Supermutants - leveraging mutation spell

[stormyorky]

I got this idea from playing balseraph a while ago. It fits my playstyle; trying to make an army of very strong units, focusing on quality of these units and nurturing them. If i can, I try make every tier4 national the strongest i can.

There is an theoretical upper limit to how strong a unit can be with mere prmotions. After combat V and Drill V, and all the anti-combatunit type, march, commando etc, a unit can not get much stronger from experience. There are, however some unique promotions only available from mutations.

Mutations is avalable, to my knowledge (fill me in if there are more ways please) from balseraph freaks and from chaos2 spell mutate. There is also the event where a unit enters a flare but that can hardly be used for mass-mutations.

Mutating an allready powerful tier4 unit that is highly promoted could result in bad result and thus wasting the unit. The idea is instead to mutate fresh units and then start build up the units with good mutations.

Discuss what civilizations that fits best for this playstyle? A few attributes comes to my mind as beeing benificial:
*Economy to upgrade low-level units to tier4 units, or...
*Production capacity to churn out tier4 units in a high pace (mutate, get rid of if not good enough mutation)
*some civ-specific mechanic that otherwise leverages mutations or this playstyle.
*chaos palace mana helps but is in no way neccesary
*a mechanic like balseraph arena helps to refine average mutations. Not neccesary but increases synergy. Any other civ has a similar mechanic?

Let me make an example:
Im currently playing Archos. They spawn spiders at a rate depending on the current number of spiders you control. While I havent reached the sufficient techs yet, Im thinking of mutating all spiders, keeping the ones with good mutations and deleting/suiciding the rest, making sure to keep a high spawn rate. While they cant upgrade to tier4 units, its an example of how certain civs has synergy with this spell. They also start with chaos mana which is a bonus.

 

[Valkrionn]

A good civ to use would actually be the Doviello, although I'm not sure they start with Chaos mana or not.

They have the ability to rapidly upgrade units, can produce said units cheaply, can Duel units with poor mutations in order to enhance those with good mutations, and new units receive xp based on the average xp of your existing units... Since using this strat you'd generally have just a few strong units, this is a good thing. New fodder could have potential to start able to keep up with existing soldiers.

The duel mechanic here could kill you too, though; It's based on actual combat odds. So if you have two new units, and prefer one over the other, DON"T duel them against each other as would be the first inclination. Instead, duel the bad unit against a stronger one, and upgrade the better one. THEN you can use him in a duel.

 

[Riot_Starter]

If vampires can be mutated, then they are good candidates since those that do have good mutations can be quickly leveled to gain all their combat, drill, and anti promos.

Another option is the Theocracy civic. You can hurry 3 disciples every 3 turns from all your cities, which will give you a ton of fodder to mutate and they upgrade for half price. The limited upgrade option of disciples is a problem, but since this is a civic it can be done with any civ.

 

[cyther]

The Doviello do get Chaos mana. (Their god, Camuelos, is the god of chaos after all)

An annoying thing about this strategy is that upgrading a unit with the mutation promotion mutates them again. Xien may have fixed that bug from FfH though.

 

[lordrune]

A good civ to use would actually be the Doviello, although I'm not sure they start with Chaos mana or not.

They have the ability to rapidly upgrade units, can produce said units cheaply, can Duel units with poor mutations in order to enhance those with good mutations, and new units receive xp based on the average xp of your existing units...

Yes, but if you play Doviello, you're going to do what I did in my last game... make Greater Werewolves before 150 turns are up

 

[Valkrionn]

Yeah, I was fairly sure they had Chaos mana... And seeing as I've never heard of the mutation-upgrade issue, I'm fairly sure that Xienwolf fixed it.

@lordrune - Was this in RifE or another mod? I ask because the only thing I gave the Doviello for Werewolves was Varulv, who still requires Feral Bond... And even then, you need Duin as a leader to build him. As Duin can't be built if he's a leader, it makes the Doviello your only route for werewolves.

....Of course, you may be talking about Vermicious's changes which allow a Wolf Pack to become a Werewolf, in which case we need to do something about that. Gives the Doviello werewolves far too soon.

 

[lordrune]

@lordrune - Was this in RifE or another mod? I ask because the only thing I gave the Doviello for Werewolves was Varulv, who still requires Feral Bond... And even then, you need Duin as a leader to build him. As Duin can't be built if he's a leader, it makes the Doviello your only route for werewolves.

....Of course, you may be talking about Vermicious's changes which allow a Wolf Pack to become a Werewolf, in which case we need to do something about that. Gives the Doviello werewolves far too soon.

Rife 1.12, playing Charadon.
I was using my Wolf Packs in battle vs Barbs, and was shocked when a unit killed by them joined me as a Werewolf And a second one later on. As I was warmongering heavily, they became Greater Werewolves quite quickly.
Didn't have Feral Bond, I think the highest tech I had down that line was Hunting - don't have the save anymore unfortunately.

 

[Valkrionn]

Yeah, thought so. I think that mechanic needs to be removed; Spawning Werewolves is fine, but upgrading to them causes too many issues.

 

[Vermicious Knid]

Early werewolf mechanic can go. Moving it way up the wolf line.

 

[Valkrionn]

That's about what I thought, actually. Wolf Packs don't need it, but it could easily be the top tier Wolf spawn...

What order do Wolves advance? Wolf -> Wolf Pack -> Hyena -> Hyena Pack -> Werewolf?

 

[Vermicious Knid]

That's about what I thought, actually. Wolf Packs don't need it, but it could easily be the top tier Wolf spawn...

What order do Wolves advance? Wolf -> Wolf Pack -> Hyena -> Hyena Pack -> Werewolf?

In my latest version it goes Wolf > Wolf Pack > Hyena > Hyena Pack > Fenris

I was thinking of putting it at hyena or later. Wolf Pack is definitely too early.

EDIT: By "it" I mean the werewolf promotion.

 

[Valkrionn]

Ooh Fenris. Recognize that one.

Hyena or Hyena pack would work, so long as Wolf Packs can't upgrade to them... Which I believe is already the case?

 

[Vermicious Knid]

Ooh Fenris. Recognize that one.

Hyena or Hyena pack would work, so long as Wolf Packs can't upgrade to them... Which I believe is already the case?

Yep. Wolf Pack is a dead end.

 

[stormyorky]

Im definetly gonna try this with dovellio.

My Archos game was just finished and it turned out to be the strangest game ive played in a long time. My giant spiders was very sucessful harassing my neighbors and they became killer units before my enemies could field any threats. I placed 1-2 super-spiders in each enemy civ's territory, killing any units that I saw. Finally, I declared them all, called nationality with the spiders and captured their cities. Totally lame strategy, but hey...
Oh, and my economy was totally ruined due to the amount of spiders I had, costing support. The game turning out completely diffrent than I intended.

 

[lordrune]

My Archos game was just finished and it turned out to be the strangest game ive played in a long time. My giant spiders was very sucessful harassing my neighbors and they became killer units before my enemies could field any threats. I placed 1-2 super-spiders in each enemy civ's territory, killing any units that I saw. Finally, I declared them all, called nationality with the spiders and captured their cities. Totally lame strategy, but hey...

That's Hidden Nationality for you
I'm just glad the AI doesn't understand how to grow animals (whether Doviello's mammalian packs, or Archos' athropods) into early game super-units, otherwise they'd be impossible to play next to