Hello, I've wanted to try winning a game with the two summonable civilizations on deity for awhile now. However, it just seems quite unlikely for you to ever get the mercurian gate before another civ does on deity.
I've tried abit of Infernal, but also realised that they kinda suck unless you have Guilds, but by the time I research guilds someone else tends to research Infernal Pact.
Are there are specific strategies you can share for playing and succeeding with the summoned civs?
- Infernals
you don't necessarily have to wait for guilds to summon the infernals and using scholarship first is also fine. Besides, you don't care that much for guilds when you don't have a high population and you don't start with one.
I like to use the infernal grimoire to get arcane lore after summoning them in the middle game, without losing time to go through the economy technologies.
Magic is good for them.
if you think that somebody's going to beat you to it, declare on them. If you can't, work to spread another religion and bribe them into changing. if it doesn't work, well...
Better is to summon them early with the Lanun.
With just pirate ports and a bulb you should be able to summon them by turn 120 if you have a good coastal start and don't suffer any pressure from anybody.
after fishing, just beeline towards it.
Going for them as fast as possible may not be the most efficient way, though.
Get mining and education.
At least education so that you can use cottages and the infernal grimoire to get priesthood.
your first units plus diseased corpses plus ritualists should be more than enough to roll over everything on Pangaea very fast - very very fast (yes, on diety).
You should whip hard the Lanun cities before the Infernal Pact is researched and leave them defenseless.
this is so that you can get Rosier and the infernal grimoire without them beating you to it.
and if you actually spawn near to them, well... you know what to do.
You should always try to use your starting units to attack the closest and weakest civilization as soon as possible and get a few cities and manes and then start rolling.
whatever you want to achieve, work to get more manes, always.
you will be surprised how many hammers you can get with just the normal citizen specialists.
after getting a few cities, never stop and raze everything.
- The Mercurians
Someone like Garrim or Beeri can summon them early enough with a good start (free engineers plus financial trait).
On diety, it is unlikely that the mercurian gate will be built before turn 195, 200. The Lanun and financial leaders may get it early, but in my experience it's rarely built before turn 185 (normal speed).
You can get them with any civilization if you can handle yourself well economically right from the start.
I like Varn Gosam.
because he can change to financial and he is spiritual.
Spiritual? Why should I care about that when I want to summon The Mercurians?
here's an overview of my strategy for pangaea -
- reroll until you get a start with at the very least a couple of floodplains and wine or a couple of floodplains and gold.
- grow the city and research mysticism
- change to God King and pacifism,build the desert shrine, use a priest
- work only the tiles that give commerce, research crafting and mining (eventually get a worker in good timing to work on the resources,of course, and settler)
- bulb runes
You should get the holy city a considerable percentage of the time. I have done it even with two dwarves in the game.
- if you get the holy city, use the thane to spread the religion to the closest neighbor and boost relations (build the runes temple and a couple of more thanes if you can after settler).
- beeline calendar and code of laws while getting more cities and workers
- or get cartography early if necessary to spread the religion and boost relations ("what? I'm going to research mysticism, cartography and code of laws?" - yes)
- get the shrine for the holy city if you can use citizens as priests; the extra money can help
- go towards fanaticism with financial and aristocratic farms
- after you get an economy going spam thanes
- if you feel you need defense, get priesthood before code of laws, hit your world spell and upgrade thanes (but you need to be good until priesthood, so you must boost relations early - if they get the same religion and you trade with them there should be no problems (don't expand towards the AI if you can avoid it, though)).
- again, spam fast thanes from quick to build temples and spread the religion like crazy (it doesn't matter if they adopt it or not, as long as the religion is spread to a city, any of units built on that city always has a chance to be of that religion)
- play like you're trying to get an early religious victory
- start building the mercurian gate, make your slider go to zero and eventually finish it off with money and good timing
- Win
That's it. It's not the absolute fastest way of getting the gate (but note that you don't have to research archery or bronze working for defense) and there is a little bit of risk, but once you have the gate, it's over. You don't have to build anything.
Because the AIs wage war so often on diety and build so many units, you'll get angels so fast - you will not be able to support them all.
it's not a simple strategy because you'll have a few tricky decisions depending on the situation, but you'll love it if you can make it work - the mercurians will really look like they are broken.
