After playing this brilliant mod, I did also stumble upon the Doviello and quickly realised that I didn't understand them. I'm swedish and quite familiar with nordic mythology, the iceland sagas and a lot of swedish folklore and this makes the Doviello more pecualiar rather then less.
I don't know if they are suppose to be vikinglike, or if they are suppose to be animallike, but regardless they are not doing a very good job either way. I get no feeling for them or for the nation. They don't feel alive, the way all the other races do.
I don't want to come and critisize them though. In fact I thought a lot about not writing everything I thought, when I first saw them, seeing how I am at awe at this marvelous work of a mod to civilization. However, I would still think a few things could be considered about this civilisation.
1. Definition? Doviello, sounds spanish. Very spanish, it might not be spanish and might actually have a very different meaning then that I find for it. However it makes me think of entirely different cultures then any nordic ones. But, I don't want to change it, but it's more confusing then helping. What are these Doviello, spanish animalhunters?, wild barbaric vikings?, The wolfmen race?, nordic barbarian race?
I don't know, they could be anything, because they aren't so easily defined as the "horsepeople, the winterpeople, the crazy people, the devil cult people and so on".
In fact the animal-like-people, that-aren't-really-animal-like-and-also-have-barbarians and-giants sounds kinda weird. They also have wolves and a wolf cult, you might add. Then they live in the tundra. Not because they want to, they just do, doesn't help either.
2. If they are vikinglike and I only say if, then there are a few alternative routes to use. One is to use vikingmythology and then you don't need any strange witchwarriors by names such as Verdandi axemen or skuldpeople or Urd knives. In fact I don't even know what that is and I'm from sweden and have read a lot of vikinglore. A LOT! Those witches don't have warriors. They are timegodesses and even that doesn't describe them. They are the three most powerful beings in norse mythology, that doesn't belong to either side of good and evil. They are also in greek mythology and a surprising number of other cultures as well.
If you wanted Vikinglore why not make those warriors into enhärjare(I don't know the english term, maybe Einherjer? Warriors of Odin) instead? Then another could be a Draugh, even if they are undead. The third could be Vaner(God family that wasn't Asar). These are at least warriors, not some strange cult of three extremly powerful witches. If you wanted the witches to be in the game, well make the witches be in the game, not three strange male units...
3. Make more wolf units. If you check nordic mythology, you will be amazed with the amounts of wolves we got that are mythological. We got tons of them and they are all very different. There are the skolls and the Ulvs. The are also the great FenrisUlv, who is so big that even the gods fear him. There's also the garm. In fact Ragnarok beings with the wolf eating the sun. Indeed you could even make the wolf a seperate unit, instead of their mounted unit.
Why not make the wolfman a unit in Doviello army too, there were many myths about wolfmen in nordic mythology, although they weren't necessarily werewolves.
Ofcourse I don't know whats the meaning of the Doviello. Maybe they are fine just they way they are. I mean, I have a hard time understanding mythology I don't know sometimes. Perhaps the doviello is part of such mythology. However in that case it would be fun if something in this civilisation sparked my interest and didn't make me think of them as spanish vikings with witch cults. Spanish vikings with witch cults isn't cool really, in fact it's kinda weird. Sorry for the critisism. I really like most of the work that has been done on this mod. Especially the elves, the religions, the horsepeople, some of the dwarves, the balseraphs and the demons and angels.
I don't mean disrespect and I am sorry if my words seems to totally dismiss this race. I'm sure Doviello is liked just the way they are. This is just my oppinion and my thoughts on how they could be better and really they aren't even all of my thoughts concerning this, but I'm not about to write a book about all the changes you could do, to the Doviello, to make them interesting, although the thought has crossed my mind.
TLDR is understandable.
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