Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I could have sworn this question's been asked and answered before, but I cannot find it: what happens if you try to summon a fourth Queen of Air, or third King of Fire, etc.? Or a closely-related subject, if you summon more than 6 (or however many there are) ice devils (or any of the other named critters in the game)?

{I've got this nice 28 air gem/turn income and I'd like to put the gems to a more efficient use than alchemizing them -- or Arrowing, Wind Riding, etc.}

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

you just lose any gems/slaves spent on the ritual.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Thanks for the prompt answer, 'lept. Mucho glad I asked before trying it.

The game should gray-out the spells in such cases. I know making such a fix would entail a significant amount of coding by JK, but 50 gems are a lot to just waste (or for players unfamiliar with the rules and who don't hang out on this forum to be penalized by).

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

So, to drag my own thread a wee bit OT, what would you folks do with 28+ air gems per turn income, excluding alchemy, Wind Ride, and Seeking Arrow?

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

You could possibly constantly hurricane a few key enemy provinces, get the unrest over a 100 and stop mage/unit income.

cheap commanders + thunder bow + eye of aiming. I like this one, especially when facing squads with not a lot of troops.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

flying boots staffs of storms copper plate

air domes

spring hawks for staff of storm wrathing squads

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

It is done on purpose, I think, forcing you to put a ton of gems at risk if you don't know the answer for sure: Is that third queen gone or not? If I ask, can I believe what the other players tell me?

It does make it far more exciting, imho. I would certainly vote to keep it just as is. In a current game, I had my ally tell me to not bother summing an air queen as he just lost 50 gems trying. Good information for sure.

Same for the dispel global thing: Now, how many gems did that turkey put into that Gift of Health? Will an extra 33 be enough or not?

I think the reason that this is not done for mercenaries is because people would be loath to ever bid on a merc if you might lose all your precious gold for some wimpy merc's who will just rout and die anyway at some point.

An air queen, on the other hand, is worth the risk.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

{slaps self on head} Doh! I should have thought of that. For some silly reason it didn't even occur to me that someone else might cast one.

I really need to go back to playing MP games. In SP, by the time I can summon these things I have such a commanding lead on all the AIs it's pretty safe to assume none of them will "steal" one out from under me. In the game I'm playing now, I have Gale Gate running, plus 3 other globals, so I'm almost 100% sure that no AI is in a position to challenge me on summoning such things. But playing SP spoils me. The AIs just aren't aggressive enough or creative and sneaky, like humans are.

Thanks for pointing out my brain cramp. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I make one of these for each BL I summon. As Caelum, most everything else I have (or summon) flies.

Already done. Good suggestion though.

I must be having another brain cramp. Can the hawks (as well as my Caelum units) fly in the staff's storm?

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

oh, I wasn't aware you were caelum. you have less need of spring hawks then.

there's that high level air global that gives some income bonus and deals w/ unrest, forget it's name off hand.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Alteration-8 Fata Morgana (A7). A good choice, but I'm saving the "Last" global slot for Arcane Nexus. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

On the other paw, regarding putting the gems at risk - I fail to see why artifacts (unique items) are greyed out from the forging list, while summoned uniques are not.

After all - shouldn't people want to gamble on whether or not a particular artifact is available?

Answer - I think that losing the gems for a summoning is very disheartening for the newer players who may not have realized that, say, Ice Devils were a limitted commodity and that they could be throwing their gems away. It's irritating even for the players who know the risk.

Making unique items work the same way would add even more irritation factor to the game....

Personally, I think it might be nice if the summoning mechanism were tweaked a little bit. After all - you get shafted when you create a unique item at the same time as another person, or cast the same global in the same turn as another. If two people both summoned the Last ice devil the same turn, one loses out, so graying out the summons wouldn't eliminate risk.

That's probably going quite a bit too far towards player friendliness though. But - if the summons doesn't work, the player could lose a random 25-75% of the gems normally used, not all the gems.

Or at a minimum, for the new players especially, the interface could do something to stress that the gems might be wasted if the summons has already been cast / all the critters summoned.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I'm making it a point to include verbiage about this issue in Liga's next Manual Addenda revision. New players need to be warned that their caster's time (and more importantly, gems) might be wasted.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

I vote for a chance for the summon to succeed... sortof like wish, summoning the Ice Devil from another player. Why else is it called Summon?

/me ducks and rolls under a handy table.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Perhaps you can strengthen the ai by using mods in early Versions like Cohens crusader mod , the ork mod and the one with the 4 handed creatures don't remember the exact name .
This way you would have to fight harder to win http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I'd add some more unique summons to the game however, and improve the Tree Lords.

Some unique Astral summon should be appreciated I believe, one that is Blood + Astral too (and a demon troop too).

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I'm not sure. Astral gives you absolutely amazing battle-magic. It doesn't need summons as well.

Mark

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Not so good amazing battle-magic.
It's good if you've massed guys and the enemy are few and lacks of MR, but otherwise it's better elemental magic.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Yeah it is two edged . Imo it is more supportative for path boosters / converting and lategame for wishing .

Soul slay / enslave mind are good but only against SCs .

And there is always the danger of magic duel .


I still haven't decided for whether fire or air is in general the best battlemagic . Air gives better Scs with the airqueens and is in many other areas more useful too though .
Anti-Sc only it is probably nature with charm .

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Air is better usually, because you can:

Mirror Image and Mistform ...

Lightning (armor negating), Orb Lightning or Thunderstrike depending your target.
Wrathful skies is easy to reach via research and battle cast that Fire or Flame storm (or strike, I don't recall, 2 are battle magic 1 is ritual).

Not to count that Air gives precision to your mages, fire gives attack that is useful only on fighting mages like SCs.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Yeah and air gives you the airqueens .
Both magic schools have though the problem that they don't work against SCs and probably later in the game the mages will be equipped with an air/fire resistence item too .

Especially the bloodnations have an edge here in midgame . If they face Airnations they can use a few storm demons and if they face Firenations they can use devils .

My problem is that i still haven't enough practical experience http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif .

But i think killing SCs supported with some troops is almost impossible via battlemagic . If they are alone charm/soul slay etc. should work but if they have a bit support i think it is a real problem .

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Seconded. It would be immensely frustrating to lose a high level unique that way but on the other hand the satisfaction of stealing an opponent's carefully acquired HLU would compensate.

How about an already summoned HLU would get a MR roll to avoid being summoned away. Would that work?

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Hmm, why is a unique item unique after all? I guess the unique items are so hard to forge, that the mage really needs a lucky day to forge it at all. It similar to drawing Pictures: You can never redraw a picture as good as before (at least for an unskilled painter like me this is true).

So I am okay that uniques are greyed out. One has heard a rumour that this thing was created by a genious and is so struck with awe that one cannot recreate it...

But that explanation aside: I would propose a general percentage chance for the success of Unique Items Creation as well as Unique Summons, so that a unique item cannot be created instantly. But in that case, a good percentage of the gems cost should be returned and not wasted...

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

General percentage chance? 100%, unless the item has already exists, in which case it's greyed out and not available for creation. Unique summons - 100%, unless already summoned, in which case 0%.

And of course, if someone is forging the same unique item / summoning the same Last unique summons in the same turn, it's a crap shoot. In theory, if two of you are doing it, 50% chance. If 3, 33%.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Random thought --

Just because you summoned it, does not have to mean that it's changed loyalties. Aieeeeeeee!

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Actually in the first game Illwinter put out (Conquest of Ellysium) they are seperate actions. Your summoning request has a variety of possible creatures it brings you, and there is a seperate chance for whether you can successfuly "bind" it. Both settings are purchaseable. You can increse the cost in order to get a greater rane of creatures, and you can increase the cost to get a safer chance of binding.

I found it alot of fun that way but I can see that it probably puts in abit too much random unfairness for a multiplayer game (CoE is single player)

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Artifacts are fine as they are. There is no reason that anyone should lose an artifact if they have created it (outside of the good ol' fashioned, kill'm and take it method).

As far as suggestions go:

Unique summons on the other hand could have a chance of loyalty switching (or possible going BREZERK!) if they are summoned.

Something simple yet might add another dynamic could be 25 base chance modfied +/- 5% on the difference in main path of casting unit.

Thus an Ice Devil summoned by a 3 Blood Caster first, but if summoned by a 6 Blood Caster later would have a 40% chance of deserting their original summoner and heading to join more powerful blood mage.

Or a 6 Blood Caster casts it first, and a 4 Blood Caster tries to steal him away, he'd only have a 15% chance of taking away the ID.

This could work well for the Royalty and the Blood Summons. Then of course a 10% chance from the chance of Loyalty could cause the Devil/Elemental Royalty to "GO BREZERK" (4% chance with 40% and 1.5% with 15)

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I believe the actual system works just fine.

Otherwise this could be scrap the Research Priorities / Rush for uniques and this could cost much more to the victim than the 2nd summoner.

If your plan is going to use your X Elemental Ruler, with full equipment, and it disappears (even if there're little chances, but it's usually 1/4) you're losing a powerful unit, a lot of gems for equipment and probably your enemy has it.
Even this could bring to a summon-countersummon til the shortage of gems waves smiling to a player, making not so usable a unit that appears one turn, and could disappear another one.
It could be a sort of Djinn ... who usually equip the Djin if not with low cost trinkets? But Djinn is very powerful, could both trapeze and teleport iirc and has many paths in magic.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Possibly. Why should you be guarenteed to have your Elemental Lord even if another summons is cast? I don't see the exact logic of why.

If the new Elemental came without equipment it would be fine. Even if the % was lowered by an additional 10 (15% chance) it would make it less of a "Sure thing". Though considering the cost of a Unique, I don't think 25 is unreasonable.

And I'm the one who usually rushes for uniques and gets and holds them and have them wait for equipment for exactly the reasoning that they can't be taken and forces wasted gems.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I'd prefer to see the spell reverted to a Summon something lesser if the big uniques are ended.

Like if both Earth king are taken and a third guy cast it, it appears a non unique Elemental Earth Lord that could have lower stats and E3 oe E2 magic, probably not worthing 50 gems but at least you don't waste.

Well personally I'd like to see the unique number incresead a lot.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Astral lacks offensive battle spells, but Antimagic, Will of the Fates, Doom, and Astral Healing are all great support spells. And relatively cheap, especially if you can bring in some communion slaves.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

So why wouldn't you be happy, Cohen? You are the self-proclaimed enemy of the SC, are you not?

If people wouldn't put anything on the unique summonses except trinkets, then the Air Queens, Ice Devils, etc, wouldn't be such an overwhelming force.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I've had this argument before. Astral has decent battle magic. Hardly what I would call awesome.

Astral's real bonus ( in my mind ) is that it grants mobility. The combat spells are nice but not better than many other schools.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

If there would be hordes of unique creatures then they would not be as unique as before, wouldnt they? (Oh, yes please: refrain from commenting on this weird logic if you understand my intentions nevertheless - especially Cainehill http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) I mean: Every creature is unique and every Militia man may have his own affliction, but please refrain from giving each one his own name... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif

---

I would not like if summoned creatures could be simply summonned again. Their are already bound!
I still feel that summoning is much to much failsafe in Dom2. Mortal mages bind and bend powerful creatures like nothing! So I proposed a fail-chance (i.e. something that noticably differs from 100% or 0%) for each summon. E.g. as a first guess , kake it 20% plus 1% per additional gem or so...

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I concur to calling "awesome" the Astral battle magic : not even talking of Master Enslave, you get Body Ethereal, Stellar Cascade, Soul Slay, Paralyze, Antimagic ... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif !

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Hmm awesome would I guess indicate that it is one of the best schools. Let's define awesome as top two.

So let's compare to air. Air has a number of area effect high damage, Armor Negating, no MR check spells that are feared by all. It is widely considered to be the best battle field magic. Orb lighting, false horrors, thunderstike, wrathful skies, storm these are all considered to be "awesome" spells. I don't know if it really is #1 but many people consider it thus.

Now #2 is much harder. It could be earth. They have a number of very powerful battle spells. Blade wind, Petrify, magma eruption there are a few and they are hard ( or impossible ) to resist.

Perhaps #2 is death. Life drain can not be resisted and it is 100 precision. Death has fine battlefield summons. Banefire is considered one of the better direct damage dealing spells. It has a vast array of battlefield spells and many do not have an MR check.

No, IMO ( and I could be wrong here ) Astral magic is at best the #4 battle magic in the game. Exactly in the middle of the pack. If this is what goes for "awesome" then so be it.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Well, the 3 Cherubyne type uber arch-angels could be really nice to see (since Seraph has been assigned to Caelum and Seraphim too).
Grabriel, Michael and Rapheal ^^
or most fantasy
Uriel, Azrael and Imrael

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Or maybe harbringers that were about as combat sturdy as a bane lord ... they are the same research level you know.

That would be cool. It does not work out that way. They are more expensive and far less combat capable. They do have A2 though. Yay!

A funny story. A SoapyFrog found himself in possession of a S5 mage a lot of research and plenty of astral gems and he could not for the life of him find anything useful for the astral mage to do.

Now I do not know if I would go that far. I think that astral is decent ( note : middle of the pack ) combat magic. And I think that it gives impressive mobility if you want to spend the gems. I do think that it totally lacks summons of any worth and that is, IMO, it's real failing.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

doom horrors, vampire queens aren't so bad

not to mention golems.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Indeed wishing is the only reasonable summon. However 100 astral gems is quite expensive assuming no clams.

Golems are clods. But it is all astral has. Not even as useful as a bane, which cost far less and requires less research. Bleech.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Golems with Stymphalian Armour and Winged Shoes/Boots of Quickness make excellent tramplers. Add anti-magic and a charcoal shield for more fun, or give your Golem the full "anti-the-person-who-hits-me" outfit. Bane Lords look funnier when they are flat.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Simply Magic Levels and Paths are counted much more than pure fighting skill.

So a Banelord, even if thougher than an Harbringer, or more skilled than a Golem, lacks of any magic skill.

Harbringer can trapeze, mistform and mirror image, and with a +1A item can wrath too.
A Golem with a Starshine Cap can teleport, and he's plenty of buffs like body ethereal, personal luck, astral weapon/shield, resist magic. And it's lifeless, this make enemy SC unable to lifedrain him, even if he doesn't regenerate unless in a lab, in the lab IIRC he heals afflictions too.

However it's true they cost a lot of pearls meanwhile you can easily build a Banelord or better a Tartarian factory.

IMO Astral really needs for some uniques.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

I really would like a summon that is cost effective before a unique. Either troops or commanders. Heck both would be nice http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Why genericize things? If you give summons that are like summons from other magic schools, are you later going to want to give something like Communion, Teleport, Dispel, and Luck powers to all of the other flavors of magic?

Communion makes Astral scary, as well as the various astral items and spells that add magic levels, and not just astral levels either. As the magic that deals with magic, it has a lot of potential for players who use it from a more sophisticated perspective than just "it isn't in the top 2 cuz it doesn't have the best summons or battle spells".

PvK

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Astral's not a school for dealing damge on the battlefield. It's a more general school. It's definitely not useful in every battle, but in the right situations, it's very, very good. Antimagic is a huge help against things like Illithids. Doom is great for making large Groups of SCs much more vulnerable to afflictions. Battle Fortune/Will of the Fates are great defensive spells for any unit. Communion is always good and almost necessary for some high level spells. And a group of astrologers with as many spell focuses, starshine skullcaps, boots of quickness, crystal coins, and rune smashers as you can afford can be extremely scary.

Air is good, but a ring of tamed lightning or thunder ward takes away a lot of its punch if you know it's coming. And the best air spell, storm, can be duplicated by an item.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Death has the best summons in the game IMO. I even prefer the Nature summons to the Air ones. And once IW fixes the anti-morale loss spells so they're effective vs. False Horror, Air should be readily negatable. But until then, Air is #1, with Death #2, Earth a distant #3, and Nature at #4. IMO, FWIW. YMMV.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Hence middle of the pack. IMO. Although I have stood corrected that if you have the correct cross-paths ( in particular death ) then it becomes much better.

That's a lot of hardware to put on a 10 hit point body. You may cry if you get hit with a flames from the sky.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Well, I'm just saying that its hard to rank them since everything is situational and most things are counterable. Against an army of mechanical men or other lightning immune creature, air is not going to be worth a whole lot. Death, on the other hand, will probably obliterate that army with shadow bLasts and nether bolts.

Hence "as much as you can afford." Teleport them all into a seiged castle the turn when the opponent storms and that won't be a problem.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

Astral doesn't blow stuff up. It's most "awesome" spells are cast in support of a conventional army, a force multiplier. And used like that it's incredibly powerful. A lot of its applications require you to mass spellcasters, but with them you can massively weaken the enemy army and strengthen your own.

One battlefield spell makes your entire army lucky and another curses the entire enemey army. This on its own turns an equal battle into a slaughter.

At a lower level spamming Paralyse breaks an enemy formation into bitesize pieces, reducing the impact of its attack and allowing yours to beat it piecemeal. Again, turning an equal battle into a winning one.

You can kill enemy SCs without having to build your own.

Enslaving a few key units can turn a battle. I once, as Arco, fought a battle with Caelum. Two enslaved Mammoths turned the tide by themselves.

Armies with many magical units become terribly vulnerable to being destroyed or taken over (again, with battlefield-wide spells).

And Communion gives you the flexibility to be able to cast the high-level high-fatigue spells without spending (and risking) a fortune in magic items.

Except in the very early game - when Raise Skeletos is King - Astral on the battlefield is much more powerful than Death (Drain Life is a fine spell, but only hurts one target, and needs a D4 caster). And this is OK, because Death has many excellent summons which Astral doesn't.

Agreed that Air is also very powerful, but in a different (rather more direct) way, and has different applications. I wouldn't want to cast Wrathful Skies in support of an army - my elephants wouldn't thank me for it.

I like that the magical schools are different, and have to be applied in quite different ways. It's what makes this game so interesting. Appealing for more summons for Astral just leads us down the path of homogenising the game in pursuit of fairness or balance, and losing both the flavour and the challenge of learning how to use all the different options currently available.

Re: Elemental King/Queen summoning limits?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif Sure, especially since I just showed you a few turns ago how I successfully used WrathfulSkies to kill a third of my own main army (despite of an active ThunderWard spell) against your lousy 25-point PD...http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif...I really bit myself somewhere when I saw that batte replay...http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif