The (not really) Official Endgame Summon Thread!

[JimMorrison]

Well adding more random or dynamic factors I'm sure could keep things interesting and add new challenge for hardcore veteran addicts.

But for those of us who haven't been playing since release, and don't have these algorithms plugged into our brain to allow us to accurately evaluate completely new units and capabilities on the fly, it would seem to just inspire confusion.....

Dominions is like some kind of crazy Rock < Paper < Scissors < Hammer < Burlap Sack < Machete < Wrecking Ball < Body Bag < Chainsaw..... kind of progression, and constantly adding or removing steps in that can ultimately lead to a newer player discovering more of the innate truths of the game, but it'll do nothing for helping them develop consistent results from a predetermined set of capabilities.

My point being, that it seems most people consider it very risky, (bordering on suicidal) to play in MP without S/D/B access, so getting used to a mod that allows you to play most nations competitively without strong investment into those paths (and their associated schools), would make a less experienced player much weaker in vanilla MP games. Currently it's not so viable to really focus on the 1-2 paths that most nations start with very strong access to.


God I could just keep typing. What I mean to say is, I want to see more late game summons as viable alternatives to what is already available. I want them to be so compelling and strategically interesting, that they are included in all MP games. I also want a pony for Xmas.

[TheMenacer]

That's pretty much what this is all about. Having the only viable endgame options be A: Wishing for Seraphs, B: GoR-ing Tartarians, or C: Being Mictlan isn't much of an endgame in my opinion. Having this be fixed up via mod wouldn't exactly be ideal for exactly those reasons that JimMorrison said, someone gets used to playing with everything being viable and then strolls into an MP game wanting to play a nature-heavy nation and expects his thematic-high-nature-magic pretender to actually do something is going to get his head handed to him. The only reason I brought up modding this in is because it seems more likely that someone here would take the reigns on this than to actually get official support for such a thing. And who knows, maybe if the thread takes off and gets some cool ideas going on in it, we'll see some of the content show up in a later patch. Also ponies.

Incidentally, I'm really really surprised there isn't a Chinese dragon summon for Tien Chi. That could do a pretty fair job as an endgame summon for them, especially since Chinese dragons were supposed to have all kinds of wacky magical powers over stuff like the weather, which suggests air and water magic, two pretty solid paths for self-buffing.

[Spendios]

Dragons could be good I think. Pretenders dragons could be renamed Ancient Dragons, Dragons Kings or things like that to note their godlike status.

The same thing could be used for the cyclops with a cyclop king pretender and normal cyclops as summons.

The Roc and the Thunderbird could be nice Air themed summons.
Also the Lammasu (though I do not know the difference between a lammasu and a shedu).

What about karkadann from persian mythology ?

[llamabeast]

Ah, great! I had meant to start exactly this thread up, maybe even today!

It would indeed be awesome if there were more late-game summons in the game. I think people have been aware of this for a while, but somehow only recently has it been vocalised.

If we do end up producing something awesome, I reckon it will find its way into MP games. I mean, I (or anyone else) can always start a game and say "this game will use this mod". Mostly you can still fill the game up. The early mod nation games filled up slowly, but more recent games including mod nations filled up just fine.

I think this idea of including pretenders as late-game summons is genius, since they are a ready-made source of powerful creatures, complete with graphics and a mythological backstory. On the other hand they are mainly big human-shaped things, so it would be interesting to have some more variety (for example in the other thread I know someone was talking about treemen - I would feel like a treeman summon was more thematic than a Lord of the Wild or other nature pretender).

We don't actually need very many to make a very big difference I think.

[Ironhawk]

JimMorrison said:
But for those of us who haven't been playing since release, and don't have these algorithms plugged into our brain to allow us to accurately evaluate completely new units and capabilities on the fly, it would seem to just inspire confusion.....

Actually, it is a trap to think in this way. Dominions has such a huge number of units and spells that its really not possible to learn them all. Sure, you need to build a base of experience in a static environment. But the skills you should be building are unit evaluation, rather than rote memorization. If you do that, then it doesnt matter what mods your game has.

[llamabeast]

Okay, I have been looking at pretenders. Here is a list of pretenders which I think might be reasonable, to a greater or lesser extent, to use as a summon:

Wyrm
Lord of the Desert Sun/Summer Plague
Titan/Titaness
Asynja
Divine Serpent
Lady of Springs
Manticore
Cyclops
Dragons
Dracolich
Nataraja/Destroyer of Worlds
Scorpion King
Son of the Sea
Ancient Kraken
Old Man of the Sea
Lord of the Waves
Nerid
Lord of the Sky/Son of the Heavens
Ageless Olm

Some will need some changes to their descriptions and so on, but none of these are truly unique (most of the human ones are described like "The so-and-so is a demigod born from a river" which I would think there could be several of). So I think all of these are at least possibles. Some, though, feel somehow wrong. To me a Wyrm is very much a pretender, and shouldn't be summonable. Can't say why I feel that more about a Wyrm than a dragon though.

I'm still really interested in any new ideas people have for late game monsters though. Personally I'm drawing a creative blank right now. I may be able to do graphics if I can find time, for a small number of original ideas at least.

[chrispedersen]

I, for one, would rather see the game become *less* about endgame summons.

Decrease the importance, emphasize thematic elements, and better balance... not as easy as a quick patch

[Loren]

My take is that there should be something at Conjuration 9 for each path.

Or perhaps a generic "Summon Dragon" that can be cast by any level 9 caster no matter what the path--it's just what you get will be based on whatever path(s) the caster has.

[Twan]

For dragons I had the idea of a spell summoning a dragon egg, then you'll have to shapechange it each turn during a five or six turns, to end with an adult dragon -with young dragon forms before the last one- (the only problem is : with actual mod commands the egg would be able to shapechange each round of combat).

[Endoperez]

Twan said:
For dragons I had the idea of a spell summoning a dragon egg, then you'll have to shapechange it each turn during a five or six turns, to end with an adult dragon -with young dragon forms before the last one- (the only problem is : with actual mod commands the egg would be able to shapechange each round of combat).

Wouldn't it actually be able to cycle through all of its forms in a single turn? I just tried to do something similar, but couldn't, because you can shape change and give other orders afterwards.