Jotnar 1.0 (almost) Bugthread

[Arctic Circle]

To start it off.

For some reason, the Jotnars unique wonder have dissapeared. Reported by my wife.

 

[heisenberg]

I'm not sure if its a patch F issue (because i just patched it up before installing Jotnar), i've been getting occasional CTDs, somewhat often while loading saved games, and sometimes midgame.

Ah, and it'll be nice if speakers automatically get promoted to their respective state religions--early on its very hard to find a citizen with the state religion to upgrade to speakers so that they can utilize their divine+channeling promos (a catch 22 that you need speakers to widely spread the religion in the first place)
Makes thematic sense too that the "priest" going around converting all the other Jotnar to his beliefs would at least follow it in the first place XD

edit: messed around abit more with the Jotnar, found a few other quirks

Troll hunters, though gaining Loyalty, still remain crazed. Is that intentional? IIRC loyalty simply kills off your unit when it was supposed to go barb.
Troll hunters are also unable to upgrade to their ranger equivalents--not sure if this is intentional because cyclops could be a whole different race altogether, but... you could promote your initial citizen either way couldn't ya? XD
Troll hunters are unable to promote to their druid equivalents, which is another natural promotion path for generic civs.
Paladins and Eidolons--I'm unsure if you have removed them, but it certainly weakens the good/evil alignments a fair bit without them.

Its interesting to note though, that the roles of immortals and phalanxes were swapped here--phlanxes lost their city attack, gained 30% city defense, as well as upped to 16 defence, whereas immortals gained overall strength.
I'm not exactly sure if giving immortals channeling III capabilities might be slightly OP though--even channeling II alone means an immortal can bombard, maelstrom, and wreck cities on their own, on top of having immortality.
But wow, a potential strength 26 defense phalanx sitting in a city and gaining 30% bonus together with usual city defensive bonuses... thats very much worse than trying to kill Acheron lol~
Though undoubtedly they'll be a pain to lose, needing a giantkin legend, and a great commander.

 

[Arctic Circle]

I'm not sure if its a patch F issue (because i just patched it up before installing Jotnar), i've been getting occasional CTDs, somewhat often while loading saved games, and sometimes midgame.

I can't say much about this. If you can find something specific I can look into it.

Ah, and it'll be nice if speakers automatically get promoted to their respective state religions--early on its very hard to find a citizen with the state religion to upgrade to speakers so that they can utilize their divine+channeling promos (a catch 22 that you need speakers to widely spread the religion in the first place)
Makes thematic sense too that the "priest" going around converting all the other Jotnar to his beliefs would at least follow it in the first place XD

Speakers aka Vala and Skald are mages and archmages. Mouth of the divine can spread your state religion - without them having the actual religion themselves. All that should be required is that you changed state religion and that the religion does not exist in the city they are currently standing in. The 'spell' are never visible unless the conditions are met.

edit: messed around abit more with the Jotnar, found a few other quirks

Troll hunters, though gaining Loyalty, still remain crazed. Is that intentional? IIRC loyalty simply kills off your unit when it was supposed to go barb.

Ooops. I thought that Loyalty made Crazed units immune to going barbarian. THIS NEEDS TO BE FIXED!!!

Troll hunters are also unable to upgrade to their ranger equivalents--not sure if this is intentional because cyclops could be a whole different race altogether, but... you could promote your initial citizen either way couldn't ya? XD
Troll hunters are unable to promote to their druid equivalents, which is another natural promotion path for generic civs.
Paladins and Eidolons--I'm unsure if you have removed them, but it certainly weakens the good/evil alignments a fair bit without them.

Trolls cannot upgrade to Cyclops, this is intentional. But you can take a 'Jotnar Adult' and choose for him to be a Cyclop. Then its a dead end. This is why I'm giving some extra candy to the Cyclops later.

Trolls should be able to upgrade to Druid, or rather UU Woodfather. THIS NEEDS FIXING!!

Yes. All religious units are removed, only one exist, mouth of divine that you can get with Priesthood. Str 6 -> 12 with Channeling III and Spirit as only sphere.

Its interesting to note though, that the roles of immortals and phalanxes were swapped here--phlanxes lost their city attack, gained 30% city defense, as well as upped to 16 defence, whereas immortals gained overall strength.
I'm not exactly sure if giving immortals channeling III capabilities might be slightly OP though--even channeling II alone means an immortal can bombard, maelstrom, and wreck cities on their own, on top of having immortality.
But wow, a potential strength 26 defense phalanx sitting in a city and gaining 30% bonus together with usual city defensive bonuses... thats very much worse than trying to kill Acheron lol~
Though undoubtedly they'll be a pain to lose, needing a giantkin legend, and a great commander.

Please compare a Titan to a Vampire Lord at endgame.. not OP really. But the Jotnar do excel in a few really brutal units. And it should be their strength. And remember that you will rarely be able to top-dog with max number of units of every 4-tier as Jotnar. If your opponents are clever at all, they will not let you max out in number of units and let them all age until they .. smash stuff.

Remember that Giantkin units do not get fortification bonus. This is an real difference when you look at combat odds.

And, Titans, honestly.. they should be dangerous even to a dragon or an avatar one on one (I am going to give them a bonus vs Avatars). Not equal, but still a threat.

As I said, I am looking forward to see how Jotnar handles in PvP. And I am willing to try to take them on, or play them, if anyone wants to try it. Thing is that in most PvP's the game is mostly resolved rather early.. or so its been when I played.. and Jotnar is a late-game civ.

 

[Arctic Circle]

A thought. How about giving Cyclops +30% vs Heroes? Honestly, all heroes seem to bump into cyclops in the old roman-greek stories and it would justify choosing a dead-end unit (cannot upgrade to 4-tier units).

 

[xienwolf]

Loyalty right now removes itself if the unit attempts to go Barbarian. If you were designing a unit to start with Crazed and loyalty to get the Crazed benefits without the chance to go barbarian, you would be better off creating a new promotion which is a copy of crazed minus the Barb chance (call it wild or something?)

 

[heisenberg]

oops i wasnt referring to the mage line units, was referring to the priest UU mouth of the divine.
They perhaps ought to automatically follow the state religion? Makes sense thematically, and it allows them to actually use their divine promo.

oh and one more thing... I killed Egrass off but I was unable to build the shrine of the champion. =(


mmm... played a few more games with the Jontar, I suppose this should be placed under the actual Jontar thread but just a few other quick thoughts about them

* 1/2 thralls are... mmm... somewhat lacking. against a human player who picks up just a shock I, they make total mincemeat of them, leaving the only other defensive unit early on being the wild troll, which cannot be build and is severely limited in numbers--ie. against a determined war/axe rush the Jontar has effectively no defense.
The earliest effective giant unit would possibly be the Hunter, since Hill giants require too many techs, but hunting+lodge come in way too late to be useful, though actually surviving till them makes the giant hunters hard to stop.
suggestion: perhaps leave thralls at 2/3 (aka pacifist elohim wars) and increase the hammerage to fit--still too weak to effectively attack, but at least does a respectable job at defending.

* I suggest changing the philosophical trait on the Mother leader. Being capped at 8 pop/city, there is absolutely no way the Jontar can pursue an effective SE--philospohical trait would be useful in maybe popping the first 2 GPs, but thats about it.
You might say that the House of Ancestors UB would add to the GPP, but adding a 5% boost and 3% per other House bonus, with say 20 other cities with houses (quite a generous figure already), would mean a 65% GPP boost.
With 8 pop a city and say leaving 3 specialists, even with philo+65%, that is still not going to pop out the say 4-5th GP anytime soon.

*I understand that the paladins/eidolons were removed because the Mouths of the Divine are already pretty strong units. However, leaving the Druids there whilst removing the good/evil divine units seriously weakens the good/evil Jontar leaders compared to the neutral leader.
IMHO, RoK and AV are the only 2 religions that are really practical for the Jontar due to their gold/beaker bonuses per city respectively, since the Jontar has to spam out numerous cities like the Chivslev. And running either of these religions would not allow the good leader to return back to neutral (unless you do the CoE > RoK shift).

 

[Arctic Circle]

Thank you for all the feedback. Keep up the good work.

oops i wasnt referring to the mage line units, was referring to the priest UU mouth of the divine.
They perhaps ought to automatically follow the state religion? Makes sense thematically, and it allows them to actually use their divine promo.

YEPP FIXA!!!

oh and one more thing... I killed Egrass off but I was unable to build the shrine of the champion. =(

I have no idea how this works.. anyone?

mmm... played a few more games with the Jontar, I suppose this should be placed under the actual Jontar thread but just a few other quick thoughts about them

* 1/2 thralls are... mmm... somewhat lacking. against a human player who picks up just a shock I, they make total mincemeat of them, leaving the only other defensive unit early on being the wild troll, which cannot be build and is severely limited in numbers--ie. against a determined war/axe rush the Jontar has effectively no defense.
The earliest effective giant unit would possibly be the Hunter, since Hill giants require too many techs, but hunting+lodge come in way too late to be useful, though actually surviving till them makes the giant hunters hard to stop.
suggestion: perhaps leave thralls at 2/3 (aka pacifist elohim wars) and increase the hammerage to fit--still too weak to effectively attack, but at least does a respectable job at defending.

This is one of the Jotnar problems. And civs should have weaknesses. I will most likely possibly make the thralls into 1/3 's or increase their city defence bonus. Or both.

* I suggest changing the philosophical trait on the Mother leader. Being capped at 8 pop/city, there is absolutely no way the Jontar can pursue an effective SE--philospohical trait would be useful in maybe popping the first 2 GPs, but thats about it.
You might say that the House of Ancestors UB would add to the GPP, but adding a 5% boost and 3% per other House bonus, with say 20 other cities with houses (quite a generous figure already), would mean a 65% GPP boost.
With 8 pop a city and say leaving 3 specialists, even with philo+65%, that is still not going to pop out the say 4-5th GP anytime soon.

Counter-idea. How about increasing the GP bonus from House of Ancestor UB? Or create another extra UB at some third-tier tech?

If not Philosophical? Defensive? Creative?

*I understand that the paladins/eidolons were removed because the Mouths of the Divine are already pretty strong units. However, leaving the Druids there whilst removing the good/evil divine units seriously weakens the good/evil Jontar leaders compared to the neutral leader.
IMHO, RoK and AV are the only 2 religions that are really practical for the Jontar due to their gold/beaker bonuses per city respectively, since the Jontar has to spam out numerous cities like the Chivslev. And running either of these religions would not allow the good leader to return back to neutral (unless you do the CoE > RoK shift).

You should be able to build Woodfathers (UU Druids for Jotnar) regardless of alignment?

 

[heisenberg]

This is one of the Jotnar problems. And civs should have weaknesses. I will most likely possibly make the thralls into 1/3 's or increase their city defence bonus. Or both.

Yea that should help a bit, even a 2/3 unit is practically crippled on the offensive side

Counter-idea. How about increasing the GP bonus from House of Ancestor UB? Or create another extra UB at some third-tier tech?

If not Philosophical? Defensive? Creative?

That could be possible, but as I mentioned in my previous post, having an 8 pop cap basically means its quite impractical to go for a specialist economy. A decent GP farm should be able to accommodate quite a few more specialists, so as it currently is, there isn't much of an issue getting that first 2-3 GPs, but beyond that is really difficult and not really worth the effort.

The other issue of course is the lack of raw production in each city, making it also impractical to go for wonders at higher difficulties, so thats the other source of GPP gone.

Unless you meant that perhaps changing the GP bonus to a raw GPP per House built instead of a percentage, but I'm not sure whether that would be broken.
ie something like 1 GPP in each city for each House built. With say 20 cities+Houses that would provide 20 GPP in the city, which would be a more respectable figure.
Maybe if its too great a bonus for such a cheap building the tech prereq/hammer cost could be adjusted too. (Just tossing some ideas about )

Otherwise if Philo is not really a useful trait, I'm not too keen on either Creative or Defensive either lol, though they may be thematically correct for a good, "motherly" leader
The Jotnar being able to only work the first ring and getting free 50 culture pops once it hits 8 pop doesn't really need the creative trait.
Defensive-wise its not that bad, just that as a personal preference I try to -always- go mounted when using defensive leaders to bring out the synergy between the extra 10% withdrawal and flanking promos. Giants... eat horses instead of riding them
Perhaps something like Charismatic (though the bonus happiness is wasted) could be useful, and somewhat different from the other 2 leaders too.

You should be able to build Woodfathers (UU Druids for Jotnar) regardless of alignment?

Only neutral generic civs can build Druids in base FfH/FF. Good/Evil aligned civs can only build Paladins/Eidolons respectively.
I must admit I haven't tried building Woodfathers as good or evil alignments since I assumed the same for the Jotnar. So if you have tweaked the build prereqs for the Woodfather UU I apologize if I've jumped the gun at pointing it out.


Oh and with respect to the Shrine of the Champion, I must admit I haven't built that in a while as well so I can't exactly recall if there's a prereq tech.
Since the only times I purposely kill my heroes off are when I play Dov/Clan when their early heroes get useless past midgame, but I haven't been using those civs much lately.

 

[Arctic Circle]

Yea that should help a bit, even a 2/3 unit is practically crippled on the offensive side

They are not supposed to be able to attack with Thralls. However I have rather early been able to charge with three Wild Trolls 4/3, whom can bombard, move across mountains and regenerate and are available without any special technology or buildings.

And Woodfather is its own unique unitclass, so it shouldn't be affected by the Druids restrictions.

Did I mention that Egrass can be upgraded to Titan if you keep him? High-level hero Titan with fire, sun, air, water and channeling III in end-game.

 

[Arctic Circle]

Ok.. I just realised. Make Mother Enningas Expansive instaed of Philosophical!!! Fix!!

 

[xienwolf]

There is a space in Python where all the civilization Heroes are listed. Never quite understood why since you could just ask CivilizationInfos for that bit of knowledge, but it is there regardless. I imagine that Shrine of the Champion might require that you are listed in that function.

 

[heisenberg]

yep, expansive would be a very nice trait when 040 is merged with FF giving 100% to settlers.

Lol, I didn't know Egrass could become a titan , when his work was done blazing jungles and springing deserts I tried to get him killed for the shrine

 

[Arctic Circle]

There is a space in Python where all the civilization Heroes are listed. Never quite understood why since you could just ask CivilizationInfos for that bit of knowledge, but it is there regardless. I imagine that Shrine of the Champion might require that you are listed in that function.

Interesting. I'll check it out, but I won't be doing any modding until January.