Chosen of Dvalin are one of the class's major gold sinks, but kind of underwhelm. Sure, they're beefy, but they're still officers, and mostly use that beef that stand around looking pretty.

And they're too proud to be thanes! Here's a ritual idea that makes them a little more than "strong-dumb councilors".

"Jarl of Men": Cast on a King's Castle, become a stationary Jarl. Breeds the human unit "Adopted Son" over time. Rather than offering extra mercenary recruitment like the Thane does for huskarls, the Jarl has a ritual that promotes Huskarls to Adopted Sons for gold, maybe a little iron.

Adopted Sons are heavily armored human soldiers with snow+mountain move. They bring a javelin and a two-handed axe to the field.

For dwarves I have a larger and different direction that I'm working on, but it's basically accomplishing the same thing. I'd like to further distance chosen and councilors into having distinct roles, instead of chosen essentially being an upgraded councilor and the councilors just have their unique, "Thane" transformation.

For chosen, they will be further specialized to front line leaders that can be promoted by Rune Smiths into powerful champions that are good candidates to be decked out in magic items. Current plan is to move them to front rank even before the champion promotion, drop their ability to found new colonies, and buff with additional HP and some local leadership.

For councilors, there will be an addition of many more terrain specific promotions they can undergo in addition to "Thanes", some of these will allow for new promotions for dwarf workers or mixed gem armors/weapons. Should make them a more interesting and appealing use of emeralds instead of solely for quickly founding colonies when no Chosen are available or there's a particularly good spot/need for a Thane.

As a catch-up mechanic, councilors will also be offered for recruitment if all dwarf queens have been lost.

The expansion of councilor's governor role sounds awesome! It will move dwarves into a healthier direction by making their strongest state one that is more spread out over the map, and thus less turtly. It WILL make them stronger tho, and they are IMO already quite competitive. Since councilors are so cheap to spawn, I think adding extra cost onto the promotion rituals themselves will be a helpful balance lever--that way there's a cost to all these new options, while keeping the councilor's original use the same price.

Going to double post instead of writing a wall.

I think a major candidate for the councilor job-list is Priest. Religion is pretty key to their flavor, so temple terrain focus feels themey.

Thematically, the following benies make sense for a Priest of Dvalin in order of appropriateness:
-Access to and/or synergy with Chosen.
-Diamond Production
-Providing human units

Here is some brainstorming in those directions, in order of my favorite ideas:

Blessing mechanic--Chosen and Champions would now be blessed units (maybe Wives of Dvalin and priests too, though this matters less). Since they would be the ONLY blessed dwarf units, short of finding a shawl, the blessing mechanic would be all about them. I think that fits nicely with their connection to temples.
Priests would be able to upgrade the blessing somehow--perhaps a ritual like the Voice of El's, that is shared among them but gets more expensive with each cast. This one would cost diamonds instead of gold though.
Alternatively, it could be a side effect of other rituals (this next one being a prime canditate).

Conversion to Dvalin-temple terrain. This would be possible on non-citadel temples, like Ancient Temples and Cave Temples. It does the double-duty of adding gem income and a place for runesmiths to work.
Thematically, it makes sense for it to cost Iron and Emeralds. I like the idea of making the ritual take multiple levels--the first step would just unlock the second, and take a bunch of AP. The second would actually do the effect. This represents the priest needing lots of time to all that statue carving, and adds some mechanical depth by making you protect the same priest or risk losing your progress.

Lastly, I thought about the dwarf priest enabling the recruitment of a human priest of dvalin, who could spread dvalin-worship to human towns. This could lead to... economy? More huskarls? An elite, blessed, huskarl variant? Not sure.

Nice! I definitely like the choice to invest in more Dvalin statues on Elysium. A sort of secondary bless mechanic for a subset of units could be interesting, I think it works fine currently for Baron. I'll give that some thought if it would fit in with Dwarves as well. I was actually leaning towards a "priestess of Dvalin" commander that would also scale off temples and cost diamonds separate from the councilor that might be a good fit for this concept.

Tweak to Runelords of Rime of Furnace:
Instead of gaining Dwarf magic 3, instead they get lv 2 casting in Frost magic and Gold magic respectively.

New Runelord of Furnace rit:
Spark Forge: Must be done on a space with a smith. Summons a fire spirit-like “Forge-Spirit” that has +1 gem and gold magic 1. Stationary, 1/tile. Not sure exactly how the gem economy mechanic works, but if it takes 30+ turns to pay for itself, it's about right?

Good suggestion, I was already thinking of ways to make the runelords more distinct and had come to the same conclusion of making Dvalin the only Dwarf Magic 3 caster while the others gained a new school at level 2. I was thinking Pyromancy for furnace, but if Gold doesn't have too much overlap with Dwarf magic that would be very thematically appropriate.

I hadn't considered unique rituals yet but that also has potential. Unfortunately the ability to add resource incomes to units is very strangely missing certain resources, so gems and sacrifices can only be done with terraforming or through just gaining trade instead.

The Greataxe dwarves cost 10 more iron than your shielddwarves. It's a meaningful difference, and they are the most expensive non-slow infantry.

But their statline doesn't seem to reflect that. They trade the (very valuable) shield for +1 hp and an ever so sliiiiightly better weapon.

I still pick them, because they SEEM to have a clear niche as an answer to melee brutes like trolls... they perform fine in this role! But with only 1 less damage I wonder if the cheaper "Dwarves" might not be able to do any job the "Warriors" do almost as well.

That's not even touching on the fact the (cheaper!) "Dwarves" are BROADLY the better, more versatile choice, since, y'know, shields.

But I actually think that Warriors might be fine as-is... it's the "Dwarves" that are too strong! They are cheap, armor 2, and have all around decent stats. Ratcheting their damage down by 1 point would leave them plenty viable while giving the Warriors more room to fill the "big axe" niche.

This was a small stat discrepancy that I did also notice, and my thought was to just buff the damage of the battleaxes +2, so they feel like a more worthy trade off for more iron and losing a shield. Dwarf units definitely have a good cost - benefit ratio, but they do still seem to suffer slow starts due to their unique recruitment mechanic, which makes me hesitant to nerf rather than buff their troops.

I see some power creep with them, though. Maybe fool around with lowering the economy bonus scaling? So young dvala unchanged, but adult and wives tuned down a notch or two?

Once you are established the big limitation on fielding soldiers is your iron income, not your dwarf babies, in my experience.

Yeah, the actual recruit costs and rates I think is worth a second look and comparison to other classes as they're basically untouched from Vanilla values currently.