Help for playing the Grigori

[rxrx]

Hello everyone. I'm quite new at FFH2 and would like some tips and strategy playing the Grigori. Mostly, I find my economy not being able to hold up to my development and would like some advices on how to maintain a good economy and military as the Grigori. Thanks.

 

[Bootsiuv]

Early commerce resources are extremely important in FfH.

Don't be afraid to move your settler around for a few turns to find some good plantation resources, and ideally, a river with a few food resources.

Also, if you find yourself in a fertile river valley with abundant farmland, Aristocracy/Agrarianism is a nice way to make lots of money. Farms will fuel your economy here. This may not be the best choice, as the Grigori have more reason to run a cottage economy than other civs. Specialists pollute the gp pool, and may interfere with you getting your special unit, the adventurer. This unit is basically a hero that can upgrade into anything (personally, when I play the Grigori, I still run a few sages to get an academy asap).

If you do decide to run a cottage economy, i.e. few farms, then city states is superior to aristocracy. You won't be able to run as many specialists, but, again, the grigori may not want to anyways (at least more often than not).

The Grigori are also agnostic, meaning they can't adopt a state religion. This is a weakness IMO, but the adventurers make up for it.

 

[Emptiness]

You can find some good tips by readercolin here. He's doesn't really talk about economy, though.

As the Grigori, your leader is Philosophical, which is usually a good reason to use a specialist economy. Doing that with the Grigori will tend to reduce the number of adventurers you get over the course of the game, so most people don't do it. Thanks to Cassiel's Adaptive trait, the Grigori can make just about any economy work, so the important thing is to understand the options and choose the right one for your game plan. There's a thread devoted to discussing the different economic strategies; you should read it to learn about them. The most common choices are probably Aristograrian, Cottage, or a hybrid involving one or both of those.

The most important thing is not to overexpand. Despotism becomes very expensive beyond about four cities; plan to be out of it by then. Try to build Markets (Festivals tech) and Courthouses (Code of Laws tech) in every city. If you find your economy in trouble then do not found new cities, and raze any cities you capture. Take steps to fix your economy, and once it is working again then you can build or capture new cities. If you get into economic trouble and respond by gaining more cities your economic woes will just get worse and worse, and can become so bad that it becomes impossible to repair the damage.

 

[Bootsiuv]

Emptiness is correct, of course.

Ideally, if you use your starting settlers increased movement and sight to find a decent starting position and expand slowly in the early game, your economy should never really need correcting. It will be strong from the beginning, and, assuming the right choices are made, remain so for the duration of the game.

 

[rxrx]

Thanks. I'll try it out then.

 

[readercolin]

Grigori Economy.

There is one thing that you are going to want to avoid as the grigori, and that is the specialist economy (unless you are playing FF+ or orbis). The reason is that you are going to want adventurers, and great people tend to interfere with getting adventurers. You also cannot run the fellowship economy because you can't get follow a religion. So, going to the economic strategy guide, that leaves the aristograrian economy, the cottage economy, the raider economy, and the trader economy.

Aristograrian. I usually avoid this as the grigori, simply because when running aristograrian, I also usually end up running a specialist economy as well, as I always tend to end up having extra food.

Cottage. This is what I usually end up running, as I can control my population fairly well, aiming to get every city to work the tiles around the city and JUST the tiles around the city. Using this, I can have every city maxing its size around pop 20 (less if not all tiles are workable), as well as getting a decent amount of commerce. Switching to financial helps here.

Raiders. Raiders works ok with the grigori, just switch to raiders on your adaptive switch. However, it isn't an economy where you can use just it, so use it only to assist you in paying for that war.

Trader. Going for a trader economy is kinda meh as the grigori. If you work at it, you can have a pretty large empire, but that not wanting to have large cities kinda kills some of the best parts of the trader economy. On the other hand, going down the tech path to unlock adventurer buildings unlocks some of the trade route buildings, so it is ok as an addendum to whatever economy you really want to be running.

This is putting everything in the context of the Economic Strategy Compilation. However, you may want some more info on being able to support everything, so I'll go into that as well.

Early priority tech for economy:
Education - for cottages
Calendar/mining/whatever to unlock local resources
festivals - for market
mysticysm - for elder council and godking (if you want to run it)
cartography - for city states (if you want to run that)
Code of Laws - for courthouses

In every city you make, I usually put down a monument first to allow it to work every tile in its BFC. Second and third buildings are always markets and elder councils. Priority for improvements are always unlock resources, starting with food, then production, and lastly commerce. Only once all resources that you can currently use are unlocked do you start improving tiles without resources on them - i usually start with food, getting just enough that once I have sanitation I'll be be able to get the city to work every tile around it. Then I build cottages and mines/lumbermills depending upon what I'm focusing the city on.

I hope this helps.

-Colin

 

[Dean_the_Young]

Here's my tip: play either Fall Further, or Rise from Eribus mods. The Grigori as a whole get some nice changes (though the Rise from Eribus really needs some offsetting; just ignore the latest patch for now), and the economy dynamics are much better overall. (You can build improvements from the start, they just take four times as long or so.)

 

[Emptiness]

That doesn't really help anyone play the Grigori any better in FfH2. In fact, it doesn't help anyone play the Grigori any better in FF or in RiFE, either. Sounds like a post in a thread called "FfH2 isn't as good as FF or RiFE", but not so much like a comment relevant to "Help for playing the Grigori".

 

[Smakemupagus]

... promote your first 2 or 3 adventurers to axemen, and take your neighbor's best two cities

 

[slowcar]

... promote your first 2 or 3 adventurers to axemen, and take your neighbor's best two cities

first adventurer as a shock2/march (+combatX+heroic...) warrior is usually enough to get rid of a neighbour and promote some troops in its wake.
other adventurers are better used as mages, twincast is just too sweet.

 

[UncleJJ]

Grigori Economy.

There is one thing that you are going to want to avoid as the grigori, and that is the specialist economy (unless you are playing FF+ or orbis). The reason is that you are going to want adventurers, and great people tend to interfere with getting adventurers.

I question this dismissal of a specialist economy for the grigori. I've played them and the combination of Industrious and Philosophical is very strong. As you probably know this combination of the leadership traits is one of the few that is not used in BtS as it's considered too strong. Of course the wonders in FfH2 are different and the GPP system is tougher to milk.

The adventurers are nice but I don't see a need to base the entire military around them. So why sacrifice what will be the most obvious way to leverage the leadership traits and palace to develop an economy? Since there's no need to research a religion I headed straight for Currency and built Adventurers Guilds in most cities. With Philosophical and Pacifism plus the bonusses from the palace and AG the capital produced 3 adventurers, 1 GM (settled) and 1 GS (academy) by turn 190. Frankly, I would prefer to have a mixture of adventurers and other GPs. On average they should appear in proportion to the types of GPPs invested, so it is like having the two systems (adventurer and normal GPs) working side by side and both benefit from the leaders traits.

The world spell is very powerful and should allow a big increase in GPs and adventurers in the middle game. The Rites of Oghma are certainly worth going for in an attempt to get a second use of the worldspell later in the game.

 

[Korias]

The world spell is very powerful and should allow a big increase in GPs and adventurers in the middle game. The Rites of Oghma are certainly worth going for in an attempt to get a second use of the worldspell later in the game.

You mean Birthtright Regained, not Rites of Oghma, right? The Rites reate more mana nodes, Birthright gives you your worldspell back.

 

[UncleJJ]

You mean Birthtright Regained, not Rites of Oghma, right? The Rites reate more mana nodes, Birthright gives you your worldspell back.

Indeed I do . Although the Rites of Oghma are good as well for the Grigori as they'll probably use a lot of mages (I do, anyway) and without religions there are no shrines to provide extra mana sources.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

That doesn't really help anyone play the Grigori any better in FfH2. In fact, it doesn't help anyone play the Grigori any better in FF or in RiFE, either. Sounds like a post in a thread called "FfH2 isn't as good as FF or RiFE", but not so much like a comment relevant to "Help for playing the Grigori".

So what? I recommend FF and RiFE over base FfH2 when playing with the Grigori: they have more favorable Adventurer-spawning mechanics and nicer economic mechanics, both of which make a Grigori playthrough easier and more enjoyable than a base FfH2 game. An easier learning curve does help for better results when playing, and for the Grigori easier Adventurers make their experience funner.

Your post doesn't even do that, or anything else. My post was a recommendation for how he could improve his gameplay experience. What does yours do?

Rather than being condescending with no purpose than your own sense of importance, why don't you go do something more productive with your time than be a hypocrite? Glass houses are the most fragile.

 

[Emptiness]

My post suggests that you stay on topic or start a new thread. It would be a helpful post, if you got the message - but that appears to have failed. In theory, posts like yours are in poor etiquette. Posts like mine can appear rude or condescending, but are necessary to point out that fact when someone is unaware of their breach. Of course etiquette is subjective, and you are free to ignore it as you please.

 

[Tasunke]

Adventure rush the Nubxorz. Or specialize in Archmages, or Assasins*

*Hero assasins are really, really awesome.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

My post suggests that you stay on topic or start a new thread. It would be a helpful post, if you got the message - but that appears to have failed. In theory, posts like yours are in poor etiquette. Posts like mine can appear rude or condescending, but are necessary to point out that fact when someone is unaware of their breach. Of course etiquette is subjective, and you are free to ignore it as you please.

You completely miss the fact that your posts fit your complaint far more than mine, don't you? There was no message to receive, because you don't even see that.

'Poor etiquette' is not being on topic with friendly suggestions: poor etiquette is condescension, being anal corrective for no purpose, and hypocritical corrections. That's not a subjective: that's a fundamental basis of social interactions, of what etiquette is.

The opening post asked a question, and I gave an answer. If one has problems with economy of base FFH, the changed mechanics of other mods will help. There was no breach of etiquette except on your part, and your part alone. You were neither helpful nor suggested anything, unless you are unaware of how a suggestion works. Here's an example of a suggestion for someone with, say, trouble with economy:

I recommend the FF mod. It's economy dynamics are better for running an economy, as you can build everything from the start, it just takes longer."

That is a suggestion: it recognizes an issue, offers an alternative, and provides a basis for why.

This is not a suggestion:

"That doesn't really help anyone play the Grigori any better in FfH2. In fact, it doesn't help anyone play the Grigori any better in FF or in RiFE, either. Sounds like a post in a thread called "FfH2 isn't as good as FF or RiFE", but not so much like a comment relevant to "Help for playing the Grigori"."

That doesn't recognize an actual issue issue, it doesn't offer an alternative, and it doesn't provide a basis for why the alternative is desireable.


If you want to be an upstanding member of a board who's presence is necessary to correct others, it might help to understand how to, you know, make a suggestion.

 

[Emptiness]

The opening post asked a question, and I gave an answer.

He was asking for advice on how to play FfH2 better as the Grigori. You told him how to avoid his problem by playing something else, not how to deal with it. Suggesting he go play Golf instead would have been as helpful.

If one has problems with economy of base FFH, the changed mechanics of other mods will help.

This assumes that someone new to FF or RiFE will immediately understand the mechanics of those mods and automatically adopt a successful strategy - which is clearly ludricrous. FF and RiFE are more complicated than FfH2, not less. Someone new to all of them will take longer to learn the dynamics of FF and RiFE because of their greater complexity, and will be more likely to need to ask questions or advice. So the idea that someone who is asking questions about how to play FfH2 will no longer have questions after switching to FF or RiFE is just silly.

There was no breach of etiquette except on your part, and your part alone. You were neither helpful nor suggested anything, unless you are unaware of how a suggestion works. Here's an example of a suggestion [...]

My suggestion was not for rxrx, but for YOU. I thought this was perfectly clear. Perhaps you failed to comprehend that fact, but I suspect that you are just feigning confusion so that you can label my post as off-topic. Yes, it is off-topic for the thread, but it is fully on-topic for a response to your post (which I contend pretends to be on-topic while in fact being off-topic). Edit: And for the record, I had already made some helpful, on-topic suggestions in an earlier post (here, if you don't see it).

I understand how to make a suggestion, and how to recognize one. I also know how to recognize disingenuity, of which your post is a wonderful example (see below).

It is possible that I am myself breaching etiquette. I acknowledge that my response to you constituted a derailment of the thread, or at least a further derailment (depending on whether one accepts your original post as being on-topic). Sometimes it is necessary to do the unpleasant in the hope that it will prevent greater unpleasantness in the future. If you choose to interpret my resolve as hypocrisy, so be it. At this point I have little hope that my posts will serve their intended purpose, so this is all probably a waste anyway.

This is not a suggestion:

"That doesn't really help anyone play the Grigori any better in FfH2. In fact, it doesn't help anyone play the Grigori any better in FF or in RiFE, either. Sounds like a post in a thread called "FfH2 isn't as good as FF or RiFE", but not so much like a comment relevant to "Help for playing the Grigori"."

That doesn't recognize an actual issue issue, it doesn't offer an alternative, and it doesn't provide a basis for why the alternative is desireable.

The issue is that your post masquerades as helpful, but is actually an insidious attack on FfH2. You advise a new player to give up on his attempts to understand how to play the mod, and instead go play another mod instead. This is made especially wicked because of the fact that the mod you suggest he play is actually more complicated than the one on which you suggest he give up, which means that if he were to take your advice it is almost guaranteed that he will have the same problem in the new mod.

The alternative is to go start another thread to vent your need to suggest FF or RiFE as alternatives to FfH2, rather than misleading new FfH2 players by responding to their requests for help with FfH2 by suggesting they switch.

The alternative is desirable, at least from my perspective, because then there will not be a need for someone watch for and respond to falsehoods such as yours to protect those who are not in a position to recognize them for what they are.

I'm sorry if any of those things were not clear in my original response. Instead of spelling out my exact meaning in harsh terms, I chose to take a subtle tack in which I implied much of what I felt needed to be said. My hope was that I could avoid a thread derailment, but clearly I failed.

 

[Sephi]

I recommend the FF mod. It's economy dynamics are better for running an economy, as you can build everything from the start, it just takes longer."

ironically the reason this wasn't merged into FFH is because it was considered not friendly to new players.

and IIRC the adivce from the FF team is that you make yourself familiar with FFH before you try FF. They probably know it best

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

as much as I like to be able to build any improvement from the start, it IS a huge n00btrap. even worse is that n00btrap= AItrap