Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

As the title of the thread suggests, I'm wondering what players here consider to be summons that are actually useful and not just a waste of gems, specifically in the early to mid game. Sometimes it seems as if a lot of the gems I spend on earlier summons would be better used if I just focused on thugging or saved them for late game summons, because spending a little extra gold on a few more soldiers would do just as well with a lot less effort.

Any diamonds in the rough that I'm missing?

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

my focus on summons is entirely to get paths that I don't have.

So, I like treelords for blood.
Specters for astral
mound fiends to bootstrap death
Lamia queens
faerie court for entry to air.

Golems, tarts, poison golems for SC.

I like banefire archers, and manifest vitirol for combat.
Storm demons can be effective. Elemental royalty.. ok.

I'm sure I'm missing one or two.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

In vanilla, I would rather save the gems. In CBM lots of goodies, like for example

-Dragonmaster -> summon cavedrake, icedrake, flamedrake or wyvern
-bonefiends
-banes
-sleepers
-firesnakes
-naiad warriors

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Some of the nationals are pretty good. Lanka in particular has some nasty stuff, although typically at blood 6+, starting with that air demon with blood vengeance, and ending with the big one that autocasts darkness.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Behemoths and the skeleton calvary are both decent choices. If you have national death mages, you can convert your entire stock of death gems into summons in a single turn, which can be a nice surprise in a mid-game war. They also don't need to eat, which is a plus if you want to make a really big army to march on your opponent's capital.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

this question is not so easily answered as the others here have. the answer to your question is very situational. the main determining factos are:
- magic access(from national mages and lucky indies you found)
- gem income
- your enemies
- value of your mage time
- urgency of early research goals

most of these factors are subjective, hence experience is your best guide. but even without much experience you can evaluate your situation(even if slightly mistaken). generally though, when considering summoned troops you need to aim at the cheapest(both in gems and mage turns) summons that fills gaps in your national armies or counters what the enemy throws at you.

anyway, I assume that you'll still seek actual summon names, so the above posters gave you some good options, just consider which to use according to these guidelines I've written above.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Winter wolves and summer lions can be worthwhile sometimes for their cold/heat auras, and I've seen fall bears/spring hawks pull their weight in some situations.

Storm demons and to a lesser extent demon knights are effective in small enough numbers to make it worthwhile to summon them one at a time.

Several summons can be real tide turners for early fights if you buff them. Body ethereal, luck, iron warriors, quickness, regenerataion, etc. and some otherwise fairly useless guys become things that really require a specific counter to keep from dominating the early battlefield with just one or two of them. For instance:
Behemoths
Kraken
Sea serpents (mostly for the fear aura)
Dark vines
Sea trolls
Crushers

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

All of the early game summons are meat; they exist to take damage and die for your amusement. That can be useful if you have something worth protecting like archers but it is still inefficient. Your best bets are:

Cave Drakes: 22 Protection lets them last a little longer than other meat.
Vine Ogres: High HP but they fall very quickly. Much better if you are an Ivy Lord.
Bane Summons: These are all pretty decent actually, but there's a strong draw to add equipment to them which bumps up their cost.

Most of the time you are better off with a battle summon. Sprites are going to be much more useful as a meat shield than Vine Men or Vine Ogres. An Air Elemental is more cost efficient than a Wyvern, etc.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Oh. And summon sprites is WAY worth the cost.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

For what they can do to the unprepared they are way, way, way, way worth the cost.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I always liked summons that get you lots of free units over time. Those are:

**scratch trolls, my bad**
Draconians
Most Elemental Royalty
Vampire Lord

Anything that makes free units usually sits in a province making free units unless I need it to do something specific.

I always look for cost effective ways to build armies. Units that make free units are high on my list.

Second highest are units or things that can be massed cheaply or units that facilitate the massing of cheap units:

Tree lords & Ivy Kings
Lamia Queens

Spells that allow me to conjure massive numbers of units with no notice allow me to store up gems and then use them as a surprise attack or defense. Any spell that conjures a large number of useful units is good for this especially if it's also cheap and I have a lot of mages that can summon them:

Seasonal Spirits
Wyverns/Drakes (given access to Dragon Master)
Shade Beasts (kinda meh, but early masses can be quite formidable)
Spirits of the Wood (I love these dryads btw. They can't heal away from home, so send a nature mage with them to heal them in the field)
Naiad Warriors (don't usually have enough Water magic for these guys)
Fire Snakes (don't usually grab these, no experience with them...)
Enliven Statues (don't usually get these either)
Reanimate Archers (these are sexy)
etc.

Again, I don't presummon large masses of these units. I wait until I know what I'm going to do with them before I whip them out because by keeping the gems instead of the units in reserve I don't give my opponent the ability to develop a counter-strategy (other than a similar summon-on-reserve action) before he has to deal with them.

Oh! I also love Great Eagles. They're made with air gems, can thug quite nicely with a luck pendant/regen ring, and great for their primary purpose... keeping spies and assassins out of your provinces. This goes for any similar patrol unit like the Simargl or Celestial Hound.

And I absolutely love summonable spy units since I don't have to spend a castle turn to make them. Black Servants and Likhos from Bogarus (Likhos are really neat spies).

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Neither the Troll King nor the Sea King makes free units. The Sea King makes water gems, but takes a long time to pay off his cost.

There are generally better uses for Elemental Royalty than to sit around making chaff, but I do tend to have them do that rather than research when they're not actively needed on the front lines.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Ah right, right... he makes free gems... mb. I have elemental royalty summon their little free units any time they're not doing anything else, but yes, frequently are better used as SCs than sitting at home. Fortunately, you don't need a lab to summon.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

While both very stealthy and "really neat", Likhos are not spies (cannot instill uprisings, etc.) They do increase misfortune in their province though, which can lead to negative events that in turn increase unrest...

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Could you elaborate for Bears? Hawks are OK as they can be used to attack enemy rear.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Agree about already mentioned Living Statues. They are quite useful.
Longdead Horsemen and Storm Demons were also mentioned. I often use Spirit Mastery while playing Death power - they are quite a good tarpit for many enemy elites. As for earlier units...
Black Servants are sometimes used as thugs with cheap equipment. Vine men could be used as tarpit if you have no alternative.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

They're 2.5 E apiece, have high hit points, good MR and are ethereal. Even with no support they can be pretty effective blockers (depending on what you're facing obviously), slap on wooden warriors (or better stuff once your magic ramps up) and it takes quite awhile to chew through the buggers while the enemy mages keep targeting them because of their hps. They're not gonna be winning battles for you singlehandedly, but they can do a pretty good job of taking the heat off of whatever you have that will.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Don't forget crossbreeding especially when you have positive luck (being Mictlan or Pagaea, for example)

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I once lost key battle to a squad of flanking shade beasts. A half dozen somehow made it through banishment span and a small picket line. They "got into" the mages and that was all she wrote.
Ssj

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Short answer: most aren't worth it.

Long answer: with normal gold/gem frequency, it seems to me one gem is worth 25 gold. So for any summonable creature, ask yourself if it can defeat two of your enemy's normal troops, or one elite troop -- per gem cost.

If you're playing with more gems or less gold, summonables become much better. More gold or less gems, and they're only good for unique situations.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Shade beasts are rather (and unexpectedly) good in fighting early\mid game sc's who are not protected from poison. They do poison damage and are of size 1 and attack 11. They may just surround and kill fast those unprepared but, of course are very vulnerable to fire brands.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

That seems fairly arbitrary and not really in line with my experience. What a gem is worth varies immensely depending on what type it is, what kind of mages you have, what your research level is, what your opponent is fielding, etc. etc. 5 -10 gems can absolutely swing a battle with thousands of gold worth of troops even with modest research if you're in a situation with the right leverage.

Summon summer lions to surround the enemy prince of death (without fire resistance) that is rampaging through everything else you've got.

Summon a behemoth and buff it with iron warriors, luck, body ethereal and quickness and watch it smushify hundreds of enemy troops.

Plop that crusher in the front row to stop that hoard of elephants like a brick wall.

Let those triple blessed vans run right over a band of spine devils (hint: length 0 hooves get poisoned regardless of their defense/glamour).

Let those mind blasters blast the be-jesus out of your good MR regenerating sea trolls.

Let those big nasty Niefel giants chew through your cold immune and ethereal dispossessed spirits.

Sure, these are all situational uses, which is kinda the point. You're gonna find most summons are not very cost effective to just summon and use as line troops, but they bring a wide variety of abilities to the table that give you tools to handle situations when your line troops aren't cutting it.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

Nice idea, never knew that

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I have a new found respect for Sea Kings Court now that gem generators have been banned. In a MP game I am in at the moment I put up a early Maelstrom and started summoning a Sea King every other turn. You quickly build up a lot of Sea King thugs which with built in regeneration and amphibious are rather excellent (better than water queens) with the right (and cheap equipment), also the water gems start rapidly building up. The trolls summoned with them simply put right upfront of your armies to absorb all the damage a enemy dishs out in the first few rounds. They are useful damage absobers and your happy to see them die so you don't after pay there upkeep. Very useful for taking out water nations as well, when supported by shark attack, friendly currents, water ward, wave breaker and quickening.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I'm surprised that sea kings are not considered worthy SC material. They have regen, some natural protection, good MR, good HP, and can self-cast personal quickness and breath of winter.

Of course, you need some good equipment to make them into a true SC, but they come earlier than most traditionnal SC chassis, are not unique, and for the cost you get sea trolls to escort them or your armies, and they make water gem.

If you happen to have a E9 or E10 blessing, a simple shroud give them decent (not great, but decent) armor (thanks to the blessing and natural armor) without adding enc, and some reinvigoration to keep with their quickness.

Add a brand for some area damage, the classic vine shield + amulet of luck and amulet of antimagic, maybe some boots of the messenger if you need more reinvigoration, and any helm (horror helm if you can, but with the earth bless, even a low-prot one will do if you don't have the gems or death magic)

And if you don't want to use so much gems because you're saving them for later SCs, just a brand and a shroud already make for a very good thug, no ?

Of course, without the earth blessing, they are harder to equipe, as you will need more reinvigoration because of the inevitable enc + quickness, but they still seams ok as earlier SCs for me.

But I am not very familiar with MP games as I usually play solo (yes, I know the AI sucks, but I play more against the map that the AI and have a blast doing it) so maybe I missed something that make them less desirable as SC ?

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I try not to base general strategies on things like E9/10 bless since such a thing requires planning in the early stages and many nations don't take a bless strategy since they cannot sustain it very long. This, therefore, has to be part of an initial strategy rather than as a strategy evolving during the campaign. Obvious alternatives to the shroud would be Rainbow Armor, Lightweight/Weightless Scale Mail or other gem-cheap, reinvig or low-enc armor. This means you may need a reinvig item somewhere else to keep enc down.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

I do like Call of the Winds as the hawk is good both as a patroller and as a "transport" commander to ferry those troops produced in castles to the front lines.

I also like the Call of the Wild as the werewolf is a good tugh when kitted or can be left in a forest summoning allies to get free wolves. I normally leave 1 werewolf in each of my forests just sommoning wolves.

Re: Worthwhile summons (early to mid)
 

In an oblique way, we're in complete agreement. I was answering the question of how useful summons are generically -- as a mass of front line troops. And the answer is, not very, unless you have high gems/low gold.

In unique/special situations they can become extremely useful, but which ones for which situations would be the answer to a different sort of question than what the OP asked.