Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Does anyone actually use vanilla summons, providing no magic diversity or thug/SC in addition, except as an absolute last resort? I can't think of a worse waste of gems then summoning a handful of units at a relatively decent price, as with vine ogres + summoning head piece, or summoning large quantities of really terrible fodder for far too many gems?

Personally I think the cost ratio on most summons should be lowered. Either make the cost less, which still incurrs many turns of mages sitting around summoning wasting their research and forging time to make doodz, or make the number of effects greater which would both lower the number of mages needed to cast, *and* provide cheaper troops.

Either way I think, currently, the basic "here are some doodz" summons aren't terribly useful at the moment.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I like Call of Winds, and national sacred summons are good.

I've got an MA Mictlan game where I've summoned really quite a lot of Jaguars (Conj 3 spell), along with quite a few Jade Serpents. It's going pretty well.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I should have specified that the summon at a distance spells were out, as they're not vanilla. Those clearly have their uses fighting PD, etc.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I can't entirely agree with the OP.

certainly, there are some damned useless summons.
but as vtb notes: national summonable sacreds can be OK sometimes.

and spells that summon lots of pretty good troops at reasonable prices are good, like the higher level, often national, summons. spells where you get 20ish units around 30ish gems; units with over 20 HP, and str and prot over 15. But I don't know, I'm only in my 2nd MP game, so maybe these are actually useless. They look pretty tasty to me though.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

The most problematic summons are the various low to mid-level summons that cost 15 to 30 gems for 5 to 20 units that are essentially worthless. Many of those are nature summons, but others as well. The cost efficiency is so bad that you are always better off using those gems to forge items or distributing them among battle mages. You get more use out of them that way.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I play Agartha a lot, and because of that I like to use low level national summons they have in all ages.

But vanella summons? I am sure that I have used some but generally they seem somewhat wasteful. I do not build a lot of thugs generally, but I like to save my gems for mage item, mid game summons, and the big late game ones.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

This is exactly what I'm talking about D: They spells end up being so junky they're useless. I'd really like to see the spells retooled to be more useful. I think it'd be a lot more interesting to see T'ien Ch'i's soldiers supplemented with a contingent of ancestral ghosts, instead of just more of the same national troops as cannon fodder because the gems are just too valuable to waste on low ratio, low power, summons.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yes, that is what I've always thought. All the serpent/drake spells for example - pure crap. Do anyone ever use them (besides from SP). Even the spell that is intended to strengthen them is bad (dragon master). I mean lv8 and 30 gems to get "not one but three" of them. What is up with that?

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Well this is kinda my speciality area. If you go back to the old CBM thread you can see my analysis of various vanilla summons and suggestions to improve them in CBM.

Many, many summons are improved in CBM, though sometimes I think qm doesn't go far enough. Or at least as far as I would.

Summon animals in CBM is a hot spell though. It scales (quite a lot) and is cheap and in the right terrain you get some nice stuff. Just as an example.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

The CBM is a way to solve the issues of course, but I rather have an explanation by Kristoffer how he justifies the high costs. I mean doesn't he like animals? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

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)

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I will alchemize a fire gem or two when I want to start a castle and am missing
a few golds to also recruit my capital only wizard. But I have not actually
used it as a real strategy since Dominions II.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yes, yes, yes! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
Just one patch addressing the most obvious balance issues in CBM ("the 10%") and I would pass by Kristoffers on my way to school with a case of beer and some snacks.

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

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Shouldn't the order on that be reversed?
That is, you would first sacrifice a case of beer and some snacks to Kristoffer and then he will answer your prayers in the form of addressing the most obvious balance issues.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I think you would be surprised to know how efficient may fire drakes be with demonbreds, elementals and army support in early Abysian rush (approx. turn 8-10). I know only a few nations that can survive this rush without serious preparations.
The real problem is that the drakes need to be scripted and positioned properly as they tend to ignore the "fire" order if they may attack. Probably they believe they can bite any enemy to death http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yes, but those are recruit able for EA Abysia. I use them as well.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Dedas, Fire Drake != Salamander...

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I've always stayed away from CBM as I enjoy knowledge, and learning the inner workings of Dominions is difficult enough on it's own, and close to impossible with a completely seperate second set of laws (units/spells/changes/etc) in CBM.

However, I'm not opposed to change in the vanilla game, and I'm a big fan of the patches, so I vote yes in support of updating some summons. (Even if it slows down the development of another new nation)

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yes, it seems strange that everything has been upscaled from Dom 2 to Dom 3 but some summons have not been tweaked. A lot of them are very inefficient and just clogging up the spell book.

I am sure just stealing a few balance ideas from CBM would make the game more enjoyable since more valid choices are available.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Ops, got them mixed up.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

For me the problem is, if many big changes are made, be it in CBM or vanilla game, the manual become obsolete and I like to use it a lot.

I think I wouldn't mind to play with CBM or an heavily changed vanilla game with a printable copy of the manual's spells/items charts with all the changes.

But having to look the manual + a changelog text elsewhere, or ingame for each spell if it's changed made me stay away from CBM (or would make me dislike a vanilla game with dozens of spell changes as well).

ps : or I'd like a simple to keep in mind generic change for all the spells in the category like "all pure troops summons have now number of effects increased by mage power" or "all animal summons number of effects are doubled" , something like that

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Just because something is inefficient doesn't mean it needs to be corrected. As was initially noted, desperation can make these spells useful, so they are still achieving a function.

Balance also goes to a much wider scope than a few individual spells. If you made lots of these vanilla summons much cheaper, you could potentially alter the balance of the game considerably.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Yeah, people might actually /use them/.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Part of the problem with nature summons is that many of them work only against living enemies. Spirits of the woods and their awe. Lots of venomous creatures can't harm undead, constructs, and (if I remember correctly) many demons. Nature summons are good mostly against other nature summons (or at least living creatures).

I've just cast Creeping Doom. Pathetic ! 2 gems to stall 30 barbarians. They didn't even manage to deal 1 (1!) damage to barbarians. They are supposed to have weak poison. Creeping Doom looks like a very situational spell. It might be better than Swarm against certain enemies, but it's hard to come up with an example. It's much higher in the research tree and requires NNN to cast.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I use Ice and Fire Drakes with Hot and Cold nations. Abysia and Jotunheim benifit the most because they lack archers.

I cant say I have done it in MP game, however. Maybe soon though. I would be in favor of a cost decrease to around 5 gems.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

> For me the problem is, if many big changes are made, be it in CBM or vanilla game, the manual become obsolete and I like to use it a lot.

That's one of our main reason to keep it as it is. Now, as the game has been out for some time I feel a bit less reluctant to change stuff that makes the manual wrong. I'm not entirely against altering casting costs. Spell lvl's and path lvl's are more of a problem as they have greater impact on your strategy and might confuse new players in particular.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I'm a big fan of the way Summon Animals works in CBM. Bears, moose, wolves, all the cool stuff, and lots of it.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I did not read the whole thread, but id like to see the e summon trolls get pr like the water trolls, and id like to see a summon added for the higher protection earth summon trolls at 2 e gems apiece.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

A lot of the stuff in the manual, and/or game, isn't completely reliable. Why keep a useless spell the same for the sake of consistency when for 99% of competitive MP games, and even most single player games, when it is never going to be cast?

I mean, you buffed seeking arrow by making it armor negating instead of piercing, and nerfed blade wind. Not to argue the changes one way or the other, but both those spells see infinitely more play, especially blade wind, then some of the worse summons.

I mean really, lets look at "Summon Animals". 20 gems for 20 pieces of fodder? You might as well just remove the spell from the spell book so it's easier to scroll down and find Faerie Court.

I would say you should feel much more at ease buffing in game summons. There is an explicit statement in the in game spell for most of them, indicated by the "# of effects" so there shouldn't be any confusion over what they actually do.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I do not think loyalty to the manual should be relevant either. It is in need of an update anyway.

I for one would pay for a new manual after the major patches are done. A working basis is already there, so correcting the manual and republishing it likely would not entail the same degree of work as the original.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

The manual is already pretty hopeless. It's been wrong on almost everything I've actually needed/wanted to look up.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

There are lots of people who only play singleplayer, or just the demo, and still think the AI is hard and impossible to beat, and would be quite confused indeed if they bought the game and found out they don't know research levels up to 4 any more.

As an example, is LA Vanheim good or crap? There was that thread about some other forum thinking it was so bad it was almost useless, and discussion about their mages' randoms and the skinshifters and stuff like that.

Similarly, here we've had huge discussions about monkey nations' PD, and about Ulm. Some people think Ulm in all ages suck, some think MA Ulm sucks, some think EA Ulm is too good already - unless someone frequents these forums, major changes will come out of nowhere. Even if someone frequents here, some changes seem to come out of nowhere.

Some changes are good and universal. Price changes are relatively easy to adjust to, and changing Summon Animals to 20 to 30 beasts isn't that big of a change. Something like changing Dragon Mastery to Conjuration 1, 10 gems and Cave Drakes to 20 gems for 4 drakes, +2 from mastery, +1 for every level above needed? Suddenly some nations can pump out lots of Cave Drakes in the early game with one turn's expense from a Great Mother pretender. The spell might get used now, but all changes are scary.

There's also the fact that Shrapnel is still selling Dominions, and shipping the game with a manual that is very clearly outdated is bad. If people can at least trust that the manual gives the right idea about where you find what spells and what they do, they can plan without having the game always open.

EDIT:
The manual could use an update, but I use it to check spells' details. Where can I find this spell, what level caster does it take, how much fatigue does it cost? It gives me that. I also use it to check probabilities from the table at page 5, and no one has proven that wrong yet. I also learned out the effects of fatigue and morale from tha manual, and no one has proven that wrong either. My manual is right in almost everything, and wrong in few things. It's also missing some stuff that should have made it in for the release (number of towers in castles, quickness stacking, things like that), and lots of stuff that was added in patches. As I said, it could use an update. But it never was, and isn't, hopeless.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I completely agree, and sometimes the spell doesn't even work as described in the manual. Stygian paths, anyone?

In Magic : The Gathering, they've faced this problem for a long time. Since the rules have changed so greatly since the printing of the first sets, they've had to extensively change old cards. For example, there is no longer "interrupts" in magic anymore. Everything is an instant. The important lesson to take away is that they weren't afraid to go back and meddle with older cards to make the game better. Even though it makes it a bit more difficult to pickup old cards and play with them according to the oracle wording (the official text of every card is listed in the oracle), the game is made that much better because old mechanics are fixed, cards are reworded, and things become keywords.

Also, they generally only change things to make them clearer, while preserving as much of the original effect as possible. Lighting Bolt may now be an instant instead of an interrupt, but chances are a player picking one up is going to play it almost exactly the same way as someone might play Shock.

I see a lot of value in gently tweaking these lower level summons. Make them more valuable. Let people use their gems on stuff other than forging, SCs, and magic diversity.

Jazzepi

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

What's wrong with it now that the bug has been fixed?

* Caster of Stygian Paths took 1 an dmg for each unit under his command instead of units taking 1 an dmg each
* Stygian Paths reported random number of lost on the way

Manual: Transports the caster and all troops under his command to distant province. En route, all troops are attacked by dmg:1 AN attack and dmg: Death, MR attack. These represent the spirits of the underworld attacking. Stealthy units only have a 20% chance of being hit by the death attack. The caster gains no benefit from stealth.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I too think gentle tweaks would be of value. A bit of a boost to summon numbers or stats, or adding scaling per path level in the right place, would add a lot to some spells. Work like that done to the 'Sleeping in...' spells, adding some scale dependencies or dominion-dependent boosts, could also be a neat solution. Summon Animals might summon bigger, stronger animals in a Growth scale, for instance.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

We have the options at hand:

1.- Make the changes in patches so SP people will not notice if they do not patch.
2.- Add a PDF to the Patch with the modifications done.

This way you can keep the manual as a basic rules book and the PDF file updated to the last changes.

You can also ship the game with the last patch and PDF file and everybody will be happy!

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I think Illwinter should forget an updated manual, at least for the moment. With so many changes and continuous patching I don't see the point, it is just too much work. It would be better to just wait until most bugs and extreme unbalances are fixed, and then release an updated manual in PDF. In the meantime we have the excellent in-game information and this forum to help us.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

Dedas - scale bug was fixed for 3.14, which introduced a new scale bug. It was fixed in 3.15, but either .14 or .15 introduced "armies not moving" bug. Continuous patches are the result of "most bugs and extreme unbalances" being present, and sometimes being created by the patch.

PDF update to the manual would be really handy, though. That's a really good suggestion.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I vote option 3...

Option 3 - introduce new items/spells (a la Ivy crown, Dragon master) at higher level to increase effectiveness of weak units.

This can be easily done via a patch and adds new content.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

I understand why the game needs to be updated regularly, that is natural when you change things in a big game like this one. My point is that it would be a waste of time to release an updated manual with every patch. Updating help texts should have low priority until it is relatively safe that the new features work as intended.
Also, the people that actually notice the different changes (not additions) and discusses them on the forums, aren't exactly newbies, so a manual is not really needed at once.

Another thing to remember is that you don't have to update the game to play and learn the basics as a newbie. I would suggest not to, so that you can use the printed manual as you play. When you feel ready to jump into MP, just download the latest patch and play some SP with a nation you like to get a feel for changes. When that is done you should stand a fair chance in any newbie game.

Re: Vanilla Summon Costs
 

All summon spells doubled... 2 tarts for the price of one http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif