Giant Faction

[turin]

My point is simply that giants are, uh... giant. That's what their name means. I agree I may have made a few premature assumptions, but my basic points could be boiled down to these:

1. Giants must be big, probably as big if not bigger than ogres or trolls.
2. Both ogres and trolls are, when fully grown up, level 2. Their level 1s are children.
3. It's hard to imagine that giants would be less intelligent than trolls or ogres (though I suppose it is possible).
4. So it would seem that giants would be as powerful or more powerful than a troll of similar skill level.
5. Thus all full-grown giants would have to be level 2.
6. Thus all level-1 giants would have to be children.

And now, my conclusion, which may not be true, but which seems rather simple to me:
7. It doesn't make sense that giants would send an army of only children into battle; thus, a faction of giants is impossible, since it would have to consist of only level 2 units.


So, in response to Jetryl: I see what his point is, but I don't think it applies here. From what I can tell SaintDust is trying to make a faction of rather generic giants, which means that my above reasoning is perfectly fine. It's possible that he is indeed trying to redefine the term giant, but from what I can tell he isn't.

And in response to, "the best way to change definitions is by making something really freaking cool, not by pissing at people" - I prefer to do both. If you want to watch me attempt to do the former, you can check out the Imperial Era forums.

[SaintDust]

Heres the new troll. If when this unit is close to perfect let me know so i can do its attack/move animations.
Thanks wayfarer for the help

Okay.. Lets assume giants are much larger than trolls.
But lets also assume that giants grow to become an adult and then thats when theya re truly powerfull. But say giants live to be a 1000 years of age. So a young giant of level 1 capabilities could easly be a young adult not a child. I would assume that giants work like this.
A level 2 giant would just be a legandary giant...

[Jetrel]

And now, my conclusion, which may not be true, but which seems rather simple to me:
7. It doesn't make sense that giants would send an army of only children into battle; thus, a faction of giants is impossible, since it would have to consist of only level 2 units.

Factions could rather easily be made using unit trees that start at level-2, and proceed to level-4. I suggested doing this to the elves some time ago; e.g. bumping their entire race up a level, and doing some other adjustments to compensate. I've dropped that suggestion, since it's not worth the trouble of implementation, but it works very well in other games.

For one great example, warcraft III did a very good job of balancing "tier 1 vs. tier 2" battles; WCIII is the polar opposite of WCII, in that when a player reaches tier 2, there are still very good reasons to consider purchasing tier 1 units. Knights, for example, are much more vulnerable to ranged (non-magical) weapons than footmen are; knights are much worse at surrounding and blocking than footmen are, and knights are much easier to focus-strike with enemy magic (necro cripples your footman, no big deal, whereas necro cripples your knight - very big deal). Footmen also collectively heal much faster from priests (because priests can work on more units at the same time).

In warcraft II and I, tier 1 units were absolutely obsolete when their replacement in tier 2 became available. This, like "symmetric factions," was just a [censored], myopic, self-imposed design constraint, not unlike the blanket judgment to "knife the baby" that I described above.

[Zhukov]

Factions could rather easily be made using unit trees that start at level-2, and proceed to level-4. I suggested doing this to the elves some time ago; e.g. bumping their entire race up a level, and doing some other adjustments to compensate. I've dropped that suggestion, since it's not worth the trouble of implementation, but it works very well in other games.

I've always thought this would be good for Drakes.

But we are hijacking this poor bugger's thread.

[Noyga]

4. So it would seem that giants would be as powerful or more powerful than a troll of similar skill level.
5. Thus all full-grown giants would have to be level 2.
6. Thus all level-1 giants would have to be children.

And now, my conclusion, which may not be true, but which seems rather simple to me:
7. It doesn't make sense that giants would send an army of only children into battle; thus, a faction of giants is impossible, since it would have to consist of only level 2 units.

Btw this could be valid for the Woses too ...

[SaintDust]

Adding the Melor Slave Line as well as update for the troll. Had to redo the club since it was bland.

[turin]

Good point. Having some factions start at level 2 is an interesting idea... I don't have time to pursue it right now, but I may end up making some of the Imperial Era factions follow that scheme.

[NightBlade]

Just curious, why is ogre mage with the giants?