The (not really) Official Endgame Summon Thread!

[AlgaeNymph]

MaxWilson said:
Beowulf ripped an arm off one of THOSE??!!! Wow.

Actually, he just ripped the arm off of a size 3 grendel.

I think [archons] should have the ability to summon dragons, basilisks, shapeshifters, and goblins. And shoot lightning-bolts during combat.

I was thinking more earth/other mages with high levels of heretic, halt heretic, and awe, along with some kind of mind control attack.

"The world, the Gnostics said, is ruled by the great and evil Archon, whose empire stretches as far as the firmament. But, in another universe, there's another Archon. And he wants your empire..."

Maybe that's too obscure for anybody else to remember.

Where's that quote from?

[Wrana]

Considering a thought which was given here - about making late-game LESS dependent on SCs I would offer to include some positive-event, etc. spells. I remember that somebody did include something like that in his mod using #copystats to gain positive-effect ability from existing Pretenders, than making new creatures immobile and non-attacking & naming the Menghirs...
There is also a possibility to include a Mountain That Walked as a Nature summon - a particularly large & wise elephant. This creature was known for his habit of making a regular ambushes against hunters who tried to shoot him. Maybe he should even be a mage - though with research penalty.
Considering a bear-spirit having an access to Death - in North Asian folklore, at least, bear was considered to be a very wise animal, having an access to spirit world...

[TheMenacer]

I'm not even sure it'd be possible to make the late-game less dependant on SCs without changing the entire base system of the game. Look at it this way, on the one hand, yes, it'd be nice to be able to have your legions of national mages not be obsolete by then, but considering the gradual escalation of magic it's just impossible. The fireball that by pure chance smacks right down in the middle of your mages is annoying, possibly altering the outcome of a battle, but isn't necessarily devastating. The earthquake/rain of stones that completely obliterates the entire lot of them could very well be if it hits your main army, and it will eventually. Important units with low HP just don't scale up alongside everything else. Thus it falls to supercombantants or thugs to shrug off hits that'd otherwise lose you five or six turns worth of recruitment and a potentially a whole bunch of gems.

That's why I think every path/nation should have viable endgame summons, because the current blood/death/astral split is just unbalanced. It'd be nice if we could keep the point of each path without losing its effectiveness by late game, but some paths, like fire for example, just aren't going to be able to do that. Fire being all aboud evocations could feasibly have some ridiculously powerful "smack the entire battlefield for a billion unresistable damage" spell, but without something big and mean to cast it, the poor mages who try are going to get a faceful of tartarian.

[atul]

I'd like to see paths keep true to their spirit. You bring Fire as an example, but why wouldn't some Evocation / Alteration bring smackdown even on Tartarians? Say a spell in theme of "brightest flames burn fastest" that targets one unit with highest Attack in province for some 999 points of damage? Or a Water spell that stops largest unit from moving, and if you attack the province on same turn it starts the combat under Encase in Ice effect? Air spell that instead of sending one Seeking Arrows at one commander's heart sends one hundred of them (think of Hero's ending)?

Naturally nothing actually moddable, but with some creativity (read: large enough boom) ideas can emerge for other things than summons.

[JimMorrison]

Basically 2 things could reduce the dependence on SCs in the late game:

First, even stronger battlefield buffs. If there were huge effect or battlefield wide buffs that gave enhanced protection against mass damage spells, and/or made those mass damage spells uncastable for some reason, and/or simply made normal troops much more effective against SCs, then conventional armies would retain usefulness.

Second, incredibly powerful single target spells. I know there are some, but adding more, so there are more paths that have things that can disable or kill of targets of singular power, would make it harder to rely on a small handful of units to wreak havoc.

Personally though, I am against a prevalence of spells that can instantly kill such an investment of time and effort, so I am more in favor of the route of horribly powerful debuffs (having an SC pretender Soul Slain is just sad), but at the same time, I am very much in favor of more variety and availability of the type of singularly powerful endgame summons that are already available. I mean, if you aren't going to take out Seraphim et al, then there need to be more options, IMO. Especially for casters, if things like Rain of Stones are going to be considered to make human sized mages obsolete, then we should have more plentiful late game caster summons. If it costs less gems to summon a 30hp+ caster that is as powerful or more powerful than your capitol only mages and then give them some gear that -might- help them survive, then why not?

I mean, we are playing at gods. It only makes sense that once the little mortals have played out their ultimate usefulness in the war, it's because the gods are bringing beasts and beings of legend into the fray, it only makes sense that it would be so. What this just means, is that currently the range of options in the end game narrows, because of the limited number, so we add a slew of new ones to broaden those options again, and make different magic paths viable to compete at the top of the pyramid.

[Twan]

Personnally my solution would be endgame non-SC summons casting powerful battle spells with the #onebatllespell command.

In the spell mod I'm (very slowly) developping, the endgame summons will be spirits with stats like that :

Spirit of Dreams (endgame air summon) hp and all stat (except MR) = 5, only 2 misc slots, but is a true ethearal and has a onebatllespell combining effects of Fog Warriors and a mass Confusion affecting 25% of the squares, also has two precision 100 long range attacks one with aoe 10 false fetters and one with aoe 10 confusion ; out of combat can call phantom beasts and domsummon/summon (a lot of) phantasmal warriors.

[JimMorrison]

Twan said:
Personnally my solution would be endgame non-SC summons casting powerful battle spells with the #onebatllespell command.

In the spell mod I'm (very slowly) developping, the endgame summons will be spirits with stats like that :

Spirit of Dreams (endgame air summon) hp and all stat (except MR) = 5, only 2 misc slots, but is a true ethearal and has a onebatllespell combining effects of Fog Warriors and a mass Confusion affecting 25% of the squares, also has two precision 100 long range attacks one with aoe 10 false fetters and one with aoe 10 confusion ; out of combat can call phantom beasts and domsummon/summon (a lot of) phantasmal warriors.

It sort of seems like giving such access to massive offensive spells would only erode the value of smaller units even more, making the only viable counter to have a few units with highest possible MR, and pray. It sounds like a cool unit, it just singlehandedly renders just about any conventional army into a complete waste of money, or even worse, a great way to buy the troops that kill your own mages off.