[merlinme]

I have a problem with a couple of the Nature summons. Summon Treelord gets you a static N4 commander with no hand slots. Summon Ivy King gets you a mobile N3 commander, who you can give the staff which gives you a N2 bonus, so he should be able to reach a higher level than the Treelord.

I've never had any joy with Ivy Men, and I'm not much of a fan of Ivy Ogres. They have protection of something like 3, and they just drop like flies beneath any sort of ranged attack. I might give them another try, using the Ivy King with the Crown of the Ivy King (and there may be another magic item as well which gives you bonuses, I forget). But one of my main goals when building an army is to have troops which will last. The experience helps, but it's just so much more effective if you can build an army which is capable of capturing a few provinces without having to stop and wait for reinforcements. Vine Men/ Ogres rarely last more than one or two battles (in my admittedly fairly limited experience). I experimented a bit using them in an army which used a lot of poison, but most of the time I'd prefer to have undead, if I want poison immunity. I tend to think there are better uses of your gems and mages' time.

A couple of comments I would make on the list of 'Good' 'Bad' and 'Ugly' summons: playing as Oceania against a nation with a lot of missile troops, I used just about all the Ethereal spells I could get my hands on, including Ether Gate. Yes it's expensive, but in the circumstances where you have lots of gems and very few troops you can fight with on land, it can be worth it. Once I'd established my beachhead, I then used Summon Animals/ Summon Pride of Lions/ Summon Animal Horde, as I had plenty of nature gems, and you can't really build an army around Mermen and Seatrolls on their own. I even cast Horned Serpents a couple of times. They're not great value for money, but they're the only animals with reasonable protection, so have some staying power against arrows.

The Animal Horde consumes an enormous amount of food, and the low protection means they tend to only last one or two battles. But it's a very cost effective use of nature gems if you want to build an army fast. You can have 100 animals for 30 gems in one turn, and I'd take that over almost any number of Ivy Ogres.

I guess what you may have gathered from this is that almost all the summoning spells can be of use in right circumstances, it depends on the nation you're using and what your needs are for gems vs. money at any one point in time.