Kunningas - Giant civ, feedback, help and opinions treasured.

[Arctic Circle]

Ok, I have decided to give it a try. Expect a minimum of effort on a weekly basis however so that progress will be truly sluggish. Anyone that wants to contribute are wellcome to do so.

It have basis in this thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=272801

I might take myself water over my head here, and if I am drowning i'll let you know.

The Fjalltindr is a name for all the giant races, originating from an common ancestor still a diverse and fractioned group. Held together in small family-groups called 'Homestaeds' each ruled by a matriark. While many of their kind survived the dark times, and some thrived during the age of ice, there were never many of them to begin with and they have few children. While their cities consists mostly of their own kind, quite a few thralls exists, never being equal with their masters but still held in high esteem and treated with care and respect.

Leaders:
Mother Enningas - Philosophical, Financial
Father Harklas - Aggressive, Charismatic

Basics:
Neutral, able to adopt any religion, most likely two leaders - one female (more builder) and one male (more offensive).

Ideas:
- I can see 3rd and 4th tier Giant units being able to go through unpassable terrain (mountains), and not suffering terrain movement modifiers.

- I can see many 3rd and 4th tier Giant units being able to 'bombard' cities.

UU's:

::Worker
Giant Thrall

::Recon
[Scout] - Scout Thrall
[Hunter] - Young Troll
[Ranger] - Troll

::Melee
[Warrior] - Thrall Militia
[Axemen] - Youngling (young giant)
[Champion] - Hill giant
[Immortal] - Titan

::Arcane
None?

::Mounted
None?

::Sea
[New] Lake Troll (fishing)
[New] Sea Troll (optics + elementalism + water mana)
[New] Neptune, a sea giant (Natures + elementalism + water mana)

??
Stone giant
Frost giant
Fire giant
Cloud giant
Storm giant

Buildings:
Homeseat - (masonry + code of laws) Reduces city maintence and distance etc
Alderssten - (masonry + arcane lore) Gives the spirit guide promotion to units built in city
Matriarks Hold - (masonry + philosophy) More or less an additional Granary-type building with a small bonus to culture

Wonders:
Harlings flesh - (masonry + elementalism) Gives increased chance of great eingeneer, some culture and marble + bronze

[thomas.berubeg]

Stone giant
Frost giant
Fire giant
Cloud giant
Storm giant

arcance Line?

[Jhoniten]

Oh you can go so many ways with this.
No need for a mounted line. Stables and such could be UB's with benefit of adding food. Giants eat a lot.

[Sureshot]

might be worth using ogre, ogre warchief, and stoneskin ogre graphics for some giants or trolls, and dont forget about wilboman graphics since hes an ice giant.

[Caradoc]

Are you sure 'Kunningas' doesn't sound a little too much like a certain sexual practice?

[DharmaMcLaren]

Ha, I thought the same! It sounds like it means "kings" in some Indo-European tongue, though.

Edit: Gah, "tongue". That was not an intentional pun, honest!

[Arctic Circle]

Yes.. Kunningas is so similar to XXX.

I'll reconsider the name. Don't want it refering to tipping the velvet.

[Tarquelne]

From the previous thread I liked the basic ideas with regard to food and expensive units. I also liked xienwolf's idea that'd result in many giant heroes. (Actually, I liked the result: many heroes.)

For the "Mounted" line you might give some giants something like the Centaur's "Sprint".

For the arcane line, perhaps:
Adept: Giant shaman. Doesn't upgrade to mage, archmage.

Mage: Directly buildable Stone, Frost, Fire, and Cloud giants. (For the elements.) Nice that they can be directly built. But more specialized and expensive than mages.

Archmage: At... err, Divine Essense? - the Shamans can upgrade to Storm Giants. Or something with Chan. 3.

[Arctic Circle]

Originally Posted by Tarquelne

From the previous thread I liked the basic ideas with regard to food and expensive units. I also liked xienwolf's idea that'd result in many giant heroes. (Actually, I liked the result: many heroes.)

For the "Mounted" line you might give some giants something like the Centaur's "Sprint".

For the arcane line, perhaps:
Adept: Giant shaman. Doesn't upgrade to mage, archmage.

Mage: Directly buildable Stone, Frost, Fire, and Cloud giants. (For the elements.) Nice that they can be directly built. But more specialized and expensive than mages.

Archmage: At... err, Divine Essense? - the Shamans can upgrade to Storm Giants. Or something with Chan. 3.

Mounted .. I am not sure. I also like the idea of nerfing some line, and mounted seems appropriate.

The arcane absolutly. Perhaps require Sorcery + Firemana to build a fire giant?

What do you think about the leaders?

[WCH]

1) Why are different species of giants in the same civilization?
2) Be careful to keep different species separate. Being able to upgrade a Storm Giant into a Cloud Giant or vice versa would be totally lame.
3) Don't use ages for tiers. Why do you need to research a new tech to upgrade a "young troll" into a "troll?" Unless you make it a tech that finally lets trolls live past a certain age or something...

[Tarquelne]

Originally Posted by Arctic Circle

Mounted .. I am not sure. I also like the idea of nerfing some line, and mounted seems appropriate.

Yeah, the Sprint thing is a real stretch.

Perhaps require Sorcery + Firemana to build a fire giant?

That'd be a good way to do it. Maybe require a certain building if you want to encourage/enforce specialization, but no-building required would work too.

What do you think about the leaders?

Look fine to me. I was surprised to see Charismatic in FFH2's traits file. (There isn't a FFH2 leader with the trait, is there?) Hmm... come to think of it the xp. discount might have been judged unbalancing in FFH2. And it may be. Well, it can be changed if so... or just worked into the overall balance for the giants. And maybe they just didn't feel like using it when the mod went to BTS.

[Tarquelne]

Originally Posted by WCH

1) Why are different species of giants in the same civilization?
2) Be careful to keep different species separate. Being able to upgrade a Storm Giant into a Cloud Giant or vice versa would be totally lame.

Are those different species? "Cloud" vs. "Storm" may be title, status, or profession. Significant physiological differences might just be indicative of breed, like with dogs or potatoes.

(The "barbarian" hill giants are the wolves?)

3) Don't use ages for tiers. Why do you need to research a new tech to upgrade a "young troll" into a "troll?" Unless you make it a tech that finally lets trolls live past a certain age or something...

I assume they need supportive clothing of increasing strength and quality, and thus ever-better technology.

[xienwolf]

Charismatic is used by quite a few leaders in FfH. Auric & Falamar are the ones which come to mind off the top of my head.

[Tarquelne]

Originally Posted by xienwolf

Charismatic is used by quite a few leaders in FfH. Auric & Falamar are the ones which come to mind off the top of my head.

Doh. I guess never happen to play Cha. leaders.

EDIT: Yep. The only other one to have it as a perm. trait is Sabby.

[WCH]

Originally Posted by Tarquelne

Are those different species? "Cloud" vs. "Storm" may be title, status, or profession. Significant physiological differences might just be indicative of breed, like with dogs or potatoes.

They're different species in D&D, on which FFH is (very) loosely based. Even if they were breeds, not species... different breeds requires different mating pools, ie, none of one group mate with any from any of the other groups for 30+ generations. If they're living in the same city and not being raised by masters who decide who they're allowed to breed with, that's highly unlikely.

It's like how humans have different races. Bushmen, sub-Saharan Africans, Europeans, South Asians, East Asians, Aborigines and Native Americans are all appreciably different from each of the others... but still all pretty similar: we can tell them apart, and there are definite physiological differences, such as in bone structure (Aborigines, for example, have a significantly thicker skull than other humans), but the differences within each race by far trump the differences between races (a European with an exceptionally thick skull probably has a thicker skull than an Aborigine with a thinner than average skull). And that's the kind of differentiation from one species with populations kept separate for 10,000+ years. Natural selection resulting in differentiation in action, but proven to be verrry slow.

Where evolution acts more quickly is in cases of artificial selection. Hence Darwin's stuff with pigeons and dogs (Darwin's argument essentially went that if we can breed pigeons into different species, or at least sub-species, nature should be able to as well, it'll just take longer). One study I found interesting was selective breeding of foxes for human socialization: after 25 generations of always selecting the most friendly towards humans, they started to actually fight each other for the affection of humans. So it works pretty quickly, but that's when selection for a certain trait is enforced, not let to run its course. Takes a long time and geographic separation for it to work naturally. And a city which contains each breed is the opposite of geographic separation.

So... I'd buy giants who live hundreds of miles apart from each other and inbreed a lot being significantly different than each other. I'd also buy it if you told me there was extreme social control and they were being bred for certain traits, not allowed to mate with just whomever. But not if they're a single species with any kind of liberty.

[Arctic Circle]

I will adopt fantasy-coherent-realism only when it suits my needs. Consider however that there are some rather complicated upgrades available already. There will not be a complete air-tight explanation to each sort of upgrade - while I will remember your opinion and make it so when it seems possible. When I get an XP working to do it on.

Races, yes. But basically the giant races have an common legendary mother and father - ancestor. Some mutual cultural common part that binds them together into one 'culture' or civilization. Look at the myriad of various races in the 'Clan' for example that in some cases can have less in common then an Frost and a Cloud giant.

Their cultural dogmas and necessities have created tabus for certain things, that is needed for survival. Also every Homestaed is focused around a specific family, that holds power very hard in their big hands based on a matriarchial structure.

[WCH]

Yeah. I'm all about internal consistency is all -- that there are giants, vampires and demons doesn't bug me, but researching a tech to have access to another breed that's supposedly been there the whole time is kind of strange. That's why FFH works better with single species civilizations... if you can't use a species until the endgame, where were they the rest of the time? And you can have two young trolls, created at the same time, but you spend money to upgrade one so it's no longer young? Just seems off to me.

Different kinds of giants working together makes sense on a certain level. Their history would need to explain it, though... the way I can see it making sense is that they lived separately and speciated, then got brought back together, but by this time they it was impossible for them to interbreed. You could even invoke the old standby, "a wizard did it," by saying that they were artificially split into separate species in an attempt to cause infighting, but their resolve was too strong and they cooperated anyway, not being as racist as the humans who thought doing this to them would be effective.

Okay, that all said, here's my suggestion: one breed for each line. Forget ages, make it class focused, same as ever. I'd also make it so that their tier 1 units are unusually strong but expensive to build, and remove a lot of the tier 4 stuff altogether. So...

Recon line:
Scout: Troll
Hunter: Troll Hunter
Ranger: Troll Ranger

Melee line:
Warrior: Stone Giant
Axeman: Stone Giant Warrior
Champion: Stone Giant Champion

Archery line:
Archer: Hill Giant
Longbowman: Rockthrower

Arcane line:
Adept: Cloud Giant
Mage: Cloud Giant Wizard
Archmage: Elder Cloud Giant

Mounted:
None

Would take a lot of work to balance properly, but it'd be pretty cool if you pulled it off. All the giants are pretty damn strong, so they'd have the most physically impressive arcanists in the game (ie, their adepts can actually win in melee. Balance it by making the mages and archmages not any physically stronger than the adepts). Main problem would be early game balance, as their tier 1 units should be much stronger than other civs. The idea is that removal of tier 4 for most upgrade lines would balance them out... instead of 4 superpowered National units of each type, they get as many stronger-than-normal tier 3 units as they can build.

[Arctic Circle]

We'll see what happens. However I have all intentions to make an attempt for a balanced civ. Fiddling with other civs is not included.

Justification is easy. For example the Fire Giants have kept a distance until the civilization have reached an understanding of their inner nature and can create structures that house their fiery flesh. Masonry + Elementalism + Fire mana.

[Caradoc]

Originally Posted by Arctic Circle

Yes.. Kunningas is so similar to XXX.

I'll reconsider the name. Don't want it refering to tipping the velvet.

How about 'Phallatians' ?

[Arctic Circle]

Ok, Can someone come up with a dirty word close to 'Fjalltindr'? Basically means 'Mountain tops' - as to remind of where the giants mutual ancestors came from.