You speak in whispers of the devils I have slain, Brian, Sareln & Ichabod of Elohim

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok the save is played. Not much interesting in it, though I did see my first Olliphaunt. As there was nothing new to see I took a birds eye view of the whole:

The scout moved onto the skelly bier this turn, I may pop it next turn. My original warrior moved back home, as I've pretty much scouted as far east as I expect to settle until I've units that won't die in the wild easily. And my second warrior wen 1SW again, land looks fertile. Another few turns circling around and then back home.

Demographics are unchanged from last turn, and I've just realised the demographics screen from last turn is actually the one for turn 8, so I'll amend that error in a minute.

[Brian Shanahan]

Now personally I don't like the Grigori that much, they've got a bad civ trait and don't really get too much to cover them. Added to that they have absolutely no access to any religious benefits, except for a medic unit to replace the priest healing. I personally believe this civ is crippled, and in MP will find itself in a tight situation without really strong playing.

Leader: Cassiel

Cassiel is a decent leader being Adaptive and Philosophical. Philosophical is needed due to the fact that the Grigori's slant is that they can produce adventurers through GPP (never enough IMO). The adaptive trait allows players to tailor their game towards useful traits like Raiders or Financial, but it starts with Industrious. Industrious is a mid-level trait in BtS in that both advantages are useful but not overpowering, but in FfH it has been nerfed by the lateness of forges (at Smelting), and the relative lack of wonders. In fact the best wonder strategy for Industrious (well for anyone really) is building the Guild of Hammers which kills half of Industrious straight away.

Worldspell: Ardour
It resets the GPP of the Grigori when cast. Not a very good spell IMO. It ties in with the lore of the civ, but it gives no immediate advantage (Revelry) nor does it allow for an attack or defence (my Sanctuary). It does allow you to make a one-off target for a Engineer or Sage in the mid game, but otherwise it is only useful in SP games.

Hero unit: Adventurer
A 2 strength unit with the Heroic promotion, which can upgrade o any of the Melee, Archer, Mounted, Recon, or Adept units a civ can currently build. They are not truly unique in that any civ can pop them from a good lair pop or by an event (I think). But the Grigori are the only civ that can guarantee their appearance every game. But then they don't have a proper (fully formed) hero, and cannot get any of the religious ones. Adventurers are pretty slow to get going, and there's a trade off, upgrade now or keep back to upgrade later.

If given time the Grigori will have a kick-ass army that virtually no-one will stand up to, but in MP it's hard to find the time.

Palace
The Grigori Palace gives Enchantment mana (+1 happy all cities), Spirit mana (usefull buff spells, though the level 3 is useless in MP {may be worth a laugh to do it though to see what the other players say}) and water (spring tiles). It gives 15% GPP bonus and an adventurer point.

Points to note: Units

Dragon Slayer:
A Champion replacement which comes with Dragon Slaying and Courage. Courage is a handy 10% strength bonus, Dragon Slaying is useless unless you WB multiple Archerons. The fact that the Griori start with Spirit mana though makes the courage promo pretty redundant. Decent unit but not much better than base Champions.

Luonnotar
A Druid replacement, not much to say here.

Medic
A healer, with all three of the promotions already. Comes wickedly late at the otherwise eminently skippable Medicine tech.

Cannot build
Any religious unit, thus forgoing some pretty handy spells and ability to manage spreading.
Paladin, if we get that late these guys are the bees knees, but they're late units and restricted.

Points of interest: Buildings

Grigori Tavern
A Tavern (easily the most useless building in the game, the trade route is nice but not at that crippling price), with an extra adventurer GPP. So slightly less useless than a Tavern.

Adventurer's guild
Unlockable at currency. Gives 2 Adventurer points, a 25% bonus to GPP, and 2 xp to land units. Build in your production cities and your GP farms. This is a handy building, especially with the paucity of xp buidings in the game.


Cannot build
Any temple of a religion, thus forgoing plenty of potential happiness, along with the other buffs temples give.

So in conclusion, I think I got pretty lucky from a game standpoint starting next to the Grigori, rather than the Balseraphs. While I do have a friendly relationship with Kyan (he's next in line, I always include a friendly message with the save, and he joshes me about being late on the save), Keelyn is an extremely dangerous mid to late-game foe, who for preference needs to be neutered early.

[Brian Shanahan]

Oh, and if I did everything right I changed my password for the game. So for those of ye who are not constrained from looking at my , it's below:

Conall Cearnach.
Free internet cookie for why I picked that one.

For those of you who are not allowed to look, if you do I'll make your lives a misery by aggressively reading Peig Sayers at you, as Richard Dawkins is my witness.

In case you're wondering why, she ruined the childhood of many an Irish person until taken off the national curriculum. Reading aloud the first sentence of one of her stories is enough to make anyone defecate in fear.

[Brian Shanahan]

Save is played again.

Nothing much doing. Exploration here:

My scout will continue east, in the direction of the hut. If Acalostas' scout goes 2NE I will ignore the hut as he should then be able to see and get it before me. But to try and disuade him I'll inform him of the hill giant.

My western warrior will start swinging north after next turn (I believe I'm reaching the bottom of the peninsula), so SW>NW. My Eastern warrior is returning home through discovered lands, so nothing new to see there.

Demographics:

Only change here is people are now beginning to look to growth, and that the soldier count leader has built a warrior, or equivalent.

As regards diplomacy I believe that something along the lines of:

To the court of Acalostas and Mackoti,
Please accept my apologies for the delay, but as ever it is the engine oil benders which are the worst.
You are again speaking to Fr. Dearg Doom, as frankly Fr. Hackett's language [SIZE="1"]"Feck! Arse! Drink!"[/SIZE] is a bit too, ah, colourful for polite conversation.

But before we get down to the meat of the business at hand, I would like to pass warning to you from my as yet unnamed scout (Elohim soldiers only get their names on completion of a hero-feat). There is a (fortunately unpromoted) hill giant 3 tiles directly East of your own scout Benedict, and in the spirit of professional fraternity he implored me to pass the knowledge to you.

I am also somewhat concerened by the (unknown to me) military leader, with 24,000 soldier points. I believe at this early stage it is as a result of an adventurer joining their cause.

In the matter of the previously discussed city, Fr. Hackett continues to express his desire for the eminently suitable defensive location. But he is willing to be somewhat more concrete in his proposal. First of all he is willing to offer a NAP for a length of time to be agreed upon. Second he is willing to offer a palace mana (nature, spirit or water) for ten turns at a time of your choosing. Finally he is willing to enter into a "most favoured trading nation" agreement with you, which means that provided that you can match another civs resource trade offer that I'm willing to accept (e.g. if they offer health for health and you do the same, actual resource not neccessarily matching, just effect) then I will be obliged to accept your offer first. Of course you will be promtly informed as to any offers I am potentially party to.

Mise le meas,
Fr. Dearg Doom.

P.S. ending greeting in Irish. And apologies for the flowery language, any time I write anything remotely formal I just can't stop with it.

The reason why I'm willing to go so far with this arrangement is twofold 1) I've no interest in settling south of the Dragon Bones site while the Grigori are in play, it's too dangerous, while the Dragon Bones site is a strong defensive location with a second line behind it, and 2) I'm increasingly tempted by a turn 100ish strike on the Grigori to eliminate or at least cripple them. This will take time to build up my forces and hit hard. As said above if given sufficient time the Grigori can build a formidable Adventurer army, but early on are weak.

[Ravus Sol]

East! For The Hill giant location I think you have West and East mixed up in the letter. Everyone does this when rushed for diplomacy (Myself included)

Your units are certainly getting around. Any particular reason you decided to be nice and not pop the skeleton barrow?

[Brian Shanahan]

East! For The Hill giant location I think you have West and East mixed up in the letter. Everyone does this when rushed for diplomacy (Myself included)

Your units are certainly getting around. Any particular reason you decided to be nice and not pop the skeleton barrow?

Thanks for the East. I have a problem even when not rushed, almost like I'm positionally challenged.

Well being nice to expect niceness back, plus a few skellies early on could cripple the Grigori, plus I think pegging Mackoti as a psycho is pretty accurate in-game.

[Brian Shanahan]

Sent the message. It may come across as me being too needy, but I thought it worth the effort.

[Brian Shanahan]

Turn played, released lizard from lair, met Kyan, report tomorrow. Boring turn really.

[Brian Shanahan]

Ok it looks like I won't be playing the save tonight, so I'll post turn 13.

I did a little exploring, and my scout was a very naughty boy, indeed:

He popped the lizard from the dungeon. Very naughty. As you can see I also met a certain Clown Prince/ess (it seems that Keelyn is gender challenged this game). Diplo later.

West went a bit more easliy:

A hut, a hut, my kingdom for a hut!

And now for the demographics:

It turns out that Kyan is the one with the big power increase. I'll quizz him on it shortly.
Somebody has popped borders, out to 37 tiles (complete land goes 9, 21, I'm not sure, but I believe 37 gets full land). Nothing else of note here.

On scores Acalostas got another tech, and it seems Gaspar did too.

Finally the diplomacy:

[COLOR="RoyalBlue"]Heus Nautat!
To the court of the gender confused emo girl,

Greetings from the court of the bleach drinking hairy priest. (guess who?) Now our "sainted" leader is too busy (drank a bottle of Castrol GT on Friday and is still hungover), so it falls to me Fr. Dearg Doom, Grand Vizier and chief Confessor of the Elohim Theocracy to convey our salutations.

In the interests of friendship and future relations *heh, heh, heh*, please let me offer you some information. Your scout 2NE of mine is almost in a direct Westerly line from the (ever grumpy) Grigori, 7 tiles should get you contact. However there are two problems, there is a mountain 3W of you, directly south of it is a Lizard my scout popped, and directly north is a Skellington barrow. I'm hoping it will produce some skellingtons to distract the Grigori, that's why it's still there.

I'm a nice bit north-west of the Grigori, protected by mountains, so you'll not get to me soon.

Do you smell the stench of burning rubber. Oh God! our leader has stolen the car and is making for The Holy Stone of Clonrichert! Must rush, see you soon.

Yours sincerley,

Fr. Dearg Doom,
Parochial house,
Craggy Island,
Somewhere off the West Coast.[/COLOR]

Kyan's response:

[COLOR="Yellow"]Salut!
Well met!
Ahoy!
A thousand greetings upon you my (horse) lord and welcome to the Balseraph Palace. Please, muddy your shoes by the door, pick up a hat from the rack and come on through. We have much to discuss...

As you step inside, what can only be described as 'music' begins to play quietly in the background.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5lGuL7N25I

Unfortunately, ill tidings have met the Balseraph civilization recently. Our Lord Perpentach is missing, Keelyn is ill with grief or eaten by demons. All i know is that when i try to open her bedroom door, flames llick their way down the corridor and the urge for suicide becomes almost uncontrollable. Ahem, maybe we shouldn't be worrying our fine guests with some dim tidings? Come, come, for we have temporary leaders! May i please introduce:

The formerly disposed and temporarily in charge again until Perpentach returns or Keelyn stops being emo- Clown Kings!

<snip>ASCII drawing of clown</snip>

Yes, that wasn't quite as impressive as it looked in my head. Nothing is nowadays. Maybe i should get a smoke machine? Hang on, whats one of those? Change our research path immediately, we don't want a calendar- we want smoke and mirrors dammit! Obviously, as you can tell from our appearance, we want nothing but peace between our fine nations. Come, let us discuss how best we might entertain one another...

Firstly, thank you for such wonderful information. I can only assume the Grigori are actually west of Smiley Jim rather than east. Years of putting up with the harlequins are riddles at the palace have led me to beleive this one was unintentional of course. I have met the Horse folk already and am happy to advise you taht the best route to meet them is to head north east from your current location, dodging around the local fauna and flora if possible. I would be happy to arrange a meet with the Hippus should you wish it, however i must warn you, the barbarians are rampant this time of year. I've been forced to slay five humanoids already! Who knew clowns would fight so darned well?

It's past my bedtime, so i'll be off for now. I hope to speak again soon though, maybe i can visit your palace for a tipple or two? That Castrol sure sounds intriguing.

Yours,

Kyan
Clown King[/COLOR]

I'll give Kyan a light grilling over the power discrepancy, something along the lines of:

To my darling little Emo-Girl,

Please accept my apologies, yes I did mean west and not east. We are having a discussion with the Grigori about something to our east (your west) and unfortunately the thinking has spilled over.

But onto more delicate matters, I noticed that someone recently received a ~15K power jump on the demographics, and when I met you last turn I was suprised at the height of your power graph. Could, perhaps, a mercenary have joined your quest in finding the whereabouts of your recently departed father?

And if you could pass on some information about the fate of my scout I would be greatful. If he survives the Lizard attack I would deem that he performed his Hero-Feat and would be worthy of a name.

And also my thanks for the directions to the Horse Lords, if possible I will contact them, though it will surely be boring (there's only so much you can say about horses).

Yours thinking of changing the rule of Celibacy,
Fr. Dearg Doom.

[Brian Shanahan]

First I sent the last message to Kyan last night. No reply as of yet.

Second the turn:
My scout died on the interturn, nameless, so no more scouting there.

My first warrior is taking a detour down south by the silks to the capital's east, to see if there is a corridor to Grigori lands.

And my new warrior popped the hut for 20ish gold:

Only one screenshot as no major new discoveries.

Demographics:

Someone grew a pop this turn, so now there is only the one civ which hasn't produced any growth. I wonder is someone going with worker first. In BtS it would be a smart move (not the smartest in MP due to only one unit start) but in FfH warrior first is nearly always best.