Insane Difficulty: Classes and Mountain Movement - Insane Difficulty

Something I've been tossing around for awhile now is deciding which movement type Golems and Giants should have. A while back, I decided to get rid of the Ice Giant. The reason for this is, with the Kalbian Peninsula moved to after recruiting Debonair, there aren't any snow levels until over halfway through the game. Instead, I'm currently going with a linear path from Giant to Gigantes to a split path between Firbolg (Snow movement) and Titan (Plains or Mountains movement). For Golems, they have a linear progression from Golem to Rock Golem to Talos.

In the original game, Rock Golems had mountain movement, but Golem and Iron Golem (now Talos) had plains movement. On the Giant side, Fire Giant had mountain movement, Ice Giant had snow movement, while Giant and Titan had plains movement. There was also no promotion between Golem tiers, and Giants only had a single promotion tier into 3 different possibilities.

While mountain movement makes thematic sense for "Rock" Golems, I'm not sure I like the idea of the Golem family being mountain movement only in the middle of their life cycle. The original game didn't have to worry about this, since each Golem was a distinct creature with no promotion path. Also, if Giants were to be mountain movement during this portion of the game as well, then there'd be no plains movement large creatures during this time, which I'm not sure I like (the Black Dragon tree used to be plains type, but I changed them to forest because there were no forest type large monsters).

On the giant side of things... there are a couple possibilities. I'm pretty sold on the idea of having more than one giant tree, but I feel like it's more interesting for them to have 2 trees, which would be unique among large monsters, than to give them 3 trees similar to the dragon family. Not to mention the differences between the giant types really aren't large enough to warrant 3 trees (it's mostly just a difference of movement type). Giants have Plains movement and I don't really have an desire to change that. Once they reach their first promotion, I had planned on them becoming Gigantes and having mountain movement type, and then at their next promotion being able to split between Titan (mountain movement) and Firbolg (Snow movement). But another possibility could be to have Giant split at tier 2 into Gigantes, which would retain Plains movement, or Hill Giant, which would have Mountain movement. Gigantes would then promote directly into Firbolg and snow movement while Hill Giant would promote directly into Titan and retain mountain movement.

This got pretty rambly, but anyway: what do you think about the movement types for Rock Golem and the Giant family? What do you think about the two promotion scenarios proposed for Giants, or would you prefer something else?

Thematically all golems feel like they would have mountain movement to me but I'm alright with them being plains, especially if they would be the only large unit with plains movement at certain times.

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I really like the sound of this option for Giants.

For Giants, splitting them at Tier 2 sounds fine, but I wouldn't touch the Mountain Giants if Mountains is going to be not good. So Giants splitting at Tier 2 sounds fine, but at what level and ALI? As it stands, Hill Giants are something I plan on avoiding, so if I need to manipulate my current Giants away from anything, that's what I'll do.

I'm personally not big on the themes for this game, or at least not bound by them, so for Golems, I'm more for having them with Plains movement. I've said before, I pause the game a lot, but my actual in-game time is very fast, usually with me sitting around the enemy base before the second day begins. I don't want a repeat of Vanilla, with all the action up ahead, and the slow units marching behind...slow, uh-yup.

This subject seems to further invalidate Snow movement, though. Now, Muses would become an even rarer 'good class with a useless, crippling movement type that makes you not want to promote into them.' Maybe some of these classes can have movement types that better represent who they are. Valkyries and Muses could be exceptional in Forest and Snow, and whatever they already are on Plains and Roads. Giants and Golems could be good on Plains and Mountains. Dragons could be good in Forests and Mountains.

Mountains, Forest, Snow, and Sky have all been buffed for the upcoming Deneb's Garden patch, so...