bridges should have water troll freespawn :)

i dont like how the troll king doesnt have access to the lake trolls

maybe a lake troll commander (amphibian) that also gives recruit option for lake trolls? could even be a lvl 1 or 2 water magic caster which would be nice for some magic variety for troll king

A unique interaction with bridges is a neat idea! The Troll King does have access to Lake Trolls in the base game but it is rather rare and luck based to get. It requires controlling a citadel adjacent to a source of fresh water, which often might not exist due to map generation. I'll consider adding a means to make that more common.

ive never had that happen, i would love it if you made them available somehow, thx for the reply

I noticed you made the Lake troll king recruitable from ports! Very nice. So crazy such a complex piece of content was basically seedlocked in vanilla. Now that he's had his second wind, I think this guy needs some rituals!

I think thematically it's clear that he should be one to hold the "Bridge Tax" ritual that the goblin khan is keeping warm for him. But I also think it would be fine if he could make bridges. They don't have a high yield, serve a strategic purpose, and are naturally limited in candidate terrain types, so I think it's a good fit for terraforming.

I'd say make it cost concentrated heavily in iron, like similar "construction" type powers. Trolls can afford to pay a lot of iron, so it can be expensive and still be quite usable. The standard "5 tiles away from any existing bridge" rule makes sense here. Obviously, it could only be done on rivers (alas, it would probably be impossible to detect that a sea space was between two pieces of land).

Of course, every swimming commander needs swimming troops! And the Lake Troll King should have something to do on Lake terrain. Thus, my pitch for a third ritual: Hold Court. Cast on Lake.
Takes 6 AP and 50 Gold, Summons a Lake Troll or a Lake Troll Warrior. I think needing a lake and the two-month wait are fair tradeoffs for reliable access to trolls, no?
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But wait! Our beloved goblin Khan can't have only 2 rituals when johny come lightly here gets 3!

I think a major missing part of my own goblin khan fantasy is access to goblin bows. More than Reavers, these guys bring something to the troll class that they don't have without them. And, for goblins? They are pretty rare!

So I'd like a ritual that arms regular club goblins. A weaker version might be half/half spears and bows. A stronger version, pure bows. Is it the case that rituals that target specific unit types need deterministic outcomes? Ideally, I'd want the ritual to produce a small die roll of wolf kin. As a treat.

Since basic goblins are recruitable every turn, I'd say he doesn't NEED a ritual to spawn basic ones... However! It WOULD tickle me if the Goblin Khan had some kind of synergy with "Clamor and Clang".

So maybe, some ritual built specifically for that? "Goblin Feast" or something. It would be slow (6AP? 9?) and offer a small discount per goblin (40G per 15?). I don't think access to a large number of slightly discounted goblins would break anything for the Trolls, even he CAN turn them into bows.

My current plan was to move the bridge toll to the Troll King himself, but Lake Troll could indeed use some unique things to do so, why not both? I also think bridge construction could be a really interesting ritual. The implications of creating a new path on the map for all to use, but the Trolls to have a unique benefit from is neat. A full suite of Goblin promotion rituals also seems like an easy add and is consistent with other classes.

So. Here's a concept I have been thinking of as "The Trial of the Gasses". Instead of being vague enough to cover all the ways you could tweak (or cannibalize) this, I'll just tell you my current favorite version.

It's a second level ritual in the main caster pool. It is cast on a Old Castle Ruin. It costs expendable goblins, fungus. About 50-50 parity to the goblins' gold cost? It would be big batches, like 50 goblins. so uh.. maybe 75, 80 fungus.

It summons about (5d3)-5 Forest Trolls. It can be done normally, but IF a "Goblin Hero" is present he is promoted to "Forest Troll Hero" an officer that is like a slightly stronger forest troll.

That's the idea. Now I'm gonna jabber.

Why forest trolls? Well, for one thing, they are weakest trolls. I toyed with maybe having the goblin hero become a full troll. But it just felt odd to have an officer become a basic unit.

But that's not the only reason. Forest Trolls are also very versatile. They can be an essential part of getting a goblin army online, because forest stealth is such a big part of the goblin mystique. But they are also quite useful in a doomstack, but only a midgame one. I'd say this is less good when spammed versus similar cost in t3 rits, which is a key target.

Why turn goblins into a Trolls? Why my fascination with subjecting goblins to swamp gas? Honestly, a big part of what got me thinking about this was doing SOMETHING with the Goblin Hero. Such a cool concept. Basically a slightly stronger goblin chief. That costs more, and can't be a king. If this is way off base, I can pitch more stuff about him.

I ALSO played with the idea of making the resultant unit a sort of troll-hybrid "hobgoblin"... Basically weaker forest trolls, but with a full complement of item slots. A hobgoblin hero does something special that a forest troll hero doesn't--gives you a great place to put otherwise hard to utilize items. And weaker hobgoblins fulfill the "capped at midgame" requirement even better than forest trolls.

BUT. Forest trolls are right there, and i wonder if hobgoblins aren't too similar to them to justify their existence.

There are some changes coming to goblins in the next update that expand their role a bit. Heroes are now eligible to become the Goblin Leader along with chieftains, the promotion ritual itself is freely known by the Troll King instead of being a ritual to be learned, and the Goblin leader's "Goblin Spawner" ritual covers all fortified citadels instead of exclusively watch towers. This leans more towards goblins becoming a growing horde of plentiful weak units that can rapidly spread out and capture undefended territory while trolls are the heavy hitters to battle enemy armies.

I like the concept of more rituals that utilize goblins as a resource, and the possibility of "hobgoblin" as a promotion to a stronger type of unit. Just an FYI, I'm basically pencils down for new content on this next update and just running test games with what's been created so far, so most suggestions here on out would be farther in the future.

So, the trolls are now even better at raiding. I like how barbarians have uses for the ruins they make, so that they can engage with the mechanic without crippling themselves too much against later foes in the long run. I think they should always be the best at that, but other raiding factions could use a little bit of that sauce!

An elegant solution: make house ruins an eligible target for call the old woods. Thus turning human ruins into troll forests, with 1 fungus income and some spooky theme about the wilds taking back what it lost.

I'll give this one some thought as it could be a good synergy if gated behind a special commander like a Lake Troll King or Linnorm. But raiding/pillaging is a very powerful mechanic given to this faction and it may deservedly be a harsh double edged sword since they can already thrive off fungus income and can now boost mines.

And now for something completely different... that ogre cheiftain is a bit of a nothingburger, isn't he? As far as I can see, his niche is that he is the strongest officer you have with full item slots. So in terms of spicing him up, the things I'm shooting for are 1:Ogrey theme. 2: Item provision gimmick. Here's what I came up with:

Knucklebones: Costs Gold. Cast on Bandit Camp. Terraforms into forest.
Summons a highly variable batch of batch of Ogres and/or "bandit-type" units like bandits, slingers, maybe minotaur brigands? Additionally summons a single "Lucky Ogre" that always spawns with 1 item.

Using this ritual is a big gamble for a number of reasons-- the fact that trolls love items but can't use a lot of them is a big one. I don't really view swingyness as a positive but it's kind of unavoidable when working with a "gambling" theme!

I'll give this one some thought, while I think it's fine/intended that some units are simply a commander and nothing more, the Ogre Chieftain has a pretty low recruit rate compared to other "just a commander" units so there could be some room to flesh it out.

I agree with the statement that some units should be just a commander, but I'd add that "just a commander" is a niche that can be filled. And it's filled by the cheapest officer available.
The troll roster has goblin officers. Very cheap, with some potential for special uses. With them in the niche, there's usually no reason to grab an Ogre Chief except "I need an officer ASAP and I was unlucky enough to roll him".

Played around with the new Goblin Prince! He's a nice, functional addition to the roster. The pieces all fit together quite nicely.

One suggestion: Give Wolfkin Alphas the Raid ritual. Kind of a big buff, I know, but it's just tragic to see a raiding faction that has a fast-but-weak army option that can't raid! I'd gladly see their recruit price go up if it meant they could fill this raid-shaped hole in their soul.

Seeing goblins come into their own as fleshed out subfaction gives me a vision of the trolls as a monstrous confederacy, with subfactions filling different niches. To that end, I'll throw more spaghetti at them.

Lake Trolls: Currently, more like sea trolls. The king should be able to do SOMETHING with lakes. Currently, you can't promote Lake Trolls to warriors, so why not that?

Ogres: Originally filled a niche of "elitest troop you get on short notice + a good unit to use items trolls cant." With goblins now demanding more of your spare gold, I've found the first half of that niche is almost gone. I still think my "knucklebones" ritual idea has legs--but now feel it would be better if instead of deleting a bandit camp, the Ogre Chief simply forgot the ritual. Additionally, Ogre Chiefs should be front rank instead of mid. Being midrank is holding them back from being THE best item-user in the roster, which I see as their only really identity.

Giants: These guys kind of fill a niche just by existing, able to do a smattering of things trolls can't. Something simple then: add "enables recruitment" to the Forest Giant, boosting the offer rate of the "giant-sized" troops. Giants are expensive and really not as combat-capable as a trollstack, so I don't see a balance problem with having an opt-in to a specialized giant-sized army for exploration.

Glad to hear the expansion on Goblins is overall welcomed!

I don't see an issue with wolfkin leaders gaining access to raid with a slight increase to their recruitment cost.

Lake Trolls have a bit of thematic weirdness with their freshwater focus and the way their recruitment is unlocked in the vanilla game with a lake adjacent citadel that is totally dependent on map gen. Adding an additional line so they can be accessed via ports was a simple easy fix. I'll give them some thought, at the very least there's room for a minor interaction with lakes. On the other hand I'm looking to add some variety to the Trolls late game summons which is currently just Orms and Linnorms, with one potential candidate being sea-themed. So there's definitely potential to boot them from being tied to ports and shift back to lakes, but with a non map gen dependent feature like a ritual.

While I don't see them as having as big of an expanded role as goblins, Ogre Chieftains will definitely be gaining some extra features and adjustments to make them a more interesting commander to purchase. Good point regarding their capability to be decked out in magic items. I will consider some way to give them ties to items whether it be a ritual or just a % chance to spawn with one.

One very useful modding tip I have recently learned that was not actually in the modding guide was setting recruitment chances to scale off of the amount of a unit owned (like dragons for kobolds). This will be seeing a lot of implementation across the board, and it seems like a very good match for a means to boost giant recruitment rates. Another potential new unit is a mountain giant, but forest giants could be another candidate if that doesn't pan out.