Grigori Guide

[sylvanllewelyn]

I don't find adventurers to be that amazing for most of the game. Giving up getting lots of great persons, when you are philosophical, is strange, especially since philosophical is much more powerful here than in regular BTS, as techs are expensive and specialization pays dividends.

What I find truly defining for the Grigori is not actually the adventurers, but the worldspell, and the philosophical trait. If you really want to use the worldspell for adventurers, I would shoot for immortals.

 

[Blackmantle]

Have to say Wonder is really amazing indeed with twincast + Spellstaff (added Waterwalking and Stoneskin to the mix to make it even more fun in my current game. Luckyly had 4 nodes (aka got out of my way to get them) so i could without wasting many promotions.)

But since the Grigori have nothing else now (exept the Divine + Religion from Medics, but that sounds a bit like nonintended / exploit even if its nice for testing) and StoW takes a lot longer to reach now due to the new paths for bulbing + Wonder not beeing all that reliable i don't find it as overpowered as Meteor Swarm.
Still very nice but not completely over the top imo (and some minor imbalances are allright imo especially because the Grigori have been overnerfed by many changes anyways.).
If alone for the additional time to get them. Also Naval bombardment is not so effective and Terrain might a factor for most summons even with Extension 2. Also its a feat important only for Grigori / Amurites more or less...
Not completely unbalancing the magic-balance for all civs like Meteor Swarm did.

Also if stack busters should be nerfed (as opposed to removing crush from the list) its not such a big issue anymore anyways. Lets see what is to come.

And since escape is on the list it could go horribly wrong with 10 Summons in you capital and the need to walk back to the battlefield all the way. So luck is a bit of a balancer. Happens once in 20 Games perhaps but if it does, it might suck alot. Even if all but one Archmages go home and he gets unlucky on his rolls.

Sad to hear its not all that hot for Kyleen (still ok i imagine even if not on-par with domination). But that might be mitigated a bit by having a rather reliable supply of new Druids if needed so you can always Wonder-out-of-the-box with 4 Druids and don't need to shed a tear if one or the other goes down + they can walk impassable. Also its very much in line with Balseraph flavor.
But i imagine that especially for kyleen speed might be a huge factor again. I belive at normal Speed a pack of 4 druids casting Wonder and replenishing them if they go down is much more feasible than at quick.
So maybe i have to test firsthand at normal to see if that only holds true for quick gamespeed.

 

[Ecofarm]

Sad to hear its not all that hot for Kyleen (still ok i imagine even if not on-par with domination). But that might be mitigated a bit by having a rather reliable supply of new Druids if needed so you can always Wonder-out-of-the-box with 4 Druids and don't need to shed a tear if one or the other goes down + they can walk impassable. Also its very much in line with Balseraph flavor.
But i imagine that especially for kyleen speed might be a huge factor again. I belive at normal Speed a pack of 4 druids casting Wonder and replenishing them if they go down is much more feasible than at quick.
So maybe i have to test firsthand at normal to see if that only holds true for quick gamespeed.

I made 3 druids from arena'd scouts, with 13-15xp each. They got mobility2, chaos 3. Even with three, the summons were too slow (no extension), too few (no twincast, no spellstaff) and too weak (no combat promos on the druids).

The big thing is that they are so slow without extension. You have to move right up to the city to attack it. With grig, the city is gone before you can even get close.

Perhaps I was just spoiled by grig, but I would not try Keelyn Chaos Druids again. It was weak. Maybe with a peak-intensive map it would be decent.

 

[heisenberg]

I was messing around earlier with the grigori medics... something odd happened though... somehow the first medic i trained in a city which order had spread to made the medic -secretly- decide to follow order
order >> divine >> channelling III: unyielding order in my capital rofl...
think its a bug though i was so desperate for cheap unyielding order "entry-level priests" that i built half a dozen more but none of them decided to follow order

 

[avalonnn]

With wonder, how many of the effects are negative for the caster/stack he is in? I have been thinking about using wonder, but I dont want, say, wither on my stack, that would suck.

another issue with wonder -- on a crowded map -- is that you may not get warned if your spell will start a war with neutral foes (or has that been fixed?).

 

[Sarisin]

I was messing around earlier with the grigori medics... something odd happened though... somehow the first medic i trained in a city which order had spread to made the medic -secretly- decide to follow order
order >> divine >> channelling III: unyielding order in my capital rofl...
think its a bug though i was so desperate for cheap unyielding order "entry-level priests" that i built half a dozen more but none of them decided to follow order

This has been discussed at length in other threads as a possible exploit.

If you manage to get a religion spread to your Grigori cities, build your Medics there. You have roughly a 20% chance that your Medic will pop out affiliated with that religion. He has Channeling II and will have the same 'superpowers' as a Priest of that religion. Also, of course, he has the healing/cure disease and can even get weapons promotions.

A further exploit of this with the Grigori I mentioned before is to beeline the Eyes and Ears Network and you will get the Disciple units for all the religions and spread them to your cities. Then, you have a chance to get Medics will all the religion affiliations and the superpowers that come with them!

 

[heisenberg]

cool~ actually its channelling II+III and divine ie you can have the same powers as those limited to the "high-priests"--except that you arent limited to a measly four and that you dont need to wait till level 6 to upgrade or need the required resource, just infirmaries.

thanks for the "tip" though i went on to spam medics in my cities with religions instead of dragon slayers (went down the metal line for my last game). 2 str weaker than slayers no doubt, but with their (quote OP) "iron/mythril scapels" and that they could stay parked right next to enemy cities after DoW make them a real force to be reckoned with. Of course the added "perk" were all the order medics "unyielding ordering" my core cities for running a -pretty powerful- SE (though I never got any more adventurers after that)
The empyrean and veil medics were awesome "siege" machines with their crown/ring of fire to help the "weaker" scalping army of medics chew through city defenders with relative ease.

Then again although it could be a possible exploit but getting the religions into the cities are pretty hard to begin with. I gotta try your eyes and ears method next time though (^^)b
Well it did take me quite a long while to churn out those super medics considering the low 20% rate and that my cities with religions were those i recently conquered and that i had to complete the infirmary on them first.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

It is a 20% chance for each religion present in the city if the unit does not have one. I was under the impression that there was a 20% chance for the first religion then a 0.8*20% chance for the third, 0.8^2*20% chance for the 3rd, etc., but apparently the loop does not break when a religion is assigned so there is a 20% chance for each religion, but of course the religions earlier in the list would get overwritten and so be less likely.


Grigori Medics have Divine and Channeling II and III, so they have all the Priest and High Priest spells, without nay national limit of level requirements. The reason they have these promotions is so they can cast Cure Disease/Heal. It has been this way since 0.31, when the spell system was over hauled. (Also, I believe Grigori Medics were defensive only until about that time.) I've been suggesting getting rid of the promotions and moving the spells to Medic II and III, but this has been ignored. I also think that it would be good to remove the state religion prereq from priests but ass then to priest spells, in which case Medics would not be able to cast spells when owned by an Agnostic leader, plus and it would be harder to exploit switching religions.

 

[Zechnophobe]

I don't see this as unbalancing. Late game is where the Grigori face their biggest hardships anyway, and getting good Medics seems fairly reasonable. It's not like they are getting infinite archmages or anything.

 

[Caradoc]

How do you do thing with the Eyes and Ears Network? I got Guilds and built the thing, but I could not build any of the disciples. The FoL had spread to the E&EN city, but the icon for the Disciple of Leaves was grayed out and could not be selected. It said that I need a Temple, which is obviously not gonna happen for the Grigori.

 

[Sarisin]

How do you do thing with the Eyes and Ears Network? I got Guilds and built the thing, but I could not build any of the disciples. The FoL had spread to the E&EN city, but the icon for the Disciple of Leaves was grayed out and could not be selected. It said that I need a Temple, which is obviously not gonna happen for the Grigori.

charles, when I built the Eyes and Ears Network, I received seven free techs because I had open borders agreements with I think 2 or 3 AI civs.

They came one after another and I got the Nightwatch, Disciple of Leaves, Savant, Ecclesiastic, Thane of Kilmorph, Acolyte and the one for OO - I forgot the name right now.

I sent them to my capital where I build my units and tried to have all of them spread their religion to my capital city.

I got FOL, Empyrean, CoE, ROK and OO from those units. The Savant and Acolyte failed to spread. Looking back on it, I might have made out better if I spread them around to other cities in my civ, but, as I said, I specialized the capital to produce units.

As I mentioned, I got Medics with FOL, ROK, and Empyrean affiliations and the superpowers than came with Channeling II and III. I also got plenty that had nothing and deleted those. I'm a little surprised that I got none with OO, though.