can research Malevolent Designs.

I hate summoning Basium. He's like an annoying kid brother who gets me in trouble and I have to save his dumb ass.

 

[OzzyKP]

I'd only summon Basium if I plan on switching civs.

 

[Fafnir13]

Never played as the Mercurians, but I loves me some Infernal gamage. It's fun to beeline for those techs as Hyborem will spawn when many of the AI's are still using warriors, meaning you can wipe out a few with him and his champions. I also enjoy being able to play a strict "destroy the world" style game without worrying about happiness, the Armageddon counter, or min-maxing my cities for growth and production. Mercurians don't seem to offer anything really different that would make me want to abandon my civ.

 

[Pike the Hands]

Never played as the Mercurians, but I loves me some Infernal gamage. It's fun to beeline for those techs as Hyborem will spawn when many of the AI's are still using warriors, meaning you can wipe out a few with him and his champions. I also enjoy being able to play a strict "destroy the world" style game without worrying about happiness, the Armageddon counter, or min-maxing my cities for growth and production.

Exactly, that's what really makes the Infernals such a great civ in my opinion. You can just throw all the normal Civ stuff to the wind for a while and revel in the destruction, which makes for a great stress-reliever. The Clan and Sheaim are also great evil destroyer types, but I've never shrieked out loud 'squeal like a pig, boy!' when destroying my neighbors playing them.

So, uh, who DOES summon the Mercurians? There's got to be somebody.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

not me. I agree that the mercurians summon mechanic could do with an overhaul, right now I think I've yet to see someone actually DO it, yet alone BEELINE it.

 

[Vorpal+5]

and we an option to make Hyborem much more powerful, it is pathetic in its progress right now.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Would it help if Basium and/or Hyborem spawned on their own new island and weren't allied to any players? Could have a giant earthquake and boom, new island appears in the ocean with Hyborem and/or Basium on it.

 

[Kilrathi]

I've only summoned Basium once, in my current game since I was way ahead and curious how it works. Thus far? Not very well -- the huge hit to my tech rate is a real drag, and I haven't seen much other benefit from having him around. I've been gifting Basium cities in hopes that he'll start pulling his own weight in terms of research (and because I'm all over the map with conquered cities and am getting tired of the micromanagement!), but that's not happening yet.

I summoned them just as I went to war, and there were a few angels wandering around but none doing much of anything. Basium himself was nowhere to be seen -- he didn't pop up in "his" capital city (this is .33f) so I was wondering if he needed to be summoned separately or something. About 20 turns later, though, when I was back at peace, I got the message that Basium (unit, not the civ) had been destroyed, and a few turns later that the Mercurians had captured an out of the way barbarian city on the tundra. So... somehow/somewhere Basium showed up and instead of helping me fight a war against two enemies he headed off to take on the barbarians? And died doing so? Acheron was still floating around, so maybe that's what killed Basium, but otherwise he somehow managed to get himself killed on a long-forgotten barbarian city guarded by warriors. Wow, that's a seriously unimpressive angel.

I've never played the Infernals and might give it a try; as things stand, though, it looks like the Mercurians need a serious boost if they're going to be at all interesting.

 

[Jules.lt]

Actually, I did it in my current game. I was experimenting with the Kuriotate and didn't expand fast enough because I was too selective in my city location choice. I had a bit of advance in technology, though, because I spammed enclaves (probably not the wisest choice growth-wise, but eh?). My neighbour Ljosalfar, 15 cities while I had 3 + 4 settlements, blocked me to the north, and 2 of his 3 vassals were around me, blocking the way.
So I promoted 2 promising settlements and took 50 turns to develop them, I summoned the Mercurian and gifted them the 2 cities just before changing over (yes, it took a few reloads to figure out how to do that), just on the turn when Ljo decided to attack me with his buddies. Did I mention my military was crap? All my fault, really, but my former me got erased in a dozen turns and my Mercurians kept only the city with the portal.

Something that may have been 50 or 100 turns of continuous attack later, I have a dozen highly promoted angels and Basium has something like 450-500 XP.
That was a FUN night (if addictive).

Tonight, I'm counter-attacking. I actually began that at the end of the night, when I conquered back one of the improved settlements and of my former civ's better cities

I might have a save from the beginning of the carnage somewhere, if someone wants to try it. Remember to build a wall first and get an adept for wall of stone

 

[Amerigo Arturo]

I summon Basium and I carve a nation for him, I war and gift him cities I take. Once the mercurians get rolling, they are a powerful force. And playing as the angles is pretty easy really, they are excellent warriors, Aggressive Raiders and free units. War, raid, take cities, use money from raiding to buy some city upgrades and troops, keep rolling. Kill 'em all, and let Junil sort 'em out!

 

[TheGreatSteve]

My second-biggest problem with Basium is that the civs that benefit from him most have problems bringing him in. He's great with the Kurio's, allowing you to have cities instead of a bunch of settlements, except you have to give up one of your super-cities to start. And he's nice with the Khazad because you can conquer without dragging down your vault, except the tech's kind of out of their way. It'd be nice if you could choose which city they get instead of ceding the gate city, or if they were summonable with an earlier tech.

My biggest problem with them is that the Order and Empyrean are probably the least used religions in most of my games. Basium isn't so hot when there's two civs still Good and a third of the world is AV.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

So.. what happens if you give a settlement to the Mercurians? They just get a free 1 pop city with nothing? Or can you not even give it to them?

 

[Jules.lt]

You can't build the portal in a settlement anyway. If you want to give one to him afterwards, you'd better promote it and develop it beforehand.
Otherwise it will take ages for him to do anything with it

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Well, I was more referring to if you play kurio and go on a conquering spree, the enemy cities become settlements, right? wouldn't it be better to give all the settlements to the Mercurians instead so they can become cities for you to share? I think thats what TheGreatSteve was saying... just wondering how it works in practice.

 

[Camber]

In my current game, playing Kuriotes, I have the Calabim and Ljosafar as vassals. Arandel Phaedra summoned Basium and I was very surprised at what happened--not sure if it is an overlooked error in coding or a feature.

Since vassals can't declare war without your permission, they stayed in peace mode rather than immediately entering war with all evil civs. That surprised me...in my previous games, they immediately were at war with all evil civs as soon as they entered teh world. Of course, when they cast their worldspell, it damaged units in all evil civs, and caused them all to declare war on Basium, Phaedra, Flauros, and peaceful-mind-your-own-business-while-you-go-for-an-altar-victory little old me. Buggers forced me to use the dragon on the Sheaim and behead Madero with my Paladins. Ruined all my fun. After I had worked so long and hard to keep the dwarves, Hippus, and Order-serving Horde from wiping out my pet evil civs.