Summons: Your thoughts.....

[CUnknown]

Yeah, I sort of like Behemoth sometimes.. They are a tad pricey perhaps, but they aren't that bad.

[Sombre]

Behemoths aren't awful, as far as the non Tartarian 10 gem single monster summons go. But 10 death gems is still too much for a glorified elephant.

[Ewierl]

Personally, I always like Vine Ogres. Not fantastic in any way, but their beauty is cost-efficacy: 2 gems per casting, and each casting can easily become 100hp of meatshield (and much more in the mid/late game as you have Ivy Kings and the like). They're slow to mass, but completely upkeep-free, so you can accumulate a lot of cheap goons, especially if have many mid-level N mages.

[Valandil]

Sadly, they don't last very long in the face of firestorm and the like. Same problem with most of hte other summons.

I'm using blocks of living statues to hold of sharks underwater in DoomChicken. Basically, they block the inevtable shark attacks long enough for the basalt kings to get buffs up/put up my own shark attack.

[Shovah32]

Vine Ogres are practically made to be buffed. They are nice normally, but throw in an army of gold and mass regeneration and they suddenly become alot more than nice.
You can also add quickening, resistances, will of the fates, fog warriors, weapons of sharpness ect but the first 2 work great on their own.

[Evil Dave]

On a related topic: other than skelly spamming, I almost never deliberately cast battlefield summoning spells. Do other people? What do you summon?

[Shovah32]

LA Ulm+Massed Vampire Counts in your own dominion+Several castings of Summon Lammashta

Great fun.

[Velusion]

In a previous post I said most everything except late game summons suck. There are a couple exceptions I missed:

Call of the Wild can be very useful
Vine Orges can be cost effective with the right summoning gear/summoning abilities.

[Ewierl]

Valandil said:
Sadly, they don't last very long in the face of firestorm and the like.

Quite true. But even before you can lay down buffs like Army of Gold, the main use of Vine Ogres is in the early game. They are accessible and useful way, way, way before there are spells that can slaughter them en masse.

Oh, and other useful summons: I find Mechanical Men very useful sometimes. They're a niche critter, but the niche isn't a rare one: if your opponent is using lots of nasty elemental spells, you can plough through happily with these immune-everything fighters. (Even once you eventually get access to the equally-protected Iron Dragons, the MMs can still be worthwhile when your opponent backs up elemental spells with a few MR-targeting effects like Disintegrate. Neither type has excellent MR, so it can be better to have a stack of small guys than one big one.)

[VedalkenBear]

Hmm. As far as (national) summons go:

I find S&A Tien Chi's rather interesting. River Oni (why are they called Oni if they're Chinese?) are quite nice, the Fire Oni are okay (but not the greatest; they don't 'play well'). Servant and Hounds are pretty craptacular. The Soldiers are solid.

Marverni's Iron Pigs are pretty hysterical. 20HP 20Prot Sacred Boars.

I think Gandharvas must be mentioned. Bandar Log can easily summon them, and IIRC Patala and Kailasa can Clam for them. Depending on the Bless, Yazatas can be in the same camp, though it's a lot harder for Caelum to get the pearls. (Someone, switch it to Air summons. It just makes sense.)

Anyone mentioned the Morrigans of Fomoria yet? They look pretty interesting. Never been able to mass them, though. Also, I'd like opinions on the Golem Cult's stone guys. Any good ones?

As far as commanders go? The Serpent Cult's Satyr has to be high on the list of 'cool and actually pretty decent'. Even taking him as an Assassin, he's not bad for the price. If you start next to LE Arco or Jotunheim, they can be even better. OTOH, you kind of have to built your pretender around using them.