Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

I was going to post this right after the last thread, but I'm a lazy bastard.

What are your top 5 least favorite summoned units and commanders. The context is value vs return. Which units do you feel simply aren't worth it due to the cost and performance.

Units
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5.

Commanders
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Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

I'm not sure. Corpse Man Construction, maybe Will'o'Wisp and the similar death/fire battle summon, some early Conjuration summons (Fire Drake), and Spine Devils. Don't know about commanders.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

In addition to me being curious what people like/dislike compared to me, I don't have the experience everyone else does, and tend to summon off a very small list. I found the last thread to be very insightful, and am hoping to get similar feedback.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

In the unmodded game, the drakes are pretty useless and have a high summoning cost, and the corpse men are just an atrocious waste of air gems even with a lightning rod.

Almost all death summons that summon low level corporeal undead (longdead, soulless, ghouls etc) or the incorporeal undead (shadows, shades etc) are bad.

My own summoning list is also rather limited simply because there is no cost effectiveness in summoning otehrs units. I tend to play with a fairly low site frequency on large maps, so you need to be economical with the gems.

Edi

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Single-unit summons that summon weak-ish creatures.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Like Wyverns - one of the least effective units for the price, in my limited experience trying them.

I do summon a few drakes sometimes.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

I find wyverns handy (but you know that I always push the lesser choices). They tend to be available early in the game and with "attack rearmost" can nicely distract mages if properly used. Of course, an early choice "handy" summons can became a later game "crappy" summons when something better is available to the same purpose.

I do agree that Ive never been able to justify corpse men.

I have have a peeve about things like those wood spirits that cant leave their province. Not because of usefulness. I just think the game-logic is low. It would make more sense to me if they ONLY allowed themselves to be summoned to forests that do NOT have any structures like labs. Not being summoned only to ones that do have a lab. Of course if that happened then you would need one specific for each terrain but I have no problem with that logic

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Ok, I have tended not to play nations that can summon wyverns early on, and/or that do have other things I'd rather do with those gems.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

This spell is not very useful... sometimes I will have a sceptre holding a staff of storms in a castle and then will have him cast the spell if death gems are needed elsewhere. I think you get 5 corpse men per air gem with the staff of storms.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

I've zapped up a few with Corpse Man Construction myself using a lightning rod, as Machaka, but only a few, to fill a small and pretty unimportant role, but I agree it seems like a big waste, especially when I don't have a spare lightning rod sitting around.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

They are very, very weak. They should be at least on par with Vine Ogres IMO, as the path combination is quite rare, and there isn't much synergy besides Vision's Foe.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

my biggest problem with the wood nymphs is that they will retreat, and kill themselves in the process, after a turn or two.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

eater of the dead isn't that great

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

hes great if he can be controlled or if you only expect to use him short term (and he is quite fun to use) but i agree he isnt exactly a good investment (if you really want to use him bring a guard of mind enslavers/charmers with penetration items so if he goes wild you can recapture him for a while)

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Caelum in one of my MP games is using corpse men a lot. Whats so bad about them? Low Protection/banishable is not great, but their tunder fist packs a punch. No worse then clockwork horrors and at 5 per gem ...thats not a bad deal.

I have always avoided them to this point, so had never used them or faced them. But my raiders accidentily ran into caleums pure corspe man force...my vans were outnumbered 3-1 which normally isn't a problem. They were killed after getting one attack off, which always is.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

What is so great? 0 enc trampler but you can get that with abominations much earlier on (much cheaper, and you don't have to worry about having to reclaim them later). Prot is too low so even with regen they do not do well in a fight. With only the 2 misc slots, not much help from items. CB mod buffed them and maybe lowered the cost so they might be slightly better.

The same for corpse constructs, cb buffed them.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Ah were the comments to corpse constructions for base game? I only play CB mod, I always forget that not everyone uses it.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Corpse men got boosted big time in the CB mod. Just FYI

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

Conceptual balance, perhaps?

As far as I remember, Corpse Men are just tougher soulless in the base game.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

That's why these ... polls / questions are kinda pointless these days. A significant portion of the community never plays without some version of the conceptual balance mods, while another significant portion never plays with mods period.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

All the polls I have done have been from the my perspective and had the CB mod in mind. But a lot of the changes in the CB mod were minor tweaks, so can still be compared to base game. Your right that it is harder. But since there is a lot of activity on the forums, there aren't a lot of new threads, particularly game related threads, so I still think its a good idea to try.

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

I was wondering if anyone was using Will o' Wisps and/or Lesser Elementals in their games after the CB 5.4 change. I've seen that my Troll Kings have better things to do with their time once they've discovered Blade Wind, for example. Eh, maybe we should discuss this sort of thing in the CB thread, it probably needs a bump by now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Summoned Units II - Negative Opinions
 

In unmodded, I didn't think Will o' Wisps were bad. Not that I used them a lot, but mainly because I was just doing other things or didn't often have many mages who were suited to doing it.