Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

Sea trolls and normal trolls both cost upkeep for a very good reason: both are site recruitables from Troll Pit (normal trolls for the earth site, land only, sea trolls for the sea-only water site). Sea trolls cost 50 gold, hence 3 and fractions upkeep, normal trolls cost 60 gold and 4 upkeep.

Both sea kings and troll kings cost 150 gold, hence 10 upkeep. Sea trolls in general are completely worthless. They only have fist as weapon, thei have an abysmal attack and poor defense rating and relatively poor morale. Their only redeeming quality is not needing supplies, and that doesn't compensate for their weaknesses. They are better in Zen's spell mod, have claw for attack and an improved attack rating.

As a side note, other creatures that are summonable and cost upkeep are black hawks (5 gold, so 3 of them cost one upkeep), thralls, Mictlan slave levies, madmen and mad deep ones (1 gold each), as well as mad priests and holy deep ones. I'm not sure about Draconians, I need to check that.

Edi

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

Yes, splooger, you do. All that you need is having the supply present in a province. Summer Sword + Wineskin on a non-combat commander such as a scout does wonders for the supply problem.

Edi

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

Cool, that's good to know. I'll have to revise my tactics for the next game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

On a vaguely related note, if I have a sneaking, hidden scout carrying the Chalice, will the healing effects still work?

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

It should.

Edi

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

The Chalice definately works on a hidden unit - had 2 afflictions removed from my pretender the same turn she moved into the province a scout was hiding out with the Chalice in.

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

That is a truly lame reason for making summoned trolls cost upkeep. The summoned ones ought to be free, and they could make the recruitable ones cost upkeep or not. I suppose this might be a tricky programming task, and that is perhaps why the developers took the easy way out on this.

Having some summons cost upkeep while most are free is not very balanced. It is a sad tribute to the weakness of water gems vs. other gem types that the best amphibious water summons are abysimally weak and even cost gold to maintain. At least there are many, many good earth summons besides trolls, and earth trolls are a Last resort summons to be used only in extremis when you need a quick army but don't have the superior earth summons researched yet.

Either ALL summons should cost or NONE should. A half-baked measure is not a good idea. Myself, I favor the idea that all summons should cost upkeep so as to make national troops a bit more attractive for use beyond the early or mid game.

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

Shouldn't even be tricky to program - just like there are already multiple "flavors" of militia, each with its own unit type, there could be 2 separate unit IDs for water and earth trolls - recruitable ones could then cost upkeep, summoned ones be free, and otherwise they could be identical to one another.

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

That would render AshenEmpire and SoulGate probably unplayable. But there should be at least an icon that makes one aware of upkeep-freeness, similar to need-not-eat!

Re: Atlantis and upkeep/supply
 

I'll never understand why so many people believe this. There's absolutely no relation between summoning and upkeep.

Even longdead and souless? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif