What good are the Mercurians?

[cain3456]

I'm playing the Bannor and built the Mercurian gate. Later on, the Hippus declared war on me for no other reason I can see other than I bordered them and that we were the top two on the power graph. They even followed the Order as I did.
By this time the Mercurians have well over a hundred angels, but Basium does nothing with them but park them in his capitol. I even suggested Hippus cities to attack. Basium will bring them out to the city walls, and then never follow thru with the attack. Surely a hundred angels could overwhelm a city defended with maybe five longbows at the most.

 

[Aline]

I would suggest using the more naval AI mod, it makes the Mercurians pretty badass.

 

[kjnoren]

I'm playing the Bannor and built the Mercurian gate. Later on, the Hippus declared war on me for no other reason I can see other than I bordered them and that we were the top two on the power graph. They even followed the Order as I did.
By this time the Mercurians have well over a hundred angels, but Basium does nothing with them but park them in his capitol. I even suggested Hippus cities to attack. Basium will bring them out to the city walls, and then never follow thru with the attack. Surely a hundred angels could overwhelm a city defended with maybe five longbows at the most.

Isn't Basium set to only go against the evil and maybe neutral civs? The Hippos are good if they've converted to Order.

 

[Lone Wolf]

Isn't Basium set to only go against the evil and maybe neutral civs? The Hippos are good if they've converted to Order.

Nah, this shouldn't affect his military tactics.

By this time the Mercurians have well over a hundred angels, but Basium does nothing with them but park them in his capitol.

The "official" FFH AI is, shall we say, idiosyncratic.

 

[Tasunke]

Best thing to do with the Mercurians is to switch to them.

Best way to do this is to build up a "good religion priest infrastructure" ... or build plenty of good heroes, good priests, and spread good religion.

Other than that, focus on GNP so that when your base-civ is "AI" you can just ask them to "tech this plz" while your own GNP goes fully to Angelic support.


Second best thing to do is to use the Naval AI mod made by Tholal


other than that, at -20% war weariness per city, the Mercurian gate is a pretty nice wonder (if you don't have to lose a good core city to get it, that is >.> )

 

[cain3456]

Yeah, I was playing without the More Naval AI patch--wanted to finish the game up before I used it. Unfortunately, the game's gotten so huge that I'm getting repeatable CTD, so this one is abandoned.

Will load up the patch and let you know how it works.

 

[Kiech]

Any special tips on how long it takes the Mercs to get going? Any special tips on how many towns I should make sure they have, and resources?

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I guess you're not playing as them, merely getting them as allies?

1) their capitol should have good production potential so they can get their war machine rolling

2) adopt Order or RoK, and use paramanders/crusaders as your fodder troops. each time one dies, it respawns as angels

3) make sure they have access to metal, the higher the better. angels upgrade to T4 units for 5 gold, so Mercurians want T4 units asap, and Mithril for str 9 angels.

 

[A Moon]

I guess you're not playing as them, merely getting them as allies?

1) their capitol should have good production potential so they can get their war machine rolling

2) adopt Order or RoK, and use paramanders/crusaders as your fodder troops. each time one dies, it respawns as angels

3) make sure they have access to metal, the higher the better. angels upgrade to T4 units for 5 gold, so Mercurians want T4 units asap, and Mithril for str 9 angels.

You may wish to specify which units are "T4".

 

[doktarr]

You may find this recent discussion in the "best wonders for each civ" thread useful.

My usual strategy when I summon the Mercurians, unless I'm playing the Kuriotates, is to build the gate in a recently built colony or captured city very far from the core of my empire, with a land connection to several potential enemies. I'll either let it slowly build, or rush it with a Great Engineer/Soldiers of Kilmorph.
Once it's built, I'll take the mana from Basium (no need for him to mess with mages - free life and earth mana is one of the best parts of the wonder IMO) and try to leave him alone until he can build a mega-stack.

FWIW the T4 Angels are opened up by Animal Mastery (Herald), Divine Essence (Valkyrie), Rage (Seraph), Guilds (Angel of Death), and Warhorses (Repentant Angel and Orphanim). The Angel of Death is probably the best one.

Very late edit: having played the Mercurians a bit more, I no longer really think the Angel of Death is best. It's one of the least useful, actually.

1. On maps with a lot of water (or Ererbus maps, I guess) the Orphanim are probably the best. It's great to just run them around grabbing every barbarian island, and experienced Orphanim can consistently beat just about any naval unit.
2. Seraphs can summon Fire Elementals and Fireballs, and unlike mages they can crush stacks to get XP.
3. Heralds can hit move 4 and have 14 strength before metal. Herald's call is a nice emergency feature but it's the speed and strength that makes them good.
4. Valkyries are nice just for the way you can run them aggressively and use them to soften up extremely tough defenders, just like regular Immortals.
5. Angel of Death is annoying to use in city attack unless you are planning to raze the city anyway (and even then, only if the city doesn't have any good religions to deliver you angels when it gets razed). The lack of hidden nationality means you can't wreak havoc like shadows do in peacetime, either. They are basically good for picking off weaker units in stacks during wartime. This would probably be most useful in defensive wars, actually.
6. Repentant Angels are great against Sheaim/Infernals/Luchuirp, but it takes careful management to make sure you only have them attack only non-living units, and aren't out there defending the stack against a bunch of living attackers. You pretty much have to leave them at home against all-living opponents unless you want to keep replacing them.

Since all the angels use metal, mithril working is the key tech as soon as you have any decent number of angels.

 

[Kiech]

I am playing as the Kurios with the MNAI mod on an Erubus map. I have the Mage guild wonder, and did not take his mana...seeing as how all of his Towns have mages using Hope while I provide garrison support, I guess that is what I did wrong. Fyi he did not conquer/settle a single town, all 20 or so have been provided be me.

I have taken out all of the other Civs on our continent, and will probably just sit back and build the tower of mastery for the rest of the game. Hopefully Bassy can protect me if Kazzad gets any dumb ideas.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'd recommend against the Erebus map, all those mazey mountain ranges really change the gameplay a lot and the AI doesn't handle it well.

 

[Kiech]

That would help explain a few things. I thought that was all fixed with MNAI? Anyways, the remaining play area should not have that issue.

 

[Qgqqqqq]

Err no, the AI still sucks in MNAI. (IMO)
It just sucks a LOT less.
FYI, I generally go farms/workshops as mercurians, 100% gold (but providing gold to my ally) to utilize the gambling house happy.

 

[Kiech]

I finally decided to go look at the military advisory screen for Basium. After being summoned 190 turns ago he has 22 angels and 124 casters...he hasn't fought a single battle aside from barbs/animals, so I know he didn't lose anyone.

For now, I have taken away his mana privileges.

 

[Kiech]

Just finished the game. Basium did build up quite a bit after I took his mana away and was by far the strongest civ. I sure hope when I play it as the angels, my partner provides me with about 20-30 or so towns until I decide to build an army.

Oh, and if you are going for the Tower victory...its best to avoid banning death/shadow/entropy mana in the overcouncil.

 

[Folket]

I think there was a bug in MNAI where the AI produced way more adepts/mages then designed. I think this is fixed with 2.42 that is not out yet.

As for him having 22 angels. Not much he can do about that. Guess there just have not been enough wars containing good civs. Spread rok/empyrean/order to any civ that is in war to make them produce more angels.

 

[doktarr]

I think there was a bug in MNAI where the AI produced way more adepts/mages then designed. I think this is fixed with 2.42 that is not out yet.

Even if the AI is improved, I would still advise taking away his mana unless you really have no use for it. It's one of the main benefits of building the gate. (Well, perhaps not for the Kurios, but certainly for anyone else.)