Jotnar Balance and Discussion

[fothal]

I like the changes to the Jotnar! A few balance issues I have encountered though:

1. Sea Farms are highly unbalancing. The extra commerce is the primary culprit. I'm also using the Kelp mod, which makes the food production a bit too high as well. I would either eliminate the food bonus provided by the lighthouse or decrease the frequency of kelp.

2. I have not yet found a way to create fishing boats (sea farm) in an ocean tile. This means that whales and many pearl resources are unavailable.

3. Old giantkin units with a "kindred" promotion are a bit too powerful, especially at high difficulty levels where there are large numbers of barbarians to fight (and gain experience from). Wisdom of the Ancients then makes this even worse. These Tier-2 units are now level 22 and are nearly unstoppable. I shudder to think how powerful they will be when upgraded to the endgame units!

4. The ability to create forts using trolls is far too powerful. I had two trolls run around the map creating forts in strategic locations, then had a Stonekin giant follow later to be certain they are all on top of hills, and eventually give them all Stormkin. Barbarians are no longer a threat, invading armies never reach my borders, and I can even sometimes box in a civilization by placing forts narrow passages (peninsula entrances or between mountains). On top of all that, I also have new ranged units (Hurler) available any time I want be creating a city from a fort, then simply abandoning it to the barbarians (or guarding it if I want the city).

A lot of great ideas (some really cool ideas, I might add!), they just need to be toned down a bit in places.

Also, just one random thought on cities which occurred to me:

The decreased plot radius doesn't seem logical to me. Giants should be able to travel further to work the fields. Wouldn't it make more sense to allow cities of radius 3, but then make each point of population cost twice the food (4 instead of 2)? Perhaps also add +200% maintenance for number of cities? Just a thought, not certain how it would play out.

 

[Darksaber1]

2. Yu can't make fishing boats, build sea farms on the resource. If their out to sea, you need to wait 'till Astronamy.
3. A bit overpowed, but other wise working properly. After all, imagine what would happen if you got unluky, and one of those units died..
5. The plot radius is reduced because it's supposed to repesent the small polulation of a Steading. And now, balance.

 

[fothal]

2. Yu can't make fishing boats, build sea farms on the resource. If their out to sea, you need to wait 'till Astronamy.
3. A bit overpowed, but other wise working properly. After all, imagine what would happen if you got unluky, and one of those units died..
5. The plot radius is reduced because it's supposed to repesent the small polulation of a Steading. And now, balance.

On sea farms....I did wait until astronomy, and cannot build them on ocean tiles using a Troll Hunter with Seakin.

 

[Vermicious Knid]

I like the changes to the Jotnar! A few balance issues I have encountered though:

1. Sea Farms are highly unbalancing. The extra commerce is the primary culprit. I'm also using the Kelp mod, which makes the food production a bit too high as well. I would either eliminate the food bonus provided by the lighthouse or decrease the frequency of kelp.

2. I have not yet found a way to create fishing boats (sea farm) in an ocean tile. This means that whales and many pearl resources are unavailable.

3. Old giantkin units with a "kindred" promotion are a bit too powerful, especially at high difficulty levels where there are large numbers of barbarians to fight (and gain experience from). Wisdom of the Ancients then makes this even worse. These Tier-2 units are now level 22 and are nearly unstoppable. I shudder to think how powerful they will be when upgraded to the endgame units!

4. The ability to create forts using trolls is far too powerful. I had two trolls run around the map creating forts in strategic locations, then had a Stonekin giant follow later to be certain they are all on top of hills, and eventually give them all Stormkin. Barbarians are no longer a threat, invading armies never reach my borders, and I can even sometimes box in a civilization by placing forts narrow passages (peninsula entrances or between mountains). On top of all that, I also have new ranged units (Hurler) available any time I want be creating a city from a fort, then simply abandoning it to the barbarians (or guarding it if I want the city).

A lot of great ideas (some really cool ideas, I might add!), they just need to be toned down a bit in places.

Also, just one random thought on cities which occurred to me:

The decreased plot radius doesn't seem logical to me. Giants should be able to travel further to work the fields. Wouldn't it make more sense to allow cities of radius 3, but then make each point of population cost twice the food (4 instead of 2)? Perhaps also add +200% maintenance for number of cities? Just a thought, not certain how it would play out.

1. Consensus seems to be that sea farms are a bit OP. They will be rebalanced in the next patch.
2. I will check on that
3. Old giants are going to be brutal. That is why religious heroes are blocked, for example. Spawn rate is going to be reduced slightly, so that should help.
4. This was intended. I can reduce work-rate on trolls if I hear a consensus that this is OP.
Plot radius: Yeah...I hear you. This is a game balance thing. Various mechanics of the Jotnar encourage you to spam cities...other mechanics punish you for it. My goal is to make this tricky to balance as you play. If Revolutions was incorporated I would punish spam with an increased likelihood of cities becoming independent...but that will have to wait.

 

[Breez]

The plot radius is one of the off sets to some of the other power issues. Lack of religious heros is another.

Personally I think the 1st citizen per city should come at the current rate. The 2nd should be 1/2 as likely, the 3rd 1/4th the current rate and the 4th 1/8th the current rate. (or what ever)

I think it is important to have some citizens, but I am maxing out the number of citizens I can have VERY fast it seems. Loosing a Giant isn't that big of deal to me as every city has 1 or 2 citizens "cooking" in them. Getting older and gaining exp but just sitting there idol adding hammers to the city. I lose a combat unit? No problem let me go upgrade the 150 year old citizen that had 60xp (or whatever) but is still level 1. No problem at all customizing it to fit the role I just lost. Another citizen will be along to replace him soon enough.

1: I think reducing the frequency of kelp is fine, but removing the guaranteed food from lighthouse is a terrible idea.

4: Yeah Trolls building forts or even roads seems wrong.

I think I will put forward another balance suggestion... IF possible change the provided by a giant in the city to be based on its age. Like:
0 at 0-50
+1 at 50-100
+2 at 100-200
+3 at 201-300
+4 301 ->

(or what ever the age breaks are currently)

Would provide incentive to keep some experienced citizens at home to counter the incentive to send them off to fight. I find my older units going off to war and my younger ones working at home till it is their turn for combat duty.

 

[Darksaber1]

Well, currantly you get at least 2 hammers, so your numbers would need to be rebalanced, but I like the idea.

 

[Breez]

right, I was thinking along the lines of The older ones providing more hammers would off set the younger ones giving none. I would say 1-100 giving 1 would have the same rough effect though. Either would be fine to me.

I will be honest, I like the race but seems too OP to me in general. Just needs slight toning down. Hence the suggestion of lowing giant spawn rate, but not strength of Giants. I wonder if the way to do that would be...


0.00 to 1.00 Giants per city = spawn rate of 1.0(X)
1.01 to 2.01 Giants per city = spawn rate of .75(X)
2.00 to 3.01 Giants per city = spawn rate of .5(X)
3.00 to 4.00 Giants per city = spawn rate of .25(X)

 

[Vermicious Knid]

Yeah, it is very possible to tone down the spawn rate. Easy, even.

The equation right now is:

iGiantSpawnChance = 10 * (iMaxGiants - iCurrentNumberOfGiants)

The max giants is 4 + (6*number of cities). So a Jotnar civ with 6 cities could have up to 40 units with Jot Giantkin. Your spawn rate is obviously going to taper off drastically as you approach that max.

I'm happy with the maximum number...so the thing to change is the constant. I might adjust it all the way down to 5 and see how it plays.

As for the artisan bonus...I was already considering dialing it back to 1 hammer. Having that number increase with age would be easy...just copy and paste work really.

The sea farm issue...it will be rebalanced. I will probably roll the things I want from seafaring (work sea tiles immediately, see pearls) into Traditions and slightly reduce the food they get from sea tiles. Should end up being about as valuable food-wise as a normal farm. Ah, and to answer an earlier question...Oceans are currently excluded as an eligible tile for sea farms. I will fix that.

The troll building thing I like. It is necessary for a number of reasons. Sounds like work rate needs to be dialed back though. I'll probably gimp their workrates in general and have them increase with age.

 

[fothal]

1. Consensus seems to be that sea farms are a bit OP. They will be rebalanced in the next patch.
2. I will check on that
3. Old giants are going to be brutal. That is why religious heroes are blocked, for example. Spawn rate is going to be reduced slightly, so that should help.
4. This was intended. I can reduce work-rate on trolls if I hear a consensus that this is OP.
Plot radius: Yeah...I hear you. This is a game balance thing. Various mechanics of the Jotnar encourage you to spam cities...other mechanics punish you for it. My goal is to make this tricky to balance as you play. If Revolutions was incorporated I would punish spam with an increased likelihood of cities becoming independent...but that will have to wait.

The plot radius being for balance makes sense. Thanks for the design information.

I like the idea of decreasing the work rate for trolls. That should balance out the ability very nicely.

 

[Breez]

Yeah, it is very possible to tone down the spawn rate. Easy, even.

The equation right now is:

iGiantSpawnChance = 10 * (iMaxGiants - iCurrentNumberOfGiants)

The max giants is 4 + (6*number of cities). So a Jotnar civ with 6 cities could have up to 40 units with Jot Giantkin. Your spawn rate is obviously going to taper off drastically as you approach that max.

I'm happy with the maximum number...so the thing to change is the constant. I might adjust it all the way down to 5 and see how it plays.

Wow that is more than I realized. I thought it was 4 per city. Period. 4+(6/city) means 10 for the 1st city. that explains my confusion earlier in this tread.

As for the artisan bonus...I was already considering dialing it back to 1 hammer. Having that number increase with age would be easy...just copy and paste work really

.

I think balancing it is the important part, I agree with the reduction overall personally. That is why I suggest zero hammers to start with to balance out the increase late.

The troll building thing I like. It is necessary for a number of reasons. Sounds like work rate needs to be dialed back though. I'll probably gimp their workrates in general and have them increase with age.

That should work fine.

 

[2Hydroclopse]

A curious thought: would it be possible -in respect to the Jotnar specifically- to increase the minimal distance between cities to 5 or 8 -perhaps based on map size?- and make their culture stronger against enemy culture(2*, 3*)?

I think that might be an interesting/awesome flavor tweak; though, I am not sure how hard that would be to implement.

2* When enemy culture would attack preexisting Jotnar culture that is. That might be the hardest part, knowing which culture came first.
3* After some thought, perhaps their culture could auto-win against enemy culture (or something close to auto win anyway), and have the Jotnar culture expand slowly -expanding out every other culture tier starting after the first expansion, or something along those lines-.

 

[fothal]

I've played several games as the Jotnar now (Great race!) and changed my opinion on a few items:

I no longer believe giants are over powered when highly promoted, but they get to that point a little bit too quickly compared to the units of other races. No clue what to do about this and the timing isn't *too* bad, so I'd be tempted to leave things as they are.

Great Commanders: They are too common for the Jotnar. After my first war I have enough great commanders to assign one to every single unit, including my large stacks of thralls sitting on cities. I typically could assign 3 great commanders for every giantkin combat unit. This is ridiculous and greatly diminishes the meaning of great commanders compared to their importance to other races. I'd also be tempted to make great commanders for the Jotnar giants so they can pass through mountains. Might create a new variation on Giantkin that doesn't give offensive bonuses with age.

Sea units: It seems a bit odd that a unit which boards a Wild Troll or Reaver can stay on when the Troll/Reaver passes over land, but cannot board that unit if on land. Any chance of either allowing boarding in any location, or forcing carried units to get off on land?

Finally, a random thought which might or might not be reasonable, balanced, and/or possible: What about allowing all giants to carry a single unit of a smaller race (e.g. humans, elves, dwarves, etc.), but not giants (unless a Reaver, etc.)?

 

[Valkrionn]

Hmm... Maybe decrease GC rate on Traditions?

 

[Breez]

Personally I think al Great Commanders come too fast. It is like they don't ramp up. The 9th comes just as easy as the 1st.

It is glaring for the giants as they tend to have less troops.

 

[Vermicious Knid]

Yeah, noting unique to the Jotnar with GC. They do tend to be in situations that lend themselves to GC spawn due to the way they fight. They have small armies with very high defense ratings, so they tend to sit and let wave after wave of warriors/hunters/whatever the AI is spamming crash into them and die. Once the AI runs out of gas you advance and crush cities.

...at least that's the way I do it.