The dino mechanics are fun as heck. Can't express my delight when I see the Tyrant spawn. And of course, a way to interact with ancient forests improves the health of the class a lot.

One thing that sticks out at me is that your access to dinos is not dependent on the number of ancient forests you control. Rather, it depends on the number of Kings you recruit, and ultimately, the amount of gold you budget for it, capped by King recruitment.

Here's an idea that will let dino spawn scale with the number of controlled forests, and allow Tribal Kings to fill a permanent beast taming role rather than doing their thing and becoming suicide scouts:

The ritual no longer removes itself from the King's list. Instead, it has an additional summon step, where it always summons 1 "Game Warden" unit. This guy's presence prevents cast of the ritual. Game Wardens always spawn diseased, which removes them over a length of time. This can represent the forest's hunting grounds "recovering!"

Since they'd share the space with the spirit of aztlan, baiting enemies into killing them would be pretty inefficient! A neat trick, no? With very large numbers of ancient forests, your dino supply is still limited by the gold cost of the ritual itself.

On the subject of the lv. 2 casters, "Priests". Some of them have cool bennies, like enabling recruitment. Some of them sadly do not.

I'd recommend slapping enables recruitment on the Priest of the Bloody Mother, since Blood Warriors are already a thing. For those without a relevant troop to add to the pool, breeding slaves like the Priest King would be a great substitute.

The outlier is the Sky Priest, who gives you eagle warriors. Eagle warriors are kind of terrible. Since the faction can't consistently produce a flying officer, their flight is a dubious benefit. Ignoring that, they are holy naked spearmen. I see a few ways to address this.

You could make them always recruitable, like Jaguar Warriors. This lets them properly fill the niche of fodder for a flying army--because you don't need to hoard them in advance.

You could raise their base damage modifier--by 1 or even 2 points. This would nudge towards the elite troop status they seem to be meant to have. This scratches a thematic itch for me, as its kind of silly that they fly at you but don't hit harder than a shmuck on the ground. Now that I mention it, giving them a Lance attack would also make sense.

You could give Sky Priests fly, making them a straightforward opt-in to a flying army.

Nice! Glad to hear you are enjoying the dinos! I think a shift towards changing the "scaling" of the recruitment to ancient forests controlled vs. Tribal Kings recruited is a good recommendation. My first thought is to make it a sort of "reverse Revive Ancient Forest" that reverts it to a recuperating ancient forest, with a "blocker unit" as a backup if for some reason that does not work out.

Already set my eyes on Blood Warriors having no recruitment and Eagle Warriors needing a buff, my first thought was adding a javelin, but I like the idea of a lesser lance charge too, makes them more unique. Currently the High Priest of the Sky does gain flying, so it is there but 1 promotion further.

Idea Round up from my latest game:

-Forest stealth units but no forest stealth commanders. ----> Add forest stealth to Tribal Kings and Nahuali.

-Moon Warriors are inferior sun warriors with no clear role ---> +1 MR and Magic-tagged weapons makes them anti-magic specialists.

-Blood Warriors, same deal ----> +2 HP makes their berserking pop and makes them a good target for regen buff from blood casters.

-Xiquiripat, "god of sharpened obsidian" thematically misses, mostly functions as a mage. ->Trade Night 2 for Night 1 + Warrior Wards 1. Gives him a more martial feel.

-Iyahua Etznab, "goddess of ceremonies" does not have non-combat function. What? ---> give her slave-spawning functionality AND/OR tier 1 blood ritual

-Larger Dinos gain "enables recruitment" that enables upgrading them with palanquins/barding for iron.

Forest stealth on commanders and buffing the less impressive holy warriors are excellent suggestions.

Tier 2 summons for Priest King I am revisiting in particular. I've mainly tried to improve these rituals in the past purely through injecting variety, but I'm now looking to make a more meaningful change that will give each different school it's own identity, while also having the pool of units be a little more consistent.

WIP:

Inherent "25% to gain a blessing instead of a summons" is dropped.

Each school will have 4 unique "demigod" casters that will each possess a 1-time use ritual to gain a blessing, a "god-beast" result, a diced amount of lesser monsters, and 1 result unique to each school.

This way focusing on Blessings is still somewhat random, but more consistent and requires spreading out among the different temples to maximize.

Definitely no barding/riders for the t-rex, but some other dino promotions could be on the table.