Help for playing the Grigori

[readercolin]

I don't remember exactly what I was doing that game. However, I can give you the numbers for normal speed, which is what I play on. I'm putting them in spoilers to allow people to easily skip to the points they want to see. Note, there is a lot of theoretical number crunching, and exact numbers would vary according to starting position etc. However, I am using as a baseline my average research rate over a game to figure out how quickly the various techs would be researched.

TDLR: It is possible to get 6 adventurers by turn 300 if you focus on getting adventurer GPP, but play it safe and only get them in your capital and pollute the GP pool as little as possible. With micromanaging and polluting the pool (but not too much), it is possible to bump that up to 8 adventurers. Casting the worldspell at turn 300 allows you to get another 5 or so adventurers over the next 100 turns (possibly more, depending upon if you pop any with the world spell).

Sources of Adventurers

Spoiler :

Sources of points: (5 possible in capital, 3 possible in other cities)
Palace provides +2 adventurer points
Adventurers guild provides +2 adventurer points, and is available at currency
Grigori Tavern provides +1 adventurer point, and it is available at mercantilism

Sources of % bonuses: Total bonuses possible, +315% (200% in other cities)
Grigori Palace +15%
Philisophical +100%
National epic +100%, available at warfare, but requires library (also gives +1 GC point)
Adventurers guild, +25%, available at currency
Pacifism, +50%
Republic, +25%, available at Taxation

Important things to note, all the tech requirements are down the same path - the downside, no units are unlocked here.

Tech Requirements

Spoiler :

The total tech requirements, in order needed to get, with the tech, beaker requirements, and unlocks written to the side. Note, this is all normal speed (which is what I used to get them by turn 300)

Agriculture - 104 beakers - unlocks education
Ancient chants - 104 beakers - unlocks education
Education - 364 beakers - unlocks warfare, writing, and code of laws
Writing - 494 beakers - unlocks library (needed to build heroic epic)
Warfare - 416 beakers - unlocks heroic epic
Code of Laws - 416 beakers - unlocks currency
Currency - 1170 beakers - unlocks adventurers guild & taxation
Taxation - 2080 beakers - unlocks republic and Mercantilism
Mercantilism - 4420 beakers - unlocks Grigori tavern

All told, it is 3068 beakers to currency, 5148 to taxation, and 9568 to get mercantilism (yeah... mercantilism is WAY overpriced).

Now to how a game would play out.

First hundred turns:

Spoiler :

You start with crafting, and you can decide whether or not to prioritize getting calender or education first, but I would grab those two as the first techs (education for cottages, calender for plantation/Agrarian). Depending upon your starting position, getting just 10 commerce you should have those 4 techs by turn 70 or so - it is entirely possible to do that faster however. Once you have those 4, farms and cottages, you should have higher population, and more commerce, so things get kind of up in the air after that. I would however make bronze working my next priority, for the better units. So this puts us through the first 100 or so turns research wise.

Adventurer wise, the first adventurer comes after 100 GPP. With a base of +2, and initial modifiers of +165% (philisophical, pacifism, and palace bonus). GPP are rounded down if there isn't sufficient to get the next. That means that you get +1 effective GPP for every 50% at this time, which gives you +5 initial GPP. That means that your first Adventurer should come around turn 20 or so. The next teir is 300, which should come around turn 80 or so. Every additional adventurer comes at a cost of +200 more each time (so it goes 100, 300, 500, 700, etc. (please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think there are some changes to growth after 1000, but I'm not sure what exactly they are). With +5 points, that puts you at +40 turns between adventurers each time, with a starting point of 20 (20, 60, 100, etc. note, this is time between adventurers, not turn an adventurer is gotten on). If you desire, you CAN speed this up a touch by running another specialist part of the time, though I would personally try to keep an 80% chance of getting an adventurer.

Turns 100ish - 300ish

Spoiler :

Starting with research again. Assuming you have cottages and more cities now, you can probably easily get writing/warfare by turn 150. Assuming a fairly natural growth of your economy, you can probably get currency by turn 200. Note, this is assuming that you run a cottage economy, have a few cities, etc. You can run aristocracy/agrarianism if you want, or run a cottage setup, and this is also assuming that you focus a bit more on beelining then on spamming everywhere, but if you have a decent economy, you will have leeway to research other techs.

Moving on to adventurers, if we assume that you manage to get heroic epic on turn 150, and an adventurers guild around turn 200. Note: exact numbers would vary depending upon start. You would have 2 adventurers by turn 80, and 350 adventurer points around turn 150. Thereafter, you would have +2 adventurer points, and +1 great commander points, and a 265% GP bonus. This would put the next adventurer 14 turns later. At turn 200, you would have around 390ish GPP, and you would get another +2 adventurer points, and +25% GPP. This would put your 4th adventurer at around turn 216. After that, it would be another 46ish turns for your 5th, or 43 if you had republic, or 36 if you have grigori tavern and republic (note, you couldn't actually get those things things by turn 216, but by this point it wouldn't take too much longer to get taxation). Holding like this, you would have around 6 by turn 300.

On the other hand, adding in other GPP from other sources will reduce that time. This can be done by getting more in the early game by running a sage/merchant/whatever early. As long as you keep the chance for something else under about 25%ish, you will usually manage to get an adventurer. Another alternative is to build the Form of the Titan, which will add +2 GC points, meaning that if you want to guarantee adventurers, you'll want to snatch an adventurers guild as quickly as possible. Another strong point is that once you grab adventurers guilds, your other cities will have a base adventurer rate of +2 +175% (+200% with republic). It is by doing these kinds of things that manages to let you snatch 8ish adventurers by turn 300

Casting the worldspell

Spoiler :

If at this point, you use your world spell (and for arguments sake say that no city pops a great person), your capital would have a base great person rate of 20 (without a tavern, +2 from palace, +2 from adventurers guild, +1 heroic epic, +300% from bonuses). That means an adventurer in 5 turns, a second in 15, a third in 25. Other cities would get 100 AP in 17 turns (with just adventurers guild) or in 12 turns (with guild and tavern). If we say that they have the tavern, then they would produce an adventurer in 77 turns (the capital would have already produced 3 by this point), and without a tavern it would be over 200 turns before it produced an adventurer (the capital would have produced 7 by that point... and the game would probably be over...). The saving grace here would be that other cities probably would have already had a large stockpile of adventurer points, meaning you would probably get a few adventurers from your other cities. Also if there are other sources of GPP its even easier to get more.

Hope someone else finds this interesting/useful... I didn't think I really had that much to say on the subject, but I guess this post proves me wrong

-Colin

 

[Monkeyfinger]

The GP requirements ramp up at 2000, not 1000. You're thinking of BtS.

 

[Dean_the_Young]

Dean the Young, can you cease further derailment of this thread?

I have yet to see you post Grigori Tips on this thread (for playing the game specifically as the Grigori). Basically, stop being immature and actually point out how to better play the Grigori.

Doubtful. Though I have to say, you giving anyone a lecture on maturity is quite a fascinating sight...

Some people focus on Archmages, is that what you do? Im assuming, from previous posts, that you focus on Dragon Slayers ... Pure economy -> down the metal line to champions

It varies. I usually go either a metal/government tech line, or split between recon and magic after an initial rounding out of techs. But first and foremost, I almost always go for writing, baring some pressing need otherwise (need fishing boats, or hunting).

I don't do multiplayer games, but for against the AI I find that starting with economy-related techs, especially writing, form a good base for later advancement; the sooner you build libraries, for example, the longer you get their benefit, and the more it matters. I go for writing first (with a detour at mysticism, for God King for early governance production/commerce and a Grigori unique building, the Museum, in the modmods).

While this is a strategy for any civ, Grigori are a bit better placed than most to benefit from this, though, because adventurers can provide that period of defense/expansion. Whereas other civs might rush a military tech to get an initial edge, whether for defense or offense, the Grigori adventurers provide that regardless: it's rather hard to overcome a combat V warrior with Heroic Promotions, or just the standard shock/cover promotions if you aren't to that point yet. Grigori don't need to rush an early military tech to start strong expansion, or necessarily to defend either.

So while others are spending beakers towards bronze working, or hunting, or anything other techniques, and then would have to start towards writing from there, a Grigori player can already be at/close to writing, get the library early to accelerate their reseach base, and pull even/ahead. Especially since writing also grants the ability to trade technologies, making you well placed to serve as an early middle man to catch up by trading other people's techs with eachother.

being able to build a farm in 24 turns isn't going to help any new player. Nor is playing a mod that doesn't have a manual, more python features that aren't documented anywhere, more bugs, no strategy forum / strategy guides.

if you want to learn FFH, play it and not some modmod (which all of them you should try some day ). Pretty simply

I don't know if it is bad form what Dean is doing, but it is surely bad advice.

Being able to build a farm in 24 turns isn't going to help, not least because you can get the farm tech at about that same time, but being able to build cottages or plantations is. If you want to rush for something else, being able to get a economic basis without having to go to those techs themselves can help. It doesn't take 24 turns either, if you put more than one worker on the task, take the obvious worker promos to increase speed, and similar. Depending on what your terrain is (or if you play the End of Winter option in general), you can be completing improvements at about the same pace as your growth rate to work them. This is especially true with the Grigori, who have a lower happiness cap than others because of their lack of religions.




This whole 'oh gods it doesn't have a manual' track really doesn't make much sense to me, because (a) FFH doesn't exactly have an awesome manual besides the civlopedia either, and (b) you don't need one, because they aren't that different. Certainly not different enough that you won't have any clue of how to do anything when you pick it up, and certainly not difficult enough that's it's impossible to play and learn.

Learning by immersion can be fun, and is a good deal of actually learning anything. Part of games is picking it up as you play; if you insist on knowing every strategy, angle, and do hours of research and homework before you even start the game, you're making it into work, not a game.

 

[deanej]

There's Xienwolf's manual, though it hasn't been updated in a long time. I'm not big on learning by immersion, but that's because I'm a perfectionist.