Vanilla Summon Costs

[ano]

Dedas said:
Yes, that is what I've always thought. All the serpent/drake spells for example - pure crap. Do anyone ever use them (besides from SP). Even the spell that is intended to strengthen them is bad (dragon master). I mean lv8 and 30 gems to get "not one but three" of them. What is up with that?

I think you would be surprised to know how efficient may fire drakes be with demonbreds, elementals and army support in early Abysian rush (approx. turn 8-10). I know only a few nations that can survive this rush without serious preparations.
The real problem is that the drakes need to be scripted and positioned properly as they tend to ignore the "fire" order if they may attack. Probably they believe they can bite any enemy to death

[Dedas]

Yes, but those are recruit able for EA Abysia. I use them as well.

[Edi]

Dedas, Fire Drake != Salamander...

[Saulot]

I've always stayed away from CBM as I enjoy knowledge, and learning the inner workings of Dominions is difficult enough on it's own, and close to impossible with a completely seperate second set of laws (units/spells/changes/etc) in CBM.

However, I'm not opposed to change in the vanilla game, and I'm a big fan of the patches, so I vote yes in support of updating some summons. (Even if it slows down the development of another new nation)

[Reay]

Yes, it seems strange that everything has been upscaled from Dom 2 to Dom 3 but some summons have not been tweaked. A lot of them are very inefficient and just clogging up the spell book.

I am sure just stealing a few balance ideas from CBM would make the game more enjoyable since more valid choices are available.

[Twan]

Saulot said:
I've always stayed away from CBM as I enjoy knowledge, and learning the inner workings of Dominions is difficult enough on it's own, and close to impossible with a completely seperate second set of laws (units/spells/changes/etc) in CBM.

However, I'm not opposed to change in the vanilla game, and I'm a big fan of the patches, so I vote yes in support of updating some summons. (Even if it slows down the development of another new nation)

For me the problem is, if many big changes are made, be it in CBM or vanilla game, the manual become obsolete and I like to use it a lot.

I think I wouldn't mind to play with CBM or an heavily changed vanilla game with a printable copy of the manual's spells/items charts with all the changes.

But having to look the manual + a changelog text elsewhere, or ingame for each spell if it's changed made me stay away from CBM (or would make me dislike a vanilla game with dozens of spell changes as well).

ps : or I'd like a simple to keep in mind generic change for all the spells in the category like "all pure troops summons have now number of effects increased by mage power" or "all animal summons number of effects are doubled" , something like that

[Agema]

Just because something is inefficient doesn't mean it needs to be corrected. As was initially noted, desperation can make these spells useful, so they are still achieving a function.

Balance also goes to a much wider scope than a few individual spells. If you made lots of these vanilla summons much cheaper, you could potentially alter the balance of the game considerably.

[Jazzepi]

Agema said:
Just because something is inefficient doesn't mean it needs to be corrected. As was initially noted, desperation can make these spells useful, so they are still achieving a function.

Balance also goes to a much wider scope than a few individual spells. If you made lots of these vanilla summons much cheaper, you could potentially alter the balance of the game considerably.

Yeah, people might actually /use them/.

Jazzepi

[B0rsuk]

Part of the problem with nature summons is that many of them work only against living enemies. Spirits of the woods and their awe. Lots of venomous creatures can't harm undead, constructs, and (if I remember correctly) many demons. Nature summons are good mostly against other nature summons (or at least living creatures).

I've just cast Creeping Doom. Pathetic ! 2 gems to stall 30 barbarians. They didn't even manage to deal 1 (1!) damage to barbarians. They are supposed to have weak poison. Creeping Doom looks like a very situational spell. It might be better than Swarm against certain enemies, but it's hard to come up with an example. It's much higher in the research tree and requires NNN to cast.

[Dedas]

Edi said:
Dedas, Fire Drake != Salamander...

Ops, got them mixed up.