Jotnar: Balance Discussion Thread

Or an Altar victory... Have you seen the House of the Ancestors? +5% :gp: in the city it's built in, and +3% :gp: in ALL OTHER CITIES. You won't have more than 2 or 3 specialists per city, put you'll have so many cities with that building that it doesn't matter. :eek:

Edit: What kind of flavour do you think they should have for their starting position? I say gain a bonus for plains hills, maybe mountains? Probably distance as well...
 
I LOVE the Jotnar. They are a great race and very unique.

Now, I have to say it: they are overpowered. A little in strenght, a lot in production. Everybody is talking here about immortal/deity difficulties, which are supposed to be hard. Take it down to prince/monarch and you'll see...

They don't need neither farms nor grasslands. At all. Windmills and watermills provide all the food they need to get to size 8. Only one farm is needed in cities without rivers (so a farm irrigated through construction, that is), never more than two (specially once you get sanitation).

Their commerce output is HUGE! Two of their leaders are financial, which basically affect all their windmills and watermills. Was someone ever short on money? Was I the only one who experienced an amazing research rate?

As they don't need that much food to make their cities grow to size 8, who wants grasslands? Take Ergrass and make everything plains for the extra hammer. So their hammer output will always be pretty good as well.

Then, at the same time, this is extremely easy because you can use every citizen to build improvements. In the practice, this means that any newly found city will see its surroundings improved in a few turns, and it will get to size 8 extremely soon. I never bothered to build a worker. Egrass and the citizens is all you need. And I mean like... REALLY fast. A city is founded and next turn it has 3 citizens working its tiles. I was discouraged from upgrading citizens as long as I didn't need to, so as to use them as workers.

So, to slow them down, citizens shouldn't be able to build improvements. Upgrading them to workers, as someone suggested, would make them more balanced. Then, the +1 extra commerce for their windmills and watermills should be taken out. Financial leaders will already take advantage of these improvements later (it's at engineering, I think, when they get +1 commerce).

Playing as them (on prince, I think), I got on top of the score pretty soon; then I killed the Mazatl with a few giants in a matter of some 20 turns. I only played until turn 250 or so, but I already owned the game. So I don't know how they do at later stages.

A question. I thought you could only have 1 mouth of the divine. Has that been changed? I could upgrade several citizens to that.

On the positive side, the citizen spawn rate seems fine to me. You don't get many, but they are extremely powerful in comparison to what other civs have at the same stage of development. Also, I see the Jotnar as an easy and very interesting race, quite good for newbies. Well, really, the Jotnar are amazing, but maybe too amazing...
 
... Am I the only one who has been getting my Jotnar butt handed to me, repeatedly, on a silver platter? 0.o Tried a few on noble and lost within fifty turns to barbarians, and that was with spamming Thralls and using every citizen either working or upgrading to settlers.... And the one time I even MET another civilization... It was the Shiem. And they over-ran me ten turns later... True, I DID hit war insead of peace on accident and their pyres made short work of my massed Thrall/civie deffenders.
 
I am currently crushing the world as Jotnor on Immortal. They are definately VERY strong. The citizen spawn rate seems too high to me if anything.

The best use for their hero for me seems to be massive lair farming. Great people, equipment, etc.. I've cleared half the world of lairs with him (he is strong enough to fight off most baddies, and can run into mountains if not.. and once he gets adventurer, the whole world is a gold mine.)

I got Brigit at turn 154...
 
OK, my money problems were due to the upkeep of Thralls (had a lot of them). Now that that is fixed, I can test things better.
 
I really find that jotnar have production issues. Ultimately, you have only 8 tiles to work with per city. This really creates problems with trying to build wonders. Right now, my capital has 3 mines and 2 winsmills, but ti's still takig about 20 turns for pact of the nilhorn. and that's really the best production it can ever get.

Also, I find that the citizens alone are really not good enough to replace workers. They work slowly, and jotnar expand fast. Right now, I'm having to dedicate my best production cities to churning out workers, to get my newer built/conquered cities going.
 
Valkrionn said:
Or an Altar victory... Have you seen the House of the Ancestors? +5% :gp: in the city it's built in, and +3% :gp: in ALL OTHER CITIES. You won't have more than 2 or 3 specialists per city, put you'll have so many cities with that building that it doesn't matter. :eek:

Edit: What kind of flavour do you think they should have for their starting position? I say gain a bonus for plains hills, maybe mountains? Probably distance as well...
Click to expand...

This is another show of the Jotnar mutual memory/subconscious Jungian thingy. Also with House of the ancestors you'll have every Jotnar unit running around with Spirit Guide.

For flavor, I really didn't think much. They can manage in any terrain.
 
I don't see how Jotnar are overpowered... Yeah, AI is stupid, but I tried to play against player who was sheaim and his pyre zombies level ALL my cities. Because I don't have enough citizens to stop his stacks (he constantly rebuilds them) and thralls just can't do Anything against zombies. And it's an early game.

Another game against Balseraph they went oo and I must say that the only way I could stay alive was to stay away from sea at all.

A game against doviello: they make a warrior-rush, cast a worldspell and I can't do anything with my 2-3 citizen trolls...

Jotnar are quite easily killed in multiplayer. Unability to quickly restore their military strength means sure lose without any rival running slavery, and thralls are just free xp.
They are quite good for single player but totally unplayable in multi. The only way I was able to survive: I've managed to find a 2-tile valley completely surrounded by mountains and settled there. I had just 1 tile of production, but my opponent couldn't get me :D.

P.S. What about "every jotnar unit running with spirit guide"? Spawned citizens don't get spirit guide from the building for me, just built thralls.
 
As far as I can tell, jotnar seem to be best suited for offensive combat, on the erebus mapscript. Where there are mountains everywhere.

The best tactic early on seems to be attacking enemy stacks from mountaintops, with your trolls. They have low defence strength, so you need that mountain to prevent a counterattack.

The fact that all jotnar units can cross mountains to get to the enemy, and that they can bombard cities, seems to weight them heavily towards being aggressive, not sitting back and defending. Your empire is also inevitably going to grow large and trackless, and you simply don't have enough giants to cover it all. So you have to eliminate threats before they come for you.

Also, I think picking an ally on your borders is a good idea. I've started right next to the Kuriotates. Just finished annihilating the doviello, for declaring war on them. and now I'm doing the same to Clan. Everyone seems to hate the good guys.


Father Khasghenal seems to be the best all around leader, I think. Agg/Fin is an incredible combo. I can't really see why you'd want to play the other two personally.
 
WarKirby said:
I can't really see why you'd want to play the other two personally.
Click to expand...

Combination of Philosophic leader, Wall of Covenant, House of the Ancestors and National Epic turns Jotnar capital into a spawn nest for Great Commanders, who are very useful, since you have a rather small amount of units and giving them attack/defence boni isn't a bad idea.
 
Can you post a link to the necessary Assets files in the first link of this thread? The file in the other thread seems to be AWOL.
 
By the way, can anyone explain me, what do I need to upgrade Citizens into Wielders of Arms? It seems, like I can't do it with Training Yard, Barracks and all the prerequisite techs, listed in Civilopedia. What do I miss?
And the same question about receiving most basic mages...
 
Valkrionn said:
I've found the Jotnar to be like the Scions.... Occasionally OP, sometimes weak, usually in the middle.

I do agree though that Mountainous maps are important for them. :lol:

@ Jabie: Shouldn't need to download anything. They're included in the latest FF patch.
Click to expand...

I find scions to be more powerful.
Their archers with upgrading arrows are a huge threat. They just get enormous amount of XP and now when you can chase and THEN shoot they became even stronger :). I had AI with 20+ stack of archers in his cities on hills all lvl>4 so I didn't have a chance to kill them at all without tsunami/banishment.

About scions: a lack of possibility to fortify on their hill giants/trolls make them really weak defenders. Any stack with city raider can easily capture their cities.
 
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