Need hints & advices concerning summoning...

[sector24]

For my playstyle in single player games, nothing beats a Wraith Lord. Incredibly durable due to their starting equipment, with the ability to cast Soul Vortex and then just wade through hundreds and hundreds of the chaff the AI loves to recruit so much, these guys are also immortal if things go awry.

With this in mind, your best bet is probably LA C'tis because you can get a D5 mage very easily, and search every province for death sites from turn 2. You need Conjuration to cast the spell and Alteration for the Soul Vortex.

I equip them with a Frost/Fire/Shadow Brand, Charcoal Shield, and a Pendant of Luck. Nothing more is necessary, you could probably get away with less.

This should give you a good starting point to say, "I like this" or "I don't like this" and maybe try something else. Blood and Death have the best end game summons, but often nations have their own spells typically called "National Summons". If you are looking for good national summons try the angels of Marignon.

[Lingchih]

sector24 said:
Blood and Death have the best end game summons, but often nations have their own spells typically called "National Summons".

I would offer Astral as well. It's not really a summons, but Wish can give you some awfullly nice super combatants.

[Saulot]

No, not irritating, heh. If they were, I wouldn't bother writing a response. Just very difficult to answer.

I should re-emphasize and rephrase that list piece of advice I gave, to just look at the spell list in the game (click on each one and read the description) and with the manual open to check out the stats of various summon units, and to examine each spell individually. Spending an hour doing that will give you a much better idea of what's available, and probably save dozens of hours of just random experimentation.

If you want strategy examples that are different or more advanced from what the manual offers, I suggest the strategy index. (On the off chance you haven't already examined it) Reading about what other people do with a nation, or suggest doing with it, can be very helpful in directing you to points of interest that you would want to examine and experiment with.

[Gregstrom]

I may be able to add a couple of pointers.

It is often said that the best summonable creature is the Seraph. It's rather expensive, though. To try it you'd need to be playing as MA Pythium or MA Marignon.

Quite a few good summons are in the Death school, so you could try playing as a Death heavy nation - EA or LA C'tis, for example. You can also reanimate undead with clerics of several nations. It's another form of summoning, and very useful.

Again as noted above, Blood has a lot of entertaining summons available. Jotunheim and Abysia have some Blood for checking out the basic summon roster there.

EA Mictlan and Lanka have a wide range of powerful national Blood summons, and for Mictlan at least you really want to be using them to get the best out of the nation.

Finally, MA R'lyeh has an interesting summon site in its capital and might be worth a look-in.

[hnchrist3]

To any question that starts with "What is best..." in DOM3 there is only one answer: 'It depends.' Everything is interdependent and based on an overall strategy.

Not to sound trite, but the "real" answer to your question is LA Ermor, as all of its (national) players are summons. Your only (national) commanders are freespawn or summoned. (You may still muster regular units, but they have upkeep costs--yeccch!)

However, even Tartarians are available to anyone if they have the appropriate Death-level and Conjuration-9 research.
[Hint on Tartarians. They come to you powerful but useless because they are feeble minded. Acquire the Chalice (Construction-8; unique) and all that goes away. NOW, you have a fighting force.]

Again, it all depends. If you are a powerful Blood nation, you may use vampires; Seraphs seem popular as well.

A summons in itself is not useful; it must be tailored to either the threat or the conquering strategy.

[CUnknown]

I think the best summon races are the blood races (e.g. Mictlan) for devils, storm demons, etc. and the death races (e.g. LA Ermor) for all the nice death summons.