Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I love animals. They're delicious!

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Summon beef cake.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

It's a good question.

Compared to dom2, national army sizes you encounter in midgame have been multiplied by 3 or 4, and so battlefield wide dammage spells kill 3 or 4 times more troops when their cost is unchanged, lone SCs are perhaps a little less efficient but teams with thugs and mages are far better with the new morale system...

Only troops summons in most cases got no love at all (vine ogres had even their cost increased iirc) when gold allows to recruit far more regulars. It looks like a strange design decision in a game where half the rituals are troop summons.

(another one is not upgrading alchemy results, a gem should worth 30 or more gp with the devaluation of gold imo, I wonder if anyone uses gold alchemy out of extreme emergency, or the old trade price of 10 gold for a gem).

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Even when playing Abysia with smoldercone and a ridiculous amount of gems, I never alchemized. It's just not worth it.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I'm using alchemy in an ongoing MP game. I've got Turmoil-Luck, and not enough luck http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Got an Eternal Pyre up, and when I'm short of cash, I dip into my fire gems.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

With the great alchemist it becomes somehow justified to use alchemy, although not enough (in my opinion) to actually choose the pretender.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Maybe they all should just double the effects to start with and then a bonus for each magic level above the one required to cast it to make it extra nice in certain occasions.

Even nicer would be some "special effects" a few extra, stronger, nasty beasts if the mage has certain other paths... "summon this creature" that now gives 10 would then give 20, and 5 extra for each higher magic level of the path the spells is in (maybe with a cap at 30) but if you had death magic too 5 of them would be ethereal. And if you had earth magic 5 of them would be better armoured, or there would be a bonus extra summon of a complete other type a drake of the magic path you have.

(hmm a lot of extra creature types that would mean, some programming too I guess.. but I'm just dreaming here and IMHO it would be fun.)

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Well, you could mod it in by creating several versions of the same spell with different secondary paths. (Of course, not possible for spell that are already multi-pathed, and you can't get double bonuses.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I'm not KO, but I believe most spells in the games remain pretty much exactly at the rough estimate cost levels of when they were first added, before anyone had used them much beyond testing them for bugs. Which is of course the only way to start, but the reason they were not changed I believe has more to do with the fact KO would much rather add new content than balance what is already there, especially since mods can address many of those issues.

Also, I'd note that Dom2 to Dom3 changed remarkably little in terms of troop summons being worthwhile, almost all of the useless ones in Dom3 were already that way.

Oh, and on alchemy, I still use it a fair amount, but it's obviously rarely a good choice when you in a strong position and have lots of other options.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

maybe he should just use the say 10% most obvious and undisputed changes from the CBM in a new patch?

I''m thinking summon spells would be amongst them, I also found the pretenders nice and the scales too (though the last 2 are not undisputed I think)