Grigori : Brainstorm Thread

[Imuratep]

For cultural victory how about being able to sac your heroes for 1000 per level (i.e.10000 culture for 10th level)? Or 500 per level and a building that boosts your culture and your economy. That way their heroes would be useful beyond warmongering and it would enable interesting strategic choices (do I sacrifice him now? Will the remaining ones be enough to stand in war?) Perhaps the spell should need a certain time to be cast (about 20 turns) and should trigger a popup to give the opponents time to declare war on them.
Something like "Great legends about (hero name) are told in the Grigori realm and now spread into our lands fascinating our people - Some fear the people could lose their connection to our land."

If you want to extend it you could even make an event:
--> option 1: We can't allow the influence of those heretics --> DoW 10 turns of hurry anger option 2: "We won't do anything about it. These are just tales, nothing more." --> +10 Grigori culture in all your cities 10% chance for each city of removing all religion from it. option 3: "This hero should is an example of virtue. He will inspire our people and will guide us in distress. Construct a Monument of him in every city." --> Receive a Monument with +5 culture (like with the Grigori option in the Monument event) in every city. 50% chance for each city of removing all religions from it. +200 Grigori culture in all cities +4 relation to the Grigori leader

 

[Rystic]

I still support the Diverse trait for the Grigori. Flavour-wise, it suits them well, and it's nice to have Adventurers of multiple races.

 

[Breez]

I like the Diverse trait also.

Alternatively I will put forth... what if 10% of their settlers spawned as a different Civ? Every so often one of their new cities would build the UU/UB of a different Civ. Sort of like the exact opposite of Conquest is now. Captured cities would be Grigori but a FEW built cities would be of various races.

 

[Rystic]

Conquest is its own thing, and I don't like new mechanics trending on older ones. Diverse could work even better in Fall Further because you can add Lizardmen/Scion units to the mix.

 

[Valkrionn]

Worldspell is going to be changed... Opera had a good idea (Orbis uses the same spawn system now), so I'll be using that.

I like Diverse for ADVENTURERS, but I don't know about it for normal units. I'm pretty sure military training would tend to neutralize any differences... Racial promotions might work, but over all I want them to have their normal units.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Personally, I think that good (or at least liberal) governance should be the Grigori advantage more than anything else. Considering how all the Grigori society descriptions provided by the writing staff imply they start with councils with voting and Cassiel pushing them to vote for themselves... would it be too overpowering for them to start off with Liberty and maybe even Republic?

Or perhaps the Grigori could have their own civ-specific government civic like the Jutnar, mixing the benefits of the two (culture, bonus trait elections, though maybe no specialist), and adding in a great person advantage as well (which is their biggest weakness for the Grigori play through). Like the Jutnar it would be an 'only' civic, limiting them (perhaps even with a low of war weariness, like the Eloheim capital), but it would overall be an advantage for them?

Actually, the Grigori government has been established to be a form of feudalism. Officials are appointed for life long terms, although there are certainly some sort of checks and balances, perhaps like the ability to remove officials via petitions or recall elections started through petition. There are no payed positions, and no perks like governors' mansions or expense accounts. There are also no hereditary titles or positions of any sort. Local lords are chosen from the most average of a region's citizens (possibly chosen by lot), and are basically just Justices of the Peace. Their actual powers are very limited. The Grigori don't use taxation, so these "nobles" spend a lot of their time trying to get people to volunteer to help out around the community, donate money to the public coffers, or run fundraisers like base sales. (I think Cassiel may allow the larger towns and cities to have stronger and more democratic governments, but he doesn't care for them and the rural people have more say in national government.)


Cassiel does not care for elections, since they lead to the rise of a political class that needlessly fracture the populace into political parties over minor policy differences. More importantly, they need money for their campaigns, which makes them beholden to financial interests and urban specialists rather than honest yeoman farmers. He knows that such a system tends to lead to a government of men whose loyalties lie with Mammon, although they rarely realize it themselves. Cassiel considers Mammon just as bad as any other god.

 

[Opera]

I like the Diverse trait too, even though only for the races. Like, no UU of outside. That's what I mean to do in my own mod (maybe you were thinking I was going to do it like in the TweakMod, Valk?). I don't know how the race is chosen in the TweakMod but I plan to do it function of the surroundings of the city. Forests->Elves, Hills->Dwarves, Jungle->Lizards, etc. However, I still don't know if it will be for the Kurios or for the Grigori. I'm thinking lately that the Grigori are more in "need" of a new mechanic than the Kurios...

As for the worldspell idea Valkrionn is talking about, see here.

Also, I gave them the Humanist civ trait, making them agnostics (opposing uniqueCult/Intolerant leaders, which is an innovation of my mod too) and giving them access right from the start to the Humanism civic.

(I didn't read the whole thread yet, only the last page )

 

[Dean_the_Young]

it works just like the scions awakened spawn iirc. of course then the worldspell woukd probably need to be changed so that it resets the adventurer counter instead of the great person one

Why not reset both?

I still support the Diverse trait for the Grigori. Flavour-wise, it suits them well, and it's nice to have Adventurers of multiple races.

Agreed, agreed...

Actually, the Grigori government has been established to be a form of feudalism. Officials are appointed for life long terms, although there are certainly some sort of checks and balances, perhaps like the ability to remove officials via petitions or recall elections started through petition. There are no payed positions, and no perks like governors' mansions or expense accounts. There are also no hereditary titles or positions of any sort. Local lords are chosen from the most average of a region's citizens (possibly chosen by lot), and are basically just Justices of the Peace. Their actual powers are very limited. The Grigori don't use taxation, so these "nobles" spend a lot of their time trying to get people to volunteer to help out around the community, donate money to the public coffers, or run fundraisers like base sales. (I think Cassiel may allow the larger towns and cities to have stronger and more democratic governments, but he doesn't care for them and the rural people have more say in national government.)


Cassiel does not care for elections, since they lead to the rise of a political class that needlessly fracture the populace into political parties over minor policy differences. More importantly, they need money for their campaigns, which makes them beholden to financial interests and urban specialists rather than honest yeoman farmers. He knows that such a system tends to lead to a government of men whose loyalties lie with Mammon, although they rarely realize it themselves. Cassiel considers Mammon just as bad as any other god.

Enlightened feudalism with community counsels and referendums is still more enlightened than 99% of the rest of FFH. I was just using the benefits of Republic as a base line. For all I care, you could call the hypothetical civic 'Council' (or Soviet, heh).

And, as I ranted/raved/mused about in the Grigori lore thread, what Cassiel prefers and thinks ideal ain't likely to be what Cassiel is going to get. THe world has had plenty of examples of such kinds of libertarian societies, and historie's verdict is generally clear: population concentration rules, urbanism trumps agrarianism, relying on people to voluntarily pay dues is a failing proposition, and even the most undemocratic societies form parties and factions of some sort. That's just how things work. Cassiel may not care for elections, centralization, or specialists, but the Grigori as time goes by? All of those (well, the last two) are necessary for civilizations to grow and survive past a certain point, and even the Lore says that the Grigori survive at least into the Apocolypse and Stephanos. So Grigori political currents going divergent to Cassiel's ideals is far from impossible, especially since Cassiel's whole spiel is for men to think for themselves. I mean, even Cassiel's adaptive trait reflects the changing political mindsets of the populace. (Or rather, that's how I read the trait in general: a leader who can change beliefs as time goes by.)

At present in the base game nearly every Grigori mechanic is geared towards going out and killing people. Adventurers, dragon slayers, magic-immune Lunotors, the whole nine yards. Even Adaptive is ideal for building your economy in peace and then changing over for war. Adding a bonus civic for 'enlightened leadership' is something they deserve, if only thematically.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

Why not reset both?

most likely too powerful. Ardor is a damn good worldspell as is, no need to double its power

 

[Dean_the_Young]

most likely too powerful. Ardor is a damn good worldspell as is, no need to double its power

If you don't, however, you'll halve it's power. The Grigori are too weak as it is, because they can't compare in most other categories of direct competition. Resetting GP points is their worldspell advantage anyway. If you don't reset the GP counter, you lose one of the biggest advantages of the Grigori (lots of late-game Great People). If you don't reset the Adventurer counter, you also take away them as well.

 

[Opera]

Yeah how is that fitting anyway? Ardor possibly was created to reset Adventurers spawning rather than bare GP spawning. I don't see why Ardor would reset the gp counter? Apart from obvious gameplay considerations.

 

[xienwolf]

Honestly I think that the Grigori need something which goes away from the Adventurers completely,or dramatically changes them, for their "final solution"

Unfortunately the game boils down to being very heavily about the military aspects, and the Grigori culture only touches the military through their adventurers, so anything which impacts the game has to impact the adventurers, or betray the lore.

It might be interesting to find a way to make them rely completely on adventurers for their combat capability, and provide units with other functions to see if you can flesh out a non-war game for them, but it would take some serious work to accomplish that.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

For a non-military application for Adventurers, could Patrian Artifacts be used? I haven't played with Scions so I'm not sure if Patrian artifacts work more like an item or a terrain resource, but either way could you arrange it so that Grigori could see them?* Then the Grigori could have a treasure hunt victory: get a certain percentage of the artifacts and decipher them, requiring a certain tech/building requirement (museum?), and you unlock the Patrian legacy and win the game because you reintroduced everything good about Patria/created magical nukes/built an unstoppable giant robot (or something).

If Patrian Artifacts are items, then it's easier. If they are a resource, perhaps you could create an inate promotion for adventurers along the line of 'claim artifact'. Then you hide either hide the resource like for every other civilization or you destroy it (which would put you in direct competition with the Scions).


A Patrian Artifact treasure hunt would also tie in with the conceptual Hall of Wonders discussed earlier.

 

[xienwolf]

I'm not saying they need a non-military application for adventurers. Exactly the opposite, that to be completely lore appropriate they should have almost no military EXCEPT adventurers.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Now that I think of it, "Anarcho-Feudalism" (a term I first heard from a left-libertarian in the OT forum when he was mocking Anarcho-Capitalism as being a contradiction, arediculous as Anarcho-Feudalism or Anarcho-Fascism) could be a pretty good description of the Grigori system.


Minister Koun is described as a local politician in a city, so I'm pretty sure there are some less philosophical, more statist Grigori too.




In my version, the Luonnatar aren't all that militarily oriented, just focused against religions. I moved them down to Philosophy (which was made later and more expensive than priesthood, but still a lot sooner and cheaper than Strength of Will), cut their strength in half, but allowed them to target Disciple units in stacks of stronger units, defend first against them, and have a huge bonus towards them. They can move through rival territory to use their can use Enlighten City and Enlighten Units spell. The former is basically a version of Inquisition that can get rid of even the cities' owner's state religion, and the latter is used to make units with religions give up their religion. It has a very small chance of making these units switch to your team. Priests are more resistant, but when they change teams they turn into more Luonnatar, and if they lose their faith but don't switch teams then they have lost access to their divine spells.

I also made Grigori Medics Defensive Only, and removed their ability to get weapons promotions. I never understood why medics got to use such weapons. I believe they used to be unable to attack in older versions, and never understood why that changed.

The Empire of the Grigori began to thrive, as men from all corners of Erebus, tired of being used as pawns by the Gods, sought a way to determine their own destiny. Whether carried by this wave of immigration, or inflicted upon them by the Gods as divine retribution, the Grigori began to suffer from diseases for which they knew no cure. Cassiel had the power to cure these ailments, and could even confer that power to others, however, he was also shrewd enough to realize that this would put him in the position of acting as a God himself, and all that he had been fighting for would be lost. Instead, Cassiel summoned the best herbalists and natural healers in the Kingdom, and formed the Ordine Medicos. Members of the Ordine Medicos travel throughout Erebus, seeking natural remedies to the ailments that inflict the Grigori, and are widely known for their ability to cure disease without divine intervention. Although quite often found travelling with Grigori military units, the Ordine Medicos take a vow of non-agression, and will only fight to defend themselves, and those in their care.

I'm not saying they need a non-military application for adventurers. Exactly the opposite, that to be completely lore appropriate they should have almost no military EXCEPT adventurers.

They have a military, but it consists an alliance of local militias rather than a standing army. These militiamen are notorious for defying orders and just going home whenever they are ordered to far away from their farms and families. Adventurers actually defy orders and leave their units more than anyone, but they go looking for trouble rather than running away from it.

In the spirit of that, what would you think about adding a very common recurring event in which Grigori units outside of their own cultural borders go AWOL? I'm thinking this would generally mean loosing the unit, but if the unit was an Adventurer it would instead mean getting free XP, or better yet casting spellExploreLair(pCaster) or spellExploreLairEpic(pCaster) without the need for any lair to actually be present on its tile.

 

[Tasunke]

whats the new worldspell going to be? also, if you are using the spawning system for adventurers, I don't think Cassiel would be philosophical. Maybe defensive instead.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

In the spirit of that, what would you think about adding a very common recurring event in which Grigori units outside of their own cultural borders go AWOL? I'm thinking this would generally mean loosing the unit, but if the unit was an Adventurer it would instead mean getting free XP, or better yet casting spellExploreLair(pCaster) or spellExploreLairEpic(pCaster) without the need for any lair to actually be present on its tile.

If they're going back home, shouldn't that be the units returning to their city? (Or, if you don't track units by the city that built them, the nearest Grigori city?) They're not disbanding, they're going back home.

Still, 'high' probability would be annoying, because if the unit was on a ship or just crossing a continent to escort a settler to a new city, you'd still have the risk of them disappearing in-route (after all, if you're following the mechanic and avoiding wars the most likely time you'll stay out of your culture area is when you're setting out to expand/explore). That would be very annoying (and perplexing) on or with ships at sea, while being worse than annoying on land if suddenly a high-value unit (Great Person, settler, workers) was left completely defenseless.

Perhaps it could be scaled, though; raised high or lowered to negligible by what civics you're running, what your traits are (military traits/civics increase the chance of the Adventurer event,), and unit level. I could much better see a placeholder unit with few promotions and investment suddenly going home than I could see an experienced, crack team that's fought in dozens of battles for the homeland.

And of course, loyalty promotion would apply.

 

[xienwolf]

If you did it for full selection groups at a time that would prevent the issue of accidentally leaving a settler unguarded. And perhaps moving a single tile toward the group leader's spawn location would work better than a full deleteion or retreat/teleportation. Or a cowardly version of AIControl which lasts for a few turns.

Allowing Adventurers to randomly self-cast ExploreLair could be interesting. Could have some horrible or amazing results randomly jump out at you.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, I'd assume AWOL soldiers would not be wiling to go back to the front,at least not very soon. What if it sent them home, and gave them an immobile timer?


What if it applied a promotion that worked sort of like Enraged, but gave it an extremely non aggressive unitAI that would make them head home and do nothing but defend cities? (Obviously this promotion would wear off eventually if the unit was in its own territory.)



How about making the chances of getting the event depend on war weariness? Maybe also on Tier and Level?

 

[Dean_the_Young]

Well, I'd assume AWOL soldiers would not be wiling to go back to the front,at least not very soon. What if it sent them home, and gave them an immobile timer?


What if it applied a promotion that worked sort of like Enraged, but gave it an extremely non aggressive unitAI that would make them head home and do nothing but defend cities?



How about making the chances of getting the event depend on war weariness?

No (redundant), no (with caveats), and yes, respectively.

No to the first one, because once you send them home the damage is already done. Even if you set out immediately, it's likely going to take you many, many turns to get that unit back to the war (unless it's right next door or their are roads, in which case chances are you'll just switch a unit you left for defense to go to the front). This is even more true on a multi-continent map: you may well have to wait a number of turns until a ship comes by before you can even get the unit off the island. An aribtrary holding really does nothing to compound the problem unless it's unreasonbly long in its own right. About the only 'hold' the unit might stand is if the unit counts as having moved that turn, so it can't move on the same turn.

A stronger No to the second one, unless it was a temporary promotion. A great deal of unit building is specialization, and that depends on having reliable control of a unit. If I want a defensive unit, I'll build archers and give them defensive bonuses. But when I go to war abroad, most of my units will be be attack-oriented units: I don't need or want a unit promoted with invader or anti-archery promotions to randomly decide it wants to play defense. But like I said, if it was strictly temporary, it might be tolerable.

The third one makes sense, and would reflect in part different civics. Of course, if you're going to war with something like Pacifism or Republic...


My concern is that the even would deserve far more detail and consideration than warranted. Should recon-line units randomly go AWOL from something that they largely volunteered to do? Highly promoted units? Lunnotar?

It's a thoughtful idea, but I'm concerned the balancing needed to keep it from being crippling would be unreasonable.