Summons: Your thoughts.....

[K]

So, in Dom II I used to summon things quite a bit. Armies sucked and were hard to build, so your army eventually became composed entirely of summons.

In dom III, with the exception of a few notably great summons, I generally make armies out of recruitable units and save the gems for battlefield spells, rituals, and items, or I spend them on summonable commanders.

So my question is this: are there any summons you use as a part of your strategy? Any great stories from MP or SP about a lesser used summons that paid off? How do you use your summons: support troops, frontline troops, or chaff, or some other roll?

[NTJedi]

Some summons are NOT a good for the gem investment... such as the Ziz, Behemoth and Eater of the Dead. Avoid these even in SP games unless you're totally winning and looking to splurge.

I'll let someone else list the good summons.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Some summons are situationally useful.

Claymen, for instance, when facing R'lyeh on the land. Cheap enough to form a frontline, regenerating construct that doesn't need a lab. Mindless, so makes a good frontline versus mindblasters, as long as you've got something other than your leaders for R'lyeh to target, say some deadly archers. And R'lyeh has little protection, to boot. They're poor amphibians, to boot. So they won't be great invading, but counter-attacking they can be quite useful underwater if they need not face the main force. Did I mention that pesky poisoned coral?

[Sombre]

90% of summons are basically crap in my opinion. Either overpriced or underpowered. So in MP people basically just use the remaining 10%

I recently went through almost every summon in the game to suggest changes for the next version of Conceptual Balance Mod - it just reinforced how terrible some summons are. I mean look at horned serpents, shades, spectral infantry, Ziz, drakes, amphipteres,....

An example of a good summon is something like the recently added Jade Serpent. It's actually worth casting.

[K]

Lazy_Perfectionist said:
Some summons are situationally useful.

Claymen, for instance, when facing R'lyeh on the land. Cheap enough to form a frontline, regenerating construct that doesn't need a lab. Mindless, so makes a good frontline versus mindblasters, as long as you've got something other than your leaders for R'lyeh to target, say some deadly archers. And R'lyeh has little protection, to boot. They're poor amphibians, to boot. So they won't be great invading, but counter-attacking they can be quite useful underwater if they need not face the main force. Did I mention that pesky poisoned coral?

Thats the kind of thing I was looking for.

I mean, in a recent test game as LA Atlantis I made four Winter Drakes and was quite happy with their ability to sit near the front on Fire Closest and whip on the enemy with their Area 2 frost breath attack.

Was I twenty-four Water gems happy? I don't know. They were pretty nice though, and most likely reduced my casualties of home only troops.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Also Atlantis- or Caelum, perhaps:

Hidden in Snow is an unreliable spell. Not so hot, pun intended. BUT consider the research path. With just one school (enchantment), you get Grip of Winter and semi-tough undead. Throw some chaff (skelly spam) into battle to buy time for Grip of Winter to take effect. If you've got no mortal units, throw in Rigor Mortis for added effect. There's definetly better summons than Hidden in Snow, but with the right race and mages, Hidden in Snow delivers a powerful combination with only one school of research.

If, on the other hand, enchantment is a low priority school, then Hidden in Snow is a horrible waste of gems - except there's not a whole lot to spend water gems on.

Keeping an eye on LA Atlantis and R'lyeh... pretty much all the underwater summons are useless, excepting Sea Trolls + sharks. Combine minds with ridiculously low magic resistance plus temptingly large size and hitpoints, and you've got the perfect mindblast target.

I have to wonder what the point of the kraken and sea serpent are, though I admit they may have their uses against independents or Oceania. Decoy? Does Mindblast retarget?

[Velusion]

I can't usually justify summoning almost anything except end-game summons (Abomination, Iron Dragon, Tarrasqe, etc...) or summonable casters that can diversify my magic.

[Sir_Dr_D]

NTJedi said:
Some summons are NOT a good for the gem investment... such as the Ziz, Behemoth and Eater of the Dead. Avoid these even in SP games unless you're totally winning and looking to splurge.

I'll let someone else list the good summons.

I disagree about the Behemoth. They have their niche use, especially if you can buff them up with body ethereal and
protection spells. One use, since they are size 6, they can act as decoys to protect your prentender. If I have a size five god, and am afraid of being the target of spells because of the size, I feel safer with a couple of the size 6 behemoths around. And if you are facing a squad of elephants a few behomeths could hold off some of the elephants for a bit and break them up, so your troops can deal with fewer of them at a time.

But generally building a bunch of them, and expecting to use them as tramplers does not work.


[Edit: I should add what I mentioned was theories. I haven't had a chance to try them out.]

[AdmiralZhao]

Going after the Jaguar Toads was a low blow. They might not be the best player on team Mictlan, but they've got heart. And except for the little toads, just about everything else Mictlan gets is worth summoning. Even the mass animal summon is good when you combine it with a double or triple bless. I would also defend the spectral infantry, as they were quite useful to me when playing as Lanka. You can send them out as a first wave, to exhaust the enemy heavy infantry or to hold the enemy in place while your archers do their work.

Still, my data set is somewhat more limited than yours. I'm sure there are plenty of shoddy summons I have not seen. Let me revise my statement to say:
"National summons, especially the holy summons, are usually worthwhile."

[Folket]

In general I only use the mass summon spells. Legion of wights, demonic forces and nice uniques that work as thugs.