What are the strongest summons?

Vaetti hag with a nature pick is hardly an elite mage, and neither is a druid. And dryads, bards and even daughters of avalon could be used. And a five-gem Vine crown is not very difficult to make.

Oh, does anyone know what creatures you summon in different terrains using Summon Animals? I have summoned giant spiders (NOT machaka ones!), black hawks, lions and wolves in many places, bears and boars in forests and some kind of snakes at swamps... I think I got bears from mountains, but am not sure. Has anyone researched this? Oh, and if luck affects the quality (as it does for crossbreeds) Summon Animals becomes number one mass summon spell for turmoil-heavy Pangaea, in the start at least.

EDIT: Sorry, I didn't realize you meant vine ogres... Still, nature-2 mages can cast it with a 10-gem item they can forge, and more than 100 hps for 2 gems is quite good.

Druids are great for it if you want to spend that many gems doing it (Which isn't unreasonable, but 15+1 per cast is alot in my book, but it depends on the incomes and game and everything)

Think about Mothers/Daughters is they are Capital only. I build only Crones at the capital and they are also capital only and as many as I can; ADDICTED TO CRONES am I

If I was ever crazy enough to put a Treelord Staff on a noncombat/ritual mage I'd put it on a Bard though; and a crown too But 40 Gems is too much for 2 extra fodder. Better and more effective spells/summons for that.

[ December 14, 2003, 12:54: Message edited by: Zen ]

[HJ]

IIRC, Ivy king with Treelord's staff can summon 5 or 6 Ogres for 1 gem. That can be handy if there is nothing better to do at the moment (I remember from that game that I often had only 1 gem left, and research was pretty much done).

[Saxon]

Related but different question. What about mid level summons? You know, things that your normally recruited mages can pump out in decent numbers. What do you find very effective? Summer Lions comes to mind, but I have not played around with this too much, so I am interested in your thoughts.

[Teraswaerto]

Lamias are nice.

[NTJedi]

Mid-Level Summons... Pale_Riders spell gives you 20 longdead horsemen for 10 death gems.

I don't really see much in earth...earth magic just strikes me as weak overall really. Besides blade wind its battlefield spells are weak or hard to cast, and its summons are not great either, ...

I would have to disagree... the earth kings are awesome. Lots of life, regenerating and poison immune! Easily made into supercombantants with more regenerating items and a wraith sword. Being lvl_4 earth mages also allows them to cast invunerablity(30_Protection). Of course elemental kings are not mid-level summons... this was clearly a response to a previous post.

[ December 15, 2003, 15:49: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

I consider "Mid-Level Summons" to be of the troop type not Kings, Arch-Devils, Ice Devils, etc that are commanders/SC's. Some of my more common Favorites.

All the Seasonal Spirits have their place and position (I don't know what our cutoff for Mid-Level is here).

Summer Lions - Expensive but powerful. A good unit be bait; force attention on them while you tear at their army from a different direction.

Fall Bears - See Summer Lions, but not as effective because they do not have radiation.

Spring Hawks - The equivilant of a battlefield assassin. They are fragile but get the job done, don't expect them to survive long. Just have them do their job.

Winter Wolves - Cheap, radiation effects and ethereal. What's not to love? Of course you have to have a matching dominion or they might as well be Spring Hawks.

Spirit Mastery - 4 Death Gems for some fodder that have the chance to paralyze everything they can hit.

Lamias - Cheap cavalry type of unit that has multiple units per cast (my favorite) so it doesn't eat up too many mages time.

Mandragoras - See Lamias.

Clockwork(s) - Fodder against magic heavy nations and armies and good for defending a castle entrance. Plus they are cute.

Behemoth - No Morale Elephants for everyone.

Reanimated Archers - Fast firing free Xbows, even some disease thrown in for good luck.

Blood - I like Devils and Demon Knights personally; though if you don't have access to heavy penetrating missile using troops and do have access to Frosties or Storm Demons, they can fill a gap.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Joonie73:
I have never seen Doom Horrors. How do you get them, aside from Wish?

quote:

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Originally posted by Teraswaerto:
Nope, they don't. One fun thing to wish for is the Doom Horror.

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They might come if you cast a high level spell (e.g. Wish) while the Global Ritual Astral Corruption is active.