Originally Posted by Valerius (Post 793859)

Yes, we did! It was just more expensive to do the one thug = expansion party strategy than it was for TNN since Tuatha cost more than Ri. The funny thing is in my one game with them I ended up with a horrible start position surrounded by undead, lizardmen and (as an "easy" province) knights. And got attacked early by apostacizing, smiting Ermor. So sometimes even OP things don't work out as planned. :p

I've heard good things about Sea Kings as thugs but since I usually play thug nations this isn't something I'm looking for. I do like using sea trolls as durable units that can draw enemy fire but it's cheaper to just summon some individual trolls for that purpose. So I think part of the problem is you're paying a high price and may only have need of either the troops or the commander. You could of course have a spell to just summon a Sea King and price it competitively but that might detract from the theme of the original spell. Something that I think would cause this spell to see a lot more use is increasing the Sea King's gem gen from one to two gems per turn. Even if you use him as a thug and he gets killed in a half a dozen turns you've still defrayed the cost of the spell significantly. The main drawback would be creating a gem gen mentality but I don't think 2 gems/turn is enough to cause that.

Zmeys are an interesting unit. I like the idea of monsters without full slots being feasible combatants. They are challenging because with flight and without any need to buff they can attack immediately. And of course they can dish out a lot of attacks. But the lack of slots really is a significant drawback. Actually, the main thing that frustrates me about them is that they often have lychantropos' amulets. Please change the cost of those things to 25 gems - not because they are that great but because it's maddening to keep losing mages to them. :mad:

As regards the elemental royalty, rather than make them cheaper I would prefer to keep the price as-is and make them significantly better. Generally speaking, I think unique summons that are available to all nations should be better than the non-unique options as a reward for getting them. As to how they are better, well it could be through combat abilities for some of them (ex. earth king have a large AOE attack like the zmey), useful #onebattlespells for others (ex. AQ autocasts fog warriors), and improving the summoning abilities for others (instead of summoning one unit per turn, summon five, etc.).

Speaking of the cost of summons, what do people think of the cost of angelic summons? Perhaps I'm underestimating them since I never play these nations but it seems like these are kind of pricy in comparison to other options.

Originally Posted by llamabeast (Post 793817)

How would you go about giving Zmeys fire shield?

Originally Posted by Valerius (Post 793859)

Generally speaking, I think unique summons that are available to all nations should be better than the non-unique options as a reward for getting them.