Need hints & advices concerning summoning...

[Torin]

*Tienchi has some useful demons of water and fire, don´t remember the age.
*Agartha has the Umbrals that are very powerful.
*Pangaea can autosummon maenads with good turmoil scale and Pans.
*Late Ermor and Rlieh get free creatures.
*Middle Ermor, Late ctis, Lanka can reanimate undead with their priests.
*Lanka, Mictlan (except middle9, late Marignon, late ulm have special blood summons
*Bogarus have special very cool commanders
*as said pythium and marignon summon angels
*Yomi and shinuyama have some unique summon
sure im missing some nationals, i just remembering here

as general
*earth statues can handle and absorb many troops
*death has good death mages that can skelly spam in battle
*nature vine ogres that are plentiful and absorb many damage
*water is poor with the naiads and water trolls as troops (better spend water gems on clams)
*astral is very poor unless national summons or the ether warrios that are expensive(better achemize or spend on wishes)
*fire is awful with the fire lions (can alchemize to money)
*air is probably the worst only worth if national summons or the flying ethereal birds.
*blood is always good, only blood gets you spinal demons or flying dark demons. in combination with other paths better ones (any path but astral that gets you horror attacks)

bottom line. The usual spending of gems goes to summoned commanders and their magical equipment (that costs gems) that are a sort of "heroes" that fight in melee such as the wraithlord posted above. Summoning troops is not that bad, specially against the AI that doesn´t bring those SC (fighting commanders).

[Kuritza]

Imho astral golems are very cool as anti-SC casters.
Sea troll king is a very good fighter if you can equip him properly. Regen, poison immunity, cold immunity, chill aura, quickness. Mind fatique though.
Call of the winds can be useful for sieging, or capturing provinces with 1-2 PD. But even then in helps to cast twice to be sure.

[Torin]

The golem is too good to be true.
*cheap-30(or 35 gems)
*easy to learn, is on contruction, the same you research to give it the gear you forge.
*big
*lifeless
*mindless
*encumbrance 0
*can cast teleport(with a starshine cap) and body ethereal

at the expense of:
*low attack
*vulnerable to magic duel
*cannot life drain or regenerate (if i dont recall wrong)

the main reason I dont mention these is because i guess semigall is asking about troops more than commanders.

[Semigall]

the main reason I dont mention these is because i guess semigall is asking about troops more than commanders.

Correct.

I still haven't really mastered using SC's efficiently, so for now i'm depending more on massive armies, not on single units.

[Kuritza]

Try mechanical men + storm + wrathful skies.

[Gregstrom]

Lanka or Mictlan. Massing armies of their summons can really be fun.

[Cor2]

I like any spells that scale with caster level my two favorites are clay men and summon statues but the other are cool too.

I love the create lich, immortal spell caster? awesome.

Mechanical men are great.

The Iron dragon, Tarrasque, and Juggernaut are cool but too high up on the research tree to be useful most of the time.

I want to like monster toads, but for some reason they just dont seem to do as well as thier stats would suggest.

As for a good summoning nation I like MA Argatha the golems are sweet and most are sacred, give them a fire 9 bless and set them to killin.

[Agema]

First ask, "Why Summon?"

You can summon units for a specific purpose. That might be just bulking out an army, getting new mages, or some specific tactical use.

Nearly all paths can get you bulk units, especially I think Death and Nature. The big exceptions are Fire and Astral, but they do have some neat summons in there. Air can bulk out an army, but not with much that can fight well, although it gives tactical options with flying units.

All magic paths can summon new mages *of the same path*. If you're looking to diversify, water can get you into both Nature (naiad) and Death (Kokythiad) paths at a reasonable magic level, as well as a spell that can get some random paths (Frozen in Ice?). Death also has some summons that can get you into new magic paths, although not at a strong level.

For specific tactical things, see many of the examples above. Simple things can be sticking watchers down with ?Earth to do your patrolling for you, telestic animations to boost Dom by preaching, and so on.