[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
These two paths SEEM to have some of the best summons in the game at somewhat low research levels.

Blood is almost entirely a summoning school, so it's not that surprising that it has some of the better summoned units. The various level 4 blood summons are actually quite expensive in both blood slaves and mage time. Each casting requires both a level 2 or greater blood mage to cast, plus another blood mage to find the slaves for every single casting.

The death summons are powerful, but not _that_ powerful when you consider their weaknesses. The commander type summons can defeat many normal troops, but this also requires that you put a very large amount of gems into them.

Nature magic also has very good summons. Lamias, for example, are extremely hard to kill, and can be summoned in very large quantities at a low cost.

However they also have excellent higher level summons as well, ex: demon lords, ghost riders, tartarus gate.

Tartarian gate is only really useful if the nation is able to cast and keep gift of health, and has a large enough nature gem income to cast gift of reason every turn. If that's the case, then they have about 20+ nature gems per turn, which should be able to cause a fair amount of damage. The various demon lords are powerful, but also require a major expenditure in gems to make it safe enough to actually use them in combat.

Now it is true that blood has pretty bad combat magic. But death has excellent combat magic. Eg: Life Drain, Soul Vortex, raise dead. All excellent.

Death has excellent offensive combat magic, but almost no defensive capability at all. Most of the death spells only act to overcome the extreme fragility of most undead troops.