Removing spawning altogether is going to present a lot of challenges.
Giants are better than equivalent units. Better units tend to cost more.
Jotnar cities are worse than other cities. Bad cities have bad production.
So you end up with a state where Jotnar need to spend immense amounts of time producing units, falling behind constantly, and if they ever solve their problem they break the game - and there are certainly ways to force production into overdrive.
Nothing force me to make the jotnar unit cost more, even if they're stronger. I could even make them cost less if the Jotnar are too weak. The only problem would be enemy leader with the conquerer trait. (Conquered city build their original civilization units and building instead of their own) So I would have to find a way around that. Maybe force them to use the district mechanic or keep the giant cost higher and give the traditions tech a 50% production bonus. Again, balancing issue. I will tweak some number and other small thing to balance them when everything will be implanted.
Spawning is a good mechanic for the Jotnar because it keeps the player from being deadlocked making the next giant *and* because it controls the overall availability of giants so they can't just steamroll surrounding civilizations.
I never said spawning is a bad mechanic (even if it's currently too random and give too much unit) but it implies that there's no other giants in their town. Since the new mechanic I will give them make giant city, It would feel strange to keep it. There's already two other civilization that spawn free unit in different way. I think they do it better both in mechanic and in lore.
My suggestion would be to borrow the Grigori adventurer mechanics and have Jotnar districts SLOW the count - maybe the Palace adds, say, ten ticks (towards 100 for a new Citizen/Warrior that needs to be fully upgraded) and each District removes one. Pagan Temple-equivalent adds two ticks, health buildings add two ticks each, their unique buildings each add four ticks. They'll get their first spawn somewhere around turn 13 and then future spawns will get slower and slower unless they take steps to manage it. Perhaps a civic or tech or Wonder that reduces District drain to .5 ticks for the mid-game.
That would make them even weaker. The grigory spawn mechanic is wonderfull but they need to build around it. Cottage and farm become homestead. Each one grant a specialist to their city that give more point toward the next unit each turn. They have building increasing the adventurer spawn rate. Even their world spell help the mechanic. And they don't spawn a lot of adventurer. I think they usually got ~5 by turn 200 (when played by the comp). Like I just said, I'd like to remove the spawn mechanic completely.
Here each idea with the reasons I'm not satisfied with them
Make every jotnar unit available to build
- Uninspired
Make only an upgradable basic giant unit available to build
- Hard to explain lore wise (why can't they train their unit correctly)
- Would come a time when they'll be able to spawn them too quick unless I program something around that
- Costly, and the jotnar will already have enough research and economic problem
Give each city a hidden counter that go up by its population each turn. When the counter reach a certain number, the city would spawn a new giant.
- It's still a spawning mechanic
Units built by the jotnar could have a random race attribued when they spawn. Probably with a code that would replace it with another one (Troll trailblazer, Hurlar...etc)
- Erratic, even if balanced perfectly in some game they could end too strong or too weak due to luck.
- Make it interesting to delete weaker unit on creation to lower military upkeep cost
Now that I think about it. Both problem of that last option could be resolved by making each unit built lower the chance to get another one of the same race. I think I just found the mechanic I want to use. Thanks
