Pls explain how early summoning spells are useful

[merlinme]

I have a problem with a couple of the Nature summons. Summon Treelord gets you a static N4 commander with no hand slots. Summon Ivy King gets you a mobile N3 commander, who you can give the staff which gives you a N2 bonus, so he should be able to reach a higher level than the Treelord.

I've never had any joy with Ivy Men, and I'm not much of a fan of Ivy Ogres. They have protection of something like 3, and they just drop like flies beneath any sort of ranged attack. I might give them another try, using the Ivy King with the Crown of the Ivy King (and there may be another magic item as well which gives you bonuses, I forget). But one of my main goals when building an army is to have troops which will last. The experience helps, but it's just so much more effective if you can build an army which is capable of capturing a few provinces without having to stop and wait for reinforcements. Vine Men/ Ogres rarely last more than one or two battles (in my admittedly fairly limited experience). I experimented a bit using them in an army which used a lot of poison, but most of the time I'd prefer to have undead, if I want poison immunity. I tend to think there are better uses of your gems and mages' time.

A couple of comments I would make on the list of 'Good' 'Bad' and 'Ugly' summons: playing as Oceania against a nation with a lot of missile troops, I used just about all the Ethereal spells I could get my hands on, including Ether Gate. Yes it's expensive, but in the circumstances where you have lots of gems and very few troops you can fight with on land, it can be worth it. Once I'd established my beachhead, I then used Summon Animals/ Summon Pride of Lions/ Summon Animal Horde, as I had plenty of nature gems, and you can't really build an army around Mermen and Seatrolls on their own. I even cast Horned Serpents a couple of times. They're not great value for money, but they're the only animals with reasonable protection, so have some staying power against arrows.

The Animal Horde consumes an enormous amount of food, and the low protection means they tend to only last one or two battles. But it's a very cost effective use of nature gems if you want to build an army fast. You can have 100 animals for 30 gems in one turn, and I'd take that over almost any number of Ivy Ogres.

I guess what you may have gathered from this is that almost all the summoning spells can be of use in right circumstances, it depends on the nation you're using and what your needs are for gems vs. money at any one point in time.

[Shovah32]

If you find vine men/ogres too vunerable try spells like mass protection, mass regeneration, will of the fates and other protection/survivability boosting spells.

[BigDisAwesome]

you could say that for anything though shovah. put those same spells on a less vulnerable unit and instead of going from bad to ok, you go from ok to good.

[calmon]

BigDisAwesome said:
you could say that for anything though shovah. put those same spells on a less vulnerable unit and instead of going from bad to ok, you go from ok to good.

Mass regeneration is good on high hitpoint creatures like the ogres. Not that good on low HP units

Mass protection is good especially on the ogres too because it mainly brings up protection from 5 to 10, which is an increase of 5. In case of a high former protection it only add 1.

[Ewierl]

The power of Vine Ogres is the mass of cheap HP they provide. Their staying power depends entirely on HP instead of protection, and their speed-of-output is slow compared to animals. But if you have time to accumulate them, they're very cheap; even if you only have an Ivy Crown, you're getting >100 HP for only 2 nature gems, and that ratio goes up to 200-250 once you start getting Treelords' Staves and Ivy Kings.

I agree that the Treelords themselves suck, though. I've never found any particularly good use for them, except as a side course during an Enchantment-school rush.

[Baalz]

Ewierl said:
The power of Vine Ogres is the mass of cheap HP they provide. Their staying power depends entirely on HP instead of protection, and their speed-of-output is slow compared to animals.

Yeah, the trick to using vine ogres is to understand what not to use them for. They're very cost effective against armor piercing/negating attacks, but you have to think more along the lines of longdead chaff. They're great for fatiguing people out, they're not undead so those counters are out, they're cheap to mass, and they buff a lot better than longdead because of the HP. Still, they don't have good long term survivability no matter what you do, so I tend to just mass them as reserve troops which slowly accumulate until there is a decisive battle I can throw them in. They don't have an upkeep and don't eat, so just leave them steadily ammassing rather than using them for general expansion where they'll quickly dwindle.

[merlinme]

One of my biggest complaints with Vine Ogres is how slow they are to summon. I think best case (Vine King + Crown of Vine King) is 3 ogres a turn? (I'm open to correction on this.) Early in the game, 2 ogres a turn is more like it. 2 or 3 vine ogres couldn't fight their way out of a wet paper bag.

So you can have your mage sit there for 15 turns and have 30 or maybe 45 Vine Ogres for 30 gems. 45 Vine Ogres is a chunky force, sure, but it's a painfully slow way of building an army. With Animal Horde, you can use lions as archer attackers, spiders can work with your poison cloud emitting troops, hawks can attack the enemy rear, and wolves can, erm, tire the enemy out a bit. And I'm not sure the army of vine ogres which took 15 turns to summon (without buffing magic) would survive much longer than the animal horde (without buffing magic).

I'm sure there are usable strategies with Vine Ogres. And yes, if you've got nature mages with nothing better to do, there are worse things to do than summoning a couple of them a turn. As Gandalf said, I guess they bulk out an army a bit, and it's nice that they don't eat. But by the time you had a decent number of Vine Ogres, I think Animal Horde would be a much better use of the gems.

[Teraswaerto]

I see Vine Ogres more as a mid to late game thing, despite the lowish research level. With lots of mages and lots of gems you can make armies of them.

They are not supposed to really kill much, but provide a wall of flesh for enemy units to run into.

Animal horde is much less efficient for that purpose.

[calmon]

merlinme said:
One of my biggest complaints with Vine Ogres is how slow they are to summon. I think best case (Vine King + Crown of Vine King) is 3 ogres a turn? (I'm open to correction on this.)

Vine Kings don't have a head slot. In theory you could give them treelord's staff but practically this staffs are very expensive for a +1 bonus.

[PDF]

calmon said:

Vine Kings don't have a head slot. In theory you could give them treelord's staff but practically this staffs are very expensive for a +1 bonus.

In Dom2 Vine Kings had a "built in" Crown of Ivy King (artefact) for +2 bonus so summoned 3 Ogres/turns. It could go up to 4 with a Treelord Staff.
I didn't use them in Dom3 yet so am not sure it's the same, but chances are.